Belle Chasse

  BELLE CHASSE

  William H. Lovejoy

  Copyright © 2012 William H. Lovejoy

  William H. Lovejoy has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 2012 by William H. Lovejoy.

  This edition published in 2018 by Endeavour Media Ltd.

  DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fiction. Locations and objects are used in a fictional manner and may have no relationship with the real world.

  This one is for Jane

  Table of Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  ONE

  The August night dripped with magnolia-scented humidity like Bourbon Street at night dripped with clear riffs from baritone saxophones. A sweet clarinet rippled in a Persian marketplace. Heat and sweat and laughter and the smell of popcorn. Old New Orleans tried so hard to hang onto its aristocratic past and its jazzy glory with clenched talons, but Katrina had ripped the guts out of most of it. The new age bopped along the packed sidewalks, rap music pounding through ear buds plugged into thirty percent of the ears Kenney passed. He figured their hearing would be gone by age forty.

  Businessmen from the Hyatt and the Hilton and the Fairmont, wifeless and bored with seminars on promotion and earnings-per-share analysis, walked the sidewalk and the street in self-protective threesomes and foursomes, crossing aimlessly back and forth between the littered curbs to poke their heads into saloons, searching for the one that was just right. The Friday night crush of black and white and yellow and tawny flesh had intimidated the automobiles; very few ventured down Bourbon Street. Vague shadows created by dim neon behind the revelers danced and darted.

  The August night was fiercely hot, still around 85 degrees and a similar humidity rating, and sweat gleamed on most of the faces. The aroma of beer drifted from the saloons and mixed with that of the magnolia and jacaranda.

  Glenn Kenney followed the flow, listless in the midst of all that forced gaiety. A florist would have picked him out of the bouquet, a dying rose. One foot placed in front of the other. Stop and listen to the blues. Hear a lilting voice picking out Jolie Blon, a certain pleasure for the tourists. Move on as the piano attacked the blood stream, threatening to activate it. He was seeking neither animation nor salvation.

  And trying not to think about either, which was difficult. Retracting his previous thought, Kenney decided he was in search of salvation. The old instincts, supposedly buried in the Persian Gulf, flailed to the surface, and Darwin dominated. Kenney was forced to live on, perhaps out of habit.

  The veteran panhandlers and street con artists left him mostly alone. The drug dealers on nearly every corner gave him the eye, and then elected to look elsewhere. His six-four and two-twenty was enough to make them circle wide, or to find a new interest in the souvenirs packing a brightly-lit window on the other side of the street, or to study the cracks in the sidewalk. They could appreciate the promise in the thousand dollar suit, the heavy gold watch on his left wrist, the thin gold chain revealed by the open collar of his pale blue silk shirt. They could also appreciate the omens suggested by his weathered face, his broken nose, the slim white scar along his left cheek, and the tension in his big shoulders. There was a hitch in his walk, a small limp favoring the left leg. And yet, there were ominous contrasts in the total impression. He could have been a battered cripple, but the street-wise would not have risked a fin on the roll of those dice. He was not the Man; he was not anything. His dark blue eyes were opaque, suggesting dead.

  Or deadly.

  Two novices had baited him with sure-win crap games and fabulous backroom stag shows-- “Lookin' for action, mister?”--and retreated quickly when his eyes came to momentary life and made exceptionally clear that they had made the wrong assumption. He had spoken to neither.

  The third novice, maybe fifteen years old and well over six feet tall, wearing a T-shirt proclaiming, “If God had not intended for pussy to be eaten, he would not have made it look like a taco, “ tried to sell him a diamond ring he had probably lifted cleaning rooms at the Holiday Inn.

  “You wife gonna love this, man! No shit!”

  Kenney looked at him, stepped to the side, and tried to move around the kid.

  The novice stepped with him, blocking his path. “C'mon, man! Wheah else you gonna get a ten thousan' dolla' goddamn diamon' ring for a lousy hunnert?”

  “You going to let me by?”

  “Fuck, guy! Looka this thing!”

  Kenney hit him in the face.

  The teenager went down like a steer whapped between the eyes with a ten-pound sledge hammer. His flattened nose sprayed blood down his chin and over his chest. The street mob parted and washed around them, oblivious, or wanting to be, except for one tourist who called out, “Jesus, man! He’s just a kid.”

  Kenney switched his gaze to the tourist, and that man decided to mosey on.

  Kenney reached down and pried the ring from grasping fingers, wiped the blood off his knuckles on the kid’s T-shirt, and then walked on. He judged the ring might be worth a couple thousand at most, but he wasn’t an expert. At the corner of Bourbon and Conti, he gave the ring and his speculation to a beat cop and forgot about it. Either the cop was honest or he would make his wife very happy.

  The hookers were undecided. Many had elected to pass on this one. Some had approached, and then veered away at the last moment, once they identified the potential menace. Given a preference, they would rather get their beatings from the pimps they knew than from an unknown John. The pimps did not usually leave marks.

  Finally, he spotted her. He knew her by reputation but he’d never met her.

