Last Known Victim

When they had suited up, they started for the unit in question. Patti found the scene surreal: row after row of discarded refrigerators and freezers, food tombs in this great, stinking graveyard.

And like tombs and tombstones, the refrigerators bore messages. New Orleanians had begun to use their discarded appliances as a sounding board, spray-painting messages on them, some of frustration or anger, some of hopelessness. One proclaimed in orange spray paint across its front, “Heck of a job, Brownie,” referring to what President Bush had said to his incompetent FEMA head days after the storm. One in black, “So long, Sir-Stinks-a-Lot,” and another, “Here lies Uncle Fester. Thanks a lot, Katrina.”

Interestingly, many of the units were still adorned with calendars, children’s drawings and photos. Each a kind of snapshot of lives upended, time stopped.

“These units are classified as containing hazardous waste,” Douglas explained as they walked down a row lined with the ruined appliances. “That’s why the EPA’s here. First we clean out the contents, which, by the way, is when the hands showed up. After the unit’s been pressure-washed, we drain and dispose of freon from the coils and oil from the compressor.”

“How many units are here?” Spencer asked. By his tone, Patti suspected he was having the same reaction to this bizarre scene as she. Of course, since August 29, not much about life in New Orleans hadn’t been bizarre.

“Ten thousand,” Douglas answered. “And we’re just getting started. We expect a quarter of a million before it’s all over.”

Spencer whistled. “That’s a whole lot of funky Frigidaires.”

The man snickered, even though “funky” didn’t cover it. “The good news is, they’re being recycled. When we’re done with ’em, they’re compacted, then sent to a facility where they go through a shredder, then separators. Pretty cool, if you’ll pardon the pun.

“Here we are,” Douglas said u

Then she saw the hands. Or what was left of them, anyway. Mostly skeletal, laid out on a plastic sheet on the ground. By each sat a plastic zip-type bag. She wondered if they would be able to extract any usable DNA from what remained, either from the hands or what looked like the “gumbo” inside the bags.

DNA soup. Lovely.

Patti shifted her gaze to the refrigerator itself. A typical freezer-on-top variety, white and low tech, no ice or water dispenser in the door. It didn’t come from the Taj Mahal, that was for certain.

The larger of the two men stepped forward. “Officer Co

“You set up the perimeter?”

“Yes. Verified the find and called it in.”

“Good. Contact the department, see if they were able to round us up a crime-scene crew.” She turned to the other man. “Paul, I’m Captain O’Shay and this is Detective Malone. I understand you’re the one who found the hands.”

He bobbed his head in agreement. “I suppose I should’ve gotten Jim right away, but I kinda couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Surprised the hell out of me, that’s for sure.”

“It would anyone, Paul. Why don’t you tell us exactly what happened.”

“See, we have a procedure we follow. First, we empty the units. Dump what we can in the bins. By hand or with the help of a grapple machine. When that’s done we pressure-wash ’em.

“Most of what’s in these things is sludge. I mean, these babies have been without power for a long time. It’s damn disgusting, I’ll tell you that.”

Patti wouldn’t disagree. “How’d you find the hands?”

“They were there-” he pointed “-in the freezer. Wouldn’t have found ’em if one of the bags hadn’t broken. Slipped out of my hands and busted open. Act of God, it was.”

The act she had interest in was one of pure evil.

“But you didn’t go get Mr. Douglas?”

“I was kinda blown away, you know? Thought maybe this wasn’t the real thing. That one of the other guys planted it as a joke.”

His voice shook slightly, though Patti was uncertain whether from anxiety or excitement.

“So I laid that one out to take a real good look at it, and you know it didn’t look like plastic. That’s when I found another one.” He glanced at Douglas. “And went and got Jim.”

“And together you removed four more?”

He bobbed his head once more. “After we realized what we had, we were real careful.”

“We appreciate that.” She glanced at Douglas. “Do we know where this refrigerator came from?”

“The Metro New Orleans area.”

“You don’t have a street, a neighborhood or-”

“Just the Parish. Orleans.”

Although frustrated, she wasn’t surprised. The cleanup effort was immense. She’d heard the debris from this storm alone was going to equal thirty-four years’ worth of regular New Orleans debris. Something like one hundred million cubic yards, enough to fill the Superdome twenty-two times over.

She turned back to Paul. “Notice anything else different about this unit?”

He thought a moment. “Nope. Sorry.”

“If you think of anything, let us know.” She held a hand out to Jim Douglas. “We’ll take it from here. When our crime-scene crew arrives, you’ll send them our way?”

He said he would, and as he and Paul walked away, she turned back to Spencer. He had crossed to the hands and was squatted down beside them.

“They’re all right hands,” he said. “That’s six different victims.”

She frowned. “Why right hands?”

“Why hands at all?” he countered.

“They’re trophies. Obviously.”

“Katrina comes into town and our sick bastard here loses his collection.” He fitted on a pair of latex gloves, then held his own hand to the skeletal remains. “Women’s hands. Too small to be a man’s.”

She slipped on a pair of gloves and joined him. When she compared, she saw that the hands were a similar size to hers. “Still, they could have belonged to a young male, maybe a teen?”

“Maybe.” Spencer cocked his head. “Look at this. These four were very neatly severed.”

“But these two,” Patti murmured, “real hack jobs.”

“As time passed, he got better at what he did.”

“Practice makes perfect.”

“Grim thought.”

“Well, here’s another.” She stood. “They were all frozen. They all began the decomposition process at the same time-when the power went out.”

Spencer took over. “So we’re not going to be able to say when the mutilation occurred. Could have been right before the storm-”

“Or years ago.”

“Exactly.”

“Grim fact number two. No telling how many people have handled this refrigerator or how long it’s been outside, exposed to the elements.”

“Finding any trace will be a miracle.”

He referred to trace evidence, she knew. Things like hair and fiber. “As will usable prints. We’ve got no way to pinpoint where this refrigerator came from, so no frame of reference to hang our investigation on.”

“Grim fact number three,” Spencer offered.

“Exactly. And DNA, if we can get an uncontaminated sample, won’t do us jack without something to compare it with.”

“Grim fact number four,” Spencer murmured, trying for levity. “Thanks, I needed that.”

The crime-scene crew, consisting of one tech, arrived. She recognized him from his gear. Obviously this lone tech would be doing it all, from photography to fingerprint-and-evidence collection.

Where they’d scraped him up, Patti could only imagine. Without housing, there was nowhere for people to live, even those who still had jobs. Currently hundreds of NOPD officers were living on the Carnival cruise ship Ecstasy, docked downtown on the Mississippi River.

“Yo,” the tech said, setting down the gear. “What do we have?”