All the Devil's Creatures (26 page)

BOOK: All the Devil's Creatures
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The masses could have defeated the town’s tiny police force and the county sheriff’s department had their numbers chosen to riot. The governor sent in Texas Rangers to man the streets in their Stetsons and five-pointed stars hammered from Spanish silver—uniforms more befitting the vast prairies and plains and deserts to the West than this cloistered, moss-draped place. The get-ups instilled no romance in that sultry air, only provocation.

The crowd did not riot, but it churned with a gathering menace.

As he crossed the street from the courthouse, John Seastrunk could smell the adrenaline in the air like ozone preceding a electric storm, and he feared that Tasha Carter’s presence in that old monolith of officialdom—and her uncle’s blessing of him before the explosion—would only hold the people at bay for so long. He did not suspect that many in that crowd were violent by nature. But one hot-head among them could create a spark like a careless ember in the old-growth forest.


 

Bobby joined the sheriff in his office in the courthouse annex, past the circus atmosphere around the square, past the aggrieved and the curious and the profit-driven, past the banners and the drums and the cameras. Inside, Seastrunk took his place behind his desk, a seat of great power in this county but beholden to interests and forces Bobby had understood little of until that week. As the sheriff motioned him to sit, Bobby sensed a foulness from his boss but did not know if that foulness was directed at him. The young deputy sat and prepared for a reaming out. And he readied his own defiance.

“Son, I owe you an apology.”

The sheriff did not continue but stared into his deputy’s eyes with his hands clasped before him on the desk. Bobby rubbed his neck and averted his gaze. He had come prepared to stand up for his honor, to offer his resignation if necessary. He could take what he knew to Waltz and Solis—maybe the P.I. would take him on as a junior partner. But even if not, he would work this case with them for free if they would have him, to unravel this inscrutable conspiracy. To prove to the world that the myopic media were wrong, that the murder of Dalia did involve something beyond a pair of murderous redneck throwbacks. To prove that he was not a redneck throwback himself.

Bobby reestablished eye contact, and then he said, “Nossir.”

“Yes, Bobby, I do.” Seastrunk did not alter his expression or his posture. “Hell, I don’t know if that son-of-a-bitch Duchamp is mixed up in this mess the way you seem to think. But there are enough question marks that somebody ought to be digging around.”

Bobby relaxed, comfortable now that it seemed his boss had called him in here to do some real police work. “How certain are we Jimmy Lee Monroe bombed the Reverend’s house?”

“Pretty damn sure. Forensics found traces of ammonium-nitrate in his car and on his body—same chemicals used in the bomb. Neighbor says he saw a Chevy sedan like the one we found Monroe’s body in pulling away from the house just before the explosion. The same car, by the way, registered as a rental to Waltz down in New Orleans.”

“It’s all tying together. Not to mention ol’ Wayne Tatum blurting out Monroe’s name under pressure.”

“There are dots, I’ll give you that. And I can see where lines could be drawn to make some pretty interesting constellations. But I’m not ready to draw those lines quite yet.”

Bobby opened his mouth, hesitated, held back. Then he said, “Do we know Monroe’s cause of death?” The deputy knew only that the owner of a crapped-out carwash at a crossroads between here and nowhere had found Jimmy Lee stiff as a board in the Chevy.

“Autopsy shows he was hopped up on meth and booze. He was cut up pretty good—in the groin area, and his nose was broken, but those injuries predated his death by a couple of days. Official COD is cardiac arrest, maybe brought on by asphyxiation. It’s possible somebody suffocated him. Or he could have just stopped breathing. We didn’t get any other prints from the car.” The sheriff scratched his neck. “Staying just in this room, the coroner wants to rule it natural causes. I’ve asked him to hold off just for a bit.”

Bobby paused, nodded, considered. “Well. Just tell me what I need to do.”

“Ain’t that simple, son. This is where politics come in.”

Feeling his hands clench on the arm rests of his chair, Bobby sighed. It almost came out as a growl.

“Calm down, deputy. Let me back up.” The paternalistic gaze. “Seemed like you were getting pretty tight with Ms. Tasha Carter.”

“That was … before.” He crossed his arms before him. “Anyway, what does that have to do with—”

“Because Hargrave’s gonna bury anything that could slow down them closing the book on the Tatum boys. You remember I raised the issue once of bringing in Monroe for questioning. The DA wouldn’t have none of it.”

