The Hundredth Man (5 page)

“Take it easy there, Mr. Peltier,” I said, moving to his side and putting a steadying hand against his back. “Take a deep breath.”

“Who is that?” he rasped. “Jesus.”

“A man named Jerrold Nelson.”

“Jesus.”

“Breathe,” I repeated. He breathed.

“I came to see what was taking Clair so long and, Jesus where’s the head?”

“We don’t know that yet.”

“Who would do such a thing to another person?” He sucked down a couple more fast breaths and his color started returning.

“I’m I’m all right now, Detective. Never seen a body without …” He managed a quivering smile. “I wish I’d stayed outside.”

Zane deep-breathed his way to Clair’s office, looking closer to his true age. In cattier circles it’s mewed that the nuptials of Zane Peltier to the former Clair Swanscott was less marriage than merger, him bringing name and wealth, her weighing in with brains and ambition. Zane’s money was rooted in antebellum Mobile, one of those snowball fortunes that gathered as it rolled. He inherited several enterprises, was on the boards of several others, but labored about fifteen hours a week, I’d heard. Probably very efficient hours.

Clair stuck her head in the front door of the suite. I saw Zane behind her. He looked ready to leave. Clair cocked an eye toward the utility office.

“I have a disinterment in Bayou La Batre, then lunch with Bill Arnett. I’ll be back by three forty-five.” Clair turned my way. “This is the way it operates, Ryder. Everyone doing their jobs, working on schedule. Showing up on time.”

Not a word of it meant for me.

The door squeezed shut. Clair was off on schedule and Zane, one suspects, was off for a stiff belt. Which left just me and Evie or something boy and girl alone together in a way-house for the dead. I ambled toward her while detecting on the way: no wedding band. She was filling in lines on a pile of forms.

“I’m Carson Ryder, Homicide,” I said to the crown of her head. “I don’t believe we’ve been formally introduced.”

She made a few pen scratches before looking up.

“Ava Davanelle.” She didn’t offer her hand but mine was unavoidable. Her handshake was cool, compulsory, and quickly retrieved.

“You’re new here, Dr. Davanelle?”

“If six months seems new to you.” She looked back to her writing.

“Seems like you’re on the wrong side of Doc Peltier today. You come in late? I was two minutes late for a meeting with her once, and she just about “

“Ever see a doctor about that nose problem?”

“Nose problem?”

“The way it pokes into other people’s business.”

I watched her fingertips shake slightly as she wrote; the room was cold.

“I apologize,” I said. “I’ve worked with Clair, uh, Dr. Peltier, for a year now and always feel like I’m on her wrong side. Like maybe she doesn’t have a right side. But if she didn’t have a right side, how could she have a right hand? And if she didn’t have a right hand, how could …” I heard myself babbling inanely but couldn’t stop, my version of small talk.

Dr. Davanelle gathered her papers and stood.

“Nice to have met you, Detective Carson, but I “

“Ryder. It’s Carson Ryder.”

” have much to do today. Good-bye.”

I followed her across the room until she turned like I was a smelly dog sniffing at her legs.

“Something else I can do for you, Detective Carson?”

“Ryder. Carson Ryder. I’m here to observe the post on the Nelson body, Dr. Davanelle.”

“Why don’t you have a seat in the lobby,” she said, punching the word lobby. “Someone will let you know when we’re ready.”

CHAPTER 4

“… rats … rats … rats.”

D
r. Davanelle’s gloved hands pressed aside the victim’s pubic hair as she leaned over the body and finished a slow and precisely enunciated reading of the inscription. “The ink is light lavender and difficult to decipher from a distance. Preliminary findings suggest a writing instrument with a very fine stylus. Slight penetration into the epidermis can be observed. Microphotos are in the case file … “

Summoned from exile after a half-hour wait, I’d found Dr. Davanelle and the ancient diener, Walter Huddleston, positioning the body. A tall, broad-shouldered black man with the strength of a much younger man, Huddleston had eyes like red torches and never smiled. I pictured Halloween’s children trooping to his house, the door creaking open to Huddleston’s scarlet glare, the kids sprinting away in a melee of screams and flying candy.

