6

“That new hair give us anything we don’t already know?” Gatlin asked.

Broussard took a deep breath. “I’ll show you,” he said, going to his desk. He picked up two Polaroid photographs and laid them side by side. “This is the first hair we found.”

Everyone moved in closer. Broussard’s chubby index finger went to the fat part of the hair. “This is the root, and this—” his finger slid along the length of the hair “—is the shaft. This darker central core in the shaft is the medulla. There are three significant features to this hair: It has a narrow spindle-shaped root, the shaft is naked, and there’s no medulla just above the root. That makes this a restin’-stage hair, the kind shed naturally every day.

“This new hair—” his fingers moved to the other picture “—has a large club-shaped root. This clear material surroundin’ the shaft is part of the follicle. And if you look close, you can see that the medulla extends all the way into the root.”

Kit had no trouble seeing the first two features, but the third eluded her even when she bent down for a better look. The expression on Gatlin’s face was one of tolerance rather than interest. He obviously would have preferred that Broussard give him the bottom line without all the buildup.

“This hair did not fall out naturally,” Broussard said. “It was forcibly removed.”

“Could be it’s a hair that got tangled in his hairbrush,” Gatlin said. “He cleaned the brush, the hair falls on his clothes, and later it drops onto the tape while he’s working on the letters.”

“Two things wrong with that idea,” Broussard countered. “One, it’s unlikely this hair is from the same person as the first one. The first hair is a gray hair that’s been colored with a black dye. The second is a red hair with no dye in it. Generally, you can’t determine from a single hair what color a head of hair is, because we all have several different colors of hair in our scalp, but someone who dyes their hair would most likely treat all of it to get a uniform color. If this red hair came from the same scalp as the first one, it should show some evidence of dye.”

“Maybe one’s a beard hair,” Gatlin said.

Broussard shook his head. “Don’t think so.”

Gatlin seemed about to suggest another explanation but then appeared to reconsider. “You said there were two reasons I was wrong about the second hair coming from the killer’s hairbrush. . . .”

Broussard picked up the picture of the second hair and held it so Gatlin wouldn’t miss his next point. “See this dark band across the shaft?” He pointed to a region a short distance above the root.

Gatlin nodded.

“It indicates a degenerative change in the poorly keratinized zone just below the skin surface.”

“So?”

“That means the hair comes from a corpse.”

There was a silence as they all grappled with this surprising revelation.

“How do you know the degeneration didn’t take place after the hair was plucked?” Gatlin said finally.

“Any degeneration after plucking would go all the way to the root. Bein’ in the scalp apparently protects the deeper region.”

“How long after death before this band shows up?” Gatlin asked.

“Been seen as early as eight hours. Usually, it’s typical of longer times.”

“Not likely then that it could have come from the second victim.”

“Or the first one, either,” Broussard said.

“So what are you saying?” Gatlin asked. “There’s a body we haven’t discovered yet?”

“Certainly would fit the facts.”

“A body he decided to move several hours or days after death?” Gatlin sucked his teeth in thought. Eventually, he said, “I don’t get it. The other bodies were in places where they’d be found. And with him leaving those letters, he obviously wanted them found. What is there about this other one that makes it different?”

Broussard had no answer, a fact that irritated him as much as the supposition he’d accepted as fact earlier and that he must now confess. “I should point out,” he said, “that if the second hair didn’t come from the killer, it’s possible the first one didn’t either.”

It was now clear to Kit and Gatlin that this had always been a possibility. Rather than blaming Broussard for the oversight, they each felt at least partially responsible for not seeing it themselves when the first hair was being discussed.

“On the way over here, I had the feeling we were gaining on this guy,” Gatlin said. “Now, I’m not so sure. I hope the fiber evidence holds up. It’s not much, but . . .”

Broussard’s expression reminded Gatlin that they had not spoken of fibers previously. “Guess I didn’t tell you. The lab found a few white fibers stuck to the first victim’s shirt in the bloodstain. They said it was something called viscose. It’s an absorbent material used in camper’s towels. The way I figure it, the killer had to make sure he didn’t get blood on him, so he wrapped his knife hand in a towel.”

With nothing further to discuss, the meeting broke up and Kit headed to Grandma O’s for a sandwich. Gatlin returned to Homicide to do some paperwork.

“You goin’ back to the hotel?” Fleming asked Broussard after the others left.

“I need to do a few things here. You mind walkin’ back alone?”

“Nope. Don’t forget tonight.”

“I’ll be there. Thanks for the consult.”

“Just make sure I have to testify.”

Left alone, Broussard sat behind his desk, got two lemon balls from the glass bowl, and put one in each cheek. He reached across the desk and pulled the picture of the red hair around to where he could look at it.

