Voodoo River

by Robert Crais

  “Yep. Except for this cat.”

  “You’re not married?”

  “No.”

  She looked around at my home. “This is very nice.” Like she wanted to talk but didn’t know how to begin.

  I held out the glass and she took her hands from her pockets to accept it. I went back into the kitchen, opened the oven, and squeezed the potatoes. They were soft. I put them on a wooden trivet on the counter, then removed the little bowl of yogurt and green onions from the fridge. I brought the steak and the steak tongs outside to the grill. Jodi Taylor watched me do these things and followed me out onto the deck without speaking. Her face was creased and intent and I hoped that she wasn’t thinking me a drunk. She said, “I love the way barbecues smell. Don’t you?”

  She held the glass with both hands, and I saw that the glass was already empty. Nope. She wouldn’t be thinking me a drunk. I brought out the bottle of Knockando, refreshed her drink, then put the bottle on the deck rail. “Your mission this evening, Ms. Taylor, is the care and handling of this bottle. You are to replenish your drink at your discretion without asking for my permission or awaiting my action in same. Is this clear?”

  She giggled. “I can do that.”

  I smiled back at her. “Fine.”

  I put the steak on the grill. The coals were a fierce, uniform red, and the meat seared nicely with a smell not unlike the hamburgers we’d cooked at Lucy Chenier’s. Put her out of your head, Elvis.

  Jodi said, “I’m sorry about what happened.”

  “Forget it.”

  “I want to apologize.”

  “Accepted, but forget it. It’s over. It’s time to move on.” Would Lucy like Cabo? Stop that!

  The canyon was quiet except for a couple of coyotes beyond the ridge. Below us, a single car eased along the road, its headlights sweeping a path in the darkness. The sky was clear and black, and the summer triangle was prominent. Jodi said, “This isn’t easy for me.”

  I turned the steak and prodded it with the tongs so the fat would flame on the coals.

  “My dad died in 1985. My mom died two years after that. They were everything to me.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I know who my mom and dad were. My dad was Steve Taylor. My mom was Cecilia Taylor. Do you see?”

  “Yes.”

  “I loved them more than anything. I still do.”

  Something dark flicked by overhead. An owl gliding along the ridge. Jodi Taylor had more of the scotch and stared at the flames licking the meat. “There are things about Louisiana I want to ask.” Her voice was soft, and her eyes never left the flames.

  “All right.”

  “Do I look like her?” We both knew who she meant. Jodi sighed when she said it, as if, in the saying, she had started down a path she had long avoided.

  “Yes. You could be sisters.”

  “And my birth father is dead?” Her eyes never left the flames, never once looked at me as if, by refusing human connection, the questions were unreal and of no more substance than those questions you speak to yourself in the moments before sleep.

  “Yes. I spoke with his younger sister.”

  “My aunt.”

  I nodded.

  “Do I look like her?”

  “No.” The steak was done but Jodi Taylor seemed poised upon some internal precipice between painful things, and I didn’t want to upset her balance.

  “But you saw a picture of my birth father?”

  “You don’t look like him. Your birth father’s family is light-skinned, with fine features, but you look like your birth mother.”

  I flipped the steak again. “Are you sure you want to hear these things?” In the restaurant she had said no; in the restaurant she had been adamant.

  Jodi Taylor blinked hard several times and had more of the scotch. The cat crept out onto the deck and sat downwind, barely visible in the dark. Watching. I often consider, Does he wonder at the human heart? Jodi said, “I feel like I’m being pulled apart. I feel guilty and ashamed, as if I’m betraying my mom and dad. I never so much as thought of my birth parents, and now I feel that if I can’t find some peace with this it’s going to get larger and larger until it’s all that I am and I won’t be me anymore. Do you understand that?”

  I took the steak off the grill. I put it on a plate and stood in the night, looking at her.

  She said, “I didn’t want to pay that man. I said it doesn’t matter. I said no one will care about these things.” Her eyes were filling again.

  “But Beldon and Sid convinced you.”

  She nodded.

  “They frightened you, and they made you ashamed.”

