Blood in the Lake

by Anne L. Simon

Mom came to my rescue. “I’m afraid we need to steal Mandy and get her cleaned up a bit before those meds kick in and she passes out cold.”

  I hesitated at the door to the hall and looked back at Tom. His arms hung at his sides as limp as two wet towels.

  “We’ll talk tomorrow,” I said.

  * * *

  I woke up in the morning to the sound of Mom tiptoeing into my bedroom. The bedside clock read almost ten. I couldn’t remember when I’d slept so late.

  “Hello there, my girl. How’re you feeling?”

  “Stiff and sore, and I can’t say I had sweet dreams.” I stretched and felt one monster cramp seize my left calf.

  “They sent you home with pain pills in case you might need ‘em. Can I get you one?”

  “No, thanks. But a good strong cup of coffee would be very welcome. And water. I feel I’ve been crossing the Sahara.”

  “I’ll leave you yesterday’s The Daily Iberian, Hon. I just got around to looking at it. There’s an article about the jury selection beginning on Monday. Tom was here earlier, but he had to leave for a meeting with Mr. Strait. He wanted to come into your room to see you, but I only let him take a peek. I assured him you were going to be fine. The poor guy is pretty upset. He said he’d be back as soon as the meeting finished.” Mom glanced at her watch. “Long meeting. That was over two hours ago.”

  Mom’s strong coffee helped clear my fuzzy head. I felt better.

  I read the article in the newspaper but didn’t like it much. When called by the reporter, Tom had refused to comment, which left the field to the defense. Sarah took full advantage. Tom would have a lot of work to do when he questioned potential jurors for Remmy’s trial. Many of them would have read the article and considered the possibility there could have been another dude. Damn. Maybe there was.

  Even after all I’d been through, the case stayed in my mind.

  Mom had a different take. “You don’t have to worry about the article. I find it amazing how few people read the paper, or read anything, these days.”

  Mom helped me dress and look a little more presentable, which I wanted to do before seeing Tom. I got settled on the living room sofa to wait. Dad kept asking me what was going on, but I couldn’t tell him. I didn’t know.

  As it turned out, I had plenty of time. Tom didn’t arrive until after one. And right out of the box he had surprising news.

  “The trial is being continued.”

  “What?” Mom and I said at the same time.

  “Well, first off, Deuce gave us a report about his meeting with Skipper Domingue. When pressed to remember the conversation he overheard in the bunkhouse, Domingue thought one of the men might have had a drawl, as he called it. In view of what Taddy told us about the man he ran into on the path to Jefferson House, that puts us in possession of investigatory evidence we’ll be needing to disclose to the defense. Then another shoe dropped. Yesterday a tool pusher coming in from seven days offshore couldn’t find his vehicle on the Diamond Offshore remote lot. When the sheriff’s men did a thorough search of the premises, and ran the info on the twenty-some white trucks parked there, they found a five-year-old Toyota pickup with a Tennessee plate registered to one Michael Brown. Their conclusion? Sometime in the past week someone stole the worker’s truck, another white pickup of course, left the Toyota in its place, and headed out. Best guess? Mickey Brown. Unfortunately, with fresh wheels, now he could be anywhere.

  “If that wasn’t enough big news for one day, Buddy surfaced—you know he’s been missing for 48 hours—and went out to ask cousin Dudley what he knew of Remmy Richard’s pals. Dudley babbled a bunch of nonsense, but in the process spilled out a good dozen names we’ll have to run down. With all that, and the possibility of triggering double jeopardy if we go forward with the trial and then have to stop, I had to accept the situation. Continuance.”

  “So you made the call?” I asked.

  Tom shrugged his shoulders, and smiled. “I guess you could say I did, but when Mr. Strait listed the considerations, I knew what I had to do.”

  I had the picture. Smart man, that Mr. Strait.

  Tom continued. “I called Sarah and she came right in. She was ecstatic. Together we informed Judge Bonin we’d be filing a joint motion to continue the trial. I won’t repeat the words the judge used in reaction to that news.”

