Water Mark Read online




  Water Mark

  It’s just one more body in one more destroyed house. In New Orleans, after Katrina, there are thousands of destroyed houses and hundreds of body yet to be found. Can one more matter? It does to Micky Knight as she takes on the search to find out who the woman was and why she might have died there. But is Micky searching for justice or just doing anything to avoid confronting the ways Katrina destroyed everything that had tied her to New Orleans?

  Micky’s investigation leads to a tangle of greed and deceit that stretches back generations. Someone is using the destruction wrought by the flooding to finish what was started a hundred years ago. To stop them Micky will have to risk not just her life, but any chance to reconnect with Cordelia and rebuild the life she had before Katrina. But if she doesn’t stop them, a young teen whose only crime was wanting to help the destroyed city, will be the next body left in an abandoned house.

  Chapter One

  The approaching twilight offered only dense shadows. I regretted my hasty decision. It had seemed reasonable in my office, a still-golden sun slanting through the windows, power restored, the lights on.

  But this area was dark—no lights, ghost houses with empty blank windows, no streetlights, no cars save for overturned, muddy wrecks. This used to be a nice, middle-class neighborhood of tidy houses, cars washed once a week, people who knew their neighbors. Then Katrina came, the levees failed, and water washed away everything, leaving wrecked houses, wrecked cars, and wrecked lives. Two houses down, a body had been found. I knew the scribbled signs of the rescuers well enough to know what they meant. They had left a similar sign on my house, only with zero instead of one. In the dark gloaming, with no light other than the circle of my flashlight, this area felt haunted. People had died here, died horrible, needless deaths, and the land bore the scars.

  The house in front of me was the pale gray of white in encroaching darkness, cut in half by a dark water line. Five minutes, I told myself. Look around for five minutes; get some ideas of what I have to do, then come back in broad daylight.

  The flashlight was almost too strong, the brightness of its beam turning what was left beyond the light even more hidden and dark. Like most of us who had come back, I had taken preparedness to an almost obsessive level. Two flashlights and spare batteries in the trunk of my car, and one in the glove compartment. The one in my hand was a foot-long Maglite. I was counting on its bright beam to keep away the ghosts and its heavy metal weight to deal with miscreants remaining on this side of the divide.

  I carefully picked my way across the lawn, still littered with debris from the flood. It was colder now, November sliding into December, but too many snakes had been washed from the swamps for me to step easily over fallen tree limbs. A ripped sofa cushion, if it hadn’t started out as a muddy brown, it was now. A bent child’s bicycle wheel, no bike attached. The moldering body of a dead cat. I quickly covered it with the sofa cushion, partly as the only makeshift grave marking available, partly so I wouldn’t risk stepping on it as I returned this way. I didn’t want to offend even a cat ghost.

  The stairs had little debris on them, probably knocked away by whoever had searched this house. The screen door was hanging, barely held in place by one screw in one hinge, but the wooden door behind it was closed. Either the searchers had shut it, or they had entered through a window. It was hard to tell if any of the windows were passable. Better to look for glass shards in the strong sunlight.

  In the five minutes I had given myself, the last glimmer of the sun had fled; everything was turning into a coalescing gray and would be black in another ten minutes.

  Come back tomorrow, I told myself, this can wait. A damp, chill wind rattled the dying leaves. Even the sturdy evergreens, the oaks, the pines hadn’t survived being bathed for weeks in the toxic waters.

  I turned to go.

  A car door slammed. An unmarked van had pulled up at the corner. With my beam of light, I was easily visible. These desolate neighborhoods had been plagued by all-too-human ghouls, stealing everything they could strip from the empty houses, from copper wire to upstairs carpet.

  Leave, just leave now, I told myself. You don’t bother them, maybe they won’t bother you.

  I swiftly turned from the watermarked house and scrambled across the yard, barely managing to avoid stepping on the hasty grave of the cat.

