Gator Aide (Rachel Porter Mysteries) Read online

  “Merely a concerned citizen.”

  I hung up and headed back out into the rain. Times were hard in Louisiana, and, as usual, graft was rampant. Priding itself on having more poachers per capita than anywhere else in the U.S., Louisiana considers outlawing a time-honored tradition, just as much as down-home politics is a way of life. All a poacher needed was to be a registered voter, have a quarter, and pick up a pay phone, and any hunting charges would soon enough be dropped. I’d already been told it was crazy to try and fight the system. That had only intrigued me all the more.

  Waterlogged, I headed back home late that afternoon. Like most other days since I’d been here, it had hardly been rewarding. Following the curve of the Mississippi River, I drove toward New Orleans. A steamy piece of bog crunched between Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River, the city had originally been claimed by France in 1718, when that country swept its prisons clean of its derelicts, loading them onto boats bound for New Orleans. With a crime rate today to rival that of New York, it seemed as if some of their descendants still had a good hold on the city. When I had first arrived, I had been advised to live in or around Slidell. Rents were cheaper, it would be easier to get to work, and there was a lot less crime. But after a week of living in the local Econolodge, looking at strips of fast-food joints, creosote factories, and sawmills, I had decided to blow my budget and head where I was most comfortable. While it’s not New York, at least New Orleans is crowded, claustrophobic, and noisy. I felt right at home.

  Once again my salary was being eaten up supporting a small and expensive apartment, but it was worth it. Situated in the French Quarter, the tiny two-story building of pale pink plaster had black wrought-iron tiers and balconies as intricately woven as my grandmother’s tatting. A minuscule courtyard and garden in back was a tropical jumble of multicolored flowers. Sweet-smelling magnolias mingled with angel’s trumpets, as flaming hibiscus competed with ginger lilies for precious space. But what had clinched the deal was the artwork strewn about the place. Small concrete satyrs romped in the garden, lusting after stone angels. A devil-head fountain spouted water over its long curling tongue, splashing onto nude maidens as they slept among the water lilies, the shade from banana trees dappling their bodies with intermittent rays of sun. Plaster masks of long-dead movie stars lined the wall outside the owner’s apartment, in an ode to Norma Desmond. From the owner’s taste in art, I gathered I had found a kindred spirit. I knew he was the kind of man who still dressed up for Halloween.

  The upstairs apartment was small, which suited me fine. Having grown up in New York, I’m uncomfortable when faced with too much space. Fronting Chartres Street, the living room led to a closet-sized Pullman kitchen, which I managed to keep clean through minimal use. The bedroom in back had French doors leading onto a balcony that overlooked the courtyard, and was vaguely reminiscent of Tennessee Williams and his cast of dysfunctional characters. Old and in bad condition, the building was loaded with atmosphere and charm.

  Stripping out of wet and muddy clothes, I left what I could of the marsh lying on my bathroom floor as I turned on the water in the tub. I planned on my usual evening activity of soaking for a while with a glass of wine and a trashy magazine, when I noticed the red light blinking on the answering machine. When I pressed the playback button, a familiar, deep Southern voice reached out toward me.

  “Bronx, get your ass over to 138 Ursuline Street. There’s been a murder in the Quarter.”

  Two

  The building was right around the corner from the old Ursuline Convent. Locating the apartment, I flashed my badge and pushed through the crowd already gathered outside the door, eager to catch a glimpse of the body. While the DEA, the local police, and Fish and Wildlife sometimes worked on cases together, I’d never been included on a murder before. But having viewed more than my fair share of dead bodies both on TV and in the movies, I felt prepared for whatever might await me inside. Besides, if the case was a break from working on ducks, I was grateful for it.

  As I entered the apartment, my umbrella, as well as the rest of me, dripped a large puddle of water onto the floor, but I had a feeling the tenant wouldn’t mind. Without being stopped, I made my way past a small circle of people, finally entering the room where the largest group huddled. What awaited me was a bloody scene. The bedroom walls were streaked with ribbons of red paint, except that the paint was still sticky and turned out to be blood. A tight knot of cops from N.O.P.D. were clustered about the body as if to keep the rest of us out. While I wasn’t sure I was that anxious to look, I found I couldn’t stop myself from trying to gawk over the bruisers in front, until one body got tired of my jabbing and turned around. Embarrassed at my New York aggressiveness, I flashed my ID as I backed up.

