Billy Whistler

by Bill Thompson

  Harry Kanter wondered how things had ended with Landry. He searched the web for information about a missing female, but instead he found a sensational story. The well-known Louisiana ghost hunter Landry Drake was in the Vermilion Parish jail for kidnapping.

  Kanter was acquainted with Junior Conreco; he’d had a few cases in Vermilion Parish and found him to be a reasonable guy — not the sharpest pencil but not a bad cop. He didn’t think Landry would be involved in a crime like this, but if Conreco locked him up, there had to be something there.

  Curious about a man he thought he knew, Kanter called the sheriff. He said that he’d worked with Landry and it surprised him to learn he’d been arrested.

  The sheriff said Landry had a dark side. The public saw him as a young investigator who enthralled people with his TV shows. Behind the facade lurked a psychopath, a molester or even a killer, but definitely a kidnapper.

  “Whatever happened down at Asher, he was involved,” Junior confided to his fellow lawman. “We didn’t find where he put the body, but some high-powered lawyer from New Orleans is here talking to him now. I’m hoping he’ll convince his client to make it easy on everybody and come clean. He can lead us to the corpse and we’ll wrap things up.”

  “Do you have a team combing the area where she disappeared?”

  “No need, in my opinion. I’m letting my theory play out first.”

  “Sheriff, you’re making a huge mistake. You’ve already convicted the man who got you involved in the first place, and no one is looking for a girl who may still be alive.”

  “You see it one way; I see it another. You aren’t down here in the trenches.”

  No, but I will be soon, Kanter decided as he hung up. He went to his boss, explained the situation, and got approval.

  State police Troop I in Lafayette covered Vermilion Parish. Kanter called the commander there to explain what he wanted to do. The captain said he’d send a man to Abbeville to await Kanter’s arrival from Baton Rouge.

  Two hours later the two state cops walked into the sheriff’s office in Abbeville. Junior had stepped out, and the dispatcher called him. Kanter asked to talk with Landry Drake while they waited, and the deputy complied without question. The state cops surrendered their weapons and met Landry in a small room while the deputy stood behind them near the door.

  They conversed quietly. Landry had been a friend, but his years of service taught him that some people were chameleons. Landry seemed glad he had come, and Kanter said Junior’s attitude about the case puzzled him.

  “Kidnapping is a crime where we offer our help to the local guys, so here I am. I have to say I never thought it’d be you on the other side of the table.”

  Landry smiled ruefully; it had never crossed his mind either.

  Just then the door burst open, swinging so hard it hit the deputy in the face. Junior stormed in, just as furious as he’d been on the Asher shoreline when he arrested Landry.

  “Get the hell out of here, Kanter! I didn’t call the state for help, and you’re interfering with an ongoing investigation.”

  “I was just explaining to Mr. Drake why I’m here. We assist local authorities on kidnappings. Let’s go to your office and talk.”

  The sheriff fumbled his words. “Maybe it wasn’t a kidnapping. It’s still early in the investigation.”

  Kanter stood. “You called him a kidnapper. I’d prefer not to talk further in front of your prisoner. Let’s go, Sheriff.” He moved toward the door.

  “Goddammit,” Junior muttered. He pointed a finger at Landry. “Before this is over, you’re gonna be sorry you ever set foot in Vermilion Parish.”

  Late that afternoon Lieutenant Kanter and a deputy joined Sheriff Conreco and four of his men to search the area where the girl had disappeared. Kanter had insisted Father Paul come too, since he had witnessed the events.

  Kanter wondered what issues Junior had with Landry. For some reason, his mere presence infuriated the sheriff so much that he’d jailed him on what might be a trumped-up charge while his presumed accomplice the priest was free. If Father Paul had been present when a crime was committed, why didn’t Junior detain him until things were sorted out?

  They planned to search until dusk and return to Abbeville before dark. Things were wrapping up when a deputy shouted, “Over here! I found her!”

