“Not to me. Why do you want to know about that?”
“It could be important.”
“To what?”
“Never mind. I don’t mean to be rude, but I have some thinkin’ to do.”
“Will you be at the memorial service for my father tomorrow?”
“Absolutely.”
“Would you be willing to say a few words?”
“I’d be honored.”
Broussard hung up, rocked back in his desk chair, and folded his pudgy fingers over his belly. Who would know about his sister’s death? He shook his head. Not likely anyone in New Orleans, but maybe . . .
He dropped his chair forward and poised his hands over his computer keyboard.
As dexterous as he was with a scalpel and dissecting scissors, he was a terrible typist, and his fingers often hit the wrong key or the space between keys. Even so, he had soon navigated to the web site for the sheriff’s office in Bayou Coteau, the town where he’d lived until his parents’ death.
He punched the office number into his phone and waited for an answer, which came as promptly as one would expect from such an important civil servant.
“Sheriff Guidry, please. This is Dr. Andy Broussard callin’ from New Orleans.”
Lawless Guidry had been elected to office fifteen years earlier, despite his given first name and habit of dressing like a member of a Hell’s Angels chapter. Some say that rather than a vote of confidence in his law enforcement abilities his election was a long overdue expression of admiration for him making all state running back when he played on the Bayou Coteau fighting nutrias.
“He’s on patrol, but I’ll patch you through to him,” the female dispatcher said.
After a few minutes of static, a voice that sounded like its owner needed a laryngeal CAT scan said, “Guidry here. Speak up or shut up.”
Broussard had met Guidry years ago, so after saying again who he was, the old pathologist launched right into the reason for the call. “We’re havin’ a rash of murders over here and it looks like it may have somethin’ to do with the death of my sister, Belle.”
“Didn’t know you had a sister.”
“She died two years before I was born. My folks said she died after bein’ hit by a truck when she was seven.”
“Why’d it take ‘em two more years to have you?”
“Well, you know, I never thought to ask ‘em about that. And they never spoke much about Belle either. Don’t even know any details of the accident, and I was thinkin’ that the sheriff at the time, T. O. Neuville, would be the one I should talk to. He still alive?”
“Sort of. Had a stroke a few years ago and is pretty much an invalid. Lives with his daughter, Connie, who takes care of him.”
“How’s his mental state?”
“I’m guessin’ he’s depressed.”
“You know what I mean.”
“You’d have to ask Connie about that.”
“She married?”
“Divorced, but still uses her husband’s last name; Castille.”
“Wouldn’t happen to have her phone number would you?”
“Ordinarily, at this point I’d explain to you that I’m not a community bulletin board, but I remember when you was in town a few years ago and we shook hands, you had a grip on you that’d make an albino color up. Ain’t many around here can match me on that score. So that buys you my respect an’ the phone number you want. Hold on.”
After about thirty seconds of static, Guidry came back on the line and gave him Connie’s number. He then said, “How come you didn’t ask me if I had Neuville’s files from all his old cases? What you’re lookin’ for might be in there.”
“Figured I’d try Neuville first and if that didn’t work out, come back to you about the files.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t have ‘em . . . lost in a flood from a burst pipe ten years ago.”
“Then why’d you bring it up?”
“Wanted you to know that Neuville was your only chance . . . so you wouldn’t piss it away thinkin’ you had another boat in the weeds.”
“Very considerate of you.”
“It was, wasn’t it? Good luck with whatever the hell you’re doin’.”
Connie Castile’s voice drifted out of Broussard’s phone like dandelion fuzz blowing gently on a summer breeze. After running through the necessary preliminary gab about who he was and the generalities of why he was calling, he got to the point. “Would I be able to ask your father some questions about that over the phone?”
“Do you speak Cajun French?”
“No. Why do you ask?”
“Ever since his stroke that’s the only language my daddy speaks. I can’t translate for you because I only know a few words. Mostly I communicate with him now by simple hand gestures and showing him objects he might want.”
