All the Devil's Creatures (30 page)

“So then the county Republican party saw an opening.” Kathleen laughed without humor. “In those days, the local GOP consisted of the Duchamps and a few kooky free thinkers. And the Duchamps were pretty much universally reviled. The old man had never made an effort to integrate into the community. And Robert was seen as an alcoholic, privileged dimwit.”

Kathleen paused and shook her head, eyes gazing into the middle distance, reflecting. “Robert wanted that seat. His grandfather was a senator from Maine. But his father had given up any chance of making a political dynasty by moving to Texas. His interest was business. I think my husband felt that if
he
could be successful in politics like his grandfather, he could best his father. Or something.” Kathleen repeated her dry, brittle laugh. “It’s all quite Oedipal.”

“And the campaign was dirty, wasn’t it?” Geoff caught Marisol’s sharp look but he pressed on, baiting the woman, feeding her rage while doing nothing to allay her fears. “Dirty and dishonest campaign, and he’s stayed dirty, isn’t that right Ms. Duchamp? And you sat by while he dragged his office, this state, through the mud—”

“I had children to raise, damn you. Responsibilities …”

“And now he’s gone too far,” Marisol said, following Geoff’s lead. “And you’re entangled in this thing—”

“I’m here of my own volition—”

“The hell you are.”

“We’re taking what we know to the authorities by the end of the day,” Marisol said. Her tone remained soft, her eyes hard. “The only question is, are you with us, or are you with him?”

Now the tears did come, the handkerchief revealed. But then she brushed back her hair and stiffened her chin and said, “I can confirm that that man Monroe worked for my husband.” She held up one of the ledger books. “These aren’t in any sort of code, really. Just a shorthand my husband has used for years. I can read them. And, yes, many of the figures do represent payments to Monroe. For what, I don’t know.”

“You’re going to have to do better than that, Ms. Duchamp. How does the old Texronco refinery on the lake play into this?”

“Texronco’s a successor of the old Duchamp Petroleum Company. I’m sure you know that. But what goes on at the refinery …”

“What goes on there, Ms. Duchamp?”

But she changed tracks, not meeting their gazes. “Robert’s father was opposed to the Congressional race from the beginning. He had no interest in politics, except to the extent he could buy off politicians to get what he wanted. So he refused to fund my husband’s campaign. Of course, Robert had no money in his own right. His father had set him up with a small oil services company—a Texronco subsidiary—this was during the oil boom of the ‘70s, and still Robert managed to run it into the ground. But anyway they struck a deal; Robert’s father’s enterprise, the Group, would fund my husband’s political career, but Robert would be beholden—he had to use his career to advance the interests of the enterprise.”

Marisol said, “The Group?”

“That’s what I call it. It’s not really a business. You could call it an association. Robert would often just say, ‘I’ve got to meet with the Group.’”

Geoff leaned forward on the sofa, his mind racing over what the Prince had told him. How much of the little man’s lunatic ramblings could be true?

“What is the purpose of this association?” he asked. “And who are its members?”

“I don’t know as much as you probably hope. I think it may be related to weapons. Or drugs. Maybe both. I imagine something like Iran Contra. In any event, it goes back decades. It’s quasi-governmental, or used to be.” She issued forth an angry laugh. “The good ol’ military-industrial complex. Over the years I would see people come and go, but the meetings became increasingly secretive. I could point out a few of the members, but it wouldn’t get you far. Plausible deniability is the name of the game.”

“I saw your husband and another guy discussing a project at the lake.” Marisol described the dapper man from the party.

“I think I know who you’re talking about. He’s an investment banker in New York, but he comes from an old New England family that’s been tied in with the Duchamps for generations.”

Geoff said, “What about a tall thin Middle Eastern man with a British accent? Calls himself the Prince?”

“Sure. Prince Bashir-something-or-another. The twelfth-or-so son of an Arab sheik who struck deals with Robert’s father after the war for control of some of the richest oil fields on Earth. Because, you know, if you’re a
Duchamp
, you can never have enough money.” She had pronounced the name the French way rather than the Americanized
DOO-
champ customary in that family, and must have noticed Geoff’s quizzical look. “I used to say it that way to tease him—he hated it. Especially after the reactionary wing of his constituency became convinced the French were our blood enemy.

