by O’Neil De Noux
What John Raven Beau didn’t expect when he stepped into the Abbeville Central Fire Station, a temporary morgue for Hurricane Rita victims, was to find the place empty. It was after one a.m., Monday, September 26, 2005, and still stifling hot outside. Less than forty-eight hours earlier Rita had slammed into southwest Louisiana. The witch was bigger than Katrina and more powerful.
Beau stopped just in the doorway and dropped his travel bag. Like his bag, Beau was decked out in black—T-shirt, tactical pants with too many pockets, and army boots, his nine-millimeter Beretta in a black canvas holster on his gun belt. The only color came from the gold star-and-crescent badge clipped to the front of his belt.
“Hello. Hello! Anyone here?”
“Just a minute,” a feminine voice called from the back of the station house.
Beau spotted two stainless steel autopsy tables in the center of the wide room and a row of green canvas tarps suspended by wires on the right side of the room. A blonde woman in a baby blue jogging suit came from behind one of the tarps, saw him and started his way.
“Everyone’s eating,” she said. “Everyone that’s not out rescuing people.” As she got closer, Beau saw her face was made up like a model, her hair perfectly styled, the jogging suit looking tailored for her trim figure. She looked familiar, like he’d seen her someplace before.
“I’m with the press,” she said. “Who are you?”
“NOPD Homicide. I’m looking for the pathologist.”
The woman had blue eyes and was pretty in a perky sort of way. She looked a few years younger than Beau’s thirty.
“Wait. Did you say New Orleans Police Homicide Division?”
“That’s right.”
“Are you Beau?”
He nodded slowly.
Her face lit up with a broad smile as she stepped closer and extended her hand to shake. “I’m Stephanie Cipresso from American Police magazine, in L.A. You’re the man I’m looking for.”
Another tarp opened and a smallish, thickset man in a T-shirt and jeans came out. The woman turned and said, “Jeff, it’s him. Beau!” The man reached back through the tarp and pulled out a camera.
“Did the sheriff tell you?” The woman had turned back to Beau now.
“Tell me what?”
“We’re doing a story on you.”
It was getting weirder by the second. Beau had rushed from New Orleans to do the same job he’d been doing since Katrina hit less than a month ago, checking bodies to see if any were homicide victims before they were sent to the morgue.
“We’re doing a story on you,” the woman repeated.
“Why aren’t y’all out with the rescuers, doing that story?”
“That’s so last month. We did that with Katrina. I have extra copies of the issue. We called it ‘First Responders: First on the Scene, First to Save Lives.’ This time it’s a cop’s story we want and you’re the man.”
Beau was too tired to argue. Working sixteen, eighteen hours a day for weeks, he was also beat up from traveling a hundred and sixty miles in a National Guard humvee, dodging debris on the highways. He pointed to his travel bag.
“Where can I stow this?”
“Cubicle on the end is open.”
Beau picked up his bag and went into the last cubicle, the cameraman following and taking pictures of him. In the cubicle Beau found an army cot, a small plastic dresser with a mirror atop, and a canvas chair.
When he went back out he asked, “Did the pathologist go rescuing people too?”
“No,” Stephanie answered. “He went to eat. You hungry?” She kept smiling.
“I could eat.”
“Come on. I’ll show you to the cafeteria. We just got the electricity back.” She led the way with a bounce in her step.
The camera flashed again and Beau told the cameraman, “Jeff, right? Enough.” One more flash and Beau stepped closer. “I’m serious.”
They crossed the fire station parking lot, easing between ambulances, National Guard humvees, police cars from a host of north Louisiana parishes, as well as Arkansas, Tennessee, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. The fire station’s two fire engines were out there too.
The middle school next door was filled with evacuees. In the cafeteria a couple dozen emergency personnel, cops, and National Guardsmen were eating. Tables with large stainless steel coffeepots lined one wall, along with boxes of military MREs, those tasteless “meals ready to eat.”
Beau spotted a familiar, stocky man stand up and wave him forward. He hadn’t seen Vermilion Parish Sheriff J.C. Legendre since high school. Legendre was the football team’s defensive MVP, a lethal linebacker that hit like a Mack truck. Beau was the Offensive MVP of the Holy Ghost Riders, the rambling quarterback who’d won a scholarship to LSU. That was a dozen years ago, but Legendre looked the same, except for the mustache.
“Good to see you.” Legendre hugged Beau. He pulled back and Beau could see the lines on his face now. “It’s bad. We’ve lost just about everything south of 14. Cameron Parish is gone. Most of my people are out on the water, plucking survivors. I’m meeting the governor at eight a.m.” Legendre checked his watch. “She’s like a deer caught in headlights.”
Legendre seemed to notice Stephanie and her cameraman now. “Ah, you’ve met.” He raised a finger to the woman and pulled Beau aside. “I’m glad you’re here to handle the bodies. Got some more homicide cops coming in from Chicago and Seattle, but we need the press, and I want you to do me a solid. Baffle this woman with bullshit. Get her to think we know what the hell we’re doing.”
Beau looked into his old friend’s weary eyes. Here was the top law enforcement officer of Vermilion Parish, a man who could easily be overwhelmed by this catastrophe called Rita that had just destroyed most of his jurisdiction, taking the time to ask a favor.
“Whatever you need, J.C.”
“I know you loathe the media,” said the sheriff. “I appreciate it.”
So the stories about Beau, hammered in the New Orleans media, had reached out here.
“But,” Beau added as the sheriff pulled away, “I need to check on my uncle.”
“Absolutely.” The sheriff pointed to a thin man sipping a Diet Coke. “That’s Earl, my chief of detectives. He’s got the master list of people we got at the shelters.”
The sheriff moved back to Stephanie and her cameraman, while Beau went to talk with the Chief of Detectives.
After a pasty meal of MRE meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and macaroni and cheese, Beau led Stephanie and Jeff back through the emergency vehicles.
Stephanie said, “What’s that smell?”
“The swamp,” Beau answered. “It’s usually not this strong in town.”
“The sheriff tells me you’re not from Abbeville, originally.”
He shook his head. “Little village called Cannes Bruleé. Probably gone now.”
“Who were you asking about? A relative?”
“My uncle and my dog. They haven’t been found yet.”
“They didn’t evacuate?”
