“Shoot it, goddammit,” I shouted. I heard the boom of a gun and a spume of water kicked up in front of the ’gator, then a second. The creature stopped short and then a sprinkling of pink and white fell to my right and it turned in that direction. It reached the objects just as a second shower fell, farther away to the right, and I felt the boat against my back and Morphy’s hands helping me to haul myself up. We turned for the bank as Morphy sent a third handful of marshmallows into the air. When I looked at him, he was grinning as he popped a last marshmallow into his mouth. Out on the bayou, the ’gator was snapping at the last of the candy.
“Scared you, huh?” Morphy smiled as I shrugged off the air tank and lay flat on the bottom of the boat.
I nodded and kicked off a flipper.
“I think you’re going to have to get your dry suit cleaned,” I said.
We sat on a log and watched the ’gator for a while. It cruised the bayou looking for more marshmallows, eventually settling for a wait-and-see policy, which consisted of it lying partially submerged near the marker rope. We sipped coffee from tin cups and finished off the last of the chicken.
“You should have shot it,” I said.
“This is a nature reserve and there are laws about killing ’gators,” responded Morphy testily. “Not much point in having a nature reserve if people can come in when they please and shoot all the wildlife.”
We sipped the coffee some more, until I heard the sound of a boat coming our way through the rice and grass.
“Shit,” said a familiar Brooklyn drawl as the prow of the boat broke the grass, “it’s the Donner Party.”
Angel emerged first, then Louis behind him, controlling the rudder. They moved steadily toward us and tied up at the maple. Angel splashed into the water, then followed our gaze out to the ’gator. He caught one sight of the partially submerged reptile and ran awkwardly onto the bank, his knees high and his elbows pumping.
“Man, what is this, Jurassic Park?” he said. He turned to Louis, who jumped from his boat to ours and then onto the bank. “Hey, didn’t you tell your sister not to be swimmin’ in no strange ponds?”
Angel was dressed in his usual jeans and battered sneakers, with a denim jacket over a Doonesbury T-shirt that depicted Duke and the motto Death Before Unconsciousness. Louis was wearing crocodile-skin boots, black Levi’s, and a white collarless Liz Claiborne shirt.
“We dropped by to see how you were,” said Angel, casting anxious glances out at the ’gator after I had introduced him to Morphy. He held a bag of donuts in his hand.
“Our friend’s gonna be real upset if he sees you wearing one of his relatives, Louis,” I said.
Louis sniffed and approached the water’s edge. “Is there a problem?” he asked at last.
“We were diving and then Wally Gator appeared and we weren’t diving anymore,” I explained.
Louis sniffed again. “Hmm,” he said. Then he drew his SIG and blew the tip of the ’gator’s tail off. The reptile thrashed in pain and the water around it turned bright red. Then it turned and headed off into the bayou, trailing blood behind it. “You should have shot it,” he said.
“Let’s not get into it,” I responded. “Roll up your sleeves, gentlemen, we’re going to need some help.”
I still had the dry suit on so I offered to keep diving.
“Trying to prove to me that you ain’t chicken?” grinned Morphy.
“Nope,” I said, as we untied the boat. “Trying to prove it to myself.”
We rowed out to the marker rope and then I dived down with the hook and chains, leaving Angel topside with Morphy and his gun in case the ’gator showed up again. Louis joined us in the second boat. A thick black film of oil had formed on the surface of the water and hung in the depths below. The barrels had scattered when the topmost drum fell. I checked the ruptured barrel with the flashlight but it appeared to contain nothing except the oil that remained.
It was laborious work, tying the barrel and hauling it up each time, but with two boats it meant that we could transport two barrels at a time to the bank. There was probably an easier way to do it, but we hadn’t figured it out.
The sun was growing low and the waters were bathed in gold when we found her.
