A Killer Like Me (18 page)

A fireman helped the two detectives climb onto the back of the truck and guided them to the ladder. Murphy tied his handkerchief around his face and led the way up. The jagged hole looked like the open maw of some great beast as Murphy stepped off the ladder into the darkness.

The smell swallowed him.

Dozens of bodies were piled near the windows, where they had cooked until they exploded. Small chunks of flesh were stuck to the walls, and a sticky goo of melted human fat coated parts of the floor. Murphy doubled over and threw up. Gaudet spun around and grabbed the edge of the wall. He leaned out and heaved his breakfast at the sidewalk twenty feet below.

When Murphy finished retching and straightened up, what he faced was a scene straight from Dante’s
Inferno
, the flaming tombs of the sixth circle of hell. The lounge was burned black from one end to the other. Many spots were still smoldering. Several ceiling beams had collapsed. The furniture was incinerated. Near the fire exit and the main door, burned and bloated bodies lay in heaps.

The two homicide cops stared at the carnage.

“How many do you figure?” Gaudet said, his voice strained almost to hoarseness.

Murphy shook his head. “Forty at least, maybe fifty. This is going to be worse than the Upstairs Lounge fire.”

From the corner of his eye, Murphy saw his partner make the sign of the cross. “Lord, have mercy,” Gaudet said.

It had taken the fire department two hours to put out the fire and another couple of hours to douse all the hot spots and flare-ups. Other than a brief penetration by a couple of firemen lugging a hose, no one had been inside the remains of the Red Door Lounge until Murphy and Gaudet stepped into it.

“How the fuck are we going to process this scene?” Gaudet asked.

“Hell if I know.”

The bar was a crime scene. Murphy was sure of that. He had smelled kerosene, or something similar, in the stairwell, which, judging by the amount of damage, was where the fire had been started. He had also seen the chained fire-escape door.

That made it murder.

But even that didn’t make it Murphy and Gaudet’s case. They were on special assignment chasing a serial killer. What made it their case was a curious cop with a flashlight, who had climbed up the fire escape. Half an hour later, talking to the first homicide detective on the scene, the cop mentioned he had seen the word
log
scrawled on the outside of the fire escape door. When the detective told Captain Donovan, the homicide commander knew right away the word wasn’t
log
, as in a fallen tree trunk, but
LOG
, as in Lamb of God.

The captain called Murphy.

From the hole in the outer wall, Murphy crept forward, flashlight in hand, testing each footfall before putting his full weight on it.

Gaudet moved beside him. “What do you think about this floor?”

“Some of it burned through,” Murphy said.

“You think it’ll hold us?”

“I don’t know.”

The initial crime-scene survey took more than an hour. Murphy counted sixty-eight bodies, more than twice the number killed in the 1973 Upstairs Lounge fire, which until now had been the deadliest fire in New Orleans and one of the worst mass murders in U.S. history.

After the survey, Murphy and Gaudet climbed down and let the coroner’s investigator and the lab geeks go up. The two detectives then walked around to the back of the bar and climbed the fire escape. On the third-floor landing, they stared at the letters written on the door in six-inch scrawl:
L-O-G
.

“Maybe it’s a coincidence,” Gaudet said.

Murphy shook his head. “It’s not a coincidence.”

They knelt side by side on the metal platform. Both wore latex gloves. They had smeared Vicks VapoRub under their noses and replaced their tied handkerchiefs with filtered masks held tight against their faces by elastic bands. Murphy carried his digital camera and a bolt cutter he borrowed from a fire captain.

“But what if it is just a coincidence?” Gaudet said. “Then it’s not our case.”

Murphy spread the long handles of the bolt cutter and fitted the steel cable between the blades. He glanced at Gaudet. “It’s him.” Then he squeezed the handles together and the blades bit through the steel. Murphy opened an evidence bag and stuffed the cable inside.

While Gaudet talked about ways to dodge the case, Murphy snapped pictures of the hand-printed black letters. Then he pulled the door open and stepped back inside the charred crime scene.

It was the worst scene Murphy had ever worked.

Each body was photographed in place, then zipped into a plastic body bag and hand-carried down the ladder. The sun had not risen enough to chase away all of the morning shadows by the time the bodies started to come out, so each one was met with the glare of news lights and the flash of cameras.

