Murder in the Marsh (2 page)

Daylight streamed through the little window slit in Trahan’s cell. The metal door was closed and locked. His whole body screamed in pain. He remained handcuffed to the wall and hung limply with arms stretched upwards, legs bent sideways, and knees not quite touching the floor. One eye was swollen shut and the other caked with dried blood that glued his eyelashes together. Several teeth were chipped or missing. Most of his body felt bruised or broken. He also couldn’t think clearly, due to the blows to the head. He longed for a drink of water, as he had not had anything to eat or drink since late the day before. He tried to stand up to ease the pain in his arms and shoulders, but he slipped and intense pain wracked his body. Leaning back against the wall, he drew several deep breaths to clear his mind, but it only helped a little. Taking another deep breath, he feebly called out, “Hello? Is anybody there?”

He heard no response, and called out louder, “Is anybody there?”

Nothing. Had they left him here to die? He hung his head. How had it come to this? He knew attending the church meeting was risky, and he knew about the reputation of Lauzon. But he felt compelled to stand up for a friend and a brother in Christ.

              Trahan worried about his wife and four-month-old son. He told his wife where he was going and why, and she begged him not to go, but he believed he had to do what he thought right. He and Father Ancar, or Milton as he knew him, grew up together in Port Sulphur. Their fathers both worked for the Freeport Sulphur Company. They spent countless days in their youth fishing, laying crab traps, and helping out on oyster and shrimp boats to earn spending money. They also had a common faith in God, though Milton was Catholic and he Protestant. They both enjoyed the beauty of God’s handiwork in the bayous and bays, particularly as the sun set over the water. Milton felt a calling to the priesthood at an early age, and went off to study shortly after graduating high school. Trahan dithered around for a while after graduating; jumping from one job to another avoiding the call God placed on his heart to enter the ministry.

At the age of twenty-seven, he finally accepted a call to serve as an unpaid part-time associate minister at his home church in Port Sulphur. When the pastor passed away suddenly, the church called him to become the next minister. He agreed only on the condition that he be given part-time wages and he be allowed to continue the small shrimping business he had begun. The church readily agreed. They loved him dearly, as he had a shepherd’s heart and cared deeply for his congregation.

As he hung from the wall, he began to pray that he would be able to see his wife Elizabeth and his boy Daniel again. He had a wonderfully loving wife with a strong devotion to the Lord and ministering to others. She was the daughter of one of the employees at Freeport Sulphur and white. He was mulatto, half white and half black, but in Port Sulphur such a relationship wasn’t uncommon and his marriage did not create much of a stir. In the northern part of the parish, it would have. He regretted not spending longer saying goodbye. Tears rolled down his cheek, as he thought about their life together and what his wife and child would go through if he didn’t make it back alive.

Morning turned to midday and midday to afternoon, and still no one came. His thirst grew overwhelming, and his throat ached. When daylight began to dim, he felt certain he had been abandoned for good.

……………………………………………

Sometime before midnight two men returned to the fort and Trahan’s cell. Trahan could tell by the voices it was the two deputies. Both deputies were young. One looked to be in his mid-twenties and the other in his early thirties. As they entered, he noticed they didn’t have their uniforms on. They unfastened his handcuffs from the metal rings and let him slump to the floor. They then handcuffed his hands behind his back. Pulling him up roughly from the floor, they drug him out through the swampy courtyard. With the bright moon overhead, the deputies lead him back through the breach in the wall toward the river.

They shoved him into a boat tied up to the embankment, and made him lie on the boat bottom. As they motored through the darkness, Trahan sensed they were heading back across the river. Finally reaching the west bank, one of the deputies ordered him to get up. Struggling to his feet, he tried to determine their location on the riverbank. After one of the deputies tied off the boat, they hauled him up the steep embankment of the levee. Cresting the top, he recognized the highway, the only highway running north and south the entire length of the parish. A long dark car sat parked in the grass on the shoulder of the road. The two deputies led him to it. After putting him in the backseat and pushing him onto the floorboard, the deputies turned the car around and drove north.

After a thirty-minute drive, Trahan felt the car pull off the highway and down an unpaved road. Having spent his entire life in the area, he knew the length of the drive would place them near Port Sulphur. The car finally slowed and came to a stop. The younger deputy got out of the car, and Trahan heard a gate swing open. The car pulled forward, the gate closed, and the deputy got back in. They continued to drive forward, but more slowly this time. A couple of minutes later, the older deputy brought the car to a stop and both got out. They opened the back door and jerked him up off the floorboard and out of the car.

Squinting from the lights, Trahan looked around. He appeared to be at an industrial facility. Large silver tanks, like those used to house oil or chemicals, stood hulking in the dark. Metal piping ran from tank to tank and into some of the building structures. Some pipes ran to the very edge of the water nearby. He had been inside Freeport Sulphur Company grounds many times before with his father, but never at night. As the name suggested, the company mined sulphur from the tidal marshes and further out in Lake Grand Ecaille. It also mined sulphur across the immense Barataria Bay near Grand Isle. The company dredged a large canal through the marshes six miles long and nearly a football field wide to make the mining operation possible. A pipeline ran from the more distant offshore locations along the canal to the Freeport facility carrying liquefied sulphur. The company designed the town of Port Sulphur for the employees and included schools, a hospital, clubhouse, lodge, park, wading pool for children, tennis courts, and a baseball diamond. The company even built and managed the homes of the employees. His father, desiring more privacy, built their home outside company grounds near the water, where he learned his love for the marsh and shrimping.

