Crimson Bayou

by C. L. Bevill

•

  Caraby skidded into the parking lot of the Blessed Heart School without killing himself in the process. He didn’t want to think what would happen to him if he’d unwittingly allowed John Henry’s girlfriend to be killed by his inaction. In all the years he’d known the older man, he hadn’t ever seen him so wrapped up in a female. John Henry had dated before. But Mignon Thibeaux had the sheriff tied up in so many knots that Caraby thought the older man would never get himself free. It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

  But she’s so damn nosy, he thought furiously. Riling everyone up. Asking questions and asking them again. Determined to know the answers in spite of everything else. The Creoles were livid. He’d never seen them in such a state. They were certain that Tomas was being dragooned into Angola. They treated Caraby with more than their normal snobbish disregard. It was as if he had become the ultimate villain. The murder of a young woman had become unimportant to some of them in the fight over who was to blame.

  Unexpectedly, Caraby was reminded of what it was like to have loyalty to one’s kith and kin. Mignon Thibeaux knew explicitly what it was like to have none of it, and Caraby had turned his back on what he considered their dogged determination to alienate everything that was not right in their personal universe. He had been prompted by innate biases in his pursuit of Tomas Clovis, and the realization had shocked him.

  Upon arriving at the school, the first thing he saw was Mignon Thibeaux’s SUV. All four tires were flat. The school’s bus was gone, and no one else was apparent. Compared to the previous times he had been at the school, it was a morgue. Not even a breeze stirred the pine branches above him, and the absence of movement gave him the worst kind of feeling.

  One hand reached for the microphone on his police radio. He called it in and then asked to be connected with Ruby Wingo. Ruby came on the line with her usual saccharine tone. “You want something else, Mr. Caraby?”

  “Interrupt the parish commissioner’s meeting, Ruby,” he said. “Tell John Henry I’m at Blessed Heart, and he needs to be here, too.” His terrifyingly rigid pitch cut through any protests that she would have made. She knew immediately that it was urgent.

  When Caraby went through the courtyard he heard a gunshot in the distance and clenched his jaw shut. Through the front door of the school, he saw a skinny girl with a huge cast on her leg crawling down the hallway, then stop. She was frozen in place with her eyes staring at the open door. When she saw that it was Caraby, she began to cry copiously.

  •

  Movement was sluggish at best. She crossed a dozen bayous at the briskest pace imaginable under the circumstances and headed in what she hoped was a straight line. Mignon didn’t know how Linda planned to follow her. As soon as she began to wade through the deeper waters, it didn’t seem as though the younger woman would have a path to trace. Oh, for a boat, or a bulletproof vest, she thought. But the truth was simple. If she didn’t elude Linda, then no one was going to do it for her.

  There was only the fleeting knowledge that Linda was loath to kill Mignon until she discovered where the remainder of the rhymes was located. If the teenager had found them at the farmhouse, then all of this would have been avoided. It was obvious that Linda didn’t want other people to know that she had written them. Both teenagers, Dara and Linda, had written jump rope rhymes. Both of them were Creoles stranded in a Catholic foster home for girls. But where Dara had been basically honorable and determined to do the best for herself and who she loved, Linda was only interested in advancing herself at any cost.

  Acceptance at a prestigious school like Stanford was a coup for Blessed Heart, another child’s success to brag about to bring in the bigger donors. That in itself was not a bad thing, Mignon knew, but what if that girl had a secret? The secret was her bigoted nature, something that was well documented. That in itself was not something that would raise red flags. There was no law that could change human nature or jam its most terrible inclinations deep beneath the surface of the mind.

  But, Mignon thought, but, oh, could it give the people at Stanford a second thought about giving a Creole girl from Louisiana a scholarship. Everyone knew about Linda’s hard work and achievement. Dara had stumbled onto her stash of rhymes, along with the letter to Father William, and Caraby’s insurance card. Like the situation with Sister Helena, Dara must have decided that Linda might be able to do something for her even if it was only to give her cousin vocal support. But Linda wanted her possessions back. She had wanted them back badly enough to kill Dara.

