Cities of the Dead (20 page)

Dr. Noonan was excited and enthusiastic, which meant he hadn't been on the job long. His freshness made Spraggue feel jaded.

He also had the gift of concentrating completely on the issue at hand. Once his interest was piqued, he shoved away a mound of paperwork, sat back in his swivel chair, and really listened.

“Yeah,” he said, tapping a pencil on his blotter, “that's kind of a neat one, a neat case, you know. I haven't had that much chance to play with old bones, and these are like a gift, being as how nothing's known about who they came from. I got a chance to do tests I'd only read about in books before. I'll be glad to tell you about them, but let me get the file. I hate to trust my memory. I get the cases mixed up.”

Dr. Noonan's white coat had a nameplate on the breast pocket.
Dr. G. Noonan
.

“Now all this stuff is ‘iffy,' if you know what I mean,” the coroner said, pulling papers triumphantly from a filing cabinet. “Approximate. I hollered for help on this one, called in a forensic pathologist from Tulane. We got enough so that if you ask me, ‘Is this the body of Judge Crater?' I can say, definitely, no. But if you ask me to pick out an identity for our guy, say from a list of all the people who disappeared between the years 1960 and 1970, I can't really help you. You get me a name and a set of dental records, and I can tell you if they match.”

“Could we whittle down that list of missing persons?” Spraggue asked. “Eliminate the women? Narrow it down by height, by age …”

“Sure,” Noonan said. “Height is easy. That's just measuring a thigh bone and looking it up in a table. This guy fits into your average group, though. Not much help. He's five foot ten. He was.”

“Age?”

“We determine age by the hardness of the skull, and the formations on the top of it, which put our man in his late twenties, early thirties. So far he fits your profile of a standard murder victim.”

“How did he get killed?”

“I can show you that, if you'd like.”

Spraggue could recognize an enthusiast when he saw one. Rawlins glanced questioningly at Mary, but she eagerly accepted the invitation.

The autopsy room and the morgue were in the basement, two large connecting squares, cool and smelling faintly of dampness, strongly of disinfectant. Two walls of the morgue were comprised of refrigerated units, divided into drawers. The floor was blotchy linoleum, stained and scrubbed colorless. In the next room, the floor of the autopsy room was white tile, with central drainage. Two rectangular steel tables were spotlighted by arching overhead beams. One corner held a forklift. Another was filled with scales and weights.

Spraggue found himself taking inventory of what he'd eaten recently. As a precaution, he switched from “real person” to “actor,” excising himself neatly from the scene. This had nothing to do with him. It was scripted, fantasy. He could turn the lights on at any time. He was still in control. He wished.

Dr. Noonan stopped near one of the drawers so suddenly that his shoes made a skidding sound on the linoleum.

“We're playing it by the book,” he said solemnly. “Even though we don't think there'll be any relatives to identify the bones, we decided we'd better put them in a viewing drawer, just like any other body. He's not much to look at, but better than some we get. Not so fresh as some, but a lot fresher than others. He's been dead so long he doesn't even stink.”

Rawl made a face, but Mary came closer, fascinated.

The skeleton seemed so small, so diminished, in a drawer designed for holding a body. It had been partially wired together. The torso and pelvis were connected, the ribs in place. Leg and arm bones were appropriately placed, but totally separate from the trunk. The teeth were shocking, so white and prominent.

“He was on his back,” Noonan said, referring to his notes. “Laid out sort of for burial, except that he was on top of the coffin instead of in it. Damp as it is in Louisiana, his organs and fleshy parts would have rotted away in a couple of years, and he's been dead a lot longer than that.”

“How long?”

“Over fifteen years.”

“What killed him?” Rawlins asked. He spoke in a normal tone, but the hush of the place magnified it, made it echo.

“Well,” Noonan said, “this man could have been shot to death and the bullet could have passed through the body without striking a bone. He could have been stabbed. He could have been poisoned with some arcane substance. If he'd been strangled, I probably would have found a broken hyoid bone.”

“Could he have just died?” Mary asked. “Of the proverbial natural causes?”