Beau shrugged and stepped back into the fire station to find the pathologist standing between the two autopsy tables while three men in three different police uniforms lifted a body up on one of the tables. The pathologist, in green scrubs, pulled on gloves as he introduced himself to Beau.
Dr. Ryan Myers, an army lieutenant colonel, came from Fort Polk, where the army had set up a morgue for Rita victims. The temporary morgue at St. Gabriel was still taking in Katrina bodies, and no one wanted to mix up the dead from the separate hurricanes. Myers told Beau this was only the fourth body brought out so far, two previous had come from coffins unearthed by Rita.
“Seems most of the people evacuated beforehand. A Katrina lesson.”
This body looked fresh. A middle-aged woman in a green T-shirt and black shorts, she was covered in mud.
“Looks like a drowning,” Dr. Myers said as he pulled on rubber gloves. Beau moved closer as Stephanie and Jeff backed away and retreated into their cubicles as the post mortem exam began.
It took a good forty-five minutes before Myers turned to Beau and said, “No obvious signs of foul play.” Which meant, if she wasn’t poisoned, she probably wasn’t murdered.
As the body was packed up to ship to Fort Polk for an autopsy, Beau went for some coffee. Stephanie, who’d peeked out of her cubicle several times, joined him at the coffeepot.
“Is this some sort of espresso?” she asked after taking a sip.
“It’s Cajun coffee, petit noir. Drink it black or with plenty sugar,” Beau said. “Pretty strong, huh?”
“That woman wasn’t murdered, was she?” Stephanie had pulled out a narrow reporter’s notebook.
“Drowned.”
“That’s what you’re here for, right? The sheriff says you’re here to make sure no murder victim slips by.”
“Something like that.” Beau noticed several canvas chairs and went to sit. Stephanie followed.
“So what now?” she asked.
Beau raised his coffee. “Finish this. Get some shut-eye. Got a lot to do tomorrow.”
“Sleep after drinking this?” She put her coffee down. “What do you mean, got a lot to do tomorrow?”
“Look for my uncle and my Catahoula.” He had to explain a Catahoula, unofficial state dog of Louisiana, about the mottled coat, the pale blue eyes.
“Like a retriever?”
“Something like that.” Beau stood and stretched, tossed his empty Styrofoam cup into a trash can, and headed for his cubicle. He waved over his shoulder. “See ya’ around.”
“I want to go with you tomorrow.”
Beau turned and backpeddled, thinking of the sheriff’s request, and said, “Why not?”
Too caffeined up to sleep, Stephanie went into her cubicle to start her notes.
* * * *
Stephanie Cipresso had done her research, gathering information gleaned from news reports out of New Orleans and from Beau’s lieutenant and the sheriff here in Vermilion Parish. John Raven Beau had killed six men in the line of duty, all “good shootings,” but that was an aberration, even in violence-ridden New Orleans.
She learned Beau’s Cajun father (deceased) had met his mother, a full-blooded Sioux, at a USO show; he married her and brought her to southwest Louisiana, to Vermilion Bay. Beau was born there and went to Catholic schools all the way up to Holy Ghost High. What she hadn’t expected was for him to be so tall. Six two at least.
Stephanie was careful to spell Vermilion properly, with one L, the original French spelling of the word and the way it was spelled on Louisiana maps. She fished through her notes to make sure she still had the stuff on Beau’s football career, including his short stint at LSU, where he’d injured his knee. She went on to describe the body of the drowned victim and how Beau handled it.
Stephanie checked her Rita notes—how the storm had laid waste to everything along the gulf from Vermilion Bay to Sabine Pass, Texas. She’d heard the big town of Lake Charles was six feet underwater and Cameron Parish was all but wiped away.
Hurricane Rita was a Category 5 storm; its central pressure fell to the third lowest in the Atlantic Basin as it closed toward the Louisiana coastline. That was when Stephanie and Jeff boarded a plane to fly to Baton Rouge, arriving just before the storm, which was so large its tentacles (Stephanie likened the bands of clouds that made a hurricane a spinning top to the tentacles of a hideous octopus) covered the entire shoreline of Louisiana from Pearl River east of New Orleans to the Sabine River at the Texas border and beyond. Bigger than Katrina, if you could believe it, Rita had a much higher tidal surge.
After a quick shower in the unisex bathroom—she blocked the door with a bench—Stephanie read herself to sleep. She’d found a pamphlet among the reading material the National Guard had dropped on one of the tables. The Great Upheaval explained the forced deportation of the Acadians from Canada in 1755. The British, who won the French and Indian War, deported the French residents of Acadia, modern Nova Scotia, and parts of New Brunswick and Maine, separating families even. Most of those people came to French Louisiana and called themselves Cajuns. Stephanie had read Longfellow’s Evangeline in high school, the sad story of lost love among the Acadians during the great upheaval.
Stephanie didn’t realize she’d fallen asleep until a noise woke her just before five a.m. She peeked out her cubicle and saw Beau and the pathologist standing over another body lying on an autopsy table.
* * * *
This was a murder victim. The pathologist identified the bruises on her face and neck as ante-mortem along with telltale strangulation marks on her throat. “Of course an autopsy will have to verify my findings,” Dr. Myers added. He’d used a hollow rod to probe her lungs—no water. “She didn’t drown.”
Her blouse was twisted, pasted into a tight bundle across her chest, exposing a flat, white belly. Her jeans were also twisted by the water, wrung around her legs. Her reddish brown hair lay like a spider’s nest atop her head. Her eyes were open, their color faded in the milky look of death. Her tongue protruded from her mouth, lips swollen and colorless. Beau remembered those lips, remembered watching as she spoke and wondering what it would be like to kiss them.
He saw Stephanie Cipresso come out of her cubicle. She wore bright yellow jogging shorts and a cutoff T-shirt that exposed her middriff. Her hair was a little unruly, but she’d made up her face already. She carried her reporter’s notebook.
“See the marks on her throat,” Beau explained. “Those are thumb marks on her windpipe and finger marks along in here.” The strangler had used his bare hands. Beau turned back to Dr. Myers. “Her name was Anna du Mortier.” Beau spelled it out for the pathologist who put it in his notes. “She was related to the Marquis de Lafayette.” Beau looked back at Stephanie. “You took American History in California, didn’t you?”
“I know who he was.”
