Tag: dead-roux

My thumb was already greasing up the screen of my phone, but I dialed anyway. The humidity, thick as week-old roux, clung to everything, including my patience. Doc Broussard’s van was already rumbling away, taking our latest exhibit – one very dead, very expensive swamp thing – back to the air-conditioned morgue. Good riddance. The bayou could keep its smells; I just needed the body gone before the buzzards got any bolder. They were circling higher now, probably discussing lunch plans and critiquing the killer’s presentation. Smug feathered vultures.

“This is Thibodaux,” I said into the receiver, cutting off whatever chirpy greeting the desk sergeant was about to offer. “I need a bulletin out, ASAP. Fisherman. White male, probably mid-fifties, seen fleeing the scene of a… discovery. He probably left his boat tied up around the bend from the old cypress that looks like a drunken octopus. Get a description from anyone who fishes that stretch of water. Tell them we’re not looking to arrest him, just to chat about what he saw. Emphasize the ‘chat’ part. He’s scared, and scared people clam up tighter than an oyster in a hurricane.”

A grunt of acknowledgment came from the other end. “Got it, Thibodaux. Anything else?”

“Yeah. Check missing persons reports from the last week, maybe two. High-profile, high-net-worth individuals. Anyone who wouldn’t be caught dead in a place like this, unless it was for a very specific, very ill-advised reason. We’re talking expensive suits, custom shoes, watches that cost more than my annual salary. Basically, anyone who looks like they fell out of a Forbes magazine and into a crawfish trap.”

Another grunt. “You think it’s another one, then?” The question was hesitant, almost a whisper, as if speaking it aloud might conjure more horrors.

“Think?” I snorted, wiping sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand. “I know. This particular killer has a very specific aesthetic. Call it his ‘collection.’ And I’m damn tired of being the curator.” I hung up before he could offer any more useless platitudes.

Darnell and Gary were still wrestling with the last of the forensic equipment, their movements slow and deliberate in the oppressive heat. Gary, bless his too-green heart, still looked like he’d swallowed a dozen live crawfish. He was trying to be useful, but his eyes kept darting to the stained bank where the trap had rested. I remembered my first one. The memory still made my stomach clench.

“Gary,” I called, “finish up here, then head back to the station. See if you can dig up anything on those missing persons reports. Focus on anything that screams ‘out of place.’ Darnell, you stay here and make sure CSI gets every last speck of swamp mud that might be useful.”

Darnell nodded, his silent strength a comfort. Gary, however, hesitated. “Thibodaux, do you… do you really think he’s picking them because they’re rich?”

I turned to him, leaning against the gnarled trunk of a cypress, its bark peeling like old skin. “Gary, this isn’t some random act of violence. This killer isn’t just dumping bodies; he’s staging them. He’s making a statement. And that statement, so far, has been shouted in expensive Italian wool and handcrafted leather. These aren’t just bodies in traps; they’re trophies. And trophies usually come from somewhere specific, and they mean something to the hunter.”

My gaze swept over the murky water, the ancient trees, the way the light dappled through the Spanish moss, giving everything a deceptively peaceful glow. It was a beautiful, deadly place. A perfect canvas for a monster who liked his victims dressed for a board meeting before their final, macabre performance. The contrast was deliberate, a brutal irony. What was it about these men, these fancy pants, that attracted such a specific, gruesome end in the heart of the bayou?

I pulled out my phone again, ignoring the sticky feeling of the screen. Another call. This one to the state police, to cross-reference their cold cases. Maybe, just maybe, this killer hadn’t started his collection here in our little corner of Louisiana. Maybe he’d been practicing his ‘art’ somewhere else first, before finding his perfect gallery in our swamps. Because if there was one thing I knew about artists, especially the twisted kind, it was that they rarely stopped once they found their inspiration. And this guy? He was just getting warmed up. I could feel it in the thick, heavy air. And it smelled an awful lot like despair.

The buzzards were having a field day. Honestly, those feathered fiends, circling like they were judging my parking job. Which, admittedly, was a little close to the ditch, but cut me some slack, I was dealing with a crime scene that smelled like a seafood boil gone terribly, terribly wrong.

“Morning, Detective Thibodaux,” Deputy Gary piped up, bless his heart. Gary was a good kid, eager, but sometimes a little too green. Like a swamp frog that hadn’t quite found its swamp legs yet. He was standing near the edge of the bank, trying not to look at the crawfish trap bobbing gently in the murky water. He’d probably rather be wrangling rogue alligators than dealing with this.