  “Rachel Porter. Fish and Wildlife Service. I received a call to report here.”

  At five-eight, I consider myself tall, but the face that peered down at me stood a good five inches taller. A thick tangle of curly black hair held droplets of rain from outside, while a pair of deep-set, dark eyes tried to focus on the badge I held too close to his face. Taking it from me, the man examined my shield. He had a strange face when examined part by part. A long, sharp nose that could have passed for a beak led down to lips tinged around the corners with disappointment at a life that had turned out differently than planned. Deep-set eyes didn’t stare so much as penetrate, with all the intensity of a laser beam focused in my direction. The lines engraved in his face looked as if they could have been etched there with acid, affirming that the wear and tear of life as a cop had more than taken its toll. Dark and brooding, he reminded me of a hawk in search of a kill. As he handed back my ID, I realized he’d been analyzing me just as closely as I had him. I felt myself fluster under his stare as I grabbed the badge out of his hand.

  “Well, Rachel Porter, if you’re that anxious to grab a peek, don’t let me stop you, chère.”

  I’d run into a lot of that down here. Women were never referred to by their proper names, but were instead called honey, sugar, sweetheart, darling, and chère. At first I’d been determined to put a stop to all that. After six months, I’d pretty well given up.

  “So now that you know who I am, who are you?”

  He silently handed over his own ID. Jake Santou. Homicide, N.O.P.D. A cop pulled away from the inner circle, and I instinctively squeezed in to grab a glimpse of the body. I was sorry I did. Lying nude on her back was a girl of about twenty-five. But then again, it was hard to tell. Her body and face had been slashed hundreds of times, making it seem as if she had been bounced off a spider’s web which had left its imprint in a myriad of fine lines. A mass of dark hair lay splayed about her head, giving her the look of a porcelain doll that had been broken and discarded. Her stark white skin, the color of fine bone china, was set in a mushrooming pool of blood as the cream-colored carpet beneath slowly turned a deep shade of crimson. An investigator busied himself dusting doorknobs, bedposts, and bureaus for any stray fingerprints, the cloud of fine dust floating through the air, descending onto the chalky whiteness of her skin and scattering a flaky cloud of dandruff throughout her hair. Glancing down at my feet to escape the surprised look of death in her eyes, I saw that the soles of my shoes were drenched in her blood. The man next to me chuckled, elbowing his companion, as I pulled back in horror and peered at the circle of faces around me. Impassive in their reactions, they had seen it all before. I backed out of the circle, grateful when somebody else moved in to take my place, hiding the bloody mess on the floor from my sight. As I walked away from the body, the soles of my shoes left a trail on the cream-colored carpet, the girl I’d just viewed following along in blood as well as spirit. Leaning against the post of her bed, I turned away from the scene, thankful that I hadn’t yet eaten as my stomach took a dive. Santou appeared behind me.

  “That’s Valerie Vaughn. She was a topless dancer who worked a club over on Bourbon. But that’s not what you were called in for. That’s over here.”

  Santou
guided me past a maze of bodies, over to the doorway of the bathroom. Chained to the leg of an iron clawfoot tub was a ten-foot alligator. Looking like a giant handbag with black and beige bands, the gator, like the girl, was dead. Grateful for the distraction, I knelt down beside the reptile. It was the closest I’d ever been to one. My only other hands-on experience was with a gator skeleton I’d seen in New York with Harry Milsus, the local forensics expert used by the FWS office there.

  “Took five shots to the head.”

  The sight of the gator helped to ground me, momentarily taking my mind off the girl in the other room. I used to watch Harry Milsus click into his “forensics” mode and tried to copy him as best I could now. Running my fingers over the skull to probe the depth of each bullet hole, I appreciated the training I’d had at Glynco. But even more importantly, I said a silent prayer of thanks to Harry. He’d been of the belief that both agents and inspectors should know a lot more than what we were taught. He was right. He also knew what I was up against in a male-dominated Service, determined not to lay out the welcome mat for the few women trying to kick in its doors. Becoming my ally, he’d taught me all he knew.

