KILLER WITH A BADGE
By Chuck Hustmyre
Smashswords Edition
Copyright © 2010 by Chuck Hustmyre
For more information visit www.chuckhustmyre.com
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CHAPTER 1
NEW ORLEANS - SATURDAY, MARCH 4, 1995, 1:55 A.M.
Just moments after the sound of the last gunshot fades away, 23-year-old Chau Vu huddles close to the floor of the walk-in cooler inside her family's Vietnamese restaurant. Shivering in the darkness, she wraps her thin arms around her chest to try to keep warm and prays for the police to arrive.
After what seems like an eternity, Chau (pronounced Chow) sees car headlights in the parking lot. She steps onto a metal rack to get a better vantage point and peers through the glass cooler doors. A police car glides past the front of the restaurant, but Chau is afraid to move. She is terrified that Antoinette Frank might be in that police car.
Narcotics detectives Wayne Farve and Reginald Jacques are working an off-duty security detail just a couple of miles from the Kim Anh restaurant. They are earning extra pay by patrolling a set of apartment buildings on Michoud Boulevard near the sprawling NASA complex.
In 1995, New Orleans has the lowest paid police department of any comparable-sized city in the country. Almost all New Orleans police officers have to work off-duty security details just to earn enough money to survive.
The two narcotics detectives are in Jacques' unmarked car, a two-door, white Pontiac Grand Prix. At 1:55 a.m., they are headed to a 24-hour gas station for a shot of caffeine when their radios crackle with the call of a 34-S (a shooting). The dispatcher says that a Vietnamese male has been shot on Bullard Avenue near Chef Menteur Highway.
Farve turns to his partner. "You want to check it out?"
Jacques nods. "It's right around the corner."
Farve glances at the digital clock in the dash. "What I want to know is why the fuck people out shooting each other at this time of night."
They roll toward Bullard.
Less than a minute later, the dispatcher comes back on the air and advises that she is upgrading the call to a 108 (police officer needs help). "Be advised that a police officer is supposed to have been shot and is down on the scene," she says. "The location is the 4000 block of Bullard."
Jacques punches the accelerator to the floor. A blue Dashmaster police light is wedged between the dashboard and the windshield, but with almost no traffic on the road, he doesn't bother to turn it on. At night the blue glare ricocheting off the windshield is more trouble than the light is worth.
"Where on Bullard did she say?" Jacques asks.
"Somewhere in the four thousand block."
"That Vietnamese restaurant is the only place it could be. Everything else is closed."
"A policeman works a detail there," Farve says.
"Oh, Shit."
The Kim Anh restaurant, at 4952 Bullard Avenue, is a 3,000-square-foot, single-story building with brick sidewalls, a glass front and a blue tin roof. Tucked away in the left front corner of the building is a small convenience store, where the Vus sell soda, beer, snacks, and a few grocery items. Along the back wall of the store are several glass doors, behind which are racks of shelves for soft drinks and other items that have to be stored cold. Just behind the racks is a walk-in cooler, which can be accessed through two doors: one in the convenience store and one in the kitchen.
The Kim Anh is located in eastern New Orleans--an area called New Orleans East--and is in the Police Department's 7th District. Several 7th District officers take turns working an off-duty security detail at the restaurant.
As they head west on Chef Menteur, detectives Farve and Jacques rocket past a dark vehicle with its emergency flashers going. Jacques turns onto Bullard. Because of the grass median, he has to pass the restaurant, then whip his Grand Prix through a tight U-turn before pulling into the parking lot. Jacques stops his car at the left front corner of the building. Only rookies pull up to the front door at a shooting. Farve has been a New Orleans police officer for 15 years. Jacques has spent the last six years in narcotics. They know what they're doing.
Three minutes after the first call came out, Farve keys his radio. "25-52," he says, giving his radio call sign, "put me on the scene with 25-53." Jacques is 25-53. The two off-duty detectives are the first police officers to arrive.
The scene is quiet, too quiet. It's eerie, almost unnerving. Farve and Jacques have been to a lot of shootings. There is usually a lot going on. People scattering, bloody victims lying on the ground, someone running around with a gun--that's the norm, so it surprises the two detectives that absolutely nothing is going on at the Kim Anh restaurant. The parking lot is deserted, and a sinister silence hangs over the entire place. Whatever is going on is happening inside.
There isn't any question as to what Farve and Jacques are going to do. Waiting for backup is not an option. Although the information is sketchy--no information as to the number of shooters or where they were--the two detectives know one of their brothers is probably down inside the restaurant. Every cop carries a radio, even for off-duty security details. Since the officer who is in trouble hasn't come on the air and given any additional information about the situation, there is a very good chance he is badly hurt.
Farve and Jacques have to cover both the front and the back of the restaurant.
"I got the front," Farve says.
Jacques nods and starts circling around the left side of the building toward the back.
Farve draws his gun and cuts across the open space between their unmarked narcotics car and the building. He hugs the windowed front wall and starts sliding along its length toward the front door.
From her hiding place inside the cooler, Chau Vu sees a second car slide into the parking lot. It's smaller than the first car and doesn't look anything like a police car, but unlike the marked patrol car she just saw, this one pulls to a stop in the parking lot. It sits off to one side of the building, but its headlights remain angled toward the front door. Two men climb out. Because the glare from the car headlights partially obscures them, Chau can't tell if they are wearing police uniforms. Both men carry guns--and radios. Now Chau knows for sure. These are real policemen, and they are here to save her.
She throws open the cooler door on the convenience store side of the building, then bolts through the store toward the dining room. As she runs past the small L-shaped bar that sits between the store and the restaurant, she glances down and once again sees, wedged behind the bar where he fell, the bloody body of a uniformed New Orleans policeman. It is 25-year-old Ronnie Williams.