  Jacki du Bonnet, sitting at an outdoor table at Rollie's, midway down the block on Toulouse, saw him when he rounded the corner, leaving Bourbon Street. He sauntered along, close to the curb, dodging the cast iron lamp posts with agility, his eyes moving slowly over the crowd, watching but not apparently seeing. He was aware of her interest.

  At twenty-eight, after a decade on the street, Jacki had honed her instincts and her methodology. At first, he thought she had rejected him out of hand, then, as he closed on her, she reconsidered. Maybe she thought there was something else behind the facade, and her curiosity was aroused. There must be vulnerability in the steel somewhere she would be thinking. And there was money in the wallet.

  Jacki did not walk the street. She waited at the side of it, a touch of elegance in the short, black sheath that revealed little but promised much. One strand of pearls accented the sensuous length of her throat, and light makeup emphasized the crisp lavender of her eyes. Her lips pouted. Her fingers toyed with the stem of her wine glass. Her short dark hair was fluffed around her face, obviously turned out by a good hair stylist. She was alone at her wrought iron table, surrounded by a dozen other tables which were all occupied by happy couples chasing vari-colored drinks.

  Make mine a Hurricane.

  When he was twenty feet away, she gazed directly at him, and when he was ten feet away, she raised one eyebrow.

  His expression did not change, but his eyes stayed with her, and he altered course toward her table.

  When he stopped in front of her table, she raised her other eyebrow, exchanging query for wide-eyed innocence.

  “Why not?” he said.

  When sh
e indicated the chair opposite with a nicely fluid gesture, Kenney sat. “I'm Glenn.”

  “And I'm Jacki. With an ‘i’, no ‘ee.’ Where you from, Glenn?”

  Her hands played with the stem of her wine glass, half full of transparent Chablis. She had a nice smile, part of it amused and part of it reserved, and revealing even, white teeth. Great genes or great dentist, one or the other.

  “I'm just visiting. “ Not disclosing a home base. Sometimes he felt as if he was simply a visitor to this earth, and that was why he was often acutely aware of details, seeing the sights, getting his money's worth while he was still on the journey.

  Pulling the thick roll from his left pants pocket, Kenney asked, “How much are we talking about, Jacki?”

  She did not look at the roll, kept her eyes on his. “Some very wise man once said 'time is money.”

  Ben Franklin, he thought he remembered.

  Kenney clicked off ten one-hundred dollar bills, folded them lengthwise, and slipped them so that each numeral was visible: 100, 100, 100, 100 . . .100. He showed them to her. “I want to buy your time, darlin', three hours of it.”

  Then her eyes dropped to the bills engulfed in his big hand. Quickly, her eyes flashed back to his, and her smile lost its reservation. “What did you have in mind, Glenn? “

  “Nothing special. Just the hours. From seven-fifteen until ten-fifteen on Thursday. That was August twelfth.”

  That surprised her. “That was yesterday.”

  “Right, it was. And you need to show me where we spent that time.”

  “You’re buying an alibi, Glenn.”

  “That’s right, also.”

  “I can go with that,” she said.

  TWO

  Connie Mellor turned thirty-eight years old on August 13, the day she entered the lush, sixth-floor apartment in the St. Phillip Towers, and she was feeling every year. She may not have looked her age--lean and fit and a little bosomy in an ecru linen suit, but she felt it. Twelve years in the department and two failed marriages and one miscarriage had hardened her psyche if not her appearance.

  The building superintendent put his key in the knob lock, twisted the handle, swung the door open, and stood back. He did not want to go in first. Connie noted that the deadbolt lock had not been set.

  The man who had called in, Travers, stayed against the wall on the other side of the carpeted hallway. He looked anxious; he did not want to go in first, either.

  Her partner for the last four years, Pete Wiggins, said, “After you, Sergeant.”

  Wiggins was an intelligent man, an LSU graduate, thirty years old, small and dark, and she liked him. A very honest cop she could trust, and that was all-important in a partner. They had been paired up for four years and she had never found serious fault with him. Besides, he did not give her the same crap many of the macho cops did.

  “You get more courteous every day, Pete.”

  He grinned at her and aimed a hand, palm-up, at the doorway.

  Mellor pulled her Glock from the big purse that hung on its strap from her left shoulder and held it ready, muzzle aimed upward. Pete did the same.

  She went in, finding the entrance a wide, long foyer, slated with quarry stone. A low credenza on the left, under a gilt-edged mirror, held a silver tray with unopened mail and a grey suede purse.

  The lights were on, and she called out, “NOPD! Anyone home?”

  There was no answer. The air conditioning was on high, making the place almost frigid, a stark contrast from the atmosphere outside the windows. She walked on into the living room, followed by Wiggins. One wall was composed entirely of glass, flanked by stacked loose-weave draperies, and the view was of marine traffic on the Mississippi drifting around the bend of the river. Low, wide sofas and chairs, heavily cushioned. Ebony tables. Brass lamps. White walls and big, modern oil paintings--bright blobs and splashes of orange, yellow, red, and blue color with no subject that she could discern.

  Still no resident responding.

  “Is anyone home?”

  Silence.

  But the smell was present, the pungent odor of blood.

  In her pocket, she found a pair of latex gloves and pulled them on. Her partner followed suit.

