Alice Sharpe

by Cowboy Incognito

  Zach had pushed the speed limit as much as he could, considering what he knew about speed traps in south Louisiana, and still he’d not only missed Tristan’s funeral, he’d almost missed the graveside service. It was just as well, he supposed. He’d dreaded seeing his classmates, most of whom had settled down in Bonne Chance like Tristan, and spent their lives working on oil rigs or fishing. He hadn’t looked forward to answering their half-deriding questions about life in the big city.

  Tristan DuChaud. His best friend, for as long as he could remember, was one of the finest people Zach had ever known. Maybe the finest. His gaze went to the carved stone of the tomb, its thick walls and ornate steeple soaking up all the warmth and sunlight and leaving Tristan’s final resting place cold and dank.

  It was strange and sad to be here, knowing his friend was gone. Especially since their last conversation had been a fight, about Sandy, of course. It had occurred two days before Zach, his older sister, Zoe, and their mom moved from Bonne Chance to Houston three days before Zach’s fifteenth birthday. Sandy was mad at Tristan for some reason and she’d come to Zach’s house to talk, just as she’d always done.

  Tristan and Sandy had liked each other ever since third grade and everybody knew they’d get married one day. They were that couple, the one that would be together forever. But Tristan had always had a jealous streak, and that irritated Sandy to no end. Sometimes she’d egg him on by flirting with Zach, which infuriated Tristan, even though, or maybe because, he and Zach were best friends.

  As Zach got closer to the grave site, the formless figures shimmering in the heat began to coalesce into recognizable people. The stocky man holding the Bible was, of course, Michael Duffy. His thick shock of light brown hair looked a little out of place above the black suit and white priest’s collar he wore. Zach had heard from his mother that Duff had become a priest after the awful accident the night of Zoe’s graduation, but he’d found it hard to believe that the fun-loving, hard-partying Duff was now a priest.

  Duff raised his hand and the small group of people moved to sit in the folding chairs. Zach finally spotted Sandy, Tristan’s wife—or widow. She looked as though she was doing okay, but for some reason, she was being led to the first chair by a woman he didn’t recognize.

  He studied the woman. She was about the same size as Sandy—maybe more slender. He couldn’t place her. Was she a relative of Sandy’s? Of Tristan’s? He didn’t remember ever seeing her before, and he would have remembered her. She had an intensity that he wasn’t sure he’d ever noticed in a woman before.

  The woman got Sandy settled then straightened and glanced around. She didn’t seem to be looking for anyone in particular, but the tension that wafted from her like heat still reached out to him. He watched her, his interest piqued, not so much by her appearance, although she was attractive. He was interested in what she was doing.

  Surveillance. The word popped out of his subconscious. He rolled it on his tongue. Surveillance. The woman was doing surveillance of the area.

  As the woman checked the perimeter of the grave site, Zach noticed a subtle shift in her demeanor. She hadn’t moved, but something about her had changed. When he’d first noticed her, she’d been alert, but she’d reminded him a bit of a mother hen, scurrying to keep up with Sandy, her chick. That impression had faded when she’d begun surveying the area.

  Now there was nothing left of the mother hen. The woman was poised and taut in a way she hadn’t been before. As he watched, she straightened, her entire focus as sharp and unwavering as an eagle that has spotted its prey.

  As Zach watched her transform from protector to predator, an electric hum vibrated along his nerve endings. He felt attuned to her, as though he knew what she was thinking, what she was planning. She stepped closer to Sandy, her weight evenly balanced between her feet, her focus unwavering.

  He followed her line of vision and saw two men. Like many of the others, they were dressed in slacks and a shirt with no tie, as if they’d taken off their jackets because of the heat. But these two stood at the edge of the canopy with their hands in their pockets rather than sitting and they seemed to avoid looking at anyone directly.

  Zach thought there was a family resemblance between the two, although the younger one looked as though he might still be in high school. So they were probably father and son.

  He glanced back at the woman. He couldn’t tell if she knew them, but he could tell that she was expecting trouble.

