That word – configuration – stuck in Verlaine’s thoughts for as long as he remained at the County Coroner’s office, sometime beyond that if truth be known.
Verlaine watched as Cipliano picked the body to pieces, searching for grains, threads, hairs, taking samples of dried blood from each injured area. There were two types, the vic’s A positive, the other presumably the killer’s, AB negative.
The hairs belonged to the dead guy, no others present, and scraping beneath the fingernails Cipliano found the same two types of blood, a skin sample that proved too decayed to be tested effectively, and a grain of burgundy paint that matched the car.
Verlaine left then, took with him the print transfers Cipliano had made, asked him to call when the pictures were processed. Cipliano bade him farewell and Verlaine passed out through the swing doors into the brightly-lit corridor.
Outside the air was thick and tainted with the promise of storm, the sun hunkered down behind brooding clouds. The heat breathed through everything, turned the surface of the hot top to molasses, and Verlaine stopped to buy a bottle of mineral water from a store on the way back to his car.
There was something present today, something in the atmosphere, and breathing it he felt invaded, even perhaps abused. He sat in his car for a while and smoked a cigarette. He decided to drive back to the Precinct House and wait there for Cipliano’s call.
The call came within an hour of his arrival. He left quickly, as inconspicuously as he could, and drove back across town to the coroner’s office.
‘Have a make on the pattern,’ Cipliano stated as Verlaine once again entered the autopsy theater.
‘It appears to be a solar configuration, a constellation, a little crude but it’s the only thing the computer can get a fix on. It matches well enough, and from the angle it was drawn it would be very close to what you’d see during the winter months from this end of the country. Maybe that holds some significance for you…’
Cipliano indicated the computer screen to his right and Verlaine walked towards it.
‘The constellation is called Gemini, but this pattern contains all twelve major and minor stars. Gemini is the two-faced sign, the twins. Mean anything to you?’
Verlaine shook his head. He stared at the pattern presented on the screen.
‘So, you get anything on the prints?’ Cipliano asked.
‘Haven’t put them through the system yet.’
‘You can do that today?’
‘Sure I can.’
‘You got me all interested in this one,’ Cipliano said. ‘Let me know what you find, okay?’
Verlaine nodded, walked back the way he’d come, drove across once more to the crime scene at the end of Gravier.
The alleyway was silent and thick with shadows, somehow cool. As he moved, those self-same shadows appeared to move with him, turning their shadow-faces, their shadow-eyes towards him. He felt isolated, and yet somehow not alone.
He stood where the Mercury had been parked, where the killer had pulled into the bay, turned the engine off, heard the cooling clicks of the motor; where he’d perhaps smiled, exhaled, maybe paused to smoke a cigarette before he left. Job done.
Verlaine shuddered and, stepping away from the sidewalk, he moved slowly to the wall that only days before had guarded the side of the Cruiser from view.
He left quickly. It was close to noon. Sunday, the best day perhaps to find a space in the schedule to get the prints checked against the database. Verlaine figured to leave the transfers with Criminalistics and go check out the Cruiser at the pound. He logged the request, left the transfers in an envelope at the desk, scribbled a note for the duty sergeant and left it pinned to his office door just in case they came looking for him.
It was gone lunchtime and Verlaine hadn’t yet eaten a thing. He stopped at a deli en route, bought a sandwich and a bottle of root beer. He ate while he drove, more out of necessity than any other consideration.
Twenty minutes later: New Orleans Police Department Vehicle Requisition Compound, corner of Treme and Iberville.
John Verlaine stood with the criss-crossed shadows of the wire mesh fence sectioning his face into squares, and waited patiently. The officer within, name of Jorge D’Addario, had stated emphatically that until he received something official, something
He walked between the rows of symmetrically parked cars, took a wide berth on a boiler-suited black-faced man chasing a fine blue line through the chassis of a Trans Am with an oxyacetylene torch. Copper-colored sparks jetted like Independence Day fireworks from the needle-point flame. Down a half dozen, right, and through another alleyway of vehicles – a Camaro S/Six, a Berlinetta, a Mustang 351 Cleveland backed up against a Ford F250 XLT, and to his left before the Cruiser a GMC Jimmy with half the roof torn away, giving the impression of a can of peas opened up with a pneumatic drill.
Verlaine paused, stood there ahead of the Mercury Turnpike, the yards of burnished chrome, the mirrored wheel shell standing out from the trunk, the indents and dual fresh-air vents, the double tail fins and burgundy paintwork. Sure as shit wasn’t no ordinary car. He stepped forward, touched the edged concave runners that swept from the tail to the quarterlights, leaned to look along the base of the vehicle, its white-wall tires muddied a little beneath the chrome underslung chassis and overlapping arches. Requisition Compound wasn’t the place for such a car as this.
Moving to the rear of the vehicle, Verlaine took a pair of surgical gloves from his pockets. He snapped them on and lifted the trunk. The night before, a dead guy had been found in there; now it smelled like formaldehyde, like something antiseptic tainted with decay. The image of the body he’d stood over in the autopsy theater crammed into this space was as clear as ever. His stomach turned. He felt the root beer repeating on him like cheap aniseed mouthwash.
He went back and fetched his camera from his car. Took some snaps. Looked inside the back of the Cruiser, saw the thick lake of dried blood across the leatherwork and down onto the carpet. Took some shots of that. Finished the film and rewound it.
Fifteen minutes and he was walking his way out of the compound; paused to sign the visitation docket in D’Addario’s kiosk at the gate, turned his car off Iberville and headed back to the Precinct House to check the status of the fingerprint search.
Verlaine, perhaps for no other reason than to kill a little time, took the long route. Back of the French business quarter, along North Claiborne on St Louis and Basin. Here was Faubourg Treme, city of the dead. There were two cemeteries, both of them called St Louis, but the one in the French Quarter was the oldest, the first and original burial ground dating back to 1796. Here were the dead of New Orleans – the whites, the blacks, the Creoles, the French, the Spanish, the free – because they all wound up here, every sad and sorry one of them. Death held no prejudice, it seemed. The graves did not reveal their color, their dreams, their fears, their hopes; gave merely their names, when they arrived and when they departed. Crosses of St Augustine, St Jude, St Francis of Assisi, patron saint of travelers who loved nature, who founded the Franciscans, who begged for his meals and died a pauper. And on the other side were the believers, the gris-gris crosses marking their passage into the underworld. Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau, R.I.P. Haitian cathedrals of the soul.
He reached Barrera at Canal by the Trade Mart Observation Tower, asked himself why he was driving so far out of his way, shrugged the question away. He was now ahead of the French Market beyond Vieux Carre Riverview. A good couple of miles of warehouses interspersed with clam joints, jazz clubs, bars, restaurants, diners, sex shops, a movie theater and the landing jetties for the many harbor tours. Despite the heat the streets down there were busy. Groups of Creoles and blacks stood aimlessly at corners and intersections, hurling arrogant and playful remarks at passing women, flying the finger at compadres and amigos, drinking, laughing, talking big, oh so very big, in this smallness of life. Daily you could find them, nothing better to do, persuading themselves that this was the good life, the life to live, where things were easy come easy go, where everyone who wasn’t there
