by Jimmy Fox
“That marcher there, the one pumping the sign about moneychangers in the temple,” Big John continued, “he’s the prime mover of our anti-gambling group—former gambling addict and convicted embezzler. The pro-gambling group giving him dirty looks is headed by a pawnshop owner; now, he expects to get rich from hocked family microwaves. The black man there leading his little flock is a fire-brand preacher who once marched with Dr. King—so he claims; says a casino’ll victimize us poor, powerless black folk, and incidentally take money out of the church till, which buys his fancy cars and clothes. And over on the side, well, that’s our local white supremacist loudmouth; throws his hood into most elections. Wants a reservation for the white people. Gets about twenty votes, mostly his in-laws and cousins—far as I can tell, there’s not a frog hair’s difference between those two groups.”
Murder was the topic of their meeting. Nick felt a bit guilty enjoying Big John’s cutting analysis of the protesters. But the sheriff seemed to appreciate the cathartic value of humor, and Nick, unwinding for the first time after his wild day, didn’t hesitate to laugh along. He suspected, in fact, that putting him at ease was the sheriff ’s intention.
Big John lowered the great bulk of his body into the oversize high-back executive chair behind his desk—the desk of an important man who each day presided over a non-stop assembly line of thick files affecting many lives. “Where were we? Oh, yeah. You were dishing out some pretty powerful accusations. You say you found possible motives—and I stress possible—in the family histories of two upstanding citizens in my jurisdiction: Luevenia Silsby and Nugent Chenerie.”
“They’re both hiding something,” Nick stated with assurance. “I believe I know what it is in each case.”
“Let me see if I got this straight. Miss Luevie is a descendant of the Vulture Cult, the ancient caste in charge of rites for the dead, to see them on to the next world, and so forth. The Vulture Cult wasn’t even originally Katogoula, you’ve discovered, but some tribe called Yaknelousa.”
“Correct,” Nick said.
“But Miss Luevie’s all hung up about this, right? Doesn’t want anyone to know, ’cause she thinks it might bring dishonor on her, her husband, her business, what have you. And she thinks if she scares everybody enough with all these supposedly supernatural doings that the tribe will just pull down the blinds and tell all these meddling outsiders—like you—to skedaddle. That about sum it up for dear Miss Luevie?”
“Perfectly. I have convincing documentary evidence of her family connection to the cult. We found the crucial link in the Tchekalaya Forest cemetery, just before we were attacked. And I have reason to believe she was the one who ambushed me on the stairs.”
“It’s a big leap from throwing a trash can to killing someone. All right, let’s move on to subject number two. Nooj Chenerie.” Big John leaned back, cocking his massive arms behind his head. Nick thought of some huge crossbow shooting the sheriff ’s keen mind across the centuries of the wildlife agent’s heritage. “Nooj holds some twisted allegiance to another tribe altogether. Help me out here.”
“The Quinahoa,” Nick said. “Around two hundred and fifty years ago, the Katogoula, allied with the Yaknelousa, defeated and enslaved the Quinahoa.”
“Nooj is still pissed off about that, is he? So much so that he could be the one running around dressed up like a cougar, taking revenge for the disgrace his extinct people suffered at the hands of the other two tribes, lo those many years back. And his family has a tradition of using poisons to hunt, you say?”
Nick agreed enthusiastically, impressed that the sheriff hadn’t missed a word. “Most of the Quinahoa died in the battle, along with lots of Yaknelousa. Some Quinahoa escaped into the woods, where they plotted a counterattack for a while. The captive Quinahoa were made slaves, but over time they assimilated with the other two tribes to form what the Europeans called the Katogoula Tribe.
“Nooj has Quinahoa and Katogoula ancestors on his paternal and maternal sides,” Nick continued. “We found compelling evidence at the Quinahoa cemetery in the forest. A woman with the last name Madeul is buried there; she was born a Chenerie. There were other Cheneries and a few Bellarmines—his mother’s family—but I didn’t have time to record them. There’s little question both lines of his family had Quinahoa roots; this was a source of pride as well as festering resentment for generations.”