  Linda ultimately decided that that must have been her best recourse and strangled the other girl. Then she’d systematically covered her tracks. Dara’s body wasn’t meant to be found. Then Linda would have had time to search for the rhymes or to convince Tomas somehow to give them up.

  All in the name of protecting her own future? It was Mignon’s best guess without the girl herself confirming the story, and for some reason, namely the gun in her teenage hands, she didn’t want to talk with Linda at the moment.

  All around her the bayou had gone silent. The birds had stopped singing as Mignon made her way through a waist-deep pool of black water. She nervously scanned the area around her expecting a shot in the back or something to take a bite out of her.

  Wearing only dress slacks that were submerged now in the bayou and a thin silk blouse, Mignon was shivering. The temperature was in the sixties outside, but the water was cooler, and it was leaching the warmth from her flesh. She needed to get out of the water.

  A flock of snowy white egrets burst out of the treetop above her and made Mignon flinch. She had disturbed them, and they were announcing to one and all that an intruder was passing near them. She might as well have set off a flare in the dead of night.

  The bloodcurdling voice that was so unnaturally calm called to her. Linda’s voice was only yards away, her body concealed by the cypress trees and overflowing brush that grew so lushly in the bayous. “Miss Thibeaux,” she said loudly. “I know right where you are. If you simply tell me where the rhymes are, then I’ll let you walk away.”

  There was a note in Linda’s voice that made Mignon wonder if the younger woman was really aware of what she was suggesting. She didn’t know that Mignon had called Caraby and sown the seeds of doubt in his mind about the one girl that he had received a complaint about. There was no uncertainty in Mignon’s mind that Linda had been the one. It was the only thing that made sense. A black girl had complained about Linda and then vanished. Like Dara was supposed to have vanished. Mignon didn’t doubt that the girl was out here somewhere.

  Crawling up on a little dry spit of land, Mignon cast her gaze around her. She didn’t know how far she’d come but only that they were a considerable distance away from the school. If Mignon wasn’t being stalked by a psychopathic teenager, then she wasn’t altogether sure that she could find her way back to the school. She was utterly lost.

  Another flock of birds exploded out of the brush a distance away, and Mignon realized with dread that Linda was far from giving up. The only thing that Mignon could hope for was that she’d missed Sharla hidden under the bunk in the deepest shadows. Carrying the pillows and blankets formed into a body-like shape might have fooled the girl from a distance.

  If Mignon told Linda that the rhymes were now in the St. Germaine Sheriff’s Department’s custody, then Mignon could kiss her butt goodbye because Linda was going to use that gun to shoot a large hole in Mignon.

  Mignon scrambled through the brush intent on escape. Snakes and alligators were beginning to sound very good to her.

  •

  John Henry found Caraby comforting Sharla Adams as she sat in the front seat of his unmarked parish car. Caraby was standing next to the open door and talking softly to the child. John Henry had seen the thirteen-year-old twice before. The first time was when he’d gotten a call from her distraught neighbor. The girl was screaming like someone had been shoving pins in her eyes. Instead, it was the child’s father, drunker than a skunk, and proselytizing
about judgment day with a bloody sledgehammer in his hand. The second time was when he’d visited her in the hospital. Presently, Sharla was crying again, but she outwardly didn’t appear injured.

  As John Henry got out of the Bronco and rushed over, Sharla cried out, “Sheriff! Sheriff! Linda Terrebonne done hurt Miz Harper and Miz Thibeaux ran off ‘cause she got a gun, and she went to the church but ain’t no one else here! Linda shot at her, and I think she’s gonna kill her, just like my daddy wanted to kill me!” The sentence was said in a rapid expression of equal amounts of anguish and terror. Then she dissolved into bone-wrenching sobs while Caraby gracelessly patted her head.