  The officer had searched atop an earthen ridge next to a grove of trees. He called out the girl’s name and saw something crouching in the bushes. Startled, it ran away through the trees. Seeing more movement in the tall grass, the cop aimed his weapon at a dirty, disheveled girl who crawled out of a hole in the ridge. As surprised as he, the girl ran to him and cried for help.

  Father Paul ran to her, and she collapsed into his arms, safe at last. Em exonerated both Landry and the priest, and the lawmen searched for the person until dark.

  “A man got me,” she told Junior and Lieutenant Kanter. “I shouldn’t have run away, and he caught me and dragged me into the bushes. If you all hadn’t come, I don’t know what he would have done.”

  The sheriff said, “Let’s get you back to town. I need to get a statement, and then you can go home.”

  Back in Abbeville, the sheriff seated everyone in his conference room and asked a clerk to come in and record the girl’s statement.

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” Kanter said, pointing to the jail cells toward the back. “You’re holding an innocent man back there. You need to cut him loose now.”

  Junior released Landry, who walked to where the others had gathered. As he pulled out a chair, the sheriff said, “Oh no you don’t. Get the hell out of my parish and don’t you ever come back.”

  That was the last straw for Lieutenant Kanter, and he scolded the sheriff like a child in front of everyone. “Dammit, Junior, Landry has every right to be here. Just because you don’t like him nosing around, as you call it, doesn’t mean he can’t do it. You wasted a lot of time today on some issue between you two instead of looking for this girl. What if he’d killed her? That murder would have been on you. Keep your mind on business from now on.”

  Contrite, Junior mumbled that he should have handled things differently, and walked away from the others.

  Em gave a brief statement and said she wanted to go to bed. Father Paul’s and Landry’s cars were at the crawfish farmer’s house, and Lieutenant Kanter offered to drop them off. Once they were in his squad car, they asked if he could take them to Beau Rivage instead. Em needed to sleep; they’d spend the night and pick up the vehicles tomorrow.

  Father Paul called his sister. She’d been waiting for news, and she wept and thanked God Em was safe. She said she would have Em’s bed turned down and ready when they arrived.

  Landry called Cate, who was happy for Em and pleased that at last perhaps he could work in the parish without harassment. He advised he would spend the night with the others at Callie’s and check in tomorrow.

  Kanter asked what the beef was between Landry and the sheriff. Landry truly didn’t know, but he said the local funeral director had also demanded he get out. Junior had also told two others — a court clerk and a boat guide — to stop helping Landry.

  “There’s something they’re trying to keep under wraps,” Landry suggested, and Kanter agreed it sure looked like it. The lieutenant warned him to be careful. He knew from experience Landry wouldn’t let this go, and he also believed there was more trouble for him ahead if he didn’t.

  Junior couldn’t get to sleep that night. Everything was weighing him down. He wasn’t being fair to Landry Drake. The guy was on a mission and he was putting the pieces together. Who cared if the Conclave got blown out of the water? The secrets were becoming more than he wanted to bear. He was tired of hiding things and tired of hounding Landry for no reason at all.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Tucked in bed at Beau Rivage, Em’s mind somehow blocked the terror she’d experienced and gave her nine hours of sleep. She came downstairs at nine, energized after a good n
ight’s sleep and a hot shower. In her white shirt, shorts and running shoes, Father Paul thought she looked like an all-American girl — a far cry from when he first saw her in the confessional.

  She joined Callie, Father Paul and Landry at the breakfast table and announced she had something to tell them. Her statement to the sheriff last night was that the graveyard had scared her and she ran away. A smelly man who walked with a stoop captured her and took her to a cave. He didn’t do anything to her, nor did he speak. He just looked at her. She slept off and on, and each time she awoke he was still there, blocking the cave entrance. Much later she heard voices — men calling her name — and the man ran off just before the deputy found her.

  “That isn’t the real story,” she revealed. “I didn’t want to tell them strangers, but now I can tell you. Billy Whistler took me. He stunk like crazy and he put his nasty hand over my mouth. I got scared and passed out. I thought he wanted to kill me, but he stuck me in that little cave and watched me. I was terrified and finally someone came and he ran off. I lied about him before, but I had to tell you because he’ll keep trying to get me. They sent him. Please help me.”