  Her intensity fed his. His scalp began to burn. His senses focused to a razor-honed sharpness as time seemed to slow down. His entire body tightened and he instinctively shifted his weight onto the balls of his feet. An almost imperceptible vibration hummed through his muscles and tendons.

  At that instant, as if his energy had reached her, the woman looked directly at him. A knife edge of caution sliced into his chest. He’d never seen her before, but in that instant when her gaze met his through the shimmering heat, he had a sinking feeling that before this day was over, he was going to wish he hadn’t seen her now.

  Her gaze slid away from him and back to the man and boy. Again, Zach looked, too. The boy was whispering to his father. He nodded in the direction of the woman and Sandy, and the older man shook his head no. He urged the son closer to the lined-up chairs as Duff called for everyone to bow their heads for prayer.

  Duff began his supplication to the Lord without bowing his own head. As he spoke, he looked Zach up and down, nodded in recognition and tilted his head disapprovingly all at the same time. Zach stood still, clasped his hands behind his back and bowed his head. But he couldn’t close his eyes. He kept the two men in his peripheral vision. If they moved suddenly, he wanted to know.

  Once Duff said amen and raised his head, he held out a hand to Sandy to approach the dully gleaming casket, which was sitting on a wheeled cart, waiting to be placed into the DuChaud vault. Sandy stood, and her companion started to stand beside her, but Sandy stopped her with a small gesture. Alone, she approached the casket and laid a white rose on top, bowed her head for a brief moment, then turned and started back toward her chair. Then she saw him.

  Her face, which had been set determinedly, dissolved into anguish at the sight of him, and tears filled and overflowed her eyes. “Zach,” she whispered. “Oh, Zach, he’s gone. Our Tristan is gone.”

  Zach took two long strides and gathered her gently into his arms. He closed his eyes and hugged her to him as if she were his long-lost sister. She clung to him the same way, and her slender shoulders shook as she cried silently. Zach held her while Duff gestured to Tristan’s mother to come forward and lay a white rose next to Sandy’s. After Mrs. DuChaud sat, the priest led the pallbearers past the casket to lay red roses on top, one by one, and back to their seats.

  Then the priest laid his left hand on Sandy’s shoulder and held out his right toward Zach. “Zachary Winter,” he said. “I thought you swore you’d never come back here.”

  “There’s only one reason I would, Duff. I mean, Father...” Zach had no idea what to call him.

  Duff smiled and said, “It’s Father Michael, but Duff is fine. Nobody around here dares to call me that.”

  Zach nodded uncomfortably, then leaned in closer to the other man as a couple came up to offer Sandy their condolences.

  “What happened?” he asked in a low tone. “How did Tristan die?”

  “From what I understand, he was walking along the catwalk on the bottom level of the oil platform with one of the Vietnamese roughnecks and he fell into the water near the drill mechanism.”

  “Oil platform?” Zach said in surprise as a knot formed in his stomach. “He was on an oil rig? What was he doing there?”

  Duff’s gray brows rose. “You don’t know? Have you not talked to Tristan in all these years?”

  Zach shrugged, embarrassed. “Not really. We didn’t talk to anybody after we moved. You know, with Zoe being involved in the accident.”

  Duff grimaced briefly as he nodded.

>   “Nothing more than an email at Christmas. A comment on Facebook. You know.”

  “His dad was killed on a rig about two months before Tristan’s high school graduation, so he dropped out and went to work on the oil rig to help his mother.”

  “But he was going to LSU. He was going to be a veterinarian. How could two months have made a difference?”

  Duff nodded grimly. “I talked to him, but he was determined. He saw it as a choice. Taking care of his family—he and Sandy were planning to get married right after graduation—or taking care of himself. He chose his family.”

  “Right.” Zach’s throat closed up. He felt sad and angry. Tristan had given up his education and the opportunity for a great career so he could go to work right away. The thought made Zach feel sick as he thought of all Tristan had given up. And for what? To end up dead at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico?

  “Wait a minute, Duff. Tristan had lived on boats and docks and floating logs on the Mississippi River and on the Gulf his whole life. He was the strongest swimmer I’ve ever seen. He couldn’t have fallen overboard and drowned if he tried. What happened out there?”