43
I T SEEMS TO ME now that when I touched the barrel for the first time to attach the chains, something coursed through my system and tightened in my stomach like a fist. I felt a jolt. A blade flashed before my eyes and the depths were colored by a fountain of blood, or perhaps it was simply the dying sun on the water above reflected on my mask. I closed my eyes for a moment and felt movement around me, not just the water of the bayou or the fish in its depths but another swimmer who twisted around my body and legs. I thought I felt her hair brush my cheek but when I reached out I caught only swamp weed in my hand.
This barrel was heavier than the others, weighed down, as we would discover, with masonry bricks that had been split neatly in half. It would need the combined efforts of Morphy and Angel to pull it up.
“It’s her,” I said to Morphy. “We’ve found her.” And then I swam down to the barrel and maneuvered it slowly over the rocks and tree trunks at the bottom as we brought it up. We all seemed to handle this barrel more gently than the rest, as if the girl inside was merely sleeping and we didn’t want to disturb her, as if she was not long decayed but had been laid within it only yesterday. On the bank, Angel took the crowbar and carefully applied it to the rim of the lid, but it refused to move. He examined it more closely.
“It’s been sealed,” he said. He scraped the crowbar over the surface of the barrel and checked the mark left. “The barrel’s been treated with something as well. That’s why it’s in better condition than the others.”
It was true. The barrel had hardly rusted and the fleur-delys on its side was as clear and bright as if it had been painted only days before.
I thought for a moment. We could use the chain saw to cut it, but if I was right and the girl was inside, I didn’t want to damage the remains. We could also have called for assistance from the local cops, or even the feds. I suggested it, more out of duty than desire, but even Morphy declined. He might have been concerned at the embarrassment that would be caused if the barrel was empty, but when I looked in his eyes I could see that wasn’t the case. He wanted us to take it as far as we could.
In the end, we tested the barrel by gently tapping along its length with the axe. From the difference in sound, we judged as best we could where we could safely cut. Morphy carefully made an incision near the sealed end of the barrel, and using a combination of chain saw and crowbar, we cut an area that was roughly half the circumference, then pushed it up with the crowbar and shined a flashlight inside.
The body was little more than bones and shreds of material, the skin and flesh entirely rotted away. She had been dumped in headfirst and her legs had been broken to fit her into the space. When I shined the beam to the far end of the barrel, I glimpsed bared teeth and strands of hair. We stood silently beside her, surrounded by the lapping water and the sounds of the swamp.
It was late that night when I got back to the Flaisance. While we waited for the Slidell police and the rangers, Angel and Louis departed, with Morphy’s agreement. I stayed on to give my statement and back up Morphy’s version of what had taken place. On Morphy’s advice, the locals called the FBI. I didn’t wait around. If Woolrich wanted to talk, he knew where to find me.
The light was still on in Rachel’s room as I passed, so I stopped and knocked. She opened the door wearing a pink Calvin Klein nightshirt, which stopped at mid-thigh level.
“Angel told me what happened,” she said, opening the door wider to let me enter. “That poor girl.” She hugged me and then ran the shower in the bathroom. I stayed in there for a long time, my hands against the tiles, letting the water roll over my head and back.
After I had dried myself, I wrapped the towel around my waist and found Rachel sitting on the bed, leafing through her papers. Sh
e cocked an eyebrow at me.
“Such modesty,” she said, with a little smile.
I sat on the edge of the bed and she wrapped her arms around me from behind. I felt her cheek and her warm breath against my back. “How are you feeling?” I asked.
Her grip tightened a little. “Okay, I think.”
She turned me around so that I was facing her. She knelt on the bed before me, her hands clasped between her legs, and bit her lip. Then she reached out and gently, almost tentatively, ran her hand through my hair.
“I thought you psychology types were supposed to be good at all this,” I said.
She shrugged. “I get just as confused as everybody else, except I know all the terminology for my confusion.” She sighed. “Listen, what happened yesterday…I don’t want to put pressure on you. I know how hard all this is for you, because of Susan and—”
I held my hand against her cheek and rubbed her lips gently with my thumb. Then I kissed her and felt her mouth open beneath mine. I wanted to hold her, to love her, to drive away the vision of the dead girl.