  “How about Buddy and Deuce. How are they taking it?” I asked.

  “The detectives understood right away, but it took a good hour for Mr. Strait to get the sheriff to calm down. He was all gassed up and ready to roll for Monday’s performance before the jurors. Damn guy. He actually said he’d already had his dress uniform cleaned! I had a little more than that invested in proceeding.”

  Tom turned to Mom. “And now to our victims. Mr. Strait is going to call all your family members to come to a meeting at five o’clock this afternoon. He and Sheriff Landry will appear together, and I’ll be there as well. I expect your brothers and sisters will be very disappointed, but we really have no alternative. There are enough questions about this case to require any ethically responsible prosecutor to blow the whistle. We need to get to the bottom of any new information before we can go to trial.”

  Dad shook his head. “One thing you certainly got right, Tom. This whole business is going to be a long haul. I get what you’re saying about continuing the trial—too many questions—but the man scaring the dickens out of Taddy, and responsible for what happened to Mandy yesterday evening, is still at large.”

  I didn’t want to tell Dad my thought. Sarah may have been right all along. The man was out there, all right, and he wasn’t just trying to scare us. He was a real killer.

  Tom read my mind. “Every member of your family is going to have security now. Every one.”

  Yeah. Lot of good that does.

  Mom left to call Dora and tell her not to get on a plane to Louisiana. Tom had more information to give us.

  “I didn’t know about this until this morning, but for some time Agent Taylor has had an FBI profiler working on the search for Mickey Brown.”

  “Really? The FBI has the resources, don’t they? So what does he think?” I asked.

  “She. A PhD psychologist. She thinks Mickey Brown is a sociopath.”

  “Bingo! That’s what I thought. Delinquency, animal torture, charmer who gets but can’t keep jobs. But the way I understand it, a sociopath isn’t necessarily a killer.”

  “Right. Not necessarily, but there’s a lot to know about this guy and little of it good.”

  Dad had the next question for Tom. “Does the profiler think he’s really dangerous, or is he just trying to scare the wits out of us?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  Tom was stalling. If Mickey Brown really did kill PawPaw and beat the hell out of Mrs. Falgout, even if it happened months ago in one drug-induced interval, we had reason to be scared. This guy had nothing to lose. My turn for a question. “One thing makes no sense to me, Tom. Why does Mickey Brown stick around? He must know everyone’s looking for him. If he has a car and access to money from his drug business, I’d think he’d just head for the hills.”

  “Agent Taylor tackled that. He says Mickey Brown is not some poor schmuck who sells on a corner outside the projects or on the strip in Lafayette. His theory is that Brown is the drug cartel’s go-to man in this area, and they aren’t going to let him leave. You can’t fool around with the guys who control the life. Remember what happened to Deuce’s confidential informant? And the FBI also has an alternate theory; this area is where Brown has access to drugs. He doesn’t want to leave his supply.”

  Maybe I suffered from the after-effects of yesterday’s ordeal, but I had trouble seeing the picture. Was it because we had Remmy Richard on the eve of trial for the murder of PawPaw but he really hadn’t done it?

  “Dora’s happy to waste her plane ticket,” Mom announced when she returned. “So what about Remuald Richard, Tom? Do you think he’s just someone who got caught up in something much bi
gger than he could understand? Is his so-called confession no more than an admission that he supplied information, and maybe a car, to Mickey Brown and then felt responsible for what happened afterwards?”

  “He’s no angel, Mrs. Aguillard. He was there for Mrs. Falgout, set her up and either beat her himself or watched her get beaten up time after time. He’s going to have to answer for that. As for what happened to your father, he was involved in some way. We have to get to the bottom of all this before we proceed to trial. That’s a prosecutor’s professional responsibility.”

  “OK, so where do you go from here?”

  “Priority one is finding Mickey Brown. The profiler believes he’s probably still in the area. After that we tackle the legal consequences.”

  Good old Mom turned us away from these worries. “So Mandy, do you want to come with me to the meeting this afternoon and witness your Uncle Ti have the tantrum of the decade?”

