Death by the Riverside (8 page)

My head ran into something. Since I didn’t have a free hand, I wiggled a little closer and turned my head so I could feel whatever it was with my cheek. Wood. Cheek to cheek with a board.

I inched myself farther up, so that during the next big crash in the basement, I could thrust against the wooden covering. I hoped it was very rotten.

Hanging suspended, trying not to cough, I listened to the search in the basement. Finally, I was rewarded with a muffled “Look out” and the sound of a bed frame and springs falling over. I hurled myself up at the cover.

Bless Mother Nature, with her rust and rot. The wood itself held, but the rusted hasp easily pulled out of the rotted wood. I flung one arm over the edge, and, adding a number of scrapes and bruises, pulled myself out and into the dawn.

I quickly looked around, ignoring my throbbing knees and elbows. I didn’t want to be staring down anyone’s gun barrel.

Fortunately, plants grow very well around here. With no one to cut them back, vine-covered azalea and oleander plants had surrounded the chute opening. No one was around. I carefully closed the door, so that no light would show if anyone looked in, then I took my gun out of my rope belt and clicked the safety off.

The safest thing to do would be to head for the road and snag a passing car. But that shot I had heard nagged at me. I had to make sure it was Milo who had been disposed of.

I found what had once been a break in the bushes and edged myself through it. It was still early morning, made grayer by the clouds obscuring the dawn. My feet were getting cold and wet from the dew. I started to head for the front of the house, but I heard voices there and decided that the other direction would do just as well. The voices were coming my way, so I ducked around a corner. I saw a set of outside stairs that led up to a porch on the second floor. Treading as lightly as possible, I climbed them. The two top steps were broken, and I had to take a long step to gain the porch. Hopefully the voices weren’t headed this way. The porch didn’t seem very trustworthy; the far end was listing badly and a number of boards had a crumbly rotten feeling under my feet. The listing end also had something that looked like a thick piece of black wire, if thick black wire could move by itself.

There was a screen door leading back into the house, a direction I found appealing. I gingerly opened the screen door, hoping the rusty hinges wouldn’t make too much noise. The door came off in my hands, the hinges making no noise at all as they were no longer attached. I gently leaned the door against the wall. Whatever door had been behind the screen door was gone.

I was in the upstairs hallway. To my left was the narrow staircase from the kitchen. It went up another flight. To my right was a room, showing the decay this house had fallen to. Unless, of course, those discarded tampons and condoms were antebellum.

Voices from down in the basement drifted my way. It sounded as if they were coming up. I headed farther upstairs. The third floor was only two rooms, perhaps a sanctuary and watchtower for some previous owner. The stairs led directly into one room, which had a door to the other room. From one window I could view the river in all its misty gray-brown glory. From the window opposite I could see the drive disappearing into a curve and clump of pine trees. I couldn’t see the front of the house or how many cars were there; that was cut off by the roof below me.

I entered the other room. There was a lot of broken glass on the floor, from uncounted storms and wanton boys, so I had to watch where I stepped with my bare feet. The two corresponding windows had the same views, the drive and the river. The third window overlooked an overgrown expanse of lawn bordered by the swamp that separated this property from One Hundred Oaks.

I caught sight of three men standing on the edge of the swamp. They looked like they were tossing something heavy into the brackish marsh. There was a flash of red before it disappeared down into the weeds.

I wanted to scream or curse. To tell God or fate or whatever to bring that spot of crimson back out of the swamp. I didn’t. I said nothing. Instead I planted my feet, ignoring the glass and put the barrel of my .45 through one of the broken panes of glass.

I had never aimed this gun at another person before. I once saw my dad shoot a water moccasin with it, but that was the only destruction I’d ever seen it do. It had been his gun. That was the real reason I carried it. He had taught me, at an early age, about guns, about how dangerous and serious they were. Never aim them at another person, he had told me.

I never had. Until now. I aimed at what I guessed to be Milo and pulled the trigger. Even the roar of the gun in the quiet morning didn’t seem loud enough. Of course, I missed Milo, but I did wing goon boy. He spun down, like some forceful hand had hit him on the shoulder. I fired again. They scattered, leaving goon boy to struggle after them, with his shoulder dripping blood.

I backed away from the window, not wanting them to see me. They had their guns out and were firing, but not in my direction. Apparently, they thought that the shots had been fired from a clump of bushes surrounding one of the old oak trees on the lawn.

Part of me wanted to keep firing at them, but I told myself that my best revenge would be to live long enough to testify against them. There were probably more of them than I had bullets, particularly since I doubted they would stay still while I fired at them.

