An Evil Shadow - A Val Bosanquet Mystery

by A. J. Davidson

  Bullets penetrated the boat tearing great splinters of wood from the flat hull. Val pushed himself up off the ground and knelt on one knee as he took careful aim. The charging Gilett reminded Val of one of those running figure targets that the army uses on their firing ranges. Only Gilett was no two-dimensional, monochrome picture.

  The wail of the siren filling his ears, Val squeezed the trigger twice. Both shots slammed into Gilett’s chest. He managed another couple of strides before flopping across the pirogue’s hull. Val rose and took Gilett’s gun from his hand and checked for a pulse.

  Marie Duval’s half-brother was dead.

  The SUV of the St Francis Parish sheriff clattered over the wooden bridge, a deputy’s car immediately behind. They pulled up beside Gilett’s body and the sheriff and a deputy jumped out, their guns drawn. Val threw both guns to the ground and ran to the back of the Wagoneer and released the tailgate. Angie was inside, curled up in a fetal position. He couldn’t find a pulse, though her body was warm. Let it be more than the heat inside the trunk, Val hoped. He lifted her tenderly in his arms.

  “Get me to the nearest hospital,” Val commanded the sheriff.

  The sheriff caught the urgency on Val’s face and wasted no time. He threw open the door of his SUV and helped Val lay Angie across the rear seat. Val climbed in beside her, and the sheriff, shouting instructions to his deputy the whole time, got behind the wheel. He was already on his radio asking the operator to patch him through to the Morgan City hospital as they crossed the wooden bridge.

  “Tell them she was given a neurotoxin approximately twelve hours ago,” Val said. “She’ll need some sort of chemical blocker.”

  The sheriff started relaying the information to the Emergency Room. He wasn’t holding back on the gas.

  “Tell them she’s in early months of pregnancy,” Val added. He felt so useless. The help Angie needed most, he couldn’t provide.

  The sheriff turned his head slightly. “I see you finished what you started with Gilett. I had a call from the Coast Guard. Some seaplane pilot radioed in a report that World War Three had broken out down in the bayous.”

  Val looked up. “You better have them dispatch a paramedic team. I left a priest back there with a head wound. Tell your deputy to place him in custody.”

  The sheriff got busy on his radio again.

  Val swept a blonde hair back from his wife’s face. What had she ever done to deserve any of this?

  The sheriff intruded on his thoughts. “The Emergency Room doctors want to know what sort of neurotoxin we’re talking about?”

  “A Haitian Zombi juice. A mixture of extracts from the liver of the puffer fish and the bark of the manchineel tree.” Val caught the look of incredulity that flashed across the Sheriff’s face. That was going to be the first hurdle to overcome at the hospital; convincing the doctors to take him seriously.

  “They want to know if you can be more specific?” the sheriff reported.

  “Have them contact a Professor Richard Bickford of the Anthropology Faculty of the University of New Orleans. He should be able to help them out.”

  Something Lausaux had said came back to Val. When he talked about the antidote, he said it had been much easier to conceal. He didn’t use the word hide. Conceal. He probably had the antidote on him the whole time, or in the Wagoneer somewhere. Val considered what do to. Take a chance and have the sheriff turn around and go back to look for it, or concentrate on getting Angie to an Emergency Room as quickly as possible?

  Lausaux had been a devious bastard. He would put the antidote where no one would think of looking for it.

  Val used his thumbs to prize open Angie’s mouth. A small glass phial lodged in the back of her throat. He used two fingers to fish it out. It was a match for the one Lausaux had shown him back at Woldenberg Park. Only this phial still contained a liquid. What if it was neurotoxin as well? If Lausaux had played one final bluff?

  Val made his decision. He ripped off the rubber stopper and tilted the contents into Angie’s mouth, making sure not to spill a single drop of the precious liquid. He gently massaged Angie’s throat to help the liquid descend her gullet. Now all he could do was to wait.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Marie Duval’s heart missed a beat when she saw him. The last person she expected to find waiting on her doorstep was Val Bosanquet. She had been to the neighborhood 7-eleven for some milk and cereal for her breakfast and had been gone less than ten minutes. Had something happened to Angie? Had he brought bad news?