Someone told Murphy the story was already leading all the network and cable morning-news shows.

After two hours inside the belly of the beast, Murphy took a break. He climbed down the ladder and stood on Iberville Street looking up at the building. He heard a footstep behind him.

“This isn’t exactly your killer’s style is it?” Captain Donovan said.

Murphy turned around. “Not exactly.”

“Is he trying to send a message by torching a gay bar?”

“I don’t know, Captain. When I catch him I’ll ask him.”

“So far the newsies don’t have a clue that this might be the work of our serial killer. Let’s keep it that way.” The captain unfolded a stick of gum and pushed it into his mouth. After a couple of chews, he said, “That means keeping your trap shut around your little reporter girlfriend.”

Murphy wanted to explain that Kirsten wasn’t his girlfriend. That he had only talked to her about the serial killer out of desperation. That perhaps if Donovan had given him a task force when he first asked for one six months ago, maybe they would have caught this guy and they would not now be standing in the shadow of a burned-out building watching scores of roasted bodies being hauled out. But he was too exhausted and too beat down. So he just said, “Yes, sir.”

“You sure it was him?” Donovan asked.

Murphy nodded.

“That mark on the door might not be connected to the fire,” Donovan said. “Some kid could have done that months ago. Maybe he calls himself the Log because he has a big crank. Maybe a disgruntled patron set the place on fire, somebody pissed off about getting a bad blow job through a glory hole.”

Murphy shook his head. “It was him. He’s feeding on the shock value, trying to one-up himself every time now.”

“If the media finds out about this, there’ll be chaos. Heads will roll.”

“There’s no way to keep this quiet.”

Donovan’s face tightened. “Then you better find him, and quick. Because we’re about to have every gay-rights group and every newspaper and TV station in the country camped out at our front door.”

“Just like Katrina.”

The homicide commander smacked his gum for a minute. “I heard on the radio they’re predicting this storm is going right through the Florida Straits, maybe clip Miami, then come barreling into the gulf.”

“What’s that going to mean for the task force?” Murphy asked.

“You’ll be shut down,” the captain said. “Once the mayor pulls the trigger on the evacuation plan, everyone—including detectives—is going on hurricane duty.”

Murphy nodded toward the still-smoldering building. “What about the killer?”

“Maybe he’ll fucking drown,” Donovan said as he walked away.

Murphy sat down on the curb, wishing he had a cigarette, thinking what a bad idea it had been to quit. The Red Door fire was almost beyond comprehension. His original body count had been off by three. The crime lab had counted seventy-one dead.

As if he didn’t have enough problems already trying to keep his job, trying not to strangle his mother, trying to catch a serial killer, now he had seventy-one more bodies dumped on him. Likely, the worst mass murder in U.S. history, outside of 9/11, and it was his pile of shit to roll around in.

“I saw who did this.”

The voice came from behind. Murphy sprang to his feet and turned around. He was looking down at a guy with a face so weathered he could just as easily have been seventy as fifty, with long gray hair tied in a ponytail and wearing the trademark red-and-white–striped shirt of a Lucky Dog vendor.

Murphy looked past the man and spotted his hot-dog cart parked at the corner of Royal Street. The distinctive carts were a French Quarter icon, a bright red grill, a drink cooler, and a red and yellow umbrella, all set on top of a fiberglass base molded into the shape of a six-foot hot dog.

“What did you say?” Murphy asked.

“I think I saw who set the bar on fire.”

Friday, August 3, 8:25
AM

The killer limps into the connecting hallway between the two rooms of his apartment. His bedroom is in front, closest to the street. The kitchen is in back, and there is a tiny bathroom off the hall. The low-slung, shoe box–shaped apartment is built beneath the high side of Mother’s one-and-a-half-story house on South Saint Patrick Street.

The killer’s hip hurts, but the pain in his right knee is worse. He barely slept last night.

That fool and his Lucky Dog cart. The killer had barely taken two steps when he smashed into the cart. The pain wasn’t that bad at first, but by the time he reached Canal Street, he was hobbling.

