The first rays of sunlight touched the clapboard siding and the worn shingles and the patches of blue plastic tarp on the weather-beaten homes of the Lower Ninth Ward. Colonies of mold and mildew had been busy all night long in the clammy chill of a New Orleans winter, exuding their distinctive gases, but they lay dormant now as their hideouts warmed up, content to slumber until the sun was gone again.
Some cars and trucks were still piled against abandoned structures, rusting hulks after more than four years of rain and humidity, far beyond any hope of salvage. The junkyards, like the landfills, were already overflowing, so unless the cars were blocking traffic or interfering with access to something vital, they remained exactly where Katrina left them.
The Industrial Canal had been breached near the Claiborne Street Bridge. More than eight feet of storm-driven floodwater sloshed into the Lower Ninth Ward, directly from Lake Ponchartrain. That caused most of the immediate damage, but years of sun and wind and the constant humidity of the Caribbean basin weathered whatever debris remained.
A vindictive Mother Nature had vandalized the entire region. When the waters finally receded from the low-lying neighborhood, they left a bathtub ring around every structure, as high as a man could reach on tiptoe.
It wasn’t just lake water; it was a toxic soup. The flood had upended trashcans and Dumpsters, and back-flushed restaurant drains, toilets, gutters, and sewers. Tons of food floated away, along with the contents of ten thousand refrigerators, all of it putrefying in the warm water, and it blended with every pharmaceutical drug, legal or otherwise, from all the bedsides and bathroom cabinets and kitchen tables.
Added to that were the dead, bloated bodies of the pets and the raccoons and the rats that couldn’t swim, and the corpses of the old and the poor who huddled in their attics, praying for a rescuer who couldn’t get to them fast enough.
It all was in the mix, and it seeped into every scrap of drywall, every shingle, every floorboard, and every couch and drape and mattress, and sat there, stewing in the hot sunshine, for years on end.
The two-story Victorian house was in the middle of the block, built in 1914. Most of the other homes had been abandoned, and most still remained the exact same way the flood had left them. Some four hundred souls now lived in the neighborhood, out of a pre-Katrina population of over twelve thousand.
On the second floor of the faded mansion, in the back half of the house, the master suite was still in gloom, the lace curtains drawn tight. A series of newspaper clippings were hung on the wall with pushpins. They formed a chilling chronology of the work of a serial killer still at large.
From the Times-Picayune Press, December 25, 1976 evening edition: SIX DIE – MASSACRE AND TORNADO STRIKE BAYOU MEMORIAL CLINIC. Another article from the Bayou Press, November 1977: 8-MONTH OLD BOY HAS SKULL CRUSHED. From the Orlando Sentinel, February 1981: 5-YEAR OLD BOY FOUND DEAD. The Sun Herald reported on October 18, 1985: BRANDING KILLER STRIKES AGAIN. Boy Found In Oven, FBI Admits They’re Stumped. By then, the killer had earned his moniker.
On December 8, 1988, the New Orleans Dispatch reported: TEEN BOY FOUND IN DUMPSTER – BOTH EYES BURNED. The trail of blood continued through several more articles, culminating in a Time cover story from nearly three years ago: THIRTY YEARS OF THE BRANDING KILLER – Will It Ever End?
A young woman was asleep in the four-poster bed. She shifted uncomfortably, exposing a birthmark on her right side, a dark horizontal streak about two inches in length.
A holstered revolver sat on the nightstand beside a silver-framed photograph. Twelve-year-old Christine Mas sat on her father’s lap. He wore his cop helmet and his black pants with the white side-stripes, straddling his NOPD Harley-Davidson. His knee-high motorcycle boots were always spit-shined, but Officer Julian Mas liked to keep his scarred leather holster just the way it was.
BLAM!! A gunshot reverberated in the woman’s dream. She burrowed into her pillow, but the gravity well of horror was inescapable now. She was falling into a familiar nightmare.
