Bug Man Suspense 3-in-1 Bundle (12 page)

“The media,” Nick said. “Is that what this is all about?”

“Give me a little credit, will you? This is not about trying to impress somebody. You know DMORT, you know our policy:
the utmost respect for the dead and their families
. So when the media showed up and asked to take pictures of bodies, you know what we said? We made a simple request: ‘Please, no photographs of bodies. No coverage of victims.' That's all it was, a request—but they ignored us; they did it anyway. You've seen the pictures on TV: bodies on rooftops, bodies on sidewalks. So then we made it more than a request—we made it a ‘zero access' policy.

“You know what CNN did? They filed suit against FEMA in federal court in Houston—they said we were trying to ‘control content,' like we had something to hide. Hey, I'll let anybody look over my shoulder. I'm proud of DMORT, and I'm proud of how we do things around here. We just didn't want to see people exploited, that's all—we didn't want the suffering sensationalized. But the media—hey, they're just people like everybody else: There's good ones and there's bad ones. Some of those vultures would film the autopsies if we'd let them.

“The point is, now there's going to be a camera on every corner, watching everything we do. Whatever the camera sees, America sees—and Americans need to see us making every possible attempt to save the living. That's the test we have to pass here, Nick. Nobody's going to be satisfied if all we've learned to do since 9/11 is collect the dead more efficiently. We've got to show people that we've learned to protect the living.”

Nick shook his head. “In a few days the bodies of the hurricane victims will reach a stage of decomposition known as
floating decay
. That's what Americans will see then: decaying bodies floating everywhere, because we've made no attempt to recover them.”

“Fair enough,” Denny said. “But right now, we want them to see rescue boats filled with grateful survivors. No bodies—not yet.”

“How long will this policy remain in effect? When will we be able to start recovering the bodies?”

“The Corps of Engineers says 80 percent of the city is underwater. There are six thousand homes in your neighborhood alone; in St. Bernard Parish next door, there are forty thousand more. You tell me.”

Nick took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “The guy was murdered, Denny. I feel it in my gut. I can smell it.”

“You might be right. It's a definite possibility.”

“And you're willing to let that go?”

“No—but I'm willing to place other priorities ahead of it.”

“So we just let a murderer walk away.”

“We're not here to solve the crime problem in New Orleans, Nick. Like you said, they've got one of the highest murder rates in the U.S. They're going to have to take care of that themselves.”

“They can't do it without evidence,” Nick said. “The way we're going, there won't be any.”

“I hope you're wrong about that. But for now, we have to let it go.”

“That goes against everything in me.”

“And when you disobey my direct orders, that goes against everything in me. I told you before, Nick, I need you to play ball this time. If the coach shows you the bunt sign, you better bunt. I don't care if the all-time home-run title is on the line—
you bunt
. You do it for the good of the team, and you do it because he's the coach—that's the bottom line here. Are we clear about this?”

“Right, Coach.”

“I'm not kidding around.”

“I get it, Denny, I get it.”

Nick stopped in the doorway on the way out. “What happens to the body I brought back today?”

“You know the process. We'll do our best to identify it.”

“And the blowfly larvae I collected?”

“That's none of your business. You're doing search and rescue, remember?”

Nick reluctantly nodded. “I heard the mayor's casualty estimate on the way back up here. He figures between two and ten thousand victims. Ten thousand victims . . . it makes you wonder, doesn't it?”

“What?”

“How many of them might have been murdered.”

“Get some sleep, Nick.”

Nick stepped out of the warehouse and into the darkness. It was almost midnight now; he stopped for a moment to let his eyes adjust to the light. Across the parking lot, he could hear the low rumble of the tractor trailers all lined up and waiting to transport the dead—instead, they were little more than minimotels.
Like the man said
, he thought,
first the living
. At least the air-conditioning would feel good tonight.

“How'd it go in there?”

Nick turned to find Beth Woodbridge standing behind him.

“I have to stay after school,” Nick said.

“You've had worse.”

“I forgot—you keep the school records.”

“Mind if I walk with you?”

“Well, I can't outrun you.”

“What happened today?”

“I have a feeling you already know. I have a feeling everybody does.”

“You make good gossip,” Beth said. “You're a very interesting man.”

“You said that before. I suppose I should be flattered.”

“But you're not.”

“It's the way you say it—sort of like when I say, ‘The secondary screwworm is a very interesting maggot.'”

She paused. “What did happen today?”

“I was a bad boy—I took something that didn't belong to me.”

“So I heard.”

“Why don't you tell me what happened today? That'll save a lot of boring repetition.”

“You were instructed to assist in rescue operations in the Lower Ninth Ward. Instead, you recovered a body.”

“It wasn't ‘instead'—it was ‘in addition.' I guess they don't give points for extra credit around here.”

“Were your instructions unclear?”

“I heard what they said. I disagreed.”

“You disobeyed.”

“I
disagreed
—there's a difference. I'm not a machine, Beth; I don't operate by remote control. In the field I have to make my own decisions.”

“And you decided to act in violation of direct orders.”

He turned and looked at her. “Look—this is not like the last time, if that's what you're thinking. I just couldn't walk away from it, okay? It was the right thing to do, and I couldn't let it go.”

“I know.”

They walked the rest of the way without speaking.

