Head to Head (14 page)

“Tell me, Detective, do you accost everybody you come into contact with?”

“If they’re beating up a woman or a little kid, I do.”

“Well, next time wait for me, and I’ll help you.” Black knelt and fingered the gash on Bobby Ray’s forehead. “He’s not going to bleed to death, but he’ll be out for a while.”

He stood up, and we actually shared our first true smile. Then he said, “Come on. Let’s get the hell out of here before somebody calls the cops.”

I sat at the bow, facing Black as he guided the jon boat through gross-looking, dark green water. He was a real Chatty Cathy now, telling me over the low growl of the motor how great it was to be back in the bayous and that it’d been too long since he’d visited his old friend Aldus Hebert, who was quite a character. He said the bayou was as primordial and primitive and beautiful as ever.

Primordial and primitive, all right, but the beautiful part was iffy, to say the least. Truth be told, I was more interested in the shotgun lying across his knees. I didn’t trust his motives in suddenly showing up with a loaded weapon, so I got down to brass tacks in my usual subtle manner.

“Why’d you bring that gun? Thought you weren’t going to shoot me.”

“I never go into the bayous without a weapon,” he answered; then he grinned, all relaxed and at home, Mr. Swamp Man himself. “Sometimes alligators attack boats like this and turn them over, you know.”

“Yeah? Maybe I’ll blow their heads off if they do.”

Black laughed. “You’re losing your sense of humor, Detective.”

I lightened up by demanding, “Who’s Julie Alvarez?”

“Julie’s a nurse at Charity. She was battered herself when she was young. Now she helps other women escape from men who hit them.”

Actually, I’d gained some respect for Black, begrudging, yes, but real enough, so I said, “That was pretty cool what you did for Shelley and Ricky. Lending them the truck, I mean.”

“You did the hard part. I wish somebody had come to my mother’s defense that way.”

The fact that he opened up about his private life surprised me a little, but he didn’t look like he was going to elaborate, so I didn’t ask any nosy questions. I didn’t like people prying into my personal affairs, either, so I changed the subject. “How are we going to get back to the airport?”

“I’ll call for a limo.”

“I knew you’d be in a limo again before this trip was over.”

He didn’t rise to my sarcasm, so I spent the next ten minutes spraying about half a can of Deep Woods Off on every inch of my exposed flesh. Then I glanced around the creepy place and said, “Do you know where you’re going? This place all looks the same to me, cypress trees and dragonflies and that weird gray moss hanging off the trees.”

“I know where I’m going. We call dragonflies mosquito hawks down here.”

“We? Sounds like you’ve spent more time down here than just college days.”

“When I’m up north, I call them dragonflies. Satisfied?”

I frowned and ran my fingers through my hair. The stupid Jerry Springer T-shirt was hot, and I pulled out the material in the front and waved it around, trying to get cool.

Black watched me a few seconds, then said, “You’d be cooler without that T-shirt.”

I returned his big, suggestive smile. “The T-shirt’s just fine.”

Black laughed and shook his head. “Know what, Detective? I’ve never met anyone quite like you. Unpredictable, unpleasant, uncooperative, un-everything, but hell, I like you, anyway.”

“Gee, thanks. Now I can sleep nights.”

It took almost forty minutes to reach Black’s friend Aldus Hebert and his cabin in the swamp. I fidgeted the whole time, unsettled by the big water moccasins slithering around and the alligator eyes, like tiny twin periscopes, watching us chug past.

The minute the old homestead came into sight, Black perked up considerably. “There it is. The house has sat out here in that clearing going on seventy years. There’s Aldus on the porch.” He raised his arm and waved.

I half-turned and looked at the old man sitting in an even older rocker on the front porch of a small, weathered-gray house with a rusted corrugated tin roof.

Aldus stood up and returned Black’s wave as the jon boat bumped up against his dock, and at least ten mongrel dogs came running and sniffing and barking.

“This place really jumps after dark. It’s the swamp nightspot, with lots of foot stomping and dancing and drinking. You’d fit right in,” Black said, warming up some of his own sarcasm.

“Uh-huh. These dogs bite?”

“Not unless you threaten Aldus.”

Black climbed out of the boat, and I jumped ashore, ignoring his helping hand. So I’m the self-sufficient type, and I like to keep my gun hand free.