  Bosanquet had a parcel with him, wrapped in brown paper. “Can I come in?”

  “Of course. Is Angie okay?’ She had visited Angie the day before at Tulane Medical Center, and the toxin specialist assured her that she was going to be fine, although she had lost her baby.

  “Yes, she’s making a full recovery. The medical center plan to discharge her later today.”

  She turned the key in the lock and pushed open the door. He followed her in and shut the door after them.

  “Take a seat. Can I get you a coffee?”

  “No thanks.”

  Marie sat on a chair at the small white table. Val sat on the end of the couch. Her apartment seemed a lot smaller with him in it. He had tired eyes.

  “I brought you something,’ he said, handing her the parcel.

  She took it and set it on the table. The string that bound it was loose and easily removed. Inside were five thick bundles of one hundred-dollar bills.

  “What is this?” she asked, totally confounded.

  “It belongs to you. Fifty thousand dollars.”

  “I don’t understand. How can it be mine?”

  “Your father wished for you to have it.”

  Marie bit her lips. Val had broken the news to her yesterday of her real father’s identity, and that Donny Jackson was her half-brother. They had talked for an hour in a family room at Tulane. Or rather Val talked, she had listened. He had explained how her mother had intended to go to the press and expose Arena Victory. How Kellerman had her killed. How he also had her father and brother killed all those years ago.

  She pushed the money away from her. I can’t accept his blood-money. Did he really think this would make up for what was done to my mother?”

  “Your father was a good man,” Val assured her. “He made one mistake. He trusted his son, then had to pay for it for the rest of his life. I don’t care what you do with the money. Throw it in the trash can, donate it to charity. Or spend it the way your father intended.”

  Marie didn’t want to think about it just now. “What will happen to Kellerman?”

  “He’s been indicted for the murder of Philip Lausaux. Other charges will follow.”

  “And Donny Jackson?” According to the late-evening television news, her half-brother was now in a New Orleans jail. He had tripped a silent alarm while attempting to burglarize Jean Moncoeur’s empty Lake Pontchartrain mansion. When the NOPD patrol car turned up, he tried to make a run for it, but a leg wound, not yet fully healed, slowed him up. They caught him easily enough.

  “The same. An indictment for murder,” Val said flatly.

  Marie caught his eye. “I’m so sorry for what I’ve brought on you and Angie. What do the doctors think? Will she ever be able to have another baby?”

  “There’s no medical reason why not. She and Marcus plan to marry as soon as the divorce comes through. They’re already discussing IVF treatment with the doctors at Tulane. It’s the right thing to do. Angie and I love each other, but she also loves Marcus, and he her. She will find her happiness with him.”

  “What about you? Don’t you deserve some happiness as well?”

  “That will come. I’ve decided to rejoin the New Orleans police department as soon as the university can appoint a replacement chief.”

  “Are you sure that’s what you want to do? I thought you despised law enforcement.”

  “It wasn’t law enforcement I despised.”

  Marie left it at that. Somet
hing inside Val Bosanquet had changed, and as to whether it was a good or a bad thing, the jury was still out. She suspected that he was holding something back from her, but if he was, then he was sure to have a good reason for doing so.

  A shiver went up her spine.

  After leaving Duval’s apartment, Val sat in his car for a short time, listening to a news update on the radio. The Securities Exchange Commission had stepped in and called a postponement to Arena Victory’s flotation. The journalist went on to speculate on the prospects of it ever going ahead, as, following recent press allegations and the announcement of a police investigation into the circumstances leading up to Stuart MacLean’s death, the big stock-broking firms were hastening to disassociate themselves from it.

  The news report that followed on was a linking story. Veteran New Orleans broadcaster, Harry Nolan, the man who scooped the Arena Victory story, had initiated a campaign for the boycotting of all sports equipment manufactured in sweatshop conditions. His crusade was snowballing and the network media were taking it up. All across the country, sport stars’ agents were checking the fine print on their clients’ endorsement contracts with equipment manufacturers.

