Voodoo River

by Robert Crais

  René LaBorde stepped out of nowhere and pulled me to my feet. Bennett, grinning like his face was split, took my gun and hit me again.

  The rain fell harder and no one stirred from the Bayou Lounge.

  The two men finished their killing and came to us. One of the men was Donaldo Prima. The other was Evangeline Parish Deputy Sheriff Tommy Willets. Willets looked scared. Donaldo Prima said, “We got that fawkuh good!” I knew then that the good guys were alone at the pumping station. All of the bad guys were here.

  I said, “Jesus Christ, Willets.”

  Willets hit me on the forehead with the butt of his pistol and knocked me into the side of Bennett’s Polara. Then Milt said, “Hurry up, goddammit, and get’m in the car. We got a lot of people to kill.”

  37

  Willets put his cuffs on me, then got René to help put me in the backseat of Bennett’s Polara. Willets breathed hard as he did it, a torrent of rain running off the brim of his campaign hat, his Evangeline Parish sheriff’s poncho molten in the lightning flashes. The lounge’s wooden front door was closed, and I thought maybe Bennett had closed it as we’d left. Maybe.

  Across the lot, Bennett and a short guy with a heavy moustache loaded the bodies into Escobar’s trunk, the short guy Donaldo Prima’s thug. Donaldo Prima came over to the Polara and waved his gun at me. “This fawkuh set me up?” His eyes were blood simple from the kill.

  Rossier said, “We might need the sonofabitch! Put it away!”

  Prima pushed past Milt, screaming, “I gonna kill his ass!” When Prima touched Milt, René’s snake-fast hands shot out, grabbing and lifting and twisting the gun away. Prima hissed something in Spanish, then said, “Make him let go!”

  Rossier made René put him down, and then Prima and Rossier went to Escobar’s car with Bennett and the moustache. Willets got into the backseat of the Polara with me, and René stood in the rain. René was wearing a raincoat, but it was unbuttoned and looked as if someone had put it on for him. There was no hood, and the rain beat at his head and plastered his hair. Willets sat with his service revolver in his hand, still with the breathing, staring wide-eyed through the rear window at the group of men in the rain as if I weren’t there. The glass around us began to fog. I said, “How much does it cost for a guy like you to sell out, Willets?”

  “Shut up.”

  “I know he paid you enough to keep tabs on the sheriff, but is it enough to buy a night’s sleep?”

  “Shut up.”

  “Willets, if you sold your balls by the pound, you didn’t get enough to feed a parking meter.”

  Willets looked over at me, blinked twice, then backhanded me with his revolver. The barrel and the cylinder caught me above the left eye, snapping my head back and opening the skin. There was an instant of blackness, then a field of gold sparkles, and then only sharp pain above the eye. I could feel blood run down across the outside corner of my eye. I grinned. “You didn’t think it’d come to this when you sold them, did you? Guys like you never think that far ahead. Only now it’s here and happening fast and you’re scared shitless. You’re in the deep water, Willets, and you oughta be scared.”

  He wet his lips and looked again at the men in the rain. Scared, all right. “I’m not the guy who has to worry about it.”

  “Were you in on Rebenack?”

  He still didn’t look at me.

  “That’s perfect, Willets. Perfect.”

  LeRoy and Milt came back to the Polara. Prima went behind the lounge, alone, and LaBorde and the mustache climbed into Escobar’s Beamer. The Beamer pulled away, and Willets’s highway car came from behind the lounge. We pulled out, and the highway car fell in behind us. No one had stirred in the Bayou Lounge, and no one had come out to look. All of it had been covered by the rain and the thunder.

  I said, “I can’t believe you didn’t go for it, Milt. Two thousand a head is a lot of money.”

  Rossier turned in the front passenger seat and grinned at me. His old man’s face looked cracked and splintered, and he was holding Bennett’s government .45. He said, “Goddamned right it is. You almost had me, you sonofabitch. I woulda swallowed the whole damn hook if Willets here hadn’t tipped me.”

  “Willets isn’t the only cop who knows. A lot of people are in it, and Jo-el Boudreaux is going to take you down. The blackmail won’t work anymore.”