  “I wish I could tell you more but I can’t,” Duff said. “He went over with another guy, a roughneck. Maybe they were arguing or even fighting. Maybe they ran into each other in the dark.”

  “You know as well as I do it’s never dark on an oil rig. What’d the autopsy say?”

  Duff looked surprised. “The autopsy?”

  Zach thought he’d hesitated for an instant. “The autopsy. Who did it?”

  “I guess that would have been the ME, John Bookman. He’s the medical examiner for the parish and chief of emergency medicine at the Terrebonne Parish Hospital in Houma.”

  “Okay. Houma is about twenty-five miles north of here, right?” Zach asked.

  The priest nodded, then gestured with his head. “See Angel?”

  Zach followed his gesture and saw Angel DuChaud, Tristan’s ne’er-do-well cousin, talking to a small wiry man. Again, he was surprised. Three years older than he and Tristan, Angel had been the stereotypical bad boy all their lives. But he cleaned up nicely. His hair was styled and his suit fit impeccably, and hid his tattoos.

  “The man he’s talking to,” Duff said, “is the parish medical examiner.”

  At that moment, Sandy turned around and took Zach’s arm. He smiled at her and patted her hand.

  “It’s so good of you to come, Zach,” she said.

  “You know nothing could keep me from being here,” he replied.

  Duff took Sandy’s hand from Zach’s arm. “Sandy, walk with me over here. I want you to meet—”

  Zach silently thanked Duff for distracting Sandy. He hadn’t expected the parish medical examiner to be at Tristan’s funeral, but he was grateful for the opportunity to ask him some questions. He walked toward Angel and, eventually, Tristan’s cousin saw him.

  When Angel spotted him, he waved. Zach sketched a half wave in the air and walked over to where Angel and the ME stood. Angel made casual introductions.

  “You’re the ME,” Zach said to Dr. John Bookman. “Call me Zach. I was Tristan’s best friend in school.”

  “I’m sorry. Terrible thing that happened to Tristan,” the doctor said.

  “Do you live here in Bonne Chance?”

  “No,” the doctor answered, eyeing Zach narrowly. “I live in Houma. Didn’t Father Michael tell you that?”

  Angel wandered away toward the DuChaud family crypt. Zach was glad. He didn’t want him to overhear his next question. “I want to ask you about Tristan DuChaud’s death.”

  Bookman’s eyes shifted toward the casket, which was still sitting in front of the vault. But now the vault door was open. “I don’t discuss my work, certainly not at a funeral.”

  “I understand. If I may...” Zach paused, wondering if what he was about to do was a mistake. After all, he was here not in his official capacity but just to mourn the death of his best friend and to show his respect for his widow. He decided it didn’t matter whether it was a mistake. He needed to do it, for Tristan.

  The question of what his boss would say flitted into his mind but he chased it out again. He’d worry about that later, if it came up.

  He leaned in, close to the doctor’s ear. “I’m with the National Security Agency.” That was true. “We’re investigating possible terrorist activity in the area.” That was sort of true but not really. They were picking up chatter in the area around New Orleans and Galveston.

  He went on. “I need to know what the cause of death was for Tristan DuChaud. Was foul play involved in his death?”

  Dr. Bookman’s eyes went wide, then narrowed again. He took a half step backward and studied Zach as if he were a slide under a microscope. After a moment, he asked quietly, “Did you say NSA? Shouldn’t you be talking to the Coast Guard? They’re in charge of the recovery.”

  “I need this information, Dr. Bookman.”

  Dr. Bookman fidgeted, obviously uncomfortable. “Do you have ID?”

  Zach groaned but pulled his badge holder and ID out of his back pocket and handed it to the doctor and waited. The doctor discreetly glanced at it, looked at it again for a beat longer and then handed it back.

  “You might want to meet me at the parish morgue after the service,” he said quietly.

  “No,” Zach said. “I need to know now.” He looked over at the groundskeeper, who was standing behind the cart that held Tristan’s casket. “After the service could be too late.”

  Bookman followed his gaze. “I’m not comfortable with this. We should talk in my office.”