  By convincing me that, unlike wildlife inspectors, agents got all the interesting undercover work, along with job promotions and pay raises on the way, Harry was one of the main reasons I’d decided to become an agent. When he had learned I was being sent to Louisiana, he insisted that I bone up on reptiles. Harry would be happy to know that his many hours of work with me were paying off now.

  All five bullets had gone in at an angle and were shallow. One of the facts Harry had made a point of was that gators’ skulls are extremely thick. Whatever had killed the critter, my guess was it hadn’t been five bullets that had barely nicked the skull.

  “At least his death was quick. He wasn’t sliced and diced like the girl in there.” Santou leaned against the doorjamb, watching carefully as I tried to think of what else Harry would have told me to do.

  I found myself glancing over my shoulder at the soles of my shoes. Caked with Valerie Vaughn’s blood, the heels were slowly drying to a dull shade of red. Feeling woozy, I brought my focus back to the gator, though there wasn’t much else to examine at this point. The rest would have to be kept for a forensics expert. The problem was that we didn’t have one down here, and there wasn’t a chance in hell that Charlie would send the gator out to Fish and Wildlife’s National Forensics Lab in Oregon. Though the lab and its work were world famous, it didn’t set well with Charlie.

  “That damn thing’s nothing but pork-barrel politics, soaking up money we need out in the field.” That was his mantra whenever there was a budget crunch. It also saved Charlie from ever having to defer to anyone’s judgment other than his own.

  Though this wasn’t yet a fully grown, fifteen-foot gator, I found it hard to digest the fact that someone had been crazy enough to keep it as a pet in the middle of the Quarter.

  “I don’t think my office received any complaints about an alligator being kept here. Do you know if N.O.P.D. ever had anything reported on this?”

  “We don’t get reports on this kind of stuff, chère. Too many other strange goings-on happening here. This gator death probably doesn’t mean much of anything. There are lots of weirdos working the strip. Keeping a gator as a pet was probably a kinky turn-on for some of her johns.”

  My mind wandered, trying to imagine what sorts of kinky things one could possibly be involved in with a gator. I must not have been creative enough. My mind drew a blank. Glancing up, I caught Santou’s stare, along with the impression that if I couldn’t figure it out, he certainly could.

  “I’ll arrange to have the gator picked up. My boss will probably want to check this out for himself. I don’t suppose you found the key to unlock this chain?”

  Santou folded his arms across his body. “Nah. One thing I don’t bother with is carrying a set of keys around to unhook gators. We’ll get him out of there the best way we can. Don’t you worry none about it.” He made a motion as if to chop off the leg, sending a shiver through me.

  I ran my fingers over the bullet holes once more, the rough, scaly hide pulling at my skin. No bone fragments were sticking up. No splintering had taken place. The skull hadn’t even been nicked. Along with the strong odor of gator, the smell of death and decay had already begun to set in. I sensed Santou kneel down behind me and immediately tensed up, continuing to concentrate on the gator.

  “What makes you so sure this gator even belonged to the woman in there? Why couldn’t whoever murdered her have brought it with him in order to terrorize her?”

  Santou raked his fingers through the front of his hair, snarling his nails in a disarray of curls. As he leaned in close behind me to glance over my shoulder, his breath grazed the tip of my ear.

  “Look, if I’m gonna go to all the trouble of sneaking some big-ass gator into a hooker’s apartment, the least I’m gonna do is to torture her with it. Maybe feed the gator a chunk or two of her. Otherwise, why bother? Besides, those slices were finely done. That’s a very artistic job out there, chère. Took the guy hours.”

  Sometimes I’m slow on the uptake. The reason why I had been brought in at all was just beginning to dawn on me. I was cleanup patrol. Turning around, I found Santou watching me with the predatory gaze of a raptor as it circles its intended victim.