At the edge of her field of vision, Chau detects movement inside the dining room. Terrified, she looks up. Antoinette Frank, a 24-year-old, off-duty New Orleans police officer, stands in the shadows of the dining room. She has been waiting for Chau to emerge from her hiding place. She has a .38-caliber revolver tucked into the waistband of her jeans.
Yvonne Farve picks up the 108 call on her radio. Yvonne is Wayne Farve's wife and a detective with 18 years on the job. She is assigned to the fugitive unit and is also working an off-duty security detail. She is in her uniform, driving an unmarked police car--a four-door Ford Crown Victoria--and patrolling an upscale neighborhood. Even though the Farves have this Friday night off, they have to work two separate details to earn enough money to pay their bills.
When Yvonne Farve hears that the location of the call is a restaurant on Bullard near Chef Menteur, she knows immediately it is the Kim Anh and that a policeman regularly works a detail there. She flips on the blue police light mounted to the dashboard and makes the scene in just a couple of minutes. Because she came down Bullard from the north, the opposite direction from her husband, she is able to turn straight into the parking lot without having to pass it and make a U-turn.
She is the second unit on the scene. The car her husband is in is parked at the left front corner of the building, so she pulls her Ford to a stop on the right front corner to cover the opposite side. A marked patrol car sits backed into the shadows outside an insurance company office next to the restaurant, but it doesn't look to Yvonne as if it is there in response to the call.
Police officers responding to an emergency call--especially a 108--don't take the time to back their cars into parking spaces. The patrol car at the insurance building is dark and silent. Yvonne hears sirens close by. Other units are on the way.
Detective Wayne Farve is only a few yards away from the front entrance, a double set of glass doors, when he hears the sound of squealing tires. He glances over his right shoulder as another car rolls into the parking lot. There's a blue strobe light popping on the dashboard. It is his wife's unmarked police car.
Farve sees movement inside the dining room. As the front door bangs open, he tenses and jerks his gun up into a combat position. A young Vietnamese woman charges through the door and runs into the parking lot. A second later, a young black woman darts through the door. She's only a dozen feet behind the Vietnamese girl. It almost looks like she's chasing her.
The second woman looks familiar. Farve recognizes her. He doesn't know her name but knows she's a police officer assigned to the 7th District. He angles away from the building and grabs her arm. "Where are they?" he says.
"They're in the back," the policewoman says. "Three of them wearing ski masks."
"Where's the police officer?" Farve demands.
The policewoman looks terrified. She glances at Chau, then at Farve. "By the bar," she tells him.
"Is he hurt?"
She nods.
Across the parking lot, Farve sees his wife step out of her police car. The Vietnamese girl runs toward her. He knows Yvonne will get control of her and find out what happened. He turns again toward the door. According to what the female police officer just told him, there is a wounded cop inside the building and three masked gunmen. Jacques has the back and isn't going to let anyone get out. Yvonne has the front. Farve takes a deep breath and rushes inside.
Chau knows she has to get away from Antoinette Frank. The farther away she gets, the better. In the parking lot, Chau passes the first policeman and runs toward the car he and his partner drove up in. The headlights are still on. Both doors are open. But when she reaches the car, she finds it empty. There's no one there to help her.
She spots a second car in the parking lot. It's big and white and looks like a police car. A blue light flashes behind the windshield. A woman jumps out of the driver's seat. She is wearing a police uniform. Chau runs toward the second car and dives into Yvonne Farve's arms.
As Farve sees her husband disappear inside the restaurant, she hugs the hysterical Vietnamese girl tightly. "Just calm down," she says. "Just calm down and tell me what happened."
Seconds later, Frank runs up to Yvonne Farve and Chau. "Chau, Chau, what happened with your brother and sister?" she asks.
Chau turns her tear-streaked face away from Yvonne Farve for just a moment and says, "You were there. You know everything. Why are you asking me that question?"
Frank eases closer to Chau. "Don't worry, I'll take care of you," she whispers.
But the frightened Vietnamese girl edges away. "Antoinette, why my brother and sister get killed...and Ronnie?"
"I don't know," Frank mumbles. Her eyes dart back and forth between Yvonne Farve and Chau Vu; then she backs away. In the initial chaos at the crime scene, no one notices as Frank slips back inside the restaurant.
CHAPTER 2
The first thing Wayne Farve sees when he charges through the door and into the dining room is Ronnie Williams's body wedged behind the bar. Tactically, Farve knows he's in a bad spot. His next decision is a tossup: go to the aid of the downed officer, or continue to look for and try to neutralize the threat from the armed suspects who might still lurk inside the restaurant. There is no clear-cut right answer.
Wayne Farve makes his decision. He runs to the fallen officer. Williams is face down behind the L-shaped bar, and Farve can see that the damage to the back of the officer's head and neck is tremendous. Brain matter has oozed out onto the floor. Holding his gun in one hand, Farve reaches down with his other hand and presses two fingers against the side of Williams's bloody neck, hoping to find a pulse. He feels nothing.
Farve jerks his radio from his gunbelt. "25-52, I'm at the 108, at the restaurant. I need EMS, code three. I've got an officer down--he's been shot."
In the parking lot, other police units began arriving. Chau struggles to tell Yvonne Farve what has happened, but she is so upset she keeps switching back and forth between English and Vietnamese. Yvonne strokes her hair and soothes her as best she can. In the policewoman's comforting embrace, Chau relaxes enough to tell Yvonne that her brother and sister have been shot. She wants someone to check on them.
