Bayou Blue

by Raquel Byrnes

  “Now, Riley,” Jake’s voice shook me with its force and my breath caught.

  My alarm turned into aggravation. Who did he think he was dealing with?

  “Don’t yell at me!” I shouted back. “I said I don’t know yet, so just back off.” I poked at him, punctuating my words. “I’m not some local you can intimidate with your growl and your gun, Jake. I’ve had death threats before. I’ve had my office ransacked…I – I…”

  I wasn’t impressing him.

  He watched me with the same expression I suspected he reserved for drunken explanations at a sobriety check.

  “Yes, Riley, your life is all very Watergate,” Jake drawled. He wagged the notebook between us. “This is still obstruction of justice. I guess you don’t believe the same rules apply to you as the people you decide take down? Is that it?”

  Indignant, a wave of heat flared across my cheeks. “This is different, I’m not trying to suppress evidence, I’m trying to bring it to light!”

  “Get much light in there, do you?” Jake motioned with the notebook to my shirt.

  “Stop being dense. I wanted to read it first, that’s all.”

  Irritation flashed across Jakes features. “Dense as we are here in the bayou, we do believe in justice. You’re familiar with that term, aren’t you, Ms. Drake?”

  “Oh, like the kind Carl wanted to dispense?” I shot back.

  Jake wiped his hair with an exasperated sigh. He leaned in, putting his hand on the window behind my head, holding me in place with his deep dark eyes. “Carl knew you were in the room, Riley. If he wanted to kill you, you’d be bleeding into the gravel about now.”

  I realized then how close he was. Just a breath away, I could make out the wisps of gold in his dark hair and the heat that rolled off of him drew me closer. I couldn’t snag a thought. I couldn’t move. I looked at him with fascination and one word came to mind.

  Formidable.

  I don’t know if he noticed my expression, or it occurred to him he was practically on my side of the car, but he shook his head like he needed to clear it and sank back into the driver’s seat.

  I drew in a breath, slowing my heart.

  “What are you really doing here, Riley?” He looked down at the notebook. “You didn’t just come to get Randy’s things.”

  I bit my lip, thinking. I thought about Carl the Car Killer and all the rest of Bayou La Foudre’s population who wanted vengeance for their dead. Loved ones lost at my brother’s hands. Could I trust Jake not to derail my investigation? Did I have a choice?

  “You didn’t want to hear about it last night.”

  Rolling his eyes, he shrugged. “Well I’ll hear about it, now.”

  Taking a breath, I spoke evenly, trying to sound like a reporter and not like a sister. “I – I know you don’t believe me, but I don’t think Randy did it. I don’t think he did it and I think I can prove it.”

  “This notebook all but proves he was crazy enough to do it.”

  I shook my head. “This is…something isn’t right. Randy had problems, sure. He struggled with depression, but this?” I nodded towards the notebook. “I would have seen this, Jake. I would have.”

  Jake ground his jaw.

  I waited for him to yell or argue, but he just considered me silently.

  His eyes lingered on my mouth for a long moment and then he looked away.

  I held my breath, willing him to believe me.

  Finally, he leaned back in his seat, sank down into a slump, and blew out his breath in a slow whoosh.

  “I don’t think it matters so much anymore, Riley.”

  “What?” I almost stuck my finger in my ear to clear it. Had I heard him right? “Of course, it matters!”

  Jake pressed the heel of his hand to his brow and squinted. He looked like he had a headache. “Il est le diable qu'ils connaissent…he’s the devil they know. They won’t want to trade out for someone else. He’s who they blame, Riley. That’s all.”

  I sat up in the seat and shook my head. “No. They’d want the truth. People want the truth.”

  Jake cracked an eye open and looked at me askance. “You’re wrong. People want closure and don’t much care what form it takes.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “No, Riley. You don’t know what you’re doing at all. In fact, I suspect you haven’t the slightest idea what digging into this will cost you.”

  Crossing my arms, I shrugged. “I’m willing to take that chance. Besides, I don’t need your permission to stay in La Foudre. It’s a free country.”