  Landry asked if she was talking about the elder, and she nodded. He would do anything to bring her back. People couldn’t even discuss leaving, yet she had done it. Had the cult leader sent Billy Whistler? Did he control the creature?

  “Would they hurt you if you returned to New Asher?”

  She nodded. “He’d punish me first, and then he’d kill me to show the others what happens to folks who don’t obey. I’ve seen what he does.”

  “We can protect you, but only if you let us,” Father Paul said. “No more running away. We’re here to help. You must believe us.”

  She wiped away her tears and nodded.

  Landry asked her about the grave marker with the inscription BW 1883. “That’s Billy Whistler’s grave, isn’t it? The dirt looked different because a Strange One was buried there who hadn’t died. Then you saw the marker and ran away. But if you can’t read, how did you understand what was on the marker?”

  “’Cause I know what a B and a W look like. I seen them before and they mean Billy Whistler.”

  “So it wasn’t a Strange One’s grave. It was his.”

  “You don’t understand. He is a Strange One. There’s lots of ’em, like I told you. Billy Whistler’s all bent and his brain don’t work right. He’s a Strange One, but he’s different. Most of the Strange Ones don’t live very long ’cause something’s bad wrong with them, but he’s lived a long time.”

  Landry asked if she’d heard the story of Billy Whistler and how it all began.

  “Sure. Kids learn the story when they’re little. He’s scary and awful, but he’s kind of a hero too. It’s about that night when the bad men burned our town. They was drunk and they killed seven of our people. One of those guys did bad things to a girl. He poked out her eyes and made her have a baby later on. When they all ran away to their boats, our men caught the one who done the things to the girl and hanged him. A Strange One whistled and danced around while the body hung from a tree branch. After that night our folks called the Strange One Billy Whistler ’cause of his whistling. He died in 1883, but like I told you, he didn’t, ’cause they buried him in that grave and he dug himself out. He’s been around ever since.”

  “Where is he today?”

  “He hides out somewhere, maybe in that cave where he took me. He does whatever he wants, I guess, but his big job comes on Remembering Day. Billy Whistler gets to catch a girl and poke her eyes out. Then he kills her. That’s our special remembering for what those men did to us.”

  “Have you … did you see that happen yourself?”

  “Yes,” she answered casually. “I went to that one Remembering Day when I was a little kid. That’s when I saw it.”

  Her revelations stunned them all. Father Paul’s eyes were closed and his lips moved imperceptibly as he uttered a prayer for the victims. When he finished, he raised his head and said to Landry, “Now we understand why girls from Abbeville have disappeared over the years.” He asked Em what happened to the girls’ bodies, and she said Elder Johnson left a few as a reminder of what a bad thing people had done. She couldn’t answer about the others.

  Out of fourteen, three bodies had been found on the riverbank. They were the girls from 1930, 1950 and 2000 — the three Landry had researched at the courthouse.

  Landry felt sorry for Em. She had been raped herself, not by a twisted being called Billy Whistler but by a respected member of the cult who sought to impregnate her. When it didn’t work, a second man tried it, with the same results. Those humiliating, degrading acts were so routine to the Sons of Jehovah that she had mentioned them only to explain why she fled the commune. A barren woman was a liability, and she knew her fate if she stayed.

  Innocent girls were kidnapped and murdered, and Em seemed to accept the brutality as normal acts of a society. Elder Johnson was a sadistic monster, and Landry hoped they weren’t too late to save Em’s mind from the things she had endured.

