The Bourbon Street Ripper (Sins of the Father, Book 1) (6 page)

Michael looked toward Senior Detective Kyle Aucoin, who was trying to look as dignified as a man can look while blotting up a bloody nose. Aucoin soon disappeared into a side room, cussing with a level of vulgarity that made Michael’s ears burn.

“Is Dixie still on vacation?” Michael asked the nearby officer. One of his closest friends, Dixie Olivier, Kyle Aucoin’s partner, had been on vacation with her boyfriend for only a few days. As far as Michael knew, she’d be gone for at least another week.

“From what I know, yes, but the commander is thinking of calling her back after that murder in the French Quarter last night.”

With that, the officer walked off, leaving Michael to wonder if both Rodger and the police commander were jumping the gun on declaring this a copycat, or if they were both on the right track.

The media was already calling it a Vincent Castille copycat murder.

In the background, the ill-tempered infant continued to bleat its cries. Michael looked over and saw that the infant belonged to a woman, most likely a battered wife, who was giving a report while trying to tend to her baby. He thought she should probably check that kid’s diaper.

“I’m back,” replied Rodger, making Michael abandon his thoughts once more. He saw that Rodger was offering him a Styrofoam cup of coffee. Michael didn’t particularly care for coffee one way or another, but his partner, and everyone else in New Orleans, seemed to live on it. Not one to rock the status quo, Michael took the proffered cup with thanks, holding it for the moment. It was too hot to drink anyway. Michael recalled that Rodger had a habit of scorching his coffee, making what was normally a bitter drink particularly vile.

“Welcome back,” said Michael as he pushed the crying infant, the bloodied Aucoin, and any other distractions out of his mind. Focusing on Rodger, Michael asked the question that had been on his mind since his partner was called down to the coroner’s office two hours prior: “So, what did Morton say?”

“Well, give me a second to get out my notebook,” Rodger said, sipping his coffee before leaning down behind his desk.

While Rodger was distracted, Michael quickly leaned over to a vacant desk across from his desk and opened a drawer. In it were several cups of long-since cooled and abandoned coffee. Placing the new cup into the drawer and closing it, Michael turned back to his partner before the latter noticed anything.

Rodger plopped down his notebook, then reached into his coat pocket and fished out a neatly folded coroner’s report. Holding it out toward Michael, he said, “First off, we’re lucky as shit that Morton bumped our body up to the top of the list. But I suspect that’s more thanks to the chief’s office than anything else.”

“Probably,” answered Michael, leaning forward and focusing on the paper in the older man’s hands. “The media is already having a field day. One slip that last night’s murder could be similar to the Bourbon Street Ripper murders and every talk show and radio program is running commentary, ready to theorize that this is everything from a copycat to the ghost of Dr. Vincent Castille.”

Roger nodded grimly, with a disgusted look. Michael wasn’t sure this was a copycat—not based on one murder—but Rodger had obviously already convinced himself that it was. Michael shrugged and said, “Well, the commander wants to know one way or another, and he’s already leaning toward the copycat side of the argument. So, what did Morton find out?”

Rodger unfolded the report and handed it to his partner. “Well, the victim was in our system, so she’s been identified. Her name was Virginia Babineaux, otherwise known by her street name, Virgin Baby.”

Michael couldn’t help but smirk at that name as he took the report and got himself oriented. “Lady of the night, eh?”

With a nod, Rodger leaned back in his chair and, scribbling in his notebook, continued, “This goes against the doc’s MO, though. Dr. Castille never went for prostitutes or derelicts. His victims were always upstanding middle-class citizens. College honor students, well-mannered housewives, daughters of civil servants. Those sorts of people.”

Putting down the report, Michael was caught by one of the phrases:
“daughters of civil servants.”
In the depths of Michael’s mind, a lightbulb suddenly illuminated. “Wait, you mean like the daughter of Morton Melancon?” One look at the frown that crossed his older partner’s lips, and Michael knew that he was correct.

“Morton’s daughter was the third victim,” said Rodger, shaking his head in disgust. “It was actually Edward who told Morton what had happened. I didn’t have the stomach for it. Sent Morton on a five-year sabbatical, nearly made the poor guy lose his mind. I suspect that even if the chief hadn’t told Morton to bump our case to the top, he’d have done it anyway.”