  She blinked harder. “God, I’m scared. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Sure, you do.”

  She looked at me and took more of the scotch.

  I said, “Why did you come here, Jodi?”

  “I’ve got two days off before we start shooting the next episode. I want to hire you again. I want you to take me down there. I want to see where I come from, and see who I am. Will you do that for me?”

  Lucy Chenier.

  “Yes.”

  She nodded, and neither of us spoke again.

  We went inside with the steak. I guess Cabo San Lucas and the billfish would have to wait. The human heart bears greater urgency.

  19

  Jodi Taylor and I flew to Louisiana the next day, catching the seven A.M. flight through Dallas/Fort Worth and arriving in Baton Rouge just before noon. We rented a gray Ford Thunderbird in my name and drove to Lucy Chenier’s office. Jodi wanted to apologize, and I didn’t argue. I phoned Lucy’s office from the airport and told her assistant that we were on our way. Darlene said, “I didn’t think we’d see you again.”

  “Miracles happen.”

  Darlene said, “Unh-hunh.”

  Lucy greeted us pleasantly at the door, offering her hand first to me, then Jodi. I was grinning as wide as a collie in a kibble factory, but Lucy seemed cool and somehow distant, and her handshake was professional. “Hello, Mr. Cole. Hello, Ms. Taylor. Please come in.” Like that.

  We sat, and Lucy told us that Sid had phoned and that they had discussed what had happened and why, and she said that she would certainly be happy to continue assisting Jodi in whatever way possible. She said it to Jodi and did not once look at or speak to me. I said, “Hi, remember me?”

  “Of course. It’s nice to see you again.” Professional. Lawyerly. She refocused on Jodi.

  Jodi said, “I knew Sid was going to phone, but I wanted to personally apologize for what happened. I should’ve been honest with you, and feel ashamed of myself.”

  Lucy stood and came around her desk. “Please don’t be. Are you going to introduce yourself to Edith Boudreaux?”

  Jodi Taylor shook her head and also stood. It seemed as if we had just arrived. “I don’t want to meet these people, and I don’t want to know them. I guess I just want to see them. Can you understand that?”

  Lucy took her hand. “Of course, I can. We all have that curiosity. Seeing her is a way of seeing a part of yourself, even if you have no wish to know her.”

  Jodi said, “Yes. That’s it.”

  Lucy said, “If there is any way I can help you, even if you just want to talk, don’t hesitate to call.”

  “Thank you.”

  I told Jodi that I would be along in a moment, and she left. Lucy was standing at the door, still not looking at me. I said, “Is there something here that I’m missing?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Would you join me for dinner tonight?”

  “That’s very nice, but I can’t.”

  “We could bring Ben.”

  She shook her head.

  “Are you angry?”

  “Of course not. I think Jodi is waiting for you.”

  “You sound angry.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “If Jodi requires my assistance she may call any time. She has the number.”

  “I’ll tell
her. Thank you.”

  I walked out of the office, and Jodi and I went down to the car. I got in behind the wheel and she climbed into the passenger seat, neither of us speaking. Jodi sat with her knees up and her hands clasped between her legs, staring out the window. She said, “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing. Nothing is wrong with me.”

  She frowned at me and then she went back to staring out the window.

  We crossed the Mississippi River, and pretty soon Baton Rouge was behind us. We made good time past Erwinville and Livonia and Lottie, and, at 1:36 that afternoon, we neared the exit for Eunice. I said, “Edith Boudreaux lives here with her husband and her family. She’s married to a man named Jo-el Boudreaux. He’s the sheriff. She has a dress shop in the center of town. Her father lives here, too. Leon Williams’s sister is a woman named Chantel Michot. She lives fourteen miles north of here. You were born in a private home thirty miles north of here, above Ville Platte. What do you want to see first?”

  “I want to see the woman.” The woman. You knew she didn’t mean Chantel Michot. You knew she meant Edith Boudreaux.

  We left the highway, and Jodi put both hands on the dashboard and held herself with an expectancy that was a physical thing within the car.