“Thanks,” I said, my mouth still against her, “but I know what I’m doing.”
“Well,” she said, as she eased back slowly on the bed, “at least one of us does.”
The following morning, the remains of the girl lay on a metal table, curled fetally by the constriction of the barrel as if to protect herself for eternity. On the instructions of the FBI, she had been brought to New Orleans, weighed and measured, X-rayed, and fingerprinted. The body bag in which she had been removed from Honey Island had been examined for debris that might have fallen from her while she was being transported.
The clean tiles, the shining metal tables, the glinting medical instruments, the white lights hanging above them all seemed too harsh, too relentless in their mission to expose, to examine, to reveal. It seemed a final indignity, after the terrors of her final moments, to display her here in the sterility of this room, with these men looking upon her. A part of me wanted to cover her with a shroud and carry her carefully, gently, to a dark hole beside flowing water, where green trees would shade the ground under which she lay and where no one would disturb her again.
But another part of me, the rational part, knew that she deserved a name, that she needed an identity to put an end to the anonymity of her sufferings and, perhaps, to close in on the man who had reduced her to this. And so we stood back as the gowned coroner and his assistants moved in with their tapes and their blades and their white-gloved hands.
The pelvis is the most easily recognizable distinguishing feature between the male and female skeletons. The greater sciatic notch, situated behind the inominate bone—which itself consists of the hip, the ischium, the ilium, and the pubis—is wider in the female, with a subpubic angle roughly the size of that between the thumb and forefinger. The pelvic outlet is also larger in the female but the thigh sockets are smaller, the sacrum wider.
Even the female skull is different from that of the male, a reflection in miniature of the physical differences between the two sexes. The female skull is as smooth and rounded as the female breast, yet smaller than the male skull; the forehead is higher and more rounded; the eye sockets, too, are higher and the edges less sharply defined; the female jaw, palate, and teeth are smaller.
The skeletal remains before us conformed to the general pelvic and skull rules governing the female body. In estimating the age of the body at the time of death, the ossification centers, or areas of bone formation, were examined, as were the teeth. The femur of the girl’s body was almost completely fused at the head, although there was only partial joining of the collarbone to the top of the breastbone. After an examination of the sutures on her skull, the coroner estimated her age at twenty-one or twenty-two. There were marks on her forehead, the base of her jaw, and on her left cheekbone, where the killer had cut through to the bone as he removed her face.
Her dental features were recorded, a process known as forensic odontology, to be checked against missing persons files, while samples of bone marrow and hair were removed for possible use in DNA profiling. Then Woolrich, Morphy, and I watched as the remains were wheeled away, covered in a plastic wrap. We exchanged a few words before we each went our separate way, but to be honest, I don’t recall what they were. All I could see was the girl. All I could hear was the sound of water in my ears.
If the DNA profiling and the dental records failed to reveal her identity, Woolrich had decided that facial reconstruction might prove valuable, using a laser reflected from the skull to establish the contours, which could then be compared against a known skull of similar dimensions. He decided to contact Quantico to make the initial arrangements as soon as he had had time to wash and grab a cup of coffee.
But facial reconstruction proved unnecessary. It took less than two hours to identify the body of the young woman in the swamp. Although she had been lying in the dark waters for almost seven months, she had been reported missing only three months before.
Her name was Lutice Fontenot. She was Lionel Fontenot’s half sister.
44
T HE FONTENOT COMPOUND lay five miles east of Delacroix. It was approached via a raised private road, newly built, which wound through swamps and decaying trees until it reached an area that had been cleared of all vegetation and was now only dark earth. High fencing, topped with razor wire, enclosed two or three acres, at the center of which lay a low, single-story, horseshoe-shaped concrete building. A black convertible and three black Explorers were parked in a line in the concrete lot created by the arms of the building. To the rear was an older house, a standard single-story wooden dwelling with a porch and what looked like a series of parallel linked rooms. No one seemed to be around as I pulled the rented Taurus up to the compound gate, Louis in the passenger seat beside me. Rachel had taken the other rental with her on a final visit to Loyola University.