A long moment later, he pushed it away and picked up the white folder Crandall Brooks had given him. Leaning back, he opened the folder and stared at Susan Brooks’s picture.

So many friends and relatives gone now . . . lives whose time had passed. Was his time passing, as well? Is that why he felt so ill at ease and out of step with this case? Was that how it began—forgetting to be cautious, seeing only what you want to be there, spinning satisfying facts from smoke?

Feeling very much in need of some time off, he wedged the open white folder between his electric pencil sharpener and his beaker of pens and pencils. He then turned to a task he could delay no longer and that he had no real interest in— putting the final touches on his talk for the session tomorrow afternoon, where he would face hundreds of colleagues with an address entitled “New Orleans: Food, Fun, and Murder.”

KIT STEPPED ONTO THE street and cast her eyes skyward, where the odds of rain had gone from a long shot five hours earlier to a serious possibility. New Orleans is several feet below sea level, the highest terrain being Monkey Hill at the zoo, built so the children could see what a hill feels like. And it is surrounded by swamps. Like most New Orleanians, Kit rarely thought about any of this. But occasionally, like today, when the sky turned pewter and hugged the city, she could faintly catch the sweet vegetable odor of the wild environs and was reminded that were it not for the huge pumps scattered about the city, it might well be a swamp itself. Close behind this thought was the realization she had no umbrella in her office.

She considered going somewhere close, but out of loyalty to Grandma O, she decided to risk the longer walk. In case she didn’t make it, she stopped at a vending machine and bought a USA Today to use as a rain hat.

There was only a handful of customers in Grandma O’s when Kit arrived. On the bar sat a stuffed pelican, its wings spread, mouth open. Bubba Oustellette, the proprietor’s grandson, was up on a ladder behind the bar, affixing a small shelf to the wall above the long one holding Grandma O’s collection of stuffed armadillos and nutrias. As usual, Bubba was dressed in blue cover-alls and was wearing a green baseball cap. He was only about five four but made up for his lack of size by a good heart and boundless resourcefulness. He ran the police vehicle-impoundment station and kept Broussard’s cars running. On occasion, he’d done Kit some very large favors and she liked him immensely.

“Didn’t think Ah was gonna see you today,” Grandma O said, coming her way with a big grin.

“I sort of lost track of time.”

“Then you mus’ be real hungry.”

Kit gestured toward the bar. “Nice pelican.”

“Foun’ it in a shop over on Royal. Paid way too much, but when you see a stuffed pelican, you better grab it ’fore somebody else does.”

Kit had the vague notion that it was illegal to possess a stuffed pelican but was too unsure of her facts to bring it up. In any event, it seemed like a real dust-catcher.

“C’mon back,” Grandma O said, moving toward Broussard’s table in the rear.

Kit detoured past the bar. “You make sure you get it straight now,” she said, looking up at Bubba.

“Hey, Doc Franklyn. You didn’t think Ah was gonna put it up crooked, did you?”

“You be careful, too. That’s a long way to fall.”

“Ah can’t fall. Grandma O won’t allow it.”

Kit waved and went to her table, where Grandma O took her order before disappearing into the kitchen.

The restaurant was as empty as Kit had ever seen it. At a table in the center of the room was a prosperous-looking older couple—the man wearing a canvas hat bristling with travel pins; she in a sweatshirt advertising the Cunard cruise line.

Used to be you had to pay people to wear commercials, Kit mused. Now the wearer pays.

Her thoughts went back to the meeting in Broussard’s office. A hair from a corpse—that was bizarre. But then the whole case was bizarre. Her gaze drifted to the right and for the first time she focused on the three people sitting near the wall—a man in his thirties and two gray-haired women. Not a particularly unusual combination, except that half the man’s face was covered with a port-wine stain and the two women were identical twins both dressed in red-and-white polka-dot blouses and red slacks. Seeing this strange trio gave Kit the peculiar sensation that perhaps the two murders had not really happened at all, that she was actually asleep and the last few days had merely been a lifelike dream. Either that or there was a door open somewhere letting in the unusual.

From this unproductive little detour, she went back to thinking about Scrabble letters, numbers, and newspaper pages. She pulled a napkin from the dispenser on the table and got a pen from her purse.

KOJE 6181

For a few seconds, she stared at what she’d written. Then, elbow on the table, fist propped against her cheek, she began to doodle, first drawing a box around the cluster of letters and numbers, then making the inside corners into little triangles. She attached curly pigtails to each corner and began connecting the horizontal sides of her box with vertical lines.