Yvonne Farve keeps one arm draped over Chau's slender shoulders and leads her back into the restaurant. As soon as they cross the threshold into the dining room, Yvonne sees her husband. He's on his knees, bending over the body of a policeman. The black woman, the one who came running out after the Vietnamese girl, is standing behind him.
Wayne Farve hears the door behind him swing open. When he spins around, he sees Yvonne and the Vietnamese girl walking in. He also sees the female police officer standing right behind him, peering over his shoulder. He didn't even hear her come in.
As soon as Antoinette sees Yvonne and Chau walk in, she runs into the kitchen.
Yvonne Farve gets her first look at the officer on the floor. He's in uniform. He's obviously been working a detail, usually a safe way to make extra money. Rarely on a detail did you ever have to make an arrest. The mere presence of a cop in uniform was almost always enough to deter anyone from starting trouble. Now this officer was face down on the dirty floor behind the bar, his head and upper body swimming in a pool of blood.
Yvonne Farve creeps over to her husband. Chau clings to her side. "How is he?" Yvonne asks.
Wayne Farve just shakes his head.
Chau pleads with the two officers to please check on her brother and sister. "They are in the kitchen."
The two Farves lead Chau into the back.
As Yvonne crosses into the kitchen, the young black woman, whom she thinks is a witness, is already there. The woman tries to run past Farve toward the dining room. Yvonne grabs her arm and pulls her to a stop. "Where are you going?"
"I'm a twenty-six, I'm a twenty-six," the woman says, giving Farve the New Orleans code for a police officer. It strikes Yvonne as a bit unnerving to have this plainclothes female officer running around the crime scene, popping up everywhere, and it certainly isn't by-the-book procedure for securing a crime scene, but there are just too many victims to check on and there is the very real possibility that the perpetrators might still be in the building, so Yvonne doesn't give much thought to the woman. She'll have to deal with her later. As soon as Farve lets her go, the woman dashes back into the dining room.
"She appeared trapped," Yvonne Farve recalled.
In the kitchen, the cramped space beside the stove is a slaughterhouse. Chau's 17-year-old brother, Cuong, lies on his left side, his sandaled feet just brushing his sister's arm and head. A puddle of blood from his bullet-riddled body has spread four feet across the floor and mingles with the blood of his sister. Ha Vu, Chau's 24-year-old big sister, is still crouched on her knees. She wears a pink blouse and white pants. Her porcelain face presses against the tiles of the floor, barely peeking out from beneath her thick mop of black hair. Her hands rest beside her head. There is slightly less blood around her body. She died more quickly than her brother.
"Both of them had their hands together," Wayne Farve said. "It was like they'd been praying when they died."
Yvonne lets go of Chau and kneels down on the bloody floor. She checks Cuong and Ha for signs of life but finds none.
With the final confirmation that her brother and sister are dead, Chau again slips into hysteria. "She just grabbed onto me," Yvonne Farve said later. "So I held her."
There are no masked gunmen.
Wayne Farve steps back into the dining area and radios his partner to come to the front. Then he calls headquarters and tells them he has a "triple 30." A signal 30 is New Orleans police code for a homicide. He asks the command desk to make the proper notifications: supervisors, homicide detectives, and the coroner.
Yvonne Farve guides Chau to the back of dining room and sits her down at one of the tables. Frank hovers nearby. As Yvonne tries to soothe the frightened girl, Frank leans closer to Chau. "Where did you hide?" she asks. "Where were you at?"
Chau doesn't answer. She doesn't want to tell Antoinette where she and Quoc hid. She's afraid that one day Frank will come back. She's afraid that one day she'll have to hide again. From Chau's perspective, it is a distinct possibility. It has only been five years since she came from Vietnam, and in her native country no one trusts the government, especially the police. Here, in the dining room of her family's restaurant, among several police officers, stands one of the two people who have just murdered her brother, her sister, and a fellow policeman, yet Antoinette Frank is still free. No one has even spoken to Antoinette about what she has done. Chau is terrified, she is confused, she is heartbroken.
What Chau doesn't yet understand is that the other police officers are there to help her. They want to find the person who killed Ha and Cuong Vu, and they desperately want to find the person who gunned down Officer Ronnie Williams. It just doesn't occur to them that that person could be one of their own.
When Reginald Jacques comes through the front door, he takes one look at Ronnie Williams lying on the floor behind the bar and rushes toward the fallen officer. "Let's get him out, let's get him out," he shouts.
Farve understands. Jacques wants to shove the officer's body into his car and head across town to Charity Hospital. Police officers don't wait for ambulances for wounded comrades. They throw them into the back seat of the nearest police car and race to the emergency room. One advantage to living in one of the most violent cities in America is that Charity Hospital, the hospital that caters to the poor and the uninsured, has one of the best trauma units in the country. Charity's emergency room staff is used to treating gunshot victims. They do it every day.
As Jacques bends toward Williams, Farve lays a hand on his partner's shoulder. "There's nothing we can do for him. He's gone."
Farve stares at the policeman's body. Two days. That's how long it has been since Wayne Farve met Ronnie Williams. Wednesday night Farve and Jacques had been working their usual detail when a 7th district unit kicked in a chase just off of Chef Highway. The detectives rolled to back up the patrolman. When they arrived in the area, they found Ronnie Williams and another 7th district officer named Stanley Morlier chasing a suspect on foot. By the time Farve and Jacques caught up to the two patrolmen, the suspect had jumped into a canal to try to get away. Williams stood at the edge of the water, shouting at the crook who was slogging toward the far side. "You better get your ass out of there and not make me come in and get you." But words alone weren't enough to make the suspect turn around, so Williams dove in after him and dragged him back.
Now that same patrolman, who had shown such tenacity to a couple of veteran detectives, lay dead on the floor.