I went back into the other room and placed myself where I could see anyone coming up the stairs before they saw me. I heard a lot of shouting and a few more gunshots, then the sound of first one car, then another, starting.

I raced back to the window overlooking the drive and saw two cars, including the one supposedly driving Barbara to New Orleans, heading down the drive. As they passed the oak tree where they thought the shots had come from, they released a hail of gunfire, including what sounded like a machine gun. Then the sound of the cars disappeared and the gray morning was again silent.

I ran down the stairs as fast as I could, keeping my gun ready just in case they had left goon boy or any of the basement searchers behind. When I got to the kitchen, I stepped into the storeroom, threw the trap door down, and bolted it, just in case anyone was still in the basement. But there was no sound of protest or consternation from below. Turner was still lying in the front room, his eyes glassy and silent, with a few flies buzzing and landing on the bloody patch on his chest. I ignored him and ran outside. There was no one to be seen. Evidently they had taken goon boy with them.

I fired two shots in the direction where the cars had disappeared, in anger and frustration. Then I started running toward the swamp where I had seen that flash of red. The oyster shell drive cut my feet as I ran across it, but I couldn’t pay attention to the pain. I had to know what they had thrown into the swamp.

Chapter 11

The yard was huge, a long run, from the days when the rich were very rich and land was cheap. It was hard slogging through the damp overgrowth, with sharp weeds tugging at my cut feet. I kept running.

I got to the swamp. I wasn’t sure if this was the same place I had seen them. I didn’t see any telltale red. I followed the edge of the swamp for about twenty yards and still didn’t see anything. I looked back at the house, trying to get my bearings. The broken windows seemed to be laughing at me, like the eyes of a gap-toothed jack-o’-lantern. I ran back to where I had started, continuing until I came to a place where the weeds had been trampled down. I followed the twisted grass past a clump of scrub pine to the open place where I had seen the men.

I saw my patch of red. She could have been a doll, swept by the wind and tide of a hurricane, taken from some small child and left bent and broken in the swamp. There was that sense of disarray about her, arms and legs turned in unexpected angles. But it wasn’t a doll, it was Barbara Selby with her ash blond hair streaming around her and matted with blood.

I yelled and cursed, shouting my fury to whatever was listening, as I half-ran, half-slid down the hill into the swamp.

They never tell you about the anger. I remember the anger, no, absolute fury, that I felt after my father was killed. My Aunt Greta never understood, always telling me not to act that way and I had to accept God’s will. I would reply that if God was going to kill my father, then I was going to hate Him. And I would get spanked and sent to bed without supper.

I felt that same anger now as I slogged through the mud and marsh grass to Barbara. She had been shot, once, in the head. A big black beetle was crawling up her neck to her cheek. I picked it off and threw it as far as I could.

Kneeling beside her, I touched her hand and realized that it was still warm. Could she be alive? I felt for a pulse. It was there, ragged and weak, but she was alive.

I wanted to keep her alive. My first impulse was to grab her up and carry her out of the mud, but trying to haul her up that hill and back into the house might do her more harm than good. She needed help as fast as she could get it. She also needed to be gotten out of this cold, muddy swamp and given first aid. It was not going to be easy for one person to do both those things.

I examined her, trying to make sure that her head wound was her only injury. For all I knew those goons had broken her back, too. I hoped I could keep her alive, that this wasn’t some final horror, that she would die anyway, no matter what I did, a cruel joke from the gods.

Her head injury was the only one I could find. I decided that I would chance moving her, at least up the hill and out of the swamp.

I looked at the slope, trying to figure the best route up. Suddenly a man appeared. He was yelling something at me, but I couldn’t make it out. He had a gun and he was pointing it at me. I hadn’t done Barbara or myself any good.

He yelled again, but he didn’t pull the trigger. I stared at him and realized that I had never seen him before. He wasn’t one of Milo’s men.

Another man appeared at the top of the hill. He, too, was pointing a gun at me and yelling.

It took me a few moments to understand what they were saying. They were telling me to drop something. My gun. I still had my gun in my hand. Then I saw the silver glint of a badge on one of them. The police. Only half an hour too late. Why they were yelling at me to drop my gun while Barbara was lying here dying, I didn’t understand.

“Drop it,” the first one yelled again. “Drop the gun, now.”

I didn’t. I threw it at them. It disappeared over the hill just to the right of the first man.

“Help her,” I yelled. “She needs an ambulance.”

