by DJ Donaldson
The girl and the drug rep pretended not to be listening. Broussard, of course, had no idea what Guidry was talking about. “Henry I don’t—”
Guidry looked away. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather not get into it right now. I’m so upset with you I might say something I’ll be sorry for later.”
As Broussard walked to his car, Kit pulled in beside it and got out to meet him. “What did Burke want?” she asked. Bubba leaned out the window of the T-Bird so he could hear, too.
“To show me somethin’ he found in Doc McKenzie’s ledger. Fourteen years ago, there was another killin’ just like Homer Benoit.” Not wanting to get into a protracted discussion on such flimsy grounds as he had, he didn’t mention the much older case and what it might mean.
“Then the killer does live here,” Kit said. “But why was there such a long gap in the killings?”
“Could be there wasn’t a gap. Might have been others we don’t know about. Or maybe he was kept in check somehow.”
“Like with medication?”
“That’d be one way.” Broussard scratched his beard. “I just had a strange conversation with Henry Guidry in which he said somethin’ about you talkin’ to his brother, Eddy. What’d he mean?”
Since he already knew about Eddy, Kit decided it was time to tell him everything. When she got to the part about going down to the French Quarter with Bubba, the little Cajun pulled his head out of the T-Bird’s window and tried to become as small as possible in his seat. “… so when Teddy told me that Henry had a retarded brother, I just had to check him out. And believe me, nothing I saw put my mind to rest. He’s impulsive, emotional, and huge. And he was out of sight around the time the murders in the Quarter were committed… said he was sick. When I talked to him, his lawn mower had thrown up a stick or a stone that cut him on the forehead, and I managed to get a blood sample, which I sent to the serology lab for typing. I would have bet anything that he was type B, the same as the killer. But I just found out he’s type A. Now I don’t know what to think. I would have told you about all this earlier, but seeing you and Henry are such close friends, I wanted to be sure of things before implicating him.”
Broussard withdrew into his mental study and his finger strayed to the end of his nose. Kit waited nervously for the dressing-down she expected for withholding information. Under other circumstances, she might well have received it, but since Broussard was also withholding information from her, he could hardly complain.
About the time she thought he had rubbed all the hairs off his nose, his eyes shifted gears and he was back. “So what do you think?” she asked.
“I think we should go back to that house across from the cemetery and talk to the little boy that lives there.”
“What little boy?”
“The one that watched from behind a tree while we got flimflammed at Homer Benoit’s grave.”
CHAPTER 18
To get to the house where the little boy lived, they had to cross a rickety footbridge over a stretch of black water that ran beside the road for miles. On the other side of the bridge, the path to the house wandered between boggy pools with a green scum on the surface. The house itself was a flimsy pile of weathered boards that would make good frames for watercolors. Resting on cypress stilts, the house was no impediment to the free flow of chickens that pecked and clucked over the property. Rather than facing the road, the porch to the house looked out on a small vegetable garden that was half underwater from all the rain. Hanging on the wall fronting the street were three drying animal skins and a large galvanized tub.
In the yard beside the house, a woman was cleaning fish on a crude wooden table with a hole in it. She was wearing a Mick Jagger T-shirt bearing a picture of a large tongue, faded by many washings. The six inches of long straight hair nearest her skull was the color of the boards on the house, the rest matched the dun color of the chicken pecking around her bare toes. Though she looked to be a late-stage anorectic, it didn’t affect her ability to clean fish, for she was the epicenter of a storm of fish scales that neither Kit nor her two colleagues wished to enter.
Behind her, legs hanging over the porch, was a boy about ten years old dressed in coveralls and with no shirt. He was shucking oysters and throwing the shells on a large pile from previous shuckings. Each time a shell hit the pile, a blue carpet of flies rose angrily into the air.
“Mornin’,” Broussard said.
The woman looked up and brushed the hair from her sunken eyes with her elbow. “You want somethin’?” Her lips paid more attention to the cigarette between them than to her words. With a break in the scale storm, her three visitors stepped closer.
