Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 07 - The Swamps of Bayou Teche (24 page)

“Yaaa-” The loud splash and the dark waters closing over his head cut off his scream. Moments later, he
came up sputtering and crying. “M’aider. Chere mere
de Jesus, l’aide. Help me. Dear mother of Jesus, help.”

I could hear his fingers slapping against the gunnel,
trying to find a grip to haul himself from the water. I kicked desperately at his fingers, sometimes hitting
them, other times missing completely.

Frantically, he tried to climb over, but I kept kicking at his fingers, sending him plunging back into the
black waters. Then he started sobbing, begging. “S’il
vous plait, mepargner. S’il vous plait. Please, save me.
Please. S’il you-”

A sudden rush of water and a loud splash cut off his
last plea. The attack rocked the jon boat. I closed my
eyes and pressed against the deck as hard as I could,
praying the roiling water wouldn’t capsize the small
aluminum boat, and at the same time trying to shut out
the splashing and screaming on the other side of the
thin metal.

Once or twice when Pellerin surfaced he managed a
shout, but it was quickly silenced when the alligators
pulled him back underwater.

And just as suddenly as the attack started, it was
over. The rocking boat grew still. Moments later, the
night sounds of the swamp returned and the gay music
from the festival drifted across the still waters.

At five ten and a hundred sixty pounds, I’m lanky,
and for once it paid off. I managed to work my bound
wrists down over my flat derriere and slip my legs between them. My hands were still tied, but I quickly
freed my ankles and then used my teeth on the rope
about my wrists.

Five minutes later, I started easing the jon boat
through the swamp, bouncing off unseen cypress tnees, but always guided by the strains of one of my
favorite Cajun tunes, “Jolie Blon.”

Back at the festival, I searched down one side of the
midway for Emile Primeaux. When I reached the
dance floor, Jack had disappeared. When I asked
Marie if she’d seen him, she smiled coquettishly and
replied, “Don’t you be worrying. That one, him and
Jean, dey go for ride.”

I rolled my eyes and muttered a curse. So much for
shy Jack Edney. Now I had no transportation. Muttering under my breath, I headed back up the opposite
side of the midway. I got lucky. Standing in front of
the basketball shoot was Emile Primeaux and his
deputy, Louis.

His eyes grew wide when he saw my disheveled appearance. “Hey, what happen to you?”

“She’s the one,” I exclaimed. “Palmo!”

He frowned at me. “What that you say?”

I tugged on his arm. “I’ll explain later. Right now,
we’ve got to go after her.”

The tall sergeant pulled his arm away from me.
“You don’t make no sense. All that me, I hear back at
the table, it all sound good to me”

“Me too,” I gushed. “But as soon as we got away
from the lights, someone whopped me on the head. I
almost joined John Hardy.”

“How you know that?”

“Her half-brother, Thertule Pellerin, told me. He thought I was unconscious. He said the last one had
made a lot of noise.” I shrugged. “It had to be John
Hardy.”

His face grew hard, and he studied me narrowly.
“Where he be now?”

“Out there.” I hooked my thumb over my shoulder.
“His half-sister is really Karen Rouly Babin. For the
last nine or ten years, she’s played the part of Laura
Palmo”

Emile was still undecided.

“Look, don’t believe me. At least stop her from running, though. She has offshore accounts at Nauru.
Somewhere around Australia. If I know her, she’s already on her way. Once she’s out of the country, we’ll
never find her.”

He pursed his lips, then spun on his heel. “Den let’s
go. Louis, find Walter. Den you find out what connections there be to that place, that Nauru. Call me when
you find out.”

Moments later, we were hurtling down a dark road
with the overhead strobes flashing. “You know where
she lives, Emile?”

“Oui. Now tell me what you know.”

I held on for dear life as he skillfully threw the powerful cruiser around one curve after another. In between, I filled him in on what I had learned. “For the
most part it was conjecture, but tonight proved I was
right.” I explained how she and Palmo had met, and
the accident where she switched identities.