When it came to Cajun French, Broussard had the same problem Connie did, but he knew someone who could help. “Would it be alright if I came to see your father and I brought someone who can translate for me?”
“It’s okay with me, but if daddy doesn’t like either one of you, he won’t cooperate. And I should warn you that even before his stroke, he didn’t like anybody. When were you thinking of coming?”
“If I can get my translator on board, would two or three hours from now be okay?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll call back in a few minutes and let you know whether to expect us.”
It was one thing to be in a restaurant with Grandma O and quite another to be closed up in the same vehicle with her for over two hours, mostly because her personality just wouldn’t fit into a space that small. This made Broussard consider taking Teddy LaBiche with him instead. But Grandma O would surely find out about the whole trip and then be upset that she hadn’t been asked to go. And he didn’t want to hurt her feelings. So the decision was made.
Chapter 40
“Okay, I’ll go,” Grandma O said. “But I can’t fit in one a dose hiccups you drive. We’ll take my truck. An’ I’m drivin’.”
“I should warn you, we have to be likable, or he won’t talk to us,” Broussard said.
There was a pause, then Grandma O said, “You implyin’ dat sometimes I ain’t likable?”
“Just want you to be extra likable when we meet him.”
“Don’ you worry about me. I got tricks I can use on a man. I don’ know what you’re gonna do.”
Twenty minutes later, Grandma O pulled up in front of the morgue in a black Ford F10 4X4. As Broussard climbed in, he thought about how every time he parked one of his T-Birds in a public lot, there was always a mountainous truck like this parked on either side of him blocking his view as he tried to leave. Settling into his seat, his nostrils were filled with the scent of gardenias, Grandma O’s favorite perfume. This was a part of the equation that might have tipped his choice of a translator toward Teddy LaBiche had he remembered to factor it in. But a man who can autopsy a floater when necessary could certainly deal with a gardenia odor no matter how strong.
Grandma O glanced in the side mirror then abruptly pulled into traffic before there was room for her to do so safely, causing the driver behind her to wear out his horn.
“What you suppose he sat on?” She asked, oblivious to the problem.
“Probably just one of those malcontents that wants to get home alive,” Broussard replied.
“I didn’ know you better I’d think dat was a comment on my drivin’ skills.”
If it had been Gatlin behind the wheel, Broussard would have knocked that one into the river, but coming to his senses, he simply said, “I never criticize folks who are doin’ me a favor.”
“Suppose I was takin’ you somewhere to do me a favor?”
“Why am I startin’ to feel like a catfish fillet in one of your skillets?”
“Why you answerin’ my question with another question?”
“Did I?”
Grandma O suddenly let out a cackle that rattled something on the dash. �
��You’re slippery, I’ll give you dat.”
She turned on the radio, filling the cab with Zydeco music. “That station okay for you?”
Speaking truthfully, Broussard said, “It’s my roots. I don’t mind at all.”
They were soon on I-10, heading west, the elevated highway flanked by cypress swamps, scattered clouds hanging low in the sky. A few miles further and the trees gave way to a vast plain of low vegetation surrounding interconnected bayous and lagoons. On the distant left horizon, white smoke billowed from unseen industrial chimneys and joined the clouds as though issuing from some ancient installation laboring to terraform the planet.
The watery plain continued along the highway for miles and miles, an interminable preamble to a view Broussard had seen many times in his life, but now longed to gaze upon again.
Then finally, there it was; the choppy waters of Lake Pontchartrain, which alternated in large swathes between brown and blue, the colors indicating its varying depth. Leaving New Orleans by this route reminded Broussard as it always did, that he lived in a city set apart from the rest of the country by geographical considerations as much as cultural. There, surrounded by the immense watery wilderness, he felt both humbled and special at the same time.
A short while later, as they left the lake and wild plains behind, and trees once again lined the highway, Broussard’s thoughts returned to wondering how his sister, Belle, was involved in the slaughter of so many of his relatives.