  I brought her to Edith Boudreaux’s home first. Edith and her husband lived in a well-kept brick colonial ringed with azaleas bright with flowers and a large, neat yard. The street was quiet and slow; warm, with the smell of fresh-cut St. Augustine grass and scores of great black and yellow bumblebees lumbering around the azaleas. A shirtless black teenager pushed a mower along the side of the street, and nodded at us when we passed. I let the Thunderbird slow, and we stopped at the mouth of the drive. Jodi twisted in the seat, eyes wide. Neither the sheriff’s highway car nor Edie’s Oldsmobile Eighty-eight was present. Jodi said, “Is that where she lives?”

  “Yes. She drives an Oldsmobile, and it’s not here. She’s not home.”

  “She’s married to the sheriff?” She already knew that.

  “Yes. His name is Jo-el.” She already knew that, too.

  “Does she have children?”

  “She has three children, all in their twenties. I don’t know if any of them live here.”

  “What are their names?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are they boys or girls?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  She stared at the house as we spoke, tracing its lines with her eyes as if she was trying to read some truth there. When she had enough of the house we drove first to the small home where Monroe Johnson was waiting to die, and then to Edith Boudreaux’s dress shop. Edie’s car was neither at her father’s nor at the dress shop. Jodi seemed uninterested in the old man, but when we cruised the dress shop she asked me to see if Edie was inside. I parked along in the square and looked in the window but there was only a dark-haired woman I hadn’t seen before. I went back to the car. “What next?”

  “The Michot woman.” Jodi was frowning and her eyes were hard.

  I said, “It’s almost two. Would you like something to eat?”

  “No.”

  “Do you need a bathroom?”

  “Show me the Michot woman.”

  “She works. We won’t be able to see her now.” I hadn’t eaten since the airplane, and my head was throbbing.

  “Then show me where she lives.”

  I stopped at a 7-Eleven for two Slim Jims and a bag of peanut M&M’s. Lunch. We took the old road north to Point Blue and Chantel Michot’s shotgun house. Lewis and Robert were chasing each other around the Dodge, and an older girl was sitting on the porch, very near where I had sat, doing homework. I drove past, found a place in the road to turn around, then came back and pulled off onto the grass across from them. The older girl looked up from her homework and stared at us. I said, “The little guy’s name is Lewis. The other boy is Robert. I don’t know the girl. Chantel is Leon Williams’s baby sister.”

  Jodi Taylor leaned forward in the seat again, eyes wide. “These are her children?”

  “Yes.”

  “They’re so poor.”

  I nodded. The girl had gone back to her homework, but kept glancing up at us, unable to concentrate. A fat Rhode Island Red hen stepped out from beneath the house, pecking at the dirt. The rest of the chickens followed her. Jodi said, “This is overwhelming. I can’t believe this.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “These people are related to me.”

  I nodded. Robert ran in a circle around Lewis and Lewis tripped, bumping his head on the Dodge. He landed on his bottom and rubbed at his head, crying. Robert ran back to make sure his little brother was all right. The chickens scratched around them, undisturbed.

  Jodi Taylor took a deep breath and let it out. The girl was staring at us again. She put her book aside and came to the edge of the porch and called to the little boys and all three of them went inside. An older boy maybe a year or two younger than the girl came to the door and looked out at us. Jodi said, “I want to see the woman.” Edith, again.

  “It’s late, Jodi. We should head back to the city. We can come back tomorrow.”

  “I didn’t come here to sit in a goddamned hotel. I want to see that woman.” She was out at the edge, now, strung tight and fraying. Cheeks the color of milk.

  I looked at her.

  “Please.” Her face softened and she took my arm. “Let’s try her shop again. If she’s not there, we’ll go to the hotel.”

  I took her back to Eunice.

  We got there just before four, and again I had to get out and look in the window, and again Edith wasn’t there. I went back to the car, and got in shaking my head. Jodi said, “What do you have to do to get a break around here?”