They scrambled down the hill. When they reached us, one of them grabbed me, slapped me against a close pine tree, and did a search. Then he handcuffed me behind my back. The other one was checking out Barbara. They weren’t moving fast enough to suit me.

“Goddamn it, get an ambulance,” I exploded. “She’s got to have help now.”

“That’s enough out of you,” the first one said. He started dragging me up the hill. I tried to protest, but he twisted my arm and pulled me along. Two more men appeared at the top of the hill. One of them had a walkie-talkie.

“Call medical assistance,” said the officer that was still near Barbara. I heard one of the men asking for an ambulance as I was led back through the overgrown lawn to where the police cars were. There were three of them. About time.

I began to realize how much every part of my body hurt. My jaw where Turner had hit me, my cut feet, all the scrapes and bruises I had gotten crawling out of the coal chute, my abraded wrists. I was also cold. I had worked up a sweat running to find Barbara. My jeans were soaked from the swamp and the T-shirt was little protection against the morning chill. I started shivering.

My friendly, kindly police officer didn’t appear to notice. He led me back across the oyster shell drive without slowing down. This time I noticed just how sharp those things were.

He stopped at the cars and then started reading me my rights.

I interrupted, “What am I being arrested for?”

“Murder,” he answered.

“Huh?” was my snappy rejoinder.

“Don’t play dumb. Two people with gunshot wounds, one’s already dead. We caught you with a gun. Someone called, said they heard shots out here. This is what we find.”

Hunger, fatigue, and pain must have been catching up with me. I couldn’t quite follow his logic.

“Or are you going to tell me you don’t know anything about the dead body in the house,” he continued sarcastically.

“Oh, him.” Turner had not been on the top of my priorities.

“Yeah, him.”

“But he was shot with a .38. My gun is a .45,” I said. That woke the officer up.

“Huh?” Now he was the witty one. “How do you know?”

“Oh, women’s intuition,” I answered. That didn’t seem to particularly please him. I thought about suggesting they search the basement and get my purse with my P.I. license and gun permit. But I didn’t think it likely that they could find it where I had hidden it, let alone where it ended up after Milo’s boys finished searching.

“I think you’d better start giving me some straight answers, now,” he said.

I was cold, hungry, tired, filthy, in pain, and he wanted straight answers. An ambulance siren sounded in the distance, coming closer. I shivered. My left foot suggested standing on my right foot. My right foot told me to sit down. And he wanted straight answers.

“I want a lawyer.” There, that was as straight an answer as I was going to give.

“You’ll get your phone call when we get back to the station. Now, why don’t you tell me about that .38?” he asked.

“Actually, I don’t want a lawyer,” I said. “I want a police officer.”

“I am a police officer.”

I almost said I wanted a real one, but I stopped myself in the nick of time.

“Yes, I know,” I answered. “A specific one. Detective Sergeant Joanne Ranson, NOPD.”

“Any particular reason?” he asked.

“When you talk to her, tell her that Micky Knight says hello.”

He scowled at me, but didn’t say anything. The ambulance pulled into the driveway, crunching noisily on the oyster shells. There was another police car behind it. These guys were the local yokels. Someone pointed the ambulance across the yard to the swamp and it drove off, bumping over the lawn.

Officer local yokel was still scowling at me. Evidently he wasn’t impressed that I knew a big-city cop.

“Well, you’re still under arrest for murder,” he finally replied. One of the men from the recently arrived police car came over and talked to my police officer. I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I just shivered.

The ambulance came back from the swamp, its siren on even before it got off the grass. I watched it disappear down the long drive.
Good luck, Barbara. I hope to see you again, sometime soon.
I listened to its siren until it faded in the distance.

The morgue truck arrived. I stood, shivering, watching them take Turner out in a black body bag.

I wondered if they would think I was trying to escape if I walked the ten feet to the closest car and leaned against it. They didn’t even notice. Unfortunately the car was cold. Plus one for my feet and minus one for my body temperature, so my overall level of comfort didn’t change very much.

The morgue truck drove away. It started to drizzle. My officer went into the house to talk to some of his cohorts. Or perhaps to get out of the rain. For a dangerous killer, they weren’t doing a very good job of guarding me. I thought about walking away. But since the idea of standing up had no appeal for me, walking out of here didn’t seem very feasible.

My officer finally came back out of the house.

“My, my, is it starting to rain?” he asked. I scowled at him. He was carrying a disreputable-looking blanket, which he spread over the back seat of the car. Then he motioned for me to get in. I did. At this point, jail sounded like the height of luxury.

