Ice Fire: A Jock Boucher Thriller (9 page)

“Yes.”

“My God, why? Why here?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t know.” But he knew one thing. He had been foolish enough to be seen by hundreds of people with Ruth Kalin at the restaurant. Had he not been so careless, she might still be alive.

He drove the short distance to the Royal Orleans Hotel. It would have been easier to walk but Malika was upset. He asked her to sit in the lobby while he got a room. Aware of how it must have looked, checking in this time of night with no luggage and such a striking woman with him, he identified himself using his title, giving the excuse of a plumbing problem in his nearby home. He was given his key card and they went to their room. Malika walked in and sat rigid on the bed.

“How can you be so calm?” she asked. “That woman was murdered right in front of your house. And that fight earlier this evening; the two are connected, aren’t they?”

He closed the door, double-locked it, and fastened the chain. He walked to the bed and sat beside her, taking her hands in his.

“It’s too much of a coincidence for them not to be connected in some way. But I don’t know how and I don’t know why. If I seem calm, it’s because of what I do. I’ve sat in judgment of people for the last ten years of my life. I’ve determined civil disputes and I’ve sentenced men to jail. I’ve seen evidence of murders more brutal than this. I’ve learned to be dispassionate about—”

“Dispassionate? Dispassionate about a woman’s murder at your own home? I don’t understand. I don’t understand any of this.”

He kissed her cheek, for an instant unsure if she would permit him. “I don’t understand it either. But I will be working with the police and we will do everything possible to find the killer.”

She wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his neck, sobbing. “I don’t want to read about you,” she said.

He knew very well what she meant.

With the morning’s first light he woke to see her eyes wide open, staring at him.

“Did you get any sleep?” he asked.

“A little. When do you have to meet with that police detective?”

“Tomorrow. I think that was very decent of him.” He tried to read her face. It was a mask. “Would you like to do something today?”

“I know this sounds horrible,” she whispered, “but could we do something today to keep from thinking about yesterday?”

He sat up in bed. “Yes. Let’s get out of here. Are you ready to go back to my place?”

“I’m ready.”

“I’m sorry,” she said when they arrived at his house, “I didn’t know the hotel was so close. We could have walked. It would have been easier.”

“It’s all right. How are you feeling?”

“Groggy and tired,” she said. “Feels like a hangover.”

“Coffee will help. Let’s clean up and I’ll make some. Service in the courtyard in half an hour.”

She managed a wan smile but she stared at her feet as they walked up to the front porch, avoiding the chance of her eyes falling on any unpleasant surprises.

The morning was fresh, but not cold, the scent of blossoms heavy in the still and already humid air. With no breeze to stir them, the blooming plants in his courtyard created a mood of a very old funeral parlor. Jock sat in a wrought-iron garden chair. Malika joined him. She looked better, more in control of herself.

“I hope you like your coffee,” he said. “I make mine with chicory. Did you know the use of chicory goes back to the time of Cleopatra?”

She took a sip, then smiled. “In India, particularly southern India, it is almost impossible to find coffee without chicory. It is a staple.”

Her smile vanished. “You are involved in something very dangerous. You know that, don’t you?”

“I thought we were not going to think about what happened yesterday.”

“Is that easy for you?”

“No. It is on my mind right now. It will stay on my mind. But I’ve told you everything I know about the woman and there’s nothing more to say. This is our—”

“Last day together,” she said, finishing his sentence. “I’m sorry. We won’t talk about it anymore. What shall we do today?”

“We’ll start at the Court of Two Sisters. They’ve got a great jazz brunch on weekends. We’ll do the Quarter like we’ve never done it before. That should keep our minds off unpleasant things.”

Secret recipes, magic potions: the French Quarter’s hospitality is a witch’s spell baked in beignets, soaked in Sazerac. Surrender to its beguiling charm, and fears are banished, worries forgotten. This is the promise the tiny kingdom offers, and on the last day of Malika’s visit, the promise was fulfilled. For the day, troubles were forgotten, or at least not mentioned again.

Next morning, Jock had wanted to see her off at the departure gate, but Malika had insisted otherwise and he dropped her off at the curbside check-in.

“See you soon,” he said.

“Very soon,” she said. This was their parting tradition. They were more into reunions.