Aldus came down the steps and out to meet us, and Black gave the old man a big bear hug. “Man, it’s good to see you,” he said, then lapsed into what I assumed was Cajun.

“
Garde voir le beau belle!”
Aldus cried, shaking his bushy gray hair and beard all around and reminding me a little of Charles Manson on a good day, without the swastika carved into his forehead. He obvious had a penchant for yelling out everything he said. Maybe he was used to calling out to passing boats. Oh, excuse me, I meant bateaux.

“What’d he say?” I asked Black.

“You don’t want to know.”

“Au contraire,” I said, proud that I happened to know a few French words myself. “Tell me.”

“Okay. He said, ‘Look at the beautiful girlfriend.’”

“Well, tell him I’m not your girlfriend,” I said.

The old man chattered some more in Cajun, his dark eyes gleaming as he looked me up and down and round and round like he was ready to put in a bid.

“He spends a lot of time out here alone,” Black explained.

“Ga, ga, ga,” Aldus said then, speed-talking Cajun and wriggling his eyebrows like a real, true-life lecher. Indeed, the guy was a regular Hugh Hefner of the Bayous, with denim overalls and no shirt instead of a black silk smoking jacket. Somehow he just didn’t fit the profile of someone Black would bother to associate with.

“Who is he to you, anyway?” I asked.

“I told you. He’s an old friend. His grandson and I interned together, and we used to come down here to fish.”

“Why doesn’t he speak English? We
are
still in the United States, right?”

Black ignored me and introduced us in English. “Aldus, this is Detective Claire Morgan from Missouri. Detective, allow me to introduce my friend Aldus Hebert.”

Aldus shouted something in Cajun, shocked me by grabbing me quick-like and smacking me a good one on the mouth. I almost pulled my weapon.

Instead I suffered the ordeal with a tight smile as we all moved up onto the porch. Aldus led me to the rocker; then he sat beside Black on a bench across from me.

“Ask him if he knows where Marc Savoy is. We don’t have all day,” I said.

“Will you be patient? You don’t rush in on Cajuns and start demanding answers. They consider that rude. They’re hospitable people. He’ll be offering you something to drink in a minute. Take it and be gracious.”

“I’m not thirsty.”

“Yes, you are.”

I turned my attention to the old man. “Mr. Hebert, I’m here on police business, and I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

Aldus was looking at me now, grinning like an idiot, despite my serious tone. Obviously, he was quite proud to be a horny old goat.

I said, “Do you know where we can find Marc Savoy?”

Ignoring my question, Aldus asked me something in Cajun.

I sighed and looked at Black. “Well?”

“He asked you if you’ll go to the dance with him tonight.”

I frowned.

So Black said, “This is pretty serious, Aldus. We think Marc Savoy might’ve killed Sylvie Montenegro. Do you know where he is?”

The mention of murder seemd to sober Aldus. “Marc Savoy a strange bird,” he said in English and asked us what we’d like to drink. Black told him sodas, so Aldus went inside and brought out three Pepsi-Colas in ice-cold bottles. We all drank.

Aldus turned to Black and said, “He live out in de swamp still, in dat old stilt house of ’is daddy. You know de one. We stop dere when you came fishin’, and his momma go fix up a bucket boiled crawfish for supper.”

“Yeah, I remember her. They lived about a mile or two due west of here, right?”

“Okay, then let’s be on our way,” I said, my patience winding down.

It took us about twenty minutes to reach the old shack stilted out of the water. There was an aluminum canoe tied to the dock just off the front porch. The place was really out in the middle of nowhere, I assumed even for Cajun homesteads. The three buzzards perched on the roof didn’t bode well, either. About twenty yards from the dock, the wind shifted and the smell hit us, and it was like plunging into an open vat of putrefaction.

“Somebody’s dead in that house,” I said and pulled my weapon. I searched the surrounding cypress trees for rifles sighted on us.

Everything was real quiet, except for the slow flapping of wings as the buzzards lazily took wing. It was as eerie as hell, but I knew that smell very well. Death, grotesque and unmistakable.

“Wait here, and let me go in first,” Black offered, but I ignored that and jumped out of the boat as soon as it bumped the rickety wood landing. I climbed the steps cautiously and flattened my back against the wall at one side of the door.