  Just as I got to my car, I heard a high-pitched, girlish giggle. Looking again at the van, I watched as it disgorged a group of teenagers, all wearing matching lime-green Tshirts.

  “Okay,” said a voice that sounded like an older adult’s. “I’m sorry you got in so late, but I wanted you to at least have a first look at where we’ll be working tomorrow.”

  I slowed my stride, making a last-minute course change for my trunk instead of my car door so—in the off chance that anyone was looking—it wouldn’t seem like a group of teenage volunteers here to gut a house had scared me off. Between the van dome light, their flashlights, and the last fading glimmer of the day, they looked about as threatening as a stuffed pink poodle, so well-scrubbed and apple-cheeked that they were probably from a small town in Minnesota and this well-supervised and escorted trip was their first ever to a big city.

  As if proving my point, one of the girlish voices said, “Let’s pray before we begin.” They pulled together in a huddle of holding hands, or at least touching shoulders for the more shy—or agnostic—ones. Her high-pitched voice began, “Oh, Lord, guide our steps, protect us from harm, lead us not into temptation…”

  It was easy to tune out her nasal voice—a blessing even. I opened my trunk and rummaged as if looking for something important before I picked up the small crowbar right in front of me. More out of respect for the ghosts of the neighborhood than the praying Midwesterners, I softly closed my trunk.

  As I walked back to the porch steps, the skittering of clawed feet made me whip my flashlight in that direction, and its beam caught the snakelike tail of either a large mouse or a small rat. I can deal with mammals. The presence of rats meant the absence of snakes, all in all a bargain I’d take.

  The rodent was headed in the direction of the corn-fed huddle—”keep us strong in spirit, healthy in body—” but I was guessing that Divine Will and rat instinct would keep them apart.

  Just see what’s up with the door, I told myself as I mounted the steps. If it opens easily, take a quick look inside. If it doesn’t, then bring a bigger crowbar tomorrow. Juggling the flashlight and the crowbar, I managed to get the blade into the crack before thinking that maybe I should just try the door and see if it opened. Odds were heavily against that, but if the wood was cypress it might have survived the soaking and not be warped beyond use.

  “Amen” finally sounded.

  Followed by a high-pierced shriek. “Oh, my God. It moved! Something moved out there!”

  It seemed that Mr. Rat was a religious kind of rodent and had wanted to join the prayer circle.

  Another voice, picking up the panic said, “It could be an alligator!”

  The adult voice said, a bit shakily to be truly calming, “It’s okay. I don’t think alligators attack groups.”

  Damn Yankees. I turned from the door to face them and called, “There are no alligators here. That’s a mouse or a rat. It’s probably more scared of you than you are of it.” The last wasn’t likely to be true, but someone needed to keep them from seeing ten-foot-long alligators with bloodred fangs.

  “What the hel-leck?” the adult voice shouted.

  “There’s someone else here!” high-pitched, nasal said.

  Corn-fed Midwesterners in a desolate, devastated area of New Orleans, who were too busy praying to notice my car and a flashlight the size of a Super Trouper followspot.

  “I’m checking on a house for s
omeone,” I said. “There are no alligators in this neighborhood. It’s too cold and too far from water.”

  “It’s a woman,” one of the boys said. That seemed all it took to make me “safe” in their minds.

  “Can’t help it, was born that way,” I mumbled as I turned back to the door.

  The adult’s voice said, “Let’s go in the house, but be careful. We’ll take a quick look around, then back to someplace warm with food.” A few cheers and giggles followed, and a mass of flashlight-lit lime shirts headed for the house at the corner.

  The door on my house didn’t budge, even the knob wouldn’t turn. After trying for a full minute, I again shimmied the crowbar into the door.

  Just as I started to put pressure on the bar, a loud shriek stopped me. Lime shirts were vomiting from the house, helter-skelter, tripping over themselves in their panic to get out.

  “Oh, Mr. Rat, you’re being very bad,” I murmured to myself. Then hoped that was all it was. I’d feel real bad if I was wrong about the alligators.

