Blood Beneath My Feet: The Journey of a Southern Death Investigator Page 4

  These conversations played a part in preparing me for the underbelly of humanity. It was through these two inveterate gossips that I first heard when someone outside my family had problems, that I first experienced the callousness of some toward the problems of others, that I first learned how the tragedy befalling one lent itself to the entertainment of many.

  When I was eleven, after my father and mother had moved our family to Georgia, my granny phoned to tell us that Great-Aunt Roxie’s Imperial had failed her. A drunk driver had blown through a four-way stop and slammed into her door, breaking all of her ribs and leaving her gasping for breath with blood-filled lungs. She survived for three days in intensive care. She had been on the way to Granny Pearl’s home, to take her for a ride.

  My heart broke that day. It was my first experience with death. I believe melancholy took root in me at that precise moment, and it has never left me since.

  When I was a young man living in New Orleans, I learned those old lessons all over again, this time not from a sweet, retired teacher and her sister but from Death himself.

  The road along the Mississippi River was pitch black at night. The apartment complex I’d been called to sat next to a levee that held back the mighty river’s force. At one time, twenty years before, the area had been a great place to live. Now, the complex’s parking lot was filled with beat-up cars—some in disrepair, others with four flat tires and covered with dirt. I pulled in next to a cluster of police vehicles and a single ambulance. It appeared, for some reason, this death had drawn a crowd.

  The complex, like most of them in New Orleans, tried to imitate the French Quarter’s colonial townhouses ornamented with wrought iron, but it had never made the grade. The cheap metal used to construct the stairways and railings looked as if it would give way at any moment. Weak bulbs in the overhead fixtures emitted the only light, and it appeared as if some GE assemblyman had consumed a keg of beer and peed into every fifth bulb just for the hell of it. The faint and uneven yellow glow was eerie.

  A homicide detective and friend of mine, Kurt Snow, walked along the outer second-floor walkway. Kurt approached me with a curious grin and said, “Man, I just wanted you to know that when I saw this guy, you were the first person I thought of.” The detective laughed and turned on his heel. “It’s this way.”

  I had worked with this particular detective for a number of years and I knew his intrinsic cynicism well. It took quite a bit to amuse him.

  The living room was what I refer to as Nazi Neat—almost unnaturally orderly and organized. Hundreds of paperback books were lined up on shelves, labeled and arranged according to genre. The nap of the beige shag carpet bore evidence of having been recently vacuumed.

  The adjacent kitchen was similarly ordered, but with labels generated by a label gun. Each drawer and cabinet door had a list of what was within. No spare pieces of paper lay about. No unopened mail. No partially consumed beverages. Nothing bore witness to who occupied the space, other than its diligent orderliness. And the air was filled with buzzing.

  As I looked around the kitchen and living room, past the Spartan appearance, the sound chased me. It was a steady, continuous, mechanical hum.

  I glanced at Kurt. “What is that?”

  “That’s your Cracker Jack prize for showing up, my friend.” He smiled again, like a cat with feathers hanging out of his mouth, then pointed down the hallway.

  I stepped out of the kitchen and into the hall. The buzzing grew louder.

  Whoever lived in this apartment had built a door in the center of the short passageway. Why? It was a standard apartment, just like hundreds of others I had seen: single bedroom and bath. I placed my hand on the doorknob. It vibrated. A smell seeped into my nostrils, electric and stale. The aroma of rot and decay crept in too. I thought I knew what awaited me on the other side of that door, where the buzzing beckoned.

  As I turned the copper knob and inched the hall door open, I expected the fulfillment of my recurring nightmare. The detective could laugh along with Death while I flailed, covered in flies, choking. The joke would be on me.

  It wasn’t hordes of green little devils that rushed at me. But the sight of a collection of fruit on the floor was accompanied by the same, though louder, vibrato buzz. The air was foul and my head throbbed. The fruit consisted of a banana, an orange, and a big red apple. They glistened with an unusual sheen, nestled in their bed of shag. I studied them and noticed that each had additional coloring, aside from what nature had intended. Particularly striking were the yellow and orange surfaces meant for nourishment but now covered with jelly-like fecal matter.