“Maybe we should have called ahead,” I said as I looked at the silent compound.
Beside me, Louis raised his hands slowly above his head and gestured in front of him with his chin. Two men, dressed in jeans and faded shirts, stood before us pointing Heckler & Koch HK53s with retracted stocks. I caught two more in the rearview mirror and a fifth, wearing an axe in his belt, opposite the passenger window. They were hard, weathered-looking men, some of them with beards already tinged with gray. Their boots were muddy and their hands were the hands of manual laborers, scarred in places.
I watched as a man of medium height, dressed in a blue denim shirt, jeans, and work boots, walked toward the gate from the main compound building. When he reached the gate he didn’t open it but stood watching us through the fencing. He had been burned at some point: the skin on the right of his face was heavily scarred, the right eye useless, and the hair hadn’t grown back on that side of his scalp. A fold of skin hung over his dead eye, and when he spoke, he did so out of the left side of his mouth.
“What you want here?” The voice was heavily accented: Cajun stock.
“My name’s Charlie Parker,” I replied through the open window. “I’m here to see Lionel Fontenot.”
“Who this?” He motioned at Louis with a finger.
“Count Basie,” I said. “The rest of the band couldn’t make it.”
Pretty Boy didn’t crack a smile, or even a half smile. “Lionel don’t see no one. Get yo’ ass outta here ’fo you get hurt.” He turned and walked back toward the compound.
“Hey,” I said. “You accounted for all of Joe Bones’s goons at Metairie yet?”
He stopped and turned back to us.
“What you say?” He looked like I’d just insulted his sister.
“I figure you have two bodies at Metairie that no one can account for. If there’s a prize, I’d like to claim it.”
He seemed to consider this for a moment, then: “You a joker? You are, I don’t think you funny.”
“You don’t think I’m funny?” I said. There was an edge to my voice now. His left eyelid flickered and
an H&K ended up two inches from my nose. It smelled like it had been used recently. “Try this for funny: I’m the guy who hauled Lutice Fontenot from the bottom of Honey Island swamp. You want to tell Lionel that, see if he laughs?”
He didn’t reply, but pointed an infrared signaler at the compound gate. It opened almost noiselessly.
“Get outta the car,” he said. Two of the men kept our hands in view and their guns trained on us as we opened the car doors, then two others came forward and frisked us against the car, looking for wires and weapons. They handed Louis’s SIG and knife and my S&W to the scarred guy, then checked the interior of the car for concealed weapons. They opened the hood and trunk and checked under the car.
“Man, you like the Peace Corps,” whispered Louis. “Make friends wherever you go.”
“Thanks,” I replied. “It’s a gift.”
When they were satisfied that it was clean, we were allowed to drive slowly up to the compound with one of Fontenot’s men, the axe man, in the back. Two men walked alongside the car. We parked beside the jeeps and were escorted up to the older house.
On the porch, waiting for us with a china cup of coffee in his hand, was Lionel Fontenot. The burn victim went up to him and spoke a few words in his ear, but Lionel stopped him with a raised hand and turned the hard stare on us. I felt a raindrop fall on my head and within seconds we were standing in a downpour. Lionel left us in the rain. I was wearing my blue linen Liz Claiborne suit and a white shirt with a blue silk-knit tie. I wondered if the dye would run. The rain was heavy and the dirt around the house was already turning to mud when Lionel ordered his men to leave, took a seat on the porch, and indicated with a nod of his head that we should come up. We sat on a pair of wooden chairs with woven seats while Lionel took a wooden recliner. The burn victim stood behind us. Louis and I moved our chairs slightly as we sat so that we could keep him in view.