  “Considering I just caught you taking evidence from a crime scene, I’d say your freedom is not such a sure thing, right now.”

  “They released the scene.” I tapped my temple. “It’s not my fault they didn’t look as well as I did. It’s not a crime scene anymore, and I had a court order for Randy’s things.”

  “That order was for his effects released by the FBI, not evidence previously overlooked.”

  “Finders keepers.” I raised an eyebrow.

  Let him come back from that.

  Jake pressed his lips into a straight line. “If I you start poking around, Riley, things are going to get ugly real fast.”

  “I just want to read that sketchbook and maybe visit where my brother died. Where I nearly would have, if it hadn’t been for you.” My voice cracked and my hand flew to my mouth as if I’d cursed. I hated feeling weak, but looking weak? Not the daughter of the Lioness. I turned away and got myself under control before facing Jake again.

  “I need to know one way or another, Jake.” I reached out to the sketchbook.

  Jake’s hand came down over mine, holding it still before he decided to let me take it. “Can’t you just leave things alone? When things settle, you can come back quietly, then.” Even he didn’t look convinced of this argument.

  “Either Randy was a terrorist mastermind, or he wasn’t. The evidence contradicts itself.” I flipped through the sketchbook to the black and red scrawls my brother left behind. I held it up. With as much control as I could gather, I whispered to Jake. “How does someone scribble out madness like this and then go and mix the sensitive chemicals needed for the explosive? How would someone in this state of mind construct the type of device it took to level that building?”

  How do they send letters to their sisters?

  I pushed the thought aside. “Jake?”

  Jake’s eyes traveled along the whirling, dark charcoal figure. “Riley, these drawings might be old.”

  I shook my head and flipped the notebook closed, showing him the price tag from the store. It was the old type of tag punched out by hand taggers. The sticker stated a price and a date in blue ink. “Six days before the explosion.”

  Jake took in a deep breath, resting his forehead on the steering wheel. I barely heard him when he finally spoke. “You have twenty-four hours, Riley.”

  “You won’t regret this, Jake.” I fought the flopping of my stomach and tried to smile reassuringly.

  Jake sat up, started the car, and then looked at me sadly. “Famous last words.”

  5

  The darkening sky spread a river of purple and blue along the horizon casting the landscape in the eerie indigo of twilight. A wavering wind tugged at the long branches of the moss-covered cypress trees. They lumbered back and forth over the swaying grass like old shaggy mammoths.

  Hot air, moist and heavy, crowded in through the window and whirled my hair in its tiny tempest. I stared out at the passing scenery feeling every bit as alien as if I were on another planet. The sights, sounds, and smells of this place offered a strange sort of peace and I found myself drawn into it.

  Jake and I didn’t speak to each other. We were both lost in our own worries. I didn’t know where we were going. I didn’t care as long as it wasn’t the airport.

  The occasional garbled messaged from his police radio was the only interruption of the silence.

  I listened to the bac
k and forth chatter between the dispatch lady, Sheila, and Jake’s three deputies and wondered what it must be like to know your neighbor your whole life.

  San Diego wasn’t like that. I barely knew the people who owned the condos on either side of mine. Southern California’s culture of anonymity felt so different from the family-style of the bayou.

  Jake ignored the call for help with a bar fight between someone named Wanda and her sister, Mary. He glanced at the radio when the dispatcher reported a domestic disturbance, but when she said the assailants were Marty and Alice Dubois, he picked up the handset.

  “Give ‘em an hour, and then send someone out if they’re still going at it.”

  “Sure, Sheriff,” Sheila answered. “I’ll send Rick.”

  I remembered an ancient couple from a few weeks ago. They gave tourists rides through the bayou on fishing boats. “Aren’t the Dubois’ that old couple who run the swamp tours?”

  “Yeah, they’re in their eighties.”

  “What could they be fighting about that’s worth the effort to get out of their rocking chairs?”