  John Henry’s blood froze. It was what he’d feared. Caraby said over Sharla’s sobs, “I’ve called an ambulance for Mrs. Harper, but there’s no sign of anyone else here. I heard a gunshot earlier, but I don’t know where Linda Terrebonne or Miss Thibeaux is located.” Caraby’s dark head dipped to look briefly at Sharla, who was wrapped around his waist. “She said earlier that she thought Mignon was trying to lead Linda away from her in order to protect her. Sharla was trying to get to the phone in the cafeteria by crawling. The rest of the lines have been cut.”

  “Did you look for Mignon?” John Henry said tersely.

  Caraby shook his head. “I couldn’t leave her alone.” His head jerked toward Sharla.

  “I know that. You stay here and wait for back-up,” John Henry said. “Did she say which way they went?”

  “Toward the chapel,” Caraby said grimly. “Be careful, John Henry.”

  John Henry had already turned aside and was loping toward the chapel around the back of the school. His handgun was out of its holster and in his hand, pointed at the ground as he ran. But other than a scrap of fabric that was stained with blood, he couldn’t find any sign of Mignon or Linda Terrebonne.

  Chapter Thirty–one

  Thursday, March 20th

  Baron Samadi, don’t take me, take that boy behind the tree;

  He stole sugar, I stole tea, please don’t take me.

  He don’t believe in the old way, I practice every day;

  Baron Samadi, don’t take me, take the one behind the tree.

  - Children’s jump rope rhyme

  Mignon returned reluctantly to the cold bayou waters and ended up dunking herself twice. She was drenched from head to toe in brackish water and chilled. Her face was scratched by branches that had slapped her face in her flight from Linda. Without a watch, Mignon had no idea how long she’d been out here. From her isolated experience of running from a murderer who was out to murder her as well, she knew that time could expand itself so that it seemed as though hours had passed instead of minutes.

  Linda had called out again, trying to persuade Mignon to tell her where the rhymes were to be found. But Mignon didn’t want to give up her position to the younger woman. It occurred to her to lie to the girl, but the outcome was ultimately going to be the same. Linda didn’t dare let her live, not at this point. But as each minute passed, the situation was becoming moot. People came and went at Blessed Heart School all the time. From adoptive parents to social workers to volunteers, the place was rarely devoid of people. Today would have been no exception but for the fact that the field trip was taking them all day to Baton Rouge. Someone would come, and the police would be alerted. Linda would be found out.

  Gail Harper had said that Father William was due back soon. Father William wouldn’t protect Linda. Mignon didn’t know how she knew that, but he didn’t dare shield a murderer, even if that meant losing the school. It was part and parcel of who he was.

  Mignon stepped into a deep hole within the water and went under. She came up sputtering. The splashing seemed as loud as cannon fire, and she winced with the thought of it. A splash off to her right had her head spinning in that direction, and she saw a small alligator, no more than four feet in length, spill off a muddy bank and into the water. Mignon held her breath. Abruptly, she realized that she had disturbed the gator, and it was going to find some safer place to soak up the sun’s rays. It was afraid of her.

  She found her footing again, but then her bare foot sank into the murk of the bayou. As she lurched toward a dry piece of land, Mignon saw out into the bayou. There was one of the red markers that indicated a deeper channel for the larger boats to use. Wherever she was, it was close to a waterway that people used. The problem was that Mignon didn’t know which way to go; behind her was Linda Terrebonne, coolly terrifying with a gun and a willingness to use it, in front of her was the unknown.

  Mignon struggled onto dry land and surged through the thick brush, disregarding the sharp thorns that stabbed at her flesh as she passed through.

  •

  Linda followed Mignon’s path like a professional. Her father had taught her well. Not only had he passed on knot-making skills, but he’d made sure that his only daughter could hunt as well as any male on his side of the family. She could bring down a large alligator. She could shoot nutria and squirrel if she were so inclined. She could fish, and she could track the wild pigs that roamed in the bayous with the best of them. It was the way that it had always been with bayou families. Hunting licenses didn’t mean anything to the poverty-stricken families that lived only to exist. They did what they needed to do to provide for their children.

