Blood on the Bayou

by DJ Donaldson

  “What’s the matter, Eddy?” Teddy asked.

  Eddy removed his fingers from his head and Kit saw a small bleeding cut above his eyebrow. “Somethin’ hit me.” Eddy whimpered. “Somethin’ hard.”

  Anyone could see at a glance that Eddy wasn’t normal. Everything about him seemed off. From the tense, awkward way he held himself, as if he were a puppet being held up by invisible strings, to the obvious scooped-out hollow on his forehead and the odd fold of skin on the bridge of his nose that made it look as though the top half of his head overlapped the bottom, he was clearly different. And he was huge—massive arms and shoulders, hands that looked as big as tennis rackets, as though his size was some sort of crazy compensation for his lack of intelligence. A man who could do unspeakable damage swinging a gardening claw, Kit thought.

  She took a tissue from the pocket of her slacks. “Eddy, my name is Kit. If you bend down, I’ll make it feel better.”

  Eddy cocked his head to one side and looked at Kit like her dog, Lucky, did sometimes. Then he bent down but quickly stood up again. “It hurts more when I do that,” he moaned.

  “Then kneel,” Kit said.

  He did what she asked and Kit dabbed at the blood with her tissue. Then, carefully folding it so the blood was inside, she put it back in her pocket. “It’s only a small cut,” she said. “It’ll heal soon and you’ll be good as new.”

  “It still hurts,” he said.

  “I know, but you have to pretend that it doesn’t so people can see how brave you are.”

  “I can pretend,” Eddy said, “if you’ll kiss it for me.”

  Kit looked at Teddy for help, but all he did was shrug and indicate with his hands that it was her show. In the interest of getting on with things, Kit bent and placed a quick kiss on Eddy’s forehead.

  “Better now?” she said.

  Eddy got up and gave her a lopsided grin. “Better,” he agreed. He looked at her for a few seconds and she saw his pupils dilate. “You’re pretty,” he said. Before she knew what was happening, he put his hand on her breast. “And soft.”

  Teddy moved toward him, but Kit waved him back. Gently, she took hold of Eddy’s arm and lifted his hand off her. “Eddy, that’s not a nice thing to do. You musn’t touch a lady unless she says you can.”

  “Will you let me?”

  “No, Eddy. We would have to know each other much better and like each other in a special way.”

  “What kind of way?”

  Not wanting to explain sex to a two-hundred-and-sixty-pound man in the middle of someone’s yard, Kit tried to shift the conversation. “You’re doing a very nice job on this lawn.”

  Eddy beamed. “I go over it two times. First, I go back and forth and then up and down. That’s what makes it look so good. But so far on this one, I’ve only gone back and forth on this part here.”

  The untouched part of the lawn seemed quite overgrown to Kit. “Are you the only one who mows this lawn?”

  “Only me. They like me here. Like my work. I know because they told me.”

  “How often do you mow it?”

  “Every week.”

  “Did you mow it last week? It looks like maybe you forgot last week.”

  Eddy’s eyes flashed. “Didn’t forget. Didn’t.”

  A blood vessel began to pulse ominously at his temple. His fingers curled into fists. Teddy put a hand on Kit’s arm and pulled her back a step.

  “Henry says if you forget things, people won’t trust you,” Eddy said. “I like to be trusted. It makes me feel grown-up.”

  “I’m sorry, Eddy,” Kit said. “I was wrong to say that. I was only trying to find out why the grass is so long, if you mow it every week.”

  “Don’t push him so hard,” Teddy whispered.

  The bulging vessel disappeared and Eddy’s hands relaxed.

  “Did you mow this lawn last week?”

  Eddy put his hands in his pockets and looked at his feet. “Couldn’t,” he muttered.

  “Why not?”

  “I was sick.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Were you ill for very long?”

  He looked at her blankly.

  “How many days were you sick?”

  As he worked on the answer, she could almost hear his brain making sounds like a garbage disposal with a spoon in it. Finally, he held up six fingers and said, “Seven days. I was sick for seven days. But I’m better now. And pretty soon I’ll have all my work caught up.”

