CHAPTER NINE
Val took a call from a very irate Marcus early the next morning.
“Marie Duval has pulled out. She’s saying that she won’t register for her place at the university. Nothing Angie and I say can persuade her to change her mind. She’s moving back to her apartment, going to bus tables full-time and plans to contact Assist Haiti later today to tell it of her decision. It’s a disaster. And it’s down to you!”
“All I did was to point out a few facts. If she can’t live with them, then it’s hardly my fault.”
“Angie told me what you said. Have you the slightest shred of evidence to back up your accusations?”
“I don’t need any. I’m not planning to indict.”
“Do you realize or care how this will affect me? I went out on a limb for that girl.”
“You want to discuss prospects, ask me about Bill Trochan’s,” Val said contemptuously. Guilt over Trochan’s death was eating him up and it felt good to blow off some steam.
Marcus adopted a more conciliatory tone. “At least you’ll be able to return to your illuminations company now. I know you weren’t really committed to being a police officer again.”
“I agreed to take on the job for a semester.”
“And I’m deeply appreciative. But you must see the embarrassment it would now cause if you were to insist on remaining in the post.”
“Not to me.”
“To the university. I think it would be politic if you were to hand in your resignation today, effective immediately.”
“I’m not prepared to do that just yet. You gave me a shield and I’m hanging on to it for a while longer.”
“I’ve already talked to John Clements. I’ve told him about Duval and said that you would be stepping down.”
“Then you’re going to have to tell him that you spoke prematurely.”
“I could have you fired.”
“You don’t have the balls,” Val said, slamming down the phone.
Val packed a bag and threw it in the trunk of his car, next to his camera case and binoculars. There was no point phoning Clements to let him know he would be out of town for a few days if he wasn’t prepared to tell him where. Besides, he wasn’t in the mood to listen to Clements’s grievances, no matter how legitimate they might be.
He followed Highway 90 west as far as Morgan City, then tracked the Atchafalaya river southwest. For a coonass like Jackson, the wetlands was as good as place as any to disappear. Val passed over a wooden bridge spanning Bayou Penchant, then pulled the car off the road alongside a cypress stump forest and climbed out to stretch his legs and take his bearings.
To a city boy like Val, who expected the swamp to be some great untouched wilderness, there seemed to be one hell of a presence of man. In the distant water of the Gulf he could make out the steel superstructure of half-a-dozen oil rigs, their gas-venting fires a vivid orange against the blue horizon. Shrimp boats were dotted as far as the eye could see. On land, a brace of RVs with inflatables lashed across their rear ends scuttled across the skyline like armadillos.
The bayou towns he had passed through weren’t much more than two strips of timber buildings, separated by a course of dark, sluggish water edged with willows and with a wooden bridge at either end. Matching paved roads ran parallel to the bayou at the rear of the houses. He got back in the car and drove the last ten miles to St Francis, Donny Jackson’s stamping ground. A derelict Dodge at the edge of town had the town’s name spray-painted along its length. St Francis wasn’t much of a town, but it had enough sportsmen passing through each day for his arrival not to attract attention.
He parked outside a boarding house that was touting for business by having a bunch of Polaroids tacked to a notice board. Smiling former guests held specimen speckled trout and largemouth bass up to the camera lens. There was a vacancy and he booked for two nights.
“Here to fish?” the proprietor asked.
“No, bird-watching’s my game. Been intending to drive down this way for years, but was never able to make time.”
“You sure came to the right spot. What line are you in?”
“I’m a partner in a manufacturing firm. We sell illuminated signs.”
The man didn’t pretend to be interested. “You’ll be needing a boat. Prejean’s is the place you should head. One of his won’t cost you a fortune and most of them are still watertight.”
The bait and tackle store was in the shadow of the town’s water tower, and was the last building on the town’s western edge. A bunch of fishermen were sitting round a picnic table, drinking ice-cold beer and eating a lunch of boiled crawfish. Prejean was out front baiting crab-baskets with nutria guts.
“I’m looking for a boat,” Val said to him.
