Wild Man's Curse (Wilds of the Bayou #1)

by Susannah Sandlin

  He checked his messages, stuck a couple of dirty coffee cups in the dishwasher, and shucked off his boots, which set off another round of ankle-biting. “C’mon Hoss, naptime.”

  His coworkers knew about Hoss—rather, they knew he had a dog named Hoss. Gentry hadn’t exactly told them his dog was a pit bull or Rottweiler, but he hadn’t denied their assumptions that a badass agent would have a badass dog.

  “You are a badass, and don’t let anybody say otherwise,” he said, flopping on the bed and rubbing behind the dog’s giant black bat ears when he hopped up and settled on Gentry’s chest. “They’re just jealous of your je ne sais quoi.”

  He’d found the French bulldog puppy abandoned in a drainage ditch in Plaquemines Parish while on patrol one night about five years ago. He’d turned the tiny dog over to the shelter for about twenty minutes, then turned right around and put a claim on him, sucked in by the enormous ears and bulging brown eyes. Now, Hoss was a hefty twenty-pounder and, in New Orleans, had proven quite the chick magnet.

  Gentry’s coworkers in Terrebonne had big hunting dogs, muscular and masculine. He hadn’t shared that his badass pet had legs about four inches long and bore a striking resemblance to Winston Churchill in a black bat costume.

  Hoss was snoring within minutes; Gentry didn’t last much longer. He’d optimistically set his alarm clock for four thirty p.m., which would give him time to check on Ceelie before driving to Warren’s house. He’d wait on his lieutenant, confess everything, and hope to hell he had a job after the conversation ended.

  In reality, he expected to lie awake and spend three hours being chased by ghosts.

  To his surprise, the high-pitched beep of the alarm woke him from a sound, dreamless sleep. Neither he nor Hoss had moved, and they stared at each other and blinked. Gentry was trying to remember what day and time it was; he wasn’t sure what was going through Hoss’s mind. Probably kibble or a new spot to take a leak.

  “Let’s move it, big guy.” Hoss jumped down and Gentry shuffled to the shower. By the time he’d washed off as much grime and guilt as he could, his brain had awakened. He pulled out a clean uniform, fed Hoss, and let the dog wander his backyard kingdom for a few minutes while Gentry wolfed down half a leftover shrimp po-boy.

  He made sure his spare house key was in place under the loose board on the back deck so Mrs. Vallieres could take Hoss on his evening constitutional. Then he climbed back in his truck.

  The sleep had energized his muscles but hadn’t done much to stem the dread of talking to Warren.

  First things first. He drove south through Montegut and slowed down as he passed the drive to Ceelie’s cabin. Her truck was still gone, and nothing looked amiss. No boats in the area.

  He turned around at the first opportunity and called her on his way back toward Houma. Then he’d call Warren to see if he was at home or the office.

  “Hey, game warden.” Ceelie’s voice, husky and sultry, caused a shift in his gut that told him he was in so far over his head with this woman he couldn’t be saved. He barely knew her; if they ever were able to have a normal conversation, they might not even like each other. Plus, she was already halfway out of the parish on her way toward her real life.

  Yeah, he’d keep telling himself that and see when he started believing it.

  “Everything good with you? I’m heading to work.” Just an agent checking on a casual acquaintance. Right.

  “I’m fine. Just about to call you, in fact.” She paused, and over the line Gentry could hear the rattle of the old Chevy. “I learned some interesting things about Tante Eva today, and it might give you some clues. I’m on my way home now.”

  As soon as he talked to Warren and the sheriff, they’d be able to get someone to watch the cabin round the clock, maybe even get the parish to put Ceelie somewhere safe. Hell, she could stay at his house. Hoss liked music.

  No, scratch that thought. Talk about inappropriate. If the parish couldn’t find a place for her, maybe Ceelie could stay with Sinclair and far, far away from him and his ankle-biter.

  “Want to meet for lunch tomorrow? We can compare notes; I learned a few things today too.” He winced; his mouth obviously hadn’t received the leave-the-woman-alone memo. But he did want to hear about Eva, and he had to tell Ceelie about Lang.

  “Or I could cook you breakfast.”

