Accused

by Michael Kerr

  Nathan attempted to speak, but could not form words; just garbled something unintelligible as he reached into a coat pocket and withdrew a small bag and held it up for Logan to see.

  “Sup…sup…suppost…t…to…pr…protec me,” he eventually managed to say in a stilted, stammering whisper as he let the Gris-gris that Martha Dupré had given him drop to the ground.

  Logan assessed the situation. A thin stream of blood was running out of Cassidy’s left ear, and he had now lost consciousness. Perhaps he would die, or be comatose and never fully recover from the injury. It didn’t matter, because there was no way he could kill a man who was so utterly defenseless. He hoped that Nathan Cassidy would spend the rest of his life – should he survive – in a permanent vegetative state. That would negate any possibility of him being a threat to Ellie or anyone else.

  Returning the money to the bag and tucking it in his rucksack, Logan quickly checked Reynolds and the other man. The detective was still sitting with his head hung down on his chest, but was dead. And Cassidy’s henchman had lost most of the back of his head and a large portion of his brain. Logan was the last man standing. He wiped the Glock and dropped it next to the Explorer. Let the forensic team and other detectives attempt to work out what had gone down in the cemetery. All he needed to do was dump his boots, due to there being spots of blood on them, and the probability of sole prints being found that could be matched to them.

  The truck was approaching as Logan scaled the wall and dropped down onto Basin Street.

  Marcus stopped at the curb and was moving off again before Logan had time to shut the door.

  “Keep to the limit and drive to within walking distance of where you live,” Logan said. “The sooner we part company the safer you’ll be.”

  “What happened?” Marcus said.

  “It’ll be all over the breakfast news.”

  “Is Cassidy dead?”

  “Maybe, but if not he’s as good as.”

  It was only a five minute drive to the corner of the street where Marcus lived in a state-funded low income apartment.

  “Thanks for helping out,” Logan said as he took four banded wads of five thousand dollars from the rucksack and handed them to Marcus. “This should ease your burden a little.”

  There was no argument. They shook hands and the old guy got out and said, “Stay lucky, Logan,” and walked off into the darkness.

  Logan parked in the motel’s lot, went to room four, knocked on the door and said, “It’s me, Ellie, open up.”

  Ellie Mae threw the door back and wrapped her arms around Logan’s waist and almost knocked him off his feet.

  “Thank God you’re back,” she said with tears of joy in her eyes. “I was worried sick. What happened?”

  “Make coffee while I take a shower. As for tonight, all you need to know is that you’re safe now. The less details the better, because at some stage the police will probably question you, and what you don’t know will save having to tell lies.”

  “Cassidy?”

  “He’s no longer a problem.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  IT was twenty-four hours after the showdown at the cemetery when pieces began to fall into place. Detective Lucy Pleshette had put some of it together. Her partner’s body had been found with several others at the St. Louis Cemetery No.1, and there was no viable reason why he should have been there. The absence of his car at the scene led her to believe that he had been in one of the two vehicles registered to Cassidy Enterprises, and the .22 pistol found on the ground next to him had his prints on it; and the bullets subsequently proved to be a match to those that had slain Brad and Alma Dicky. It was hard to accept as true that Rod had been corrupt; she had always thought him to be as straight as a bad day is long. There were just a lot of questions from the crime scene, but no one to provide answers. The only survivor was Nathan Cassidy, who had been unconscious and was now in an induced coma at the Ochsner Medical Center. The prognosis was bleak, and it was believed that should he survive the traumatic brain injury, then he would be in a persistent vegetative state.

  The initial shock was followed by an overriding conviction that Logan had been a part of it, and had somehow lured Cassidy and his men to the cemetery. But there was nothing concrete to work with. Logan’s whereabouts were still unknown, and even if they found him he would no doubt have an alibi for when the shootings occurred. Without physical proof of wrongdoing he could not be accused of being implicated. Innocent until proved guilty could be a real pain in the ass.

  After staying another night at the Lucky 7 Motor Inn, Logan asked Ellie Mae for Mike Audley’s number and gave him a call.

  “No names,” Logan said when Mike answered. “Anything happen?”

  “A couple of troopers called by,” Mike said. “Seems three guys went canoeing and didn’t come back. I said that I’d reported my truck being stolen, so maybe there was a link. And I caught the news about what happened. I assume that you crossed all the t’s and dotted the i’s.”

  “Yeah. I just called to let you know it’s over with.”

  “That’s a relief. What now?”

  “I move on, and our friend is safe to go back to her life.”

  “Is she with you?”

  “Talk to her,” Logan said and handed Ellie Mae the phone.

  “Hi,” she said. “Are you and your four-legged buddy okay?”

  “I think he’s missing you.”

  “I’ll be sure to call round for coffee one of these days and bring a treat for him.”

  “Do that,” Mike said. “We’ll both look forward to seeing you.”

  Ten p.m.