  Val turned off the radio, started his car and joined the traffic flow on Canal.

  Other books from AJ Davidson

  Non-fiction

  Kidnapped

  Defamed!

  Fiction

  Death Sentence – A Val Bosanquet Mystery

  Moon on the Bayou – A Val Bosanquet Mystery

  Sandman – A Val Bosanquet Mystery

  Churchill’s Queen

  Wounded Tiger

  Piwko’s Proof

  Paper Ghosts

  Decoys

  Read bonus sample of AJ Davidson’s Death Sentence, the second Val Bosanquet Mystery

  Chapter One

  Reincarnationists maintain that new life springs from death, a time for celebration as well as sorrow. East Feliciana Parish Deputy Sheriff Val Bosanquet was not a believer, but before the sun sank on a fateful July day, he would readily agree that one man's demise had led to, if not exactly a birth, certainly a rebirth.

  Val, a former New Orleans homicide detective, was a campus cop when Clinton middle-school teacher, Diane Laing, went missing. She was the fourth woman to disappear in a series of suspected abductions. Back then, he had his hands more than full with Crescent City iniquity to pay much heed to events along the Louisiana Mississippi state line. If it had not been for his cousin Nath, a young Marine, the Laing abduction might have quickly fallen off his radar. His cousin spent two weeks' leave as part of the search teams combing the woods and soya bean fields surrounding the location of the last positive sighting of the victim. Each evening he would phone Val, updating him on the search and picking his brains as to what direction the investigation should be taking next. Nath had thrown himself into the hunt with the same steely determination and vigor that would mark him out as a soldier of exceptional ability. With youthful naivety, he was convinced sheer energy would help good triumph over evil. He had attended the same high school as Laing, but could not swear to ever having spoken with her. Over one hundred people volunteered to assist the East Feliciana Parish Sheriff’s Office look for the local girl. Despite their best efforts, the searchers did not discover a single trace of the missing twenty-three-year-old. Nath took it hard. He refused to believe the worse and insisted she was still alive.

  Ten years were to pass before Laing surfaced.

  During those years, Val had again dropped out of law enforcement. His brother Marcus manipulated him into signing on as the Chief with a campus PD. His stint on the university’s payroll ended badly and he left New Orleans for the East Texas border where he found a job with a private investigations agency. The sheriff of East Feliciana Parish, as sliver-tongued as any snake oil salesman, had enticed him into trying his hand at rural law enforcement. The two men met during the cleanup operation in the wake of Katrina. Seeing the destruction visited on the city of his birth and witnessing the worse the human race could offer convinced Val that he had more to contribute to society than the checking of credit ratings for Texas banks.

  Val moved northeast, bought and restored a ramshackle shotgun house outside Clinton. As he sawed and planed wood, he played rock albums on an ancient stereogram the previous property owner had left behind, and then, in his spare time, started to tour goodwill shops to add to the collection of 1970s vinyl. Since leaving a devastated New Orleans, Val had gained twenty pounds and developed a pathological hatred of golf. He slotted smoothly into his new job and there was nobody more surprised than he was when he rediscovered the investigative grit that had made him New Orleans youngest ever homicide lieutenant. However, the break that led to Laing’s discovery had not sprung from any rejuvenated sense of purpose, but from a fatal accident and the contents of a department store’s shopping bag.

  Word of the fatality reached Val late on a Friday afternoon, the penultimate day of July. A few minutes later and he would have been off-duty and might have missed the shout. A vehicle had swiped a forty-three-year-old white male as he was returning to his car parked on St. Helena Street.

  Val cradled the phone on his shoulder so he could search through the clutter on his desk for some scrap of paper to note the details. He found a dog-eared internal memo and turned it over.

  “What did you say his name was?” Val asked the Clinton PD officer who had called him to report the fatality.

  “Jake Harrell. He was carrying an out-of-date Louisiana driving permit.”

  The name sounded familiar to Val. Perhaps he had pulled him in some time or other.