  She was not making it easy to be detached and professional. “Eight too early?”

  Jesus, but he was weak.

  They confirmed plans for the morning and hung up after he’d made her promise twice to keep the doors and windows locked. And if Warren fired him, he’d have plenty of time to stake out the swamp by her house.

  The phone rang again before he had a chance to hit the speed dial to call Warren. His pulse sped up at Tommy Mason’s name on the screen. Was he going to admit Lang was alive? Did Gentry want his brother to be alive?

  “Broussard.”

  “Hey there, baby brother. You and me, we got some lousy timing.” The familiar voice made his heart stop.

  “Lang.” His brother sounded the same. Same drawl. Same attitude. Alive and well.

  Gentry let the truck drift across the center line and had to jerk the wheel to avoid hitting an oncoming car. He pulled the truck into the gravel drive of an abandoned, hurricane-ravaged shell of a house to avoid killing himself or someone else.

  Good God. Despite his gut reaction to Tommy this morning, Gentry had still, deep in his heart, thought Lang was dead, had prayed it was all a mistake. Some people need to be beaten over the head with the truth before they’d believe it; he appeared to be one of them.

  “Guess we need to talk, little brother. I’m guessin’ since you was the one that stopped by Tommy’s house this morning, you ain’t told anybody yet. Maybe you didn’t believe it was me. Maybe you was feeling guilty for what happened three years ago. Mom ever forgive you for murdering me? Heard you got an award for it.”

  Shock gave way to anger at the voice of the brother he’d idolized until they’d gone so far on their separate ways that the gulf was too wide to cross. The brother he’d mourned. “We do need to talk. Name the time.”

  “Tommy’s place. Out back in the garage. Don’t let his old lady see you.” Lang laughed, which sent a flinch of anger across Gentry’s shoulders. He was buzzed on something. Last time they’d been together long enough to have a conversation, Lang had shown up at Gentry’s place in New Orleans, looking for drug money. His devils of choice at that time were coke to get up and H to come down. Who knew what he was into now.

  “When?”

  “Hey, I’m here now, just hanging out, bro. You workin’, or are you getting ready to bang on that sweet little niece of Eva Savoie’s? I might try to get a taste of that myself.”

  If he touched Ceelie, Gentry would have to kill him. Again. And this time, there’d be no coming back for either one of them.

  He swallowed the anger and wrapped his training around him like a cloak. He kept his voice serious, but calm. “I’m just south of Houma. I can be there in thirty minutes. That work?”

  “I guess I don’t have to tell you to come alone, Gent.” Lang’s voice, so much like Gentry’s had been before four years of college and seven years in New Orleans had smoothed out the accent, grew soft. “Just you and me. A conversation between brothers.”

  “I’ll be alone.” Gentry ended the call and sat for a moment, taking deep breaths and thinking. Lying had bought him a little time. He was nowhere near Houma and could be at Tommy’s in ten minutes. But he had to handle this right for a change. Start thinking like a law-enforcement officer and stop thinking with his heart and his dick.

  He called Jena Sinclair’s cell phone, gave her a brief rundown, and asked if she’d go straight to Ceelie’s house and stay there until they heard something. She was coming off a long workday, but he trusted her. More important, he thought Ceelie trusted her. “If you need to tell Ceelie there’s a credible threat to get her to cooperate, that’s okay. I might’ve had m
y doubts before, but this is real.”

  “On my way.”

  “And Red? I owe you.”

  Jena chuckled, but it was strained. “Don’t worry, Broussard. I’m running a tab.”

  Next call: Warren, who answered on the first ring with a gruff, “Doucet. Why’ve you been looking for me?”

  God help him. Gentry took a steadying breath and talked fast, sticking to the facts. How he was sure he’d been mistaken about it being Lang, deciding he should approach Tommy, and ending with the phone call from his not-so-dead brother. The “I’m sorry” at the end of his spiel sounded lame even to him.

  “Save it,” Warren said, and the snap in those two words said worlds. “Where are you?”

  “I’m about ten minutes from the rendezvous.” Five if he drove fast. He swallowed hard and tried again. “I’m sorry, Warren. I should have told you from the get-go.”

  “You damn well should have. Give me Mason’s address.”