From the airport he returned to the Quarter and his meeting with Detective Fitch. They’d not set a specific time, but Jock knew the detective would be waiting for him.

The Eighth District Police Station on Royal Street was another of the French Quarter’s most historic buildings. Built in 1826, it had been the old Bank of New Orleans. Its elegant façade disguised the activities now conducted within its walls, ranging from the mundane to the morbid. Judge Boucher was expected and was shown to Detective Fitch’s office, a mustard-yellow room with brown blotchy stains on the walls from bad plumbing. It was barely big enough for the three chairs and the desk behind which the detective sat. The judge stood in the doorway, his eyes drawn to the ashtray on Fitch’s desk. Swiped from the Old Absinthe House, it held six or seven cigarettes, all crushed soon after lighting.

“Trying to quit,” Fitch said.

“Good idea.” Boucher still stood in the doorway. “You know, this is one of the ugliest offices I’ve ever seen. Color makes me want to puke.”

“Makes me want to smoke,” Fitch said. “I don’t like it either and this is Sunday. Let’s get this done so we both can get out of here.” Boucher pulled a wooden chair away from the desk and sat down.

Detective Fitch’s eyes were two black marbles buried beneath a protruding frontal orbit above and puffy purplish sacs below. It
was like he was staring out of a cave. A permanent slouch gave him a world-weariness that his sagging face reinforced. This was a man going through the motions of life.

“Did you know the deceased?” Fitch asked.

“I recently met her.” Fitch had asked this question the other night, but Boucher did not object. He described the circumstances, then added, “My girlfriend thought she saw her at my house Friday before I got home, but that’s a guess. It was dark.”

Fitch shook his head. “You only met her the one time?”

“Yes, once.”

“Then she comes back to your place without being invited—”

“Was she shot at my place?”

Fitch drummed his fingers on his desk and looked at Boucher. He shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. Someone wanted it to look like a suicide. Gun was in her left hand, but there was no gunshot residue.”

Jock brought the picture back. Standing next to the car, driver’s side, open window. Entry wound left temple. He brought another picture to mind. Meeting Ruth. First handshake. Firm handshake. Eating fried chicken, drumstick in her fingers.

“She was right-handed,” he said.

“You sure about that?”

“I’m sure. I remember shaking hands and we went out to get something to eat the evening I met her. I can picture her eating. She was right-handed.”

Fitch took out a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. He tapped one out and was about to light it. Boucher glared at him. He put it back.

“That’s a nice house you got,” he said.

“Thanks.”

“Not many judges can afford a place like that, even federal judges.”

“Back before I was a state judge I was a trial lawyer. Got lucky with a couple toxic tort cases.”

“So you’re rich?”

“I’m comfortable.”

“Then why the hell are you a federal judge? I know what you guys get paid. Work it out on an hourly basis with the overtime you put in, and you all make as much as a plumber.”

“I believe in our judicial system—”

“Spare me.” Fitch held up his hand. “I’ve worked with more judges than I can count, mostly city and state judges, but I’ve known some feds too. There’s only one reason to be a judge—you like getting your ass kissed. And those who don’t kiss your ass, you can kick theirs, to hell and back. That’s my definition of power, kiss my ass ’cause I can surely kick yours.”

“It sounds like you don’t have a very high opinion of judges.”

“I’ve been a cop for almost thirty years. I’ve known judges good and bad and crooked and straight. No, I don’t have a particularly high regard for judges, but I don’t despise them either. They serve a necessary function, like a traffic light. It’s just the holier-than-thou shit that gets to me. I’m all for proper decorum in the courtroom and all that, but it builds egos that make a lot of them assholes. So I admit I grin a little when one of you gets caught with his dick in his hand.”

“That’s what you think about the murder of that poor woman? A judge caught with his dick in his hand?”

“That was my first thought,” Fitch said, “body in the driveway of a judge’s nice, expensive house. I’m sorry. It wasn’t fair to you.” He let out a long, slow sigh. “I had a nice house too, before Katrina.”

“Where do you live?”

“Past tense. Lived in Chalmette. Don’t live anywhere now. Got a place where I sleep, and I work here.” He sighed a weary sigh. “You got an alibi for Friday night? She was killed about ten-thirty.”