  The municipal cop continued, “He was unfortunate. From the preliminary eyewitness reports, the vehicle did not strike him that hard, but he stumbled backwards over a curb and his head connected with a concrete bollard. The impact smashed in the back of his skull like a spoon cracking a hard-boiled egg. The paramedics say death would have been pretty quick. The driver of the vehicle stopped and called the paramedics on her cell.”

  “Alcohol or drugs involved?”

  “No cause to think so. The elderly female driver appears traumatized and the paramedics are recommending she be taken in for observation. The witnesses agree that speed was not a factor. Another officer is checking for security tapes, but as far as I can see, there's no camera covering this part of the street.”

  Val pulled a face. “Just our luck. Any suggestion it was deliberate?”

  “Not so far. The two wits who had the best view of the incident both say Harrell stepped out in front of the vehicle. The driver did brake, but had no chance of missing him.”

  “Have you sealed off the scene?”

  “Yeah. We were here pretty quickly. We were just a block away when the call came through. My partner preserved the scene and I rounded up most of the wits before they had time to melt away.”

  “Sounds like you're on top of things,” Val said, happy enough to leave the incident in the hands of the Clinton cops.

  “Pretty much,” the officer confirmed. “Reason I contacted you was because the victim was carrying your card in his wallet.”

  It was the prompt Val needed to jog his memory. Harrell had been the elder brother of the second of four East Feliciana women abducted during a sixteen-month period starting eleven years earlier. One of his less-rewarding duties as the Sheriff’s Office senior detective was the periodic review of historic, unsolved investigations. The missing women had been one of the first cases he had looked at after his appointment, spurred on by Last Seen, a true-crime book published by a local journalist. Predictably, the Sheriff's Office had come in for some heavy criticism for its failure to find the slightest trace of the women, or their bodies. The first woman abducted was Kristal Dean, then Samantha Thomas a week later. Six months went by before Jodie Ford went missing on her way back from visiting her older sister’s college campus. The final victim was Diane Laing. Dean was African-American, the other three white. Val had spoken to all o
f the close family members of the disappeared women, but had unearthed nothing of value. The original investigators did as thorough a job as could be expected of them, considering the paucity of concrete evidence. He remembered handing Harrell his card the last time they had talked, asking him to get in touch if any fresh information surfaced. The dead man, like Val’s cousin, had been a Marine at the time of his sister’s abduction; a captain with the 1st Recon Battalion.

  There was no good reason for Val to attend the scene. He had not heard from Harrell since their last brief conversation just days into the previous year. No good reason at all − not even his jurisdiction. But Val wanted to know why Harrell still carried his card?

  “I'll be there in five,” Val said, though it would mean skipping the customary last-Friday-of-the-month barbecue Sheriff Ted Harris was hosting at his house that evening. He would ask Deputy Blemings to accompany him. She was three months pregnant and had sworn off liquor. No point in spoiling the evening for Joel Wright, Val’s usual partner, who was probably sitting down his generous backside next to one of Harris’s spool tables at that very moment, with the thirst of a deranged wildebeest. Wright was due to start two weeks’ vacation and did not plan to waste a single moment in sobriety.

  Val left his office and signaled to Blemings that she should join him. She rose from her desk and slid her Glock into the paddle holster on her hip. He quickly explained the phone call. They would ride the short distance from Bank Street in Val’s SUV.

  “Has the victim's family been informed?” she asked.

  Val was all too aware that more often than not a female deputy would have to deliver the very worse type of news. Equality in the workplace did not count for much when dealing with personal tragedy. He looked across at the young detective. Since becoming pregnant, Nicki had not worn a seatbelt. Her partner was a mortgage broker in Jackson. And a keen golfer.

  “Harrell's only relative was his sister, the second of the girls who disappeared. Her name was Samantha Thomas. Orphaned as children, when a Baton Rouge train wreck had claimed the lives of their parents, the social workers tried their best apparently but were unable to place them with the same family. A childless couple adopted the girl, not much more than a toddler, within a few months. Jake Harrell, just into his teens, was cared for by a number of homes and foster parents, but was never formally adopted. He joined the Marines as soon as they would have him, and the life suited him. I was surprised to hear that he had resigned his commission. He seemed the sort of guy perfectly cut out to be a lifer.”