An Evil Shadow (10 page)

Val strode across the street to the plainclothes
officer taking his turn at watching Duval. The officer wound down the car
window.

“Everything okay, Chief?”

“Yeah, everything’s fine. You can report back to the
station house. Tell Captain Clements that I’m pulling the surveillance on
Duval.

The officer appeared surprised, but nodded and drove
off.

Val climbed into his car and headed south across town
to the Irish Channel. First stop was the building where Duval had lived with
her mother. The exterior had grown considerably more decrepit in the intervening
years: a section of roof tiles had gone and two of the top floor windows were
blackened with soot. Nobody challenged him as he walked through the hell to the
rear. The makeshift lean-to had been torn down; there was nothing left now to
show that it had ever existed. The yard was a mass of weeds. He knocked on a
few doors, but had no luck finding a resident who had been living there ten
years before, though he talked to one woman who said the building was owned by
a company called Crescent City Holdings. She wasn’t able to tell him how long
they had owned it.

Val spent the next couple of hours pounding the
sidewalks, touring the district’s thronged Haitian bars. The fronts were
painted in bright vivid colors and a cacophony flooded out from their unshutered
doors and windows. A combination of loud meringue music pulsing with African
Caribbean rhythms, video games being played, and rapid, teeth-clicking Creole.
Each time he brought up FRAPH, all he got was a lot of blank faces and a
nervous shaking of heads. Moncoeur’s name produced a similar response.
Eventually he couldn’t take the stink of cheap rum, reefer smoke and fried okra
any longer and headed home.

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 them
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 quests 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 ’nds. 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 qrillades 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 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 well 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.