  Gentry read it off. “You want me to call the sheriff?”

  “Hell no.” Gentry winced: Warren only cursed when he was really pissed off. “You keep your ass where it is until you see a shitload of deputies coming your way. You take directives from them. You understand me? No more Lone Ranger. I’ll be right behind them.”

  “Yessir.” Gentry ended the call and sat in his truck, feeling like the worm he was. No more than two or three minutes passed before an unmarked black sedan pulled up in front of him, followed by a truck with the TPSO shield emblem on the side. He got out, ready to take grief. He didn’t know the two guys in the sedan, but Adam Meizel exited the SUV.

  “Broussard, what the hell’s going on?” Meizel shook his hand, which Gentry appreciated. It might help the detectives see him more as a toad than a worm. A slight improvement.

  He gave them as brief a version as possible. “We thought Langston Broussard was dead; I still don’t know how he survived, but he did.” Gentry’s head threatened to explode from the pressure building between his temples. How could his own brother have done the things that had been done in that cabin?

  He told his story with his hands holding up the bottom of his shirt, letting one of the deputies strap a wire under his uniform. He tugged the shirt down when it was secure, then took a transmitter disguised as a cell phone so he could communicate if the wire failed.

  “We’ll stay out of sight until he incriminates himself or it goes south,” said the lead detective, who’d introduced himself as John Ramsey. “We haven’t gotten prints on anything; he’s been careful. So get him to talk.”

  Finally, they set out. Gentry pulled onto the highway and cut west to Dulac. His training kicked in now that they were moving. A Zen-like calm settled over him and he gave in to it. His eyes were sharp, his nerves steady. Emotion might drag him under later, but he could do this. Again.

  All he needed for motivation was to think of a cabin filled with blood and the soft lips of a woman he’d helped to put in danger.

  CHAPTER 12

  Ceelie glanced at the plastic sandwich bag lying on the seat as she drove the battered pickup up the long, rutted expanse of Little Caillou Road, aka Highway 56. She’d hoped to be heading home with a clue as to why Tante Eva had been killed.

  She hadn’t expected to come back with family curses, more mysteries, and a bag of blessed chicken bones. Not to mention marching orders to bury Tante Eva’s throwing bones and make this new set her own.

  Ceelie braked to let an alligator mosey across the highway toward Bayou Petit Caillou, which the road hugged as it meandered northward, along with a steady line of raised houses, boat launches, and private fishing piers.

  The number of people living in the bottom portion of Louisiana’s second-largest parish, half of which was composed of water or semisubmerged land, had surprised her. She’d steeled herself to spend the day cruising down and back up a long, isolated road surrounded by water, sawgrass, and sugarcane fields, which is what she remembered from her childhood. There was still plenty of tall grass and cane fields, but also a lot of people living their lives, too stubborn to let erosion and increasingly violent storms run them off their own patch of mud.

  She understood how they felt, only her storm—Tante Eva’s killer—had two legs and doled out a different brand of violence.

  Tomas Assaud also had been a surprise. She’d expected a tiny, wrinkled Chitimacha relic when Joseph Assaud, himself in his forties, took her to meet his grandfather. She’d met Joseph at the church parking lot, then he’d taken her in a boat to Tomas’s raised cabin at the edge of a marsh, just past the Cocodrie water tower.

  Instead of being the shriveled, frail, male equivalent of Tante Eva, Tomas was tall and brown, and looked strong as a Chitimacha warrior should. Only an arthritic hip that slowed his gait and the wide streaks of gray running through his black hair gave away his age.

  The meeting had begun on a chill-inducing note when the old man had greeted her not with a handshake or nod, but by pressing his palm against her forehead. He’d bowed his head as if in prayer, speaking softly: “Vous avez été maudit. Lâche pas, fille de Eva.”

  It had freaked the hell out of her. She’d backed away from him until she ran into Joseph, who’d remained in the doorway. She understood his words: You have been cursed. Do not give up, daughter of Eva.

  “I’m Celestine, Eva’s great-niece.” To make sure he understood, Ceelie added: “Petite-nièce de Eva.”

