In God's House (19 page)

Detectives Melancon and Delcambre were good guys. They were polite and deferential to the priest, explaining that they were only in Philadelphia to escort us home. We made our way down the concourse to the boarding area. I accompanied Detective Melancon to the counter for check-in.

We were not going direct to Louisiana. Later, I learned the media had all Louisiana airports staked out. The plane we were boarding was flying to Houston Intercontinental. When the detective laid the four ticket folders on the counter, I realized that Dubois and I were not ticketed in our own names. Dubois was flying under the name Sean Robinette, and in some twisted private joke, Sean had me ticketed in the name of Eloi Labat, a judge I despised, and who would be presiding over the trial.

When we boarded the plane, Dubois took a window seat and looked out at the sky. It turned to night shortly after we took off and Dubois stared into the darkness the whole way to Texas. On his lap he held the parcel of new clothes we’d bought in a mall on the way to the airport. I’d picked out a suit, shoes, socks, a tie and two shirts for him. The colors were earth tones. I knew there was no way to make this man acceptable, even presentable to the public, but I hoped he would appear sincere. On no account was I going to allow the DA or the sheriff to parade him through a courtroom dressed in an orange jail jumpsuit, or worse, have Dubois insult the world by dressing as a priest.

In Houston, we followed the detectives through the airport and took a shuttle van to a small hotel on the outskirts of the airport property, where Dubois and I were put in the back of an unmarked police unit. Melancon drove and Delcambre gave directions. It was after 2 a.m. when we approached the Louisiana boundary with Texas at a place called Orange.

Detective Melancon swung the car off the Interstate and into the parking lot of an all-night diner. He parked the cruiser near some garbage dumpsters. Inside the diner, Delcambre picked a booth toward the rear, directing Dubois and me to sit with our backs to the door. Delcambre, Melancon and I ordered full breakfasts. Dubois passed. Said he wasn’t hungry. He asked for a coffee and one of my cigarettes. While we ate, the detectives talked with Dubois about duck hunting.

Back at the car, the detectives pulled guns and ammunition from the trunk and locked and loaded the weapons. They put the guns in the front of the car and Dubois and I took our places in the back.

As we crossed the Sabine River into Louisiana, the car was doing nearly a hundred miles an hour, bouncing over the uneven marshland road. “Sorry. We gotta beat daylight into Thiberville,” Melancon said. We exited the Interstate at a closed service station in Pont Soileau, twenty-five miles out of Thiberville. Melancon went to a pay phone. I followed him. He poured quarters into the phone, dialed, and instantly said, “Yes, Mr. Robinette. We’re in Pont Soileau now.”

It was just after four in the morning and Sean had obviously been waiting for Melancon’s call.

“I got it,” Melancon said into the phone. “The bridge. Bridge is open. Bridge is closed.” Hanging up the receiver, fishing out his change from the coin return slot, Melancon turned to me and said, “It’s a code we have. Let’s go. They’re waiting to catch us in Thiberville.”

When we turned off at the first Thiberville exit, we were the only car on the wide avenue as we traveled the first hundred
yards. Then we began to get company – another unmarked unit pulled in front of us, a second came up behind us, and one flanked us on our left. I assumed they were also armed. No one in our car spoke.

At the university football stadium, the convoy turned left toward the Thiberville courthouse. Melancon made a radio call, identifying himself as SO, or sheriff’s office, unit one, calling base.

“This is SO Base, come back,” the voice said. It was Sean Robinette’s voice. He was handling the dispatch desk at the sheriff’s office at 4:30 a.m. I was too tired to even try to figure out what Sean was doing on the police radio at this hour.

“This is SO One,” Melancon repeated. “Is the bridge to Baton Rouge open?”

Robinette came right back. “SO One, there’s traffic on the bridge. Repeat. Traffic on the bridge.”

Before Robinette finished speaking, our whole caravan took a drastic left turn, heading away from the courthouse. As Delcambre gunned the powerful engine, Melancon almost dove over the seat, grabbing me and pushing me to the floor, Dubois on top of me. We stayed there, feeling the car careening wildly through the streets of Thiberville.

The radio crackled again, and Sean Robinette’s voice said, “SO One. SO One. Bridge open. No traffic. Bridge open. Close fast.”

Melancon said, “SO One to Base. Roger that. Closing fast.”

As the car made a sharp right-hand turn and accelerated, Melancon shouted toward the back of the car, “Stay down!”

Other than the sound of the motor racing, the only noise was metal slamming on metal as Melancon made ready the guns on the floorboard in front of his seat.