Trahan smelled the powerful, pungent odor of sulphur permeating the air. Even in the darkness, he noticed a yellow hue from the mineral seemed to coat everything at the plant. Except for the storage tanks and piping, the facility lay deserted. The deputies led Trahan to the edge of the water, to another motorboat. Seeing the boat, he knew whatever was going to happen to him would not be good. If they planned on releasing him, they would have done so, not take him on another water borne excursion.

The deputies threw Trahan into the boat headfirst and he landed painfully on his left shoulder and side. They then jerked him up on his knees. One deputy sat in the front, and one got in behind Trahan to steer the outboard motor. The deputy in the back started the engine, while the other untied from the dock. The deputy operating the boat steered away from the bank and out into the spacious Freeport Canal.

Five minutes later, as they steered down the right side of the canal, passing large liquid storage tank barges, Trahan made his move. Quickly pulling one leg up, he threw himself over the right side of the boat just as they passed two barges moored end to end. He had already taken several deep breaths preparing for his escape. As a child growing up around the water, he learned to be a skillful swimmer. With his hands still handcuffed behind his back, he hit the water hard. Disoriented at first, he regrouped and used his legs and his upper body to propel himself deeper into the water toward the right side of the bank and the barges. The frigid water had almost no visibility, but he possessed a good sense of direction. After swimming underwater for a couple of minutes, he finally came up for oxygen. Ascending slowly, just enough for his mouth to break the surface, he sucked in the salty air. Out of one eye, he noticed the boat quickly circling around and coming back. Turning his head, he realized he still had half the distance to go from where he dove into the water to the barges. He planned to swim between the two barges and crawl up on the marsh grass, where he felt he could lose the two deputies in the high reeds.

He took another deep breath and kicked back below the surface. The deputy in front of the boat noticed the disturbance in the water and directed the other deputy towards him. When Trahan ascended again, only a few feet remained to the barges. But the boat bore down on him, and the deputies showed no sign of stopping. He tried to duck back below the water, but the front of the boat grazed his left shoulder. He heard the whine of the propeller following, but wasn’t far enough below the surface to avoid it. The propeller sliced the right side of his head. Excruciating pain shot through his head, as he struggled to remain conscious and return to the surface. Before he made it, his head injury overcame him and everything went black as he floated slowly upwards.

The deputies grabbed Trahan’s floating body just as he began to sink below the surface gain. A deep, bloody gash sliced his head from the right temple all the way to the backside of his head. Grabbing him by the arms and legs, they fished him into the boat cursing him angrily. This time they tied his feet together to prevent any further escape attempts.

James Trahan awoke to the sensation of his body being tossed out of a boat onto the hard wooden surface of a boat dock. Every inch of his body groaned in pain, particularly his head where the propeller gashed him. He breathed laboriously and painfully. Darkness still prevailed and the moon shone brightly. He couldn’t tell where he was, and he could see no lights except for those of the fish camp behind him. The camp was large and well built. The owner obviously was someone of means. No other camps were around, and this one appeared to be located further out in the marsh near one of the larger bays.

Looking through the blood and water washing past his eyes, Trahan could see the moonlight reflecting off the ripples in the water in the marsh. Though he knew the bays, bayous, and lakes of the marsh like the back of his hand, he observed no recognizable landmarks. Lying on the dock like a partially filleted fish, he noticed the only other person nearby was a deputy standing on the dock porch. Through the lamp lit windows of the camp, he heard voices and glimpsed moving shadows.

“Deputy,” he called out hoarsely and painfully to the man standing nearby.

“Quiet!” the deputy barked.

“Deputy…Is this what you’ve joined law enforcement…to do?”

“I said quiet! Whether I want to or not, it’s beyond that point.”

“What do you mean?” Trahan responded.

“You’ve angered someone very powerful. Mr. Lauzon doesn’t play games.”

Trahan said nothing more for the next few minutes.

“Can…I make a last request?” Trahan asked, breaking the silence and breathing laboriously.

“What is it?”

“I would like for you…to take the wedding band off my finger…and send it to my wife.”

The deputy lowered his head thoughtfully. He had his own wife and children, and he knew if he didn’t follow orders and take care of Trahan, their life together would be in danger. After a minute of thought he replied, “Okay, I’ll see she gets it.”

The deputy walked over, bent down and slid the ring off Trahan’s finger. He dropped it in his pocket and walked back to his post.

Trahan thanked him and then remained silent, using what time was left for prayer.

Thirty minutes passed, and then Trahan heard the camp door open and footsteps approach. Lauzon, the Sheriff, and the older deputy appeared above him.

“So we meet again Mr. Trahan,” Lauzon spoke in a scornful tone. “But this time under different circumstances. What did you think you were doing? Did you think that you could just waltz in where you didn’t belong and save the day for your friend? As long as I’m alive and running this parish, there ain’t going to be no negro priest, no integrated schools, and no mulattoes showing me up in front of my constituents. You made a terrible mistake spouting off in our meeting.”

“I did what…I believed the Lord would have had me do.”

“Is that right? And would the Lord have you die too?”

“If that’s His will.”

“Then it must be His will.”

“Let me ask… Mr. Lauzon. I’m prepared to die. Are you?”

“That’s not going to take place anytime soon,” Lauzon said sharply.

“Whether sooner or later Mr. Lauzon…it makes no difference. It’s your relationship with the Savior…that makes the difference.”

“Enough of this!” Lauzon yelled. “Get on with it! It’s getting late and I have a promising day of fishing ahead of me.”

The two deputies walked to the back of the camp and emerged with a large net. They laid it out on the dock and lifted Trahan onto one end of it. They then rolled him across the dock, wrapping him tighter and tighter with each turn. Once completely bound, they tied rope around him, and rolled him over into the boat. They then placed two anchors in the boat. Having everything they needed, the two deputies stepped into the boat, started the engine, and motored out into the black expanse of the marsh to complete their unholy task.