In the medicine cabinet above the bathroom sink, he finds an old bottle of aspirin. He pops four into his mouth and gulps them down with two handfuls of water from the tap. As he closes the medicine cabinet, he stares at his reflection in the mirror and wonders about the hot-dog vendor.

How good of a look at me did he get?

Even if the Lucky Dog man couldn’t describe him, staying to watch the fire had been a mistake. Had he walked away, as he intended, the cop would not have noticed him. Which means he would not have had to run. Had he not run, he would not have slammed into the hot-dog cart.

No more mistakes, he promises himself.

He leaves the bathroom and limps into his bedroom. On the far side is a sliding glass door, the only entrance to his apartment. He pulls open the door and steps outside. The pain in his knee grows as he lurches to the end of the short driveway and stoops to pick up Mother’s newspaper. As he turns back, he shoots a glance at the concrete steps leading to the veranda that stretches across the front of Mother’s house, a house to which he—her only child—does not have a key.

He hurries back inside his apartment.

Sitting on the edge of his bed, he opens the newspaper and scans the headlines. There is nothing about the fire. At first, he is outraged. Then he realizes the fire was probably after the newspaper’s deadline.

The killer grabs the TV remote and switches on the television. He flips to Channel 15, which plays continuous rebroadcasts of the latest WWL-TV newscast. The fire is the lead story. The gray-haired male anchor, whose solemn face is buried beneath a thick layer of makeup, calls it the Inferno in the French Quarter.

“A six-alarm fire, which investigators are calling intentionally set, began about midnight last night in the French Quarter and killed as many as sixty people, according to fire and police officials.

“Witnesses say that within seconds, fire engulfed the Red Door Lounge on the top floor of a three-story building at the corner of Chartres and Iberville Streets. Patrons at the popular gay and lesbian nightspot who tried to escape the blaze found the fire exit chained shut, which made escape nearly impossible. About twenty people did manage to get out of the burning building by flinging themselves from windows or squeezing through the partially blocked fire exit.

“WWL’s Jim Hitchcock is on the scene. Jim, what can you tell us?”

The screen cuts to a reporter on the street, who prattles on about the devastating death toll and how shocked everyone is in the tight-knit French Quarter community, especially its gay and lesbian members.

It turns the killer’s stomach to see such fawning respect given to those abominations.

The camera shot widens and shifts slightly, showing the reporter on the right of the screen.

The killer is shocked to see that standing beside the reporter is the hot-dog vendor, his Lucky Dog cart visible in the background.

The news anchor’s voice cuts in. “In a WWL exclusive, reporter Jim Hitchcock is talking to a man who may have seen who started the fire at the Red Door Lounge, a fire that killed at least sixty people. Jim . . .”

“Thanks, Bob,” the reporter says into the camera. “I’m here on Iberville Street at the scene of this deadly six-alarm fire with Frank Smith, a Lucky Dog vendor who works in the French Quarter and who says he saw a man running from the scene of the fire moments after it started.”

The reporter then turns to the man standing beside him in his distinctive red-and-white–striped shirt. “Mr. Smith, tell us what happened.”

Smith, if that is his real name, long-haired and tattooed, looks like an old biker. He swallows hard, then says, “I was pushing my cart up the street when I heard all the commotion—fire trucks, police sirens, lots of yelling and stuff. Then this guy came running from that direction and ran smack into my cart.”

“Can you describe the man you saw?” the reporter asks.

“I didn’t get too good a look at him, other than he was a white guy . . . Caucasian, I mean, probably in his thirties.”

“Have you told the police what you saw?” the reporter asks.

The hot-dog man shakes his head. “They haven’t asked me anything yet.”

The “
LIVE
” graphic in the top left corner of the screen means nothing, the killer knows, because what he is watching is a repeat of the 6:00
AM
broadcast.

On the screen, the reporter turns back to the camera. “And there you have it, Bob, a devastating and deadly fire, the situation so chaotic that even this eyewitness hasn’t been able to tell investigators what he saw.”

The anchor thanks the reporter and they exchange some somber yet meaningless chitchat about the fire. Then, on cue, the anchor’s expression gives way to a smile as he transitions to a story about kids beating the dog days of summer at a nearby water park.