  Willets licked his lips. “He’s right, Milt. We oughta not play it this way.”

  Milt said, “Who else knows?”

  Willets was licking his lips again. “The guys out at the station, Jo-el’s wife and that lawyer from Baton Rouge, and Merhlie Comeaux. Comeaux went home, and the two women are at the Boudreauxs’.”

  Milt Rossier nodded and grinned still wider. “We’ll just round’m up and kill’m and that’s that.” He said it the way you’d tell someone you wanted pickles on your potted meat sandwich.

  I said, “You’re out of your mind.”

  Willets said, “Jesus Christ, that’s crazy.”

  Milt nodded. “We’ll see.”

  Willets said, “You can’t just kill all these people.”

  Milt nodded and asked Bennett if he knew how to get there, and Bennett said yes. Willets was licking his lips every few seconds, now. He said, “Hey, Milt, you don’t mean that, do you? You can’t just murder these people?”

  Milt cocked his head and looked at Willets as you might a slow child. “Son, simple plans are best. What else can I do?”

  Willets squirmed in his seat, holding the service revolver limply in his lap. I wondered if I could move fast enough to snake it from him before Milt shot me. Willets said, “But that’s three officers. That’s Jo-el’s wife. How we gonna explain all that? Jesus Christ.”

  I said, “Hey, Willets, how do you think he’s going to explain you being the only one left alive?”

  Milt Rossier said, “Oh, that one’s easy.” Then he pointed LeRoy Bennett’s .45 at Deputy Sheriff Thomas Willets and pulled the trigger. The sound was enormous, and the heat and muzzle blast flashed across my face, and Tommy Willets’s head snapped back into the seat and then jerked forward, and a spray of red splattered on the vinyl and the door and the windows and me. When Willets’s head came forward he slumped to the side and was still.

  LeRoy said, “Man, dat was loud as a pork fart, yeah.”

  Milt reached back and took Willets’s revolver and had Bennett pull over. Bennett put the body in the trunk and we went on. I said, “You really mean it. You’re going to kill everybody, aren’t you?”

  Milt said, “Uh-hunh.”

  We drove to Jo-el Boudreaux’s house and turned into the drive, Prima pulling the highway car in behind us. I said, “If you hurt them, Rossier, I swear to God I’ll kill you.”

  LeRoy said, “Save the big talk, asshole. You gonna need it later.”

  Milt got out of the car and met Prima and the mustache, and together they went to the front door. Around us, the street was quiet and well lit and masked by the rain. Just another dreary southern evening in paradise.

  Milt rang the bell, and Edith Boudreaux answered. The mustache pushed past her into the house, and as quickly as that they were bringing Lucy and Edith across the lawn to the highway car. Lucy was struggling, and the mustache had to keep a hand over her mouth. You never expect the bad guys will come to the door. You never expect that they’ll ring the bell. When Rossier climbed back into the car, he was smiling. “We’ll see what ol’ Jo-el does, now. Yes, I guess we will, won’t we?” I’m not sure he was saying it to me or to Bennett. Maybe just to himself.

  They brought us to the crawfish farm, driving through sequined curtains of rain, and put us in the processing shed. Escobar’s BMW was already there, René standing in the rain and mud like some great oblivious golem. When Milt Rossier saw him, he shook his head and made a tsking sound. I guess you never get used to it. They taped Lucy’s and Edie’s wrists with duct tape and made the three of us sit on the floor beneath the gutting tables. Rain hammered in through the big, open
front of the processing shed, but we were well back and protected. The rear of the place was open, too, and more rain dripped there. Milt and Prima and Bennett gathered together, then Bennett got back into his Polara and drove away. Going to give the news to Jo-el Boudreaux. Edith looked pale and drawn, and Lucy looked scared. After Prima and the mustache finished with the taping and left us alone, I said, “Fancy meeting you here.”

  Lucy didn’t smile. The beautiful tanned skin was mottled, and her nostrils were white. Her eyes moved from Rossier to the mustache to LaBorde to Prima, like something might happen at any moment and in that instant she must be ready or it would be forever lost.