“Well, here we are,” Nick said. “I suppose a gentleman would walk you home, but after all, the place is surrounded by razor wire.”

“That's okay. I know the way back.”

She started back toward the DPMU, but a few yards away she turned back again. “Will you be able to sleep?”

“The sleep of the righteous,” Nick said. “No problem.”

“I'm serious. Will you be able to sleep?”

“I will if you stop talking and go away.”

“All right,” she said. “Good night.”

Nick watched her until she reached the warehouse, then swung open the trailer door and crawled inside. On the floor to the left, Jerry was already in a deep sleep. He lay on his back with his chin slung low like a hammock; a deep, moaning sound was coming from somewhere inside him.

Nick nudged his shoulder. “Hey. Jerry.”

“Wha— Are we there yet?”

“Wake up, you big snitch.”

Jerry propped himself up on one elbow and rubbed his face. “What'd I do?”

“‘According to Jerry, you went out of your way to find the body,'” Nick recited from memory. “Thanks a lot.”

“Hey, he asked me. What was I supposed to do, lie?”

“Next time, just leave out a few of the details—that's called
editing
. Where's the boy?”

Jerry pointed toward his feet.

On the floor at Jerry's feet, two equipment bags lay end to end. Nick slid one of them aside and found J.T. curled up in a tangle of blankets. The boy slept so soundly that he didn't even appear to breathe; Nick considered laying two fingers on his carotid artery just to make sure.

“Poor kid,” Jerry said. “He was out cold the minute his head hit the pillow.”

“Did anybody see him come in?”

“Nah—they were all asleep before we got here. Most people work normal hours.”

“Most people are boring.”

“He can't keep coming here, you know. It's against the rules.”

“He slept on a rooftop last night, Jerry—if he slept at all. What was I supposed to do, leave him there on the levee with a bunch of strangers? I thought the kid deserved a good night's sleep.”

“Doesn't everybody,” Jerry said.

“Well, sleep fast. We'll need to get up early to sneak him out of here before the rest of them wake up.”

“I thought the plan was to take him up to the Family Assistance Center.”

“We'll do that first chance we get,” Nick said. “Right now he needs to sleep.”

Jerry heaved over onto his side, and Nick slid the equipment bag back in place to conceal the boy's presence. His own sleeping bag was across the aisle to the right; he didn't bother to climb into it, nor did he remove his glasses. He just rolled onto his back and lay there, staring at the bunk above him.

11

Wednesday, August 31

Nick unlocked the chain from around the trunk of the tree and tossed it into the boat; it landed in the aluminum hull with a loud clank. The old magnolia was a perfect place to conceal the boat the night before, just fifty feet from the point where St. Claude Avenue became submerged but in water still shallow enough for wading. Nick slid the boat out from under the spreading limbs and swung it around toward the street.

The old man had been nice enough to loan them the boat—too bad he didn't throw in the trailer as well.
It wouldn't have helped anyway
, Nick thought, because they had no vehicle to tow it with. DMORT maintained a small motor pool of cars and vans to shuttle team members the sixty-five miles to the city and back, but none of the cars had a trailer hitch—and none of them were scheduled to leave St. Gabriel while it was still dark. If you wanted to keep those hours—Nick's hours—your only option was to hitch a ride on one of the countless relief vehicles constantly ferrying back and forth. This morning they had shared the cab of a FEMA semi hauling pallets of water and supplies into the city. Jerry and J.T. had slept the whole way down, leaning up against each other like tent poles, while Nick learned what he could from the driver about conditions in the city.

The whole downtown was underwater, the driver told him; the Seventeenth Street Canal had a two-hundred-foot-wide breach in it, flooding the city with millions of gallons from Lake Pontchartrain. Charity Hospital needed to be evacuated, he said, and so did Tulane University Hospital just across the street, with eleven hundred patients between them. Both hospitals had been on emergency backup generators since 2:00 a.m., and the water was rising an inch every five minutes. Soon the water would drown the generators and all power would cease—lights, air-conditioning, even the ventilators of those on life support.

Jerry and J.T. waited for Nick at the edge of the water. When the boat came within reach, they both grabbed the bow and dragged it up onto the pavement with a grinding crunch that sounded especially abrasive in the morning stillness.

“Don't you get tired of doing all the work for him?” Nick asked.

“He's just a kid,” Jerry said.

“I was talking to the kid.”

Nick emerged from the water like a robot, growing heavier with each plodding step; on the roadway, he peeled down the heavy rubber waders and wrestled them off.

Jerry hoisted the gas can into the boat and reattached the fuel line. They had taken the empty can back to the DPMU the night before, stopping to refill it at a gas station in St. Gabriel. In New Orleans there was no fuel to be found—unless they siphoned it from the gas tank of an abandoned vehicle.

“How long you figure we'll have to keep doing this?” Jerry asked.

“Beats me,” Nick said. “The driver said that FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Teams should start arriving today. I figure they'll have to set up some kind of fuel depot.”

“There's a boat,” J.T. said suddenly.

“Where?”

“Can't see it yet. Over that way, I think.”

Soon both men could hear the high-pitched drone of an outboard motor echoing across the water. Seconds later, a sleek black rescue boat emerged from between two houses and headed toward the ramp.

“It's that LaTourneau guy,” Jerry said. “Man, he's out early.”