Jena almost choked on an oversized bite of the peanut butter pie the waitress had just brought. “We didn’t sell it,” she said after her coughing fit subsided. “It was acting so weird, I sent it to Baton Rouge to be examined and autopsied. If we had sold it, all the meat would’ve gone to a local shelter and proceeds into a special aid fund.”
Ray frowned and set down his fork. “It was acting weird how?”
“The gator just sat in a mud puddle in the middle of the road, if you can really call it a road. The woman—Doris Benoit—said she’d called you before.”
“Yeah, but I never saw no gators out there. Just her ugly mutt.”
Yeah, well, even ugly mutts could be lovable, although Chewbacca was a pretty good Ugliest Dog candidate. “It was there this time, just hissing every once in a while. Doris was yelling, jumping around, even poking it with a table leg.” That got a raised eyebrow from Ray and the beginnings of a smile from Ceelie. “Gator just sat there. Didn’t try to fight. Didn’t try to run back to the water even though it had a clear path.”
“You make the call to send it to Baton Rouge or did your high school partner?”
Snarky much? “Mac’s a good agent, and he’s not as young as he looks.” He was only a year older than Jacks, Jena realized, and next to Jackson, Mac Griffin was the soul of maturity.
“Seems like a good enough guy. Hey, you ladies want to go have a drink somewhere? I’d like to hear how the Black Diamond investigation is going.”
“Not me. I gotta get home.” Ceelie gave Jena a questioning look while Ray gave her a semi-leer beneath raised eyebrows. He gave used-car salesmen a bad name.
“How ’bout you, Jena?” He leaned closer, speaking in an exaggerated whisper. “We could go somewhere private. I know you probably got some scars from being shot, but you can’t see a scar in the dark, right?”
The dickwad was offering her a pity fuck in a darkened room?
She smiled. “You’ll never know, will you?” Then she gave him the easy out he didn’t deserve. “Sorry, but my younger brother has just moved in with me, and I told him I’d be back before eleven to help him get settled. Besides, I’m not involved in the drug task force.” Like she’d tell him anything.
“How little is this little brother? Too little to unpack by himself?”
“He’s twenty-four, but not feeling well.” She gave a conspicuous sniffle. “Hope it isn’t contagious. Ceelie, you ready to go?”
They managed to escape the restaurant without further contact, and only after Jena burned rubber pulling her truck out of the parking lot did she let loose a stream of expletives that had Ceelie on the floor laughing.
“Let me guess. You don’t like this guy, right?”
“Of all the condescending, sexist things I’ve heard in my life—and remember I worked patrol for NOPD—this was the worst.”
“You want I should throw da bones for you, sha?” Ceelie slid easily into the swamp patois, and she’d learned a few voodoo spells from her great-aunt Eva. “Put a little curse on dat coonass, him? Take away his ability to get dat thing up?”
Jena laughed. “That man is not worth wasting your mojo on, and I don’t care what he can or can’t get up. But I’ll let you know if I need some mystical intervention.”
Jena kept the tone light until she dropped Ceelie off, but the closer she got to Chauvin, the madder she got. By the time she parked in front of the architectural monstrosity she called home and climbed the front steps, she was ready to punch someone.
Until she saw what looked like an envelope from Terrebonne Parish Waterworks on her doormat, which was the only thing she’d bought for the house so far. The envelope had been weighted down with what looked like a socket wrench, still new and in its packaging with the Ace Hardware price tag. Did it have any significance or was it the note writer’s version of a paperweight?
She read the note, did a slow one eighty to look around the property, unlocked the door, and went inside. After making sure the deadbolt had been thrown and the house was in order, she poured herself a glass of sparkling water with fresh lime juice and settled on her sofa. She read the note another ten or twenty times. What did Cole Ryan know about the drug case? Why would he only talk to her—she wasn’t even involved in the case except for the unexpected connection of the gator.
The gator found near Cole’s house.
She hadn’t felt threatened by Cole Ryan earlier, but Mac had been right outside, along with Doris Benoit and her odd little family.