When Farve asks Antoinette Frank for a better description of the shooters, she repeats the same story from earlier: She saw three black males wearing ski masks running from the restaurant. The sole detail Frank adds is that the suspects jumped into a dark-colored car and fled down Bullard. Farve keys his radio and advises the command desk of the description of the phantom gunmen and the suspect vehicle. He also tells the dispatcher that he and Jacques saw a dark sedan, possibly a Toyota Camry, headed west on Chef with its hazard lights flashing. The dispatcher relays Farve's information citywide.
* * *
Responding to the 108 call on Bullard, Officer Ernest Bringier, a 7th District patrolman working a one-man car, spots a dark sedan with its emergency flashers on headed west on Chef Highway.
Bringier is assigned to the 3rd platoon, working the night watch--10:35 p.m. to 7 a.m. It is Bringier's platoon that relieved the second watch, including officers Ronald Williams and Antoinette Frank.
Bringier is headed east when he sees the car. He has heard the description the dispatcher put out about a possible suspect vehicle, a small dark car with flashing hazard lights.
By the time Bringier spins his police car around and advises the dispatcher that he has spotted a vehicle that might be connected to the shooting, the sedan is already starting to pull toward the shoulder. Bringier flicks on his police lights and pulls up behind the car. When he gets closer, he sees that the car is a Nissan Stanza with what appears to be one male occupant. Bringier keys his radio again and calls out the car's description and license plate number to the dispatcher. He also gives his location.
As a second police car glides to a stop behind him to back him up, Bringier gets on his public address system and calls to the driver of the Nissan to step out of his car. The driver is a black male, six feet, two inches tall and weighs somewhere around 250 pounds. He has no gold teeth. Radio traffic from the command desk, based on a 911 call from one of the victims, mentioned something about a short black male with a lot of gold teeth.
Bringier and the other officer approach the driver. The man doesn't appear nervous. Instead, he is calm and cooperative. Bringier asks for his driver's license and runs his name through the dispatcher. The man has no warrants and a clean record.
The two officers explain the situation. They tell the man that they were looking for suspects in the shooting of a police officer and that his car matches the description of a vehicle seen in the area of the shooting and at the time of the shooting.
The man raises his hands. "You want to search me, search my car, that's fine with me. I don't want no trouble, officer."
Bringier barely manages to conceal his disappointment as he searches the man's car and finds nothing--no guns, no ski masks, no money.
He thanks the man for his cooperation; then the two officers climb back into their patrol cars and continue to cruise the area, looking for three men in a dark car.
* * *
Renee Braddy is watching TV when her boyfriend, Rogers LaCaze, bursts through the front door. They share an apartment at 6801 Cindy Place, number 211. The apartment is just five minutes from the Kim Anh restaurant. LaCaze makes so much noise Renee is afraid he'll wake the baby. She can tell something is wrong with him. LaCaze doesn't talk, just walks straight into the kitchen, picks up the phone, and dials a number. After listening to the handset for a second, he punches in more numbers, then hangs up. He is paging someone. Whatever is wrong probably has to do with Antoinette Frank. Since LaCaze got shot back in November of last year, he and Frank have been spending an awful lot of time together.
LaCaze paces around the apartment for a couple of minutes. Then his cell phone rings. As he answers it, he walks down the hall toward the bedroom.
It's LaCaze's brother, Michael calling. "What's up?" Michael says.
"I need you to come pick me up," Rogers tells him.
"Why?"
"Something got fucked up. Me and Antoinette did something, and it got all fucked up."
"What'd you do?"
"I can't talk about it on the phone. I need you to come pick me up."
"All right," Michael says.
Five minutes later, Rogers LaCaze stands outside his apartment building waiting for his brother. He lurks in a shadow cast by a streetlight. As he waits, he tries calling Antoinette Frank's cell phone several times but doesn't get an answer.
His brother's gray Cutlass Supreme rolls around the corner.
Rogers steps out to the street as his brother eases to a stop against the curb. He climbs into the passenger seat. "I need to stay at your apartment tonight. Maybe for a couple of days."
Michael LaCaze steers toward the interstate. "Why, what happened?"
"Something went down on Bullard. Involving that restaurant where Antoinette and those other cops work that detail."
"What went down?"
"It's a Vietnamese restaurant. They were supposed to have a lot of money in there." Rogers tells his brother that he and Frank planned to rob the restaurant. She worked there. She knew the ins and outs, knew the people who worked there, including the cop working the detail. "He always be fucking her over. Those Vietnamese do whatever he say, so Antoinette doesn't get to make any money working that detail."
"What the fuck did you do?"
"She went to the door first and got their attention. I went in behind her and shot the cop. She was supposed to take care of all the others, but somebody got away and hid. It was the girl who runs the place. She saw us."
"Where's Antoinette?" Michael asks.
"She dropped me off by Renee's, then went to the 7th District to play it off."
"How is she gonna play it off?"
"Act like she was a witness or something. She's going to tell them some dudes in ski masks did it."
"What's she going to say about you?"
"She better not say anything about me," Rogers says.
* * *
The New Orleans Police Homicide Division is inside the Detective Bureau, on the third floor of Police Headquarters at 715 South Broad Street. Homicide detectives are the elite of the elite. They pride themselves on their tailored suits, their unflappable composure, and their iron stomachs. A detective, no matter how good his sleuthing skills, who squirms at the sight of blood or who barfs after catching a whiff of a rotting corpse on a hot summer day gets bumped quickly to another division. He'll be following up on bicycle thefts, or investigating assaults on meter maids, because a detective who can't stomach the sight of death in all its grisly forms isn't going to make it in Homicide.
For the Homicide Division, whose business is death, business is good--very good. The week ending Saturday, March 4, 1995 has been a busy one. Before the murders at the Kim Anh, the toll of death and destruction for the week stands at 18 people murdered and nine wounded.