  Zach shook his head.

  “Okay, but please remember that you are at the funeral of your best friend, and don’t create a scene.”

  The medical examiner took a step away from the crowd. Zach followed him, his scalp burning at the doctor’s statement. Don’t create a scene.

  “We don’t have a cause of death,” Bookman said.

  “You what?”

  “Lower your voice, Mr.—or is it Agent—Winter? You don’t want to upset Sandy.”

  “Why don’t you?” Zach asked quietly, afraid he knew the answer.

  “Because we don’t have a body.”

  Zach stared at him, then darted a glance at the casket.

  “That’s right. That casket contains no human remains.”

  “Son of a—” Zach stopped himself and rubbed his face. “You didn’t recover the body?”

  Bookman sighed. “I have remains.”

  “I don’t understand,” Zach persisted.

  Bookman looked across the crowd at Sandy. Zach followed his gaze. “It’s pretty simple. There’s not enough of Tristan DuChaud to put in a casket.”

  “Not enough—” Zach felt queasy. He’d known that was the answer, but to hear it stated like that, in no uncertain terms, stripped him raw. “What do you mean, not enough?” he growled.

  Dr. Bookman searched his face for a moment. “A rather substantial piece of calf muscle, a piece of scalp with hair intact and...that’s about it. Barely enough to provide identification. I can’t afford to waste any of it by burying it in the ground. Now understand, I haven’t positively identified these remains with DNA. I’ve sent the samples off, but it generally takes weeks, if not months, to get DNA back.”

  The doctor might as well have sucker punched him. The idea that all that was left of Tristan was a little muscle and a bit of hair. The back of his throat burned with nausea. “What about the other man?”

  Bookman nodded. “He was pretty chewed up. There were several schools of sharks in the area.”

  Several schools of sharks. Zach tried to erase that phrase from his mind. “But you can identify the difference between him and Tristan, right?”

  “On a superficial level, yes. I can. From physical attributes mostly. The Vietnamese man, according to his employment records, was five inches shorter than DuChaud. I would expect his torso, parts of which we recovered, to be smaller than DuChau
d’s. I would also expect the typical Asian features, whereas DuChaud was Caucasian. I’m relatively sure that the calf muscle tissue and the scalp with light brown hair belong to DuChaud.”

  “What’s your conclusion? Any sign of foul play?”

  “I can’t answer that question. Right now, what I can say with relative certainty is that I have the remains of two men, one Caucasian, one Asian. There is enough of the Asian’s torso present to be certain that he perished. The meager remains we collected for DuChaud are not conclusive at all, but judging from the damage to the Vietnamese man’s body, it would be difficult to imagine that DuChaud could have survived.”

  Zach swallowed hard. “Wait a minute,” he said. “You said difficult, not impossible. Are you saying there’s a chance he could be alive?”

  Bookman shook his head. “No. I’m not. The remains we have are not conclusive, but the men went overboard in a place and a situation that doesn’t support survival. Not only was the drill mechanism and a large diesel motor right there, practically beneath them, but as I mentioned, there were sharks, too.”

  Behind Zach, the groundskeeper pushed the cart that held Tristan’s casket. One wheel was rickety and it creaked with every inch of movement. He turned.

  Sandy, who was standing next to Duff, started to turn around as well, but the priest kept his hand on her shoulder. With his eyes, he beckoned Zach.

  “The Coast Guard has captured several of the sharks,” Dr. Bookman went on. “They’re sending me the stomach contents to see what additional remains I might be able to recover.”

  The queasiness rose in the back of Zach’s throat again.

  “Sorry about your friend,” Dr. Bookman said.

  Zach thanked him. He stepped quickly over to Sandy’s side. He wanted to watch until the groundskeeper slammed the stone door and locked the bolt.

  Actually, that wasn’t what he wanted to do. He wanted to run over to the casket and rip it open. He wanted to see with his own eyes just exactly what was inside, if it wasn’t his friend’s body. But of course, he couldn’t do that. He wouldn’t. Sandy was there and he’d rather die than let her know that her husband’s body was never recovered.