“Never saw you do dat before,” Grandma O said, interrupting with Kit’s food. “You mus’ have somethin’ both-erin’ you.”

Grandma O moved around and looked at Kit’s scribbling right side up. Her face fell and her Grandma O demeanor wilted, an amazing conversion for a woman who could bend tenpenny nails with her fingers and eject abusive patrons by force.

“What’s wrong?” Kit asked.

“Nineteen eighty-one . . . dat’s when my Albert passed.”

Looking at her scrawls on the napkin, Kit saw that her doodling had divided the 6181 into 6/1/81, June first, 1981. “I’m sorry I reminded you of something so sad,” she said.

“Albert was a good man an’ Ah know he went to a good place,” Grandma O said bravely. “Person can’t go back to what was. We gotta jus’ move on. You have somethin’ to eat an’ you’ll see your way through dat problem.”

She put Kit’s food down and headed for a sailor at the bar, who was fondling the pelican.

Kit went to work on her sandwich, her eyes returning to the napkin while she chewed.

6/1/81

She felt the stirring of an idea. Farfetched? Perhaps. Perhaps not. She certainly had nothing to lose in checking it out. And it could be done on the way back to the office.

She chewed faster now, wanting to be done with lunch and on her way. Had she been in any other restaurant, she wouldn’t have bothered finishing her poor boy, which suddenly seemed enormous. But she was as intimidated by Grandma O as any of her other regulars were, so she stayed, chewed faster, and got it all down.

She was a block from the restaurant before she realized she’d left her rain hat behind. This caused her to pick up the pace.

The library was on Tulane Avenue, a few blocks from the hospital. She went directly to the Louisiana Room on the third floor, where the librarian directed her to some gray cabinets in the back, past the microfilm readers. In those cabinets were rows of small cardboard boxes containing microfilms of old copies of the Times-Picayune. She found the box containing the issue printed on 6/1/81 and took it to the readers.

She checked the instructions on the reader and threaded the film according to the diagram. Black pages flew by as she turned the crank. Finally, she got to the front page. As she scanned it intently, a small voice said, “Dear, can you read this?”

It was a birdlike old lady at the next machine. Kit leaned over and saw on the reader something that looked like the guest register for a hotel. She bent closer to the entry above the old lady’s veined finger and squinted at the faded signature. “It looks like . . . Vorheis.”

“Yes,” the old lady said. “I see that now. Thank you so much.”

Kit went back to her own search but, unlike the old lady, had no idea what she was looking for. Over the next few minutes, she encountered nothing but page after page of uninteresting old news and old ads, so that when the front page for June second rolled into view, she reversed direction, rewound the film, and put the spool back in its box. Her failure to solve the Scrabble riddle was not to be the only negative associated with her visit to the library, for when she reached down to get her purse, it was gone.

Heart thumping, she looked on the other side of the chair. Her purse was not there, either. With an inventory of her credit cards mentally rolling by like frames on the microfilm reader, she shoved her chair back and hurried to the gray cabinets, thinking she might have left it there when she was searching the drawers for the right box.

Nothing.

Concentrate. . . . When did she have it last? She’d definitely had it at Grandma O’s, because she’d taken the pen out of it to write on the napkin . . . and she had it at the cabinets, because she remembered setting it right here . . . and she also had it at the microfilm reader, because she distinctly recalled putting it on the floor next to . . . the old lady.

She rushed to the elevators. Having been so intent on reviewing the film, she had no recollection of when the old lady had left. She could be blocks away by now.

The elevator took forever to get to the ground floor and when it finally did, she ran through the lobby to the exits, one of which opened toward city hall and the other toward the Tulane-Loyola intersection.

She dashed to the Tulane-Loyola exit and went out onto the steps. No sign of her. She continued onto the sidewalk and looked to her right, down Loyola. There she was, about forty yards away, carrying a shopping bag and walking fast.

Kit started after her in a dead run, giving out an ill-advised shout. “You with the shopping bag. Stop.”

The old lady looked back and then began to run like a whippet, her long dress flipping around her thin legs as she flew over the pavement. She was fast, but Kit was faster, and the distance between them steadily closed.

The old lady ran to an occupied car waiting at the curb and began clawing at the door handle. She got it open just as Kit reached her. As the old lady dived inside, Kit grabbed at the grocery bag, which ripped in half as the car sped away, the door on the passenger side still partially open.

There was dried mud on the license plate, so there was no chance to get the number. But Kit did retrieve her purse, for it had fallen out of the bag and onto the street.

A quick survey of the contents showed that everything was there. Heart still thumping, she slipped the bag onto her shoulder and headed back toward Tulane Avenue as a misty rain began to fall.