“Well, this woman taught me English my senior year at Holy Ghost. It was her first year as a teacher. She was probably twenty-one, pretty as hell and sweet, and now look at her.” Beau reached over and touched the victim’s right hand. Cold. Wet. He wanted that momentary connection, needed it as his mind talked to Anna, telling her he would get who did this. As absolute as the sun rising outside. He’d get her killer.
Dr. Myers scraped the victim’s fingernails, coming up with dirt and debris, perhaps even some skin from her attacker. A twig was embedded between two of her fingers. A closer search of Anna’s clothes surfaced two oak leaves and a piece of a branch.
“The branch is live oak,” Beau said. “See how it’s almost black.”
He turned and went out to talk with the two sheriff’s deputies who’d found her. They wore khaki uniforms with brown shoulder epaulets and dark brown pants. He wrote their names on his notepad: Harrel and Huf. They had to be rookies; both barely looked twenty-one. Beau felt Stephanie move up next to him as the men explained they were flagged down by a man named Smith across from Holy Ghost school in Cannes Bruleé. Holy Ghost was the only building left standing in the entire village. The man Smith was sitting on a patch of high ground next to a huge tree. It was then they noticed the woman’s body floating in the water about fifty feet away.
“Where is this Smith?” Beau asked.
“Cafeteria for the moment.”
“Can you point him out to me?”
The men headed across the parking lot, and Stephanie ran back into the fire station.
Smith was a big man, tall and rotund. He wore clean hospital scrubs and was working on his second MRE, some sort of ham-and-cheese thing.
“I’m Detective Beau, you have any ID on you?”
Smith shook his head and shoveled down a bite.
“What’s your full name?”
“Joachim Samuel Smith. Date of birth: twelve twelve nineteen seventy-five.” He pronounced his first name Joe-akim.
“You from around here?”
“Iowa originally. Been here a couple years. Miracle to be alive.”
Beau pulled up a chair, straddled it, put his notepad on the table. “What’d you do for a living?”
“Grass cutter for the town. Cannes.”
“Why didn’t you evacuate?”
“I did. Caught a ride in a pickup, only it broke down. Probably still on the side of the road. Well, maybe not with the high water. Walked back to town and went to Holy Ghost, figuring nothing would bring her down and it didn’t. Only instead of staying in the big building, I stayed in the utility building, where they kept the lawn mower gear. There was a bed inside.”
Huf brought Beau a fresh cup of coffee.
Smith took another bite and talked with his mouth full. “When the water came, I thought I could make it to the big building but got washed away. If it wasn’t for the tree, I’d a drowned.”
“Tree?”
“The one they found me under. The water drew me up into the branches and I hung on.” The man’s arms were badly scratched and a couple of gouges decorated his pockmarked face. There were bruises on both hands.
Beau caught sight of Stephanie and Jeff hurrying in. She’d changed into khaki pants and a dark green blouse and had managed to fix her hair in only a few minutes. Jeff carried his camera.
“The pickup driver. What happened to him, or was it a her?”
“Him. He headed up the road on foot.”
“The dead woman. Did you see her before they pulled her out of the water?”
Smith shook his head and shoved another spoonful into his mouth.
“You cut the school grass?”
“Yeah.”
“So you’d seen her before, right? At the school.”
Smith shook his head again.
“Where do you live?”
“Used to live in a little apartment on the back side of Perry’s Café, but the building’s gone. Whole damn town’s gone.” Smith shook his head harder.
“How long you been in Cannes Bruleé?”
“Told’ya. Two years.” Smith finished his meal and looked at Huf. “Hey, you said a doctor was gonna check me out.”
As the deputies started to lead Smith away, Beau asked where they were taking him.
“We’re using the gym for a shelter.”
Beau nodded to Huf to stay behind. When Smith and Harrel were out of earshot, Beau asked Huf, “Any way to run this guy, check for a criminal record?”
Huf said, “The state police has an emergency headquarters, a Winnebago thing parked behind the courthouse. I’ll run him for you.” Beau jotted the information on a separate sheet of paper and passed it to Huf.
Stephanie asked, “What’s that all about?”
“The man’s lying. Cut grass for two years and never saw Anna. Besides, anyone gives a cop his name and date of birth has been handled by the police before.”
Stephanie jotted furiously in her notebook.
A smallish man moved up, said, “I’m the vice principal of Holy Ghost. Someone just said y’all found one of our teachers. Alive, I hope.”
His name was William Summers and had been at Holy Ghost six years. A soft-looking man with premature jowls, his eyes filled when Beau told him Anna du Mortier was pulled from the water.
“I told her not to go back,” Summers managed to say before breaking down. Beau led him to a chair. It took a while to get the story out. Apparently Anna had packed up her stuff and had come up to Abbeville, but she returned to Cannes to pick up her savings bonds. “Said they were in a crawl space above a closet.”
“Where did she live?”
“Second Street. Little white house with a green roof.”
“That’s not near Holy Ghost.”
“About four miles.”
Beau didn’t tell Summers how Anna was found next to Holy Ghost. Maybe she’d gone to the school at the last second, or tried to go there. He had a couple more questions. “When did she head back? Was it right before the storm?”
“The storm was already hitting.”
“Do you know anyone who’d harm Anna?”
“Harm? No.”
“Any suspicious people around the school recently?”
“No. I heard the school building’s the only thing left.”
Beau nodded and asked about Smith, the grass cutter.
“Big guy. Yeah, I’ve seen him around.”
“He have any connection to Anna du Mortier?”
Summers shook his head and started crying again.
* * * *
Beau found two Wildlife and Fisheries agents hanging around outside the morgue. Both had their baseball caps off as they wiped their brows. They wore dark green polo shirts, dark brown pants, and jungle boots.
“Sure,” the one named Landry said. “I got me one of dem airboats ‘bout a mile from here.” Landry was dark-complected with a thick mustache. He looked at Stephanie. “We also call it de fan boat. Flat bottom, got an airplane propeller attached to de back, but you can’t get sucked in. Dey in a big cage, but we can go anywhere, no matter how deep or shallow de water. We take it in de swamp and marshes. Somebody tole me dey use it on frozen lakes up nort. You from up nort?
“L.A.”
He looked at Beau who said, “Los Angeles.”
“Oh, California.” Landry back to Stephanie. “Don’t get much frozen lakes dere either, I suppose.”
Beau asked where the boat was and said they’d meet Landry there.
“She comin’ along?” Landry asked.
