Buried

Only on CSI, Criminal Minds and NYPD do cops have to fuck up to pull cold case duty.

The only perk twenty years on the New Orleans police force gets me is the right to bitch about it.

There are many reasons I’m cozying up to Officer Kitty Larsson (short for Katrina for

obvious reasons). The third is because she’s a midwestern transplant like I was back in the day.

The second is she got enough spark in her to jumpstart this old man. But the first reason? She

works dispatch, which means I get a personalized heads up whenever a body shows up in the

French Quarter and the cause of death is not alcohol related stupidity.

Like today. There’s a carved-up body in the back of Marie Laveau’s House of Voodoo on

Bourbon and, God help us, Nunez is running point at the crime scene. He’s a nice enough kid,

but he’s fresh out of Tulane and as green as they come. We’ll be lucky if he doesn’t puke on the

body again.

I’m blowing a kiss at Kitty and heading for the door when Captain Landry steps in front

of me.

“Where do you think you’re going, Miller?” At 6’ 2” and 220 pounds of muscle, Landry

makes a damn good roadblock. “Before you feed me some line of bullshit, let me remind you

today is the 13th.”

I doubt you’d find a city filled with more suspicious nut jobs than New Orleans. They

avoid walking under ladders, shun black cats, and refuse to rent apartments numbered thirteen.

Like I said, nut jobs. My disdain of the number thirteen is evidence-based and rational.

I turn around and walk toward the records room, but not before I holler, loud enough for

the whole precinct to hear, “Hey Landry, remind me to show you the article in the Journal of

Forensics Science on what bile does to trace evidence.”

It’s mildly satisfying to hear raucous laughter and Landry shouting Get back to work! as I

close the records room door behind me.

“Hello again,” I say to the two hundred or more dusty file boxes piled floor to ceiling,

leaving only enough room for a tiny desk, a folding chair, and a reading lamp. Each box holds

roughly fifty files so I’m staring at approximately 10,000 cold cases, all unsolved homicides. It’s

enough to drive a detective to drink.

I open the box nearest me, pull out the first file my fingers find, and read Homicide, Jane

Doe, approximate age: early to mid-twenties.

“If you can hear me,” I say to the ghosts of the murdered. “Tell me what happened to you

so I can bring you justice.” Call it a stupid ritual if you want, but I swear sometimes when I talk

to them, they find a way to talk back.

Inside the file is a list of the names of the cops who worked the case: Detectives Pascal

Broussard and Henri Landry, a summary of their findings, crime scene photos, and something

that grabs my attention. Two plastic evidence bags.

I hold the first one up to the light from the table lamp. Chipped fingernails painted blood

red. The bag is dated 1984, two years before DNA was first introduced as evidence in a court of

law.

“You got lucky,” I tell the perp though I don’t usually have much to say to them.

Inside the other bag is a charm bracelet with one lonely heart-shaped charm.

“Didn’t get around much, did you?” I ask the dead woman. Most charm bracelets from

the 80’s were heavy with souvenir charms, like some sterling silver passport wrapped around a

wrist. Not a bad way to trace a life backwards.

I slip on plastic gloves and open the bag. The silver bracelet slides into my palm. It’s

packed with dirt. I can see words engraved on the charm, but it’s too tarnished to be legible.

Nothing a bit of polish won’t fix. After it’s checked for fingerprints, of course.

***

I wait my turn outside Captain Landry’s office as Nunez gives his report. The scent of

vomit wafts toward me and my stomach clenches. Damn Nunez. I swallow hard. I’d go flirt with

Kitty whose desk is as far away from Landry’s office as possible if it weren’t for the tingling in

my hands and head that tell me I’m onto something.

Finally, Nunez walks past me though the stench hangs in the air of Landry’s office.

“You need something, Miller?” Landry motions toward the chair in front of his desk.

“I might.” I sit down and hand him the file minus the list of detective names who worked

the case.

Landry pulls out one of the crime scene photos. It’s a close up of a hand with five fingers

reaching for the sky from beneath the ground. Nails, covered in chipped deep red polish, poke

through the earth. A charm, smudged with dirt, hangs from the bracelet that encircled the

woman’s wrist.

“Jesus.” Landry shakes his head.

I hold up the evidence bag containing the bracelet.

“I’ll be damned.” Landry leans forward to get a better look. “Somebody fucked up, that’s

for sure.”

I couldn’t agree with him more. “I want to send this to forensics for a full work up:

fingerprinting, DNA sampling, soil analysis.”

He looks at the date. “Miller, this one is so cold it’s got frostbite,” he says.