“Open up, police,” I called out.

“No one with a nose could stand being inside that house for longer than a few minutes,” Black said from right behind me, but he held the shotgun at the ready.

He was probably right, but I couldn’t be sure of that, so I kicked in the door and led with my gun. Inside the one-room shack, the stench was revolting, and I covered my nose with my shirttail. Black followed suit.

The person who I assumed had been Marc Savoy sat in an overstuffed chair in the corner. A deer rifle was propped between his knees, and a huge black hole gaped where his mouth and nose had been. It was swelteringly hot in the room, and bluebottle flies had found their way in through holes in the window screens and were swarming on the oozing wound, their buzzing loud in the silence.

On the wall behind the corpse was blood and brain tissue, spattered over about a thousand photographs of Sylvie Border taped to the old pink-and-yellow striped wallpaper. Actually, all four walls were covered with images of Sylvie. Some were pictures torn from high school yearbooks; more were from movie magazines and
Soap Opera Digest
. There was a framed prom picture of the two of them and an eight-by-ten of her in a blue-and-white cheerleader’s uniform on a table beside an unmade cot. Marc Savoy had lived in a shrine dedicated to Sylvie Border.

I squatted down and examined the corpse. Obviously, Black had seen a few dead bodies himself, because he wasn’t too squeamish to join me by the man’s remains.

He said, “Looks like a suicide. Is there a note?”

“I looked. There’s no note. Don’t touch anything. Let’s go outside, and I’ll call the sheriff.”

Black followed me out, both of us sucking in the fresh air, but the odor crept all over our flesh and clothing like some kind of living fungus.

I hoped I could pick up reception way out there as I fished out my cell phone. Black watched me and said, “Maybe he followed Sylvie to Cedar Bend, murdered her because he couldn’t have her, and then couldn’t live with the guilt.”

I held the phone in one hand and looked at him. “Is that what you think happened?”

“Sounds reasonable.”

I stared at him, and he stared back. “Or maybe it went down this way. Your Cajun Mafia friends took the law into their own hands rather than wait for the cops and courts to screw it up. Maybe you’re covering for them?”

Black didn’t move, but I could almost see the anger rising up inside him. “That is ridiculous, and they’re not my friends.”

Surprised he’d finally lost his cool, I smiled and said, “No need to get all defensive, Black, not unless you have something to hide.”

Face dark and furious, Black watched me dial 911. I identified myself as a Missouri law enforcement officer, reported the crime to the Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Department, and told them exactly what we’d found and when and where.

Since the child had been sleeping in the father’s bed, the father had forgotten to enforce some of the rules of conduct. He now let Brat go outside and play in the woods and along the little creek at the back of the property.

One day Brat was swinging on an old tire swing near the coach house at the end of the old driveway when a little girl about six years old came running across the lawn. At first, Brat wasn’t sure she was real.

“Hi,” she said. “What’s your name?”

Brat dragged both feet to stop the swing and stared in shock at the little girl. She had long blond braids and was very pretty. Brat had never seen another child, except for the five-year-old little boy who had drowned in a public swimming pool and whom his father had embalmed.

“My father calls me Brat.”

“That’s a funny name.”

“Are you real?” Brat asked, reaching out to touch her.

She said, “Why are you whispering?” Then she said, “I like your swing. Can I swing on it?”

Brat got off and let it dangle between them, but the little girl with braids was too small to climb on, so Brat lifted her up. “Now push me,” the little girl demanded. “Real high. I like to go high as the birds. I have a pet squirrel named Mr. Twitchy Tail. He comes right down out of the tree and eats acorns out of my hand. You can feed him, too, if you want to.”

Brat nodded and pushed the swing higher and higher, and the little girl laughed and laughed until Brat laughed, too. It felt strange to laugh. Brat couldn’t remember laughing before, but the father was busy in the cellar and no longer watched so closely. Brat liked the little girl. Maybe she could be a friend.

They took turns on the tire swing until a woman’s voice called from the distance.

“That’s my momma. See, here she comes.”

Brat looked and saw a woman walking quickly toward them. She had blond hair twisted into braids like the daughter, and she smiled, one that was big and white and happy. “Why, hello there,” she said to Brat. “You must be the child who lives in the big house. I work for your father now. I’m your new cook.”