“Like I told you before, I went to hear some zydeco with my girlfriend at a roadhouse on Lake Pontchartrain.”

“Witnesses?”

“Maybe two hundred. I got in a fight.”

Fitch chuckled. “I don’t see any bruises. You win?”

“I had help, infantry and artillery.”

The detective didn’t ask for an explanation, still chuckling. “Federal district judge brawling in a redneck bar. That’s a good one, and I’ve heard judge stories you wouldn’t believe.”

“It was a Cajun bar, not redneck.”

“Yeah, well, choice of venue doesn’t change the cause and effect, from my perspective.” He reached for his cigarettes again, but this time didn’t pull the pack completely out of his shirt. “Listen, I gotta ask you more questions, but this shithole is getting to me too. You want to get out of here?”

“There’s something I do on Sundays,” Jock said. “You’re welcome to come with me and we can talk while I do it.” He explained his one-man salvage missions.

“One request,” Fitch said. “St. Bernard Parish.”

St. Bernard Parish was the only parish completely inundated by Katrina. Of nearly twenty-seven thousand homes, only half a dozen remained habitable after the storm. Six. In addition to the flooding, oil storage tanks burst, covering the area with a foot of black sludge.

“Found my wife’s body a week after the storm,” Fitch said. They were on the outskirts of Chalmette, the St. Bernard Parish seat,
heading toward the town called Violet. “She was buried in oil. Don’t know whether she drowned or suffocated, not that it makes much difference. I couldn’t get out of the Quarter, with all that was going on. You ever been married?”

“My wife died of breast cancer,” Jock said. “Five years ago. No kids. She was trying to get pregnant, before . . .”

“Sorry for your loss,” Fitch said.

“Ditto. How about here?” Jock stopped the truck.

The few houses still standing were empty shells. Most lots were empty, nothing rising from the ground. Refuse lined both sides of the street. But for its cracked blacktop, the street might have been nothing more than a bulldozed path through a garbage dump. Stunted trees were the only signs of life. There was no sound other than a breeze teasing something hanging loose somewhere, banging it against a hard surface without rhythm or rhyme. There was no animal life, certainly no humanity: all washed away on fouled floodwaters.

They got out of the vehicle and began picking up objects closest to the road, mostly loose rotten wood and personal effects like the odd shoe, a coffee cup that remained inexplicably intact. The broken toys that spoke of monumental loss they left untouched. The fact that a black man and a seedy-looking white man could load the bed of a pickup without being harassed was further proof that this onetime neighborhood where friendly souls had once congregated was now a wasteland beyond concern or care.

“Federal judge and Eighth District detective picking up trash. Don’t you just wish some wiseass would come by and try to give us some shit about looting?” Fitch said.

When the bed of the pickup was full, Fitch leaned against the side of the truck and reached into his shirt pocket. This time the
cigarette was lit. After three puffs, he discarded it, crushed it under the sole of his shoe.

“Okay, Judge. Back to the inquiry. I gotta do my job. Why did the deceased come to you in the first place?”

As they drove back to the French Quarter, after properly disposing of the refuse, Judge Boucher repeated his narration of the chain of events, beginning with Judge Epson’s initial heart attack. Not wanting it to become evidence and thereby losing control of it, he left out telling the detective about the report Ruth Kalin had given him the night before her death. His safe had not been found when the police had searched his house, and he’d been asked no questions that would require him to perjure himself. There were minutes of silence after he finished his account.

Fitch spoke. “I want to take a look at the case file on that lawyer that was shot twenty years ago. Cold cases have always intrigued me.”

“That’s a good place to start,” Boucher said.

When they pulled in front of the police station, Detective Fitch offered a handshake before leaving and sealed the deal. “You’re okay, Judge, sorry about what I said earlier, about judges, I mean.”

“You’re entitled to your opinion. Maybe I can change it.”

I
T WAS MIDAFTERNOON MONDAY
when Judge Boucher’s assistant brought him the files requested from the Federal Records Center. He thanked her as if this had been a routine request, and she didn’t act as if it were anything unusual, though after working for two federal judges and a magistrate over a period of more than fifteen years, this was a first for her. He asked her to close the door when she left, with instructions that he not be disturbed.