All the Devil's Creatures (10 page)

“I don’t trust her. Dalia brought her something, but she won’t talk to me. Lady’s working her own angle.”

And you won’t talk to her.
“We’re meeting with her tomorrow, T-Jacques. We’ll see what’s on the drive, talk to her about it.”

“That’s big of you, Mr. Waltz.” Geoff could almost hear within the contempt dripping from T-Jacques’s voice:
since she died on your case
.

•

The cab ride back to the hotel was short and silent. Geoff’s gut lurched and his head screamed—a sleepless hangover. He felt irritated at T-Jacques’s conspiracy theories but more than that at his own drunken loss of control, his descent into the realm of disorder and irrationality. He knew better than to than to start a binge without being able to bring it to its proper conclusion—utter oblivion followed by twelve hours of dreamless sleep.

“I owe you an apology—I really kind of lost it for a minute back there.”

Marisol grinned and met his gaze. “I hardly noticed. Anyway, T-Jacques seemed pretty wack.”

Geoff wanted to smile back but feared even that minor movement in the jarring taxi would make him vomit.

In the lobby of the hotel, as they waited for the slow and ancient elevator, he said, “I’m pretty beat. You want to look at the flash drive?”

“Sure, first thing—before we meet with Dr. Kim. I should have all the software I need on my laptop.” She paused and bit her bottom lip. “But hey, I need to ask: how well do you trust her?”

They stepped into the creaking elevator—all worn brass and dark wood and faded velvet, barely big enough for the two of them. “Eileen? When it comes to her consulting services, her scientific expertise, I trust her all the way. As for anything else—pretty much not at all.”

“I think I get it.” Catching Marisol’s crooked grin, Geoff could smell the whiskey-laced coffee on her breath.

They got to his floor and Geoff stepped out. He watched the doors slide shut, framing her body posed with left hand on hip, her weight on straight right leg. Geoff felt an urge to put a hand out to stop the doors. It passed, and she was gone.

D
uchamp’s private phone rang just as he maneuvered his Hummer onto the Interstate for the drive back to Dallas, back to his urban manse and away from the bayou country that had once provided his political base.

“This is the Speaker.”

A voice, almost British but with an exotic lilt, answered.
The Prince
. “Are you secure, Congressman?”

“Yes, go ahead.” Duchamp felt the phone grow slick with the sweat of his palm.

“There has been a serious breach—on your watch. This disturbs me. Worse, it disturbs the Doctor.”

Duchamp’s mouth went dry at the Prince’s invocation of the old German—perhaps the only man Duchamp still feared. “I’m aware of it. My man is making it right. Give us time.”

“Time? Time is a luxury you can ill-afford, Congressman. I shouldn’t need to remind you that the project is nearing its culmination. I am arranging a meeting on the Doctor’s behalf. You’ll be contacted.”

“That’s fine. Whatever I can do to put the Doctor at ease—”

But the Prince hung up.

•

The e-mail looked like any other spam. It claimed to advertise “FREE V!@grA.” Near the bottom of the body of message, a seemingly random alpha-numeric string.

Robert Duchamp mentally deciphered the code and called the corresponding phone number and entered the pass key. A computerized voice answered: “Saturday, April 4, 8:45 a.m.” Barely twelve hours until his meeting with the Group, his colleagues whom poor old Jimmy Lee knew only as the Shadow People.

Just twelve hours between now and his chewing out.

He shut down the computer and walked over to the wet bar in the corner of his walnut paneled study, past the book cases displaying photos of himself with global dignitaries and knick knacks bequeathed on various junkets. In the back of the little freezer compartment of the hotel-style mini-fridge, he found the special ice cube. He set it on the bar and whacked it with a chrome cocktail shaker until it cracked and shattered, freeing the little brass key frozen inside.

Back at the desk, a mahogany Edwardian that had belonged to his grandfather Preston Duchamp, he unlocked a bottom drawer. He took out the pack of Marlboros and the Zippo stashed there and stepped out the French doors to the patio and the always clean but seldom used pool. Lights, fading shades of purple, blue, and green, illuminated the water in a repeating pattern. He gazed beyond the live oaks into the yellowish sky of the Dallas night and smoked.

The Doctor
. Confidant and close friend of Poppy Preston himself. And that goddamn bitch poking around the swamp had threatened their lives’ work. Good work, a project to save humanity from its degenerate self—and make he and his fellows a lot of money in the process.