  Down the hall, close to the bedroom door was an open can of Crisco, just like Granny Pearl used to use to deep-fry her pork chops and country-fried steak. Its pure white, silky surface was stained with feces and blood. My ears rang and behind me Kurt and his fellow policemen laughed.

  Considering what my occupation entailed—staring at the dead—one has to laugh now and then. Not once, when I opened a door, knowing there was a body on the other side of it, did my bowels fail to spasm or my breath keep from growing more shallow. I never knew what I’d find. I was afraid, always aware I shouldn’t be there. Surely there were other adults somewhere who could do this job, strong men with white Stetsons on their heads and Vitalis in their hair—not me. Add a layer of unknown buzzing to this kind of scene and I’m a little boy again, curled up deep under the covers in my small bed, worried about the monster in my closet.

  I swung open the door and was met by debris. Stacks of magazines—some torn, some still in their wrappers, all with a singular theme: the female form in lingerie, to be precise. Women in nightgowns, with bras, without bras, tied to walls, or on all fours with collars, silky corsets, and a mask.

  Buzzing.

  The victim, the corpse, the dead guy, the worm food was lying amongst the images and he too wore women’s lingerie. His mortal shell displayed black patent-leather stilettos, a black garter belt with black lace trim, and a corseted bra, which I later found out is referred to, oddly enough, as a merry widow. Rail thin, with ribs protruding, he lacked the voluptuous curves requisite for such attire. The shapely cups made for beautiful, soft, welcoming breasts contained instead shriveled man-tits with areolae surrounded by strands of wiry black hairs, though he had made an effort by stuffing pantyhose into each cup.

  To complete the portrait, locks from a shoulder-length dirty-blonde wig poked out from beneath the white plastic bag covering his head. Peeling the trash bag back revealed layers of smeared makeup coupled with the expected decompositional changes. The lipstick he had applied in order to augment his own reality was smudged and now painted his mouth into a frown. His natural hair, beneath the wig, was short and brown, wispy when compared to the blonde volume hiding it.

  Between his legs lay what was probably the onetime pride of his manhood. Now as thin and flat as a piece of bacon, it rested, twisted and shaking (along with his testicles) in the grasp of a hand massager that looked as if it were manufactured in the 1960s. Its two elastic straps entwined his member, which he had clamped with a plastic shower-curtain ring. Dead and rotting, heat still rose from his crotch, radiating and vibrating a reminder of the pleasure that had killed him.

  I found out later that the young man had been a computer engineer. He had lain undiscovered for over a week, surrounded by fecal-covered fruit and sex toys stained with his bloody pursuit of fleshly delights. Inside the plastic bag around his head he had placed an aerosol can of a substance called Gazz. At the time, it could’ve been bought in the French Quarter at any one of a number of sex shops that dot Bourbon Street. It was an oxygen depriver. The can’s shiny silver label depicted a cartoon-like balloon face that smiled like a John Wayne Gacy clown painting.

  I shook slightly as I stared at it. Not that it mattered, but I wondered why he’d done it? When does a man get to this point? At what juncture did he decide to shove fruits and vegetables up his rectum? When did the cold plastic of a device take t
he place of the warm, gentle touch of a lover? Was I witnessing human devolution? I had been warned before I started the job that I would never see it all, but I would see many things that would leave me wondering.

  The massager provided a steady, grating rhythm as we processed the scene, and it periodically provided comic relief, but there was a fear that hummed inside me the whole time. I stared at the wall socket where the device was plugged in. Maybe God had grown disgusted and fried this guy. Maybe God was disgusted with me for just bearing witness. Since childhood and witnessing the mania of my father, I had been afraid of crazy people. I shared the belief with my professional colleagues that if a bastard wants to destroy himself, he will not hesitate to take you along with him.