Broussard introduced everybody and said, “Somethin’ kind of unusual happened last night over at the cemetery and we were wonderin’ if you folks saw anything.”
The woman shook her head. “Ah got too much work to do without worryin’ what goes on ain’t none of mah business.”
“Maybe the boy saw somethin’.”
“So ask him.”
As they walked over to the boy, the woman resumed work on her fish.
“Findin’ any pearls?” Broussard said.
The boy shook his head and made a face like he wasn’t expecting to find any. “What’s your name, son?”
“Ain’t got one. Lost it over in dat swamp one day when mah pirogue sank.”
Broussard chuckled and dug around in his pocket, bringing out two of the wrapped lemon balls he’d brought for Kit. He held them out to the boy, who casually inspected them, then wrinkled his nose and looked away. “Do you know who we are?” Broussard asked. Behind him, he heard a slap as Kit flattened a mosquito attempting to feed on her arm.
“Heard you tell ma your names but don’ remember ’em.”
“We’re the folks you were watchin’ a little while ago in the cemetery.”
The boy threw an oyster shell at one of the chickens, which squawked and high-stepped to safety. “Didn’ say Ah was in da cemetery,” the boy said, sticking the point of his knife into the porch floor.
“Don’t have to; I saw you there,” Broussard said. “What I’m wonderin’ is, did you see anybody else there last night… diggin’?”
The boy pulled the knife out of the floor and stuck it in again. “Maybe Ah did an’ maybe Ah didn’.”
Kit was growing impatient at Broussard’s inept handling of the boy. “Let me try,” she said, stepping forward. “Son, we’re not being nosy. This is a police matter. Some people… innocent people in New Orleans and some of your neighbors have been murdered and we’re trying to find out who did it. This person is very dangerous and until we catch him, anyone around here, even you or your mother, could be his next victim. So for your own safety, you should tell us what you saw.” From the look on the boy’s face, Kit could see she was getting to him. “Besides protecting your mother, you’d be acting as sort of a deputy sheriff.”
The boy stared at Kit for several seconds without speaking, his mouth slightly open. Then he said with more sarcasm than a ten-year-old should be able to muster, “Deputy sheriff? Wow am Ah impressed.”
Bubba had been hanging a few steps back while his two colleagues worked on the boy. Now he stepped up and whispered into the boy’s ear. When he was finished, the boy looked at Broussard with wide eyes. “It was dat guy with da fat gut, works at da gator farm.”
“Carl Fitch,” Kit said.
“He dug up somethin’ an’ took it away in his truck,” the boy said.
“Appreciate you tellin’ us that,” Broussard said.
“You welcome.”
Broussard turned to go, then hesitated and asked the boy, “You ever go into Leper’s Woods?”
The boy seemed astonished at the question. “Jus’ cause Ah’m a kid don’ mean Ah’m stupid,” he said.
Broussard gave Kit a look that said “Didn’t I tell you?”
As they passed the boy’s mother, she scraped a fish head and a pile of guts into a hole in the table. Some of it mi
ssed the bucket on the ground. “Never knew da boy to back down before,” she said, the cigarette bobbing between her lips. She pointed her knife at Bubba. “Mister, you got a way with young’uns. There a woman shares your bed?”
Blushing, Bubba shook his head.
“You ever get in a marryin’ mood, you know where to find me.”
When they were out of hearing range, Kit said, “What did you say to him, Bubba?”
“Ah tol’ him that if he didn’ tell us what he saw, Ah was gonna catch him alone and put his bare butt in a hill of fire ants.”
“Bubba, you’re terrible.”
“Dat’s what Gramma O keeps tellin’ me.”
“What now?” Kit said to Broussard.
“Go over to the gator farm and talk to Fitch.”
Suddenly from the grass at Kit’s feet, there was a squawk and a flap of feathers—a nesting hen that barely escaped being stepped on. Surprised by the ruckus, Kit shied into a boggy puddle that claimed one leg almost to the knee. Bubba rushed to help.