  “Did you see a doctor?” Kit asked.

  Eddy shook his head. “Henry said a doctor couldn’t help. That I’d get better all by myself.”

  “Eddy, where were you when you were sick?”

  He looked at her with a furrowed brow.

  “Were you in a different town?”

  He shook his head. “Home.”

  “The whole time?”

  “Home… in bed.”

  Teddy and Kit turned at the sound of an approaching car and saw Henry Guidry pull in behind Teddy’s truck. From the look on his face as he walked toward them, he wasn’t happy.

  “Hi, Henry,” Eddy said. “I’ve got a new friend. Her name is Kit. See, Kit, I don’t forget things.”

  “Eddy, wait for me over on the steps.”

  “Okay, Henry.”

  When Eddy was out of earshot, Guidry said, “I know why you’re here. What I don’t know is why you’re talking to Eddy.”

  “We thought that since he spends so much time in town, he might have heard or seen something that would help us figure out who killed Homer Benoit,” Kit lied.

  “He doesn’t mow lawns at night. And isn’t that when Benoit was killed?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “So how could he possibly know anything about it? Maybe you’ve already noticed that Eddy is easily upset by things if you don’t know how to talk to him… and you don’t. So I’d appreciate it if you’d keep away from him.” Guidry turned and walked quickly toward the front steps, where Eddy was playing with something in his hand.

  “That sounds like our cue to move on,” Teddy said.

  While he was making a U-turn to head back toward the town square, Kit said, “Where’s the nearest Federal Express pickup?”

  “For what destination?”

  “New Orleans.”

  “There’s a local outfit that’ll guarantee same-day delivery in New Orleans if your package is at the pickup no later than three o’clock.”

  Kit looked at her watch. “That only gives us twenty minutes. Where’s the pickup?”

  “Drugstore in town. What is it, package or letter?”

  Kit took out the tissue she had used on Eddy and showed him the bloodstains. “I’m going to send this to our serology lab and have it typed.”

  CHAPTER 16

  On the way back from Breaux Bridge, Broussard stopped at the Texaco station to inform Sheriff Guidry of his plans to exhume Homer Benoit. Though not enthused at the prospect, Guidry called the local funeral home to set things up. It was decided that, weather permitting, the exhumation could take place the next day at nine o’clock.

  That night, Broussard took everyone, including Teddy, to Mulate’s, a combination restaurant, dance hall, and bar in Breaux Bridge, where Kit finally got the hang of the Cajun two-step by watching Bubba and Olivia do it. From Mulate’s, they all went back to the Duhons’ for a nightcap. After an hour or so of good conversation in which alligators weren’t mentioned once, Teddy expressed his thanks all around and said good night. Olivia had the presence of mind to let Kit see him out.

  The night air was humid and hot. In the bayou next to the house and the swamp beyond, frog armadas waged vocal warfare. Teddy paused at the steps and turned, the porch light reflecting in his eyes.

  “You haven’t told me how long you’ll be here,” he said.

  “I don’t really know,” Kit replied. “Depends on how things develop.”

  Teddy stepped closer. Despite the warm night, she could feel the heat from his skin on her bare arms. “And how are thi
ngs developing,” he whispered.

  His cologne drew her in and his arms slipped around her waist. “I sense a certain momentum building,” Kit said breathlessly.

  “I understand that momentum is difficult to stop,” Teddy said against her ear.

  “It’s not anything you’d want to step in front of.” Kit sighed.

  He kissed her gently, then pulled away. “Will I see you tomorrow?”

  “I’ll give you a call when I see how the day is shaping up. You’ll be at work?”

  “After ten-thirty or so. I’ve got some errands to do.”

  He started down the steps.

  “Teddy?”

  “Yes?”

  “I was wondering… do you have any idea how many eggs a woman has in her ovaries when she’s born?”

  “I surely don’t,” Teddy said, perplexed.

  “Good.”

  As she watched his truck go down the drive, Kit leaned against one of the huge porch columns and breathed. “Oh you better not let them get behind you, Teddy LaBiche.”

