She turned the page and the brittle paper cracked under her touch. The second and third pages were filled with writing in the same elegant hand. But it was all in French, a language she couldn’t read.
Turning the page, she came upon a roughly drawn map with street names she knew: Bienville, Chartres, Dauphine—all streets in the French quarter. But many downtown streets were missing; a map drawn before they existed. A large section of land on the side of Canal Street opposite the quarter from what was now Magazine Street to Rampart Street was lightly crosshatched.
Between the next two pages, she found a loose piece of yellowing parchment folded in half. Holding it as lightly as she would the wings of a butterfly, she unfolded it and found a detailed sketch of a plant with long slender shoots growing from what looked like a tulip bulb. The roots of the plant had clusters of nodular growths on them.
Under the sketch was another crudely drawn map, this time of the bayous south of the city, with Xs clustered in certain areas. At the bottom of the parchment, there was a long paragraph written in the same hand as before.
“So what’s in the book?” Phillip said.
Lost in its contents, Kit jumped at the sound of his voice.
Phillip put a hand on her shoulder. “Sorry, kiddo, I don’t mean to keep doing that.”
“It’s Albair Fauquel’s journal,” Broussard said.
“Who?” Phillip said. Then he remembered. “Oh yeah, so the guy really existed, huh?”
“Most of it is Fauquel’s account of the story Grandma O told me, how some land was taken from him and sold to satisfy a debt he owed.” Broussard took the parchment out of the book and set it aside. He turned back to the city map Kit had seen. “This is the land in question—today, a big piece of the financial district.”
Phillip whistled under his breath.
“To get even with the judge who ordered the land sold, Fauquel cast a spell on him, one that drove him mad to the point of killing his wife, his daughter, and, then, himself. We already knew that from Grandma O, but Fauquel tells us how he did it.” Broussard tapped the parchment. “With this plant.”
Phillip leaned over for a better look. “Bet that’s what you found in the lab wastebasket.”
Broussard pointed to the bayou map with Xs on it. “These are spots where the plant grows. And down here are instructions for its use. A powder made from the dried roots was usually sprinkled on a victim’s firewood. Fauquel put it in the judge’s tobacco. It’s all here. He tells how the victims will think they hear songs their mother used to sing to them when the spell takes effect. They even knew that it didn’t always work.” He looked at Kit. “A stone like the one we found on your porch was supposed to be good luck for the one who left it.”
“So that’s what Vogel put in the fabric he shipped to the Escadrille plant,” Kit said.
“For some reason, he wants the old curse to come true,” Broussard said.
His brow furrowed, Phillip said, “I thought the powder had to be put in a fire.”
Broussard tapped the parchment again. “There’s a warnin’ in here about keepin’ it in a cool place after it’s made. Apparently it’s unstable and doesn’t need a whole lot of heat to set it off. Puttin’ it in fire not only activates it but makes sure it gets spread around.”
“So when he shipped the toxin-impregnated fabrics, they weren’t dangerous,” Kit said.
Broussard nodded. “Not until the cars containin’ ’em sat in the hot sun for a few days. I suspect Shindleman was an accident. Knowin’ that heat could set it off, Vogel wouldn’t have knowingly allowed the adulterated material to be exposed to those sunlamps. Probably some kind of foul-up at the plant.”
“And when Shindleman shot the plant manager, Vogel got scared and shut the plant down for awhile,” Kit said.
“Makes sense,” Broussard replied. “Takin’ the job in forensics put him in a position to know if anybody had caught on to what he’d done.”
“How come no one figured out that those cars were dangerous before this?” Phillip said.
“Some people aren’t susceptible,” Kit replied. “And some that were affected killed themselves after they left the car, like Barry Hollins did. The common features in the related cases were hidden by so many extraneous facts, it took a computer to sort it out. And even then, we had to find the Escadrille tie-in ourselves.”
“Which is why New Orleans Escadrilles that were driven to other cities never caught anyone’s attention,” Phillip said.