Dr. Davanelle finished the visual inventory. There was no other writing, only a tattoo on the scapula, an Oriental dragon. She pulled her cloth mask tightly into place, picked up the scalpel, and the procedure progressed the Y cut, the revelation of the dark machinery. I was impressed by her economy of motion, gloved hands moving with such floating, independent grace as to suggest each had its own homunculus in the rafters. Clair and the other staff paths, Stanley Hoellker and Marv Rubin, seemed heavy handed in comparison, brusque and mechanical. I watched for a half hour, entranced, a word I never thought I’d connect to an autopsy.

“You’ve got great hands,” I said. “Ever think of playing shortstop?”

She lifted the heart to the scale, dropped it in. “Surely you know the procedure is being taped, Detective,” she said. “I’d appreciate your remaining quiet.”

“Sorry,” I said.

Dr. Davanelle continued down the cavity for another fifteen minutes. She removed and weighed the first kidney, then proceeded to the second. It squirted from her hand and fell toward the floor. Without seeming to look, she caught the tumbling organ in her other hand.

“There you go,” I said, forgetting myself. “Shortstop all the way.”

Her green eyes blazed from above her mask. I shrugged and said, “Forgive me. Just making conversation.”

She flicked her head toward the door. “The hall’s over there, the way you came in. If you go outside you can make all the conversation you want. One more outburst and that’s where you’re going.”

My cheeks felt hot, like I’d been slapped in the face. I nodded and went silent, though speaking at an autopsy wasn’t a capital offense. There was generally a touch of banter, the transcriptionist recognizing it as such and excising it from the record, no big deal.

She continued the procedure, giving the play-by-play into the air, recorded as she noted for later transcription. Being a detective, I studied her as she worked and discovered some interesting anomalies: I’d first thought her petite, but realized it was how she held herself that made her seem diminutive. I also found it odd she didn’t include her title when we made introductions. Most MDs waved their titles like flaming swords, and wouldn’t leave a note for the meter reader without a Dr. or MD pasted to their name. She was dour, abrupt, and projected the femininity of a hammer yet her motions verged on symphonic, her skills beyond what I’d have expected of someone with just six months in the game.

A few minutes later there was a break in the action while she went to fetch an instrument. When she returned, I said, “I meant no offense by comparing you to a shortstop. I was trying to relate my enjoyment at your skill. Your hands move like water.” She stared at me like I’d urinated on her Reeboks.

“Didn’t I request that you not talk? Not ten minutes ago?”

I took a deep breath, released it. “I’ve never been at a postmortem where a gag rule applied, Doctor.”

She tossed the instrument to the table, spun to face me.

“Here’s how it works: I handle the procedure, you handle the observation. It can be done quietly. If you have intelligent questions regarding the autopsy and some people actually do ask your question and the answer will be provided. If that’s too difficult for you to understand, I can have it typed up and delivered to your superior.”

I’m slow to irritate but sometimes make exceptions.

“Look, Doctor, just because you got shit on this morning doesn’t mean you have to shovel it down the the line.”

Her eyes lit like green fire and she yanked the cloth mask from her mouth. Her skin was ashen and sweat beaded on her forehead.

“I’m not going to take this,” she said. “Who do I call to have you replaced?”

I started to respond, thought better of it. I threw my hands up in surrender, made a lip-zip motion, and stepped back to give her room. Plenty of room.

For the next couple of hours I was the Sphinx. I asked three questions, all framed in bland technical lingo. She answered in the same manner, robotic. The autopsy revealed the severing of the head was precise, accomplished with a thin, razor-sharp blade, and probably unhurried. Save for the tattoo and minuscule, cryptic writing, the body was unmarked.

The dark stain of the gravity-settled blood, livor mortis, indicated the victim had remained supine after death. Nothing else, at least not yet.

The procedure finished, she snapped off her gloves, dropped them in the biohazard container beside the table, and started to walk away. Without turning she said, “I’ll have an outline of the major points typed up. It’ll take two hours. You’ll find it at the front desk.”

“Doctor,” I called to her retreating back. She stopped, turned, glared. I wondered if I’d broken some rule about speaking after the recorder was turned off.

“Yes, Detective Carson?”

“It’s Ry never mind. Listen, Doctor, we got off on the wrong foot and I think it was my fault. I’m a cretin with small talk and make up for it by jabbering inanely. Can we maybe start over?”

When she didn’t answer, I said, “It’s past lunch. I know a great po’boy joint down by Bienville Square. My treat.”