“I guess.”
Landry smiled, “Good. I show y’all what y’all need.”
Beau took a quick shower and slipped into a pair of sand-colored tactical pants, pocketing a folding knife, two extra magazines, handcuffs, keys, and put on another black T-shirt, this one with nopd in barely discernable charcoal gray lettering in front and police in white on the back. As he was putting on his belt, with its holster and badge already attached, Stephanie came in and sat on his cot.
“Four homicide detectives just showed up.”
“Good, they can take over.”
He looked at her wide blue eyes and for an instant thought of cutting her off at the knees—what did she think just walking in and sitting on his cot, but he hesitated, realizing this woman was not an enemy, even if she paints an unflattering picture of John Raven Beau in her magazine—the half-Cajun, half-Sioux warrior who left bodies in his wake.
Instead he shrugged. “We’ve got a murder to solve,” he said, holstering his Beretta and slipping his hunting knife into its sheath at the small of his back.
Jeff tagged along, snapping more pictures as they rode in a squad car. A little over a mile south of Abbeville, they encountered a wide expanse of brown gulf water.
Stephanie said, “Some of the levees broke again in New Orleans.”
“I know.”
“Parts of the city’s reflooded.”
Beau nodded.
“The lower Ninth Ward and St. Bernard.”
Beau nodded again. B.K., or Before Katrina as they put it now, few outside the city ever heard of the Ninth Ward, the Seventeenth Street Canal, Gentilly, St. Bernard Parish. Now those words rolled out of the mouth of strangers as if they knew all about the lower Ninth Ward, an area most cops believed needed a good flooding—a Noah’s Ark kind of flood—not to wipe away the poor people but to wipe away the shacks, tenements, and shanties that sheltered thugs and drug dealers. Let them go to Houston and Atlanta. We’d had them for decades. Hey, Atlanta, it’s your turn now. Nearly a month after Katrina and New Orleans had its lowest crime rate since Bienville’s time. Sure, there weren’t a lot of people, and the thugs would come back, but for a while the gunfire didn’t echo.
“What kind of knife is that?” Stephanie asked as they climbed aboard the boat.
“Lakota. Oglala Sioux.” Beau pulled out his knife, held it up. “Made of obsidian, sharpened on one side only. Good for skinning buffalo, taking scalps of the white eyes.”
She laughed.
He slipped the knife back in its sheath. “This knife’s scalped a few.”
She couldn’t tell if he was joking as he gave her the expressionless, emotionless look of the plains warrior.
* * * *
Beau sat in back with Landry while Stephanie and Jeff sat up front. After they were strapped in, Landry passed Beau and Stephanie a headset.
“Got an intercom for us to talk.”
The noise from the propeller and engine was loud, and the boat shuddered before it slid away from the wharf and crossed a bayou and small lake before hitting the flooded marsh. The air was thick with the fetid, sweet-sour odors of the swamp. A little more than a mile south of LA 14, the great Cajun Prairie had extended all the way down to the gulf and over to Texas.
“De water’s goin’ down slowly,” Landry said. He glanced back at Stephanie and went on, “We call dis a platin, Cajun Prairie. See dem ridges.” He pointed to swatches of high ground protruding from the water. “Dat’s called a cheniere and the drainage canals, you can’t see dem now, dey under the salt water, we call dem a coulée.”
They dodged so much floating debris it was like a carnival ride. As they passed through what was once the village of Perry, they saw shattered roofs and wooden planks plastered against tall cypress trees and live oaks, and an occasional magnolia tree. Landry turned down the Vermilion River, some of its banks rising from the water to mark the channel. There was less debris here.
Eventually the boat made a left away from the river and headed for Vermilion Bay and Cannes Bruleé. They had to slow when they reached the deep cypress swamp, easing around cypress knees, passing beneath the wide black branches of live oaks dripping Spanish moss like ghostly beards. The towering oaks with their twisted, black branches looked like upturned tarantulas to Beau.
Landry named each type of tree for Stephanie. When he finally ran out of trees to name and shut up, Stephanie started humming on the intercom, lightly at first.
“See dat?” Landry pointed to a mass of floating debris, split rails of wood, some with holes in them. “Dats what’s lef of what we call pieux, rail-and-post fences to keep de cattle in. Before dey make de bob wire, we Cajun make the pieux.”
“Bob wire?” Stephanie asked.
“Barbed wire,” said Beau.
Stephanie began humming again, then words came to the song, “Pretty Rita ... meter-maid. Pretty Rita ... meter-maid.”
Landry glanced at Beau who just shrugged.
* * * *
“What’s that?” Stephanie called out, pointing to something floating in the water off to their left.
“Dead gator,” Landry answered, slowing the boat, easing closer to the carcass floating belly up. The alligator had to be twelve feet long. “Big one,” he said.
“Rita killed alligators?” Stephanie said, pointing out the carcass for Jeff to photograph.
“If the wind didn’t get it,” Beau said, “then the water did. This is salt water from the gulf. Alligators are fresh water animals.”
“Brackish water too,” Landry injected. Beau knew gators could live in what some Cajuns called “sweet” water, a mix of salt and fresh water, but this gulf water was too saline.
There was no way to recognize they were in Cannes Bruleé, until Beau made out the white masonry main building of Holy Ghost High School standing in three feet of water. Most of the windows were missing, pieces of roof dangled from the building’s sides. The two large water oaks in front of the school were on their side, huge root balls rising from the water. The red brick courthouse, with its spires and parapets, which looked like a medieval castle to Beau, was gone as well as the entire business district of the village which used to lay on either side of Landrieu Avenue.
On a small island of raised ground in the center of the avenue, across from Holy Ghost, stood the largest tree in the village, a live oak that towered at least a hundred and fifty feet in the air, its crown wide enough to shade half a football field, two of its gnarled black branches hanging almost to the ground. The wind had done its work, breaking many of the branches and shredding much of the Spanish moss that hung raggedly in the heavy air.
Landry slowed the engine and the airboat slid over to the school building. He and Beau took turns calling out as they circled the entire building, yelling to see if anyone was still inside. Circling back around to the front, Beau pointed to the live oak tree. He climbed out on the small patch of land at the base of the tree and saw the grass had been gouged up where the boat had rescued Joachim Smith. He moved to the tree and scaled it easily, stopping when he was a good fifteen feet up. He could have gone a lot higher. The clicking of Jeff’s camera was the only sound.