  “Smell it? “he asked.

  “Yes. Not good.”

  Wiggins headed for the dining room and kitchen, and Mellor went to the right, toward a short hallway, turning on the hall light. She tried the two doors on her right, finding a bathroom and what appeared to be a guest bedroom converted to an office. Cautiously, she pushed open the single door on the left, revealing the master bedroom and the carnage.

  She raised her volume. “In here, Pete.”

  Checking her watch for her notes—five-forty-five, she took one step inside the room, looked in both directions, and then fixed on the bed. The woman's body was nude, spread-eagled on its back across pink satin sheets that were dulled by large pools of congealed, brownish blood. She had been beautiful yesterday. Blood scatter peppered the brocaded walls and the white carpet. Dried blots of blood on the glass of the sliding doors.

  Quickly, Mellor glanced into the master bath and found it vacant. The same was true of the huge walk-in closet. Then she went to the sliding glass door to the balcony, which was locked, and surveyed the lanai. It was also barren but for two white wrought iron lounge chairs and a matching low table.

  She slid the semiautomatic pistol back into her purse.

  Wiggins appeared in the doorway. “Ah, shit.”

  “Call for a team, will you, Pete? And the Coroner. Get a uniform to locate her car in the garage and seal it until we have time to go over it.”

  She and Wiggins had three other open homicide cases. It was more than a full load, and this one would really fill out their days.

  Pulling his cell phone, Wiggins went back down the corridor, meeting the superintendent and the boyfriend, and turning them back into the living room. “Just have a seat, will you? “

  Connie walked around the bed, careful of where she was stepping, and looked closely at the men's ties that had been used to bind the woman's wrists and ankles to the four legs of the bed. Expensive ties.

  The odor was getting to her, forcing a gag reflex.

  She looked at the face. The mouth was hidden by a strip of wide duct tape. No screaming, please, while this is going on. One big hazel eye stared at the ceiling in shock and dread; the other eye was hammered pulp. Long, high-lighted blonde hair, already losing its luster and clumpy with blood clots, was spread over the pillow. The skin would have been flawless before the mascara mixed with the blood, painting a grotesque mask that tried to hide the bruises on the forehead and cheeks. The left forehead and the left cheekbone were caved in, shards of white bone showing. A right-hander. The damage suggested the use of something other than a bare fist. Or a gloved fist.

  Mellor checked the body. Some lividity apparent--the bottom side of the body was barely colored in dark bruise, the sign of unpumped blood settling. Of course, it was always difficult to tell. Dead bodies could be deceptive about the causes of death. It was a body of which she might have been envious twenty-four hours before. Full-breasted, wide-hipped, long-legged, tiny-ankled. Now the breasts were flattened of their own dead weight, the smooth stomach and pelvic region was knotted with lacerations and blue-brown contusions, the tanned arms were rigid. Judging by the warp in them, the legs and arms were likely broken. In several places.

  She turned away, gulping to hold down the bile. Her seven years with homicide should have steeled her to the variety of havoc that humans imposed on one another, but it had not done so. Externally, she never revealed her repulsion, not for any fellow officer seeking a chink in her--in any female officer's--carapace. Internally, her stomach flipped and flopped and threatened to revolt.

  And still she had to look, to examine closely, to start the adrenaline pumping, to firm the conviction that she would do everything she could do to make this asshole pay for his play.

  When she knew she
was not going to vomit, she backed away and looked briefly for a weapon, but saw none. Going back to the master closet, she quickly surveyed it and found it to be all female. There were no expensive ties clinging to a hanger. She went back to the living room, then into the foyer to retrieve the suede purse. Pete was on his cell phone, standing in the kitchen. The superintendent, a grayed man in his sixties, sat on the front edge of a big sofa, appearing small.

  The other man was softly handsome, jowls and stomach just beginning to sag, maybe pushing 50 years. He had dark hair suggesting color treatment, a deep-water tan suggesting ownership of a boat, or a swimming pool, or a beach. Strong-looking hands suggesting a firm golf grip. Despite the tan, his face appeared pale as he asked, “Is she . . . is she . . . ? “

  Mellor was going through the wallet. “Yes sir, she's dead. “

  He sagged back in the chair. “My God! “

  She found the driver's license and held it between her fingers as she opened her notebook and jotted down the license information.

  “How did she. . . ? “

  “What's your name again, sir? “

  “Uh, Travers. Nick Travers. “

  “You were to pick her up at five o'clock? “

  “Yes. I got here early, about ten minutes early. “

  “And how did you know the lady? “

  “Well, we dated several times. “

  “I see. For how long? “

  He thought a moment. His voice was a little raggedy. “A month. Maybe five weeks.”

  “How did you meet her?”

  “I bought a boat from her.”

  “And what do you do, Mr. Travers?”

  He made plastic things. All kinds of plastic things for all kinds of customers. Cases for ghetto blasters and home computers. Vials for pharmaceutical firms, like that. He was fifty-two, widowed, with three married children, lived alone, and worked and travelled hard.

  Connie wrote it all down.

  “And you'd known the woman for about a month. What's her name, Mr. Travers?”