  My eyes darted around the room, across the amused faces of the police officers, over the empty Crisco cans and lacy teddies. I felt afraid. It was one of the first moments when I sensed death beckoning me. I had already started to drink off the job, and I hated myself for it. I couldn’t control the volume of alcohol I consumed, and I didn’t quite understand the need for it until perhaps that night. Ideas crystallized. Mankind was doomed and so was I.

  Then panic set in. To myself, I was screaming, Don’t let this be the last scene I see on Earth! Don’t let my death be a punch line for some cop, like this guy!

  I reached for the massager’s cord, expecting the same warm current that flowed through this guy’s body to flood me. I imagined myself falling, convulsing across his corpse. I grabbed for more manly thoughts of duck hunting, summer football camp, or Army basic training and yanked the cord from the wall. The buzzing stopped.

  In the profession of death investigation there are those who linger along the fringe who have made a name for themselves on the topic of masturbation. Autoeroticism is what it’s called. Self-pleasure. And if you claim you’ve never done it, you’re lying. Like anything else in life, including greasy cheeseburgers and Kentucky branch water, it will not prove fatal if taken in reasonable measure. However, moderation is not usually in the vocabulary of those who not only self-stimulate but also deprive themselves of oxygen. Of course this is what had killed my guy.

  You might imagine these deaths happen daily. I suppose they occur with greater frequency than cutting one’s head off with a chainsaw, but it was not something I saw every day. These more bizarre exclamation points at the end of a life just catch the public’s attention. They mean nothing more than that someone discovered a variation on a theme. No trends in homicidal violence, no potential pandemics, no warnings to family members of genetic predisposition to fatal disease—just sexual fulfillment running amok.

  When you’re young and placed in a position of authority, you start thinking you know everything. And maybe you do know a bit, from an academic standpoint, about how true knowledge comes from lives lived. From my perspective, you also learn from those who have died. At this early point in my career, I was a moron. I possessed none of the characteristics that make great investigators, let alone a great human being.

  Pictured from left to right: Mary Elizabeth Scott Morgan, Bertha Scott and Fred Scott. This image was taken at a studio in the French Quarter of New Orleans prior to Fred’s departure for France in World War I. Bertha was disowned by the Scotts soon after for marrying a Catholic. She lived the rest of her life in the French Quarter. Circa 1917.

  The mandatory glaze of compassion and active listening had yet to manifest itself in my twenty-four years of life. I was dangerous because I’d been told that I was intelligent enough to do the job, but unfortunately the smart men who had told me this were forensic pathologists, who rarely if ever have to deal with families. When the masturbating cross-dresser’s mother called me, sympathy was the last thing on my mind.

  She called the morning after we’d found her son. I had sent the state police to notify her the night before. With the images still seared into my mind and with that faint buzzing still resounding in my ears, I wondered what I would tell her about the condition in which we’d found her son. Topics my grandmother and great-aunt would not have dared whisper about twenty years earlier, even in their most refined, backwards phonetics, I would now have to discuss openly.

  The hold light on the phone blinked as I kept her waiting. I chose wrong. When I picked up the receiver and she spoke in a voice like warm sorghum syrup, dripping with Southern sweetness, sick with grief, I stated, “Your son died from autoerotic asphyxia.” In my rush to impress her with my forensic acumen, I’d set off a rockslide, pounding her toward the inevitable.

  “Sir, what is that?” Her voice was the perfect template for a Southern belle. I began to explain, but the further I ventured, the more I felt like Brer Rabbit covered in tar.

  I tried again, and after finally describing in brutal simplicity that her son had been found dressed in women’s garments with a bag over his head and that he had died while masturbating, the silence was worse than any buzzing I’d ever imagined. Then her voice gently slipped away with “my precious baby” and the line went dead.

  When in doubt, let God comfort, let God assuage, let God fill in the blanks. It was not my voice this mother had needed to hear. It was not the machinations of my intellect she had awaited. It was simply reassurance she had sought, reassurance that her child was now at peace, that maybe he had crossed into eternity in total solemnity. I had robbed a woman with my words. And like the clang of an old church bell, thoughtless words could never be recaptured. With all due respect to Roxie and Pearl and their artful method of disguising the worst, some things are ultimately better left unsaid.