  Father Paul took her hand in his. “Em, what you’ve seen in your short life is horrifying. Jesus doesn’t want people to hurt each other, and what Elder Johnson has done to your people is a sin. You did a good thing running away, and if I can help it, you’ll never have to face those people again.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The situation in Vermilion Parish was getting out of control, and Landry had to get help. He faced a labyrinth of problems. Em had revealed unbelievable atrocities. Some people went to great lengths to keep secrets, and an ever-growing chance existed that the Sons of Jehovah would capture the girl

  He saw the story — a massive cover-up that began a hundred and forty years ago — but he couldn’t juggle all its parts. He called his boss and asked for a meeting.

  Landry liked Ted, and not only because he was one of Landry’s biggest supporters. The station manager was forty, single, and always struggling with his weight. Ted saw Landry’s life as filled with adventure, and his own as dull and routine. When Landry worked on something exciting, Ted yearned to go out in the field with his ghost hunter. It would never happen, because running a metropolitan TV station, especially one with Landry Drake on the team, left no time for day trips to haunted houses in sleepy Acadian towns. Instead, he lived vicariously through the tales Landry spun about his adventures.

  They met in the conference room and Landry laid out what Em had disclosed. This investigation was headed in a new and potentially dangerous direction because the Sons of Jehovah were neither extinct nor dormant. If Em’s story was true, they still did the same awful tricks they’d been doing for decades.

  Landry made a request that caught Ted by surprise, and he took it up the corporate ladder. He sent a summary of Landry’s investigation to his boss in Chattanooga. Like everything Landry did, the request was bizarre but also exciting, and Ted hoped they’d approve it.

  He wanted to know something simple. Who occupied the graves in the Asher cemetery? The Sons of Jehovah owned the private graveyard, and no records existed in the parish courthouse. He couldn’t just dig the bodies up, so he approached it a different way. Landry would seek a court order to disinter the bodies. Maybe they were the missing Abbeville girls, or disfigured “Strange Ones,” or others the cult leaders killed when they no longer served a purpose. There was only one way to find out.

  The suits in Chattanooga liked the idea and said what Landry wanted would boost ratings. Even if they didn’t get the court order, just going through the motions would generate huge publicity. Channel Nine would run clips on the story as it unfolded — the legal process in Vermilion Parish, the attempt to contact the owners of the cemetery, the cult’s background and so forth — and it would generate interest even if a Bayou Hauntings segment never happened.

  The company’s general counsel told Ted to use local counsel and ensure Landry didn’t break the law. He had been to the site twice, and he’d trespassed on private pro
perty. No more of that, the company’s attorney cautioned, or the reporter might end up in jail for real.

  Ted called the New Orleans attorney and told him about the cemetery near Asher that the Sons of Jehovah owned. He wanted to know what steps to take to exhume bodies there.

  The paralegal assigned to the project found the request curious, but he wasn’t surprised. He’d seen Landry Drake’s shows, and this matter — digging up bodies in an old cemetery — had to be something the investigator was working on.

  Most of the time, however, his curiosity went unsatisfied. He’d do the research, submit a report, and never hear anything, because the story never got aired. He didn’t waste his time wondering what Landry wanted with bodies in an ancient graveyard. Once he started, the research didn’t take long. The law was well established, with plenty of precedent and clearly defined rules to request an exhumation. He gathered the information, a senior partner signed off, and Landry had the research and a legal opinion the next day.

  Channel Nine’s lawyers prepared a brief requesting disinterment on behalf of M Savary and other girls in the cult. The reason was to find out if murders were being committed every ten years as part of a ritual called Remembering Day.

  For obvious reasons, Landry hoped to keep the sheriff out of the process. They would submit their request to the district attorney serving Vermilion Parish or to the state attorney general. If one of them chose to, he would ask a judge for an order. If the judge agreed, the exhumations would happen. If not, Channel Nine had the right to appeal.

  When Landry explained his problems in Abbeville, the lawyers agreed with him that they’d submit to the state first. They would deal with parish officials only if it came to that.

  News travelled fast. Five hours after they filed the brief, the NBC affiliate in Baton Rouge broke the news that a New Orleans TV station sought to open caskets in a ghost town called Asher. The newscaster linked Landry to the story as they ran file footage showing the foundations of Asher’s long-gone buildings.