“Wouldn’t have caused a ripple,” Kit replied.
“All fine as far as it goes,” Broussard said. “But it doesn’t go far enough. We know why we might have found those plants in Vogel’s wastebasket three years ago, but why were they there tonight?”
“Jesus,” Kit moaned. “He’s still at it.”
“There’re a couple of other things that are makin’ my feet sweat. For one, there’s the last page in that journal.”
He flipped to the last entry, one clearly written by someone other than Fauquel, and read the passage aloud: “The hand that wrote these words was stilled July seventh in the year of our Lord seventeen hundred and thirty-eight.” He looked up. “The date circled on the calendar in the lab off the kitchen is also July seventh; the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Fauquel’s death. I want to see the building on Rampart that our friend just leased.”
*
The building on Rampart was a run-down one-story with its plate-glass windows whitewashed on the inside. Phillip had no trouble with the lock.
Except for a five-gallon can of whitewash and a crusted paint roller, the place was empty.
“What do you think?” Phillip said.
“He obviously didn’t want anyone to see what was going on in here,” Broussard said.
Kit looked around at the peeling walls. “What’s to see?”
“Nothin’ yet,” Broussard replied. “But I wonder what we’d have found on July seventh?” He shook his head and shifted the lemon drop in his cheek to the other side. “Wish we had him where we knew he couldn’t do any harm.”
Self-consciously Phillip looked at his feet, fully aware that had he not put his personal life ahead of police business there in the swamp and run off to see his daughter, it was likely that Vogel would now be in custody.
“I have a feelin’ there’s more to be learned at CCI,” Broussard said. “Let’s pay ’em a visit first thing in the mornin’.”
On the way home, all Broussard could think about was black taffeta and gardenias.
CHAPTER 19
Shortly after he had ducked into the swamp grass, the pain in Vogel’s shoulder became so intense he slipped into unconsciousness and slumped onto a fallen cypress, his hands dangling in the water. He woke with mosquito fish picking at the wrinkled skin on his fingers. When he tried to move, he found his joints stiff and unresponsive. Attempts to change position of his left arm brought breath-sucking pain to his shoulder, and he cursed Phil Gatlin’s marksmanship.
The swamp was totally black and he could see nothing. The frogs that had been so quiet earlier were now singing madly. In the distance, there was a bellow from a bull ’gator and he cringed when he thought of how he had lain vulnerable for what must have been hours.
He got to his feet and a tom-tom began to beat on the back of his head. The bullet became a hot poker that buckled his knees. He braced himself on the fallen tree and waited for the moment to pass.
When he felt better, he looked slowly about, trying to guess where his pirogue might be, then realized that in the dark, a boat would be useless. The path was what he needed. He was sure that he had gone no more than fifteen yards into the grass to hide. Figuring three steps to a yard, that would be… The dust in his brain lay in drifts over the answer to this simple calculation. Forty-five… yes, that was it. No more than forty-five steps to the path.
He set off slowly, feeling the way in front of him, each foot testing the muck for stability. With each step, his shoulder thro
bbed and waves of pain lapped at his skull. When the required number of steps failed to produce solid ground, he stopped to think. But that made the pain in his head worse and, like a trapped animal, he felt the urge to flee in any direction. He quelled the panic and forced himself to concentrate.
If he had set off in the opposite direction from the path, it would now take twice as long to reach it if he went back the way he’d come, providing he could even find his way back. But if he had set off parallel to it, he could still reach it in about forty-five steps. Since the odds of having gone parallel instead of perpendicular to the road were… two to one, he should now turn… left or right? That was the choice. Well shit! The chances of choosing the wrong way were even.
Screw the odds, he thought, slogging off to the left. After a dozen steps he fell sprawling into his boat. Now he knew the way, for the nose of the pirogue had been pointed toward the path. A few minutes more and he was on dry land, heading for the highway. As he trudged up the grassy trail, the hopelessness of his situation became clear. His plan was not going to work. How could Broussard and Franklyn be so goddam lucky? Three times between them, they’d managed to slip a trap he’d set. They probably knew it all by now and his years of preparation for that one glorious finale were going to be utterly wasted. The Escadrilles weren’t enough. They weren’t nearly enough. And it was all that bitch Franklyn’s fault.