  Two people vaulted off the porch, taking a third and part of the railing with them.

  Amidst the incoherent screams and yells, all I could make out was, “It’s horrible, horrible!” repeated over and over, and “My leg! Damn, my leg!”

  I hastened back to my car, threw the crowbar in, and grabbed my cell phone, keeping the flashlight.

  When I got to them, someone in the van was shouting, “Let’s get out of here! Where are the keys?”

  Two of the porch jumpers were still on the lawn, including the one moaning about his leg. I made them my first priority.

  One was a boy holding his ankle. He had misjudged his jump. The other was the one adult with the group. A quick look told me his leg was broken, with some of the bone showing.

  The rest of the group had retreated to the alligator-proof van.

  I knelt by the man. “What’s your name?” I asked him.

  “Bob,” he managed to gasp.

  First and last would have been nice, but I settled for what I could get. “Bob, you’ll be okay, but your leg is broken.”

  “No shi-oot,” he said through gritted teeth.

  “No shoot,” I echoed. I dialed 911 on my cell phone. No signal. No shit. I glowered at it. Of course there was no signal. To get a signal in my unflooded neighborhood, I had to go outside and face west. How could I hope for a signal here? “Damn,” I muttered. “Do you have the keys to the van?” I asked Bob.

  “What? Why do you need them?”

  “To send someone for help.”

  “Every kid here has a cell phone,” he said.

  “Welcome to New Orleans,” I said. “There’s no signal here.”

  He nodded with his head to his left front pocket and I fished a set of keys out of it.

  As I approached the van, the high-pitched, nasal voice demanded, “Who are you?”

  I pulled out my PI license, flashed it just long enough for the kids to get the hint that I was someone somehow official, without giving them a chance to really see it. I wasn’t counting on private eye impressing them much.

  “Who can drive? Legally?” They all looked far too young, but two of them put their hands up, a boy and Ms. Nasal. “No cell signal here, so I need someone to drive to where there’s a phone.”

  “I’ll do it,” Ms. Nasal said. “Someone should stay here with Coach.” She nodded decisively at the other driver.

  The other legal driver had to argue. “I was sitting up front. I have a better i.e. of where we are.”

  I decided for them. “Both of you go. I’ll stay here.” After all, I wasn’t scared of either real rats or improbable alligators. “Get to a phone as quickly as you can, call 911, and send an ambulance to this address. Do you know where you are? Do you know where you need to go?”

  Mr. Driver and Ms. Nasal exchanged a look as if asking if the other had the answer.

  I quickly gave them directions to where I knew they would find phones.

  One girl jumped out. “I’ll stay,” she said, then added, “It’s just a dead body. It can’t really hurt us.”

  The van started, drowning out the question I was about to ask.

  Chapter Two

  As the van disappeared, I headed back to my car. My questions about the dead could wait while I took care of the living.

  Preparedness, of course, required a big first-aid kit in the trunk. With a glance at the gas gauge, I started my car, drove the short distance to the corner house, and parked at enough of an angle that the headlights swept near where the two hurt men were.

  Bob was moaning slightly, though he was still aware enough not to curse in front of the kids. But I was worried about him. He had to be bleeding, and even my obsessive first-aid kit wasn’t much use for a broken leg. The best I could do was to try to keep him comfortable and out of shock until help arrived.

  It had been warm enough to not really need a jacket during the day, but the humidity of New Orleans can quickly put a chill dampness into the air. I got a mat from my car, had Bob lie on that, then covered him with the space-blanket thing from the first-aid kit. The boy, Nathan, seemed to have only a sprain. I wrapped his ankle with an Ace bandage and loosened his boot so it would be easy to get off as the ankle swelled. With help from Nathalie, the girl, I moved them so that they were sitting next to Bob—on the side away from his broken leg. They sat back to back, so all three could help warm each other.

  That was as much as I could do.

  “What made you all run from the house?” I asked.

