High Strung Page 8

  Now, a dozen years of homicide detective duty in a major city had made him impervious to unimaginable horrors. This was just another John Doe. Not even Ketchum’s first severed head case. It was not a person, not a human he viewed; it was a puzzle. A challenge. An obligation. He was obligated to find the truth and to bring the killer to justice. Until that happened, Ketchum would be on the case. He would leave the killer’s final reckoning day to the Lord—or more likely the devil.

  This set of photos, the medical examiner’s photos, had been taken in the ME’s autopsy room. Much better lighting. Much more detail. The head from all angles. Close-ups of the severed neck edge, the inside of the mouth, various wounds. The face.

  Ketchum groaned as he reached down into his bottom right desk drawer and pulled a greasy brown paper bag from among his stash of foodstuffs and condiments. He extracted the contents, tossed the outer bag in the trash, and methodically unwrapped the greasy white butcher’s paper from around his hubcap-sized muffaletta, as he had done a thousand times. He kept half of it in the paper pocket, bit down hard, and tore off a big chunk, chewing and smacking like a chimp as he wolfed down his breakfast. He slipped the single-serve brown paper bag halfway down from covering the cold beer he’d picked up on the way to the precinct, and popped the top. He wiped his greasy, wet fingers on his pants legs to keep the photos clean.

  With his freshly licked, clean pinky finger of his non-sandwich hand, he slid the photos around, arranging them with the victim’s face ones front and center so he could get to know his victim. Right off the bat he knew the victim did not die peacefully. He knew the face’s expression—a frozen snapshot of terror, pain, and confusion—was not this person’s usual countenance. It was not anyone’s usual expression.

  He again wiped his thumb and forefinger on his trousers, slid a fresh manila pocket file folder out of a box of them, and scrawled, “John Doe Head #1” in permanent marker across the tab. He gulped down the last hunk of muffaletta, wadded up the paper, and tossed it in the trash. After finally wiping his hands on his pants, and his mouth and face on his shirtsleeve, he gathered everything else he had on the case already and stuffed it into the folder to keep it all in one place. Not really organized, but at least together. If the bits and pieces and reports and notes he already had lingered on the desk too long, they would be absorbed like milk into cereal, becoming just another stratum in the four-inch layer of papers already obscuring his desk.

  Next, he unearthed a half-used steno pad in his desk drawer, flipped through the pages, and decided many were garbage. He gathered them up and forcefully wrenched them from the spiral top, accidently pulling the wire tip out of the final hole, causing it to stick out like a hypodermic needle. He tried to tuck it back into the hole, but after being jabbed in the thumb, he decided to just slide it through the spiral instead. Painstakingly extracting the twist of paper left in the spiral, he tossed it toward the trash can, missing. Then he labeled the steno pad the same as the file folder.

  “Here we go, Mr. Doe,” he announced to the head photograph. He was prepared now to start his case notes.

  Male. White. Pale complexion. Middle aged. Salt and pepper ponytail in disarray. Held by ponytail? Scruffy beard. Small silver skull pierced earring in his left ear. Hooded brown eyes. Thin lower lip. No teeth. He underlined “no teeth.”

  “No teeth” is significant, he thought. Rarely did Ketchum see something atypical in a homicide, but no teeth was definitely odd. It sure eliminated the possibility of identification from dental records. John Doe didn’t seem old enough for full upper and lower dentures. None were found at the scene. Plus, the gums showed teeth sockets that were fresh, not healed and not beaten out like with a bat or crow bar. They were extracted. Cleanly.

  “Who are you, John Doe? Why were you here? Who did you piss off? Which of your acquaintances or family went off the deep end and hated you so much they literally beheaded you? And, stole your teeth?” Ketchum softly implored the full-face photo.

  He knew by experience this was not a random murder. It was obviously premeditated. And deeply personal, deeply unhinged, so to speak. What bothered Ketchum the most was not that this man lost his life. His death was a done deal and he was not suffering, but the realization that the person who did this was out there among everyone else weighed on him.