“Gimme your hand.”
The puddle gave up her leg reluctantly, succumbing finally with an obscene sucking sound. Back on solid ground, Kit looked at the mud and algae on her slacks. “I don’t think it’s a look that’ll catch on,” she said. There was no way she was going to let Teddy see her in such a state. “Much as I hate to miss the action, I’ve got to change clothes. You two go on. I’ll meet you there.”
Broussard and Bubba followed Kit back into town, where Broussard used the pay phone in front of the drugstore to call Sheriff Guidry.
“What’d he say?” Bubba asked when Broussard came back to the car.
“Wasn’t there. Supposed to be back any minute. I left a message for him to meet us at the gator farm.”
“You think we oughtta be goin’ over dere alone? Might be we’re gonna stir up some trouble.”
“We’ll be careful not to push anybody into a corner. There are ways to get information without accusin’ folks of anything.”
At the turnoff to the alligator farm, they met Teddy LaBiche coming from the direction of the interstate in his pickup. He waved and stopped in the middle of the road. Broussard pulled up alongside.
“How did everything go this morning?” Teddy asked.
“Not good. Somebody took the body for a ride. Got information that Carl Fitch might know somethin’ about it.” Broussard watched Teddy’s face closely. The surprise he saw there seemed genuine enough. Broussard let his eyes wander to the back of Teddy’s truck, where the bed was covered by a black tarp held in place by snap-top fasteners. He’d first noticed it last night. At the time, the observation had meant nothing. Now though…
“Why don’t we go talk to Fitch,” Teddy suggested.
“He at work?”
“Supposed to be, but with Carl, you can never be sure. I haven’t been in yet myself. So I guess we’ll find out together.”
Broussard followed Teddy to the farm and they both parked in the lot beside the processing building.
“There’s Carl’s truck down there,” Teddy said, pointing at the road where it bordered the breeding pen. “But I don’t see Carl. Come on, we’ll find him.”
Teddy looked first in the office and then they searched the processing center without luck. “Nothing to do now but work our way through the holding buildings,” Teddy said. “Which makes me even more convinced that we need an intercom system connected to the office.”
At Teddy’s request, Broussard and Bubba let Teddy search each building by himself so that the alligators inside would be disturbed as little as possible, an arrangement that seemed reasonable. After ten minutes of this, they still hadn’t found Fitch. To get to the last set of buildings on the property, they had to pass Fitch’s truck.
“Been here awhile,” Broussard said, checking the temperature of the hood with his hand. He looked in the cab and then the bed, which was clean except for one muddy smear near the tailgate.
“Mon Dieu…?”
Turning to see what had caused Teddy’s outburst, Broussard found him staring into the breeding pen, where about twenty yards out, several large gray-white objects bulged from the black water. “What is it?”
“Looks like dead gators,” Teddy said. “At least three of them.”
“Can we get one up on the bank for a look?”
“You don’t want to keep looking for Fitch?”
“Right now, I’d rather see one of those gators.”
“Me, too,” Teddy replied. “We can use our egg-collecting boat there.” He pointed behind them to a metal boat upside down on three sawhorses beside the road. “But first we’ll need some rope.” He jogged to a nearby supply shed and returned wearing a pair of knee-high rubber boots and carrying a large coil of heavy rope. “I’ll need a hand with the boat.”
“That’d be me,” Bubba said.
The two men turned the boat over and carried it to the gate in the chain link that surrounded the breeding pen. “Okay, Bubba put her down for a minute.” Teddy threw the rope in the boat and opened the gate. “Let’s change ends; I’ve got the boots, so I should have the bow.”
A moment later as Bubba bent to pick up the stern end of the boat, Teddy added, “Just be careful not to rattle the fence. That’s what we do to call them in for feeding.”
Bubba stood up, confused. “Ah thought dey were dead?”
“Looks like only three of them. There’re about a hundred in here.”
Bubba’s mouth dropped open.
“Don’t worry, they’re shy of boat sounds.”
