Indian Country Noir (Akashic Noir) (17 page)

Images of cops standing outside an apartment building
fill my TV screen, flashing blue and red lights illuminating
the powder-blue N.O.P.D. uniform shirts. I spot my former
partner's yellow-blond hair as Detective Jodie Kintyre moves
through the crowd and into the building. Jodie wears another
of her skirt-suits, this one tan.

The camera pans to several cops crying, turning their heads
away from the camera as the television news anchor explains,
"The body of Fifth District police officer Kimberly Champagne
was found this evening in her Tchoupitoulas Street apartment
after she failed to show up for roll call."

Jesus Christ! I let out a long breath and, "Motha fuck!"

"The tragic killing of the popular officer is particularly
heart-wrenching to the rank and file. Officer Champagne, a
recent graduate of the police academy, was a rookie with a
promising career ahead of her." A police ID picture of a smiling brunette with wide eyes comes on the screen as the anchor
goes on to explain how Kimberly Champagne went to Sacred
Heart Academy before attending Tulane University where she
majored in Sociology.

I lift the bottle of Abita beer to my lips and finish it off.
It's taking all my strength to keep from jumping out of the chair, grabbing my weapon, badge, and radio, and racing to
the scene. I'm off duty and maybe it's my Lakota heritage
(Sioux, as the white man calls us) that knows better than to
go looking for trouble. It'll find me on its own. Or maybe it's
the Cajun half of me that knows not to volunteer. Volunteers
are from Tennessee, not south Louisiana.

I get up slowly to grab another Abita and sit back in
the easy chair and wait for the sports to come on. Waves
lap against the side of my houseboat and I hear the guttural
noise of a big outboard as some boat slips away from Bucktown out into Lake Pontchartrain. Sad Lisa rises slightly
then gently settles as the waves subside, and I close my
eyes for a moment and hear it again, in my mind. "... cop
killed ..."

A summer breeze flows through an open porthole of my
houseboat carrying in the familiar scent of salt water. I can't
stop my heart from racing no matter how hard I try.

Trouble is waiting for me the following morning as I walk into
the detective bureau in the visage of my lieutenant's dark
brown, scowling face. Dennis Merten, all six feet, 250 pounds,
stands with his arms folded across his chest. He wears his
usual black suit, narrow black tie loosened. He hasn't even
had time to take off his jacket.

"Detective John Raven Beau," Merten calls out. "Just the
man I'm looking for."

He growls as I approach. "I need you on Tchoupitoulas.
Assist the evening watch with a canvass. A cop was killed last
night."

"I know. Mind if I look over the dailies?" I'd like to know
more about the case than what was on the damn news.

Merten walks away, snapping back at me, "Just don't take all fuckin' morning." Then he stops and says, "I'm surprised
you didn't go barreling over there last night."

"I'm on the day shift, remember?"

"'Bout time you learned that." Always in a good mood,
that man.

Climbing from my unmarked Chevy Caprice, I leave my suit
coat hanging in the backseat and reach in for my portable radio, note pad, and pen. I wear my black suit today, with a light
gray tie. My hair is freshly cut and shorter than usual. It's still
as dark brown as when I was a kid. My 5 o'clock shadow is in
check with a close shave this morning.

A better description of me would mention I'm six-two and
lean. An ex-girlfriend says my eyes are the color of dark sand.
She also says I have a hawk nose and look like a raptor at
times, a bird of prey.

I stare at the apartment house that was on TV last night.
It's a redbrick building, old, a warehouse converted into condos. This entire area has been reclaimed-hulking buildings
turned into apartment houses or small delis, coffee shops, a
Kinko's at the corner of Julia Street.

Two marked police cars are parked directly in front of the
building. I spot two uniforms standing down the street and
one outside the front door of the place with Jodie, in a light
yellow blouse and black slacks this morning. Her blond hair,
freshly blow-dried as always, is longer than usual, a page-boy
cut.

I tug up my pants as I start across the street. Must be losing weight, my stainless steel 9mm Beretta 92F, in its nylon
holster on my right hip, weighs down my belt more than
usual. Jodie nods at me as I approach and I recognize another familiar face. The uniformed cop smiles weakly at me and pushes a wild strand of dark brown hair from her face.