“That’s sure a lot to infer from a poem on a headstone,” Big John observed skeptically.
“A rare public moment of emotional sincerity from Nooj’s family.”
Big John rubbed the back of his neck. “I got to hand it to you, Nick, you make the improbable sound almost convincing. Nooj sure could handle a forestry fire can without incinerating himself; and he and Miss Luevie both know the forest better than most. But here’s where I get a little lost. Why’d either one of them pick Carl Shawe and the Dusongs to kill? And why is Travis Corbett part of this?—he’s not even Katogoula. He was the poor bastard we found speared to a tree at the Indian mounds. You might not remember that, considering the state you were in. The spear didn’t kill him, but it was a different design altogether. Authentic in every detail, but newly made, bigger, like the ones aimed at you and your pretty redhead in the woods. Tommy says these spears were probably flung from a more serious atlatl than the one stolen from his garage closet. Again, Miss Luevie or Nooj could’ve managed that just fine . . . if you’re not just barking at the moon.”
“This is where my facts end and speculation begins,” Nick said. “As a genealogist, I’ve learned to keep those ideas to myself, until I can prove them. A murder investigation has different rules. It’s more than just filling in some empty spaces on a pedigree chart.”
“‘Speculation,’ huh? And here I thought you been makin’ up the whole thing! . . . Just kiddin’ you, man. I have great respect for what you do, this family-tree business. So go ahead, climb out on that limb.”
“I keep coming back to the idea we talked about at Three Sisters Pantry a few weeks ago,” Nick said. “Carl was a black sheep, a loner. The Dusongs were childless. This murderer feels part of the tribe and is making careful decisions about his victims. The Shawe Twins survived their attack, as did their father, Tommy.”
“Maybe our Sacred Cougar saw a chance to send another warning at the burial mounds on the cheap,” Big John suggested, “without killing anybody else. Travis had been dead for weeks, broken neck, and some strange puncture wounds. The neck part of it was an accident, maybe a car wreck or a fall, coroner thinks, but he’s sending the corpse off for more lab work just to be sure. Could be the killer knew about the body buried there, and figured out a way to use that young Chitiko-Tiloasha fool as his messenger of fear to the Katogoula. . . . This warning theory would make sense for Miss Luevie, but what ultimately would Nooj want from the tribe? Is he playing some weird game or is he just going to slowly wipe them out, one by one?”
“Who’s speculating now?” Nick asked wryly. “In genealogy, you go to the original source to get as close to a fact as possible. Someone needs to ask Miss Luevie and Nooj those very questions.”
Big John laughed loud enough to startle the protesters outside into momentary silence. “I ought to reassign some of my detectives to my convict vegetable farm and just hire me a genealogist or two!” He snatched up his phone and ordered a potentially superfluous detective to prepare two search warrants for him to complete. He made another call to a secretary.
Nick, seated in a chair facing the sheriff ’s desk, took the opportunity to survey the office.
Academic and professional diplomas and awards covered a couple of walls. Neat stacks and rows of books and periodicals on tables and shelves around the office spoke of a well-informed student of many disciplines, a man not too proud to learn new things. Near the phone, Nick noticed a popular genealogical paperback primer, the top cover arching up from use. This sheriff was a hands-on guy.
“Now, if I convince a judge to give us search warrants, what do you
expect us to find, exactly?” Big John asked after hanging up the phone.
“Maybe the spear-thrower, a blowgun, a cougar skin . . . hell, I don’t know. You’re the forensic experts, I’m just a genealogist who may have uncovered a motive.” Hawty would second that, Nick thought. “What’s the story on that young man you, uh, apprehended with your front bumper today?”
“The Chitiko-Tiloasha kid? He’s spillin’ all the beans he’s got. Says a woman by the name of Val put him up to the stunt. She’s some kind of manager down at the Bayou Luck Casino who wanted to spook the Katogoula out of opening up their own casino. She been giving him a little of the good thing, you know, to get him wrapped around her finger. Ain’t never met a man who could turn it down. More powerful than dope, and I ain’t lyin’!”
“Val,” Nick said with distaste, probing the tender parts of his ribcage. “You pay big time for thrills with her.”