  SOUTHERN MAN

  SOUTHERN CULTURE, as seen by outsiders, runs the gamut from inbred hillbillies to moonlight and magnolias. I suppose these clichés hold some validity. However, they lack the subtlety that truly defines the South. It has often been said that what separates the typical Southerner from everyone else is that Southerners are able to tell you to go to hell and have you thanking them for it in the end.

  The Southern male can generally be defined by four specific criteria: NASCAR, SEC football, hunting, and fishing. Now, none of these pastimes is either mutually dependent or mutually exclusive yet there is one commonality between them: in order to be considered a true Southern man, you must be either sincerely interested or able to successfully fake significant knowledge about at least one of them.

  Luckily, I don’t have to fake anything. My two chosen preoccupations—SEC football and fishing—serve me well, given that I’ve been a resident of both Georgia and Louisiana. As a young man I witnessed the evolution of two of the greatest running backs in SEC history: Charles “Alexander the Great” Alexander of Louisiana State University and Herschel Walker of the University of Georgia. I was even present “Between the Hedges” when Herschel broke the NCAA freshman rushing record. Any hopes I held onto back then of playing high school football or playing for either LSU or UGA were dashed when I evaluated my own talent, speed, size, and strength as compared to these guys. So I decided instead to be a prodigious fan and direct my remaining skills toward fishing.

  Over the years I’ve caught my fair share of fish. I have lured in trout in the Blue Ridge Mountains with cool air blowing across the bare skin of my arms. I have watched the sun rise over an oil rig in the Gulf while angling for snapper. For all of the places I have fished I have as many stories, some of them inflated, as stories will sometimes be. One of the most poignant fishing tales I’ve heard was told to me by a New Orleans police officer and great friend, Andy.

  Andy, who was somewhat older than me, would always invite me along on his twenty-four-foot Carolina skiff whenever he ventured into the saltwater marshes east of New Orleans. One cold March morning some years back, as we sought out bull redfish, this burly cop looked toward the west where the New Orleans skyline was clearly visible, and with a great helplessness in his voice he said, “Brah, wouldn’t it be great to see a mushroom cloud rising right from the center of that bitch?”

  I considered his words quietly, not wanting to
disturb his thoughts with any of my own. Ultimately, though, I thought better of agreeing with him. The prevailing eastern winds in his scenario would have driven the fallout directly into our faces, and the great bull reds who were eluding me would have never come my way again.

  Don’t judge my friend too quickly. There is a certain hue of sadness and even inevitability that police officers and particularly death investigators wear, like thick Kabuki makeup. The grief that we strive so hard to put aside wears on us, and we are never truly shed of it. So we turn to morbid humor. The general public might be appalled by it and our loved ones probably wring their hands over us, praying we will avoid firearms, sharp objects, and bourbon. (Which, by the way, I did not.)

  A few years prior to this fishing trip my life had changed in a way not many people could understand. I had been befriended and mentored by a man I had considered the best death investigator I had ever met, Bill Donovan. And, as is often the case with friends, I inherited some of his preexisting relationships. One such relationship was with the family of federal judge Lance Mitchell. Judge Mitchell was a big man with a stout baritone voice that had the most soothing, grandfatherly Southern tone. The judge possessed an incredible sense of humor and a fantastic appetite for all things Southern, including bourbon and branch water, as well as SEC football—particularly LSU football.

  The first time I met the judge was in 1988 when I was invited to an LSU vs. Ole Miss football game. In my vast Southern football-fan experience I had never attended such a game. In the first place, it is considered quite the honor to be invited to this game because every year all the LSU-faithful celebrate Billy Cannon’s 1959 Halloween run, which propelled LSU to the SEC Championship. That same year LSU was also declared National Champion. (For those who enjoy sports trivia, the 1959 LSU football team is the same team that the Taylor Hackford film Everybody’s All-American was based upon.) The other unique aspect of this game was the roster of our entourage: Judge Mitchell and his son, Lance, Ron Shapiro of Oxford, Mississippi, and my best friend and mentor, Bill Donovan.