I met Officer Juanita Cruz a couple months ago at Charity
Hospital when I worked the murder case we call Shoot Me I'm
Late-a case she helped me solve. Wasn't much to it. Guy had
his buddy shoot him in the leg so he wouldn't get in trouble
with his domineering girlfriend for being late again for a date,
only the guy died.

I'm about to ask what a Fifth District officer is doing
downtown, but when a cop's killed, we all come out like the
cavalry (may not be a very good analogy from a man whose
ancestors wiped out Custer at Little Big Horn).

"Hold this," I say to Juanita, handing her my radio as I unfasten my belt and tighten it up a loop. That's better. Juanita's
chocolate-brown eyes are wide and I wink. She looks as if
she's lost weight too. She still wears her hair back in a bun,
like most women in uniform do. As I recall, she's twenty-five,
a good five years younger than me.

Jodie's cat eyes are weary as she lets out a long sigh. "We're
going to recanvass the building first. I'll start at the top with
Juanita. You start at the bottom, okay?"

I slip my radio into my back pocket.

It takes me six minutes to solve the murder.

Mindy Cellers, with a "C," an inquisitive seven-year-old
who lives in apartment 1A on the first floor, stares at my gold
star-and-crescent badge clipped to my belt as she tells me, "I
know who killed her."

I go down on my haunches, eye level now, and ask the
obvious, "Who?"

Mindy tugs at the sides of her reddish hair. "I tried to tell
the police last night, but nobody would talk to me."

"I'm talking to you." I keep my voice low and soft. "Who
killed her?"

"The Wolf." Her green eyes narrow as she nods. "That's
what he calls himself. He visits her a lot."

"What does he look like?" Hoping she's not about to describe a canine from some childhood fantasy world.

"He's as big as you and thicker. And scary looking."

"Scary?"

"He's got a sharp face and big eyebrows." Mindy leans forward. "I think he's her boyfriend."

A door opens behind me and I turn to see an old man
peek out.

"He saw the Wolf when he left." Mindy leans past me,
speaking to the old man. "The Wolf almost knocked you over
when he left, didn't he?"

I stand and the old man's gaze moves from my gun to my
badge and he shrugs. He's barely five feet tall, balding with
a craggy, sallow face. He's in a faded red plaid housecoat.
Barefoot.

"I'm Detective Beau. Homicide. You saw someone yesterday?"

The man glances around, hand still on the door as if he's
about to slam it and escape back inside. I recognize the look
of fear; I ease forward.

"There's nothing to be afraid of. We'll get him, you know.
Nobody kills a cop and gets away with it." I drop my voice
menacingly. "Not in New Orleans."

"You don't know Wolf."

I slip my radio from my back pocket and call Jodie.

Allan O'Grady lives in 1B, an apartment decorated with
timeworn furniture and old-fashioned lamps and smelling like
sweaty socks. Jodie and I both jot O'Grady's story on our note
pads.

Last night, at about 7 p.m., the former boyfriend of Kim berly Champagne who lives in apartment 2B came hurrying
down the stairs, bumping into O'Grady who was coming back
into the building from putting his garbage out. The Wolf, in
a black jacket and baggy black pants, kept his hands in his
pockets as he jammed his shoulder against the door to swing
it open and rush away. An hour earlier O'Grady had heard
several loud pops, but thought it was a car backfiring. Later,
when the police arrived, O'Grady heard voices and crying but
wouldn't answer his door no matter how many times people
knocked on it. He'd turned off the lights.

Jodie asks why everyone knows this man as the Wolf and
I Spot Juanita Cruz easing in the open doorway. Her eyes are
red and she nods me over. We step back into the hall where
Mindy still waits in her doorway.

Juanita's face is scrunched up as if in pain. "I know him."

She takes a step back and sits on the stairs. "Kim broke up
with him months ago."

I pull out my note pad as I watch her breathing heavily
now.

"What's his real name?"

"Ahern Smith." She sucks in a deep breath. "Calls himself
the Wolf or just Wolf. Always refers to himself in the third
person. Like, `The Wolf is hungry,' or, `The Wolf thinks this is
nice."' She blinks up at me and tears flow from her eyes. "He's
an ex-Green Beret."

I sit next to her and ask how long she'd known Kimberly
Champagne.

"I broke her in when she came out of the academy." Juanita buries her face in her hands. "We were partners for six
months."