He and another officer got in the front seat. There was a heavy-duty partition between us. We rode in silence, at least for my part, into whatever small town this was. I couldn’t read the name at the police station, since they took me in the back way. The criminal entrance, I surmised.

I caught a reflection of myself in a mirror. I was covered in rain-streaked coal dust, barefoot, with dried blood from elbow to wrist on one arm. My clothing looked like resurrected dust rags, the jeans covered in mud from the knees down. I could easily pass for seriously deranged.

They led me to a cell, took off the handcuffs, and locked me in. I heard a crack about fumigating the place after they got rid of me. I didn’t care. I settled on the lumpy bunk and pulled the scratchy wool blanket around me. It took me a long time to finally stop shivering.

After a while, my friendly police officer came back and started asking me questions which I ignored. I just kept telling him to get hold of Ranson. I would let her explain this. I was too tired and too worried about Barbara. I asked him about her, but he didn’t know anything. Or said he didn’t.

He finally left. I got back under the blanket to keep warm. I was probably getting a cold.

Sometime in the middle of the afternoon, a rookie type showed up with orders and all sorts of official-looking papers to take me back to the city. He didn’t look real thrilled when he caught sight of me, borrowing the blanket I had sat on in Friendly Officer’s car to put me on in the back seat of his car. He also made sure that his bulletproof, anti-deviant protective barrier was flawless and solidly locked.

Good, I figured, that meant that I was safe from him. I dozed until we hit the early rush-hour traffic.

Rookie led me to Ranson’s office and left me outside to wait for her return, letting me decide whether or not to ruin one of those beautiful, antique folding chairs by sitting on it. I sat. Beauty is fleeting, but painful feet are forever.

I was sitting there feeling very dirty, not to mention sorry for myself, when Danny Clayton walked by. Without recognizing me, I might add.

“Danny,” I said. She kept on walking. “Assistant District Attorney Clayton,” I said, getting her attention.

“Do I…” she started. “Micky!” she exclaimed when she recognized me. “My Lord, woman, what happened to you?”

“Oh, I ran into a doorway,” I answered. The expression on Danny’s face told me better than any mirror how bad I looked.

“It must have been one hell of a door,” she replied.

Ranson walked up, casually said hello to Danny, noticed me, and did a double take. I did get some satisfaction out of having thrown her.

“Shit, Micky, what did they do to you?” Ranson asked in a tight voice.

“They?” Danny asked, looking first at Ranson, then at me.

“Come into my office. No, wait, let’s go to the women’s room and get you cleaned up,” she said and led the way.

Since there weren’t too many women in this area, we had it all to ourselves. Ranson went to get me some sweatpants and a T-shirt from her locker.

I started trying to wash the blood and coal dust off. I had a big bruise on my cheek and jaw where Turner had hit me. My clean arms were a welter of bruises and cuts. Both wrists were torn and scraped from the ropes. My left foot had a nasty cut on the arch and both feet had a number of minor cuts from the oyster shells. The more dirt that came off, the more concerned Danny looked. I almost wished she wasn’t here. I had treated her too badly recently for me to feel I deserved the concern she was showing.

Ranson returned with her gym clothes. I took off the dirty rags.

“Who did this to you?” Danny asked in an angry voice.

“A coal chute, oyster shells, a swamp,” I answered as I dressed. Danny took my chin in one hand and turned my face to her, then started to trace the bruise on my face. I flinched as she hit a sore spot.

“No oyster shell did that. Or that,” she said, pointing to my wrists. “There are laws against people hitting other people,” she finished.

“Yeah, but you should see the other guy,” I said, trying to make a joke. Then I remembered the other guy was in a body bag.

“Can you identify him?” Ranson asked.

“Yes,” I answered. “I can even tell you where he is.” Ranson cocked an eyebrow. “In a morgue somewhere in St. John the Baptist Parish,” I answered. The jokes were over.

“Did you…” asked Danny, leaving the “kill him” hanging.

“No, I didn’t.”

“Let’s go back to my office,” Ranson said, leading us out.

The first thing Ranson did was call out and order us some po-boys for supper. It was past six o’clock already. She seemed willing to let Danny stay, and I didn’t mind.

I told them my story with only a slight interruption for dinner. It took me over two hours, between my fatigue and Ranson’s questions.

When I finished, she stood up and said, “Okay, now it’s time for you to go home and go to bed.”

“She’s coming home with me,” Danny added.

“Good idea,” Ranson said.

But there was still some unfinished business.