  Linda’s father, she remembered, had been proud of her for her hunting skills. But at age twelve he had already been arranging for her to marry another Creole boy as soon as she turned sixteen. Even that young, her plans had already been firm in her mind. The boating accident wasn’t hard to arrange. It was only a simple matter of placing ignition wires into the gas tank and connecting them. The next time her father and mother had gone out in their most prized property, a decade-old power boat, it had blown up. The coroner had pronounced it an accident.

  But their legacy had been that no one had been willing to take Linda into their already-full families. Consequently, Linda had become a part of Blessed Heart School’s family. She realized the advantages of the school and ensured that she stayed there. Potentially adoptive families were dissuaded by her actions with them privately. She used the above- average schooling to learn as much as she could. She was proud that she had almost lost her Louisiana accent and the wording that marked her as one of the bayou families with little to no education.

  The only problem with the school was all of the Gullah girls there. They didn’t know their places. They didn’t know that Linda was the one who was to be admired and to be copied. They had their own way of looking at things that showed how backwards they were, all because of their African blood. It didn’t matter to Linda that the same blood ran in her veins because she had overcome it. She was better than they were. She was better than all of them. Dara had learned that the hard way, and it was only a matter of swinging the circumstances the right way with Mignon Thibeaux to guarantee that Linda’s secrets were maintained.

  Although the day was later than she’d foreseen, it was only a matter of time before she found the older woman and persuaded her to tell her the location of her rightful belongings.

  Linda skirted a deep bayou and found the deep marks that Mignon had made dragging herself out of the water. The teenager realized that Mignon wasn’t having an easy time of it. The woman had been away from Louisiana too long. She had immersed herself in the richer culture that her profession and lifestyle encouraged, and now she was paying the price.

  The trail was clear and Linda followed, anticipation twinkling brightly in her eyes.

  •

  John Henry was arranging for the St. Germaine Search and Rescue Team to come to Blessed Heart School. It was something that he had done one time too many times in regard to Mignon. Gail Harper had been evacuated with Sharla in an ambulance. Caraby was on his own cell phone talking to the man who used bloodhounds to find criminals, often escapees from Angola and Huntsville.

  Three deputies had searched the grounds for signs of Linda Terrebonne and Mignon Thibeaux. Other than what John Henry
had already found, there was nothing. Two hours had already passed, and they hadn’t even heard a whisper of an unnatural noise from the bayous.

  The insidious fear that had permeated John Henry’s body was starting to feel like an impenetrable ice floe that nothing would ever break apart. All the issues that were driving Mignon and him apart seemed pointless and futile at that moment. Nothing mattered except ensuring that she was safe.

  Caraby disconnected the phone. “He’ll be here in an hour.”

  John Henry’s lips flattened into a grim line. He wanted to yell that the man with the bloodhounds should be there in ten minutes, but he was being ridiculous. It would take him time to load up his hounds and get them ready for a search then safely transport the valuable animals. He mutely looked out at the forest and wondered if she were alive or dead.

  Father William was escorted by a deputy to where John Henry was anxiously waiting. “Sheriff,” the priest said urgently. “What in the name of St. Peter is going on here? Your deputies wouldn’t let me down the road, so— ”

  Caraby interrupted him. “Do you have a gun at the school, father?”

  “A gun,” Father William repeated numbly. “I saw the ambulance, but no one would tell me what happened.”

  “Do you?” Caraby insisted.

  Father William’s mouth opened and then John Henry turned around. The rage on the sheriff’s face was unmistakable. “Answer him,” he said, and it was all he could do to keep his voice level.

  “I keep a deer rifle in my office,” Father William said. “It’s locked in one of the closets.”

  “The closet was left open,” Caraby confirmed softly to John Henry. “What was it? A thirty ought six?”

  Father William nodded. “Yes. A Winchester. But who would have taken it?”

  “Have you had other problems with Linda Terrebonne?” Caraby asked coldly. “Problems you neglected to mention to us, either the first time I came here about her or during the course of the Honore investigation?”