Their route took them through Baton Rouge and Lafayette, then down the Southern leg of I-90, Grandma O pushing the F10 over the speed limit most of the way. Even so, they reached the exit for Bayou Coteau with the sun low in the sky. With dusk fast approaching, they traveled the next seven miles accompanied by a saw grass swamp on both sides of the road. Then Broussard saw what he’d been worried about. He threw up his arm and shouted, “Turtle.”
Grandma O gently swerved the truck to miss the animal, came to a stop on the shoulder, and looked at Broussard. “Go on.”
Broussard climbed out of the truck, hustled to the turtle, and picked it up. He carried it across the road and put it down on the edge of the black water lapping at the shoulder. Then he returned to the truck and got back in his seat.
“How’d you know what I wanted?” he asked, hooking up his seatbelt.
Getting underway again, Grandma O said, “Bubba’s been tellin’me for years about you and turtles.”
“He ever say anything about a chipmunk?”
“No.”
“Good.”
Soon the swamp on the left gave way to solid ground and the beginning of a line of ancient twisted live oaks that would continue all the way into town. On Broussard’s side of the car, the swamp persisted until the road divided. There, a small right artery ran under a big sign for Teddy’s alligator farm. From this point on, oaks now lined both sides of the main road.
For the first time since leaving New Orleans, Broussard felt the poignant emotion of returning to his childhood home. Passing an oak with a distinctive bulge on the side of the trunk facing the road, he remembered the day he’d found an almost intact shed skin of a snake hanging from one of the tree’s tortuous lower branches. He’d told the boy with him, Billy Crochet, that the skin belonged to a yellow rat snake. Billy had then spit on the ground and said it was impossible for anybody to know what kind of snake a shed skin came from. Broussard had subsequently found the skin’s owner under a nearby bush. And it was indeed, a yellow rat snake. Over there, Broussard remembered falling out of that tree and breaking his left little finger. Even now, the appendage still wasn’t completely straight.
Minutes later, as the F10 arrived at the quaint town square with all its balconies and wrought iron railings, the antique lantern-style street lights had just come on. At that moment, the superficial memories Broussard’s mind had been using to mask the ones that hurt, melted away.
“If you don’t mind let’s take a moment and go down there,” he said, pointing at one of the streets that radiated away from the square. Sensing his melancholia, Grandma O did as he asked without comment.
The requested detour led them first to a pink-stuccoed church and then, with a prompt from Broussard, under the wrought iron elliptical arched entrance to the town cemetery.
Broussard pointed to one of three possible driving routes into the grounds. “That way.”
Like New Orleans, the water table in this area was too high for dry in-ground burials. So the narrow asphalt ribbon they’d chosen wound through a marble city of the dead. Finally, Broussard said, “Stop here, just for a minute.”
He got out and walked over to an arched crypt with a sleeping lamb perched on a pedestal at the peak. In carved relief across the gable was the name BROUSSARD. Those interred inside were listed in order of their deaths. At the top was his sister Belle, her short life inscribed below her name. His father was next, his name added eighteen years after Belle, when a 3000-pound cypress log rolled off one of his own saw mill trucks and crushed his car. Broussard’s mother was the final name on the entry slab, killed in the same accident as his father, but dying twenty minutes later, just as the ambulance arrived at the hospital.
To one side of the entry slab there was a pedestal meant for flower vases. There being no Broussards left in town, the pedestal had nothing on it. Feeling as empty as that pedestal, Broussard moved down the line of crypts until he came to the one for The Duhon family. He stood for moment thinking about Claude and Olivia and the horrible circumstances of their deaths, which had occurred a few years earlier, when one of his most bizarre cases had reached out from New Orleans and snared them in its grip.