Another item on the creepy list: somehow, Coleman Ryan had found out where she lived. It wasn’t as if she was in any directories; she hadn’t been here long enough. No one from LDWF would give out her private info. Not directory assistance, even though Dad had installed a landline. The number was unlisted and she hadn’t given it to anyone.
She couldn’t call Cole, but he could’ve called her without showing up at her house.
Maybe he had tried; she hadn’t been able to hear a lot inside the restaurant. She had carried her mobile phone with her, but it had sat on the table next to her plate the whole time. She could’ve been in a stupor from the stories of Ray’s heroics and missed a call.
Which is exactly what had happened. When Jena tugged her phone from her pocket, there was a call from an unknown number with a south-central Louisiana area code, made around eight thirty. Would it have killed the guy to leave a message, if that was even him? Talk about doing things the hard way.
She dialed the number and eventually a young boy answered with a tentative “Hello?”
“Hi, I got a call from this number earlier tonight. Can you tell me where this phone is located?”
The boy’s voice grew muffled as he talked to someone who turned out to be his mother and took the phone. “Ma’am, this is a pay phone outside the Kwik Mart on 55. You must have the wrong number.”
The woman hung up, not realizing she’d told Jena all she needed to know. Cole Ryan had tried to call her; she’d bet on it. Why he’d creep her out by leaving a message at her house instead of on her phone, she had no idea. Not to mention how he’d found out where she lived.
Then again, she knew nothing about this man, did she? Her instincts told her she could trust him, but her instincts were not very trustworthy themselves these days.
She’d be here at five tomorrow to talk to him, but she wasn’t sure she should be alone.
CHAPTER 16
When Mac picked Jena up at 6:00 a.m., she’d been preoccupied and quiet. They’d planned to spend part of the day hiding out in their patrol boat on Bayou Pointe-aux-Chenes, seeing what kind of activity the place was attracting. Then they’d drive up to Houma so they could talk to Don Gateau and Amelia Patout.
“I need to get home by four thirty,” she’d announced when Mac asked if she wanted to hang out with EZ and him after their shift since their stint as full-time partners was ending soon. He admitted he’d miss her. Lieutenant Doucet had finally cleared her for solo patrol next week, so Mac would be back on his own part of the time, with Jena part of the time, and—God help him—would spend a couple of night shifts each week under the silent glare of Paul Billiot. That, he wasn’t looking forward to.
In the meantime, they had their alligator case to figure out. One Jena feared might just intersect the DEA case. She had laid out her theory on the way back from Thibodaux yesterday, but they agreed to keep it quiet unless more evidence piled up. Making the leap from one gator with Black Diamond in its belly to an elaborate system using ill-tempered reptiles as drug mules? That leap was the size of the Grand Canyon. They’d both be laughed out of the division if they came in with that crazy idea and no proof.
They drove to the boat launch in silence and set out with a trolling motor, which was slower than the outboard but also quieter. As they proceeded south down the main bayou, growing closer to the branch that cut off toward Sugarcane Lane, Mac scanned the banks for gator lines.
His heart rate spiked when he finally spotted one in a bank overhu
ng with branches—heavy-duty fishing line attached to a limb, a baseball-sized lump of what looked like rotten chicken hanging from the bottom.
“Look over there.” Mac slowed the boat and pointed at the baited line.
“Damn.” Jena picked up a pair of binoculars and studied the area. “Let’s settle in and watch for a while. Might be a poacher, or might be worse.”
“Sounds good.” Mac maneuvered the nimble mud boat against the opposite bank, hidden from view in either direction. He turned off the motor, used a pole to push the boat as far against the bank as he could, and tied off.
Now they waited.
“If nobody shows up, we should take a closer look at the bait.” Jena kept her voice low. “If the drug traffickers are using gators as a mobile delivery system, it makes sense that their bags of drugs would have to go inside something a gator would want to eat.”
