we collected ourselves.”
“What difference does it make?”
“It makes a big difference. You have no idea what’s going on here, do you? Not just in the Ninth Ward, or even in New Orleans—I’m talking about nationwide. It’s those fish-eye glasses of yours: You can’t see a thing unless it’s right under your nose. You can’t see the big picture.”
“Let me tell you what I can see, Denny: I see maggots —and not the kind that were supposed to be there. The body was still submerged, all except for the abdomen—but I found the maggots in the head area, under an inch or two of water. They were infesting a blunt-trauma wound—the kind that might have been made by a club or a bat.”
“Or a falling tree limb or flying debris.”
“Shut up and listen, will you? The maggots were Chrysomya rufifacies —hairy maggot blowflies. The larvae are unmistakable—they’ve got these little fleshy spikes all over their bodies. The hairy maggot blowfly is not an aquatic insect—it’s terrestrial. The adult blowflies that laid their eggs in that wound found the body on land, not in water.”
“So maybe this guy died on land but the rising water just carried his body away.”
“That’s possible,” Nick said. “But when did he die? That’s the issue here. A maggot passes through three stages of development before it pupates into an adult—three instars , they’re called, and it takes a specific amount of time for the maggot to reach each instar. Those were third-instar maggots, Denny—it took several days for them to reach that stage of maturity. That guy had been dead for days before we found him, and that means he wasn’t a hurricane victim. He might have died from that blunt-trauma wound—or he might have been murdered.”
“Or it might have been an accidental death—or even a suicide.”
“Maybe. An autopsy might tell us more—if the tissues haven’t decomposed too badly. That’s why I brought the body back. ”
Denny shook his head. “Nick, you’re missing the point.”
“Missing the point? What other point can there possibly be?”
“Let me try to explain something to you—something you might not have thought of before: Hurricane Katrina—the city of New Orleans—it’s all a kind of test.”
“A test of what?”
“A test of how federal, state, and local authorities respond to a catastrophe after 9/11. Did you catch that last phrase? After 9/11 —that means everything. For the last four years, every politician in America has been talking about homeland security and disaster preparedness and emergency contingency plans. Entire agencies have been created since 9/11; DHS didn’t even exist four years ago, remember? Everybody feels like we got caught with our zipper open on 9/11, and no one wants to see it happen again. So after four years and a few billion dollars, what have we learned? Here comes Hurricane Katrina—let’s find out. So everybody and his brother throws a sleeping bag in the trunk of his car and heads for New Orleans—including the media.”
“The media,” Nick said. “Is that what this is all about?”
“Give me a little credit, will you? This is not about trying to impress somebody. You know DMORT, you know our policy: the utmost respect for the dead and their families . So when the media showed up and asked to take pictures of bodies, you know what we said? We made a simple request: ‘Please, no photographs of bodies. No coverage of victims.’ That’s all it was, a request—but they ignored us; they did it anyway. You’ve seen the pictures on TV: bodies on rooftops, bodies on sidewalks. So then we made it more than a request—we made it a ‘zero access’ policy.
“You know what CNN did? They filed suit against FEMA in federal court in Houston—they said we were trying to ‘control content,’ like we had something to hide. Hey, I’ll let anybody look over my shoulder. I’m proud of DMORT, and I’m proud of how we do things around here. We
“What difference does it make?”
“It makes a big difference. You have no idea what’s going on here, do you? Not just in the Ninth Ward, or even in New Orleans—I’m talking about nationwide. It’s those fish-eye glasses of yours: You can’t see a thing unless it’s right under your nose. You can’t see the big picture.”
“Let me tell you what I can see, Denny: I see maggots —and not the kind that were supposed to be there. The body was still submerged, all except for the abdomen—but I found the maggots in the head area, under an inch or two of water. They were infesting a blunt-trauma wound—the kind that might have been made by a club or a bat.”
“Or a falling tree limb or flying debris.”
“Shut up and listen, will you? The maggots were Chrysomya rufifacies —hairy maggot blowflies. The larvae are unmistakable—they’ve got these little fleshy spikes all over their bodies. The hairy maggot blowfly is not an aquatic insect—it’s terrestrial. The adult blowflies that laid their eggs in that wound found the body on land, not in water.”
“So maybe this guy died on land but the rising water just carried his body away.”
“That’s possible,” Nick said. “But when did he die? That’s the issue here. A maggot passes through three stages of development before it pupates into an adult—three instars , they’re called, and it takes a specific amount of time for the maggot to reach each instar. Those were third-instar maggots, Denny—it took several days for them to reach that stage of maturity. That guy had been dead for days before we found him, and that means he wasn’t a hurricane victim. He might have died from that blunt-trauma wound—or he might have been murdered.”
“Or it might have been an accidental death—or even a suicide.”
“Maybe. An autopsy might tell us more—if the tissues haven’t decomposed too badly. That’s why I brought the body back. ”
Denny shook his head. “Nick, you’re missing the point.”
“Missing the point? What other point can there possibly be?”
“Let me try to explain something to you—something you might not have thought of before: Hurricane Katrina—the city of New Orleans—it’s all a kind of test.”
“A test of what?”
“A test of how federal, state, and local authorities respond to a catastrophe after 9/11. Did you catch that last phrase? After 9/11 —that means everything. For the last four years, every politician in America has been talking about homeland security and disaster preparedness and emergency contingency plans. Entire agencies have been created since 9/11; DHS didn’t even exist four years ago, remember? Everybody feels like we got caught with our zipper open on 9/11, and no one wants to see it happen again. So after four years and a few billion dollars, what have we learned? Here comes Hurricane Katrina—let’s find out. So everybody and his brother throws a sleeping bag in the trunk of his car and heads for New Orleans—including the media.”
“The media,” Nick said. “Is that what this is all about?”
“Give me a little credit, will you? This is not about trying to impress somebody. You know DMORT, you know our policy: the utmost respect for the dead and their families . So when the media showed up and asked to take pictures of bodies, you know what we said? We made a simple request: ‘Please, no photographs of bodies. No coverage of victims.’ That’s all it was, a request—but they ignored us; they did it anyway. You’ve seen the pictures on TV: bodies on rooftops, bodies on sidewalks. So then we made it more than a request—we made it a ‘zero access’ policy.
“You know what CNN did? They filed suit against FEMA in federal court in Houston—they said we were trying to ‘control content,’ like we had something to hide. Hey, I’ll let anybody look over my shoulder. I’m proud of DMORT, and I’m proud of how we do things around here. We
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