“But, how she manage that?”

I shook my head. “The car burned. One body was
unrecognizable. Maybe they assumed she was
Palmo.” I glanced around at him. The overheads lit his
dark face with flashes of blue and red. “I’m guessing
everything in the car was destroyed by the fire, even
their purses and identification. She has a terrible scar
on her face from the fire, and probably the rest of her
body. Maybe when she regained consciousness, she
saw the opportunity to switch places. She’s bright,
real bright.”

“But why she do that?”

“John Hardy. Revenge. She blamed him for her
husband’s suicide, and for her going to prison.”

He looked around at me, a skeptical frown on his
face. “You mean you telling me that she planned all
this for all them years?”

I grinned crookedly. “What the old saying about a
woman scorned? Hell has no fury or something like
that?”

He didn’t reply, so I continued. “Hardy called
Palmo at three A.M. on the twenty-sixth. She met him
in Fawn Williams’ Jeep.”

“Why Willams’?”

“Throw us off. Somehow she learned that Williams
was at the convention in New Orleans, probably from
Hardy who was a client of Williams. She claimed
Williams had threatened Hardy, so she stole the Jeep
from the parking lot at the airport, followed her half brother in the suburban to Whiskey River, gassed up at
Venable’s where she demanded a handwritten receipt,
then returned to the airport where she dropped off the
Jeep. She changed clothes, removed her wig, the joined
her half-brother for the trip back to Bagotville.”

Emile didn’t answer. He nodded forward. “There
her place”

The house was dark, and the garage was empty.
“Her Pontiac’s gone. A white one”

At that moment, the radio crackled. It was Louis.
“Sergeant. The next connection to Australia from the
U.S. is tomorrow morning at eleven from Los Angles
to Sydney” Emile looked at me. We had the same
thought. He clicked on his mike. “Louis, wherever
you be, head for the Atchafalaya Regional Terminal.
You know what Palmo looks like.” Throwing the car
into reverse, he whipped around, and in a shrieking
tear of rubber, headed for the airport.

I held on as we raced north. His last remark bothered me. Keeping my eyes on the road unwinding
ahead of us, I said, “I don’t think we’ll be able to recognize her, Emile.”

He glanced at me briefly. “Huh? What that you say?”

“The woman’s too smart. She’s going to change her
looks.”

He groaned. “That’s all we need,” he muttered,
kicking the cruiser up another ten miles per hour.

As we sped north to Lafayette, I filled Emile in on
the money-laundering scheme and the three offshore
accounts. “Gates admitted it all to me”

“Where he be now?”

I shrugged. “Probably running from Jimmy Blue”
Chewing on his bottom lip, Sergeant Emile
Primeaux grunted. “Me, I always know Jimmy Blue
up to something. Us, we could never find nothing, but
now, we’ll pick Gates up. He’ll tell us what we need
to know.”

Just after we turned east on I-10 at Lafayette, the radio crackled to life. The dispatcher informed Emile
that there were no flights from Atchafalaya Regional
to Los Angles until noon the next day. “There only
flights out of the airport tonight are to Baton Rouge at one A.M. and to Dallas at three A.M. From either airport, there be connecting flights to L.A.,” he said.
“That’s it until seven”

Emile frowned at me.

“That’s it. She doesn’t have time to drive to another
airport, not if she plans on connecting in Los Angeles
by eleven tomorrow. She has to make a local connection somewhere. Either Dallas or Baton Rouge”

At midnight, there were only a dozen or so vehicles
in the terminal parking lot, and one of them was a
white 2005 Pontiac. Emile ran a quick license check.
He grinned at me when the dispatcher informed us
that the vehicle was registered to Laura Palmo, Box
78, Route Three, Bagotville, Louisiana.

With Louis right behind us, we screeched to a halt
in front of the main entrance and hurried inside.

