Artist (6 page)

“
I was out West,” she said. I don’t see anything here. What do we do now?”

“Let’s head back to the office. I’ll give you the file on Chaisson and rustle you up some desk space. That will give the uniforms some time to interview the neighbors. Who knows? Maybe someone saw something.”

Dupond kicked a detective out of his desk. Cassie got a spot in the corner. There was a phone, a green blotter stained with coffee, and two working drawers. The third was stuck and had been for years. Nobody cared enough to pry it open. Adan was in the room, working the phones with a reverse phone book, calling neighbors around both the houses where the victims were found and not making any progress.

“One guy says he might have seen someone walking down the street,” Adan said. “A guy he didn’t recognize and he can’t remember exactly what day it was. He th
inks it was the day Chaisson was killed. A guy with a backpack.”

“So we just arrest every guy with a backpack. Only about 10,000 of those a day,” said Dupond. “We’ll be done by the time we retire.”

“Anything from the neighbor’s around Kelt?,” Cassie asked.

“Nope,” Adan said. “We drew a blank on that one too. Her car was on the carport so she drove there. She either met someone there or he brought her there.”

“What about Chaisson? Any ideas? Did she let him in? Any chance this is a guy both of them knew? We need to get a list of all their friends, people they know, see if anyone is on both lists.”

“We’re already working that. It takes awhile.” Adan was tired. “You know, we’ve done this before. You’re supposed to be learning from us.”

  Cassie didn’t give. “I’m throwing out ideas. It’s how I do things. Thinking out loud.”

“Well, think about this….” Adan started.

Dupond waved him off. “You know, that idea you had about the footprints was good. I should have thought of that. It was too late by the time we got there but it was a good idea.” Cassie shrugged and he went on. “If you have an idea we want to hear it.” Adan turned back to his desk.

“Anyway, this isn’t good. We have to find a connection between the two women. If there isn’t one, if he’s killing random pickups, we can’t catch him unless he makes a mistake. Which means….”

“We wait for another murder,” Cassie finished the sentence.

“We don’t sit around
and wait. We work what we have and hope for a break. That means we work the list of friends. We check the phone company. We go back and work the neighbors again. Sometimes people remember things later. But, yeah, we need him to make a mistake.”

“While we’re waiting for him to screw up,” Cassie said, “What do you think about the letters carved into the bodies? He can’t be stupid enough to be carving his initials on the victims. It’s got to mean something to him though.”

“How about numbers?” Adan suggested. “CLV, in Roman numbers that’s,” he took a minute to think it over, “that’s one hundred and fifty five.”

“One fifty five.” Dupond thought that over, looked at Cassie. “That mean anything to you?” Cassie shook her head.

Cassie spent the rest of the afternoon in the office, reading the Chaisson file, making notes for later questions. There weren’t many. The investigation was thorough from what she could see. There just wasn’t much there to be found. Most murder investigations immediately focused on the people around the victim. Husbands and wives were always central targets. Boyfriends came next, scorned lovers were ripe for a look. Jill Chaisson wasn’t married. She dated, but not seriously. The last boy she went out with had a rock solid alibi, playing flag football with friends until late in the evening. Even her girlfriends couldn’t point them at anybody.

“She was just a really nice girl,” one said to Dupond. Cassie listened to the tape
d conversation with a pair of headphones. The girl sounded shaken. Dupond was steady. “She would go out with a gang of us if we asked but she didn’t drink a lot or chase guys. She hung around the Art Department, studied European History. She was really into French artists like Renoir. She liked The Thinker.”

“Excuse me?” Dupond said.

“The Thinker? You know the guy sitting down with his chin resting on his hand?” It took a minute for Dupond to catch on.

“Okay, I know what you’re talking about now. The statue.”

“Yes. It’s by a guy named Rodin. He was French and Jill loved almost anything French. She took French history way back and kind of idolized the whole French art scene.”  Her voice broke. “I can’t believe she’s gone. Do you think this is someone we know? Should I be worried?”

Dupond closed his notebook. “I think you should be careful. I think you should always be careful.”

“Will you catch the guy?”

“Yes,” Dupond said. “We’ll get him sooner or later. In the meantime, be extra careful. Tell your friends, too. Stick together at night”

Viktor Watt was repeating the same words to himself.
Be careful. Don’t get swept away by your own success. Don’t get cocky.
It was easy enough though. He had now made three attempts. Two had been immensely successful, the last especially so. Maybe it was time to take a break. The idea of stopping though, he couldn’t really consider that. Not for long anyway. The need inside went away for a short time afterward. It came roaring back in a few days though.

He continued his routine, scoured the n
ewspapers for any reports in the newspaper. In the evening, after classes, he watched the news, flipping between channels. Nothing. It was a shame. He would have liked a little press. The idea that behind their doors the women of the city were nervous gave him a rush. Maybe he would have to do something about that, make some kind of public display. He thought about sending a note to the police department, filed the idea in the back of his mind. Too pedestrian. Maybe though, maybe there was a way.

Lakeshore Drive runs the entire length of the southern shoreline of Lake Ponchartrain. A driver exiting Seabrook Bridge can drive miles along that southern shore. The expanse puts him between the levee and the lake, a green area populated with parking spaces and enough room to spread out and spend the day picnicking or fishing or just enjoying the view of the water from any one of dozens of benches set up to
do just that. Halfway along its length the road passes the University of New Orleans. Beyond that the green area opens up. Across the levee, to the North, begins the more exclusive neighborhoods where business professionals, lawyers, and politicians enjoy the status of lakefront property.