  Logan parked the truck at the side of the river on a deserted wharf, wiped everything in the cab and the door handles clean of prints and walked away leaving the key in the ignition. Fifteen minutes later he was back at the small bar on Sixth Street where he had left Ellie ordering a loaded hotdog and a glass of beer. He went to the bar and got a bottle of Bud and took it over to the table and sat opposite Ellie on a rail back chair.

  “Am I really safe to go home now?” Ellie Mae said. “And can I phone my mother and tell her that she is?”

  Logan nodded and said, “We’ll grab a cab, and I’ll stay the night at your place and then I’ll be on my way.”

  “Where to?”

  Logan shrugged, took a swig of the beer and said, “I don’t know, Ellie. I’ve got a hankering to head northwest, but wherever I go will be on a whim.”

  “Do you suppose that you’ll ever find a good enough reason to put down roots?”

  “Perhaps I spent too many years in one place, and being settled is something that doesn’t work for me anymore. I just let life lead me by the nose these days and enjoy the ride.”

  They slept together that night, and it was almost one p.m. the next day when Logan took a cab from the doublewide at the River View Trailer Park and told the driver to drop him in the French Quarter. He had given Ellie Mae the remaining eighty thousand dollars that had belonged to Cassidy, and told her to make good use of it and not go back to waiting on tables in a diner. It was true that strangers could become friends, then lovers, and back to being strangers again. Sometimes all you kept were memories of good and bad times. Ellie had held him for a long time, before simply saying ‘Thank you, Logan’, as he had eased back from her and got in the cab without looking back as it moved off.

  After booking in a cheap hotel, Logan showered and then slept till eight p.m. before walking two blocks to the Spotted Cat on Frenchmen Street, to stand outside on the sidewalk and use a phone that he had taken from one of Cassidy’s crew to call Lucy Pleshette and ask her to meet him, but to be sure not to be wearing a wire.

  “Why do you want a meet?” Lucy said.

  “It’ll be my last night in The Big Easy, and I thought a little jazz and some good company would be a pleasant way to spend it.”

  “I’d be asking you some hard questions, Logan.”

  “I’d be surprised if you didn�
�t, Detective. I’m hoping I can answer them and be on my way tomorrow without continuing to be a person of interest.”

  “Where are you?”

  “At the Café Negril on Frenchmen Street. I expect you to come alone.”

  “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  Lucy thought long and hard after she ended the call, and decided to play it straight with Logan. He would be wary, and any show of force would cause him to take flight. And he was not wanted for any particular crime, even though he was probably guilty of several.

  Logan walked up the street, crossed it and entered the mouth of an alley almost opposite the café.

  Lucy parked next to the curb, put a POLICE CALL card on the dash, got out of the pool Ford and looked around. He was nowhere to be seen, and so she entered the busy café and was led to a small table that had just been vacated.

  Logan waited five minutes before making the decision that she had come alone. He strolled across the street and into the café. He saw her sitting facing the door and went over and sat on a chair and put his rucksack down on the floor between his legs.

  “You’ve got balls, Logan,” Lucy said. “This could be a trap.”

  “But it isn’t…Right?”

  Lucy shook her head.

  “Let’s order,” Logan said. “I need a cup of coffee and a sandwich.”

  There was live music, and so they had to lean in to hear each other talk without having to raise their voices.

  “Were you at the cemetery?” Lucy said when a waitress had taken their order and weaved her way back to the counter between customers at tables that were placed very close together for maximum seating.

  Logan stared into her umber eyes and decided that she had come for information, not to trick him into an admission of wrongdoing.

  “Had I been there, then it would have been to do a deal with Cassidy to protect Ellie,” Logan said. “And if it had been a setup to kill me, then I would have undoubtedly used whatever force necessary to defend myself against armed men.”

  “What about Detective Reynolds?”

  “A bad apple. He was on the take. Check his bank records. There’ll be a paper trail if the suits that run things decide to do more than make him look a hero that was killed on duty.”

  “A gun with his prints on it had been used to murder Brad Dicky and his wife,” Lucy said. “So unless it was planted he won’t be getting a funeral with a police escort and all the trimmings that usually mark a line of duty death. Honor and respect for his service and dedication will be nonexistent.”

  “So it’s a wrap,” Logan said as the waitress set a pot of coffee and two ceramic mugs on the table and said that the food would be ‘just a coupla minutes, hon’, to Logan.

  “There were a couple of things I noticed at the cemetery that could put you there,” Lucy said.

  “Which are?”

  “The crypt where we found three bodies had been entered, and the thick layer of dust on top of a coffin had marks on it.”

  “What kind of marks?”

  “At a guess, from studs on the bottom of something with perhaps the same dimensions as your rucksack. Forensics could probably be able to match it if it was. And there were boot prints. They’re almost as easy to match as latents.”

  Logan glanced down at the hiking shoes he was wearing, and smiled: “You could always take these to do a comparison.”

  “They look brand new,” Lucy said. “What was wrong with the ones you had?”