Duchamp would prefer to face the old man himself tomorrow—to explain, to put his ancient but still lush and brilliant mind at ease. But he expected that sniveling rat bastard Prince would run the show. The weasel had become the Doctor’s chief surrogate. Duchamp spat into the pool and envisioned himself holding the Prince’s swarthy little head under that water ….

“Robert.”

Duchamp jumped and for a dizzy moment thought he was going to fly straight into the pool. “Dang it, Kathleen, you liked to scare me to death.”

“You’re smoking.”

“I know, I know.”

She approached in her long, blue night gown and brushed his cheek with the back of her hand. Her stiff blonde hair was brushed back and coifed. “God, you look so tense.”

“I guess I’m a nervous wreck, Blueberry.”

She smiled a little at the old pet name. “Tell me why.”

“Business.”

Kathleen Duchamp turned her head and looked out over the pool. They stood. A lightning bug flashed under the trees. Then Kathleen said, “Don’t forget the curator’s dinner next week—you said you’d help with the menu.”

He dropped his cigarette to the tile and stomped it out. “And I will.”
Unless I’m buried under ten feet of swamp muck by then.

“Good. It will all work out. It always does.” She turned to face him and gently touched her fingers to his. “Let’s get away after next weekend. Take the jet someplace hot …”

“It’ll be hot here soon enough.”

Her eyes twinkled. “You could fly me yourself.”

“It’s been a long time, Blueberry.”

“Well, remember who you are:
Preston
Robert Duchamp III
. The best yet.”

He laughed a short bark. “Dad and Poppy are rolling in their graves.”

“No, they’re not, dear. They’re
proud
.”

B
obby took a bar stool in Bubba’s Roadhouse and ordered a light beer. Bubba McGee himself worked the bar, a man Bobby’s father’s age whom Bobby had known his whole life, whom he’d seen nearly every Friday evening after school as a boy when he and daddy would make their father-son ritual drive to this unincorporated area outside their dry town and daddy would buy that week’s case of beer at McGee’s liquor store across the black top from the roadhouse. McGee always had a piece of jerky for him.

“Bobby Henderson,” McGee said. “Can’t believe you’re three times seven.”

“Yessir. And then some.”

“Hellfire. That just makes me feel old. Might be gettin’ ‘round time for me to hang it up. How’s your daddy?”

“Fine. Fishing every day.”

The barman’s expression turned to well-practiced sympathy as he polished a glass. “And your momma?”

“Still hanging on.” Bobby’s gaze did not falter.

McGee walked down the bar to wait on other patrons. The place was just filling up with the Friday night crowd: roughnecks and good ol’ boys, old coots and bored, wild women. Hank Williams, Jr. blared from the juke box. A band started setting up on stage, college boys in dark t-shirts.

Bobby nursed his beer and McGee returned. “So what brings you in here, deputy?”

“Just wanted a beer, I guess. Things been a bit tense since the Bordelon murder.”

“Shoot, I guess that’s right. The blacks liked to take over the square the other day, didn’t they?”

Bobby looked him in the eye. “I guess.”

“Is it true a group of ‘em’s camping out on the courthouse lawn?”

“Yep. Some of the Rev’s people from around the state stayed behind. They say they’ll be there till justice is done. I guess they mean till we catch the bastards and they’re convicted.”

“Can’t be too soon for my taste. Though I can’t say I mind the extra business from the news people.”

Bobby followed McGee’s nod to a corner table filled with men and women in professional dress. They drank draft beers and fiddled with their phones, or sat back and watched the crowd, or talked and laughed together.

Bobby said, “So. Anybody been in here talking about killing black folks?”

McGee smiled. “Nope.”

Bobby took a sip of his beer. Then he said, “You know the Tatum twins are back in town.”

McGee laughed. “Son, your investigative method lacks subtlety. But I’ll tell you one thing: I banned those boys from this place two weeks ago.”

“How come?”

“Picking fights. Duane in particular’s a loud mouth. And Wayne just sits there, quiet, covered in those prison tattoos. Like he’d as soon break your neck as look at you. They’re trash. Their daddy was trash. And so on, time immemorial.”

A cocktail waitress approached and said she needed three bottles of Bud and three tequila shots. McGee fixed her up and returned to Bobby. “I’ll tell you, son. I wouldn’t put anything past those Tatum boys. They’ve always been ugly. And prison turns a person mean. I recognize some of Wayne’s tattoos, if you know what I mean.”