Many of the branches above were broken and he wondered how high the water had come. Unlike New Orleans, where the water stayed for weeks until it could be pumped out, leaving a waterline, the water had come here high and fast and was already sliding back into the Gulf of Mexico.
He looked around at the brown water and remembered that Huf said Anna’s body was found about fifty feet away.
Beau climbed down and asked Landry to go back to the school building.
“What are you looking for?” Stephanie asked.
He told her Anna du Mortier could have been blown here during the storm but was most likely murdered near here.
“How do you know that?”
“There wasn’t much other damage to her skin. She could have floated I suppose, but she wasn’t blown far from the scene of the murder.”
Landry found a second story window for them to climb into, Beau standing in the airboat and pulling himself in, then Landry, who’d tied up the boat.
“I want to come,” Stephanie called out.
Beau reached down and helped her into the steaming hot, dark classroom, its floor sticky with mud. Drops of water dripped on them from the wet ceiling as they made their way across the room.
“What are we looking for?”
“We want to make sure no one’s in here.”
“They would have heard you yelling.”
Beau led the way into a the mud-caked hall. “If I’d strangled someone, I might not volunteer to be rescued right away. We have to eliminate that possibility, establish the fact no one was here when we checked.”
They found no one on the second floor and headed up to the third which the water had barely touched.
“So,” Stephanie went on, “according to your theory, the man Smith may not have murdered Anna because he wouldn’t have flagged down the rescuers, not volunteering to be rescued right away.”
Beau looked back at her. She sported a brown stain on her shoulder, a thick dollop of mud. “We don’t use theories in homicide. We go with facts only. Smith was found near the body. We’ll see if we can find anyone else.”
They didn’t.
* * * *
Beau directed Landry to where he grew up, back through an even thicker cypress swamp, the air much hotter now.
“Reach in dat chest,” Landry asked Jeff. “We got some towel.”
Jeff passed out clean face rags for everyone to wipe the sweat from their eyes.
“I got ice water in de odder chest.” Landry pointed at a red and white igloo.
Stephanie passed out plastic bottles of water. The boat had to slow to navigate between the trees and the debris floating out toward the gulf. Shingle roofs and sides of wooden houses, parts of shanties, twisted pieces of tin, the occasional appliance, bicycle tires, nicknacks from houses, framed pictures with broken glass, plates and bowls, lamp shades, a wooden bench, a sofa and so much more, but no human bodies.
The bodies of animals dotted the brown water, raccoons, opossums, muskrat, squirrels, snakes, more gators, weasels, razorbacks, as well as farm hogs, a couple of cows, and enough nutria to fill the back of a pickup. A half dozen blue crabs crawled atop the carcass of one of the hogs.
“I guess de crabbin’s gonna be good in a li’l while,” Landry said.
Beau recognized the high shell road that ran along Bayou Brunet. Part of it protruded from the water. He pointed to his left and as the airboat slid toward two live oaks still upright in the water, the expanse of Vermilion Bay suddenly opened in front of them. It wasn’t olive green now but brown, and the trees lining it were mostly gone. But it was the bay all right.
Beau had Landry stop the boat. The wooden fence was gone as was the house Beau grew up in. “My great-granddaddy built the house right there.” He pointed to the live oaks.
“It was a daubed house, raised a few feet on cypress blocks, a wood shingle roof, walls filled with swamp mud and moss to keep the house almost cool in summer and warm in winter. There was a wooden porch with four posts. Two front doors, one into the front room, one into the room where we ate, just in front of the kitchen. On the right, stairs from the porch went up into the attic where I slept. There was a porch in back that connected to the pier where we kept our pirogue.”
Beau felt his throat tighten. He waved at the wide bay. “You can smell the rain when it comes in, rich and damp.” He shielded his eyes from the glimmering bay. “The clouds build. Tall, gray clouds. Suck the humidity right off the bay and it becomes almost cool, even in the dead of summer.
“When the rain came, it came in sheets, in waves, peppering the swamp, bending the branches of the big oaks and fluttering the cypress moss and it’s like the sky’s falling. Fat raindrops hammered the roof like thousands of nails from heaven.”
Beau took in a deep breath.
“After my daddy died, my mother sold our house and moved back to South Dakota to be with her people.”
“The Sioux,” said Stephanie, then put her hand over her mouth because she’d interrupted.
Beau turned to her. “My mother’s father, up in Dakota, used to tell me how the white man believes the land belongs to him. The Sioux believe we belong to the land.” There was a catch in his voice. “If we do, then this is the land where I belong.”
Taking in another deep breath, Beau closed his eyes and said in a raspy whisper, “It’s gone now. All gone.” He wiped his face with the damp face rag. “If my Sioux grandfather could see me now, he’d call me a bad name.”
“What name?”
Beau tapped Landry’s shoulder and indicated they should turn the boat around, then answered Stephanie. “The plains warrior, the Sioux and their cousins, the Cheyenne, never showed emotion. Unlike the white man, who is known to show his anger and even cry in front of everyone. If a Sioux warrior did the same, he would be called Woman Face.
“When my daddy died, I was a Woman Face for a while.”
Beau concentrated on steeling himself, on pulling out the plains warrior, of morphing from Cajun to Sioux and stopping this depression. Stephanie scribbled in her notebook and Beau closed his mouth because he’d said too much. Jeff snapped a picture, then peeked out from behind the camera with a big grin, giving Beau the thumbs-up signal.
Beau shook his head and turned away.
The airboat went about, back to the road alongside Bayou Brunet until they came to a stand of cypress trees. Beau noticed several boards wedged between the trees and pieces of a green shingle roof.
“I left my Catahoula right here with my daddy’s brother, my Uncle Dreux. I was on vacation. Had to rush back to New Orleans after Katrina so I left my dog here where it was safe.” He looked at Landry again, “Let’s take it slow on the way out in case somebody calls out to us.”
He looked in every tree they passed, but spotted nothing, not even a bird. Beau checked out every animal carcass but there were no dogs.
“Well,” said Landry. “Rita done one ting right. She got rid of de mosquitoes.”
Beau should have noticed, but Landry was right. Not one mosquito.
“And I bet de salt water gon play hell wit de fire ants.”
