As Murphy watched them go, he knew he had only two hours to find Richard Lee Jeffries.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Monday, August 6, 5:45 PM
The driveway in front of 127 South Saint Patrick Street was empty. Murphy circled the block looking for an old Honda Civic with a new set of Goodyear Aquatreds. There wasn’t one.
He parked across the street, in the back lot of Saint Anthony of Padua Catholic Church. He watched the house until six o’clock. There was no movement and no change in the lighting. It didn’t appear anyone was home.
Murphy was reaching for the glove compartment when his cell phone rang. The caller ID showed Restricted. It was either a police number or it was Kirsten. He pressed the ignore button. He pulled the hood of his raincoat over his head and cinched the drawstrings. The rain was coming down in sheets.
His police radio crackled. “Homicide Division to twenty-five fifty-four, Detective Murphy.”
It was Calumet’s voice. Murphy picked up his radio and keyed the microphone. “Twenty-five fifty-four, go ahead.”
“Call the office ASAP,” Calumet said.
Murphy set the radio back on the seat and grabbed his cell phone. He dialed the main number for Homicide.
Calumet answered on the first ring. “Murphy?” The young detective sounded excited.
“Yeah.”
“Can you get back here by six fifteen?”
Murphy glanced at his watch. That was in less than fifteen minutes. “Why?”
“For a briefing.”
“What briefing?”
“We got the search warrant.”
“What!” That was impossible. They couldn’t have done everything he had told them to do.
“Yeah, we got the warrant.”
Murphy took a deep breath. He had to sound like a detective who wanted to arrest the most prolific killer in the city’s history. “How?”
Calumet’s voice dropped to a whisper. “The captain overheard me and Doggs talking about putting together a warrant, and he asked what kind of information we had. Once we laid it out, he told us to leave off all the murders except the dump job in the east, the one where you found the tire track. He said that’s the only one we need to link Jeffries to right now.”
And the captain is right, but that doesn’t help me.
“You got it signed already?” Murphy said.
“Doggs is on his way back from the judge’s house right now. The judge lives uptown, on the river side of Saint Charles, said he rode out Katrina and he’s going to ride out this one.”
What a fucking disaster, Murphy thought. “I’ll head back,” he said. “Wait until I get there to start the briefing.”
“This is awesome, huh?” Calumet said.
“Yeah, awesome.” Murphy pressed and held the end button to disconnect the call and to turn off his phone. Then he switched off his radio.
From inside the glove compartment, he pulled out a zippered black leather case about the size of a pen and pencil set. The case held his lock-picking tools. Several years ago, the department had sent him to Miami to attend a weeklong lock-picking course. Sometimes when you were executing a search warrant or an arrest warrant, it was better to sneak in than to smash your way in.
He pulled on a pair of latex gloves.
When Murphy opened the car door, a gust of wind nearly ripped it from his hands. The wind was driving the rain down at a forty-five-degree angle, hard enough to sting his face.
There were lights on inside the main house, but the apartment was dark. Jeffries’s mother had probably left the lights on to deter looters, except that in a couple of hours there wasn’t going to be any electricity to power the lights. Last time, it had taken three months to get the power back on in most of the city, longer in New Orleans East.
The homes on either side of the Jeffries house looked empty too. Murphy approached the sliding glass door at the front of the apartment by walking up the left edge of the driveway, next to a low brick wall that separated the Jeffries’s small patch of yard from the one next door. He was glad he was wearing a dark-colored civilian raincoat and not his NOPD jacket with POLICE in reflective tape across the back.
After a glance up and down the street, Murphy pulled a pin rake and a tension wrench from his leather case and crouched in front of the lock. He worked both tools simultaneously for five minutes, but he couldn’t get the lock to spring open.
All of his training had been on standard door locks and dead bolts. The glass door had a lock similar to a file cabinet. In theory, it should work the same as any other lock, but it didn’t. He changed to a different rake. Then he tried a pick.
Nothing worked.
He looked at his watch. It was already 6:15. How long would Doggs and Calumet wait for him before they gave up and came on their own? He had to search the apartment before the task force showed up. There had to be something in here that would lead him to Jeffries.
Murphy jogged back to his car. He opened the trunk and pulled out his tire iron.
The glass door had an aluminum frame that was a little loose in the jamb. Murphy forced the beveled tip of the tire iron between the frame and the jamb, just above the lock. The door was designed to slide to the left along tracks at the top and bottom. Murphy snapped the tire iron to the right and broke the lock apart. He pushed the door open a couple of feet and stepped through. A heavy drape hung across the doorway. Murphy shoved it aside, then slid the door closed behind him.
The apartment wasn’t completely dark. The drape had concealed a light coming from a back room. Murphy felt like shouting “Police,” which was what he usually did when he entered a house looking for a murderer. But this was different. He didn’t say anything.
He pulled down his rain hood and stood still, listening, his right hand gripping the butt of his Glock. Nothing moved inside the house. Murphy reached back and pulled the drape closed, leaving only a narrow gap through which he could see the street. He laid the tire iron on the nearby bed and drew his pistol. Then he slipped a flashlight from his raincoat and crept forward.
The apartment was small, a front bedroom, a short hallway with a bathroom on the left, and a kitchen in the back. There was no doorway connecting the apartment to the main house. Nor was there a back door. As he suspected, no one was home. Murphy holstered his pistol. He gave the kitchen a quick search but found nothing that connected Jeffries to the Lamb of God murders.
The hallway was narrow and bare, with a low ceiling that gave the entire apartment a claustrophobic feel.
Murphy stepped into the cramped bathroom. The vanity, the toilet, and the shower stall were squeezed into a space no bigger than six feet by six feet. Standing at the sink, he pulled open the mirrored door to the medicine cabinet and dug through the pill bottles and assorted junk. He found nothing. Behind the bathroom door was a linen closet with two doors, one above the other. The lower door had an old-fashioned laundry-chute hatch built into it.
Murphy checked his watch. It was 6:30. He was already fifteen minutes late for the briefing. Doggs and Calumet had probably started without him. They would be here soon.
He opened the upper door to the linen closet. Four shelves that began at waist height and rose to the ceiling held bath towels, hand towels, and washcloths. On the top shelf was a green mesh bag stuffed with beach gear: a pair of flip-flops, a sand bucket, a plastic shovel, a tiny fishnet, a cheap diving mask and snorkel.
Murphy closed the upper door and pulled open the one below it. Behind the lower door was a clothes hamper, piled half-full of dirty clothes and towels. He kicked at the pile with the toe of his shoe. There was something hard under it. He bent down and pulled out the clothes and towels. Beneath them was a shoe box. He lifted the lid and shone the beam of his flashlight into it.
Inside the box were locks of hair, swatches of clothing, women’s jewelry, and a gallon-sized zippered plastic bag containing a decomposing human hand with one finger missing. The hand belonged to the dead prostitute under the Jeff Davis overpass. The killer had cut off both her hands and kept one. Murphy had found the evidence he needed to prove that Jeffries was the Lamb of God, but he hadn’t found Jeffries.