Gaudet started chuckling.
“What?” Murphy snapped.
“I heard you blew your lunch on the lawn.”
As Murphy dropped into his chair, images of Marcy Edwards lying dead and bloody on her bathroom floor flashed through his mind. “I drank too much last night,” he said. “I guess the smell got to me.”
“I thought you were home sleeping.”
“I had to get to sleep didn’t I?”
The Wingate crime scene had been brutal. After Murphy finished talking to the lab tech who was busy collecting his DNA-laced cigarette butts, the coroner’s investigator showed up and Murphy had to help him and Gaudet roll the body and examine it. He had almost puked again. Staring at the dead woman, he had convinced himself that as soon as he got home he was going to put his gun in his mouth one last time and finally pull the trigger.
Later, while he was riding back to the office with Gaudet, Murphy changed his mind again. Focus on the case, he told himself. There was a chance the mayor’s daughter was still alive. Find her and catch the killer, then decide what to do.
Murphy snatched his portable radio off his desk and called for Doggs and Calumet. He got no answer. “Do you have a cell number for either of those idiots?” he asked Gaudet.
After shoving a pile of papers around on his desk, Gaudet found a yellow sticky note. He read out a telephone number.
“Which one is that?” Murphy said.
Gaudet shrugged. “Does it matter?”
Murphy picked up his desk phone and punched in the number. Joey Dagalotto answered.
“Where the hell have you been?” Murphy said.
“Murphy?” Joey Doggs asked.
“Yeah, it’s Murphy. Where the hell have you and Calumet been? You left us at the Wingate scene all day.”
“We were running down a lead.”
“A lead?”
Gaudet peeked around his computer monitor.
“It’s a long shot,” Doggs said, “but we were going back through all the case files and we found a good picture of a tire track from the crime scene near Michoud Boulevard.”
Murphy remembered the scene and the tire impression. By his tally, the dead prostitute was the killer’s fourth victim. She had been strangled with a cable tie and dumped in an isolated spot off Interstate 10, out in the alligator-infested bayous of eastern New Orleans.
During his initial survey of the crime scene, Murphy had spotted the tire track in the mud. He ordered a crime-scene photographer to take high-resolution photos of the track. Then he had a lab tech make a cast of it. “I sent pictures of the tread pattern to the FBI lab three months ago, but I haven’t heard anything back from them.”
“We have a way around that,” Doggs said. “Calumet’s dad owns a tire shop in Metairie, so we showed him the pictures. He said the print is from a Goodyear Aquatred Three, which isn’t that common in New Orleans. He called somebody at Goodyear and got us a list of local customers who bought that model tire.”
“On a Sunday?”
“We actually got the list Friday night. We’ve been working on it ever since.”
“Doing what?”
“Narrowing it down.”
“How many people are on it?” Murphy said.
“A hundred and fifty.”
“That’s a pretty big list.”
“There were more than that, but Mr. Calumet said the tread looked pretty new, so we asked the Goodyear guy to give us only sales that went back six months from the day the body was discovered.”
Regardless of whether he killed himself or not, Murphy wanted the serial killer arrested. His mind ran through the investigative angles. “Did you prioritize the list based on criminal-history checks and sex-offender-registry listings?” he asked.
“Yes,” Doggs said.
“What’d you come up with?”
“Forty-seven people. We started interviewing them last night.”
“Good work,” Murphy said. “You get anything?”
“Not yet. So far we’ve only found thirteen customers, but we got nine DNA swabs. We’re asking everybody we interview for one just in case we recover DNA from a victim.”
DNA. It conjured an image in Murphy’s mind of the crime-scene tech squatting in the street, picking up cigarette butts with a pair of tweezers.
Murphy ignored the image. “Pay careful attention to the ones who refuse,” he said, “and don’t discount women who bought tires, or men over, say, fifty. They could have husbands or adult sons living at home. Run the addresses in MOTION and check out any males under forty who’ve used those addresses in the past two years.”
“Thanks,” the young detective said. He sounded excited. “Look, I just got home, but I can come back in if you need me.”
“You know the mayor called for an evacuation?”
“Yeah, I heard it on the radio.”
“You and Calumet need to be here at six a.m. Donovan said we’re staying on the case, but bring your tactical gear, because we won’t be going home for a while.”
“Just like last time, huh?”
“I hope not,” Murphy said. Then he hung up.
He had been in two shootings in the weeks following Katrina. One he reported, one he didn’t.
Hearing the fire in the young cop’s belly made Murphy less inclined to shoot himself when he got home, at least for now.
Gaudet, who had been staring at Murphy while he was on the phone, said, “What up?”
Murphy gave him the short version.
“Got to hand it to those kids,” Gaudet said. “That’s not too shabby a piece of detective work.”
“No it’s not,” Murphy said, but he was still thinking about DNA.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Sunday, August 5, 9:25 PM
The killer arrives at the house on Burgundy Street much later than he intended.
It’s Mother’s fault.
She is panicked about the approaching hurricane and tomorrow’s mandatory evacuation. She wants him to drive her to Baton Rouge, where she has booked a hotel room. But he is not evacuating. He needs to stay to finish his work. He told her that he has been designated as one of the city’s essential employees, excluded from storm furlough and exempt from the evacuation order.
“You, essential?” she scoffed. “You must be joking.”
“I’m responsible for maintaining vital records and the integrity of the court system.”
She barked out a short, phlegmatic laugh. “You’re a low-level clerk.”
He jiggled a set of keys in her face. “Essential enough to be entrusted with keys to the office.”
In reality, he is just a low-level courthouse clerk. So low that he does not have his own keys to the office. Several months ago, he simply lifted his boss’s keys and had them copied on his lunch hour. He does most of his “research” at night, when the office is empty.