He wiped his hands on a filthy towel and stood up. He was Cajun.
“What are you after?” he asked, taking in the camera case and binoculars Val had slung over his shoulder. His shield was hidden in the base of the camera case, along with his cell phone that he had turned off.
“Something not too arduous. I’m here more for relaxation than serious ornithology.”
“Blue ‘erons ‘ave been landing on Choac’o Lake. You could start there.”
“Sounds good.”
He led Val into his store and outfitted him with the basics for an afternoon on the bayou. He set a tank of gas on the counter, put a six-pack into a cooler and shoveled shaved ice on top. Val handed over a fistful of dollar bills. The beer drinkers had followed them in and had silently observed every part of the transaction. Their sullen faces did not encourage dialogue.
“I supposed to check your permit,” Prejean said as he carried the equipment out to the jetty.
“I didn’t bother with one.”
Prejean didn’t bat an eye. “Common enoug’ mistake.”
Val cursed his stupidity. What sort of birder wouldn’t have a valid Wild Louisiana stamp?
Prejean loaded the gas and beer cooler into the flat-bottom boat and demonstrated the correct operation of the outboard motor. “You s’ouln’t run into trouble as long as you steer clear of t’e lily pads and the morning glory vines. If t’e prop fouls, kill t’e motor. T’en tilt it up and untangle it with your ’ands. Use t’e pole if t’e water’s s’allow.”
Val made himself comfortable, his hand on the throttle, as Prejean cast off. He stood at the edge of the bayou and watched until Val passed under the wooden bridge.
Donny Jackson had been a great raconteur of tall tales about growing up in the wetlands. He talked of men-eating alligators, knife-duels to the death, and cocaine smugglers landing their seaplanes on the bayou that ran past his home just a mile or two northwest of St Francis. He boasted how his great-grandpappy, as a middle-aged man, had built a house from notched and pegged cypress boards, and when he had finished, had planted seven oak trees in a semi-circle around the front. One tree for each of the children he had fathered, but only three of whom carried his name.
It was mid-afternoon when Val came across the house. This part of the parish bore a greater resemblance to Val’s mental image of the wetlands. The house was closer to four miles outside of town, isolated in the center of a bayou maze. It had been an hour since he had last seen another human.
He left the boat amongst a jumble of dried canes and cypress knees and found a vantage-point in a stand of willow trees. The house was raised off the ground on stone piers, its ancient cypress timbers the same gray as the moss hanging from the oak trees. The red brick of the massive chimney had weathered to a pale pink; the roof was of rusted tin. Azalea bushes were growing at the base of the piers and honeysuckle had wrapped itself around the railings of the porch. An overturned pirogue was resting on two wooden trestles at the gable end of the house and an oil drum had been cut in two along its length and the two halves welded back to back to form a barbecue and base. He could make out the name Jackson painted in yellow letters on a mailbox next to a low wooden bridge across a coulee.
The
salt from the tidal marshes seasoned the air as he lay and waited. The swamp mud was alive with mosquitoes and biting insects.
He watched the house for an hour before seeing any sign of life. A rust-pitted pick-up trundled across the bridge and pulled up in front of the house. A man and woman got out, both white-haired. The man carried a bag of groceries into the house and shut the door.
Val watched on into the evening, until the light grew bad and the lamps were switched on inside the house, without observing anything out of the ordinary. He called it a day and backtracked to where he had left the boat. Jackson wouldn’t be dumb enough to hide out at his parents’ house, but Val had a gut feeling he was somewhere close by.
Back in St Francis, he arranged with Prejean to pick the boat up before dawn, bought a tube of insect repellent, had a supper of beef grillades and dirty rice in a bar and went to bed early.
He was back out on the bayou shortly after first light. A gentle breeze blowing in from the Gulf was enough to ripple the water and sweep away the stench of rotting vegetation. Two snowy egrets rose from the clump of willow trees as he approached. Nothing had changed at the Jacksons’ place. The pick-up was still parked in the same spot as the evening before. He settled down for a long day.