  Once people had crossed certain psychological lines, like cold-blooded murder, like hands-on, up-close-and-personal, gory, bloody murder, they lost all boundaries. Now anything was possible for them. Now they knew what they were capable of, and they had absolutely nothing to lose if they did it again. They were a hand grenade with a very loose pin to anyone within shrapnel range.

  That’s why Ketchum felt a special, urgent need to crack this case as soon as possible. He started reviewing the other evidence. The unnerved krewe member who found the head had given a statement, but it didn’t shed much light on the investigation: “I went to the warehouse this morning around seven to look for my wallet. As soon as I opened the door I smelled something God awful. I started looking around on the float for my wallet and heard buzzing and saw a lot of flies swarming around a big ol’ whiskey barrel we use for candy to throw. I went over and peeked in. At the bottom of the barrel is a head. A human head. A stinking head. The source of the stench. At first, I thought it was a part of the float. Like one of the ornament figures had lost its head. I went to pick it up and it was real. It was heavy and the flies and stink told me it wasn’t just part of the float. I dropped it and went running out and jumped in my car, and went back home, and called the cops. I didn’t want to be there with that. I still don’t have my wallet, but I ain’t going back there again. That’s all I know. Cashion Boudreau.”

  Ketchum and his team had interviewed the krewe captain and most of the thirty-two float-riding lieutenants, some of whom had sobered up enough to make sense. None of the statements from the other krewe members and people who had access to the float revealed anything significant, except the riders said something stunk up the place toward the end of the parade. The candy barrel was filled just hours before rolling the float out for the parade, and no one had noticed a smell or a head then. No one saw anybody on the float trotting around with a severed head during the parade, but during Mardi Gras, no one would have really thought much about it if they had. Only krewe members were allowed on the float, but none of them confessed to the crime, and all seemed truly shocked and disgusted they were traveling around the parade route toting a real severed head. All krewe members were accounted for and had airtight alibis since they were all on the moving float together. Their stories about who saw whom, and when, matched perfectly.

  Another fact they agreed on was they noticed the stench about halfway through the parade. Not before, in the warehouse, not on the way to the warehouse, but during the parade. However, a stench in the French Quarter, especially during Mardi Gras, was not all that unusual. Drunks are notorious for puking, peeing, and pooping wherever the urge hits them. By the time the float traversed the parade route, starting around seven p.m., the revelers had been partying since breakfast, so the concentration of stink-making drunks and ambient funk was pretty high.

  The detectives asked each krewe member how the head could have gotten on the float, if none of them put it there. The answers ranged from “magic” to “voodoo” to someone in a tree or on a parade ladder on the parade route dropping it onto the float. They all agreed the float was too high off the ground for someone on the sidewalk to chuck it onto the float. It had to somehow arrive from the heavens. They also agreed the head probably appeared toward the end of the route, when the barrel was already empty and no one was reaching into the dark barrel for candy to toss to the spectators.

  At least a timeline is developing, thought Ketchum. The head appeared sometime between when the float was rolled out of the warehouse at four p.m. to go to the parade route, and seven this morning. Most indications were that the head seemed to arrive during the parade. That was only about a forty-five-minute
window of opportunity. How did someone put a human head in a barrel on a moving float—in front of two-and-a-half miles of onlookers and thirty-three people on the float—without any witnesses?

  The statements from the hotel guests along the parade route were no help, either. No one confessed. No one saw anyone on the street or anywhere else with a severed head. Everyone was in current possession of their own skull.

  The New Orleans mayor was trying to stifle the media coverage about the head and at the same time pressure NOPD to crack the case immediately. “I move at my own pace,” Ketchum flatly informed the mayor on the phone, “so you need to just sit tight until I tell you different,” and then hung up.

  Anytime a tourist city finds a head missing its body during its crowning jewel tourist draw, it’s embarrassing. Imagine finding a severed head on the stage after the ball drops on Times Square for the New Year’s celebration. That would be a real faux pas.