The lobby was empty. The single attendant behind
the counter shook his head. “Haven’t seen anyone
since the last flight from Baton Rouge came in about
an hour ago” He gestured to the empty terminal. “It’s
dead in here, but it always is this time of night.” He
glanced at his watch. “But in another few minutes,
passengers be coming in bound for Baton Rouge”

“How many,” I asked.

He hesitated, eyed the badge on Emile’s chest, then
checked the roster. “Twenty-three if they all show up,”
he replied.

Emile muttered a curse. “Louis, you and Walter search that end of the building. Look in every room,
even the woman’s john. Tony, him and me will search
this end. Meet back here.”

We found nothing.

A few minutes later, the passengers bound for Baton Rouge began filtering in. We studied them carefully, but there were none with the petite stature of
Karen Rouly Babin, a.k.a. Laura Palmo.

One by one, each passenger checked in at the ticket
counter then made his way to the loading gate. I
shook my head slowly. I was overlooking something,
but what?

We stood on either side of the doors of the loading
ramp, studying each passenger. Laura Palmo was not
among them.

In disgust, I wandered over to the window, watching the small jet taxi down the runway and lift off into
the night. Emile came to stand beside me. “Well, mon
ami. Us, we don’t find her.”

I shook my head slowly. “I don’t understand. She
couldn’t afford to take the time to drive to Lake
Charles or Baton Rouge unless she was deliberately
trying to throw us off.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Maybe that what she do.
Maybe that one, she switch cars on us in the parking
lot”

“Maybe” I groaned in disgust, glancing down at the
private planes parked on the apron below. One, a two seat Cessna was warming up. I watched idly, then I realized what I had overlooked.

“Emile. Down there. Look.”

“What you look at? The airplane. What about it?”

“Charter,” I muttered.

At that moment, the pilot gestured toward the terminal, and a short-haired blond wearing a fringed
leather jacket and Western boots pushed through the
door of Southern Charters and headed for the Cessna.

“That’s her!” I shouted. “It has to be ” I raced
toward the escalator to the lower level. “Call the tower
and tell it to stop that plane!” I shouted over my
shoulder.

I took the escalator three steps at a time. My knees
folded on me at the bottom, sending me tumbling
head over heels. I scrambled to my feet and dashed
down the empty hall toward the exit, the sharp click of
my heels echoing off the walls.

When I burst through the doors, the blond spun.
Palmo! The scar on her face stood out. Her face
twisted into a grimace, and she jabbed her hand into
the pocket of her fringed jacket.

I vaulted over the chain link fence and raced toward
her. When she pulled out the automatic, I threw myself aside.

Two small pops sounded above the roar of the
Cessna engine. I rolled over in time to see her wave
the automatic at the pilot, insisting he climb inside.

He threw up his hands and backed away.

Laura Palmo gestured angrily with the small automatic. Reluctantly, the pilot climbed inside and released the brake.

While her attention was on him, I jumped to my
feet. She spotted the movement and spun and, fired
again. A blow like a baseball bat struck me in the
shoulder, spinning me to the ground.

At the same time, the pilot threw open the passenger’s door and scrambled over the seat and tumbled to
the tarmac. With no one at the wheel, the Cessna began rolling forward in a large circle.

At that moment, Emile and Louis burst through the
doors and slid to a halt, service revolvers drawn.
“Throw down your weapon,” Louis shouted.

Laura Palmo ignored the order, instead screaming
curses and touching off several shots in their direction. The two officers ducked. I stayed on the ground,
hoping she had forgotten about me.

Thinking back, I don’t believe any of us saw the
Cessna moving in a circle. Emile and Louis, like me
and the hapless pilot, were concentrating on dodging
the bullets Laura Palmo was throwing at us.

I looked up when her fusillade ended. “Laura! Give
it up. You got nowhere to run!” I shouted.

She cursed me, slammed another clip in her automatic, and fired again in my direction. She spun and
raced right into the spinning propeller of the Cessna
bearing down on her.