  “So, I was called in to save you the drudgery of filling out paperwork on a dead alligator that happens to be chained to your murder victim’s bathtub. Have I got that about right?” Tired and still damp from my daily dousing of rain, I would gladly have given all of this up to climb into any hot bath at the moment, with or without a gator chained to the leg.

  Santou kept his voice low, forcing me to lean in toward him. “Let me give you a word of advice here, chère. Don’t try to make this more than it is. It’s just a dead gator that some whacked-out stripper kept for kicks. Nobody cares, least of all your boss. This kind of thing always means more paperwork for everyone involved. It’s just the breaks that you’re the one that got stuck with it this time.”

  My body ached as I pulled myself up off the tiles. This wasn’t what I needed to hear. What I needed was dinner and a solid night’s sleep, not to be arguing in a bathroom with a dead gator at my feet and a mutilated girl outside the door.

  “You know what, Santou? It’s just some whacked-out stripper in the other room. Who the hell is going to care about that, either? I’m getting the distinct feeling that it won’t be you. For the record, as far as I’m concerned, until I find out there isn’t a tie-in here, I’m taking it for granted that there is. I’m also going to find out what it is, even if I do it on my own time. Until then, don’t even consider telling me how to do my job.”

  Shoving my way out of the bathroom, I elbowed through the crowd, using jabs I hadn’t called into play since jostling on a subway. I pushed past paramedics leaning against a wall, bored with the waiting; past the scene investigator busy capturing Valerie Vaughn’s image with his camera as he focused in on every slash along the curve of her hips, each and every puncture wound outlining the roundness of her breasts. I made a determined effort not to look in her direction, not wanting to be just one more idle gawker caught up in the drama of the moment. Santou caught up with me as I reached the door.

  “Hey, hey, hey. Hold on. I don’t like rash judgments, and you just made one in there.”

  I opened my mouth to protest but Santou cut me off before I could even start.

  “I made one, too. I don’t come up against much of this wildlife stuff. But you’re right. It’s your job, and I suppose you know what you’re doing. If I was out of line, I apologize.”

  I didn’t comment as he shifted from one foot to the other.

  “What say we pool our information? You poke your nose around and learn something, you tell me, and I’ll do the same by you. Who knows? Maybe you’re right. Maybe there is a tie-in here.”

  His eyes darted across my face with a wound-up intensity t
hat was ready to snap.

  “Tell you what. There’s someone I want to question tomorrow about this murder, who would probably be interesting for you to meet. If I set it up, I’ll give you a call.” He squinted at me, the corners of his mouth curled into a lopsided grin that clashed with the brusqueness of his stare. “Deal?”

  “What makes you think I could possibly have access to any information that you might want in my little old wildlife job?”

  Santou arched an eyebrow, acknowledging the dig. The movement of his hands caught my attention, and I glanced down to see a strand of garnet and onyx rosary beads woven between his fingers in a game of cat’s cradle.

  “Chère, you strike me as a wolverine. You got something in your craw, you won’t let it go till you’re good and ready. I figure you’re going to shake this one around for a while. Who knows what you’ll come up with? I’m placing odds it’s better to have you as an ally than an enemy.”

  I liked that.

  I had just sunk chin deep into a hot bubble bath when my doorbell rang. The buzzing stopped, only to be replaced by a persistent knocking at the door. Finally, I heard my landlord in the hallway calling out my name.

  “I’m in the bathtub!” I hollered back.

  Surrounded by a po’boy oyster sandwich, a glass of mediocre red wine, and People magazine, my evening was set. I listened as the lock on my front door clicked open and Terri Tune came in. Clad in a bright red kimono and backless slippers, he carried two large piña coladas on a tray. As the other tenant in the building, and my designated best friend, there was no keeping him out of any locked door. I had given up trying a long time ago.

  “Oh, please. Are you still drinking that crap?” Picking up my glass of wine, he sniffed it and proceeded to dump it down the sink. Then he made himself at home on the toilet seat, decorated a la Terri, with a pink shag carpet. The kimono slipped open as he crossed his legs, casually dangling a slipper from his toe. Terri put me to shame, taking more time to shave his legs than I did my own. Removing the paper umbrella from the frosted glass, I took a sip.