Last Known Victim

New Orleans, Louisiana Sunday, August 28, 2005 4:00 p.m.The gods were watching over New Orleans. Or so it seemed. How else could this historic city built below sea level, this beautiful jewel set in a swamp, have survived?Survival. Of the species. The fittest. The self. An instinctual response to fight for life. To fight back.Would she?Walk to the door. Open it.There she was. Lying on the bed. Asleep. Bitch! Cheap, faithless whore!She deserves it. She betrayed you. Broke your heart. She stirred. Moaned. Her eyelids fluttered.Quickly! Cross to the bed.Put your hands around her throat and squeeze. Her eyes snapped open.Pools of blue terror.She bucked and clawed. Tighter.Tighter. Her fault. Hers. Bitch! Betrayer!Her creamy skin mottled, then purpled. Her eyes bulged, popping out like those of some freakish cartoon character.No pity. No second thoughts. She brought this on herself. She deserves it. Her hands dropped. Her body shuddered, then stilled.Halfway there. Breathe deeply. Calm yourself. Finish what she forced you to do.A scream shattered the silence. A loud crack, like a gunshot, shook the house.Only the wind. Katrina's fury. Move, quickly! Good. Now check your equipment. Make certain you have everything you need.Industrial-strength trash bags. Rubber gloves and boots. Foul-weather gear. Shiny new bone saw. Pretty, pretty saw.Zip-closure plastic bag.No one to hear. No one to come. All gone. An empty city.New Orleans, LouisianaWednesday, August 31, 2005 3:00 p.m.A ghost town, Captain Patti O'Shay thought. Or a scene from some post-apocalyptic horror flick. No cars or buses. No people on the sidewalks or lounging on porches. Eerily quiet.She crept along Tchoupitoulas Street, heading uptown, maneuvering past downed power lines, branches and trees, sometimes having to go off road. Struggling to keep her attention on the task of driving. And to keep exhaustion and despair at bay.Katrina had hit and all the "Doomsday" predictions had come true: the levees had begun to break and the bowl that was the Big Easy had begun to fill with water.Ninety percent of the metro areaincluding police headquartershad flooded. Only the high ground had escaped: the French Quarter, parts of the Central Business District, pockets of the Garden District and Uptown. And this street, which ran along the ridge of the Mississippi River.The city was without power. Without running water. Without access to supplies. Twenty-five percent of the NOPD's vehicles had flooded.Citizens who hadn't evacuated were now trapped. On rooftops and in attics. On the interstates and bridges. Dying in the brutal heat, without food, water or medical care.Now the looters, junkies and thugs had taken to the streets. The NOPD had established Harrah's Casino, located high and dry at the foot of Canal Street, as their staging area. The Royal Sonesta, one of the French Quarter's swankiest hotels, now served as the temporary police headquarters.She tightened her fingers on the steering wheel. All communications were down. The police department had been reduced to using a handful of walkie-talkies and one ad hoc, mutual-aid radio channel. A channel they were sharing with all other parish agencies and the state police.Because of a "talk around" feature, communication between parties more than five miles apart was impossible, rendering unit commanders without a chain of command. To make matters worse, the various agencies kept cutting over one another, creating the cacophony she was listening to nowa stream of disjointed alerts, updates, conversations and requests for assistance.It was something, at least. Fellow survivors, agencies struggling to restore normalcy. Audible proof that the world had not come to an end.Though she feared hers had.Her husband, Captain Sammy OSpindler, Erica is the author of 'Last Known Victim', published 2007 under ISBN 9780778324614 and ISBN 0778324613.