As the airboat picked up speed for the long haul back to Abbeville, the wind blew over their perspiration, cooling them somewhat. Stephanie started humming again, followed by, “Pretty Rita ... meter-maid. Pretty Rita ... meter-maid.”
After the thirtieth or fortieth repetition, Beau asked, “What’s that song?”
“Huh? Oh, Pretty Rita ... Meter-Maid. The Beatles. It’s on the Abbey Road album. Or maybe Sergeant Pepper’s.”
Before she could start up again, Beau asked, “Your last name, it’s Spanish?”
“Italian. Northern Italian. Bet you didn’t know northern Italians, up by the Alps, are blonde haired, blue eyed.”
“Yep. Didn’t know that.”
“Bet you’ll never guess what Cipresso means in Italian.”
“One who asks too many questions?”
“No.” She stuck out her tongue. “It means cypress.”
Beau looked at the mud which had spread from her shoulder down to her chest. “They have cypress trees in Italy?”
“Of course.” She squinted at him. “At least I think so.”
Jeff finally spoke a minute later. “My last name’s Magyar. That’s sort of Hungarian.” After a few minutes, when no one commented, he added, “Our language has no diphthongs.”
Landry turned to Stephanie and said, “And I bet you tought I talk funny, mais yeah?”
* * * *
Beau smelled the food before they made it to the cafeteria and stopped in the doorway to take in the scene. Long tables down the center of the cafeteria were lined with people holding large paper plates. On the other side of the tables, women served hot food. The room was filled with the familiar scents of Cajun spices, seafood, and cooked meats.
Moving to the stack of paper plates, Beau passed one to Stephanie, Jeff, and Landry before getting one for himself. A short woman with bluish hair behind the first table smiled at him and said in a Cajun accent much heavier than Landry’s, “You step up an’ get some vittle, chére.”
“Where’d y’all come from?” Beau asked.
“Opelousas and we got de lady from Ville Platte, Grand Coteau, Eunice, and Basile too.”
“I’m from Crowley,” another woman called out.
“And Crowley too. We tought you could use some hot food, mais yeah.”‘
Stephanie waited for Beau, asking what each dish was. “That’s andouille, Cajun sausage of spiced pork, and that’s boudin, another Cajun sausage but made with rice, pork, chicken, and vegetables.” He took a slice of each, Stephanie opting for smaller slices.
“Jambalaya, of course,” Beau said as a younger woman with coal black hair put a scoop of browned rice mixed with shrimp on their plates. Another woman passed him a steaming bowl with crawfish etoueffee poured over a bed of white rice.
He explained to the L.A. reporter, “It’s like gumbo only not as watery.”
“It this shrimp?”
“Crawfish.”
They moved to a table where Huf was just finishing up. Huf said, “I got that criminal record check for you.” He waited for Beau to put his plate and bowl down and passed him two sheets of computer printout. Beau scanned the sheets and patted Huf on the shoulder. “Good work.”
Huf got up. “I’ll get y’all something to drink.”
Jeff joined them while Landry slipped over to his compadres, other green-clad Wildlife and Fisheries agents. Beau saw them checking out Stephanie. Huf brought an armful of bottled waters.
Before sitting, Beau looked around and caught Joachim Samuel Smith stuffing his face at the end of one of the tables. He tapped Huf’s shoulder. “Don’t let him leave. I wanna talk to him in the firehouse after we eat.”
“No problem.” Huf started to get up and Beau grabbed his elbow. “Just keep an eye on him. We’ll finish before he does. Would have liked to have caught him before he ate.”
The andouille and boudin were both highly seasoned and succulent but the crawfish etoueffee was divine, almost as good as when Beau’s daddy cooked it. Then again Calixte Beau often used different ingredients in his etoueffee and gumbos. Muskrat, coon, squirrel, nutria and just about every fish native to south Louisiana from channel catfish, yellow cat, sac-a-lait, speckled trout, redfish, red snapper, sheephead, grouper, and fresh water bass from the bayous. It was subsistence living on the bounty of the swamp and marshes, but Beau grew up thinking he lived in a paradise of game and seafood. He didn’t even know he was “dirt poor” until he went to school and the kids called him a swamp rat and made fun of his home-made clothes.
Beau’s mind drifted back to scenes from a different storm, one of those torrential, long-lasting New Orleans rainstorms that flooded much of the city’s streets and nearly a quarter of her homes. He’d found a Catahoula puppy wet and shivering outside his boathouse, took it in, dried, and fed the little tyke. Even in the cramped quarters of the boat house the puppy thrived and grew and Beau called him Buck.
Buck loved to run along the nearby levee, chasing gulls, scampering over the huge blocks of concrete at the base of the levee that kept Lake Pontchartrain from taking the city. Parts of that levee were gone now. And so was the Catahoula.
Beau shook his head, looking down into the thick etouffee.
Buck was so happy to be at his uncle’s place next to the swamp, back where his breed was created by the Catahoula Indians from Spanish war dogs brought to Louisiana by DeSoto. Buck took to the marshland instantly, chasing squirrels and yapping at birds, treeing a coon. Buck came with a storm and was taken by a storm.
Beau’s throat tightened and he put his spoon down and closed his eyes, steeling himself, pulling himself into an inner world of the Sioux brave. He would be sad later. There was no time now. He had a murder to solve.
Landry came over with his plate and a can of Mountain Dew. He sat on the other side of Stephanie and said, “All we need is a li’l music for a Fais Do Do.”
“A what?” Stephanie seemed to like the jambalaya best.
“Cajun ho-down, a dance. We use de fiddle and accordion. A neighborhood ting. Cajun two-step and the Cajun waltz. At de big Fais Do Do we do de Lancier Acadien Cajun square dance.”
Stephanie pulled out her notebook and started scribbling. Landry leaned over and spelled the words for her. Beau watched Smith shovel more food into his mouth. Beau finished his plate, took it to one of the big trash cans. When he saw Chief of Detectives Earl, he went over and said, “I need a deputy.”
Earl talked with a mouthful of jambalaya, pointing his plastic fork toward Huf. “Take ‘em. He won’t sleep. He’s too eager for me.”
“Thanks.”
Beau worked it like this. He had Huf make sure Smith didn’t get on the newly assembled buses they’d brought in to evacuate people to Alexandria and Shreveport, while he located a small room with a folding table at the back of the firehouse. There he replaced the two canvas chairs with metal folding chairs.