  A week ago, she’d have sworn that she’d forgotten every shred of Cajun French she’d learned from Tante Eva as a kid, but necessity was scouring off at least the top layer of rust.

  The old man had smiled and approached her again. Trapped by the immovable Joseph, she assumed a rigid stance and waited for another creepy proclamation. This time, however, Tomas hugged her and spoke in his thick, singsong accent. “I know you, child. You don’t remember Nonc Tomas but he remembers you. Eva always said you had the gift.” He stepped back. “Your Tante Eva, she knew her part in the curse would have to be paid for, but . . .” Tears glistened in his black eyes. “So much pain.”

  He turned and slowly walked through another door into a small den. “Come, come.”

  “Go with him; I’m gonna stay here.” Joseph sat on a worn sofa covered with a knitted throw in the traditional Chitimacha colors of black, cream, and brick red. “That’s his ritual room. Follow him on in there, now. Don’t make him wait. He ain’t as healthy as he looks.” That proclamation made, Joseph picked up a copy of the Houma newspaper lying on the coffee table, flapped it a couple of times, and settled back to read.

  Awesome.

  Actually, Ceelie would’ve liked nothing more than to get in Joseph’s boat, haul ass to the pickup, and drive back to the cabin. That would accomplish nothing except to prove her cowardice, though—and get her awfully wet and possibly tangled up with a moccasin or gator. She was here. She’d initiated this meeting. She had to see it through.

  The room had been small, square, and dark. When her eyes had adjusted, she realized the darkness came from all the textiles hanging from floor to ceiling along the walls. Woven rugs. Strips of leather. Beaded squares. Embroidered rectangles that might have once been bits of tablecloths. It was like a room wrapped in an ornate shroud.

  Tomas had settled into a threadbare armchair in one corner. “You look much like her, you know. Like Eva.”

  Ceelie had pulled a chair away from a small table—his throwing table, she’d bet—and tried to exorcise the thought of shrouds from her mind. “Do I? I don’t think I ever saw photos of her when she was my age.”

  With the ice broken, they had talked for more than two hours. He spoke of his father, Joseph, who’d learned the ways of the Chitimacha from his grandfather. About Tante Eva’s grandfather Julien, who’d left Isle de Jean Charles and built the cabin on Whiskey Bayou.

  He also had said it was with Julien that the curse had begun and had passed to Eva’s parents and brother and then to Eva herself.

  “What is this curse?”
Ceelie didn’t know whether to find it comforting or disturbing that it wasn’t just she who’d been cursed but multiple generations of her family. “Who created it?”

  To those questions, Tomas had no answers. He’d told her Eva never spoke of it in details, only whispered of a secret her grandfather had kept, then her parents, and then her. The secret had brought evil into all their lives, but Eva had claimed that when she died, it would be over.

  “I told Eva that the curse might not be hers to end, and only after her death would the fates decide.”

  Judging by the way her aunt had died, and the things that had happened since, Ceelie suspected the curse hadn’t ended at all.

  The visit with the old man had gone smoothly until Ceelie asked about Nonc LeRoy. “Did you know him? Do you know why he left?”

  Tomas made a slashing sign in the air, and Ceelie recognized the warding off of evil—like a Catholic making the sign of the cross, except creepier.

  She waited while the old man recovered, unsure if he’d say more or if their visit was at an end.

  “LeRoy Breaux was not a good man.” Tomas’s voice when he finally did speak was so soft Ceelie had to strain to hear him. “He was un coquin, un voleur. He drove Eva to continue the curse of violence.”

  “I don’t understand.” Ceelie wracked her brain for a translation. “Je ne comprends pas.”

  “He says the man was a rascal and a thief.” Joseph had come to stand in the doorway but wouldn’t enter the room, even when Ceelie offered him the chair. Apparently, one entered the room only at Tomas’s invitation.

  “A thief. What did he steal?” She turned back toward Tomas. “Did he steal from Eva? Did he get in trouble with the law?” Surely the sheriff’s investigators would have discovered it if the man had a record.

  Ceelie continued to ask questions for a while, but Tomas had fallen silent and stayed that way. She wasn’t even sure he heard her anymore. After another fifteen or twenty minutes spent mostly in awkward silence, Joseph announced that it was time to leave.