“Yeah, but this is New Orleans,” I repeat what he’s been preaching to me for twenty

years. “Nothing stays buried here forever.”

Landry chuckles and scribbles his name on an authorization form and hands it back to me

with the file. “Okay. Start digging.”

I’m standing up to leave, file and form in hand, when Nunez leans into the office.

“Excuse me, Captain Landry. I forgot to mention something earlier.”

Landry crinkles his nose. “Send me an email.” His words are nicer than his tone and

Nunez quickly backs out of the doorframe.

“Were we ever that young and dumb?” Landry cracks a rare wry smile.

“Maybe you were.” I walk to my desk, sending Kitty a wink along the way.

***

Two days later the report from forensics appears in my Inbox. I scan the romance novel

description of New Orleans soil. Alluvial sandy loam—containing a mix of sand, silt, clay and…

I couldn’t care less. I spot the attachment icon and click. Two images of the charm fill my

computer screen.

The front of the charm is blank, but there are words engraved on the back. They’re in

French, which I don’t speak. Still, I know what they mean all too well.

“Isabel.” My voice is dead. Flatlined. My heart breaks wide open and pain floods me

faster than booze flows on Bourbon Street. Though that’s not where I met her.

***

I was standing at the corner of Rue Chartres and Rue Toulouse, exploring the French

Quarter before my first semester at Tulane began when the rain sprang up and I was caught

unprepared.

“Thank you!" I said to the woman in the red dress who offered me her smile, captivating,

and her umbrella, black.

“Avec plaisir.” She linked her arm in mine, and we strolled down the rain-drenched

streets. The heady scent of her perfume floated into the air and was captured by the umbrella. I

breathed her in and stole a sideways glimpse.

She caught me, of course, and threw back her long brown hair and laughed. “Magnifique!

You have the look of a man who wants to share more than an umbrella with me.”

She stopped walking and turned to study me. “Ah, but you are only barely a man. I am

thinking the only time you have kissed a woman was during a game of tourner la bouteille.”

She smiled when it became clear I had no idea what she’d said. “It means spin the bottle.

I am right, no?”

We stood there in the rain, beneath her umbrella while she made fun of me in French and

my body throbbed as something new roared to life. She was right, yes, but that was a truth I’d

never confess.

“Not to worry.” She stroked my cheek. “Isabel will take good care of you. Come with

me. I will teach you the art of faire l’amour.”

My body translated her words just fine.

Isabel’s apartment was three blocks away. She ducked under the umbrella and sprinted to

her door. She slid her key into the lock while I stood on the sidewalk and felt the slates shift

beneath my feet.

“Ne t’inquiéte pas. Je serai doux.” She held the door open for me. “Do not worry. I’ll be

gentle.”

***

"You’re so beautiful.” I said as my fingers traced the slope of her breast and paused.

“Again?” She smiled slightly and looked at me.

“Yes please.”

Isabel closed her eyes and arched her back.

***

Later, much later, I fell asleep listening to the sax player on the corner. It was the first

time music spoke to me.

could show me the Quarter today.”

In the morning, I made Isabel coffee and brought it to her in bed. “I was thinking you

She yawned. “Mornings are for working, praying, or sleeping in and I only do one of

those well.”

But I had awakened a different man, the kind who didn’t take no for an answer. We

walked to the river and ate beignets, she somehow with grace while I ended up dusted in

powdered sugar.

“Vous êtes douce.” Isabel kissed me on the bank of the Mississippi and licked her lips.

We strolled down Rue Royal, hand-in-hand. I spotted a bookstore and wandered around

the foreign language section until Isabel said the books smelled like dust and she was sick of

sneezing, so we left. A few blocks down, she stopped to admire a charm bracelet on display in a

store window. I memorized the name of the store. In short, it was a day like no other I’d lived,

and I didn’t want it to end, but I had a bag in a dorm room and a life as a college student to

unpack.

Back in her apartment, Isabel was not happy about me leaving either. “I will never see

you again,” she declared. “You will meet some beautiful young woman in your classes and fall

madly in love with her. You will forget all about me.”

I reminded her that I was studying criminal justice, the major at Tulane taken almost

exclusively by men. “Besides, I could never forget you. Mon coeur est tien.”

Her eyes widened and then she laughed. “One night with me and suddenly you speak

French?”

“What can I say? You inspire me,” I told her, and, in that moment, I saw the whole of my

life: bringing her coffee in bed every morning; discovering new ways to surprise her every day;

falling asleep beside her every night in a city filled with music. I needed nothing more. My heart

truly was hers.