“But the others are more comfortable,” said Stephanie.
“That’s the point. I don’t want him comfortable.”
Beau grabbed his mini cassette recorder, made sure it worked, then went to fetch Joachim Smith. He had Huf lead the big man into the newly arranged interview room and left him to wait for forty-five minutes.
“Let him think on it,” Beau said as he and Huf, Stephanie, and Jeff sipped fresh cups of petit noir.
“So you think he did it.” This from Jeff.
Beau shrugged. “I’m not letting him go to Shreveport until I eliminate him as a suspect.”
“How do you do that?”
“He has to convince me.” Beau was feeling Cajun and winked, but that’s how he handled most interviews. Good cop and bad cop rolled into one. The smiling Cajun then the dead-serious Sioux. Stephanie handed her coffee cup to Jeff and wrote more notes.
“Please tell me I can come in and watch.”
Beau shook his head. “One on one. Even Mister Huf here doesn’t come in. Otherwise, the defendant can say we ganged up on him. The presence of a reporter pressured him. And with all due respect to you personally, you’ll give him something pretty to focus on instead of the ugly I’m gonna bring down on him.”
Stephanie leveled those blue eyes at him. “You’re not gonna beat him.”
Beau grabbed the two canvas chairs they’d removed from the room and put them just outside the door. “I’ll leave a crack in the door if y’all promise to keep quiet. Y’all can listen.”
He finished his coffee and handed the empty cup to Huf, who asked, “You wanna leave your gun with me?”
“Why?”
“No cuffs on your suspect. What if he wrestles you for your gun?”
“If that fat bastard wrestles my gun from me, he can shoot me.”
Beau went into the room.
* * * *
It was hotter inside and the single yellow bulb dangling from the ceiling gave the room a shadowy glow. Smith sat on the other side of the small table, hands flat on it, sitting straight up, eyes glaring at Beau.
“What’s this about?”
Beau put his notepad and pen on the table, pulled out his ID folder and showed his credentials to the man, then withdrew a Miranda warning card from inside and began to read it. “Before I ask you any questions, you must understand your rights...”
“I’m under arrest?”
“No. You’re a suspect in a crime.”
“What crime?”
“Murder.”
Smith leaned so far back he almost tumbled over.
“You want to let me finish reading this?”
A slight nod from the big man and Beau read his rights, tucked the card back into the ID folder, and returned the folder to his pocket.
“I’m Detective John Raven Beau, NOPD Homicide Division and I’m half Oglala Sioux.” Beau pulled out the obsidian knife and put it on the table, then sat, the knife close to his right hand.
“Did you know the American Indian never scalped anyone until the Europeans, the English, and Spanish came and started lifting scalps because the Indians’ hair was so long and pretty?” Beau picked up the knife. “We perfected the system, however.”
Smith’s eyes were riveted on the knife. Beau returned the knife to its sheath at the small of his back and put the silver mini cassette recorder on the table.
“I asked you before—” Smith’s voice wavered. “—what’s this about?”
“It’s about the fact you’re a lying son of a bitch.” Beau smiled coldly.
“What?”
“You didn’t even know Anna du Mortier? At Holy Ghost for two years and never even saw her. She was my teacher. People noticed Anna du Mortier. Well, the lying’s about to stop because we’re gonna be here until I get the truth from you. The easy way or the hard way.”
Beau turned on the recorder. Smith folded his arms in a typical defensive gesture. Beau pulled the computer sheets he’d folded into the back of his notepad and started reading, “Joachim Samuel Smith. Date of birth: twelve twelve nineteen seventy-five. Born Ames, Iowa. Arrests: June 2, 1985, in Ames for auto theft; January 2, 1991, in St. Louis, Missouri for aggravated battery; two more arrests in St. Louis for simple battery; September 8, 1994, in Cairo, Illinois, for murder in the second degree. Convicted of manslaughter. Sentenced to ten years at Joliet State Penitentiary. Looks like you served five years, released in 2001, on five years active probation.”
Beau lifted the paper and pointed to the last entry. “And here it says you’re wanted by the Illinois State Parole and Probation Office for parole violation. You thought they forgot about you?” Beau put the paper down. “You’re not going to Alexandria or Shreveport. You’re going to parish prison. The prison didn’t flood.”
They stared eye to eye for a good twenty seconds before Beau let out a long breath and said, “All right. Enough of that.” He got up, moved his chair around to the right side and sat closer to Smith, his weapon away from the man, and for a moment he remembered the flip remark he’d made to Huf about the suspect grabbing his gun. Beau looked at the wall and said gently, “You didn’t plan to do it, didn’t even do it on purpose, did’ya?”
Beau continued, “I gotta confess, I can only imagine what it was like out there in the dark, the wind howling, slamming against you, debris flying like hungry bats and the water coming in. It was relentless, rising and rushing in, smelling of salt, pushing you up that tree.”
Beau looked at the man’s eyes. “I climbed up the tree. How far did you have to go?”
Smith took in a breath, let it out, and put his hands on the table again. “Past the big branches. I had to keep going: The water kept coming.” His eyes grew wide. “Things kept hitting me and then I saw a big sheet of metal, twisting in the air like in a tornado, musta been a tin roof. If it wasn’t for the branches it woulda cut me in two, but it hit the tree and flew off.”
“And it went on and on didn’t it?”
Smith’s eyes filled and he wiped them, a hint of anger rising to stop the emotion.
“You’re the only one who survived in the village,” Beau told him. “Make sure your lawyer brings all that out at the trial.”
“What trial?”
Beau shook his head. “What? You really think I scalp people, dump their bodies? You’ll get your day in court.”
“But I didn’t do anything.”
Beau sat straighter and let his eyes go deadpan. “Why do you insist on insulting my intelligence? You know how many murders we have in New Orleans? We’re the murder capital of the country. I solve twenty, thirty murders a year. I know a killer when I see one.” Beau let his voice slip into a whisper. “I see one every day in my mirror.” He leaned closer, almost touching the man. “She tried to get in the tree, didn’t she?”
Smith said nothing. Beau pulled his notepad close and picked up his pen.
“Okay. Tell me what happened. You tried to evacuate, right?”