Well, that explains his reaction last night
, thought Michael. He went back to looking over the autopsy report. His eyes moved like the scanner on a fax machine, taking it in line by line. When he set down the report at last, Michael closed his eyes and visualized the entire report. There it was in his mind, clear as day, down to Morton’s accidental transposition of the letters
i
and
e
in
their
.

Opening his eyes, Michael rejoined his partner in the conversation. “So this killer is already doing something different from the doc. He chose someone who is less than an upstanding member of society.”

“Correct,” replied Rodger, sipping his coffee again. “Which means if another of these pop up and she’s in the same social class as the first one, we’ve got us an MO.”

Michael looked grim as he nodded in agreement. “Although, if we’re lucky, this was a one-time situation, and there won’t be another one of these ‘popping up.’”

To Michael’s dismay, Rodger immediately shook his head, saying, “I’ve been on the force over forty years, and my gut is almost never wrong. My gut tells me, Michael, that this is just the beginning.”

For a long moment, Michael was silent. He heard the infant in the background still crying, although not with as much strain to its voice.
Someone must be trying to comfort it, at least
, thought Michael, who gave a sigh and began spreading out the various pieces of evidence obtained from Sam Castille. He didn’t want to believe that Rodger was correct, but his own gut didn’t offer any solace.

After a few moments, Michael began, “Well, Vincent took one victim every seven days, correct? That gives us six days to find and identify the killer before the next victim goes missing. Now, I’ve been sorting through this stuff we got from Sam and have come up with several things.”

Michael produced a stack of receipts, bound together with a rubber band. “First, we have these receipts. All of these show the purchase of the hardware that the doc used to perform his murders. For each murder, he bought new power tools, new tubing, new everything.”

“Except his scalpel,” stated Rodger, taking the receipts and looking through them. “He used the same scalpel for every murder. He also used the scalpel, and not anything else, to finally kill his victims. Did the same kind of cut given for an autopsy. Everything else was either to torture during the killing, or to dismember afterward.”

“Right,” replied Michael. “And according to the autopsy report, the cuts on Ms. Babineaux were made from a hacksaw, a wire cutter, a circular saw, and a scalpel.”

“Same as the doc,” said Rodger, tossing the receipts back onto Michael’s side of the desk.

“But not quite, Rodger,” said Michael, tapping the upturned autopsy report. “Morton clearly states that the scalpel cuts were amateurish, that they didn’t have the precision of a trained surgeon. That means that the killer doesn’t have any training as a physician.”

As Rodger nodded, Michael continued, grabbing a similar bundle of receipts. “Now these receipts are from various restaurants around town. Commander’s Palace, Arnold’s, and Café Giovanni, just to name a few. Each receipt is always from the same night that the body was discovered.”

“That’s no surprise,” Rodger said, finishing up his coffee and tossing the cup into their already overflowing trash can. “At the trial, the doc was profiled as treating himself to a nice meal after every murder, sort of a reward for a job well done.”

Michael couldn’t hide his disgust at Vincent Castille as he continued. “The point I am getting at is that the doc’s case was highly publicized twenty years ago. So all these facts would be available for someone who knew where to look, correct? So, if this is a real copycat, like we suspect, then he will do more than just murder like Vincent Castille.”

Rodger looked up, the look on his face showing Michael that they were both arriving at the same conclusion. With a quick nod, the older man said, “Right, and since a copycat will want to emulate the full Vincent Castille experience, if we analyze lists such as recent hardware purchases and expensive restaurants… ”

“… we can find our man,” finished Michael with a smile. He and Rodger had solved many cases this way, arriving at the same conclusion over conversation. The younger man knew that he and his partner were as different as night and day, but when they worked together as a cohesive team, they could solve any case.

Michael sometimes wondered if Rodger, and not Edward, was the one who had solved the original case.

Rodger motioned toward the contents of the box Sam had given them. “So, then, what else do we have here?”