Sergeant Eddie Rantz commands one of the three shifts, or platoons, in the Homicide Division. The 3rd platoon has come on at 11 o'clock Friday night and is scheduled to work until 7:00 Saturday morning. Three hours into their shift, most of the 3rd platoon homicide detectives are in the office doing paperwork or following up leads with phone calls. It's not easy to get in touch with normal witnesses--people with jobs, kids, and a regular life--at two o'clock in the morning.
"We were sitting around waiting for somebody to die," Sgt. Rantz said.
They didn't have long to wait.
Just before 2 a.m., the bell rings--a homicide cop's phrase for a murder call. The command desk advises Sgt. Rantz about a shooting in New Orleans East. "I didn't think it was any big deal," Rantz said. He has worked more than 1,000 homicides and doesn't get excited very easily. "I was waiting for the command desk to give us more details. If the victim didn't die, then it wasn't going to be our call."
A few minutes later, the command desk calls back. The dispatcher advises Rantz that the shooting in the East was at a restaurant and that it involved a police officer. Rantz stands up and slips into his suit coat and straightens his tie. Across the cramped office space he spots veteran homicide detective Marco Demma hammering away at a typewriter. "Marco," he shouts.
The detective looks up.
Rantz nods toward the door. "Come take a ride."
"What's up?"
"We got a twenty-six (police officer) involved in a shooting."
Demma stands and shrugs on his jacket.
New Orleans Police Department policy requires that a homicide supervisor, a sergeant or above, handle all police officer-involved shootings. The department defines "police officer-involved" as any shooting in which a police officer either shoots someone or is shot, regardless of whether or not it results in death.
Rantz has just hit the interstate heading east when the dispatcher calls on the Homicide Division's private radio channel. She tells him that an officer has been shot at the restaurant. Rantz shoves his Kojak light onto the dash and steps harder on the gas pedal.
As Rantz's unmarked police car crests the High Rise, the Interstate-10 bridge that arcs high enough over the Inner Harbor Canal to allow cargo ships to pass underneath, the command desk calls again. The dispatcher notifies him that a police officer and two civilians are dead on the scene.
Rantz tells the dispatcher to order every detective who is working to respond to the scene. It is going to be a long night.
CHAPTER 3
Rogers LaCaze's brother lives in an apartment in the small town of Gretna, on the west bank of the Mississippi River at 636 Farmington Place, number 100. Michael LaCaze, two years older than his brother, is no stranger to violence, which is one of the reasons he lives on the ground floor of his apartment building. He was shot in the back in 1994. The bullet that tore through his spine left him paralyzed from the waist down. At the time of the Kim Anh murders, Michael is on probation following a 1992 conviction for illegally carrying a firearm.
Michael's fuel gauge shows empty as he parks in front of his apartment just after 2:00 a.m. He has a girlfriend who works back across the river. He's supposed to pick her up at around three o'clock. Confined to a wheelchair, it's a hassle for Michael to get out of his car to pump gas.
Inside the apartment, Rogers is nervous. He paces the floor. He tries a few more times to reach Frank on her cell phone but gets no answer. What is she doing, what has she told the police, what do they know about him?--these questions and others must be flooding through LaCaze's mind. His brother's small apartment must seem almost like a prison cell. The walls squeeze tighter. Rogers is going stir-crazy. He volunteers to go put some gas in his brother's car.
Just down the street, two blocks from Michael's apartment is an all-night Chevron gas station. Rogers hops into his brother's Cutlass Supreme and drives to the gas station.
The Chevron has eight pumps. He coasts to a stop beside pump number two. Standing at the pump, LaCaze fishes through his pockets and pulls out a leather wallet. It isn't his wallet. It belongs to the cop he shot--the dead cop. LaCaze flips open the wallet and digs out a Chevron credit card. At 2:29 a.m., Rogers LaCaze shoves Officer Ronald Williams's Chevron card into the credit card slot in pump number two. The card reader feeds the data it pulls from the magnetic strip on the back of the card into a central computer. The LED screen built into the face of the pump flashes the word AUTHORIZING... LaCaze waits.
Because Officer Ronald Williams is a decent, tax-paying citizen with a job and good credit history, and because the central computer is unaware that at that very moment paramedics on the other side of the city are struggling to load his bloody corpse into an ambulance and rush him to Charity Hospital in a futile attempt to save his life, the computer takes only a few seconds to authorize the purchase of gas with Williams's card.
Inside the Chevron gas station, late-night cashier John Ross walks toward the back of the store when he hears the printer under the cash register start spitting out receipt tape. When someone uses a credit card at any one of the eight pumps, the computer system records the transaction by first printing a transaction authorization number.
When Ross hears the printer, he steps back to the register and looks outside at the pump area. He sees a guy he's known for at least a few months standing beside pump number two. The guy is pumping gas into the gray Cutlass. There are no other customers. Ross recognizes both the man and the car. He doesn't know the man's name, but he knows both him and his brother as regular customers and has talked to them both on several occasions. Referring to Michael LaCaze, Ross later said, "I pumped gas for him at the station once. He came one day and he couldn't get out of the car."
When Ross sees who is at the pump, he is surprised. He's never seen the guy with a credit card before. The gas station attendant thumbs the button on the intercom. "When did you get a credit card?" he jokes.
LaCaze looks toward the store. He just smiles and shrugs his shoulders. After pumping $15.29 worth of gas into the car, he slides behind the wheel and drives back to his brother's apartment.
* * *
In the dining room of the Kim Anh restaurant, Detective Yvonne Farve huddles with Chau at a back table. When the detective asks her what happened, Chau tells her that a short black man with gold teeth came into the restaurant twice that night. The second time that he came in is when they started shooting everybody.