Mac shook his head. “It’s a wild-sounding idea, using gators to deliver drugs. Why wouldn’t the supplier just bring the drugs in by boat and turn them over to the local distributor? You know, like in the real world.”
“Because between us and the Sheriff’s Office and the DEA and the Coast Guard and the State Police, we have every major waterway covered. The only way to get drugs in by water is to come in a minor route.”
There were thousands, literally, of small inlets and waterways coming in from the Gulf and snaking around southern Terrebonne.
“What if the supplier caught the gator somewhere else, fed him the drugs, stuck on a tracking device, and then released him up here?”
Jena nodded. “Exactly. The risk to the supplier is minimal since all he has to do is meet one of the locals somewhere in an isolated spot offshore, hand over the goods, and leave. The local idiot catching the gator-mules only has to use his tracking device and nab the gator, so his risk of getting caught is minimal because even if we caught him, we’d assume he was a poacher.”
“Except that a couple of bags of drugs got caught on treble hooks and the stoned gators’ weird behavior tipped us off.”
Jena raised her binoculars and looked at the bait again. “Which means our rotten chicken over there could be bait for a poacher, or it could be bait for someone looking to trap a gator full of drugs.” She gave Mac a rare smile—at least it was rare these days. “I think it’s a plausible theory. Everybody on the task force is focusing on boats coming in through the major waterways along the coast, not a guy in small bayous trapping gators out of season. But who’s the supplier? Who’s catching the gators? And who’s taking the drugs out of those gators and distributing it?”
Mac shrugged. “That, I don’t know.” But he was going to keep thinking about it.
They sat quietly for a while, watching and waiting—something Wildlife and Fisheries agents did a lot. Waiting for a poacher or illegal hunter to show up. Patrolling, looking for trouble. Mac figured that was true of a lot of law enforcement agencies. It sounded exciting, and it was—about 5 percent of the time.
“So, how’d things go on your dinner with Ceelie last night?” Mac asked.
“It was great until Ray Naquin showed up.” Jena’s expression was that of someone who’d just smelled a bucket of fish guts. “He might be a fine nuisance-gator trapper—just ask him, and he’ll confirm it. But what an absolute sleaze bucket. I should slap you for daring me to go out with him.”
Mac returned the grin. “You didn’t take the dare, so I’m blameless. What’d he do? And how’d you pay him back?”
Jena’s smile faded. “He suggested it would be okay to go someplace private and dark after dinner—you know, because you can’t see scars in the dark.”
Mac clenched his jaw and looked away from the pain that showed on her face. “I might have to beat the crap out of that asshole. Bet Gentry would help me.”
Jena’s voice turned fierce. “I told you that as my friend and my partner. You don’t go blabbing it around, hear me? Or I swear to God I’ll never tell you anything again.”
Mac glanced back at her with surprise. “You consider me a friend? I thought you hated me, like the rest of them.”
“Mac Griffin, stop right there and take that hurt look off your face. You’re gonna make me beat your ass, and don’t think I can’t do it.” Jena’s voice grew stern. “Nobody hates you. People only tease the agents they like; you should know that. Even Paul doesn’t hate you; he knows you’re intimidated by him and he thinks it’s funny. So he pushes your buttons on purpose.”
Mac let that sink in a moment. “No, you’re lying. Paul doesn’t think anything is funny.”
Jena smiled. “Yeah, he does. He’s a nice guy under all that serious silence. And as improbable as it seems, yes, I consider you a friend. You’re a good agent.”
Mac gave a short nod, but inside he was doing a Snoopy dance. He’d come so close to quitting and crawling back to Maine, but damn it, he liked it down here where nothing came easy and people fought and clawed for whatever they had. Maybe there was a chance for him to succeed here after all. He just wanted to fit in.
“Hey, I hear something—not a motor, but water moving.” Jena moved to get a better view from the prow while Mac grabbed his own binoculars. “I think it’s from the south.”
Actually, it turned out to be more from the west, from the bayou outlet that dead-ended at Sugarcane Lane. And Jena was right; this was no motorized boat but a simple pirogue, being propelled by pole by a tall man with long blond hair tied in the back with braids.
