All the Devil's Creatures (13 page)

Jimmy Lee felt another, stronger twinge of fear and doubt. The hand holding the Glock waivered. But when the Speaker stepped forward, he rediscovered his resolve and steadied the gun. “Stand back.”

“Okay, okay.” Duchamp half way raised his hands back up. “But Jimmy Lee. Nobody ever asked you to kill that girl.”

“Bull—”

“No, son. You’re delusional.” The Speaker paused and pursed his lips and shifted his tone to one of sad paternalism. “It’s okay; it’s not your fault.”

Jimmy Lee felt himself weakening.
Am I really doing this? Oh good Lord, this is Speaker Duchamp.
He fought it, leveled the gun. Tears threatened. “Now you stop that talk, Speaker. I know I’m right.”

The Speaker shook his head and walked toward him. Jimmy Lee couldn’t will himself to say anything. “How many people know you work for me? How many people who are more loyal to you than they are to me? Have I ever paid you in anything but cash? Have you ever been in a meeting with my colleagues or constituents? You don’t exist. And I’m all you’ve got.”

The Speaker stood right before him then. He saw the Speaker place his hand on his forearm and gently push down, pointing the gun to the floor. His arm felt a million miles away, in no way connected to his body. But the Speaker’s aura of power enveloped him. He smelled his musk. Felt his breath. The Speaker’s eyes locked him in. Then he put an arm around his shoulder. He whispered: “You’re my stealth-man, Jimmy Lee. I need you, son. I love you.”

Jimmy Lee cried into the Duchamp’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Speaker. I screwed up. So stupid. So goddamn sorry.”

“Okay, son, okay.” Duchamp caressed his back, convulsing with sobs. “I’m going to tell you how to make this right.”

G
eoff stopped for gas just outside Opelousas. Marisol laughed at the daiquiris-to-go shop connected to the truck stop—she hadn’t spent much time in rural south Louisiana. While she poked around inside, Geoff called his client to deliver the good news about the arrests. With the murder investigation over, there would be no reason to stop and meet with Willie. He could be in Dallas by eight. Burger and a beer at the neighborhood dive—Tony would probably be there, they could share a few laughs. He owed Tony a thank you for introducing him to Marisol. Heck, maybe Marisol would even join them …

But best of all, the arrests should help put to bed Willie and the other plaintiffs’ conspiracy theories, their belief that Texronco would stoop to murder to cover something up. So there would be nothing to stop them accepting the company’s settlement offer.

Sally Kincaid, Willie’s daughter, answered the phone.

“I just saw it on TV,” she said. “We are so relieved, Geoff.”

“Yes. I’m glad it’s over, and we can get back to focusing on the lawsuit. You know, I hope it can be resolved soon.”

“Yeah, Willie told me about the settlement offer. It would be just wonderful for the lake.”

“Agreed. Willie around?”

“Just missed him—he and Joey went to get the mail. Want me to have him call your cell?”

“Nah. I’ll give him a call Monday. I mean, there’s no reason now for me to bother y’all this evening.”

“Oh, you’re still coming, aren’t you? We have quite feast planned. The sheriff and everybody will be here!”

Geoff hadn’t planned to stay for dinner and doubted that the sheriff had, either. He hadn’t planned for the two of them to be there at the same time. But Sally sounded like she had planned on all those things, like she had planned a party. He closed his eyes and rubbed his face and stifled a sigh. “Wait, the sheriff’s still coming?”

“Sure! I told him I’d bought all this food, so he agreed to come on out. Bringing his deputy. Just for fun—no business. I used to run with his daughter years ago. And anyway, Joey’s tickled that a real live sheriff is coming for supper. Add in a big city lawyer and a private detective, the boy will think he’s on a TV show!”

“Well, Sally—”

“Please do come. We might even get the sheriff to play us a little something on his guitar. What time y’all think you’ll get in?”

“We’re on track to be there about six.”

“The sheriff and Bobby—that’s the deputy, Bobby Henderson; you know he’s been all over the TV—they’ll be here about then so that’s perfect. We’ll see y’all tonight.”

She was gone before he had a chance say any more. He leaned against his car in the fuel island then started walking over to the truck stop store to find Marisol and let her know they’d be stopping off in East Texas after all. For a home cooked meal. With a crazy old codger and a guitar-picking sheriff. And Joey—that strange little boy with funny eyes.