"Do you know his name?" Farve asks.
Chau shakes her head.
Yvonne Farve has heard the off-duty female police officer, the one wandering around the restaurant, tell her husband, Wayne, about three men in ski masks. "Who was he with?" she asks Chau.
Chau hesitates, then nods at Frank, who stands just a few feet away. "He came in with Antoinette."
Farve turns and looks at the police officer. Her jaw drops.
Yvonne Farve pulls Chau out of the chair she has been sitting in and moves her to a different table, farther away from Frank. She understands exactly what the frightened young woman is saying. Officer Antoinette Frank isn't a witness. She is one of the killers.
* * *
By the time Chau tells Yvonne Farve what happened, the restaurant is swarming with police officers. Someone says that the new police chief is on the way to the scene. Superintendent Richard Pennington was sworn in just five months before, after being hired away from his post as assistant chief of the Washington, D.C. Metro Police. The new mayor of New Orleans, Marc Morial, has scoured the country looking for someone who can curb the skyrocketing crime rate and bring honor, integrity, and a much-needed morale boost to a police department rocked by a number of sensational scandals during the past several years.
The entire Vice Squad has been disbanded and several of its members either fired or sent to prison for corruption. The Internal Affairs Division, the cops who police the police, has been also been disbanded for incompetence. The FBI has taken over NOPD's internal investigations. Then in April 1994, Officer Weldon Williams was arrested for dragging Mitchell Ceasar and another man into a field and shooting them with his 9mm duty weapon. Ceasar died; the other man lived.
In December 1994, the FBI announced the arrest of 10 New Orleans cops on federal drug trafficking charges. The feds also arrested veteran officer Len Davis for murder. Then in early 1995, just before the Kim Anh murders, the Justice Department announced that New Orleans had the previous year's highest per capita homicide rate and had earned the distinction of being the murder capital of the nation.
Although the number-one designation for murder stung the mayor and other city officials, New Orleans's reputation for murder was nothing new. In his 1952 book, Ready to Hang: Seven Famous New Orleans Murders, (Harper & Brothers, NY) Robert Tallant recorded the observations of a visitor to New Orleans from New England, who wrote to his wife in 1849, "The corpse of a murdered man can lie in a New Orleans street for three days without the citizens paying it the slightest notice. Only the odor of decomposition stirs them into action."
* * *
While he waits for Homicide to arrive, Wayne Farve does what he can to contain the crime scene. All of the 7th District patrol cops who are on duty respond to the Kim Anh crime scene, but most of them are so upset that they are almost useless. "Everybody who worked with Ronnie was screwed up in the head," Farve said.
Frank is no help either, but Farve notices something different about her reaction. "She looked like a caged fucking rat," he said later. Frank paces the restaurant, looking for a way out. At one point, she rushes into the kitchen but finds Wayne there. "You have to get back up front and stay there," he tells her. "You can't leave."
In the dining room, Frank tries to slip out the front door, but Yvonne blocks her path. The detective tells Frank to sit down, that she has to wait for Homicide to get there. Frank slumps into a chair across the room from Yvonne and Chau.
Yvonne catches Wayne's eye and nods for him to come closer. She doesn't want to leave Chau alone. When Wayne gets to her, Yvonne shoots a glance at Frank, then pushes her lips close to her husband's ear and whispers, "This little girl says that bitch killed all these people."
* * *
The reason three off-duty detectives arrived at the scene before any of the working patrol cars from the 7th District is because Bullard Avenue sits on the far eastern edge of the city. Although the city limits stretch some 10 miles past Bullard and reach out into Lake Pontchartrain, with few exceptions, Bullard Avenue is the last outpost of civilization. From there to the parish line--because of its strong Catholic roots Louisiana is divided into parishes instead of counties--there are probably more alligators than people.
Most New Orleans East residents live on the western side of the 7th District, so most of the police calls are there. The East, as it is often referred to, is a strange mix of mansions and federally subsidized, Section-8 housing. During the 1960’s and '70's, those who had money moved to the East to get away from those who didn't. They also moved there to escape the crime and urban decay that plagued the rest of New Orleans. Separated from the rest of the city by the Inner Harbor Canal, a wide shipping channel that cuts between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain, and upon which drift ocean-going cargo ships, New Orleans East residents built sprawling subdivisions and palatial homes. They felt separate and safe--at least for a while.
Eventually the interstate and public transportation reached out to the East and made it more accessible. That accessibility brought with it the crime and decay from which the original settlers had been trying to escape in the first place.
By the mid-1990's, the East was still considered a decent place to live--more decent at least than downtown. It was home to many of the New Orleans Saints football players, although most of them lived on the eastern side of the district, in the gated subdivisions off of Bullard Avenue. But for the 7th District cops, the action was on the western side of the district. They spent all of their time, like the rest of the severely understaffed New Orleans Police Department, jumping from call to call, just trying to keep a lid on things. They were miles from the grisly murder scene at the Kim Anh restaurant.
Homicide detectives Eddie Rantz and Marco Demma reach the scene about 45 minutes after the shootings.
The first thing Sgt. Rantz likes to do when he arrives on a crime scene is to take a walk. He wanders around and tries to get a feel for the place. At first glance, the crime scene at the Vietnamese restaurant doesn't look that complicated. The restaurant is housed in a stand-alone building, not much bigger than a good-sized house, and from what he's heard, the actual crime scene is pretty much contained inside the building.