“Den we oughtta make a lotta boat sounds,” Bubba said.
“And I’ve always got this.” Teddy showed Bubba his little pistol.
Bubba nodded and smiled anemically.
With Bubba’s eye’s searching for alligators, Teddy carried the bow into the water. When Bubba’s feet reached the end of the cement apron that bordered the water, they put the boat down and Bubba pounded on the side with his hand. “Boat noises,” he explained, looking at Broussard.
Teddy came around to the side and climbed in. He released one of the oars from its fastenings and laid it across the seat, making, Bubba noticed, a gratifying amount of boat sounds. “Bubba, you pole us out to that one over there and I’ll work the rope.”
Teddy took the rope to the bow, where his weight allowed Bubba to push the boat into the water while getting only the tip of one shoe wet. Accustomed to poling his pirogue down Goose Bayou—the body of water that ran past his log house outside New Orleans—Bubba smoothly propelled the boat forward until Teddy held his hand up in a signal to slow down. Bubba let the oar drag against the bottom.
Teddy leaned over and lifted a very large scaly tail out of the water. Pinning it against the boat, he worked a noose down it as far as he could, then tightened the slip knot with a flourish. “That’s it. Take us in my friend.”
They switched ends and Bubba poled them back to shore while Teddy let out rope as they went. “We’re going to have to get this carcass through the gate,” Teddy said. “So take us in a little to one side so the boat isn’t in the way.”
Bubba nodded and wiped the sweat out of his eyes. A few minutes later, the bottom of the boat scraped against the cement apron. Broussard held the boat steady while Teddy and Bubba got out. Then they all pulled it up onto the apron.
“What happened?” a voice behind them said. It was one of the young men Kit had seen the day before in the processing building.
“Don’t know yet,” Teddy said. “Found a couple of our breeders dead. We got one on the end of this rope. Give us a hand, will you?”
Together, they pulled the heavy reptile toward them until the end of its tail lay on the apron. Teddy and his helper then retied the rope around both of the animal’s thighs.
“Easy part’s over,” Teddy said, looping the rope around one hand and offering the free end to the others.
When all four had a good grip on the rope, Teddy gave the signal to pull and the carcass slowl
y began to slide out of the water.
“How much dis thing weigh?” Bubba gasped from his position right behind Teddy.
“If I told you, you might quit,” Teddy said.
Finally, with all of them breathing hard and their shirts wet with sweat, the huge reptile lay across the road.
“Congratulations,” Teddy said, fanning himself with his straw hat. “You’ve gotten the best of about seven hundred pounds of dead weight.”
“Any objections to opening him up?” Broussard asked.
“How do you know it’s a him?” Teddy said.
“Thickness of the body, rugged look to the head.”
“You know your gators,” Teddy said. “Buddy, get us a skinning knife, will you?”
“Got one right here in my car.”
While they waited for Buddy to get back, Teddy crouched at the animal’s jaws. “Gator like this ever gets hold of you, you couldn’t pry his jaws apart with a crowbar. When you’re had by a gator, you’re had good. Couple years ago, I saw a big one close on a piece of steel with so much force, he drove two of his teeth through the top of his head.” He stood up and looked wistfully over the water. “Sure hope it’s only three. You can’t get insurance on gators.”
“Here you go,” Buddy said, handing Teddy a large knife.
“Let’s get him over on his back,” Teddy said.
The animal was so distended with gas that it resembled an inflatable fake more than a real alligator, unless of course you looked at its teeth. To preserve the skin, whose value would partially mitigate the loss of the animal as a breeder, Teddy made a large incision along the junction of the desirable belly scales with the worthless armor on the back, cutting through the musculature but being careful not to go so deep that the bloated stomach might be punctured. He carried the cut up and around the jawline and brought it down the other side, completing the circle with a transverse incision just in front of the hind legs. He rolled up the freed section of flesh and laid it on the ground a few feet away, planning to separate the skin from the muscle later. Maggoty white and obscenely distended with gas, the stomach dominated the peritoneal landscape.