“Anyway my uncle, my father’s no-account brother, was involved from the beginning, I know that. Crooked as the day is long. Died twenty years ago. I think his widow Esther carried on for a while, but Lord she’s ninety now if she’s a day. I don’t think Robert’s talked to her in years. I sure haven’t.” Kathleen flipped her hair and her lip twitched, as if her current indignation could dispel the decades she spent complicit in such greed with only that minor convulsion. “This isn’t just about me saving myself, I hope you realize. After he left office, after those bastards in the media destroyed him with that trumped up fake charity scandal, Robert swore to me he would give up his association with the Group, the refinery, all that East Texas unpleasantness. We bought our house in the city where we could take in a play, go out to dinner. I wanted us to become patrons of the arts.” She looked back and forth from Geoff to Marisol, as if pleading for understanding from the two of them. Defensive, for the first time that morning. “That swamp down there was never our home, really. It was just politically expedient to be based there.”

“But he didn’t give up those associations. And the books prove that?”

“The books prove that Robert continues to transfer large amounts of money among various shady characters, all connected somehow to that refinery. You could use the information in those books to crack open his finances, his overseas accounts that fund the work of the Group. But the most damning evidence in those books links my husband to that degenerate piece of white trash Jimmy Lee Monroe. Wire transfers to Monroe immediately before and after that lynching down there, what’s-her-name …”

Geoff closed his eyes. “Dalia Bordelon.”

“Right.” She stubbed out her cigarette and rose, gathering her purse. “Now I’ve given you everything I know. Do what you have to with it. I’ll be talking to my lawyer. I could testify to my husband’s link to Monroe. I could authenticate the books. That’s all I can do. But your problem is Hargrave. He’s been one of Robert’s cronies for years. You’ll never get him to go after my husband.”

•

Stretching out on the couch, gazing at the ceiling through the lingering haze of Kathleen’s cigarette smoke, Geoff said, “Well, it’s not a lot, but it sounds like enough to take to a grand jury. They could dig into the finances, freeze assets. Maybe come up with an indictment.”

Marisol said, “But the woman just said that the DA’s in bed with Duchamp. He’ll never convene a grand jury.”

Geoff rubbed his chin, feeling her watching him. He thought he’d done well on Kathleen Duchamp, maybe scored some savvyness points with his worldly detective.

“Maybe we need to throw some sunlight on this thing,” Marisol said. “Force the DA’s hand. Maybe we need to go to the press.”

For the first time since the beginning of this adventure, Geoff felt a little less naïve than his P.I. He sat up.

“The media, the way they see it, they’ve already solved this thing. The Tatum twins are as good as convicted. Those national cable news guys, they don’t want to dig any deeper—they have a story that sells. And the local press has been eviscerated. I bought a daily down there. One section, barely ten pages long. Half of that obituaries. I’ll bet they don’t have a single full time reporter anymore. They don’t have the depth for any investigative reporting.”

“So the big city media is all we’ve got, and they don’t have a clue.”

“Right. You saw what they did to that deputy Bobby Henderson—”

“Now hey, Waltz, what he said was awful.”

“Untactful at best. And I’m sure the twins are as guilty as sin, whether they were working for Duchamp or Monroe or not. But in context what Bobby implied was that maybe Dalia’s murder was linked to some of these other crimes, based on information I gave him and the sheriff, remember—and the media crucified him for that.”

“But if Kathleen went public, the media would jump all over it—”

“Angry political wife turns on her husband—you’re right. Great gossip value. Problem is, Kathleen looks like the type who’d whither in the spotlight. And anyway she’s lawyering up. She’ll keep mum on the advice of her attorney. The only reason she agreed to talk to us is you scared her shitless the other night.”

Marisol gave him her crooked smile for the first time since that night in New Orleans, before things turned so dangerous. But Geoff thought a distance remained in her eye as she said, “Then what do you suggest?”

“We’ll need some official imprimatur. Eventually the FBI will take this up if things go right. Duchamp’s been under investigation before and he pretty much skated when he agreed to resign. There’s still plenty of people on the Bureau who’d jump at the chance to finish him off.”