Rantz circles the restaurant, searching the ground, studying the bits of trash lying around, looking at the walls, the windows, and at the cars in the parking lot. You can tell a lot by the position of the police cars: who got there first and how much of a hurry they were in. The two unmarked cars were obviously first on the scene. They took commanding positions within the small parking lot, each with a good angle on the building, one that provided a clear line of sight, cover, and a superior field of fire if armed suspects rushed out of the restaurant.
The other police cars, the patrol units from the 7th District, arriving after the two unmarked cars, hadn't had as much choice in their positioning, but had nevertheless been placed in decent tactical locations so that the officers could see as much of the building as possible and be in a position to block the suspects' escape. But then there is that one car, that one 7th District car. It seems out of place.
Rantz stares at the marked police car backed into a parking space at the State Farm insurance office next door. It sits hidden in the darkness, just outside the circles of light cast by the streetlamps and the lights from the restaurant parking lot. Whoever drove that car had not parked there for any tactical purpose. From where the car sits, the driver would have to crank his or her neck past their shoulder just to see the front of the restaurant. The only reason Rantz can figure that the driver parked there was so that the car couldn't be seen from inside the restaurant. But why would a police officer, responding to the scene of a shooting with an officer down, want to hide? Why take the time to back into a parking space?
When he reaches the back door of the restaurant, which is really located on the side, on the south side of the building, Rantz pokes around by the trash cans, looking for discarded clothing, wallets, purses, anything an armed robber might toss away while leaving the scene of the crime. Rantz's experience, combined with the late hour, the isolated location, and the violence tells him that this case is going to be about an armed robbery--an armed robbery gone bad.
CHAPTER 4
Sgt. Eddie Rantz knows a thing our two about armed robberies. By 1995, he's been a detective for nearly 20 years, and a large part of his career has been spent chasing down armed robbers. Before transferring to Homicide, Rantz served as assistant commander of the Armed Robbery Division and as commander of the Bank Robbery Squad.
According to Rantz, armed robbers are more aggressive than most criminals. "They live closer to the edge," he said, "and are willing to take bigger chances." He said that one of the biggest attractions of armed robbery is that it is an all-cash business. There's no middleman taking a cut of the proceeds, no fence the robber has to sell his plunder to at cut-rate prices. As soon as it's over, the robber gets to start spending the cash.
It takes a certain type of personality to stick a gun in someone's face and demand money. Armed robbery is not a crime of passion like most murders, it's not a sneaky crime like burglary, and it doesn't require good math skills like drug dealing. "Most armed robbers aren't smart enough to deal dope," Rantz said.
But what they lack in passion, sneakiness, and mathematical capacity, they make up for in raw violence. Sometimes, even when an armed robber gets what he wants, he will still take his crime a step further--dead witnesses don't testify.
Rantz also knows a thing or two about violence. During his career as a New Orleans police officer he was in 13 shootings and killed six people in the line of duty.
"I was with Eddie on his first kill," said legendary New Orleans homicide detective Joe Waguespack, Sr.
Late one day in the early 1970's, Rantz, then a rookie policeman working uniform patrol in a one-man car, was dispatched to investigate a "shots fired" call in Gert Town, a rough neighborhood off South Carrollton Avenue, on the uptown side of Canal Street.
Thirty years later, sitting behind his desk in a high-rise office overlooking downtown New Orleans, retired detective Eddie Rantz, now a practicing attorney, says, "In that neighborhood they always had shots going off, so I didn't think much of it."
When the call came out over the police radio, detectives Joe Waguespack and Billy Roth happened to be in the area. It had been a long day for the detectives, who were just ending their tour of duty. Waguespack knew Rantz was in a one-man car, and he didn't hear any other cars responding to assist.
Waguespack was driving. He turned to his partner. "We got to go back up that one-man car on this shooting call."
Roth shook his head. "We're almost to the station."
Waguespack shrugged and spun the steering wheel.
The complainant lived in the neighborhood and said an older black male had been wandering around the neighborhood most of the day firing a shotgun.
The complainant had given an address where the man with the gun lived. It was a rundown shotgun-style house, elevated off the ground two or three feet and set on brick columns. New Orleans-style shotgun houses are shaped like a shoebox. They have a narrow front and long sides.
Rantz parked his cruiser next door and approached the house. It had a raised porch that spanned the narrow front. The front door was on the right-hand side of the porch, and a picture window was on the left. When Rantz climbed the steps onto the porch, he found the wooden front door standing open and the screen door closed. Because of the bright sunlight outside, he couldn't see into the dark house. There was also no safe place to stand on the porch. If he stood to the left of the door, he'd have his back to the big picture window, but to the right of the door was barely a foot of space between it and the porch railing.
Rantz chose the right-hand side. He turned sideways and squeezed himself into the tight space between the door and the railing. With his face pressed against the screen, he peered into the tiny front room. Sitting in a chair, opposite the door, was a black man in his late 50's. Rantz knocked on the frame of the screen door.
Inside, the man stared through the screen. "Who is it?"
"It's the police," Rantz said. "Open up."
The man dropped his hand beside the chair. "The police? Fuck the police." He came up with a double-barreled shotgun.
Rantz pressed tighter into the tiny space and drew his revolver.
The man inside the house pointed the gun at Rantz and cut loose with a blast that shredded the screen door.
Detectives Waguespack and Roth rolled up just as the man's first shot ripped across the porch and out into the street.
Eddie Rantz, pinned between the edge of the door and the porch railing, poked his .38 around the doorframe and fired back.
The detectives sprang out of their car and ran toward the house. Waguespack jumped onto the porch while Roth skirted around the side to cover the back. Faced with two armed cops at the front door, a lot of criminals will beat a hasty retreat through the back door. Unless they're crazy.
As Waguespack compressed his bulky frame into the couple of inches of space between the door and window, Rantz reloaded his six-shooter.