“But that was before Jimmy Lee blew up the Rev.”

“Dammit, son. You think that’s gonna make it
more
likely the Hargrave’ll want to dig up bones? With Duchamp breathing down his neck? And have you seen the mob out there? Like they’re fixing to riot? Tell you one thing—Hargrave’s not gonna poke that nest. And anyway I got no pull in that office. That’s why I ask if you’re close to Tasha.”

Bobby willed himself to tamp down any pride he might feel that the sheriff needed his connections. “We’re hardly talking.”

“Turned on you like everyone else, huh?”

“Yessir. We had a big row while I was furloughed. Spoke by phone since then. Agreed to be professional for the sake of this case. But, hell, I got no pull either. And, well …”

“What?”

“Tasha Carter’s got her own agenda. She’d be no help. She’s tight with Hargrave and Duchamp. Sees them as her way up and out.
Politics
-wise.” He spat the word.

The sheriff puffed his cheeks in a look of comic incredulity. “Signing on with Duchamp? And as a Republican?
Yee-law
, that must hurt her uncle more than getting bombed.”

“I’ll bet.” He paused. “I take it she thinks a black woman can rise through the Republican ranks pretty fast. As a … defier of stereotypes.” He could not bring himself to say
token
.

“I reckon she’s right. Up to a point.”

They gazed at each other in silence across the desk that had belonged to Seastrunk’s father, the sheriff and deputy separated by two generations but shouldering the same weight of history, a weight that seemed to Bobby would be visited upon the sons of that place until the end of time. He wanted nothing more than to throw it off, to flee to some modern anonymous city where history (in the form of maybe a few fine old buildings or a statue or commemorative marker here and there) served only to add texture but did not make itself a constant suffocating presence.

The deputy breathed. His boss broke his gaze at last. Bobby said, “How’s the Rev doing, anyway?”

“Not bad, considering. The bomb detonated outside and blew the window in. If that ignorant fool Monroe had had the sense or the strength or the presence of mind to rig up a decent explosive … well, as it is Mose Carter’s serious but stable. He’ll pull through. He’s a tough ol’ goat.” The sheriff’s eyes looked sad. Tired. The old man looked his age. “And Bobby?”

“Sir?”

“Reverend Carter can be prideful. He can even be mean. But he never would have achieved what he did for his people if he hadn’t been those things. He’s a good man. Real good.”

“Yessir.”

Seastrunk rubbed his hand through his hair and said, “Lord, I need some joe. We’re not done here yet.” He called to his receptionist and they talked about the weather (
of all things
, Bobby thought) while they waited and when she came with the steaming cups the sheriff settled back in his chair and said: “Now you listen to me. You think you can link all this to Duchamp somehow and like I said, the dots are there so I’m not saying you’re wrong. But I’m going to be just as ugly and honest with you as you were with me last week. You know Hargrave and Duchamp are thicker than flies on the Fourth of July.”

“But we don’t work for Hargrave. You and he were both elected by the people.”

“Son, I love you and I know you’re smart but right now you sound as ignorant as a new-born pup on Christmas morning.”

Maybe it was the coffee, or the air-clearing they had accomplished before it arrived, but the sheriff had returned to his full leonine form. Bobby felt relieved.

“I know I don’t work for Hargrave. But I don’t plan on giving up this post come election time. I’m just an old widower who’s kids have all moved off, and I don’t know what else I’d do. And hell, I’m good at it. I know every dirt farm, bayou, and gravel road in this county like I know my own prick, and that’s more than I can say for Duchamp and Hargrave and all them from town.”