Noonan had gloves on his hands, thin plastic gloves so tight they disappeared against his skin, leaving his hands shiny. He touched the skeleton now, turning the skull, displaying a fissure in the back, near the right side.

“He didn't die any natural death,” he said. “Not with this crack in his skull. He wouldn't have been walking around with this.”

“That little crack is enough to cause death?” Rawl peered into the drawer. His hand went out as if to touch the bones, then drew back.

“A blow strong enough to cause that crack would have done a great deal of damage. You don't crack your skull by knocking your heard against a wall. A lot of force was applied to this guy's head.”

Rawlins paced slowly to the other side of the room. “This is all damned interestin',” he said, nodding to Spraggue to join him over in the far corner while Dr. Noonan readjusted the bones and closed the drawer. “But I don't see what the hell it has to do with Joe Fontenot.”

“Hang on,” Spraggue said. He turned back to Noonan. “What was found on the skeleton in the way of clothing? Odds and ends?”

“‘Odds and ends' is good. Cloth has its own rotting cycle. Cotton goes fast, linen lasts longer, nylon and synthetics stick around quite a while. We sent the stuff to the FBI forensic lab. They're good, but slow.”

“Could we see the articles?” Spraggue asked.

“Sure. I'd say they'd be back from Atlanta in a couple of weeks, probably.”

“A couple of weeks!” Spraggue echoed.

“This guy has been dead a while,” Noonan said defensively. “I couldn't exactly put a priority rush on it.”

“Was there any unusual object found with the bones?” Spraggue asked.

“Unusual … Now, let me think. Yeah, yeah. I remember. I don't even have to look it up. One of those leather bags full of mumbo jumbo. We find them on a lot of corpses. Mostly blacks, but a few whites. This one was a real good one, I'd say. Seemed old. Fine leather bag.”

“A fine leather bag …” Rawlins repeated.

“You think you know who the skeleton is? Who it might be?” Dr. Noonan's enthusiasm made him look even more like a gawky, excited teenager.

“I think we have to talk,” Rawlins said to Spraggue.

“Dr. Noonan,” Mary said, flashing her most tactful smile, “you have been so helpful. Is there somewhere the three of us could go to have a little private discussion?”

“I'll go get a cup of coffee.” Noonan said, polite but wistful. “I could use one. But,” he turned and looked back from the doorway, “I sure would like to know what's going on.”

“So Would I,” Rawlins said as soon as the coroner's footsteps petered out. “You're connecting this skeleton to Fontenot because both of 'em had a gris-gris bag?”

“This particular gris-gris bag is not something you buy in the five-and-dime. It's special, the sort you'd get if you asked for protection for a dangerous undertaking, like going off to war—or robbing a Brink's truck.”

“How do you know so much about it?”

Aunt Mary raised her eyes warningly to the ceiling, and Spraggue said, “Look, let me tell you a story. A lot of it's conjecture, but it fits the facts.”

“Go ahead,” Rawlins said with a sigh. “What can it hurt?” There was one folding chair in the corner. He jerked it open and offered the seat to Mary.

“Here goes,” Spraggue said. “Stop me if I go too fast. Three people pulled the Morgan City robbery. One of them was Fontenot. Fontenot was in New Orleans up to the time of the crime, living with Dora. So it's fairly safe to assume that the other two robbers were also in New Orleans. Okay so far?”

“Okay.”

“The robbery occurs, and gets out of hand. Fontenot is caught. This is on February 5, 1966. One week later, February 12, 1966, Miss Evelyn Despardieu is buried, along with an extra body.”

“Now you've lost me,” Rawlins said.

“If you were going to pull a tricky holdup with two other people, wouldn't you pick a place to meet to split up the dough afterward? Maybe you'd even wait a week for things to cool off.”

“Maybe, but why the hell would I pick some graveyard for the meetin'? What connection is there between that graveyard and Fontenot?”

“Remember,” Spraggue said to Mary, “what Dora told me when I asked about her husband's work?”

“She said he was unemployed most of the time.”