Then, sensing something chilly on his periphery, he turned and caught the eye of the man at the next pump over, just screwing the gas cap back on his banged up old pickup. Texas plates. He wore a black t-shirt and ratty old jeans. Black greasy hair. Eyes rimmed red. At once nervous and angry. He looked like hell. Like a minor demon. He turned away and got in his truck. Geoff shivered in the warm Louisiana sun as he made his way to the store.

S
heriff Seastrunk wished he had never had the little TV in his office wired for cable, so sick he had become of his deputy’s youthful and rugged visage, which every cable news outlet had come to broadcast as a symbol of all that remains wholesome and good in the American interior, which they packaged and presented and sold without irony as a vessel of churning sexuality. “
Stud with a Star.
”
“Ripped Ranger.”
“
America’s Hottest Cop.
” Though Bobby was neither a sheriff, a Texas Ranger, nor a policeman.

And ol’ Bobby hammed it up, brandishing his bandaged arm, giving the cameras his best Clint Eastwood squint on the courthouse square late the night before—”
we got ‘em; they’re behind bars tonight and for the rest of their lives.
” And today via satellite on a cable gossip show—smart enough not to discuss any details of the investigation but happy to issue platitudes about justice and racial harmony to the mantis-legged host in her swivel chair, who gushed over this young man, this wounded hero, from a county she would never know or visit as if he were not doomed to be discarded within the week to the dust bin of pop-media history.

Seastrunk switched off the television and looked outside at the little encampment set up on the courthouse lawn in the soft Saturday springtime light and felt glad, at least, that they would be gone soon. Back to Dallas and Austin and the main contingent back up to Chicago.

He owed a good man a telephone call.

“Reverend,” he said when Mose Carter picked up. “I reckon you’ve heard the good news?”

“That you think you’ve caught the men who murdered Miss Bordelon? Well, yes.” “I thought you’d be pleased.”

“Bless you Sheriff, I am. But what a jury or a judge might do in this town—”

“Okay, Reverend. But did your niece tell you they confessed?”

“She doesn’t talk to me about the investigation, John.”

“That’s fine.” Seastrunk did not know whether to interpret the Reverend’s sharp tone as defensiveness over the suggestion that Tasha might have shared confidential information with him, or as a manifestation of the ancient bad blood between the Reverend and the district attorney’s office. The sheriff considered the consternation the old minister might feel at his grand-niece’s chosen career path, felt no desire to probe into how those old enmities, spurred anew by the Bordelon killing, might impact the Rev’s family dynamics.

“Anyway, we do have a confession.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear it,” said the minister. “But sometimes, ‘round here, the arc of the moral universe bends extra slow. And sometime it bends backwards.”

Seastrunk felt his voice harden. “I’m not sure I catch your meaning, Reverend. They may have saved themselves from death row—”

“We’re not after blood, John.”

“—but I don’t think there’s much doubt a jury will be putting them away for life.”

“You’re a good man, John. Your father was a good man, too. But unlike you, he was calculating. Cunning and wise.” The sheriff waited through a long pause, sensing that the Reverend had more to say. “I see things you don’t see. Or can’t. I’m not sure this story ends with the Tatum brothers.”

Seastrunk did not ask,
Do you have anything to base that on, Reverend?
He did not ask because he knew that no satisfactory answer would be forthcoming, that Carter’s suspicions—as a spiritual matter—stemmed from his belief that evil swirled about the pines and the cypresses of this place in cold eddies visible only to a spiritual man like himself until manifested upon the flesh of an innocent like Dalia Bordelon, that such devilry forestalled the possibility of true justice. And—as an earthly matter—from a deep loathing of Robert Duchamp and his protégé, D.A. Ben Hargrave, dating back decades and based only upon mundane small town politics.

Instead, the sheriff said, “I’ve been impressed over how you and Congressman Duchamp have come together over the Bordelon murder.”

The icy silence that followed confirmed Seastrunk’s suppositions. Then the Reverend said, “
Ex-
Congressman Duchamp’s interest in Ms. Bordelon’s lynching extends only so far as how it may affect his business interests, the siting of a new automotive plant or some such. Ours was a temporary alliance of convenience. But do not for a moment believe that I trust that disgraced politician or his supplicant Ben Hargrave to put true justice above a quick fix to this community’s image problem. I fear that the Tatum brothers may represent no more than this quick fix, that baneful men with hate in their veins will walk among us still.”