I didn’t see Isabel, though not by choice, over the next few months. School was harder

than I expected and nights I wanted to spend with her were spent with books. Still, she was my

first and last thought of every day.

Fall break finally arrived and I couldn’t wait to see her, so I asked her to meet me at Cafe

Soule, a quaint open-air restaurant near her apartment for lunch. While she slept in, I ran my

errand. I checked the spelling twice just to make sure. Somethings a man has to get right.

Isabel was late, but I didn’t care. We sat at the table where sunlight brought out the red

highlights in her long hair. She ordered a bowl of seafood gumbo while I had the Jamaican jerk

chicken, and it was just like I’d imagined it would be.

She asked about school, and I talked for over an hour about my forensics class and how

smart criminals never got caught. “They drown their victims,” I told her. “You see, fingerprints

are 99 to 99.5% water so exposure to water basically washes them away. Of course, then there’s

the matter of what to do with the body. Burial is the obvious choice.”

She asked a few questions, but mostly she listened and though I didn't want her to be

silent, she was all the rest of that afternoon. We walked the streets of the Quarter until the sun set

and the moon had to compete with the city of lights just to be noticed.

We sat by the edge of the Mississippi where she had kissed my powder sugared lips and

told me I was sweet.

It was the perfect time for the perfect surprise for the most perfect woman in the world. I

slipped my hand into the inner pocket of my fall jacket.

“For you.” I handed the jewelry box to her.

She took out the bracelet and saw the heart charm dangling from it. “Mon coeur est tien,”

she read the engraved words I meant with all my heart.

I was expecting her to jump into my arms and kiss me. I was expecting her to tell me her

heart was mine too. I was expecting us to pick up where we’d left off.

She stared at the bracelet. A tear slid down her face. “You know why all the streets in this

town start with the word rue?” She finally broke the silence. “Because this city is filled with

regret.”

I wasn’t expecting that.

I offered to put the bracelet on her wrist. She refused. She couldn’t, she said. She’d met

someone else a month ago, she said. It was serious, she said.

Serious? After one month?

A tiny voice of sanity in my mind reminded me we had only shared one night. What, the

voice asked, is she capable of feeling with someone she’s shared one month?

She was sorry, she said as she sat by the edge of the Mississippi. And then, she was gone.

***

I don’t think anyone ever forgets their first love. I certainly didn’t, even after Isabel

disappeared. Life went on though everything sounded out of tune for a very long time. In my

third year at Tulane, my roommate Jacques, who majored in jazz studies of all things, dragged

me to a concert at the Beauregard-Keyes House in the Garden District. I almost refused to go in

when I saw the address: 1113 Rue Chartres.

Then I saw Lisette, front and center in the band and blowing into her mouthpiece in a

way that made me jealous of her saxophone.

We found our way to each other after the concert and many nights after that. I loved her, I

suppose though she never arched her back when I touched her, and I never brought her a cup of

coffee in bed.

I haven’t had these thoughts in a very long time, but I can’t shake them anymore than I

can put the bracelet back into the evidence bag. It’s mine, I rationalize though even as I think it, I

know it’s a lie. It was always hers.

I fall asleep holding the bracelet in my hand now and she comes to me in my dreams.

Isabel. She moves beneath me, arching her back, and it’s just like it was with her until the dream

changes and she’s begging and screaming and gagging until she lies silent beneath me, and I

begin to scream. I wake up every night, covered in sweat, heart pounding, and sobbing while I

squeeze that bracelet in my hand so hard it digs into my flesh.

“If you can hear me,” I’d said to the ghosts of the murdered that day in the records room.

“Tell me what happened to you so I can bring you justice.” Isabel has been telling me her story

ever since.

I was murdered, mon chéri, I hear her say. Where is the justice you promised?

***

Captain Gérard Landry, my boss and my friend, looks at me from across his desk. “You

know who killed her?” Landry taps the name I’ve written on the cold case file. “This Isabel

Sonnier?”

“I do.” The blood pounds in my ears. My breath is shallow and fast. My heart thuds in

my chest. Is this what a heart attack feels like?

Landry leans forward and reaches for his phone. “I’ll get the warrant.”

My pulse throbs in my temples. “There’s no need.”

The look on Landry’s face tells me he doesn’t understand. I’m not sure I do either, but

I promised her justice. Scared as I am, this is what justice looks like.

“Nothing stays buried in New Orleans. Not bodies, not secrets, not lies, right?”

Landry nods.

Images flash in my mind. My hands holding her under the water. My fingers fastening

the bracelet on her wrist. My back aching as I dug the hole.

“It turns out memories don’t either,” I whisper.