That status came at a cost though. Weekends were a trial as throngs of young people, high school and college students, used the lakefront green area as a party spot. From lunchtime till late at night it was a parade of cars, people sprawled on the levee drinking, throwing their bottles and cans behind the houses. Saturday nights were the worst and by Monday morning the levee and the area behind it were a mess no amount of policing could contain. The city gave up trying to enforce the litter laws and simply assigned a regular patrol to clean up at the beginning of each week.

It was still, however, a good place for a health conscious lawyer to take a morning run before heading off to the city for a day of suing people. Lucas Dahl was one of those health conscious lawyers and on this Monday morning, the litter was especially bad. Every other day he ran two miles, leaving the gate through the fence along his backyard line, turning right and following the levee exactly one mile before turning back and covering the same distance home. His Golden lab, Jupiter, spent the time ranging back and forth, investigating the piles of trash and other interesting objects left behind by the weekend warriors. This morning Dahl was shaking off the effects of his own big weekend, his birthday. His wife invited friends over, they drank too much, and he opened gifts and went to bed with his head spinning. His wife, who tolerated his early morning runs, gave him a pair of very expensive running shoes. He was wearing them now.

Dahl started with a slow jog. Jupiter was already well ahead, off the
levee in the grass on the side of the road where the pickings were better. The dog trotted back and forth, sniffing. Dahl kept an eye on him. Jupiter had a tendency to wander too close to the street. A whistle usually brought him back. Dahl finished the first quarter mile, picked up the pace, and pushed on. He was over forty years old and getting a little thick around the waist, thinking about joining a gym but his time was stretched thin. Even the morning run was stolen time when there were kids to be fed and off to school and a wife who wasn’t really a morning person.

He reached the half-mile mark and settled in. Ahead, Jupiter was sniffing around a tree. Dahl could see him pacing back and forth, head down. He barked twice. Dahl closed the distance. Fifty yards away Jupiter barked again and sat down, head cocked, looking at something on the ground. Jupiter began pacing again, back and forth, stopping to sniff, backing off, then returning. Barbecue, Dahl thought, or somebody puked. He closed to twenty yards when he saw the foot. In ten yards
, it became a leg, Jupiter sniffed at a foot. By the time Dahl drew even with the tree it became a full body, leaning up against the tree. Drunk, he thought. For Chris sake, the police have to do something about this place. Now we’ve got drunks passing out behind the house.

Dahl called the dog, which refused to move. Shaking his head, he
walked down the levee, intent on dragging Jupiter away. He stopped fifteen feet short. The drunk was no drunk. It was a woman. She wasn’t leaning against the tree. She was tied to it. A cord ran around her neck, looped around the tree, then returned to her neck, holding her upright. She was naked. Her eyes were open, staring out at the world. Jupiter sniffed her stomach, backed off. Dahl, stunned, took a few steps closer. Jupiter sniffed the dried blood on her belly. It ran down her waist in a rivulet, across the side of her rump, and pooled on the ground. The blood came from a series of letters, three in all. Carved into the smooth flat flesh, a perfect palette, were three letters. CLV. Lucas Dahl, rising partner in the law firm of Dawkins and Weye, leaned over and puked on his brand new and very expensive running shoes.

“Keep everyone back, keep everyone away,” Dupond said into the phone. “I want the whole area roped off, fifty yards on either side
. Go all the way out to the road. Everyone who goes in or out, I want their names and I want you to collect their shoes. ….you heard me, I want their shoes, everyone. We’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

Dupond and Cassie were in his office when he got the call. Adan was off re-interviewing witnesses. They took Dupond’s car. He stuck a magnetic light on top, punched the accelerator. Cassie held on to the dashboard as they picked up the Interstate on a flat out run, descended on to Elysian Fields, running red lights. The scene was gathering interest. A crowd of students sat on the levee watching, a hund
red yards back. Drivers on the road slowed, craned their necks to see what was going on, continued past. The patrolman on the scene, a young officer with a silver nameplate reading Boles, met them as they got out.

“I’ve got the guy that found them at his house with my partner. We got it roped off as soon as we could. I don’t think anyone else has been close. Those kids”, he pointed to the crowd of students on the levee, “some of them were up on the levee looking down but I don’t think they got too close. Anyway, we have it closed off all the way from the road, over the levee, all the way to the back of the fenceline of the houses behind. Nobody’s been in or out since.”

“Good,” Dupond said. “Keep everyone out. Give me some boundary tape.” He turned to Cassie. “Here’s what I want to do. I want to come in from the side on a narrow path. Everyone moves in on that path, you, me, the coroner guys. Then we’re going to walk in close, stop about ten yards away. You see how the grass stops around the tree?”

Cassie nodded. The tree was a young oak, eight inches in diameter. Around it
, the grass was a healthy green. Underneath, in a circle of five yards, the grass thinned out as it got closer, changing to pure dirt at the base, dirt moist with dew. They came in from the west, Dupond running the tape out to mark their path. When the grass began to thin, they slowed, watching the ground, working their way in. They got within three feet before Dupond stopped.

“There,” he said. “See that?”

Cassie moved up closer. She could see a semi-circle, a slight edge pushed into the ground a foot from the base of the tree. A series of wavy lines ran across the arc, a heel mark. Dupond edged back, got the attention of Boles and waved him over, meeting him at the perimeter. “Get a photographer out here. Make him wait here for me and I’ll bring him in. Make him take off his shoes.” He returned to where Cassie was waiting.

The girl was young, Hispanic, maybe eighteen or twenty years old from the looks of her, Cassie thought. Tiny, a little over five feet, probably less than a hundred pounds. There was a small heart tattoo on her upper right shoulder.
The letters on her stomach, carved in this time, not scratched, crusted over with blood. Cassie could see a thin line of white fat where the skin splayed out from the lines. A line of ants crawled up from the ground along the blood line and into the wound, and back down again.