“So we go to the Feds?” Marisol smirked. “You know I have some experience with those fools.”

Geoff thought she was playing with him a little bit but didn’t care. He said, “Not yet. The Justice Department higher ups will be reluctant to step in as long as it looks like the local officials are wrapping this thing up nice and tight with no one complaining. Convictions are imminent, then everybody can go home. So before that happens we need to take what we have to the one person in any position of power down there I think we can trust—who can’t stand Duchamp: Sheriff Seastrunk.”

“Maybe, Waltz. But …” She hesitated, chewed a thumbnail. And Geoff saw that her expression had gone dark. Like clouds gathering over a high mountain meadow; a storm brewing without warning.

“But what, Marisol?”

She shook her head, took a long time to answer. Then she said, “My mind keeps going back to New Orleans … what I saw. How it made me feel. This is about more than dirty politics, Waltz. Something bigger.”

Now don’t you go all T-Jacques Rubell on me.

“It’s all the old Duchamp family dirty laundry, Marisol. And it’s going to end with Robert Duchamp behind bars.”

G
eoff found a parking spot in the garden style complex near the Interstate exit to the main road into town. A corner of that town that looked as if it could have been air lifted from any suburb of any city in America. Except there was no city here. Just big box stores and chain restaurants with their parking lots creating seas of concrete; the ugly modern hospital building from which the Reverend had decamped the day before; the elevated highway and its constant roar. Fast food signs towered above it all, beckoning travelers to stop and eat and piss without need of venturing to the town’s distinctive core.

Bobby came to the door in jeans and a college t-shirt. Out of uniform, the deputy looked younger than his thirty-odd years, like a high school senior on his way out of town. Bobby greeted Geoff and Marisol like old friends, waving them into the combination living-dining room. It had been just over two weeks since their single meeting, the feast at Sally Kincaid’s house the night Geoff leaned of Eileen’s murder. It seemed like much longer.

After their meeting with Kathleen Duchamp, Geoff had pulled out his phone to call Sheriff Seastrunk only to find he had a voice mail from Deputy Henderson. “The sheriff doesn’t want to be involved, but he’s given me pretty much free reign to work with y’all in this investigation,” Bobby had said when Geoff called him back. He understood the politics of it, but Geoff felt a little that the old lion had decided to retreat to his cave, to let his cub hunt for him. Seastrunk had not struck him as so timid.

They sat around Bobby’s plain oak dining table; Geoff thought it looked like a hand-me-down.

“We’ll start with the Dalia Bordelon murder,” Geoff said. “And the subsequent murder in New Orleans of her boss, my consultant, Eileen Kim. Here’s what we’ve got.” He pulled out the ledger books and explained their significance, explained Kathleen’s willingness to testify.

Marisol sat expressionless with her arms crossed before her. On the drive down, the distance, the heart-clinching coldness, the she had exhibited off and on since New Orleans had returned. No hints of the old playfulness that had peeked back out after their interview of Kathleen. As if the nearer they got the center of this thing—heading east, into the pines—the more some nauseating dread embraced her. Impenetrable. And he had stopped searching for any glint in her eye reflecting their shared passion.
Just a one night stand, best forgotten
, he thought. He’d had others since Janie died. He resigned himself to it.

She said, “We can also document that the refinery Dalia was investigating when she was murdered is still controlled, when you work through the various Texronco subsidiaries and trust funds, by the Duchamp family.” Pausing, she touched her hair and let it fall before her eyes. “And that’s not the least of it. Jimmy Lee Monroe tried to kill me in New Orleans. He shot at Geoff. We have no doubt it was him—I can identify him from photographs, I can identify his truck. And of course he stole our rental car.”

Still not meeting either of their gazes, Marisol threw back her head and stared to the ceiling. “And the New Orleans PD is treating it as a random carjacking. The way they see it, Monroe killed a garage attendant and snuck into my car. Then jacked me when we were isolated. They implied I had it coming for going out to the devastation zone by myself.”

Geoff said, “If you’d told them you worked for me … with the shooting in the bar—”