“Morning, Gary,” I drawled, pulling on my gloves. “And let’s try to keep the ‘detective’ to a minimum, huh? Makes me sound like I should be solving crossword puzzles, not… this.” I gestured vaguely towards the water with a gloved hand. This was South Louisiana, honey. Half the time I felt more like a glorified exterminator than a detective.

The air hung thick and heavy, like a wet wool blanket. The bayou was breathing out the stench of decay and despair, and I swear, those buzzards were starting to look downright smug. I swear those feathered fiends were laughing at me.

I sidled up to Gary, trying not to sink my boots into the mud any deeper than necessary. “So, tell me, Gary. What have we got besides a potential appetizer gone wrong?”

Gary swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple doing a little jig. “Uh, well, a fisherman found it, Detective… I mean, Thibodaux. Said it was heavier than usual, and… well, you see the suit.”

The suit. Oh, yes, the suit. Even from this distance, I could tell it was something fancy. Italian, maybe. Definitely not your average fishing attire. It was pristine, practically untouched… except for the fact that it was currently adorning a corpse residing in a rusted crawfish trap. The contrast was comical, in a dark, twisted kinda way. Like someone had decided to host a black-tie event for the swamp creatures.

“And the fisherman?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“Gone. Took off faster than a scalded dog. Said he didn’t want nothin’ to do with it.”

Smart man. I didn’t particularly want anything to do with it either, but duty called. And duty, in this case, smelled like week-old shrimp.

“Alright, Gary,” I sighed, pulling out my sunglasses. The sun was starting to beat down, turning the bayou into a veritable sauna. “Let’s get that thing out of the water. Gently, now. I don’t want any… souvenirs.”

As Gary and another deputy, a hulking fella named Darnell, started wrestling the trap out of the water, I took a closer look around. Nothing obvious jumped out. No signs of a struggle on the bank, no discarded weapons, just mud, cypress knees, and the unwavering gaze of those damn buzzards.

Once the trap was on solid ground, I approached it with the caution of a woman approaching a sale on designer shoes. You knew you were gonna get hurt, but you just couldn’t resist.

The victim was… well, he was a mess. But even through the grime and the decay, I could tell he was someone. Someone important, maybe. The suit was impeccable, the shoes were handcrafted leather, and even the watch on his wrist looked like it cost more than my entire car.

“Alright, Gary,” I said, trying to keep the bile from rising in my throat. “Call Doc Broussard. Tell him we’ve got another one.”

Gary’s face, already a shade of pale green, bleached another degree. His eyes darted from me to the trap, then back again. “Another… You mean like… the last one?”

I didn’t dignify that with an answer, just a slow blink behind my shades. Another one, indeed. Like a bad batch of gumbo, or a particularly tenacious strain of swamp fever. Just when you thought you’d scraped the bottom of the pot, bam, another helping of misery. This wasn’t just a random body in the bayou anymore. This was starting to look like a collection. And I had a feeling the collector wasn’t done shopping.

The silence that followed was thick, heavy with the unspoken implications. Even the buzzards seemed to hold their breath, their beady eyes fixed on our macabre tableau. I swear they were calculating their chances, wondering if we’d be kind enough to leave them some scraps. Fat chance, feathered fiends. This one was staying intact for Doc Broussard.

While Gary fumbled for his phone, probably trying to remember Doc’s number through the fog of nausea, I circled the trap. It was a standard wire mesh affair, rusty and worn, the kind you’d see locals drop by the dozen. But inside… inside was anything but standard. The victim, now fully out of the water, looked even more out of place on the muddy bank. He was a Caucasian male, mid-forties maybe, with neatly coiffed dark hair that was now matted with bayou sludge. His face was distorted by decomposition and the tight confines of his watery prison, but the remnants of a strong jawline were visible.

And that suit. Lord have mercy, that suit. It was a deep charcoal grey, a three-piece by the looks of it, made of a fine wool that probably cost more than my entire retirement fund. The silk tie was still knotted perfectly, a splash of crimson against the dark fabric. His pristine white shirt was, miraculously, mostly intact, though stained with what I was sure wasn’t mud. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to dress this man for his final plunge.

The killer hadn’t just put him in the trap, though. They’d folded him. Like a piece of origami, or a particularly awkward laundry item. His limbs were bent at unnatural angles, his torso compressed, as if he’d been forced into the small space with considerable effort and malice. It was grotesque, a sickening testament to the killer’s strength and twisted sense of humor. He wasn’t just murdered; he was packaged.

