Robert Crais - Voodoo River

Jo-el Boudreaux stopped all the twitching and waving as completely as if he had thrown a switch. His eyes narrowed briefly, and then he put his palms flat on his desk and wet his lips again. When he spoke I could barely hear him. "You're reporting a homicide?"

"It's not the first, Jo-el. It's been going on, and it will keep going on until it's stopped."

"Rossier was there?"

"Prima met LeRoy Bennett at Rossier's bar, the Bayou Lounge. Bennett and LaBorde were at the pumping station, but Rossier's the guy who's in business with Prima."

His fingers kneaded the way a cat will knead its paws, only without satisfaction. "Can you prove that?"

"They buried the old man and a little girl. Let's go see them."

He came around the desk and put on his hat. "God help you if you're lyin'."

Tommy Willets was gone when we walked out through the substation and climbed into Jo-el's car.

The sheriff drove. I spoke only to give directions, and a little less than twenty minutes later we turned across the cattle bridge and moved into the marsh and the cane fields. The rain had left the road pocked with puddles, but the ruts from the big trucks were still cut and clear. Everything looked different during the day, brighter and somehow magnified. Egrets with blindingly white feathers took dainty steps near thickets of cattails, and BB-eyed black birds perched atop swaying cane tips.

We parked alongside the pumping station. The sun was cooking off the rain, and, when we left the car, it was like stepping into a cloud of live steam. We moved north along the edge of the waterway for maybe eighty yards until we came to the little grave. The rain had washed away some of the soil, and part of the old man's arm was visible. There was a musty smell like sour milk mixed with fish food, but maybe that was just the swamp.

Jo-el Boudreaux said, "Oh, my Lord."

Boudreaux bent down, but did not touch the earth or what was obscured by it. He stood and turned and looked out across the waterway, shaking his head. "Jesus, ain't this a mess."

I said, "It isn't just you and your wife anymore, Boudreaux. Rossier isn't just selling meth to crackers. He's in business with animals, and people are getting hurt. You can't ignore that."

He wiped at his forehead with a handkerchief. "Oh, holy Jesus. I didn't know about any of this. I never knew what he was doing. That was the deal, see? I just stayed away. That's all there was to it. I just let him go about his business. I never knew what he was doing out here."

"This thing is going to end, now, Jo-el. You're going to shut Rossier down."

He looked confused. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that I can't walk away and let it go on. If you don't stop it, I'll give you up."

He blinked hard and looked from me to Joe Pike, then back to me. His face was bright pink in the sun, and slicked with sweat. "You think I'd let someone get away with this? You think I'd just turn away?"

I pointed at the grave. "That old man and that little girl are dead because you turned away."

The pink face went red, and in that moment he wasn't the scared blacksmith; he was the leather-tough farmer he'd had to be when he was fronting down Saturday-night drunks waving broken Budweiser bottles. He said, "I've got a wife to protect. I had to look out for her goddamned daddy."

Pike moved to the side, and I stepped into Jo-el Boudreaux's face and said very softly, "It was almost forty years ago. Edith was a child, forty years ago. You went along because you didn't want anyone to know she'd been with a black man. It's the race thing, isn't it?"

Jo-el Boudreaux threw a fist the size of a canned ham at me with everything he had. It floated down through the thick air and I slapped it past, stepping to the outside. He threw the other hand, this time crossing his body and making a big grunt with the effort. I slapped it past the same way and stepped under. He was big and heavy and out of shape. Two punches and he was breathing hard. Pike shook his head and looked away. Boudreaux lunged forward, trying to wrap me up with the big arms, and I stepped to the side and swept his feet out from under him. He rolled sideways in the air, flaying at nothing, and hit the muddy ground. He stayed there, crying, hurting for himself but maybe hurting for the old man and the little girl, too. I thought Jodi Taylor was right. I thought that he was a good man, just stupid and scared, the way good men sometimes are. Somewhere nearby a fish jumped, and tiny gnats swarmed around us in great rolling clouds. Boudreaux got control of himself and climbed to his feet. He said, "I'm sorry about that."

I nodded. "Forget it."

He looked down at his pants. "Jesus, I look like I wet myself."

Pike handed Boudreaux a handkerchief.

Boudreaux wiped at his hands and his face, then blew his nose. "I ain't cried like that since I was a kid. I'm ashamed of myself."

I said, "You ready to talk about this?"

He offered the handkerchief back to Pike but Pike shook his head. Boudreaux shrugged. "Jesus, I don't know what to do. If I knew what to do, I wouldn't be in this fix." He blew his nose into the handkerchief again, then put it into his pocket. "I gotta talk with Edie."

"Your choices are limited, Jo-el. The one choice you do not have is inaction. Inaction has led to this, and I will not allow this to continue."

He nodded and looked at the water. It was muddy and still and probably didn't offer much in the way of advice to him. He said, "Man, isn't this a mess. Isn't this a goddamned mess." He looked at the shallow grave and what was in it. "Shit."

Pike said, "There's a way to survive this."

When he said it something cold washed down my spine. I said, "Joe."

Jo-el Boudreaux squinted at Pike, his eyes curious and hopeful. "What?"

Pike said, "Prima's at war with another coyote named Frank Escobar. Escobar's been trying to take out Prima because Prima's cutting into his trade. If he knew that Rossier was in business with Prima, and he knew how to get to them, he might take them out."

Jo-el Boudreaux's left eye began ticking. He stared at Pike, and then he looked at me. "That's murder."

I said, "I don't know if this is helping, Joe."

Pike said, "We could make it happen. Rossier's gone. Prima's gone. You bust Escobar." He cocked his head, and the hot Louisiana sun gleamed off his glasses. "No one ever has to know what Rossier knows." He cocked his head the other way. "You see?" The world according to Pike.

Jo-el Boudreaux wet his lips and looked shaken. "Jesus Christ, I don't know."

I said, "There are a couple of ways to go with this, but what you can't do is nothing. Doing nothing is why those people died." I pointed at the little grave. "If Jodi Taylor's back, I'll have to see her. I have to see Lucy Chenier. You have until tomorrow, Jo-el. Talk about all of this with Edith and decide. We'll call you tomorrow."

He was nodding again. "Okay. Yeah. Sure. Tomorrow." He wet his lips again, then looked again at the little grave and shook his head. He said, "Those poor folks. Those poor folks." He started back toward the highway car.

"Where are you going?"

He answered without looking back at me. "Gotta get the coroner's people out here and recover these bodies. Can't just let these folks stay like that."

He vanished behind the emerald green cane and the sawgrass.

Pike said, "What do you think he'll do?"

I shook my head. "I don't know, but I hope he does something."

We waited beside the little grave, the two of us staring down at the old man's arm, reaching up out of the earth, reaching as if he was trying to find his way back from darkness.

Two Evangeline Parish sheriff's cars and a gray van from the parish coroner's office came out to disinter the bodies. A powder blue Buick sedan arrived a few minutes later, driven by a man named Deets Boedicker. Boedicker owned a Dodge-Chrysler dealership and had been elected coroner, a job that mostly consisted of overseeing the technicians from Able Brothers Mortuary to make sure they didn't screw up any evidence until the police had finished with the scene. Able Brothers had a contract with the parish. When the police had finished with their photographs and measurements, Boedicker asked how the bodies were discovered, and Sheriff Boudreaux said that a couple of kids fishing for channel cats in a bateau had found them and phoned it in. Boedicker said, "Looks like a couple of Mexes to me. Ain't that just the thing? Sure been a lot of Mexes around here lately." I guess that was the extent of his expertise.