  “Carmen said she saw a dead body, she started running, so we all started running,” Nathan told me.

  “Did any of you actually see a body?” I asked.

  Both kids shook their head no and Bob grunted something that sounded half no/yes.

  I looked at the house. The marking of the searchers, clearly spray painted next to the door, indicated that no body was in this house. Admittedly some of the searches were hurried, some incomplete because of debris or unsafe structures. But something seemed off about these kids finding a body in less than a minute that trained rescue workers hadn’t noticed.

  I stood up. “Let me see what’s in there.”

  “Be careful,” Nathalie called after me as I started up the stairs.

  I might find a months-old decaying body, but I was worried that it was an owner—or even a thief—who had been hurt while checking out the house. The kids hadn’t been inside long enough to test for a pulse.

  I hesitated at the door, swinging my flashlight across the porch. I didn’t want anything, even innocent rats, to creep up on me in this dismal darkness.

  Nothing moved. I opened the door and went in.

  The heavy smell of mold hit me. I swung my flashlight across walls blooming with gray, green, and black patterns. The floor was a grayish cracked pattern of dried mud. I suspected that even the bright light of the sun would show only shades of gray in this house. That was all the water left behind.

  The house was ranch style, probably built sometime in the forties or fifties, with an open floor plan. The door opened to a foyer that opened to the living room, the living room leading into a kitchen and dining room. I guessed that by the furniture the flood had heaped in haphazard piles.

  I retraced the quick arc of my flashlight with a slow one. Same gray-green mold and mud. The dried muck crunched softly as I stepped into the room. I could easily follow the footmarks of the kids. The entrance area was well trampled, with several paths coming into the house. One ended abruptly after a few feet, two had traveled a little farther before ending. One led around an overturned sofa. I carefully followed, pausing every few seconds to probe the room with my flashlight.

  “Anyone here?” I called. Only the rustling wind answered.

  The sofa sprawled upside down, almost cutting the room in half. It had been light green in another lifetime, but now the mold seemed to mock its delicate pale mint, as if nature couldn’t be cosseted with such a delicate hue.

  I
slowly edged around it and my flashlight caught what had terrified the children. Save for the staring eyes, he could have just been asleep. I looked at him for a moment. One thing was clear; this body hadn’t been here since Katrina came though. Maybe a day, most likely a few hours, but this wasn’t a body that was several months old. Beyond the fetid smell of the mold, I could smell no other decay. Not that I intended to look closely, but there was no insect damage.

  Oddly, he was dressed in a dark pin-striped three-piece suit, the tie perfectly knotted. He seemed very young, little beard visible on his face.

  Could this be a joke, I wondered. Or a perfect mannequin that the vagaries of the water somehow washed here?

  I knelt down to feel for a pulse, to feel if the skin was plastic.

  The flesh was cool, all too human. I could detect no pulse. The face seemed almost serene save for the staring eyes. Something in them was haunted.

  In the harsh beam of my flashlight, I noticed faint lines at the corner of the eyes. Maybe he wasn’t such a young boy. I gently ran a finger along the lapel of the suit. No, not a boy at all.

  I stood up and backed away from the body. I couldn’t do anything else, except perhaps mess up a crime scene even more.

  How had a woman, dressed as a man, been killed and ended up in this deserted location? But it wasn’t my problem to solve.

  I turned from her and went back outside.

  Chapter Three

  Instead of rejoining the small group immediately, I hurried to the corner to see if I could flag down any help. Nothing, not a gleam other than my flashlight and the beams of my car. The only sound, save for my breathing and the hushed murmurs from the group, was the shush of the wind. I stood there a few minutes, willing our rescuers to come. But, at least in this case, my will was weak and no friendly ambulance lights appeared.

  I didn’t want to be here. What should have been a quick jaunt was turning into a marathon—with me, two kids, one injured-and-out-of-it adult, and a dead body.

  As I returned to the group, Nathalie asked, “Did you find the—?”