I smiled brightly and jiggered my eyebrows.

She walked away as if I were a coat of paint on the wall. The door of the utility office slammed behind her. I called Harry to see what was up. He said interviewing white trash. When he asked what I was doing, I said not selling a lot of po’boys, be there in a few.

The most distracting aspect of speaking to Jerrold Nelson’s aunt, Billie Messer, was her constant brushing of insects from her face when none were there. I first suspected a neurosis, but realized it was her conditioned response to living in a house trailer with rusted-out screens and a busted AC. The fortyish Messer was Nelson’s only surviving relative, and Harry’d spent the morning tracking her to a trailer court overrun by weeds and feral cats.

Billie Messer had been an exotic dancer in her younger days, but exotic drooped into pendulous and she now mixed the drinks she’d once hustled. Dressed for work, Ms. Messer wore scuffed black spike heels, a miniskirt noire, and a frilly black bra straining with effort. Frizzed red hair framed outsized features I suspected looked either equine or enticing, depending upon time of night and substances abused. Harry and I leaned against a sun-hot rust-bucket car in her front yard while Billie Messer sucked cigarettes, waved off invisible bugs, and Cliffs-noted her nephew’s life in a strangely seductive voice, like a hillbilly Tina Turner.

“Poor ol’ Jerry weren’t good for but one thing, and that happens in bed.  He was damn good looking. Smart, too, more in the clever way than book kind. Always made out like he was smack on the edge of being some famous model. Might a happened ‘cept he was so lazy. He made his way on his looks, though, shacking up with men or women. Didn’t matter which, long’s they gave him money. I asked once, said, “Jerrold, how’s come you do it with boys and girls both?” Know what he said? Said it all felt the same, so what did it matter? I said what you mean, all feels the same? He said, like nothing, that’s how it feels, Aunt Billie don’t feel up, don’t feel down, just feels like nothing. You know what else he said?”

“What, Miss Messer?” Harry asked, truly curious.

“He thought it was funny folks thought he was so good at doing it, you know, ‘cause he could go on at it for so long. He said when you don’t feel nothing, there’s nothing to make you stop. I asked wasn’t there anything made him, you know, jump over the hill? He said he had to bear down hard on thinking about flying.  Then he’d do it, he’d have his you know.” Bessie Messer frowned, shook her shock of frizzed hair sadly, and swatted an unseen insect. “Ain’t that the damndest thing?”

We headed across town to interview Terri Losidor, the woman who’d filed charges against Nelson. Harry drove, I reclined in the rear talking to the back of his head. Some people claim their best thoughts arrive in the shower or astride the can; for me it was the backseat of a car. When I was a child and the bad things started at my house, I’d tiptoe into the night and hide in the rear of our sedan, spending the night in wispy sleep before returning to bed at dawn. To this day I took comfort lying in the backseat, hands behind my head, watching the buildings and treetops flash by. My backseat meditations didn’t bother Harry, he enjoyed driving, though he was a terrifying practitioner of it.

“You’ve seen maybe twenty times more jealousy-slash-revenge killings than me, Harry. How many have been as neat?”

“Doesn’t mean anything. They’re all different.”

“Come on, Harry. How many have been so damned immaculate?”

Harry grunted; he liked to drive in silence, I liked to think aloud. He grudgingly elevated his right hand, thumb and index finger forming a zero.

“Slicing and dicing, Carson. Fifty stab wounds. Eighty. Or more hammering than John Henry. I saw a shooting where the shooter emptied a clip, reloaded, and start shooting again.”

“Right. The anger floods out. This one was neater than a show home.”

“The body was neat, Cars. What’s the head doing now? My guess is target practice. Or taking a good hammering.”

A semi tractor rig pulled beside us at a light. The driver glanced down from his high perch, startled at seeing a guy in a sport jacket and tie reclining across the backseat of a Taurus. I winked and he turned away. I said, “The head taking the punishment … the face symbolizing the whole. It works, I guess. Where we at?”

“Airport Road by University. So how come you don’t sound convinced?”

“If that’s what the killer wanted, the head, why not break for the end zone soon as it was in his hands? Do a victory mambo. Spike it, whatever. Just like you were thinking. But he hung around and wrote on the body. I’m guessing that’s why he pulled it into the light.”