The snick of a bullet being slid into a rifle’s breech is unmistakable. It’s a sound to still the heartbeat of any cop, especially when it has come from behind him.
“Turn round real slow,” a man’s voice commanded.
Val did as he was told, to find Jackson Senior three paces off and pointing a hunting rifle directly at his chest. He was unshaven and dressed in a green checkered shirt and dark green canvas jeans. His face was weather-beaten and the hand around the trigger guard was covered in liver spots.
“How long have you been out here?” Val asked.
“Since a little before dawn, like any self-respecting hunter. I saw signs of the ground here having been trampled, and we’ve been expecting visitors.”
“Donny. He’s inside?”
“Nope, but he warned me to keep my eyes peeled. Start walking towards the house. And don’t try anything. I don’t often miss what I aim at.”
Val bent over to pick up the camera case and binoculars.
“Leave them,” Jackson said, signaling with his rifle’s barrel for Val to move away. He kept the gun on him as he reached down and took hold of them.
“I’m a police officer. My shield is hidden at the bottom camera case.”
“I don’t need to see no shield to know what you are.”
“Then put down the gun. You aren’t about to shoot a cop.”
“You think not? We don’t pay much mind to the law in these parts. I know a dozen ways to dispose of a body in the swamp. Now stop gabbing and start walking.”
Val headed towards the bridge over the coulee. Jackson kept close enough to keep a bead on his back, but not so close that Val could jump him.
His wife appeared on the front porch of the house as they reached the dirt road. She was a tiny bird of a woman, her hair tied up and pinned, and she wore a flower-patterned apron over a plain yellow dress. She watched as her husband brought home his prize, her face devoid of emotion.
“What’s your name, son?” she said, when they reached the bottom of the steps.
“Val Bosanquet.”
Understanding flickered in the old woman’s tired eyes. “Donny warned us that we might be getting a phone call from you. I don’t think he was expecting you to show up though.”
Val could only speculate as to whether Jackson had talked to Trochan or had seen the press conference on television and put two and two together. He favored the second. “It’s very important that I talk to him. His life’s in great danger.”
“Don’t he know it, but right now, I don’t think he wants the kind of help you have in mind. I know my boy and I know the bad he's done.”
The husband tossed the camera case to the wife. “Take a look in there.”
She found the shield. She slipped it into her apron pocket, closed the case and zipped it.
“Have you had anything to eat?” she asked. “The least we can do is feed you until we decide what is to be done with you. Bring him on inside, Roy. He can join us for breakfast.”
The interior of the house was clean and tidy. The furniture and drapes were old but of good quality and well cared for. The gray cypress floorboards were partially covered with Indian rugs. Hanging on the rear wall was a picture of Christ with an electric candlelight flickering below it. A small cherry wood sideboard set against the rear wall was used to display framed photographs. Above the huge fireplace was a set of bleached alligator jaws.
Mrs Jackson set the camera case and the binoculars on a dresser next to a thick pile of National Geographic magazines. Val was led through to the kitchen and told to sit at the far end of an oak table. Roy Jackson leant against a line of cupboards, his rifle still trained on Val’s chest.
“How does eggs, link sausage and cinnamon toast sound?” Mrs Jackson asked.
“I’m not hungry. I’d rather talk about Donny.”
Ignoring Val, she opened a refrigerator and lifted out a carton of orange juice.
“Mrs Jackson, your son has nothing to fear from me. I’m the law. But there are other men looking for Donny. Men who won’t give up easily.”
She cracked an egg into a skillet. “Then we’ll have to take sure they don’t find him.”
“If you know anything about these people, you must realize that you’re not doing your son any favor. I could bring the FBI in. Donny might have to go to jail, but at least he would be alive.”
“Donny isn’t going anyplace.”
“Then think about yourselves. Your lives could be in danger as well. Staying here is madness.”
The woman traded glances with her husband. “Our kin have lived in this house for four generations, and we’re too old to think about moving.”