  “Those old Timberlands were a little down at heel, due to my walking a lot. It was time for a change.”

  “Good Timing.”

  “Or just that I needed new footwear. What do you need, Lucy Pleshette?”

  “I suppose I could do my best to tie you to a lot of what has gone down.”

  “It could get complicated making a big deal out of it and costing City Hall a fortune to have a trial over the deaths of lowlifes’ and a corrupt cop. There would be an awful lot of bad publicity attached, and no certainty of getting a conviction, studs or not.”

  “I thought about that on the drive over,” Lucy said. “I decided that you, or whoever was involved, did nothing more than use force to protect yourself and Ms. Sawyer. Is that true?”

  Logan sipped his coffee, set the mug down and said, “If it had been me, then I would not have initiated what apparently went down, or shot anyone who was not attempting to take my life. As it is, I have an alibi for the time it took place. You would need a confession to make anything stick, and you know that being an ex-homicide detective I wouldn’t be making one.”

  “As I see it, several no-good assholes blew the shit out of each other; end of story.”

  Logan smiled and said, “Sometimes you have to let real justice take precedence over the law, Lucy. Too many wise guys go through life evading what they deserve because the law can’t prove that they’re guilty of any wrongdoing. Cassidy was one of those.”

  “He’s still alive.”

  “But in what state?”

  “Critical. If he makes it he’ll probably not even know who he is, where he is, or be able to communicate with anyone for the rest of his life.”

  “A lot of decent, honest people will be glad to know that.”

  They ate their sandwiches, drank more coffee, and Logan got to listen to some quality jazz.

  “I’m done here,” Lucy said a half hour later. “What about you?”

  “I’ll be hitting the road tomorrow,” he said. “If you have no objection.”

  “We only needed you and Ellie Mae as witnesses against LaSalle and Nash, but events have made that redundant.”

  Logan placed a twenty and a ten dollar bill on the table, stood up, lifted his rucksack and shouldered the strap.

  Lucy grasped the rucksack and tilted it so that she could see the studs at each corner on the bottom. She would have bet her pension on them being a match to the indents in the dust on the tomb in the crypt, but just gave Logan a knowing look and headed for the street.

  “Take care, Detective,” Logan said as she climbed into the car.

  “And you,” Lucy replied, and drove away.

  EPILOGUE

  THE heat had built up during the morning, and by midday the humidity was almost stifling. Ellie Mae was feeling optimistic as the cab pulled up outside the gates of the trailer park. For the first time since the incident at Dicky’s Diner she felt almost safe. It was difficult to feel totally free from trepidation after the life-threatening events of the past few days, but that was to be expected.

  With the money that Logan had given her and some other necessities in an embroidered denim shoulder bag, she locked up the doublewide and was soon after being driven down the potholed track to Mike’s cabin.

  As the cab driver used the clearing as a circle driveway to turn and – avoiding the carved wooden animals – head back to the highway, Henry bounded up to her and almost knocked her over as he jumped up to place his front paws on her shoulders, lick her face and whine with pleasure.

  “Looks as if you’ve really got a friend in Henry,” Mike said as he reached her and they embraced. “Are you planning on staying over?”

  “If you can put up with me being around for a while,” Ellie Mae said.

  Mike grinned and said, “A long while would suit me just fine.”

  Logan got on a Greyhound at the station on Loyola Avenue, and six and a half hours later he was stepping off it three hundred and fifty miles west in Houston, where steak ruled over gumbo, and zydeco and jazz was replaced by shit-kickin’ country music.

  Checking in at the Sunset Motel next to the Gulf Freeway, Logan took a shower in the cramped bathroom of the bare-bones economy room and then went out for a meal at a nearby restaurant. Toby Keith’s voice was booming from speakers wired up to a retro-styled Steepletone CD jukebox, and the décor was how he imagined an old west saloon would look, complete with a pair of steer horns hanging over the wall-length mirror that were as long as Logan was tall.

&nbs
p; There was a sign behind the counter that read BAR STAFF REQUIRED. After he’d eaten and paid the check, and being in a capricious frame of mind, Logan thought that he would apply for work and spend a few weeks in The Lone Star State before moving on.

  About The Author

  I write the type of original, action-packed, violent crime thrillers that I know I would enjoy reading if they were written by such authors as: Lee Child, David Baldacci, Simon Kernick, Harlan Coben, Michael Billingham and their ilk.

  Over twenty years in the Prison Service proved great research into the minds of criminals, and especially into the dark world that serial killers - of who I have met quite a few - frequent.

  I live in a cottage a mile from the nearest main road in the Yorkshire Wolds, enjoy photography, the wildlife, and of course creating new characters to place in dilemmas that my mind dreams up.

  What makes a good read? Believable protagonists that you care about, set in a story that stirs all of your emotions.

  If you like your crime fiction fast-paced, then I believe that the books I have already uploaded on Amazon/Kindle will keep you turning the pages.

  Connect With Michael Kerr and discover other great titles.

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