  The mayor reiterated to Ketchum that this head case during Mardi Gras was especially embarrassing because last year there were no Carnival parades due to a contentious police strike. This year, the parades were back in spades, to the great joy of New Orleanians. The police were back, too. There were literally platoons of uniformed police officers marching and riding in the parades. The cops and the mayor had even toasted one another with champagne in front of Gallier Hall, tossing the glasses into the street per the usual custom, and resuming the parade. Not a single cop noticed someone dumping a severed head on a float. They were too busy partying with the mayor.

  Ketchum had not been partying with the mayor or anyone else. He was a homicide detective. Homicide detectives didn’t party. Homicide detectives were in a perpetual state of sullenness. He had been doing this too long to party. Almost two decades was way too long for a person to be constantly exposed to the most horrific things humans do to each other.

  No, Ketchum didn’t party, he self-medicated. He drank. A lot. Constantly. At home and at work. He was a very high-functioning alcoholic whose skills had allowed him to climb the blue ladder to be Chief Detective while totally sloshed. He self-medicated, like the majority of his fellow officers, because to admit to anyone he was having psychological problems would be certain career death. If the brass got the slightest whiff of someone with a “mental” problem, they found a way to weed them out. But drinking, well, that was just partying, blowing off steam. A meeting with a shrink meant you were nuts, and must be eliminated. He was too damn close to retirement to risk his career just because he thought he might be cracking up.

  So he drank. Everyone knew it. He didn’t bother to hide it, keeping a bottle of bourbon in his desk drawer at all times. No glasses needed; he slugged from the bottle. No one talked about it. The brass ignored it, because he was still useful to them. They would happily enable him to slowly self-destruct as long as he produced results.

  It was no wonder Ketchum’s world had imploded around him. Ketchum did his job. That was it. He ate, slept, and did his job. That was his life. On his days off, he went to murders he didn’t have to attend. He saw himself as the vulture of law enforcement. He didn’t chase the bad guy from the scene of the crime. He didn’t go to shootouts, or hostage situations, or burglaries. He didn’t ride on the intimidating SWAT vehicle in his ninja gear to take down an active shooter. He didn’t pull over the drunk driver or bust the teenager for a baggie of pot. He showed up when there was death. Like a vulture. The grim reaper’s colleague.

  He had no interest in people except for cops, corpses, and criminals.

  Ketchum avoided places and situations where he felt vulnerable. He shunned crowds like those at stores or movie theaters or sporting events, because they made him anxious and feel like the walls were closing in on him. He couldn’t eat at restaurants in peace without facing the doorway and looking over his shoulder at the back entrance, so he got take-out and ate at home or in his car or in the inviolability of his office. He carried his duty weapon on him at all times under his plain clothes. He had concealed pistols all over his house and on his nightstand. He had backup weapons in his personal and unmarked vehicles. He was paranoid, hypervigilant. He had earned it.

  Ketchum didn’t rest, even when he slept. He had great difficulty falling asleep and often was awake for two or three consecutive days; his body needed sleep. Sleep deprivation messes with your mind and your body in very bad ways. Yet even though his body craved sleep, it wouldn’t succumb to it. Complicating his insomnia was Ketchum’s internal conflict about sleep. He knew he must sleep and felt horrible without it, yet on another level he preferred not to sleep.

  There was literally no rest for the weary detective. His dreams were even worse than his cases. He saw human monsters in his waking life; when he slept, they were in his nightmares, jerking him awake as he screamed and punched to get away from them. When he awoke, his pillow and hair were soaked in sweat. He awoke even more exhausted than before he slept. Day after day. Week after week. Year after year. Death and grotesque wounds were his daily routine. He saw children, the elderly, and people his age who had been brutally slaughtered. He was in a perpetual state of muted, suppressed alarm and outrage.

  If an average person had seen one, just one of the atrocities Ketchum had seen hundreds of times over the years, their psyche would be haunted and changed forever. Ketchum saw them daily, up close, hands-on, for hours on end. His days of being appalled, of being horrified, of being brought to tears were far behind him. At least that was what he told himself.

