She felt a tug at her calf as she left the bathroom. A nasty-looking nail protruded about two inches from the splintered doorframe. She squatted to check the damage and was surprised to see she hadn’t been gashed, even though the nail had ripped the leg of her boot-cut jeans. She shined the flashlight beam at the nail and found blood on it. And not only on the nail; looking closer, she found spots on the varnish of the dark wood frame. She went back to the main room, where Johnson and Dupree were examining the corpses.
“Are any of them injured on the leg? Just above the ankle or maybe on the calf? It’ll be a deep cut that bled a lot and required a bandage.”
They cleared enough debris to examine the victims’ legs. The women wore summer dresses, and it was immediately obvious their legs weren’t injured. Dupree and Johnson looked at her, shook their heads, and waited for an explanation.
“The hurricane blew in the bathroom window. It tore the door right out of its frame and left a nail poking out. Someone cut himself on it, and that someone applied a bandage and took the time to wipe up blood from the floor.” She took them into the narrow hallway.
Johnson swabbed the dried blood and sealed the sample in a plastic bag. His face was serious when he looked at Amaia. “You understand the importance of this?”
Amaia thought for a moment. She wasn’t as convinced as Johnson. “I’m not sure . . .”
“What do you mean? It’s the killer’s DNA!”
“Probably,” she admitted. “But he’s started to do weird things, and that worries me.”
“‘Weird things’?” Johnson repeated. “What kind of weird things?”
“For instance, it was more important to him to set up his exact scenario with the bodies than to hide his presence. That’s just the opposite of the previous cases. He piled the furniture in a corner to make space for the bodies. He spray-painted FEMA search and rescue codes. We haven’t seen anything like that before, even though the other murders also took place right after disasters.”
“None of those disasters was as vast as Katrina; and this one’s in a city,” Dupree pointed out. “It’s the first family with neighbors in adjoining apartments. The others were in fairly isolated single-family homes. He probably changed his methodology because he wanted to make sure he wouldn’t be interrupted while he was dealing with this family.”
Amaia directed her flashlight beam along the hall. “I think he killed them and then went to the bathroom. I smelled urine in the toilet; the tank was dry. The family had a bathtub full of water and a plastic bucket to scoop it with, but he must not have thought of that. I’m sure that the pee’s not from anyone here. These people were poor, but they kept the place clean and tidy. I think the killer cut himself on the way out of the bathroom. He wiped up the blood, but he was in a hurry, so he made do with a quick swipe with whatever he found at hand. I don’t think he paid much attention to it or even really cared. Of course, he didn’t want to leave obvious bloodstains, but in a dark hallway with no electricity, nobody would be likely to notice a faint stain on the floor outside the bathroom.”
“You’re not going to suggest he’s hoping to be caught, are you?” Johnson challenged her. “If so, you should forget it. He’s doing everything he can to avoid detection and arrest.”
Amaia saw a smile playing around Dupree’s lips. The boss was an adamant advocate of the theory that the Composer wasn’t just avoiding capture, he believed no one even knew he existed. She thought the same. “No, he’s not going to allow himself to be trapped, but in this storm and in this city . . . You saw it in Bill’s face on the way here and on Bull’s as well. This is like the end of the world. Just imagine the mentality of someone who seeks out this kind of devastation. What I meant when I said he didn’t care is that I believe he’s nearing a climax. The grand realization of his destructive work is at hand. In my opinion, Katrina isn’t just a sign,” Amaia argued, “for him, this storm is his direct channel to God. ‘There shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.’ He’s accelerated his rhythm, and he’s not going to stop. New Orleans is his revelation. I believe that, somehow, he doesn’t really care what happens next.”
Johnson studied the stain on the floorboards. “He wiped up most of it, but there’s still a lot here. Any normal person with an injury like that would try to get to a hospital. You think it’ll help to notify the emergency rooms?”
“He bandaged it himself. A pressure wrap would be good enough, unless the nail hit an artery. Besides, remember what it’s like out there—there’s mud everywhere, nobody can see the bottom, and there’ll be lots of injuries to feet and legs as time goes on.”
“He’ll stay in the city,” Johnson replied.
“I’m sure he will.”
“So am I,” Dupree said. “The only thing we can be sure of is that he’s facing the same difficulties we are. Operation Cage, as we planned it, is cancelled. I just radioed Captain Forneret, and they’re overwhelmed. They stood down the roadblocks because they need every officer. The 911 center can’t handle all the incoming calls. They’re talking about leaks in the levees, maybe even breaches. And that’s what they’re really scared of: if the levees give way, that’ll create a massive surge, and New Orleans will disappear.” Dupree raised a hand and pinched the sides of his nose, trying to forestall a developing migraine. He smiled, but his expression was bitter. “Listen, I radioed the District 8 police station to see if we could get someone to evacuate these bodies. Never got the chance to ask. After he gave me that information dump, I didn’t even bring it up. We’ll seal the door and mark it with crime scene tape. That’s all we can do. We had a taste of the storm damage on our way here, but it was enough to show us things are only going to go from bad to worse as the day goes on.”
Amaia heard the churning sound of an approaching outboard motor and went to the front door just as Bill and Bull returned from their tour of the building.
“Police launch just got here with a rescue team, a real one, all of them state troopers. We talked with them. The old lady next door phoned in about the gunshots. She has an old landline. Nobody else in the building. Took us a damn long time to convince her to open up, and when she did, she told us she’d been hiding under her bed since she heard the shots. She couldn’t tell us much more than what we heard from the ops center. She heard five or six shots, one after another, maybe four or five seconds apart. And, worse, she heard people screaming. She said whoever it was tried to open her front door and stood out there for a while, but she didn’t see a thing. She was paralyzed with fear, and that saved her life. The troopers are going to evacuate her, unless you want to talk with her first.”
Johnson sprayed over the fake rescue sign with the correct information, according to the FEMA protocol. Dupree went to the old woman, whom two troopers were carrying out on a stretcher. She was deathly pale and terribly upset. He leaned close, intending to ask her the same questions she’d heard from Bull and Charbou. She smiled weakly, and Dupree realized he really had no desire to bother her.
She reached out a thin arm and took his hand. “God bless y’all! You so good to me. I was scared to death, the devil come to get me, but y’all my Good Samaritans.” The troopers quickly carried her down to the launch.