Perhaps it was his parents’ death when he was a kid that pushed him toward forensic pathology as a life’s work, a motivation to learn exactly what happens when someone you love and depend on, is simply gone in a matter of seconds or minutes. Certainly that experience at such a young age would explain the anger he felt toward the homicidal instruments of death. Natural causes . . . it’s right in the name . . . natural. No one is supposed to die at the hands of another. But he also felt anger when bodies came to the morgue because of an accident, especially one caused by negligence or stupidity. In the case of his parents, the chains responsible for safely securing the log on the truck had either been the wrong size or improperly rigged. No blame was ever officially lodged against anyone. But someone was at fault.
Then there was Claude and Olivia, that wasn’t natural, but who was accountable? Some would say they were. But maybe in a sense, he was.
“You okay?”
It was Grandma O standing beside him. Only then did he realize his usually organized mind had been knocked out of alignment by a toxic memory mudslide. This was why even after he retired, he could never return here to live. “I’m fine,” he said. “We better get goin’.”
Chapter 41
Grandma O pulled into the dirt driveway of a cottage almost completely covered with a gargantuan rose bush covered with clusters of little yellow blooms with a color so intense they could clearly be seen even in the advancing dusk.
“Somebody here got a green thumb,” Grandma O said, as she unbuckled her seat belt.
A moment later, in response to Broussard’s finger on the bell, a slim woman with long brown hair and a pleasant face opened the door. Her apparent absence of makeup even though she knew visitors were coming suggested to Broussard that she was a no nonsense woman who cared more about substance than appearance. In validation of that opinion, she took immediate charge of their interaction by offering her hand and saying, “I’m Connie Castille. You must be Dr. Broussard.”
Her hand was warm but rough. “It’s so good of you to allow us to see your father.” Releasing her hand, Broussard then said, “This is my friend . . .” And there he faltered. It seemed odd that he should introduce her as Grandma O to someone neither of them had ever met before. But in all the years he’d known her, he’d never learned her first name. It seemed so ridiculous.
Se
nsing his problem, Grandma O edged Broussard to the side, offered her hand to Connie, and said. “Zenobia Oustellette, but you can call me Grandma O. Everybody else does.”
“Well, you both better come in,” Connie said, stepping aside.
Inside, the décor was like Connie herself, functional and tidy.
“Before I take you in to see him, I should explain that talking to him won’t simply be a matter of translating what he says. His stroke somehow altered the parts of his brain that deal with language. Now, he doesn’t even understand English any more. I’m not sure I made that clear when we spoke earlier. I’ve learned a few simple French phrases so I can take care of him, but I couldn’t help you carry on a conversation. Your questions will also have to be in French. I hope that’s not a problem.”
Broussard looked at Grandma O, who said, “We gonna be fine.”
“He’s also paralyzed from the neck down on his right side,” Connie said. “So he doesn’t shake hands. When we go in, I’ll let you explain why you’re here. Be prepared, you won’t have long to make him like you. ” She motioned for them to follow and they all went to an adjoining room with a hospital bed facing the door.
On that bed was her father, looking right at them with intelligent eyes whose clear blue color Broussard could see even from the doorway. His paralysis didn’t involve his face so there was no drooping, or any other evidence he was ill. He was old and his face was heavily road mapped, but there was still strength in it. Even before they were all inside, the old man said, “L’enfer qui etes-vous?”
Grandma O looked back at Broussard and translated in a whisper. “He say, ‘who da hell are you?’”
Broussard had briefed Grandma O on the general reason for this visit. His plan was for her to introduce them as she saw fit, then he would begin to tell her what to say. She approached the bed and began a fluent cascade of French, speaking in a gentle tone Broussard had never heard before. Soon, he saw Neuville nod his head, apparently agreeing to something.
Grandma O had brought a huge handbag into the house with her. She now put it on the edge of the bed and reached inside. Her hand came out holding a large plastic container, which she placed on the nightstand. Another incursion into her bag produced a plastic spoon and a napkin in a zip top bag. A moment later, she guided the spoon, with a generous helping of whatever was in the container, toward the old fellow’s mouth.
Assassination at Bayou Sauvage Page 22