His boot caught in a vine. Growling, he ripped his foot loose and with his head thrown back like a howling wolf, he screamed in frustration. The resulting pain in his head and shoulder dropped him to his knees and he began to whimper. As his pain and the white heat of anger receded, he knew what to do.
He reached the highway and set out for the boat dock where he kept his pirogue, hoping that no one had realized that it was his car on the grass next to the minnow tanks. The road was a thin ribbon through a croaking bedlam and the dim white line along the shoulder was not enough to keep him from frequently wandering off course.
A pair of headlights appeared in the distance. Fearing that it might be the police, he dropped to his belly in the roadside weeds and waited for the car to pass.
It took a long time to cover the two miles to the bait shop, and near the end of his trek, the wound in his shoulder began to bleed again, causing him to fear that loss of blood might send him into shock before he could accomplish what he had in mind. Despite his wretched condition, he felt a flutter of pleasure when, in the floodlight at the boat dock, he saw his car right where he had left it.
His fatigues had deep pockets on the front of each leg. Button-down flaps ensured that items placed in those pockets stayed there. Even so, he experienced a stab of fear that having lain in the swamp and fallen in the boat, he might have lost his keys. His spirits rose when he plunged his fingers deep into his right pocket and found the keys among a crushed pack of cigarettes, his lighter, and some extra bullets for the rifle.
The three tanks the boat dock used to hold bait minnows had been fashioned from fifty-five-gallon drums cut in half lengthwise so that the filling port could serve as a drain. Hanging on a nail near the door of the small air-conditioned shed that housed the tanks was an enormous crescent wrench that they used to work the screw-top caps when the water needed changing. He removed the wrench from its nail and carried it to the car.
The clock in the dash said 4 A.M. He was shocked at how long he had lain unconscious in the swamp. Without the exertion of walking, the bleeding stopped and as long as he didn’t move that arm, there was minimal pain. His head didn’t hurt quite as much, either. He pointed the car toward the city. At the intersection of Highway 8 and Gentilly, he wheeled left and held the course until it crossed Waring, where he also turned left—in the direction of Crescent City Industries.
At the entrance to the CCI parking lot, he switched off his lights. The lot was empty except for a blue Nova with gray primer around the lip of the front fender, probably the night watchman’s car. He cut the engine, put the car in neutral, and glided silently to the far corner of the lot, where a cluster of bushes in a bed carved out of the blacktop concealed his presence. He picked up the wrench and got out, being careful not to slam the door.
At the loading dock of the detached warehouse, he found the metal overhead door secured with a padlock. Having not expected to need it, he’d left the warehouse key at home. The sound of whistling came from the direction of the main building.
He froze. It was getting closer. The night watchman on his rounds. The night watchman who would have a key to the big padlock.
The dock was illuminated by a single floodlight aimed so that on one side the recess for the overhead door was in deep shadow. The darkened space was large enough to conceal him for a few seconds, and if he could think of a diversion to keep the watchman occupied… He patted his back pocket and remembered placing his wallet in the trunk of the car before setting out in the pirogue. And that’s where it still was. What then could he use for bait? The whistling was getting closer.
The watchman stepped onto the dock, still whistling. In the light from the flood lamp he saw Vogel’s cigarette lighter lying on the cement. No longer whistling, he went over to see what lady luck had brought his way. When he bent over, Vogel struck, bringing the wrench down with all the power he could muster. There was a dull crack as the wrench shattered the watchman’s skull. He couldn’t risk having the man wake up, and he was too weak to drag even a small man to the car, where he might have locked him in the trunk. This was the only way.