Brat remembered the father needed a cook and nodded.

“We’re living down in the old coach house. Come with us, and we’ll have chocolate chip cookies and milk.”

Brat nodded and went along with them. It seemed very peculiar to be outside with other people, but they were both very pretty with their long blond hair like Brat’s mother’s, and they didn’t seem to care that they had to do all the talking. The little girl gave him some acorns, and Brat sat very still until a brown squirrel with a big, bushy tail scampered down on the porch rail and grabbed one out of Brat’s hand. The little girl clapped with delight and said that Mr. Twitchy Tail liked Brat and that Brat could feed him any time he wanted.

That night Brat told his friends in the cold room about the woman and little girl and Mr. Twitchy Tail, and they were very pleased about Brat’s new friends. When the cook had brought out the cookies, Brat had stolen five more off the pretty yellow plate to take home to the mother and her friends, but a new dead man had come in the black hearse today, a skinny old grandpa with wrinkled brown skin that clung to his bones like a skeleton. He looked like he needed a cookie more than Brat did, so Brat broke his in half and shared so the poor old man wouldn’t be left out. The old man was grateful and said he had five grandchildren, all boys, and they liked to fish in his pond behind the barn and swim in the creek where tadpoles darted around and dragonflies landed on the surface of the water. Brat liked the old man and wished the grandsons would come to visit.

From then on Brat spent lots of time with the little girl and the cook, without his father finding out, and it was the best time of his life. Then one day when Brat and the little girl were taking a shower with the hose in the cook’s backyard, the embalmer walked around the corner where they were playing. Brat’s happy smile froze and faded to horror, and the father said, “You run along home, right now, you hear me, Brat!”

Brat dropped the hose and obeyed, but the cook said, “That’s a terrible thing to call a child.”

“Then just let me tell you what he did to his mother, and maybe you’ll understand,” the embalmer said in his angriest voice.

Brat felt sick inside but kept walking across the wet grass toward the main house. But then he looked back and saw the cook listen to the father, then place the little girl behind her and look after Brat as if she saw a monster.

Later that evening, the father found the child hiding in the cold room and dragged Brat upstairs to bed. He said he was disappointed that Brat’d gone off and talked to those people in the coach house. He said he’d been forced to tell them how Brat had pushed his own mother down the steps and killed her, and to advise the cook that it would be wise to keep her child away from Brat.

Brat felt a terrible burning inside him, like a boiling hot river of fire, but waited until the embalmer slept, then crept from the main house and ran to the coach house. Inside the glass front door, the cook and the little girl were packing boxes. They were leaving, and Brat beat on the door and cried, “Don’t leave me here, don’t leave me. Please, take me with you. I’m not bad, I’m not. I didn’t hurt my mother.”

The cook ran to the door and said through the glass, “You go home now and leave us alone, or I’ll call the police.” She jerked down the shade, and no matter how long Brat knocked and pleaded, she would not answer.

Later Brat trudged home and went down into the cold room and told the dead friends, and they said, “They aren’t real friends like us. They don’t care about you. They were liars and just pretended. They like to hurt you like your father does. They’re evil like him.”

Brat felt the fire blaze hotter inside his belly as thoughts came about going back to the coach house and hurting the cook and the little girl, beating them with the razor strop over and over. The flames inside him grew hotter and hotter until he knew he had to go back tomorrow and beat them. But the next day, when Brat went down the hill with the razor strop, the cook and the little girl were gone, and the front door stood ajar. So he lured Mr. Twitchy Tail up on the porch with the acorns the way the little girl always had. Then Brat grabbed the squirrel by the tail and twisted its neck, then slammed it over and over and over on the front steps until the fire inside him went out. He then walked back home, feeling much better.

When Brat told the mother about the pet squirrel, she said, “It deserved to die for being friends with that terrible woman and little girl who hurt you so much. Besides, it’s not so bad being dead. I like it here in the cold room with all my friends around me. It’s good to be dead. Maybe you can bring Mr. Twitchy Tail down here to play with us.”

Later that night, after the child had returned to the cold room from the father’s bedroom, the little squirrel did come to visit and curled up in the child’s arms, like it used to do on the front porch of the cook’s house.

The child was ten.