  Jake smirked. “Alice thinks Marty ‘makes eyes’ at the women on the tours.”

  “Does he?”

  “Every chance he gets,” Jake said through a grin and I felt pulled into his space.

  “Huh.” Making it through all those years together seemed like impossible odds.

  Most of my relationships end quickly, usually with accusations of impossible expectations of character, but mostly I think that they are intimidated by my family.

  My father faces down water cannons from poaching ships. My mother storms down doors in Harlem. My older brother Raymond, a marine biologist, gives lectures at the World Health Organization. They had expected me to go into law. When I chose English as a major, that raised eyebrows until I settled into a journalism minor. As long as I was serious about free speech, world issues, and seeking the truth, they were happy.

  At least, my mother had once commented, I didn’t waste time writing fiction.

  It’s hard to measure yourself against a family of crusaders and come out feeling good about yourself. I understood that. I lived it every day. That didn’t make Friday nights any less lonely.

  Jake and I settled back into our silence until a call came over about a missing teenager named Dennis.

  Sighing, Jake pulled the handset again. “Yeah, Sheila, this is Ayers. Send Toughie over to Pont Bleu. Dennis hides out under that bridge when his daddy’s on a tear.”

  “Sure Sheriff,” the tinny voice answered back. “Will do.”

  “And Sheila,” Jake ground his jaw before he spoke. “Send someone over to Dennis’s house and haul his daddy in to calm down before we take the kid back. And make sure he’s not…” He looked at me. “Make sure to check his equipment.”

  “OK if I send Rick?”

  “Yeah, that’d be good.”

  “OK.”

  He muttered before hooking the handset back and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.

  I wondered how many times Dennis would perform this blatant cry before someone sent some real help.

  “You just going to let things alone? Dennis’s dad gets out in the morning…then what?”

  “Then he goes to work. We sorta need him there.”

  “Oh, yeah, where’s that?”

  Jake flipped the radio to a talk station and turned the volume up.

  I leaned closer, waited until he caught my eye, and then I knew. “He’s a deputy isn’t he?”

  Jake looked back out the windshield. “One of these days, that curiosity of yours is going to get you killed, Riley.”

  “I just can’t believe you give him a pass just because he’s a deputy.” I sank back into the passenger seat. “Why don’t you—”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jake interrupted. “I—” The steering wheel in Jake’s hands creaked with the force of his grip. “Just…drop it, Riley.”

  He scowled at the windshield.

  I decided to drop it. My elbow ached and I rubbed it, looking at the sky. Rain was coming.

  The darkness grew outside, eating up the landscape as it advanced.

  I reached up and flicked on the car’s interior roof light.

  Jake looked at me, his brow arched. “What’re you doing?”

  “I can’t see.”

  “You don’t need to see anything in here, Riley.”

  I nodded, dismissing his argument. “Where are we going?”

  His gaze flitted to the roof light, but he left it on.

  “You’ll be staying at the Lightning Bug.” He glanced at me sideways. “It’s the only place that’ll take you.”

  The sound of gravel under the tires pulled my attention to a large house set back from the road. White arches and gingerbread woodwork framed beautiful stained-glass windows. They flashed the last slivers of sunlight onto the grass in a kaleidoscope of shapes. A three-story Victorian home wrapped with a large porch sat in a field of tall grass that lashed in the stirring breeze. The swishing noise almost drowned out the gentle tinkling of glass wind chimes hanging over the door.

  A place for honeymoons. A place for love.

  We pulled to a stop under the carved-wood sign that swung from a wrought-iron arch leading into the front garden. Jake grabbed my bags from the car and I hauled my purse over my shoulder. The laptop computer inside my bag shifted as I fought for balance on the gravel.

  Why did no one have sidewalks out here? Was it a law, or something?

  Jake started for the front walk. He didn’t slow his stride and I struggled to keep pace. Jake looked over and lifted the bag from my shoulder.

  I wanted to protest, to point out that I was capable of lugging my own baggage, but the truth was, I felt exhausted.