“So you know Val, do you?”
“Oh, yeah, we’ve met.” Nick explained his short, unhappy friendship with Val and Butch.
“I’ll be chattin’ with Miss Val directly,” Big John said, jotting down something of what Nick had told him. “Apparently, her idea was to capitalize on all the weird stuff happenin’ around here. Sends out young Stu dressed up like a cougar, with some lighter fluid to write an anti-casino billboard from the other world. He makes sure some folks hereabouts see him in his costume.
“But the way he tells it, something went wrong. He’s doing his artistic arson in the grass, looks up, and there’s the real cougar, or spirit, whatever you want to call it, on the burial mounds, doing something God-awful with a body. Travis Corbett, you know? So he takes off and runs smack dab into me—or my car—to be more precise. He swears up and down he had nothin’ to do with the other cougar sightings, the murders, or the fire.”
Big John glanced down at the genealogical book and then grinned slightly, realizing that Nick had seen it. “Why all of a sudden? That’s what puzzles me. How come our killer laid low until now? Fact is, both Miss Luevie and Nooj been your all-star Katogoula.”
“It must have something to do with federal recognition,” Nick said, “the plans for development, all the attention. These events were the psychological trigger. You’ve seen it before, haven’t you, Big John? The famous preacher caught in a hotel room with a hooker; the great doctor who kills his terminal patients with a secret injection; the family-values politician busted in drag in a seamy French Quarter bar; the billionaire climate crusader who turns out to be a colossal polluter in Third World countries. The admired surface behavior is a front for a powerful suppressed desire or compulsion to do the opposite. And it’s always some great life crisis that opens the cage door for the evil twin of the psyche.”
“Reaction formation, as I recall from my psychology courses.”
“The Katogoula believed in an essential duality of creation long before Freud. The good keeps evil in balance, until something—human conflict or an external force like drought or disease—disturbs the balance. You’ll see this idea in their Twins of the Forest myth.”
“Say, you’re not a half-bad profiler, you know that?” Big John said.
“Thanks.”
The phone rang. Big John listened to the caller, smirked, shook his head, and replaced the handset. “I shoulda known. It’s Friday, after five o’clock, and hunting season, to boot. Regular deer season starts tomorrow. Won’t find a judge within fifty miles of this courthouse. They’re all out at their camps. But I’ll keep on it; maybe one of our judicial big shots’ll get his limit early and come on home; somebody’s got to be on call, you would think, right? Well, at least I’ll send young Ray Doyle out to talk to Miss Luevie and Nooj first thing tomorrow.” He glanced over at his holstered pistol on a credenza. “I do believe I’ll go with him myself.”
Nick didn’t wait for the search warrants or the promised visit from the sheriff and his head detective. There was too much at stake. The killer’s evil side was winning the battle. The cougar could strike again at any moment.
After he left the courthouse, he stopped at a gas station. From a pay phone he called the Wildlife and Fisheries toll-free poaching hot-line. In a passable local drawl—he imagined his tongue as a boot stuck in mud—he reported that he’d seen a hunter using live decoys, baiting the water around his Lake Katogoula duck blind, taking pre-season ducks, spotlighting deer, and committing many other infractions he’d found in the official hunting-regulations booklet he’d picked up at the courthouse.
Easy as pulling the fire alarm at his high school. Grinning like the mischievous teenager he once was, he tickled his arthritic MG to life and pointed it toward Three Sisters Pantry.
CHAPTER 33
The squeal of the screen door at Three Sisters Pantry obliterated any notion of a stealthy visit. It didn’t matter. “Shock ’em,” Nick’s detective friend Shelvin Balzar had advised. Nick intended to do just that.
Luevenia stood behind the counter, tallying purchases for two men—three six-packs of beer, a big bag of pork cracklings, cigarettes, lottery tickets. She looked up at Nick. Instantly, her congenial manner drained away. Her pine-bark brown eyes seemed to grow rounder and intensify in color, telegraphing hate and anger so unmistakably that Nick almost turned around and left.