Val ate nothing of the food she prepared. She was a good cook and it smelt wonderful, but his insides weren’t up to handling anything solid. When he finally pushed the plate away, Roy walked him outside and had him carry a wooden porch chair into the living room and sit on it. His wife produced a chromed Smith & Wesson revolver from her apron pocket and held it on Val as her husband lashed his arms and legs to the heavy chair.
It was unreal. Had Bonnie and Clyde somehow survived the Arcadia shoot-out, driven a further 250 miles south, taken the name Jackson and settled down?
Jackson had an outdoor man’s way with rope. It would take five minutes of determined sawing with a sharp knife before he could be free. His wife slipped the revolver back into her apron pocket.
“No point in gagging you,” Jackson said. “There’s nobody close enough to hear you.”
“What about his boat?” she asked.
“I could smash a hole in the bottom and sink it in the bayou. He won’t be missed until tonight. They’ll not do anything about it until midday tomorrow at the earliest, and that won’t be much. Just another city-boy who capsized and drowned. Happens all the time.”
Val didn’t much care for the direction the conversation was taking.
“My second-in-command knows why I came to St Francis. He’s going to start wondering what has happened when I don’t report in. First thing he’ll do is have the parish sheriff drive out here.”
“Then the sooner we decide what to do with you, the better,” Mrs Jackson said. She turned to her husband. “Best call Donny and talk it over with him. Not from here though.”
Her husband nodded thoughtfully. “Will you be okay on your own?”
“Don’t see why not. He ain’t going anyplace.” She patted the stock of the rifle.
He lifted a bunch of keys off the dresser, slipped them into his pocket, and then pulled on a quilted vest and a John Deere baseball cap. He shut the door after him.
“Roy won’t be long,” she said. “Meantime I’ve got chores to be getting on with.” She propped the rifle against the frame
of the kitchen door and started to clear the breakfast table.
Val strained against his rope bindings for a few minutes, tensing and relaxing the muscles in his arms, before admitting that it was futile. The chair could be made to hop forward an inch or two at a time, but what benefit was there to that?
He divided the room into segments and started a detailed scrutiny of each, hoping to discover some way to free himself from the fix he was in.
He took his time over the photographs on the polished sideboard. There was a monochrome wedding scene, and a couple of Donny Jackson as a young boy, wearing a Roy Rogers cowboy suit and holding a BB gun. Presumably the yellowing, older pictures were of the grandparents. The largest picture was a group of laughing and smiling men, dressed in vacation clothes, posing under a coconut palm outside a hotel. Val recognized a younger Roy Jackson standing on the edge of the group.
The telephone was on a small, circular oak table at the far end of the couch. It might as well have been a million miles away.
Thirty minutes ticked by and he didn’t come up with one viable option. He faced the disagreeable truth: he was at the Jacksons’s mercy.
The woman washed and dried the dishes, stripped the bed and put the sheets in the washing machine. Then she dusted the living room. Twice, as she passed through the room, she checked the bindings around his wrists. He tried to start up a conversation with her, but she didn’t want to know. She went into the kitchen and assembled the ingredients to mix cake batter.
The clock on the mantel read seven-thirty when he heard the pick-up clatter on the boards of the bridge. Mrs Jackson emerged from the kitchen and wiped her floury hands on a towel before she picked up the rifle. A truck door slammed shut. She walked across the room and opened the door.
Another truck door was slammed shut. Val shouted a warning to her, but his words went unheard.
The blast from the shotgun caught her squarely in the chest. It wasn’t like in the movies when a sawn-off’s victim is sent flying backwards by the force. She just seemed startled, then for an instant looked down at the blood staining her apron, before crumpling to the floor.
Two black men dragged an unconscious Roy Jackson into the house, one of whom bent down and picked up the rifle before they stepped across his wife’s lifeless body. The man carrying the sawn-off shotgun was six-four, with an enormous chest and arms as thick as Val’s thighs. He had dirty braided hair and a solid gold tooth. The man who had picked up the rifle was three inches shorter and wore a New Orleans Saints T-shirt. There were two angry red welts across Jackson’s forehead and blood had caked in the roots of his white hair. He had taken a pistol-whipping.