“How in tarnation…?” Darnell muttered, wiping sweat from his brow with the back of a gloved hand. He looked genuinely baffled, which was a rare expression on the hulking deputy.

“That, Darnell,” I said, not looking away from the grim package, “is precisely what Doc Broussard is going to tell us. And what we’re going to spend the next several months figuring out.” My voice was flat, devoid of its usual lilt. The sass was still there, but it was edged with a weariness that only came from staring into the abyss a little too often.

Gary finally managed to get through to Doc Broussard. I could hear his strained voice rattling off the details – “another one, crawfish trap, fancy suit” – as I pulled out my own camera. Click. Click. Click. Every angle, every detail, before the medical examiner’s instruments started poking and prodding. This scene needed to be documented perfectly. This wasn’t just a dead man; it was a message. And I was going to read every damn word of it.

The smell was getting worse, a potent cocktail of decay, stagnant water, and something metallic that I knew was blood. My stomach churned, but I forced it down. This was my office, after all. The bayou was a beautiful, terrifying mistress, and she rarely gave up her secrets easily. But this time, she’d given us a little too much, packaged in a suit and a rusty cage.

“Any luck with the fisherman, Gary?” I asked, snapping a close-up of the victim’s meticulously polished, now mud-caked, leather shoes.

Gary shook his head, looking miserable. “Negative, Thibodaux. Local patrol checked his usual haunts. Nothing. His shack’s empty.”

Figures. The ones who see too much always disappear faster than a mosquito at a nudist colony. “Keep looking,” I ordered. “That man might not want anything to do with it, but he’s already neck-deep. He saw something, felt something, smelled something. And I need to know what.”

I straightened up, my gaze sweeping across the dark, reflective surface of the bayou. The cypress knees stood like ancient sentinels, silent and unblinking. The air vibrated with the buzzing of unseen insects, and somewhere deep in the swamp, an alligator bellowed, a primal cry that echoed through the oppressive quiet. This place had secrets, and it was doing its best to keep them. But I had a feeling the expensive suit in the crawfish trap was about to spill a whole lot of tea. And I was ready to listen.

I knelt, ignoring the squelch of mud seeping into my already-ruined boots. This wasn’t a pretty picture, but then again, neither was life, especially not in my line of work. The victim’s suit jacket, a deep charcoal, was still remarkably crisp, given its aquatic journey. My gloved fingers brushed against the lapel, feeling the fine wool. Some poor tailor had put a lot of love into this garment, only for it to end up a soggy coffin lining.

“No wallet, no ID,” I murmured, my voice a low growl. I’d already checked the obvious pockets. Nothing. Just the faint smell of something expensive, like old money and desperation. The killer was thorough, or perhaps the victim hadn’t had a wallet. Either way, it meant a longer road to figuring out who this fancy-pants was.

“Same as the others, then,” Gary piped up, his voice barely above a whisper. He was still trying to be helpful, bless his terrified little heart.

I didn’t need him to point out the obvious. Another one. The thought echoed in my head, a grim mantra. The first one, a stockbroker from Lafayette, found near Grand Isle. Then a lawyer, pulled from a shrimp boat net closer to Morgan City. And now this guy, deep in the cypress knees. Always a suit. Always a trap. Always folded like a goddamn origami crane by a serial killer with too much time and entirely too much upper body strength. It was a signature so bold, so utterly bizarre, it practically screamed for attention. And it was screaming at me.

“Yeah, Gary. Same as the others,” I confirmed, my gaze sweeping over the victim’s face, now partially obscured by swamp sludge. Even through the grime, I could make out sharp features, a strong jawline. He wasn’t some backwoods drifter. This was a man who likely ordered his coffee with a specific foam and argued about thread counts. A man who probably had a list of people who owed him money, and another, much shorter list, of people he might actually trust. Too bad neither list seemed to include anyone who cared enough to keep him out of a crawfish trap.

I leaned closer, inspecting the expensive watch still clinging to his wrist. Stainless steel, intricate face, still stubbornly displaying the wrong time – permanently stuck at 3:17. Another detail. Another breadcrumb dropped by someone who clearly enjoyed leaving a trail. This wasn’t about hiding the body; it was about presenting it. A grisly tableau for the bayou’s appreciative audience.

“Darnell, keep an eye out for anything loose. Anything at all,” I instructed, not looking at him. “A button, a stray paper, a loose thread. Anything that doesn’t belong.”

Darnell, bless his hulking competence, nodded, already scanning the murky water around the boat. He understood the unspoken rules of this particular dance. The killer was a showman, and we were the unwilling critics.