  *

  Early the next morning, Phil Gatlin went down the stairs from the Presbytere attic with a sore butt and in a bad humor. His mumbled remarks echoed in the empty building. “Damned nonsense. Sit up all night in a dusty hellhole, and for what? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.” He crossed the ground-floor hall and slipped one of the keys the guard had given him into the lock in the front door.

  Considering how lousy everything else was going, the gray day that greeted him was just what he expected. And wouldn’t you know it, there was a bum asleep against the outside gate. He turned the key in that lock and then noticed that the bum wasn’t asleep but had his face in a plastic bag. In his lap was an aerosol can of hair spray.

  Gatlin jiggled the gate against the man’s back. “Hey, fella, gimme a break here, will ya.”

  No response.

  He whistled through his teeth and jiggled the gate again. “Hey, Mr. Ed, take it about three feet to your right, what do you say?”

  The bum took his face out of the bag and looked up with the same expression that Joe Gunderson had on his face the night Gatlin tagged him with a solid right in the police boxing league.

  “You’re blocking the gate,” Gatlin said.

  The bum smiled and waved.

  Convinced that he would never get a useful response, Gatlin inched the gate open until he could slip out without having the bum fall backward into the portico. While squeezing through, he scraped a button off his shirt. After closing the gate and locking it, Gatlin picked up the bum’s aerosol can and tossed two bucks into the bum’s lap, hoping he was so addled that he might actually spend it on food. “Screws up the ozone,” he said, pointing at the can. “Someday you’re gonna thank me for this.” Then, as he turned away, added, “Just don’t call collect.”

  Having decided that any backup on the ground might spook his quarry, Gatlin had done this alone. His plan had been to try it two nights and give up if nothing happened. He saw now that there was no point in going on. He had simply missed him. The killer wasn’t ever coming back. Might as well call in the lab now and see how they do.

  With dust from the attic still in his nose, he stepped across to the French pastry shop in the Pontalba building and ordered coffee and a croissant. Almost from the first swallow of the hot liquid, he began to feel better. Through the shop window, he saw the two-man crew working the Presbytere arrive in a white pickup fitted out with metal racks filled with guttering. After unloading a couple of gallons of paint and sticking some brushes in the back pocket of their coveralls, they disappeared into Père Antoine Alley.

  The hot buttery croissant went well with the coffee and soon all that remained of it was a carpet of crumbs on the plate and the table. How do you eat one of those things without spraying it everywhere? he wondered. As he left, he tossed the bum’s hair spray in the shop’s trash can. Instead of heading for his car, he walked over to Père Antoine Alley and looked up, first at the painters, then at the broken windowpane Broussard had discovered—sitting right out in the open where anyone could have seen it, where he should have seen it.

  He imagined how it was the nights the killer had struck… how the guy had gone out the window, climbed down the scaffolding, gone hunting, and then returned, possibly leaving blood on everything he touched. But, of course, it had rained each of those nights and the scaffolding would have been wet…. His eyes traveled over the metal gridwork, tracing the likely route the killer had used.

  Overhead, one of the painters left the safety of his scaffold board and climbed up on the scaffolding itself to reach a corner of the window closest to the front of the building. When he stepped back onto the board, the vibrations of his movement caused something to glitter at the intersection of the second tier of scaffolding with its cross brace. Curious about this, Gatlin stepped to the scaffolding, pulled his pants up so he wouldn’t tear out the crotch, and started climbing.

  A few seconds later, he saw what it was: a gold bracelet draped over the metal peg that held the cross brace in place. With one of the keys to the Presbytere, he coaxed the bracelet free and let it fall to the ground. After climbing down, he teased the bracelet into his handkerchief and examined it more closely.

  The links were large, and although he wouldn’t be caught dead wearing jewelry, it seemed more like something a man would wear than a woman. On a small plate attached to the clasp was an inscription: To T.L. with love, from M. St.J. He stepped away from the scaffolding and whistled through his teeth at the painters.

