Every Dead Thing

As I drove, the swamp was already preparing to reveal its secrets. Honey Island would yield a body within twenty-four hours, but it would not be the body of a girl.

35

I ARRIVED EARLY at Moisant Field so I browsed around the bookstore for a while, taking care to avoid tripping over the piles of A

The only luggage she carried herself was a brown leather shoulder bag. The rest of what I took to be her belongings was being toted by Angel and Louis, who walked slightly self-consciously at either side of her, Louis in a cream double-breasted suit with a snow white dress shirt open at the neck, Angel in jeans, battered Reebok high-tops, and a green check shirt that had not felt an iron since it left the factory many years before.

“Well, well,” I said, as they stood before me. “All human life is here.”

Angel raised his right hand, from which dangled three thick piles of books, tied together by string. The ends of his fingers were turning purple. “We brought half the New York Public Library with us as well,” he groaned. “Tied with string. I ain’t seen books tied with string since Little House on the Prairie stopped reruns.”

Louis, I noticed, was carrying a lady’s pink umbrella and a cosmetics case. He had the look of a man who is trying to pretend that a dog isn’t screwing his leg. “Don’t say a word, man,” he warned. “Not a word.”

Between them, the two men also carried two suitcases, two leather traveling bags, and a suit carrier. “Car’s parked outside,” I said as I walked with Rachel to the exit. “Might be just enough room for the bags.”

“They paged me at the airport,” whispered Rachel. “They were very helpful.” She giggled and glanced over her shoulder. Behind us, I heard the unmistakable sound of Angel tripping on a bag and swearing loudly.

We ditched the luggage at the Flaisance, despite Louis’s stated preference for the Fairmont at University Place. The Fairmont was where the Republicans usually stayed when they hit New Orleans, which was part of its appeal for Louis. He was the only gay, black, Republican criminal I knew.

“Gerald Ford stayed at the Fairmont,” he lamented as he surveyed the small suite he was to share with Angel.

“So?” I countered. “Paul McCartney stayed at the Richelieu and you don’t hear me demanding to stay there.” I left the door open and headed back to my own room for a shower.

“Paul who?” said Louis.

We ate in the Grill Room of the Windsor Court on Gravier Street, in deference to Louis’s wishes, its marbled floors and heavy Austrian drapes strangely uncomfortable for me after the informal setting of the smaller eateries in the Quarter. Rachel had changed into dark pants and a black jacket over a red top. It looked fine but the hot night air had taken its toll on her and she was still pulling the damp cloth of her top away from her body as we waited for the main courses.

As we ate, I explained to them about Joe Bones and the Fontenots. They would be a matter for Angel, Louis, and me. Rachel remained silent for much of our conversation, interjecting occasionally to clarify things that had been said by Woolrich or Morphy. She scribbled notes in a small, wire-bound notebook, her handwriting neat and even. At one point her hand brushed my bare arm lightly and she left it there for an instant, her skin warm against mine.

I watched Angel pulling at his lip as he considered what I had said. “This Remarr must be pretty dumb, dumber than our guy at least,” he said eventually.

“Because of the print?” I said.

He nodded. “Careless, very careless.” He wore the dissatisfied look of a respected theologian who has seen someone bring his calling into disrepute by identifying Jesus as an alien.

Rachel spotted the look. “It seems to bother you a lot,” she commented. I glanced at her. She had an amused expression on her face, but her eyes were calculating and slightly distant. She was playing over in her mind what I had told her, even as she engaged Angel in a conversation that he would usually have avoided. I waited to see how he would respond.

He smiled at her and tilted his head. “I have a certain professional interest in these things,” he admitted. He cleared a space in front of him and held up his hands before us.

“Anyone doing a B &E job-that’s breaking and entering, for the benefit of our more respectable listener-needs to take certain precautions,” began Angel. “The first and most obvious is to make sure that he-or she, B &E being an equal opportunity profession-doesn’t leave any fingerprints. So what do you do?”

“You wear gloves,” said Rachel. She leaned forward now, enjoying the lesson and putting aside any other thoughts.

“Right. Nobody, no matter how dumb, enters a place he shouldn’t be without wearing gloves. Otherwise, you leave visuals, you leave latents, you pretty much sign your name and confess to the crime.”

Visuals are the visible marks left on surfaces by a dirty or bloody hand, latents the invisible marks left by natural secretions of the skin. Visuals can be photographed or lifted using adhesive tape, but latents need to be dusted, typically with a chemical reagent like iodine vapor or ninhydrin solution. Electrostatic and fluorescence techniques are also useful, and in the search for latents on human skin, specialized X-ray photography can be used.

But if what Angel had said was correct, Remarr was too much of a professional to risk a job without gloves and then to leave not merely a latent, but a visual. He must have been wearing gloves, but something had gone wrong.

“You working it through in your head, Bird?” smirked Angel.

“Go on, Sherlock, baffle us with your brilliance,” I responded.

His smirk widened to a grin, and he continued. “It’s possible to get a fingerprint from inside a glove, assuming you have the glove. Rubber or plastic gloves are best for obtaining prints: your hands get sweaty under them.

“But what most people don’t know is that the exterior surface of a glove can act like a fingerprint as well. Say it’s a leather glove, then you got wrinkles, you got holes, you got scars, you got tears, and no two leather gloves are go

“My guess is that Remarr was wearing only a single pair of gloves, probably latex. He imagined this was going to be an easy job: either he was go

“But when he arrives, they’re either dead or they’re in the process of being killed. Again, my guess is they were already dead: if Remarr stumbled in on the killer, Remarr would be dead as well.

“So Remarr is going in, his one pair of gloves on, and maybe he spots the kid and it throws him. He probably starts to sweat. He goes into the house and finds the old lady. Bam! Second shock, but he goes to take a closer look, steadying himself as he leans over her. He touches blood and maybe considers wiping it away, but he figures wiping it away will only attract more attention to it and, anyway, he’s got his gloves.