Michael gestured toward the stacks of notebooks, article clippings, and diagrams. “Well, all that stuff just shows the depths of Vincent’s insanity. The guy seemed obsessed with studying how much people could be made to suffer, as well as dabbling in that occult nonsense.”

Rodger picked up a few clippings and glanced over them, sighing softly before saying, “Yeah, the doc’s defense tried to put a voodoo spin on things in order to go for an insanity plea. It didn’t work, of course. The doc was too lucid, and never rambled about ‘the occult this’ or ‘black magic that.’ Still, they presented it really well. At times, voodoo almost made sense.”

Michael wasn’t surprised. Variations of “The devil made me do it” were centuries old. When facing the death penalty, especially for crimes this heinous, Michael supposed that anyone could be persuaded to try any defense, no matter how ludicrous.

Michael reached down to fish out a small pocket notebook from the pile of belongings. “Then there’s this,” he said, waving the small notebook. “It’s just a list of names and old phone numbers.”

Michael tossed the notebook to his partner. “Mean anything to you, Rodger?”

Rodger opened the notebook and looked at it. Within a moment, the older man’s lips curled down into a frown. “These are aliases, Michael. No one, not even in one of Sam’s detective stories, goes by the names Topper Jack, Mad Monty, Fat Willie, or Blind Moses.”

With a chuckle, Michael shook his head. “I knew that. I also called the phone company and tried to get their records of who owned those phone numbers back then. Of course, I was told that this was too far in the past to… ”

Michael stopped and grew silent as his partner suddenly slapped his desk.

“Oh, of course,” exclaimed Rodger. “I think I know who these guys are!”

Michael, who rarely saw Rodger have a
eureka
moment, just stared.

Rodger continued, “The prosecution always contended that Vincent had to have one, if not more, accomplices. It makes sense, since a sixty-five-year-old man shouldn’t have been able to carry out those murders alone. However, Vincent never gave anyone any information about who could have helped him. And since the stuff in this box”—Rodger waved the notebook—“was in his son’s townhome, and thus was never under a search warrant, we never got an idea of who they could be.”

Michael stood up and went to the side of his partner, looking at the small notebook again. “Accomplices, you say? This adds a new dimension to the investigation. So you think these aliases are those people?”

With a nod, Rodger looked up at his partner. “That’s my hunch. And I happen to know who can help us. A retired cop by the name of Douglas Dugas. My mentor, actually. Back in the seventies, he had his hands on every Tom, Dick, and Harry that had any information in this town. If anyone, and I mean anyone, in New Orleans would know who these four were, and where we could find them, it would be him.”

Their conversation was interrupted by an earsplitting crash. Rodger jumped up and pushed Michael back while putting his hand to his sidearm.

What the hell is happening?
Michael thought as he hit the ground. Quickly, he got back to his feet, and immediately saw the cause of the commotion—the biker, Jones, had broken free of an interrogation room by knocking the door off its hinges. All around him was a swarm of uniformed officers, and the sheer violence of the biker’s outbreak had caused everyone nearby to dive behind their desks.

In the background, the infant shrieked in terror.

“Holy shit!” exclaimed one of the officers as Jones grabbed a nearby chair and swung it at him, barely missing. “Someone bring this guy down, now!”

Three officers leapt on the biker, swinging their batons at his head. Jones seemed to ignore the repeated blows, and instead rammed his fists in two of the three’s midsections. As the sound of cracking ribs resonated throughout the room, Michael heard the one uninjured officer saying, “Shit! It’s like this guy’s immune to pain!”

That comment got Michael’s mind spinning, and he said, “Rodger! Sounds like this guy is high on something like PCP! Beating him with those batons isn’t going to do anything.”

Before his partner could react or protest, Michael was running toward the carnage.

The biker had just picked up the third police officer, who was screaming for someone to help him, when Michael reached the heart of the fray. All around were other detectives and officers, as well as citizens, most likely there just to file reports or follow up with investigations. Loosening his tie, Michael called out,
“Keith Jones!”

Keith turned around and, seeing Michael, threw the officer he was holding to the side. Unfortunately, that happened to be just where Aucoin, who had emerged from the side room right after the mayhem started, was standing. The two crumpled into an ignominious heap.