* * * *
Stephanie took notes, but when Beau had Smith go over his story a second time, her mind began to wander. Huf brought her and Jeff fresh coffees. She took a sip, flipped to a fresh page and wrote, “In 1755, the French Acadians were deported from their homes, their lives uprooted by the British. They were scattered like so much flotsam from a great storm, the storm of British conquest. Two hundred and fifty years later a good portion of their descendants are displaced again, this time by natural disaster. But these people are not flotsam, not deterred one bit. I saw it today when they came from Opelousas (get the other names from that lady) and brought pots full of the most delicious food this reporter has ever eaten.”
She leaned toward the door crack as Smith went over his ascent into the tree again. Stephanie stood, stretched, and took a step away from the door. She motioned Huf closer and whispered, “Who should I ask about this Hurricane Audrey I keep hearing about?”
Huf tapped his chest and led her a few steps away. “I did a term paper on it in high school. My grandma was one of the survivors and there weren’t many. Audrey wiped out Cameron Parish back before they had warnings, back in 1957.”
Stephanie wrote quickly.
Huf slowed down. “Only a few people evacuated ‘cause nobody knew she was comin’ till it was too late. She was the first hurricane that was named and the first Category 4 before August. She killed over four hundred people.”
* * * *
“Hot in here, isn’t it?” Beau watched sweat stream down both sides of Smith’s face. “I like the heat, being half Cajun. I grew up in the swamp.” Beau felt perspiration rolling down his back, his armpits wet. He called over his shoulder for Deputy Huf.
“Can you get us a couple bottles of cold water?”
The water was sweet and so icy it braced Beau’s throat. Smith drank greedily. When he put his bottle down, Beau asked, “Did you strangle her as you tried to go up the tree or after, in the tree?”
Smith slumped in his chair but wouldn’t speak.
Beau shook his head. “She was in the tree or trying to get in the tree. You wanna tell me it was an accident. You didn’t mean to kill her, okay.” Beau let that sink in before he added, “Come on. Tell me what happened.” Beau reached for the tape recorder. “Better yet, tell the jury. Let them know how bad it was.”
If this were the movies, Beau would have grabbed Smith by the throat, lifted him from the chair, slammed him against the wall, would have withdrawn the knife and maybe cut the man’s forehead, a first slice before scalping. But that was fiction.
In real life, sometimes all it took was getting close to the man and talking to him, telling him something simple, like I know you’re sorry, I know you didn’t mean it, or tell the jury your side.
Smith put his arms on the table, buried his face in them, and whispered, “I didn’t mean to...”
* * * *
Beau stepped out with the recorder and the taped confession, stretched, and accepted another icy bottle of water from Huf. “Take one in to him. Then search him again and cuff him.” He gave Stephanie an inexpressive look. Normally, after getting a confession, he felt a rush, an exhilaration of accomplishment, of putting an end to a case, but standing in the firehouse he couldn’t feel anything but the great loss that lingered outside after this second big storm had ravaged his home state.
“You’re being Sioux now,” Stephanie said.
“You get your story?”
“Boy, did I ever.”
Huf came out with Smith handcuffed behind his back. “Wanna walk him to the jail?” he asked.
“Naw, let’s get a car. You’re the arresting officer, after all.”
“I am?”
“You’re a Vermilion Parish deputy sheriff. I’m just an assisting investigator.”
Jeff snapped pictures of Beau and Huf and Smith standing together. Huf looked at Stephanie and said, “My first murder arrest.”
On their way across the firehouse, Beau noticed music playing and saw a line of computers against a wall with National Guardsmen manning them. One was playing a song, a ballad. A boy was telling a girl how she’ll look one day and see he’s gone because it may rain tomorrow and he’ll follow the sun.
“The Beatles,” Stephanie said and then called out to the guardsman. “Is that a CD?”
The young guardsman turned in his chair and smiled at her. “Naw. Satellite radio station called Beatle-licious.”
They waited inside as Huf went out to secure a car. The ballad echoed behind them and Beau remembered the airport hangar outside New Orleans right after Katrina and how his partner kept playing a song on her CD player, a song with groaning electric guitars and a high-pitched male voice. It was Led Zeppelin and the song was “When the Levee Breaks,” which ended with the refrain “going down, going down.”
“Why did he do it?” Stephanie asked.
“He said it was an accident, they struggled to stay in the tree, but that wasn’t it.”
“It wasn’t?”
“It was too violent. He wanted to kill her, probably lusted after her for a long time. Sexual frustration or envy or jealousy.”
Stephanie put it in her notes.
The Beatles ballad ended and another began and Beau and Stephanie looked at each other immediately, took in breaths, and started laughing. They both said it, “It’s ‘Lovely Rita ... Meter-Maid.’”
* * * *
Beau led Smith into the darkening evening, Stephanie trailing and Jeff snapping more pictures. He passed the prisoner to Huf, who helped the big man into the back of the car, making sure Smith didn’t bang his head on the way in.
A loud yipping, followed by a maniacal barking turned Beau around as Buck lunged into Beau’s legs, rubbing his snout against him. Beau looked up to see his Uncle Dreux walking up, a can of Budweiser in his hand.
Beau went down on his knees and ran his hands over Buck’s sides as the Catahoula nipped his shoulder and kept yipping in glee. He had to grab Buck’s neck to keep the dog from nipping his face.
“Where have you been?” Beau asked his uncle.
“At your Great Uncle Toulon’s camp on Indian Bayou. You don’ tink I’m stupid enough to stay thru dat big freakin’ storm, do you? And who might you be, darlin’?”
Beau stood up, petting Buck’s head now as Stephanie introduced herself to his uncle. Beau leaned in the car and told Huf, “I’ll meet you there.”
He watched the car drive off slowly and followed, cutting through the parked cars and Humvees, Buck bouncing against his leg every third step. The sun was hot on Beau’s head and he squinted in the bright light, his mind floating back to a vision of Anna du Mortier coming into the classroom in one of her plaid skirts. He saw the smile on her lips and the sparkle in her eyes and all those young years ahead of her. Beau stopped. He felt his chest constricting.
Except for a flooded school building and a lone oak, the village of Cannes Bruleé was no more. The cabin he grew up in was gone and with it, the remainder of his youth. It was all gone now.
Buck jumped up against him and Beau look down into the Catahoula’s pale blue eyes.
“Ruff. Ruff.”
“I know.” Beau petted Buck’s head. “Our work’s not done, is it?”
Copyright © 2010 O’Neil De Noux