The sun beat down, making the humid air thick and heavy. Sweat trickled down my spine, pasting my uniform shirt to my skin. The bayou, in its infinite wisdom, seemed to hold its breath, waiting. Waiting for us to discover its dirty little secrets. Or maybe it was just waiting for Doc Broussard to show up and perform his own brand of dark magic.

Speaking of which, a faint whirring sound finally broke the oppressive silence. A patrol boat, smaller than ours, chugged into view, stirring the stagnant water. Doc Broussard, a man whose bedside manner was as charming as a root canal, was finally gracing us with his presence. He’d probably been in the middle of a perfectly good nap, or, more likely, a perfectly good plate of jambalaya. The things I asked of that man.

“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” I muttered under my breath, watching the medical examiner’s boat approach. “Or, more accurately, what the crawfish trap dragged up.”

This was it. The next step in a very long, very unpleasant journey. And as the small boat pulled alongside, rocking our own craft, I knew one thing for sure: the bayou had delivered its message. Now it was up to me to translate it, word by bloody word.

Doc Broussard, looking perpetually annoyed, stepped from his smaller boat like he was disembarking onto a plague ship. His white lab coat, usually pristine, already looked like it had lost a fight with a mud pie. He hadn’t even touched the body yet. It was a talent, really, for looking disheveled by proxy.

“Thibodaux,” he grunted, not a greeting, but an accusation. His eyes, the color of weak coffee, swept over the scene, lingering briefly on Gary, who looked like he might spontaneously combust from sheer discomfort. “Took you long enough, Doc. Did you stop for a second breakfast or just admire the scenery?” I asked, my voice dry as a bone.

Broussard merely snorted, adjusting the medical bag slung over his shoulder. “Some of us have actual schedules, Detective. Unlike the local wildlife, I don’t operate solely on instinct and the scent of death.” He eyed the crawfish trap with a practiced, weary gaze. “Another one, I presume?”

“You presume correctly,” I confirmed, stepping aside to give him better access. “Same M.O. Fancy pants, fancy trap. Folded like a damn pretzel.”

Doc Broussard knelt beside the trap, his movements surprisingly agile for a man who looked like he subsisted solely on fried gator and existential dread. He reached for a pair of latex gloves, pulling them on with a snap that echoed unnaturally loud in the heavy air. His fingers, calloused from years of prodding the recently deceased, delicately probed the victim’s shoulder, then the sleeve of the jacket.

“Indeed,” he murmured, his voice losing its usual grumble, replaced by a low, professional hum. “Tailored, certainly. Silk lining, by the feel of it. Our killer clearly has a taste for the finer things… or at least, for dressing up his victims like they’re going to a very exclusive, very damp funeral.” He paused, a flicker of something almost like respect in his eyes as he examined the meticulous way the body had been folded. “He’s not just killing them, Thibodaux. He’s curating them. Each body a carefully selected specimen, displayed with a chilling, almost artistic precision. A macabre collection of high-society mannequins, all dressed to impress, all dead as doornails.”

Gary, bless his naive heart, was still trying to look anywhere but at the body. His face was a shade of green that clashed terribly with his uniform. I caught his eye and gave him a look that said, ‘Suck it up, buttercup. This is just Tuesday.’

“Darnell,” I called out, my voice cutting through the humid air. “Once Doc’s done, I need you to supervise the extraction. Everything comes out with the body. And I mean everything. The trap, the rope, every last piece of gunk clinging to it. We need to preserve every possible shred of evidence.”

Darnell gave a grunt of acknowledgment, already moving to retrieve the larger evidence bags from our boat. He knew the drill. He’d seen enough of these fancy-pants swamp things to understand the killer’s twisted game.

“And Gary,” I continued, turning to the young deputy, whose eyes widened slightly at being addressed. “I need you to start a perimeter. Keep any rubberneckers and local nosies away. And for God’s sake, keep an eye out for anything unusual. A discarded cigarette butt, a splash mark on a cypress tree. Anything that doesn’t scream ‘natural swamp activity.’” I saw him nod, a little too vigorously, a little too eager to escape the immediate vicinity of the floating corpse. Good. Give the kid something to do before he started hyperventilating.

Doc Broussard continued his examination, muttering measurements and observations into a small handheld recorder. The air grew heavier, thick with the scent of stagnant water, decaying vegetation, and the faint, metallic tang of the fresh kill. The bayou, ever the silent observer, seemed to hold its breath, watching us. It knew the secrets this water held, the stories these cypress knees had witnessed. It was just waiting for us to catch up.