  He was wrong. Just because he could suppress his emotions didn’t mean they were nonexistent.

  His adrenalin throttle was stuck in overdrive. He was trapped in the fight-or-flight rush the rest of us experience only temporarily when we have a brush with death. He was hyperaware, paranoid, pessimistic, and profoundly weary. He had seen too much for too long.

  He was divorced, alone, and lonely.

  But Ketchum didn’t know anything else. He’d been a cop since he was fresh out of college. He had passed the point of no return in law enforcement. Desk work for him was impossible now. So was being a patrol officer. Retiring and sitting on a boat just fishing, whiling away the hours, was his vision of hell, although chain-slamming beers sounded alluring. Finding and putting away the devils who destroyed people and who were destroying him gave him some small degree of comfort, of solace. The innocents needed him to avenge their deaths. It was about justice.

  Ketchum tossed the swath of photos on top of the stacks of case files on his dilapidated, green army surplus desk. He washed down his beer with a shot of bourbon chaser. The case was marinating in his brain.

  “The largest free show on earth, and some guy’s head shows up without a date at the height of it.” He paced around the broom-closet-size office, looking at one of the photos in his hand. It was a short pace space. “A hundred thousand friggin’ people in town, and another half a million locals celebrating Fat Tuesday. They are all drunk out of their skulls. How the hell am I supposed to find out who this schmuck is and who offed him? Like a damn needle in a haystack. Like a flea in a haystack. Got no leads. No ID. Not even a complete damn body. Why do I get all these damn dead-end cases?” He gathered up the photos and crammed them into the case’s pocket file folder.

  He yanked his sports jacket from the back of the desk chair and squeezed into it, adjusting his shoulder holster underneath so it was comfortable and concealed. “Saint Christopher, don’t fail me now.” He trudged to the door. The bent metal venetian blinds over the half-window clanged loudly as he opened and then slammed the door behind him. He’d clanged the blinds behind him for so long, he no longer heard the noise. Everyone else did. Every time. The clang was how they kept up with him. It was like putting a bell on a cat. If the blinds clanged, Jake was coming or going. His persistent wheezing and strangled coughing also alerted the masses to his presence. His days of sneaking around were behind him.

  Detectives start with the most obvious first. The obvious answer to the head case was that
someone who knew the victim did this. This wasn’t a random murder. You don’t just snatch a stranger off the street, behead him, hide his body really well, plant his head on a float, and go back to business as normal. This murder was planned. It took time and effort. It would have left a horrible mess at the scene. It was anger, revenge, or hate-based. It was personal. Hand-to-hand murder is always personal. A beheading sends a message to survivors. Only a psychopath could have done this.

  Initial suspects: family members, known enemies, business associates, krewe members, anyone with access to the float before, during, or after the parade, local psychopaths, and transient psychopaths. Well, that certainly narrowed it down.

  Witnesses: none known.

  Those were his first working assumptions, always subject to change. But they were a starting point. A very nebulous, broad, starting point.

  Ketchum had to depend on forensics, the medical examiner, and the pathologist to generate solid clues. He went downtown to the forensics lab.

  “Any prints on the severed head case?” He got the technician’s attention as he stuck his head into the “Authorized Personnel Only” area.

  “Nah. Dusting for prints on the float was useless. There must be two hundred and fifty people who touched it over the last six months. Plus, it’s more than thirty feet long and ten feet wide, with all manner of materials, structure, papier mâché, flowers, broadaxes, swords, jousting poles, and anything else that could be tacked on to represent the Knights of the Carnival theme.” The technician continued to examine something under the microscope as he answered Ketchum.

  “Wish we had something simple like a bullet. A bullet would be easy. But, no, we have some weird-ass murder weapon,” Ketchum lamented.

  “Yeah. But I’m still working on some odds and ends. I’ll give you a heads-up when I get something solid.” The technician never looked up as he waved goodbye to Ketchum.