“Prison gang?”

“Shoot, I reckon. He’s got them Nazi lightning bolts right here.” He pointed behind his left ear.

Bobby said, “Aryan Brotherhood.”

McGee did not respond but reached for a glass to polish. The band had begun to tune up, and the barman nodded toward them. “These fellas aren’t half bad. Out of Shreveport.”

Bobby took a few more sips of his beer in silence while McGee polished glasses and watched the band. The barman no longer seemed at ease, as if he had just realized that he had not been conversing with a shy little boy whose father had frequented his store but rather with an officer of the law.

“Anything else you want to tell me?”

McGee put down his glass and looked Bobby in the eye but continued to massage the dish towel in his hands. “Like I said: I banned those boys. I don’t abide any violence in my establishment. Now, I’ve given you all I have.” He eyed the table of news reporters. “A lot of my other patrons might not be saints, they might not be very sympathetic in the eyes of the news media, but I’ve got no reason to believe any of them are killers. So if you have to go around here asking questions, I just ask you don’t cause too much of a stir.”

“I get it,” and he did. The Tatum twins used to hang out here, and now ol’ Bubba didn’t want the national news branding his joint a cauldron of violent racism. Fine by Bobby—he felt convinced the twins had killed Bordelon; he just needed hard evidence. No reason to agitate matters by poking around this dive. Reaching for his wallet, he asked, “What do I owe you?”

“Tell you what, deputy. It’s on the house.”

•

Bobby parked along the fence row where the single-lane black top met the obscure farm-to-market road that led to town. Amid the smells of pine and sweet gum, the springtime Saturday morning air buzzing with insect life, he lay in wait, peering down the little unmarked blacktop that dead ended at the Tatum plot. Sooner or later, the red pickup would emerge. And he would find something wrong with it—an expired inspection sticker, a bent license plate. He would kick out a tail light if he had to.

He didn’t have to. The truck barreled up the road and turned toward town, and Bobby could see inside—long haired Duane at the wheel, Wayne in the passenger seat, neither seeming to notice the Sheriff’s Department cruiser.

Coming up behind them, the deputy turned on lights and siren. The truck stopped without hesitation. Unholstering his side arm, Bobby approached the truck’s open driver’s side window.

“Y’all keep your hands where I can see them—both of you.”

The twins looked straight ahead, Wayne looking nervous with hands on dash, Duane bemused with hands on steering wheel. Duane said, “What’s up, deputy?”

“Y’all understand it’s a misdemeanor in Texas to be in a moving vehicle without a seat belt?”

“Aw, Barbie,” Duane said. “Are you concerned about our safety?”

“I don’t give a flip if y’all get smashed up so bad they have to put you both in one coffin and let the devil sort out the pieces. But the law’s the law. Now,” Bobby stepped back and leveled his weapon into the truck. “I need y’all to step out of the vehicle, leaving your hands in view. Step around to the front and place your palms on the hood.”

“Dang it, dude,” Wayne said. “Can’t you just write us a ticket?” He sounded close to tears.

Duane said, “Shut up.”

The twins did as he ordered. “Duane and Wayne Tatum, you’re under arrest for not wearing a seat belt—”

“Aw man, that’s bullshit!”

“Shut up, Duane.”

“—and I’ll be impounding your vehicle incident to that arrest.” As Bobby read them their rights, he approached them from behind, removing his handcuffs from his belt. Wayne sobbed, so he went first to Duane, who seemed agitated, jumpy. Pressing the muzzle of his weapon against the small of the man’s back, he grabbed his wrists and cuffed him. But as he clicked the restraints in place, Wayne let out a wail:
“I cain’t go back to that prison!”

The short-haired brother lunged and Bobby saw a flash of metal. He did not feel the cutting but saw the blade come away bloody from his rent uniform shirt—the khaki going maroon along his arm. He swung his pistol around and made contact with Wayne’s temple. Hearing a sick crack, he saw the man’s eyes roll back into his head before he slumped to the ground, crumpling on the asphalt. He turned in time to see Duane—hands cuffed behind him—rush forward as if to head-butt him. He dodged the long-haired twin, who flew past him and fell to the ground face first. Duane rolled over on the blacktop and glared up at him, his face streaked with blood and grit.