James Burke - Light of the World

Surrette was different. Men of his ilk wish to re-create the world in their image. The evil they do is of a kind we never erase from memory. I knew I would never forget the image of the woman’s blood-spotted undergarment hanging from my rearview mirror. Nor would I ever be able to explain how a man could take pride in torturing to death an innocent young woman in the flower of her life. I wanted to confront Surrette and make him accountable, not simply for his crimes but for his existence. I think I know why Himmler and other Nazi war criminals killed themselves. They ensured their own immortality by denying us knowledge of who they really were. If I caught Asa Surrette, I was determined that he would tell us his secrets and his origins, even if the rule book got tossed over the gunwale.

Clete closed his cell phone.

“What did they say?” I asked.

“They’re sending a couple of lab guys out. We shouldn’t touch anything,” he replied. He stuck an unlit cigarette in his mouth and gazed across the river. “This one really bothers me, Dave.”

“Join the club.”

Before he spoke again, he checked to see if Molly was within earshot. “When we get this guy, he’s going into a wood chipper. We’re on the same wavelength about this, right?”

“I made a mistake earlier,” I said.

“About what?”

“I should have listened to Wyatt Dixon.”

“Are you crazy?”

“That’s the point. I’m not, and neither are you. Dixon is. He probably sees a netherworld others can’t. This one doesn’t have a zip code, Clete. Surrette is the real deal.”

I thought Clete was going to dismiss me. He didn’t. His face became empty of expression, as though he had lost the thread in our conversation. He leaned over and picked up a handful of rocks and began throwing them in the river, watching them make big plopping holes in the riffle. Then he said, “If I get back to New Orleans, I’m never going to leave.”

Gretchen’s notice in the personals read:

Dear friend from the Yellow Brick Road,

I was impressed. I’m a filmmaker. My first documentary screened at Sundance. I think you and I could work together on a biopic. I’ve already got the financing. Someone told me you have an unpublished novel. You know how to contact me. It’s your call.

The munchkin from the ridge,

“How’d you think up something like this?” Clete said when she told him what she had done.

“All predators troll. Even when they’re inactive or in prison, they troll.”

“That’s not the issue.”

“He let Alafair interview him in prison because he thought she was going to write a book about him. He took creative writing courses at Wichita State and wrote a novel based on himself. He thinks he’s an intellectual and a great artist.”

“You should have talked to me first.”

“I need approval?” she said.

“The guy tried to kill you with a bear trap. Your life was saved by a rabbit.”

“I get you. I’m so inept, I’d be dead except for the intervention of an animal.”

“I didn’t mean it that way.”

“Surrette is a narcissist, Clete. Believe me, he’ll swallow the bait. Hollywood is a drug. Its sharpest critics are fascinated by it. Otherwise they wouldn’t be talking about it all the time.”

“He outsmarted the cops for twenty years, Gretchen. He survived a collision with a gas truck. Dave thinks Surrette may come from somewhere else. He didn’t say it exactly that way, but that’s what he’s thinking.”

“How about taking the mashed potatoes out of your mouth?”

“Years back we went up against a guy named Legion Guidry. He was an overseer on a plantation in Iberia Parish.” Clete shook his head as though deciding whether he should revisit the experience. “I think maybe this guy wasn’t human. I try to forget about him. I get the heebie-jeebies when I start thinking too much about stuff like that.”

They were sitting on the front porch of the cabin. It was Friday, the beginning of a fine weekend, and Gretchen could see the mist from the sprinklers in Albert’s yard blowing on the flower beds and the patches of clover in the fescue. It was the kind of summer day that lacked only the smell of mowed grass to be perfect. “What stuff?” she said.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Don’t leave me hanging like this.”

“Dave believed Legion Guidry worked for the devil. I didn’t want to hear it. I grew up listening to stuff like that. But Dave and I never could explain a lot of the things Guidry did or the power he seemed to have over people.”

“You guys got him, right? Doesn’t that tell you something? He was flesh and blood.”

“It wasn’t us. He was hit by lightning. He ran into a swamp with bullets flying around him. Then lightning hit the woods. The coroner and some deputies found his body floating in a bay with a bunch of dead pigs.”

Clete had been drinking a can of warm beer. He picked it up, then looked at it as though he didn’t know where it had come from. He set it back down and stared into space.

“Are you all right?” she said.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I don’t like to go inside my own head sometimes.”

“Wichita PD nailed Surrette,” she said. “He wasn’t the criminal genius of the century.”

“He sent them a floppy disk that could be traced to his employer’s computer. He made the disk on a Saturday, when no one else was in the office. I think he deliberately screwed up.”

“What for?”

“He wasn’t getting enough attention. He wanted to stand up in court, in front of the families, and describe in detail what he did to his victims. He was happier than a hog rolling in shit.”

“Both you and Dave are letting this guy get to you. There’s one way you deal with a guy like Surrette. You put more holes in him than he can put plugs in. It’s that simple.” He turned in his chair. She saw the sadness in his eyes. “Don’t look at me that way,” she said.

“That’s the stuff shank artists in the joint say,” he replied. “You get that kind of language out of your vocabulary.”

“What I’m saying is the guy’s no supervillain. He’s not from the Abyss,” she said. “You’ve been around the worst of the worst. You know they all go down.”

“I took money from the Giacanos and worked for Sally Dee. They were bad guys, but they didn’t come close to Legion Guidry. This is what you’re choosing not to hear. Dave is right about Surrette. How does he come and go on Albert’s property? How’d he disappear after he almost killed you with a bear trap?”

“Are we working together or not?” she asked.

“I’ll always back your play. You know that.”

“Sometimes I’m not sure.”

“Don’t ever say that to me again,” he said.

“Why do you talk to me like that?”

“Because sometimes I feel like it.”

“You really know how to treat a girl, Clete. Fuck you,” she said.

Albert came down to the cabin Saturday morning and told Gretchen someone had left a message for her on his answering machine. The call was not from Asa Surrette but from a woman who sounded as though she were reading a prepared statement. “This is for Gretchen Horowitz from her friend up on the ridge,” the female voice said. “You’re correct about me having written a novel. Maybe Mr. Hollister might like to read it sometime. He might even like it. I would also like to talk with you about the biopic. Will Alafair be working on the project? Take care of yourself, munchkin. I think you and I might have great fun together.”

The woman gave a number and broke the connection. Gretchen jotted down the number and turned around. Unbeknownst to her, Albert had been standing two feet behind her. “What was that about?” he said.