BLAM! Twelve-year-old Chrissy was pressing her hands against the passenger window, staring at her father’s back. She was in the front passenger seat of the family car and he was standing just outside, leaning against her door. All she could see was the broad back of his jacket, and the revolver in his hand.
“DADDY!” she shrieked as loud as she could. But in the nightmare, she had no voice.
BLAM!
Mas lurched awake. She was soaked in sweat, her damp hair lying in limp strands on her forehead. She was frozen in place and taking short, shallow breaths as her heart raced from a surge of adrenalin. She gradually gained focus, staring at her father’s gun on the nightstand.
She sat up and looked dully around the room. The master suite was a large studio apartment now, as comfortable as an old pair of shoes. Her eyes came to rest on the news clippings, and she gazed at them until she came fully awake.
She picked up her father’s holstered revolver and gently cradled it in her hands, resting it in her lap. The weapon was hers now, a nickel-plated Ruger Speed Six revolver with a four-inch barrel. Officer Mas had taken it to a gunsmith, who carefully honed the works until the trigger pull was as light and smooth as silk. The original wood grips were retained. In the proper hands, it was incredibly accurate.
The Ruger was Mas’s memento of her father, and a reminder of her father’s killer. He was still out there, whoever he was. And she was determined to find him.
She drew the weapon from the oiled leather holster, gripping it firmly in her right hand. It nestled perfectly in her palm, as if it had been custom-made for her. She admired the weapon’s simple, elegant craftsmanship. Designed for reliability and rugged use, it was arguably one of the finest handguns ever made.
She didn’t take possession of it until the day she received her B.A. in Criminal Justice, the summer after her twenty-first birthday. Her mother Beth was so proud of her that she gave it to her daughter as a graduation present, confident that she could be trusted with the weapon.
The faint scent of Hoppe’s No. 9 lubricant had always been a powerful memory trigger for Mas. Sometimes it inspired her, and at other times it made it that much harder to work up the resolve to face another day on the job. This was one of those days.
Junior thrust his snout up between her knees, nudging her hands and the weapon they held out of the way. The brindle Bull Terrier was wide awake and bright-eyed, as if he had just drunk a pot of coffee. It was dawn and he was ready to play, a ball and a tug rope in his mouth.
“Hey, little booger,” she said with a smile. “Happy New Year.”
His big brown eyes sparkled and his tail wagged like a metronome. Play with me!
Mas placed the Ruger and the holster on the nightstand. Junior wagged his tail harder, attentively watching her hands, waiting for her to make her move...
She grabbed the tug rope and growled at him. Junior growled back and yanked her off the bed, onto her bare feet. It was her morning exercise.
The curtains were drawn back and the room was awash in morning light. As Junior scarfed his morning chow on the back porch by the stairs, Mas dressed before the old wardrobe mirror. It was chilly on most mornings this time of year, but it had been getting up to the upper 60s during the day. Still, she reckoned that wool slacks wouldn’t be overly warm. She tucked in her white shirt and strapped on her 10mm Sig Sauer P229. She preferred the Ruger, but she had to admit that twelve flat-trajectory rounds of .40 caliber, along with four back-up clips, did come in handy. FBI badge number 1184 was pinned to her gun belt, beside her cell phone.
She was using a strip of masking tape to get Junior’s hair off her suit jacket when the phone rang. She glanced up as the answering machine took over, and listened as she put on her Carmex lip balm. “I’m not here. You know how this works.” BEEP.
“Hi, honey, it’s your mother. Just want to know if you can make it for dinner next week. Miss you. Call me some time; I worry.”
Mas smiled and blew a glossy kiss as Beth hung up. Before Katrina, she would go to her mom’s house for a weekly get-together and a home cooked meal. But their family home, like so many others, had been lost in the storm. Mary Beth Mas spent the next year in a FEMA motel, and they began having their get-togethers at different restaurants around the city. As New Orleans got back on its feet, more restaurants became available, and they realized that it was a fun way to explore the city and to celebrate its return. Their new tradition continued even after Beth moved into her new home. This time, it was Mas’s turn to pick the place.