  We were just pulling away when Edith Boudreaux’s metallic blue Oldsmobile passed us and parked at the curb and Edith got out. Jodi and I saw her at the same time. I said, “That’s her.”

  Jodi came erect and stiff in the seat, her face almost to the windshield, both hands on the dash. Her lips parted, and there seemed a kind of electrical field flooding the car. I looked from Jodi Taylor to Edith Boudreaux and back again. Looking at Edith was like looking at an older, softer version of Jodi.

  It took Edith maybe fifteen seconds to move from her car to her shop and then she was gone.

  I said, “Are you okay?”

  Jodi stared at the closed door. Her breasts rose and fell, and a pulse hammered in the smooth skin beneath her jaw.

  I said, “Jodi?”

  Jodi blinked twice and looked at me, and then she shook her head. She said, “I was wrong. I can’t leave now. I have to go in there.”

  20

  The sun was high and bright, and the sky was a deep, rich blue, and maybe I hadn’t heard her correctly. Maybe she wasn’t talking about Edith Boudreaux. Maybe we had taken a wrong turn coming back to town and we weren’t even in Eunice, Louisiana, anymore. Maybe we were in Mayberry, and she had seen Aunt Bea slip into this dress shop and she wanted to meet the old gal. Sure. That was it. I said, “I thought you didn’t want to meet her.”

  “I’ve changed my mind.” She didn’t look at me when she said it. She was looking past me, at the dress shop, as if Edith might suddenly make a break for it and disappear.

  I said, “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  She shook her head.

  “The smart thing is to bring in Lucy Chenier. Lucy knows about this.”

  Jodi shook her head again. “I might chicken out.”

  “If you’re not sure, maybe you should chicken out.”

  “Why are you trying to talk me out of this?”

  “Because you were adamant about not meeting her. Once you meet her you can’t take it back, either for you or for her. I want you to be sure.”

  She kept her eyes on the store, drumming her fingers on the dash.

  I said, “At the very least I should go in first and prepare her.”

  She said, “Let’s just get this over wi
th.” Jodi pushed out of the car the way you come off the high board, all at once so that you don’t give yourself time to reconsider. The way you do when you’re not sure you want to go, but you’re going to go anyway.

  I got out with her and we crossed the street and went into Edith’s place of business, me in trail and Jodi ahead, plowing on come hell or high water. Two women in their sixties were browsing through a rack of summer frocks to our right, and the young blond sales clerk was talking with a red-haired woman who was looking at herself in one of those three-sided mirrors in the rear of the place. Edith was standing at the register, frowning at a sales receipt. She looked up when the little bell chimed and smiled automatically, and then she saw me and her smile froze with the abruptness of a stopping heart. Her eyes went to Jodi for a moment, held there, then came back to me. Jodi froze in the center of the store as if she’d been spiked to the floor. Up close is different than out in the car. I said, “Hi, Mrs. Boudreaux. I hope this is a good time.”

  She wasn’t liking it that I was back. “Well, it isn’t really.” She looked at Jodi again. She knew that this wasn’t the same woman who was with me before. Jodi was still in the dark glasses and ball cap, with her hair pulled back and a shapeless cotton top and big dangly earrings and no makeup. She didn’t look the way she did on television.

  I went to the counter, trying to act as if this was the most mundane visit in the world. “Mrs. Boudreaux, could we speak with you in private?”

  She glanced at Jodi again, and this time the look was curious. “Why?”

  “Because we want to discuss something personal, and it’s better if we don’t do it here.” I kept my voice low, so that only Edith could hear.

  She shot another glance at Jodi, and now she looked nervous. “My husband spoke quite clearly for us the last time. I don’t have anything to say and I’d rather you leave.”

  Jodi took off the sunglasses. Her eyes hadn’t left Edith since we entered, and now Edith was staring back at her.

  Edith said, “You look familiar.”

  Jodi opened her mouth to say something, then closed it. She came closer and stood next to me, so close that her shoulder was touching my arm. She didn’t look full-steam-ahead now. Now, she looked the way you would look after you leaped off the board, and realized the pool was empty. She said, “My name is Jodi Taylor.”