  “Thanks,” I breathed and then frowned. “Isn’t this the bed and breakfast where the lady’s dog got eaten? I remember reading about it.”

  Jake pushed the door to the lobby and held it open for me. “I hardly judge a Chihuahua to be a dog, Riley. Anyway, I shot that gator last week.”

  “That’s comforting, I guess.”

  “Besides,” He said with a smile that made my heart jump. “Gators are the least of your worries.”

  I turned from him to hide the red in my cheeks and wished he couldn’t make me do that with just a glance.

  What kind of mindless ninny was this southern air turning me into?

  Grumbling, I followed him to a long, polished wood counter at the rear of the parlor. Jake rang the bell near the computer, and I wandered off to inspect the décor.

  An elegant, cheerful room with dangly bead lampshades and deep-colored paintings of ponds in the sunlight, the Lightning Bug Inn sat on the edge of Bayou La Foudre at the end of the last paved road before the swamps. Jake drove me to the edge of town, literally. Any further and I’d be on a raft in the water.

  Someone spoke softly and I turned to see Jake leaning on the counter talking to a young woman with long black hair and perfect teeth. She had a polished, almost country-club vibe. Minimal make-up, gold bangle bracelet, and a crisp, oxford-blue shirt. She frowned at Jake, shook her head quickly, and glanced at me with the kind of disdainful scowl only teenagers can master.

  Jake spoke to her in whispered tones and I wandered next to them chiding myself for only getting a C in French. Picking up every few words, I got the gist.

  Only for one night…as a favor…nowhere else…owe you…

  “Allez, s'il vous plait…go and ask her for me?” Jake nodded towards me and the girl made a face that looked like she smelled something terrible.

  “I’ll go,” she said in a pout. “But you know what she’ll say. She never tells you no.”

  “Thank you, Michelle,” he murmured.

  The girl frowned at me and turned to go upstairs. She glanced down from the landing, flipped her hair, and then stomped the rest of the way up.

  “She’s not a fan, I take it?” I said to Jake.

&n
bsp; “Not really.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “That I needed to stash you here for one night as a favor.” Jake leaned against the counter. “She’s going to ask her mother, the manager.”

  “Why is it that I can understand you, but not most people here when they speak French?”

  “Because the locals speak Cajun,” Jake said. “I don’t.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because my mother was French.”

  I tilted my head to the side. “And your father?”

  “Loved her,” he said and glanced down at me with a half-smile. “So I learned French, not his Cajun.”

  “Jacob Ayers.” A woman, raven-haired like her daughter, appeared at the top of the stairs.

  The look on her face told me there was something there, if not now, then in their past.

  “Sheriff,” she said with a lilting accent. “You’re in the mood to be in my debt, again?”

  She spotted me and smiled. Large green eyes, ivory skin, and the pouty lips of a French woman. She was beautiful.

  I hated her immediately on principle.

  “I don’t think I have a choice, Citrine.” Jake nodded to me. “This is Riley Drake.”

  “I know who she is, Jacob. She was in the newspaper.” Citrine nodded to me and her smile faltered. “I’m sorry for your loss, Miss Drake.”

  Taken by surprise with her unexpected compassion, my mind fritzed-out.

  “Erm…I – I yeah...” I grinned like a dummy.

  Jake regarded me with a raised eyebrow. “She, uh…she and I need a place to talk. And all the rooms in town are—”

  “Je sais…I know,” Citrine nodded. “Taken.”

  No longer trying to hide my fatigue, I put my elbows on the counter and held my head in my hands. “Trouble seems to follow me, just so you know. My advice to you is to say no.”

  I liked her tinkling laugh. She reached over and put a hand on mine. “Good thing I never take advice. At least, not anymore.”

  Her gaze flitted to Jake’s, and he cleared his throat.

  “Jacob,” Citrine continued. “It’s Michelle. I think she is again sneaking out of her window to go…” She shrugged and worry filled her features. “I don’t know where. I cannot prove it, but the flowerbed, and her eyes, they are tired. Like she is out all night.”