  “Not on your life. Surely I’m entitled to be excused.”

  Tom leaned forward on the sofa. I could tell he had more to say, but his sideways glance at Mom gave away his reluctance to talk to me with her in the room. Mom picked up on this right away.

  “I’m going to fix a sandwich for Mandy, Tom. Is your name in the pot?”

  “Thank you, but no. I need to get back to the office to dictate the motion to continue. I’ll be seeing you later on this afternoon.”

  Mom disappeared into the kitchen. Tom didn’t get up. He stayed seated, holding my hand.

  “Mandy, I’ve been a total fool, and I know it. I’ve never been so scared for anyone as I was for you when Deuce called me last night. If anything had happened to you...”

  I squeezed Tom’s hand. “Go do what you have to do, Tom. We can talk later. Maybe tomorrow.”

  He brushed his lips across the top of my hand and left.

  * * *

  Saturday morning I awoke to a buzz of conversation on the other side of my bedroom wall. I started to swing my feet over the side of the bed. A wave of nausea hit me. I had a way to go before being OK. I ached all the way down my back.

  “Mom,” I called. “Can you give me a hand?”

  No response. My robe lay on the foot of the bed where she had placed it after supper. Wobbling on the crutches, I made it to the bathroom, then out the bedroom door to see what was going on. I found Dad, Mom, Uncle Bub, and Aunt Tut staring at the TV screen.

  “What’s so riveting about The Price is Right, guys?” I asked.

  Dad jumped up to help me. “We were just about to get you up.” He made a place for me on the sofa. “Detective Washington sent word the TV had cameras on someone threatening to jump off the Whiskey River Bridge. He said we should tune in. Wait! Here it comes.”

  The television screen showed a live feed, the camera playing on a large concrete structure. I watched a roadway take shape in the picture. Green metal struts crossed underneath. On one strut, I could make out the figure of a man balanced on his left foot, his right hand grasping another metal strut over his head. A gaping void opened beneath him.

  The voice of the announcer came through.

  This is Martin Newman signing off from the Whiskey River Bridge in the Atchafalaya Basin. We now return to regular programming. We will have our next live update at the top of the hour.

  Dad slapped his hand on his thigh. “Damn. We missed it.”

  “Tell me what’s going on.”

  “We don’t know, dear. Elnora from the sheriff’s office called and told us to turn on the TV to channel 10, Eyewitness News. They had a camera on a jumper on the Whiskey River Bridge, and Detective Washington thought the guy might be Mickey Brown. She said Detective Aymond was on his way out there also.”

  Mickey Brown? Maybe he might just drop into the treacherous current, into the swift waterway that led straight to the Gulf. If he did, he’d never be heard from again. Now that would be a fine solution.

  “Has anyone heard from Tom this morning?” I asked.

  “Yes, sorry. Slipped my mind. He called and said he’s running down some information and would be by later.”

  I pulled my phone out of the pocket of my robe and called him. He didn’t pick up.

  Mom got up and looked out the front door. She reported we still had our officers on duty. We sat staring at the screen for the next hour. At last the live feed came on again.

  Martin Newman, Eyewitness News, on location on I-10, at the Whiskey River Bridge. We are live on the scene. As you can see, the situation here is as it was an hour ago. To recap for those of you who have just tuned in, before eight o’clock this morning, our camera crew was returning from assignment in Baton Rouge. They spotted a man—now identified by law enforcement officers as Michael Brown of Nashville, Tennessee—clinging to a girder beneath the bridge that crosses the Whiskey River branch of the Atchafalaya River. We have remained at the scene, bringing you hourly live reports.

  A shudder ran through me. “Mom. Who is that I see there? Is it Tom?”

  Mom stood up and peered more closely at the screen. “Tom? I think it is.”

  The announcer continued.