Closing his eyes and tilting his head toward the ceiling, the sheriff said, “So what about your protestors? They sticking around awhile?”

“They’re hardly
my
protestors—consider them protestors for the Lord. But a large contingent has returned to Chicago. Many other Christian soldiers remain. Not to mention the white kids from Austin, business leaders from Dallas. I expect many will stay here until justice is served.”

After the two town fathers rung off, Seastrunk returned his gaze to the window and fumed for a bit in the wake of the Reverend’s rage and paranoia. But then his mind drifted to his and Bobby’s arrival at the scene of Dalia Bordelon’s mutilation—to the deceptive peacefulness of that bayou, the over-large (
metallic—they look metallic this year
) dragonflies that swirled about as he interviewed Willie Kincaid, and the strange kid Joey, whose mind and heart and soul had seemed to scream with pain at the desecration before him. And Seastrunk believed, just for a moment, that beneath the skin of this crime—and the Tatum twins’ undeniable guilt—a layer of wickedness might lie that he could not begin to fathom.

•

Bobby stepped into the doorway of the sheriff’s office, his lacerated arm in a sling, to find the old man staring out the window. The deputy raised his fist to rap on the door jam and get his boss’s attention, but then Seastrunk rounded on the younger man with a hard stare—as if he had sensed the deputy’s arrival from the first and only paused before turning for dramatic effect. Remaining in the doorway, Bobby braced himself.

“Get in here, deputy, and shut the door.” When Bobby had done so, the sheriff continued: “I saw your little impromptu interview from last night. In fact, I’ve seen it ten thousand times, I guess. Made it into the cable loop.”

“They sort of just threw the cameras in my face, Sheriff.”

“Is that what they did this morning when they dialed you up by satellite?” Hating it, Bobby felt himself flush. “Don’t answer that. Just listen here. All prearranged contact with the media will be coordinated through this office. You got that?”

“Yessir.”

The sheriff fixed him with a hard stare, but when he spoke his tone had softened. “Good. Now sit down. You did alright, far as it goes. But you’ve got to be careful. I suspect they’re trying to make you the face of this investigation. You’re what they call telegenic.”

“Now don’t be jealous, Sheriff.” Bobby smiled. Seastrunk didn’t return it.

“I’m not and I’m serious. If they sandbag you with a camera like that again, you’ve got to watch what you say. Don’t give away anything, but don’t be defensive, either. Be polite. Refer questions about the investigation to me and the DA. And if they ask for a sit-down interview—goddammit, next time you’d better come to me.”

“Yessir.”

“Looks like the media’s gearing up to love on you. But they’ll turn on you like a bunch of wild hogs if you’re not careful.”

“Yessir.”

“Okay. Have you had your formal interview with the DA yet?”

“Fixing to head over. Hargrave’s just got in from Houston.”

“They’re going to want to know every detail of the arrest, the investigation, the confessions, from start to finish. Just because the bastards confessed doesn’t mean we don’t have to do everything by the book. I’m a little nervous about you deciding to bring them in on nothing but a seatbelt violation.”

“Sheriff, the courts have held—”

“Hush up son, you’re not a lawyer. Leave that to the DA’s office.”

“Yessir.” The sheriff stared at him with a gaze no longer withering but not quite benevolent—like a Baptist preacher to a drunken brother. “Aren’t you coming with me?”

Making a show of shuffling pages around his desk, Seastrunk said, “No. I think you can handle it. I have this damn paperwork to finish, don’t want to waste my whole Saturday at the office. Been on the phone with reporters all morning. But meet me back here round five o’clock. We’re going for supper at Kincaid’s, out on the lake.”

“Kincaid? That old coot who found the body? Why? Case is as good as solved.”

“Well, I called his daughter to tell her that and turns out she already bought a mess of food. She’s expecting us. Now get the hell out of here and go talk to the DA so we can wrap this sorry mess up.”

Bobby did not comment on the weirdness of spending Saturday night with a swamp rat and his daughter for no apparent reason, figuring he had ripped his britches with his boss enough already. Not that he had any better plans for that evening.
Not
, he thought
, that there are many better plans to be had for a single man with tastes beyond country music, pool, and bar fights in this shitburg.