  I said, “It’s not over. There’s Pike, and there’s me. I’ll get you out of this.”

  She nodded without looking at me.

  “Did I tell you that I’m an irresistible force?”

  A smile flickered at the edges of her mouth, and her eyes came to me. She said, “You really know how to show a girl a good time, don’t you?”

  “Irresistible,” I said. “Unstoppable. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.”

  She relaxed the tiniest bit and nodded.

  I said, “A moment will come. When it does, I want you to move back under these tables. You, too, Edith. Did you hear me?”

  Edith was as waxy as a mannequin, and I couldn’t be sure that she heard me. Then Rossier came over and kicked me hard in the leg, twice. “Shut up that talk!” He tore off strips of the duct tape and covered our mouths.

  We sat on the damp cement floor and watched Rossier and Prima and the mustache move around the processing shed, making their plans. René followed Rossier like a dog after its master. Rossier went up to the main house and came back with a couple of pump shotguns and a thin, weathered man with mocha skin. Another thug. He gave one of the shotguns to the mustache and the other to Donaldo Prima. They talked for a while in the doorway, Rossier pointing and gesturing, and then the black man and the mustache went out into the rain. Setting up a field of fire. I worked at the duct tape with my tongue and rubbed it against my shoulder and the gutting table’s leg, and it began to peel away.

  Milt stayed in the sliding doors, looking out, and in a little bit lights appeared and LeRoy Bennett’s Polara came toward the sheds. It wasn’t alone. Jo-el’s highway car was behind it, but he wasn’t coming in with sirens wailing and light bar flashing. He came slow and easy, like he was trying not to make things worse than they were. LeRoy put his Polara on the side of the processing shed, then came inside. He was soaked, but he looked excited. He said, “I got’m. I told’m what you said and they came just like you said they would, goddammit! I got their goddamned guns. I busted their goddamned radio.” He was smiling a crazy grin, like we were kids and all of this was some kind of summer-camp game. Blood simple.

  Edith straightened to see, and so did I. From where we sat you could see through the wide opening and out to the highway car. Parked in the killing field. Jo-el got out of the near side of his car and stood in the rain, and Berry and Dave Champagne climbed out the other side. I thought I saw a shadow slip from the rear of the car when Berry got out, but I couldn’t be sure. Milt Rossier said, “Where’s the other one?”

  Bennett said, “Who?”

  “The one knocked you on your ass, goddammit!” Pike wasn’t with them.

  Bennett squinted out into the rain. “We couldn’t find him, Milt. He’s still out in the swamp.”

  Rossier swatted at Bennett, his face etched hard. “You dumb sonofabitch! I said everybody!”

  “We couldn’t find him, Milt!” Whining. “Hell, we’ll get him come light.”

  Milt Rossier said, “Shit!” then went to the big door and yelled, “Come on in here, Jo-el, and let’s talk this thing out!”

  Out in the rain, Jo-el yelled back, “Like hell, you bastard. You come out here. You’re under arrest!” Boudreaux stayed where he was.

  I heard something at the rear of the shed, out where they wash the blood and the scales. Pike, maybe. I worked my feet under me and rubbed harder at the tape, thinking that if things didn’t work out I would try to put myself over Lucy.

  Rossier yelled, “I got your wife, goddammit. Now get in here and let’s talk about this.”

  Jo-el came forward and stepped inside the door. His side holster was empty. He saw me first, and then he looked at his wife and Lucy. He seemed older and tired, like a man who had run a very long race and had not been in shape for it. He said, “You okay, Edie?”

  She nodded.

  No one was looking at me. I got to one knee, the other foot beneath me.

  Jo-el said, “How we gonna work this out, Milt?”