  “I’m Lieutenant Gatlin, NOPD,” he shouted. “Could you please come down here for a minute?”

  When the workmen reached the ground, Gatlin held up the bracelet in his handkerchief-covered palm. “Either of you two recognize this?”

  Both men had long hair that hung limply from under their caps. One had a smudge of paint under his nose where he had probably tried to scratch an itch with the handle of his brush. The other had small flecks of paint dotting his face. And this only a few minutes into their day. The one with the smudge under his nose reached for the bracelet, but Gatlin pulled it away.

  “No touching,” he said.

  The one with the paint-flecked face shook his head. “I ain’t never seen it before.”

  The other one agreed. “Me, neither.”

  “Anyone else working this job?”

  A look of pride crossed paint smudge’s face. “Nahh. Just us. We do it all.” He groped in the pocket of his coveralls and brought out a bent business card. “Your house ever needs gutters or paint, let us know.”

  Suddenly Gatlin was feeling a lot better. The initials—T.L. Last night hadn’t been such a waste, after all.

  *

  That same morning when Kit opened her bedroom door in Bayou Coteau, she found a pot of coffee and a pot of tea on a hot plate atop a small table in the hall. Next to the hot plate were several china cups and saucers, some spoons, real sugar, artificial sweetener, and cream. Though unaccustomed to such elegance, she adapted by pouring herself a cup of tea and taking it to one of the upholstered settees that faced each other in the middle of the hall. As she sat there imagining herself the mistress of the house, she listened for sounds of anyone else moving about. But all was quiet and she had to finish her tea without benefit of conversation. After returning her cup to the little table, she went downstairs and wandered through the great house until she found Olivia in the kitchen working a batch of biscuit dough.

  “Anything I can do to help?” Kit said.

  Olivia looked up and smiled. “No thank you, dear. You’ve heard the saying about too many cooks? Well, it started in my kitchen. I think you’ll find Andrew outside somewhere. Mr. Oustellette is still asleep.”

  “The coffee and tea upstairs was very thoughtful.”

  “If you’re like me, you need a cup of something hot just to get moving in the morning. Now go on with you.”

  Kit’s hopes for a bright day were dashed when she opened the door. Not only
was it gloomy and overcast but there was a strange expectant stillness in the air. From off in the distance, the eerie cry of a crow completed the scene. Broussard was down by the boat dock staring across the bayou.

  “Nice day for an exhumation,” he said as she came up behind him.

  “Weird if you ask me,” she replied, moving to his side. “What are you doing?”

  “Soakin’ up the atmosphere. Somethin’ to be said for livin’ out here.”

  “For the house and grounds, sure. But you can have the bayou and the swamps.”

  “Why?”

  “Too many dangerous things in them.”

  “When I was a boy, we thought that woods over there”—he pointed across the bayou—“was the most dangerous place around. It’s called Leper’s Woods. They say that before the leprosarium was built in Carville, a colony of lepers lived there and contaminated everything in it. That was one place everybody avoided, man and boy alike. Course it was all foolishness. Even if lepers had once lived there, which I doubt, they took the disease with ’em when they moved on. Nobody’s gonna get leprosy from goin’ in there. In fact, most folks couldn’t get it even if they lived with a leper.”

  “Think they’re still afraid of it?”

  “I’m sure they are. Old legends die hard in bayou country.”

  “With good reason,” Kit said. “You couldn’t find spookier surroundings… the night sounds, the brooding old trees, the black water in the bayou. Why is the water black, anyway?”

  “Tupelo gum. Put a handful of tupelo leaves in a bucket of water, in a few minutes it’ll be black as ink.”

  As they talked, the way their voices dominated the stillness around them began to make Kit feel uneasy, as though they were violating the sanctity of a great library. She scanned the trees across the bayou. “Where are all the mockingbirds?” she said, speaking more softly. “I thought the South was famous for them.”

  “Maybe they know somethin’ we don’t.”

  “Like what?”

  “Hard to say, not bein’ one.”

  “Nice obtuse answer.”

  “Comes from havin’ a head full of ideas and no facts.”