Before leaving with Juanita, Jodie explains to me how the
Wolf made it look like a break-in, as if Kim had stumbled on a burglar. "We've been looking at every goddamn 62-man in
the computer."

Jodie shakes her head and thanks me before she heads
back to the detective bureau to get a line on this Wolf character and secure the necessary warrants.

I'm left to take the formal statements from O'Grady and
Miss Mindy Cellers with a "C."

"What's a 62-man?" Mindy asks.

"Burglar."

"I'm not afraid of the Wolf." She tilts her head to the side
and smiles. "I know you'll get him."

I give her a long stare before I say, "I usually do."

Ahern Keith Smith, alias the Wolf, has no arrest record but
did spend eight years in the U.S. Army. In a photo we secured
from Kim Champagne's apartment, a picture we've distributed to all law enforcement, he looks a little like the actor River
Phoenix, the kid who OD'd, only the Wolf's face is leaner and
meaner-looking with an almost rabid glint in his blue eyes.

His condo is on St. Charles Avenue, corner of Peniston
Street, in the center of a row of new town houses built on
ground that once housed a mansion. On either side of the condos are mansions with antebellum columns, verandas and all.

At 4 a.m., I follow three S.WA.T men, decked out in all
black, army helmets, bulky flak vests. The first one carries a
sledgehammer, the second a bullet-proof shield. It's Jodie's
case and her warrants, so she makes me put on a flak vest or I
have to stay out. I'm in all-black too, black T-shirt, jeans, and
running shoes, my Beretta cupped in both hands as we move
up to the Wolf's front door. Jodie's right behind me, her own
9mm Beretta in hand. She's blacked-out also, her hair in a
ponytail.

The condo is quiet. A voice booms "Police!" as the sledgehammer shatters the deadbolt and the door flies open. Everybody wants him to be there with a weapon in hand so we can
send the Wolf straight to hell, as painfully as possible.

He isn't there, but there's blood around the kitchen sink.
Pulling on rubber gloves, we start rooting. In the Wolf's desk,
I find detailed notes of his surveillance of Kim Champagneher work schedule, times entering and leaving home, times
and places she went to after work, along with black-and-white
telephoto pictures of her. Just as I find the Wolf's night-vision
goggles and binoculars, Jodie discovers six semi-automatic
pistols and a World War II Browning Automatic Rifle, the famous B.A.R.

I can see the strain in Jodie's eyes. Under the bright lights
of the condo, her smooth face is still void of age lines, although she's pushing forty. I remind her of that, just to break
the tension, and she gets up on the balls of her feet, extends
her five-seven frame, and gives me a rabbit punch in the solar
plexus.

As the crime lab tech enters to collect the blood, headquarters calls Jodie on the radio to notify her that Ahern
Smith's black SUV was just found abandoned on the Claiborne Avenue bridge over the Industrial Canal. There's blood
in the car.

"Jesus! I gotta go." Jodie yanks off her gloves. "You got
this?"

"I'll finish up," I tell her as she pulls the band from her
hair, shakes out her ponytail, and hurries away.

When I find the Wolf's journal, I read the last entry where
he says he's going to kill Kimberly, then himself. He even gives
us the reason, a broken heart he calls my heart's death since she
left him. I flip back through the pages as he describes his life without Kimberly, back through their relationship to the time
he first saw her as they each stood outside Galatoire's, each
with friends, waiting for Sunday breakfast at one of the most
exclusive restaurants in a city of great restaurants. Kimberly
wore a short red dress that day.

He admits his clever lines didn't impress her at first, but
he succeeded in discovering where she worked and kept at her
until she let him take her out. I skim over the details of their
sex life and feel a sickness in my stomach, knowing all this
will be read in open court when we catch the bastard, all the
detailed descriptions of Kim's body.

I shake my head, my heart racing again.

As if he really jumped off the fuckin' bridge. If he wanted
to kill himself, why didn't he do it at Kim's? I close the journal,
which goes back three years. There are other girlfriends listed
too, with more explicit details. I add the journal to the box of
materials we're taking.

We've answered the question why, although why isn't
important to a homicide detective. Why is only important in
Sherlock Holmes stories and to the news media, which struggles to determine why everything occurs. In homicide, the
who, what, when, where, and how of a murder is what leads
us to the killer. But sometimes it helps to know why, I guess.