He slipped the watchman’s pistol from its leather holster and put it in the pocket of his fatigues. Of the dozen keys on the watchman’s ring, he tested nine before finding the one that opened the padlock. The overhead door made a horrible din as it lurched from his hand and disappeared up into the darkness. He waited, cringing, to see whether the noise would bring trouble but heard only the distant sound of a dog barking. Cool air poured from the warehouse, enveloping him in a refreshing embrace.
Since the loading dock faced onto an open field and the warehouse had no windows, he felt secure in turning on the lights. They produced a sight so stunning it momentarily made him forget Gatlin’s bullet: hundreds of drums, stacked three tiers high, each marked cryptically with the number 7-7, the date of their intended use. He reflected briefly on what might have been and cursed Kit again. With the big wrench, he set to work on the threaded caps atop a row of drums against the wall beside the entrance.
The caps were so firmly screwed on that he was able to remove only two of the eight, and then only by ignoring the hot flash that ripped through his shoulder each time he strained against the wrench. The red stain spread further into his shirt.
With two drums open, he discovered what he should have realized earlier. They were too heavy to tip over.
There was a yellow forklift in the wide aisle between the rows of stacked drums and he struggled into its seat. The On/Off switch was labeled, but its black-knobbed levers and shiny pedals were not. Never having driven the thing, he could only guess at their functions. His first guess sent the machine gliding backward. He found the brake a scant second before crashing into a wall of drums behind him. A minute more of careful trial and error and he drove flawlessly over to one of the open drums and nudged it off by itself. Then he rammed it!
Instead of tipping over, it slid across the floor, sloshing only a small amount of the contents down one side. A second attempt to topple it also failed. In anger, he spun the forklift around and charged a three-tiered stack on the aisle. The fork struck the lowest drum a glancing blow and slid it sideways, leaving the upper ones only partially supported. Another blow and the stack collapsed. As one of the drums hit the concrete, its seal ruptured and an oily fluid gushed onto the floor and ran under the fallen drums. The air became filled with the heady scent of the volatile liquid that he had chosen to carry Fauquel’s toxin.
He straddled a drum that lay on its side and brought the big wrench into play. With a madman’s single-mindedness he ignored his p
ulsating shoulder and pitted himself against the threads. Beads of sweat popped from his brow and his shoulder begged him to stop. The cap moved a fraction of a turn and then it was loose. Discarding the wrench, he spun the cap with fingers slippery from the fluid dribbling around the threads. Finally, the cap slid from his grip and bounced to the floor. With the forklift, he rolled the newly opened drum down the aisle to help spread its contents.
Feverish with success, he became more creative. Jamming the drum against the far wall, he got it fully onto the forklift and deposited it near the entrance, where it was now light enough that he could stand it upright. From a first-aid kit fixed on the dash of the forklift, he took a roll of gauze and held it under the waning stream of liquid still issuing from the drum that had ruptured. He unrolled the gauze, doubled it, and twisted it all along its length. One end of the makeshift fuse went down into the drum he had partially emptied. The other he carried to the entrance.
He wanted to do more, but the gray sky was changing to pink and he was afraid to linger. This would have to do. He searched his pockets for his lighter, then remembered where it was. Unwilling to touch the watchman’s body with his hands, he turned it with his foot, careful not to look at the face.
Held to the edge of the dark stain that by now had spread over nearly three-quarters of the floor, the lighter’s flame spread rapidly in a widening arc, producing almost from the first instant a thick black smoke. He applied the lighter to the free end of the gauze and paused only long enough to see the flame begin its race toward the drum. Then he ran.
He was barely thirty feet from the building when the homemade bomb blew, toppling the other drums like tenpins. The explosion took off half the metal roof, knocked dozens of cement blocks out of the wall, and threw Vogel onto his injured shoulder. A piece of sheet metal clanked to the ground a yard away and the contents of the blown drum rained on him in a fiery downpour. Groaning from the pain in his shoulder, he slapped at the sparks that threatened to ignite his clothing and dragged himself farther from the boiling hell behind him.
Cajun Nights Page 21