Seastrunk pointed at Bobby across the desk, his coarse and swollen finger like stick taken from some ancient and powerful tree. Then he closed that hand into a fist and held it before him, not pounding or gesticulating but just holding it there like a totem meant to give his words power. He said, “I still remember when Duchamp’s daddy moved down here, during the war. Set up his rinky-dink drilling company with his family money and strutted around here with his New England ways like he ran the place. Daddy was already Sheriff by then, and he used to say that old Duchamp was such a fool he couldn’t have kept that business going for a New York minute without that blue blood Yankee lifeline. Then along comes little Robert W. And I’ll tell you, he’s built his political career on being a East Texas country boy. Man of the people. But his parents sent him back east to school from the time he was twelve years old. Same goddamn prep school as his daddy and granddaddy and Lord knows how far back, back to when them Yankee lunatics were burning headstrong women at the stake and calling them witches. And then he moves back to this county like it’s his mother’s milk, but he don’t know a cotton gin from a hole in the ground. When he was Speaker of the House and he’d come down here with the D.C. press corps for a photo op, out on the lake bass fishing at mid-afternoon in August like a goddamn moron. What kind idiot goes out in a boat in the middle of the day in August and expects to catch bass? A goddamn phony Yankee carpet-bagger, that’s who.”

Bobby had heard the diatribe in one form or another many times and knew there was no point joining in with the sheriff to agree or disagree. He knew that the sheriff was right but also that the old man underestimated the power a person has to remake himself in this country, that the wealthy and powerful families in the town appreciated the Duchamp wealth and prestige and the family’s presumed choice to adopt the manners and customs of this place.

By now Seastrunk had dropped his hands back to the desk but he breathed a little heavy, and the pinkness of his face accentuated his graying hair.

Bobby said, “Yessir.”

“Here’s our dilemma, Bobby. And what I’m saying won’t leave this room. The other day, you said I can’t win without the black vote—”

“Sir, I was out of line.”

The sheriff held up a hand. “You were right. But I can’t win without a nice hunk of the white vote, either. I figure I need about thirty percent, give or take, depending on turnout. And every year—as the old folks who remember how FDR saved their hides die off—there’s fewer whites willing to vote for a Democrat in this county, even for local elections. And if Duchamp and Hargrave and the rest of the country club set wanted to bad enough, they could run me out of office quicker than a date with a ten-dollar Matamoros whore.”

“Come on, Sheriff. You’re a legend. You won with ninety percent of the vote last time.”

“Because they didn’t run nobody against me. But against a moneyed candidate? A well funded whisper campaign? Some clever race-baiting? They could string me up. So what would you have me do? Go after Duchamp straight on? Ask a judge for an arrest warrant? An
elected
judge in this county? Lord, he’d be liable to lock me up as an endangerment. Subpoena the bastard in the Tatum twins’ case? Well, Hargrave would never go for it. I’ve explained all that.”

The old man sipped his coffee and Bobby watched him across the desk and waited. Then the sheriff said, “So here’s my bit of wisdom, then I’m through with the whole mess till you’ve come in here with some hard evidence. If there really is a link to Duchamp, and the trail leads all the way to that murder in New Orleans, there’s one ‘ol boy that’s already itching to figure it all out: Geoff Waltz, a good fella seemed to me, and his P.I. And I’ll tell you what—you ought to call that fella right now.”

Chapter 28

R
obert Duchamp sat on the edge of a plush leather ottoman in his study, elbows on his knees, hands clasped before him as if in prayer, watching the little television set mounted into an alcove above the wet bar. He chewed his lower lip.

The images played in an endless loop—the burned out house, a still shot of the Reverend taken at least twenty years ago, Texas Rangers trying to keep order on a courthouse lawn teeming with protestors, a stock photo of a Confederate flag decal on the back of a pickup truck that could have been taken at any time in any town.

“It’s time to get dressed, dear.”

He turned and saw his wife standing in the doorway, unconcerned but serious, already in her gown and pearls, hair coifed and teased like that of an Italian film star of another era. She wore the look well.

He said, “All right, Kathleen.”

“Still watching the news? Honestly, I understand your worry, but you need to let go. It’s not your district anymore.”

He turned back to the television. “Yeah, I know.”

“And you divested yourself of your …
interests
down there, years ago. Right?”

Duchamp felt feverish. He turned back to his wife with wide eyes. She stood firm and lovely like pink granite. He wanted to run to her, to weep into her bosom and beg her forgiveness and the forgiveness of the world.

Instead, he said, “Of course. That was the deal.”

Her voice remained steely cold. “And you haven’t been in touch with
that woman
since you since your last round of fundraising. Right?”

That woman.
Esther Tamaulipa O’Brien. Hard and mean. Kathleen’s own aunt by marriage.

BOOK: All the Devil's Creatures
10.03Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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