“Yeah, and she said that sometimes he'd come home all dirty, as if he'd taken a job doing construction. And he didn't like to talk about it. And he seemed down on those occasions, even though he'd have a little money for the rent. And sometimes he'd bring home flowers on those days, all sorts of flowers, from florists, some that looked like they'd been picked along the road, like you might get in a graveyard.”

Mary brightened. “You think he worked part time at the cemetery?”

“I think one of the gang did. Maybe Fontenot helped out his buddy who worked there every once in a while.”

“Go on,” Rawlins said.

“Let's say the two robbers meet in the graveyard. There's a fight, and one of them dies. A tomb is open and ready. The caretaker at the cemetery said it's not unusual for a vault to get bricked up the day after a funeral. In goes the extra body.”

“Let's say that,” Rawlins agreed. “Where does it get us?”

“It gets us a dead body in a secret grave, one very rich killer, and James French, also known as Joe Fontenot, in jail.”

“Okay.”

“Now skip to French's release. What does he do, first thing, this man who's held his tongue and patiently waited for his reward?”

“He contacts his fellow thieves,” Mary said promptly. “And demands his rightful share.”

Spraggue smiled. “Yeah. And does the thief and killer say, ‘Here you go. Here's your share. There's more for you because I knocked off the third guy?'”

“I don't know what he'd say,” Rawlins offered. “But I'm sure you've got some idea.”

“Well, he might say, ‘Joe, I don't know how to break this to you, but we were both deceived. Our third partner never snowed up at the graveyard that night. He had all the money, and he took off and left us high and dry. I've been searching for the bastard ever since, but he must have changed his name and skipped the country. Can you imagine cheating your friends like that?'”

“And Fontenot believed him,” Mary murmured.

“Until he saw an article in the newspaper,” Spraggue said. “And the article turned his life around.”

Rawlins ran his hands through his hair. “Let me get this straight. You're saying that Fontenot was blackmailin' one of his former partners.”

“Right after this article came out,” Spraggue said, “Fontenot made a down payment on a restaurant. He started collecting big money every month.”

“Can we prove any of this?” Rawlins asked.

“We can find out if Fontenot made inquiries about this article—at the newspaper, at the police station, at the cemetery.”

“Okay,” Rawlins said.

“And somebody can find out what kind of employment records they keep for graveyard workers.”

“I'll do that,” Mary said. “What do I look for?”

“A man who worked there in 'sixty-five or 'sixty-six, and left in February of 'sixty-six.”

“Not much,” Rawlins said.

“His first name was Robert, and his last name was probably something French.”

“Oh?” Rawlins said.

“Jeannine Fontenot told me her husband got a windfall legacy from his old friend, T-Bob. She said T-Bob and Joe were two of the three musketeers—”

Footsteps interrupted him.

“Sorry,” Dr. Noonan said. “Can you pick up the phone, Sergeant Rawlins? It's your office, and they say it's urgent.”

A white wall phone blended into the surrounding tile so thoroughly it was practically invisible. Dr. Noonan had to point it out.

“Rawlins here,” the detective rasped. An expression of sheer incredulity spread across his face. “She's where? She what?” He nodded and grunted, said, “Hang on. I'll be right there,” and slammed the receiver down.

“Damn.” The word exploded out of him.

“What?”

“It's no good. I gotta get back to my office. Dora Levoyer just confessed to the murder of Joseph Fontenot.”

TWENTY-ONE

Rawlins edged out of the homicide lieutenant's office as gracefully as a man with half the belly, and slammed the door hard enough to shake the partitions dividing up the squad room.

Spraggue stopped pacing the worn brown rug. “She's lying. Let me talk to her.”

“She ain't in there.”

“Where did they take her?”

“No place.”

The sergeant banged his clenched fist against the drawer of a tan filing cabinet. “I can't believe this,” he said. “I'm off chasing theories and in she comes, leavin' a note, addressed to me personal, confessin' to the whole shebang. And then she waltzes out the door.”

“She's not here?” Spraggue said.

“That's what I'm telling you.”

“What did the note say?”

“I'm out tryin' to clear her name and in she comes and—”

“
What did it say?
”