Flustered, she returned her attention to the register and her waiting customers; three times she counted out change incorrectly. The two black men were construction workers, just ending a long day of sweaty, grimy, grueling labor. Yellow hardhats tilted back rakishly on their heads. They nodded at Nick as they left, their expressionless faces showing their fatigue. Nick listened to their company truck drive off through the gravel.
He’d heard there was a “truck stop” going up not far from Three Sisters Pantry. A huge affair, a veritable mini-casino, much too large for the trickle of traffic that heretofore had used the crumbling road. The Bahamian-based company building it—a narcotics outfit, the sheriff suspected but couldn’t yet prove—was betting on an expected invasion of gamblers heading for a future Katogoula casino. The truck stop would hold five times as many video poker machines as diesel pumps. And miraculously, the legislature had found money to resurface and widen the rural highway!
There were no other customers in the store now. The ceiling fans were immobile in the serenity of the fall evening. From the back of the store, plates and pots clattered in the kitchen.
“Help you?” Miss Luevie said, her curt question bristling with animosity. She walked around the counter and past Nick to shut the door against the coolness of the blue dusk.
“That’s what I was hoping,” Nick replied. “It’s up to you.”
“Well, you were hoping wrong,” she said, almost shouting in sudden rage, “because I got nothing to say to you. None of us do. We’ve said it all. So why don’t you leave, like we asked you?”
From the back of the store, the clamor in the kitchen ceased momentarily, and then resumed.
Nick followed the small woman to the counter. Luevenia turned her back and busied herself with straightening cigarette cartons and liquor bottles.
“The tribe hired me to bring the past to life,” Nick said. “I haven’t held up my side of the bargain; in fact, through something I may have done I’ve brought death to the present. Look, this has gone beyond simple genealogical research; I’m still here because it’s personal now. It’s my responsibility to figure this out, to stop the killing. I won’t sleep at night until I do figure it out. Remember, I’m a target, too; I may not have another chance to sleep at night if I can’t get to the bottom of these murders and strange events.”
His rational argument thus presented, he took out the small blue velvet French Bible from his coat pocket and laid it on the well-worn dark wood of the counter.
Luevenia turned. She stared at the book. A visible shudder rippled through her. She involuntarily stepped backward until she made gentle contact with a shelf of bottles. The clinking seemed to snap her out of her initial terror. Her eye
s rose to search Nick’s face, as if trying to detect some malign presence hiding within his skin.
“I know who tried to hurt me,” he said, “the first time, at least. And I know why.”
Her voice was scarcely above a whisper: “Where did you find that Bible? You got no right to it.”
“You can’t hide anything from a good genealogist. That’s what worried you, wasn’t it? That’s why you tried to warn me off, that day at the courthouse? You were there. I talked to the blind snack man. You’d just delivered some baked goods. I don’t think you planned it, though. You were desperate, did a rash thing.”
Luevenia drew a long breath and let it out shakily. She removed her thick glasses and set them on the clean counter. Her artist’s hands trembled as she rubbed her eyes and then smoothed her perfectly placed gray hair all the way back to the bun.
The fierceness in her demeanor had faded by the time she spoke again. “Looks like you’re better at finding secrets than I am at hiding them.”
“Did you kill Carl Shawe, or poison Tommy?”
She looked directly at Nick. “No.”
“You didn’t burn the museum, scare the Shawe twins, murder Travis Corbett, or try to kill Holly and me today?”
“No. I threw that trashcan at you, and I’m sorry for it. That’s all I done in this whole mess.” Her gaze dropped to the Bible again. “But not all I done wrong.”
She was telling the truth. As he often did in his genealogical work, Nick had trusted his instincts in coming here and confronting her. Now he felt justified in his belief in Luevenia’s innocence. The evidence was there on her face to read, as legible as any long-sought document proving with certainty another generation further back into the murky past.
“Miss Luevie, help me catch the murderer. Nobody knows more about the tribe’s history than you do. Knowledge is our best weapon, our atlatl spear to throw at this enemy of the tribe.”
Luevenia walked to the door and turned the “CLOSED” side of the dangling sign toward the front. “Come to the trailer,” she said.