  Rossier said, “Like this,” and then he raised Tommy Willets’s service revolver. I lunged forward just as Joe Pike stepped in through the back and shot Milt Rossier high in the left shoulder, spinning him around and spraying blood like polka dots across Jo-el. Edith made a wailing sound deep in her throat and came off the floor and into Milt Rossier as if she’d been fired from a cannon. Even with her hands and mouth taped she battered at him with her head and face, her eyes wild and rolling. Rossier dropped his gun and grabbed at his wound, making a high whining sound. René went for Joe Pike, and Pike shot him square in the chest two times, the .357 Magnum loads putting René down on his knees. René tried to get to his feet, and Pike shot him in the center of the forehead. Rossier tried to shove past Edith for his pistol, but I hit him low in the back. Prima fired his little revolver at Pike, but Pike dived to the side. The people outside were yelling. LeRoy screamed, “I’ll get the sonofabitch” and stood up from behind one of the gutting tables where he’d run for cover. He aimed his .45 at me, his tongue stuck in the corner of his mouth like a kid trying to color between the lines, and then a tiny red dot appeared on his chest. He looked down at the flicker and said, “Huh?” just before his back blew out and something kicked him across the room in a spray of blood and bone and the heavy crack of a high-powered rifle rocked through the rain.

  Donaldo Prima lowered his gun and looked confused. “The fuck?”

  Pike rolled to me and used his .357 to bust the chain on my handcuffs. “Del Reyo.” When my hands were free I ripped off the tape.

  The red dot flickered on Prima’s face like a firefly searching for a place to light. He swatted at it, and then his head blew apart and again there was the distant BOOM.

  Pike said, “Flash in the treeline. Gotta be two hundred meters.”

  I said, “Rossier has people outside.”

  Pike shook his head. “Not for long.” His mouth twitched.

  There were more booms.

  I drove into Edith, pushing her down, and yelled for Lucy to stay under the table. Berry was yelling, too, saying, “Somebody’s shooting at us!” Pike shouted for him to crawl under the car.

  Rossier climbed to his feet, still clutching his arm, and the dot found him. I pushed him aside just as something hot snapped past and slammed into the wall. Rossier picked up LeRoy’s .45, scrambled to his feet again, and lurched out through the rear of the processing sheds, firing as he went. I went after him.

  There was one more boom from the treeline, and then the rifle was silent. Behind the sheds, we were hidden. Rossier tripped and fell into the mud and got up and ran on, still making the whining noise. He shot at me, but with all the slipping and falling and the hurt shoulder, the shots went wild.

  I yelled, “It’s done, Milt. C’mon.”

  He fired twice more, and the slide locked back and he was out of bullets. He threw the gun at me and ran again, straight into the low wire fence that encircled the turtle pond. In the dark and the rain he hadn’t seen it. He went over the wire sideways, hit the mud on his bad shoulder, and slid headfirst into the water. It was a flat silver surface in the rain until he hit it, and then the surface rocked. He sat up, gasping for air, and I stepped across the wire and held out my hand. “C’mon, Milt. Let’s go.”

  Pike and Jo-el came up behind me.

  Milt Rossier fl
opped and splashed, stumbling farther out into the pond. “He’p me! You gotta he’p me!”

  Jo-el said, “You’re not drowning, you fat sonofabitch. Just stand up!”

  His eyes wide and crazed. “He’p me! Please, Christ, get me out!”

  The water swelled at the far side of the pond, and I remembered Luther.

  I stepped into the water to my ankles. “Get up, dammit. Take my hand!”

  Rossier tried to stand but lost his balance and fell backwards, farther out in the pond. I went in up to my knees. “Take my hand, Milt.”

  Something large moved fast beneath the surface, making a wake without breaking the rain-dimpled plane of the water. Pike said, “Jesus,” and fired at the head of the wake. Jo-el Boudreaux fired, too.

  I said, “Take my hand!”

  Rossier made it to his feet, struggled toward me, and grabbed my hand. His grip was wet and slippery and I pulled as hard as I could, but then his left leg was yanked out from beneath him and he was pulled down into the water.

  The screaming and the thrashing went on for several minutes, and maybe I screamed as loudly as Milt Rossier, but probably not.

  38

  Jo-el Boudreaux called in the state, and the state brought its prosecutors and the crime-scene people, and by noon the next morning there were over three dozen parish, state, and federal officials up to their ankles in mud. The rain kept coming, and did not slacken.