“Is that the guy who lives down by our last gator call? Ryan something or other?” Mac had never gotten a visual on the guy, just a description from Jena.
She gave him a squinty-eyed look. “Yes it is.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Stay down and be quiet. I want to see what he does without him knowing we’re here.”
The Ryan guy poled his pirogue around the bend, then took out an oar to propel himself in their direction along the bigger bayou. He had a couple of fishing poles on board, and Mac spotted a life jacket. He didn’t see any alcohol. Those were his automatic responses to seeing a boat, and Ryan had passed those basic tests.
As he got closer, Mac got a better look at the hermit of Sugarcane Lane. The guy was younger than he’d looked from a distance, maybe early thirties, his hair blond, not silver. Great physique if you were interested in male physiques. Mac could be jealous of a six-pack as much as the next guy.
Ryan paddled his boat along slowly, but stopped short at the baited gator line. He sat still in the water, his boat bobbing slowly southward with the light current. He stood up in his pirogue, staying in the center and balancing his weight in the light boat as if he’d done this a lot. And he had his own set of binoculars.
The guy studied the baited line, then sat down and slowly swiveled, using his binoculars to examine the areas all around him. He stopped for a few seconds when his line of sight reached their hiding spot, and Mac held his breath. He shifted his gaze toward Jena without moving and she subtly shook her head: Stay hidden.
After what was probably five seconds but seemed an eternity, the Ryan guy turned his pirogue and rowed back toward the south. He didn’t turn into the inlet toward his house, but kept going.
“You going to tell me why we didn’t stop and ask him about that bait line? At the very least he could be a poacher. Or maybe he’s seen something.” Mac turned toward Jena, who still had her binoculars trained on Ryan’s progress down the bayou.
“I have a meeting with him later today, and I didn’t want to scare him off,” she said. “Let’s wait here for a couple more hours, then we’ll talk to the gator buyers in Houma. If nobody shows up before we leave, we’ll examine the bait and cut the line. Either way, it’ll put somebody out of business today—poacher or drug trafficker.”
The next two hours were boring as hell, and Mac fought to stay awake, much less alert. A few boats with outboards sped past but had either not seen the baited line or not felt the need to stop since the gator hadn’t fed on it yet.
&nbs
p; Finally, they emerged from cover and crossed the bayou, confirming that the bait was not only plain-old rotten chicken, but someone had added an extra dose of rotted something-or-other juice to enhance its stench. It contained no Black Diamond. Just enough nastiness to make Mac glad he hadn’t eaten in a few hours. If he barfed in their fish cooler again, Jena would never let him hear the end of it, friends or not.
He waited until they were back in the truck and on their way to Gateau’s in Houma to ask her the obvious. “Why are you meeting with that Ryan guy today, and who’s your backup?”
“He left a note for me last night while I was at dinner. It was lying on the mat outside my front door.” Jena watched the passing scenery and didn’t look at Mac, which told him she was measuring her words and didn’t want her face to give anything away. “He says he has information on the Black Diamond case but he won’t talk to anyone but me. He wants to talk to me alone.”
Mac let that process for a minute. Maybe half a minute. Maybe ten seconds. “He left a note at your freaking house? How would he know where you live, Sinclair? That’s just one of a dozen reasons not to meet with him, much less alone.”
Jena gave him a brief glance. “Yeah, it bothers me too. I have an unlisted landline number. He called my cell from a pay phone, but didn’t leave a message. Instead, he drove to my house and left a note.”
“So I repeat, who’s your backup?”
“Mac, if he sees another officer there, he won’t talk. I can guarantee you that from my one conversation with him.”
He took a deep breath. She was his senior officer, but this had to be said. “Jena, there’s an easy solution to this. We call the sheriff’s office and tell them this Ryan guy could be a person of interest. Then you’re out of it. He’d never even have to know you had anything to do with it.”
Black Diamond (Wilds of the Bayou Book 2) Page 12