  Westbound travel has been reduced to one lane, backing up traffic from Baton Rouge all the way to Highway 415. Here at the bridge, we see various vehicles positioned to facilitate a rescue of the individual perched below. Rescue vessels from the Iberville Parish Sheriff’s Office have taken up positions below us, on the right bank of the river, poised to head out into the fast moving current. Wait. Now I see a deputy of the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office lying on the roadway of the bridge, directly over the location of the man beneath him. The deputy is on his stomach, hanging over the edge, tethered by ropes to prevent him from slipping. He’s talking to the individual below.

  I stood up and moved closer to the screen, and gasped. “That’s Deuce, Mom.”

  “God, yes. It’s Deuce.”

  “And that’s Tom standing next to him,” I said.

  “I think so. Hush. Let’s hear this.”

  I felt seasick just peering at the figure below the roadway. “Is the guy—Mickey Brown, I guess—swaying like that? He’s gonna fall.”

  Dad corrected us. “It’s mostly the camera swaying. From the angle of the picture, I figure the camera is on a boom hanging over the water.”

  I sat down so I wouldn’t lose my balance. “My God. Look at Deuce! He’s gesturing with both hands. God I hope those ropes are secure. Wait, he’s backing off. The deputies seem to be lowering some kind of contraption over the edge, down to where the man is.”

  It appears that the deputies are trying to convince the man under the bridge to take hold of a basket-like device so they can raise him back up to the roadway. The man is waving them off. Apparently he has refused the effort at rescue. Deputy Washington is placing an instrument on his belt and returning to his position on the roadway, leaning over the edge.

  We saw the reporter consult with another individual at his side.

  We have just been informed that Deputy Washington is going over the edge. He has asked for a recording device so he can preserve whatever this man has to say.

  The announcer tipped his head, apparently listening to the bug in his ear.

  We appear to be settling in for a long wait, ladies and gentlemen. We will return to our regular programming, but stay tuned. We will interrupt at any time we have developments from the scene.

  “Damnit! Why can’t they just let us watch? Even if you aren’t a part of this, it’s surely better theater than All My Children!” Dad got up and went to the kitchen for a glass of water. I felt hot. Sweat gathered under my arms.

  “Speaking of children, where’s Taddy?” Mom asked.

  Dad answered. “It’s OK. He’s in his room playing a video game. I shouldn’t feel this way, I know, and I wouldn’t want Taddy to hear me say this, but I’d be perfectly happy if they’d back off and let the guy fall into the river. It isn’t as if the deputies took a Hippocratic oath, or anything.”

  My read, it was on
ly a matter of time before that happened anyway. If the guy wouldn’t take help, the way he was hanging, he was gonna drop. The Whiskey River had the deepest channel in the whole basin. The current was incredible.

  Fifteen minutes later, the live feed came on again.

  Ladies and gentlemen. We are again on the scene at the Whiskey River Bridge. A man tentatively identified as Mickey Brown of Nashville, Tennessee, is hanging beneath the roadway, a good hundred and fifty feet above the swiftly moving river below. Detective Deuce Washington of the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office has been trying to persuade the man to accept help—to grasp a basket hanging just a few inches from his free hand. The man has apparently refused to do so. But we have a new development, a new situation developing. Another Iberia Parish deputy sheriff has arrived on the scene. He is speaking with Deputy Washington in what appears to be a heated discussion.

  “My God! Look at that!” An Iberville Parish deputy was fitting a harness of some kind around the newly-arrived deputy’s waist. Deuce was gesturing, trying to grab the harness from him. The newly arrived deputy was clearly Buddy Aymond.

  Ladies and gentlemen, it appears the newly arrived deputy is taking the harness from Deputy Washington and going over the edge attempting to rescue the man below. He is insisting that Detective Washington think of his family. Yes, the second Iberia Parish deputy, tentatively identified as Buddy Aymond, intends to go after Michael Brown himself.

  The reporter kept talking, but we weren’t listening. In stunned silence we watched everything change. Buddy gave up trying to get into the harness. He grabbed a rope tied onto a pillar on the roadway and swung himself over the edge, dangled for a few moments, and then found footing on the same strut as Mickey Brown, two feet from him.

  Dad stood up and grabbed the sides of his head. “What on Earth? Is Buddy crazy? He isn’t tied. He could fall.”