Mas’s iPhone rang and she grabbed it off her belt. “Agent Mas.”
“Morning, Chrissy.” It was Captain Thorrington, head of the homicide and robbery division of NOPD. Back in the day, he was her father’s partner, as much as lone-wolf motorcycle cops had partners, but they considered themselves partners nonetheless and would ride together whenever they could.
Mas smiled. “Morning, Cap’n.” In her heart, she was still NOPD. After getting her B.A., she had gone straight into the NOPD Academy and worked as a rookie in homicide under the Captain’s stern tutelage. After three years of active duty, she became eligible for the FBI Academy at Quantico, Virginia. Thorrington’s recommendation helped her secure a position in the program.
She became a Fed because it afforded her the freedom to pursue a criminal across state lines, and there was one criminal in particular that she sought. The Branding Killer’s activities had expanded beyond Louisiana while she was growing up, so by the time she was qualified to pursue him there were at least five states to cover. Thorrington recommended a Federal Marshal career path, but Mas decided that FBI was a better way to go.
She went to Virginia, three years to the day that she became a cop, and when she returned she was a Fed. Everyone knew she was still NOPD at heart, and everyone wanted the bastard caught just as much as she did, so for all practical purposes the New Orleans FBI Field Office seconded her to the NOPD and pretty much left her alone.
Thorrington got right to the point. “We had a jumper. You’ll want to see this one.”
Mas didn’t reply, but she knew exactly what he meant. Her stomach tightened, and she suddenly had no appetite for her usual granola and coffee.
“Eleven forty-seven Beaudry,” he told her.
Mas nodded, memorizing the address. “I’m on my way.”
She ended the call and glanced at the long row of clippings tacked on the wall beside her dresser. Her eyes lingered on the Time cover hanging next to her mirror: Will It Ever End?
She didn’t know. “Happy New Year... ” she muttered.
She took a last look around the apartment before she left. Everything was locked up tight. Junior got the signal and hopped through the doggie door on the back porch, negotiating the rickety staircase down to the backyard below.
Mas re-holstered the Ruger and laid it down beside the photograph. She kissed her finger and touched it to her father’s smiling face, then slipped her MacBook and a bottle of W.I.L. energy water in her briefcase, picked it up, and went out, dead bolting the door behind her.
Mas turned the key and pressed the starter button, and her BMW R1200 purred to life. It cost her a small fortune, but it was her only extravagance. She wasn’t a woman who was partial to jewelry, and she wasn’t much of a clotheshorse, either, but when it came to her ride she was particular.
She stashed her briefcase in one of the hard shell saddlebags, then unclipped her helmet from the frame and slipped it on, tucking her hair inside. She let the bike warm up, though it really wasn’t necessary. It just gave her a moment to watch Junior playing with the landlady’s dog.
The trash truck was coming, snaking down the street as it negotiated the piles of trash, the construction debris, and the abandoned cars. Junior forlornly watched Mas, knowing it was time for her to go. Mas bent over the fence and tousled his ears.
“Be good, little doggie. And leave those poor rats alone.”
He just wagged his tail; the only thing he heard was the word “rats.” Junior was a purebred ratter and they were everywhere these days. To his way of thinking, New Orleans was heaven on earth.
Mas went to the curb, straddled her bike, and zoomed away, slaloming around the junk in the street. What few neighbors remained waved to her, and she waved back. They liked having a cop on their block, and when she became a Fed they liked it even better. Plus, she was easy on the eyes.
She drove west across the Claiborne Street Bridge, passing the infamous spot where the floodwaters had rushed into her neighborhood. Beaudry Street was on her way to the field office downtown. She could still be on time for the ten o’clock briefing if she hurried.