The identity of this poor, well-dressed soul was priority number one. And somewhere out there, probably huddled in a shack drinking cheap beer, was a fisherman who knew more than he let on. A scared man who had seen something truly horrific and decided a swift exit was his best option. He was my next target. Because this killer wasn’t finished. Not by a long shot. And if I didn’t find him soon, there’d be another fancy suit in another crawfish trap. And another.

Doc Broussard finally straightened up, a grunt escaping him as he stretched his back. “Alright, Thibodaux. Initial assessment complete. No obvious external trauma beyond what you’d expect from being submerged in a crawfish trap for… well, for however long. But I’ll confirm the time of death and cause back at the morgue. Best guess, he wasn’t exactly having a good time when he got folded in there.” He gave the suit one last appraising glance. “Seriously, though. Who wears bespoke Italian wool to go swimming with the catfish?”

“Someone who didn’t plan on going swimming at all, Doc,” I retorted, already mentally drafting my report. “Or someone who our perp wanted to look like they were going to a very fancy, very permanent underwater meeting.”

“Precisely,” Doc mused, wiping his hands on a pristine white towel he’d pulled from his kit – a true professional, even out here in the muck. “This isn’t a random act of violence, Thibodaux. This is calculated. Deliberate. The folding… the presentation… it speaks of a killer who sees his victims as more than just bodies. He’s making a statement. Or perhaps, a collection.” His eyes, usually twinkling with a morbid curiosity, now held a more somber, clinical gaze. “He’s getting bolder, isn’t he? Or just more proficient.”

“He’s certainly not getting any less particular about his wardrobe choices,” I muttered, watching Darnell approach with a heavy-duty body bag. “Alright, Darnell. Carefully. Every last piece of that trap comes with him. We want to see how he managed to fold this poor bastard in there without tearing that hundred-dollar suit. It’s probably the most expensive thing in this swamp, besides my patience.”

Darnell, with a strength that always seemed too quiet for his hulking frame, began the painstaking process of preparing the trap and its grisly cargo for removal. He was a good man, Darnell, reliable as a cypress knee in a hurricane. Not much for words, but he understood the silent language of a crime scene.

Meanwhile, Doc Broussard was already packing up his smaller instruments, making notes in his recorder. “I’ll need to get him back to the lab ASAP, Thibodaux. Time is of the essence if we want to get a decent tox screen, DNA, and any other microscopic goodies this swamp might have preserved.”

“Understood, Doc. Gary, you finish setting that perimeter, then get back here and help Darnell load him up. And no gawking. This ain’t a parade.” I watched Gary nod, still a little pale, but moving with more purpose now. Good. Give him something to do, something to focus on beyond the smell of death and expensive fabric.

My gaze drifted across the murky water, past the gnarled roots of the cypress trees, to where the fisherman’s boat would have been tied. A small, almost imperceptible ripple broke the surface, then vanished. That fisherman. He was the key to unlocking the immediate ‘who’ and ‘how’. He’d seen something, or maybe someone, before he’d high-tailed it out of here. Fear makes people do stupid things, but it also makes them remember details, however distorted.

“Doc, I need you to run dental records and fingerprints immediately,” I instructed, pulling out my own phone, the screen already slick with sweat from the humid air. “We need an ID yesterday. This suit screams ‘important person gone missing,’ and if he’s as high-profile as he looks, someone’s already looking for him. And probably already made a few phone calls to every politician and judge in the state.”

“On it, Thibodaux,” Doc confirmed, already dialing the morgue. “You know the drill. Priority one.”

“Priority one indeed,” I echoed, my eyes scanning the water once more. Finding that fisherman was going to be my personal priority zero. He probably thought he was safe, tucked away in some backwater shack, nursing a bottle and trying to forget the horror show he’d stumbled upon. But he was about to learn that in South Louisiana, secrets had a way of floating to the surface, just like everything else. Especially when Detective Thibodaux decided it was time for them to be seen.

I needed to make a few calls of my own. First, to the station, to get a bulletin out for that fisherman. Someone had to know him. Someone always knew someone. Then, a quick check on missing persons reports, focusing on the “fancy pants” demographic. This killer wasn’t picking vagrants off the street; he was selecting his victims with a specific, twisted aesthetic in mind. Each one, a tailored masterpiece of macabre. And I was damn tired of admiring his ‘art’. It was time to find the artist. Before he found his next canvas.