"What you got?" Waguespack asked. He noticed that the rookie patrolman seemed to be handling himself like a veteran.
Rantz snapped the cylinder closed on his revolver. "Nut with a gun. Neighbors said he's been shooting up the street all day."
"How many?"
"Just one, far as I know."
The detective faced the screen door and shouted, "Mister, you need to come out with your hands up."
A second blast tore through the door.
"He's only got two shots in that thing," Rantz said.
Waguespack tightened his grip on his pistol. "Let's go."
Rantz threw open what was left of the screen door, and the two policemen rushed inside.
The man still sat in his chair, the shotgun broken open on his lap. He shoved the last of two shells into the breech. As he snapped the barrels closed, Rantz and Waguespack opened fire. The man died in his chair, his hands wrapped around the shotgun.
"We caught the guy while he was reloading," Waguespack says. "We did what we had to do, and we dragged him out."
* * *
At the Kim Anh restaurant, while Sgt. Rantz strolls around outside, soaking up details of the crime scene, Detective Marco Demma goes about the work of securing the scene and preserving the evidence. Demma has been a homicide detective for 15 years and knows exactly what he has to do. He posts uniformed officers outside, at both the front and back doors, and instructs them to keep anyone out who does not absolutely have to be inside the restaurant. He tells a couple of other district cops to circle the whole outside area with crime scene tape. Then he starts a general survey of the inside of the restaurant so he can get an idea of what he is looking at and what evidence he needs to collect.
No crime scene is ever perfectly preserved, and the Kim Anh is certainly no exception. The first officers on the scene had to go inside the restaurant to check on the victims and to search for the perpetrators. When the EMS wagons arrived, the paramedics--who could not care less about trampling all over a crime scene--rushed inside to try to save the victims.
By the time Rantz and Demma had arrived, Officer Ronnie Williams's body was already gone. Despite the massive, and instantly fatal wounds, the police officers and detectives on the scene told the paramedics to take him to Charity Hospital. No matter how bad Ronnie Williams's wounds looked, or whether or not the medics were convinced he was already dead, the cops on the scene wanted an emergency room doctor to try to save him.
In treating Ronnie Williams on the scene and in hauling him out of the restaurant, the EMS crew had made a mess of the crime scene. Demma sees a thick smear of blood along the floor where they'd pulled Williams's body out from behind the bar to get more room to treat him. On the floor in front of the bar lies the pen from Williams's shirt pocket. His leather gun belt rests on top of the bar. There are bloody footprints all over the place.
Spent 9mm shell casings litter the floor. In the wall behind the bar, roughly midway between the floor and the ceiling, Demma spots two bullet holes very close to each other. One of them has penetrated the wall and gone into the kitchen.
Tiptoeing around the scene, Demma sees a blue shirt button lying on the floor in the doorway between the dining room and the kitchen. It is from Williams's uniform shirt. How it got there, whether a bullet tore it off, or an enthusiastic medic pulled it loose, the detective has no idea.
Demma threads his way into the kitchen. He stares at the carnage that lay on the floor. This is about as bad as it gets, he thinks. A murdered policeman and two young lives stolen, one of them just a kid, really. The same thought rattles around inside Demma's head as was running through Rantz's--a robbery gone bad. Or good, depending on how you looked at it. As detectives, Rantz and Demma know they have to find witnesses, but from the perpetrator's standpoint, the systematic execution of the witnesses can mean a clean getaway.
Demma sees more 9mm shell casings, along with bullet fragments, spread out on the kitchen floor and countertops.
When Eddie Rantz walks through the front door, he sees several police officers milling around inside the dining room. Crime scene techs are breaking out their collection gear. At a table in the back sits Detective Yvonne Farve with a young Vietnamese female. The girl is hysterical, crying, hugging Yvonne, and speaking nothing but Vietnamese. There is another woman in the restaurant, a young black woman. She sits alone at a table across the room from Detective Farve and the Vietnamese girl.
Rantz doesn't need all of his sleuthing skills to figure out that the girl Yvonne Farve is talking to is probably connected to the restaurant. As for the other woman--the black lady in the leather jacket sitting all by herself--he can't figure her out. He asks one of the uniform cops who she is. The officer tells him that she's a witness to the murders. She's also a cop.
In police work, it's important to interview witnesses as soon as possible after a crime, before their memories get cluttered up with bits of information they pick up from other sources. In the emotional chaos and confusion swirling around the Kim Anh restaurant, Rantz thinks the information the uniform cop just gave him is good news. One of his witnesses is a police officer. She may be able to provide vital evidence, perhaps a direct link between the crime and the criminals.
In almost every instance, a trained police officer is a better witness than an untrained civilian. Police officers know about firearms; they know what key factors go into a suspect's description: height, weight, complexion, build, hair color, and clothing description. They know how to describe vehicles; they are used to looking at license plates.
After 20 years of detective work, Rantz knows that some cases are solved just because of pure, dumb luck. Here he is, just arrived on the scene of a triple-homicide, including a murdered cop, and he stumbles upon a witness who is also a police officer. How lucky can you get? He walks toward her.
As Demma steps out of the kitchen, Yvonne Farve catches his eye and waves him over to the table where she is sitting with Chau Vu. Farve has been keeping an eye on Frank. For the last several minutes, Frank has been staring daggers at Chau.
At the table, Yvonne Farve nods toward Chau and tells the homicide detective, "She's got something I think you should hear right away."
* * *
After running to his friend's house and calling 911, Chau Vu's 18-year-old brother, Quoc, stands inside his friend's kitchen, staring out the window. He's looking toward the restaurant, worrying about his sister. His friend's family huddles around him. Quoc wants to go back, but they won't let him, not until they are sure help has arrived.