The car stopped so suddenly it felt like a crash. As the police unit rocked on its strong suspension, all four doors opened at once and there was a lot of shouting. I was pulled from the back seat first and found myself in the grasp of four or five cops. I got a glimpse of others with shotguns pointed toward the street, but only a
glimpse. The cops were running with me in their arms. My feet did not touch the floor until we were in an elevator. “Sorry, Mr. Chattelrault,” said one of the young deputies, whose face I recognized, “DA Robinette’s orders.”

The elevator stopped on the top floor, the jail. The young deputy led me to a small office and asked me to wait for Mr. Robinette. He gestured to the coffee pot. I poured a cup, deciding to drink it black, something I had never done before.

Father Dubois was equally disheveled when he joined me in the office. He was trembling. Neither of us spoke. We both knew something was seriously wrong.

When Sean walked in, he was wearing a tight-fitting tee-shirt that identified him as a policeman, blue jeans, cowboy boots, and a pistol snapped into a holster on his hip. He offered both Dubois and me cigarettes from his pack. Dubois took one with a shaking hand. When Robinette handed him a lighter, he had difficulty getting the flame to the cigarette. Dubois studied the Zippo with a flight of ducks engraved on it, then returned it to Sean, saying, “Thank you, Mr. Robinette. That is a beautiful lighter.”

Sean handed the lighter back to him. “You keep it.”

The DA was not the only official awake early that morning. It was not even 5 a.m. and I saw the sheriff in the hallway. I was confused, but too tired to think.

“Let’s go ahead and get the pictures, fingerprints and booking entry done,” Sheriff Crozier said. We followed him into the hall.

The pictures took an instant. As they began printing Dubois’s left hand, a deputy shouted, “Man on elevator!”

No one touched Dubois but four deputies immediately grabbed me, lifted me off my feet, and hustled me back to the office, slamming the door shut behind us. There was coffee all over me. I grabbed some paper napkins and sat in a metal chair, blotting my shirt. The deputies left.

From the hallway I heard a shout, “It’s the doughnut man on the elevator. All clear.”

Sean walked into the little office a moment later. I was still dabbing my shirt.

“Sean, if you don’t mind, if it’s not a lot of trouble, would you mind telling me just exactly what the fuck is going on here?”

“It seems some people want to kill you, Ren.”

“Me? Who? Who wants to kill me?”

“I don’t know. There have been death threats phoned into Mo at your office. Two threats against you came into my switchboard, one downstairs in the sheriff’s office, and the
Thiberville Register
and Channel 2 got calls telling them to watch you die. I only know it’s not been the same voice on every call.”

“I see.”

“That’s why you came in as you did, at this time when everyone is sleeping. We decided not to tell you about it until now. There was nothing you could do from where you were. A good cop from narcotics has been covering your office and Mo. We have uniformed guys at your home. They are outside, not inside. And I have some good men assigned to you when you walk out of this building. They will shadow you.”

“Somebody wants to kill
me
?”

“My guess is some people want to kill your client. I imagine they don’t think they can get to the priest since he’s in custody and has police protecting him. The news people made it sound like the bishop has hired some hot-shot, high-priced, asshole defense lawyer to try to get his priest off scot-free, so I guess they want to kill the lawyer if they can’t get to the priest. So, they’re gonna kill you, Ren. I think that’s about the size of it.”

Sean was standing. I was seated. First, I looked at the floor for awhile and then I looked up at him. “You blame them, Sean?”

A deputy escorted Dubois into the office and Sean and I stopped talking. It was explained to Dubois that he would have an isolated cell in the jail infirmary, far away from the other inmates. I was assured that after his luggage had been searched, the clothes we had bought in the mall would be brought to him.

The arraignment was set for 10 a.m. I told Dubois I would be back upstairs with him before then and would ride the back elevator from the jail to the courtroom with him. Sean then took me down to the fourth floor, where the courtrooms were. Under the battery of fluorescent lights, I saw two large metal detectors.

“I had these set up so we can screen anyone trying to gain entrance to the courtroom. Realizing you might make some kind of complaint about this, or preserve some objection on the court record about this somehow prejudicing your client, I want you to concur with the procedure, agree in writing before the arraignment.”

“I’m tired, Sean. I haven’t slept in two nights. Shit, I don’t think I’ve really slept for a long time. I don’t understand what you are saying.”

“What I am saying is that there are some cases where convictions have been overturned, convictions of organized crime figures, because of the elaborate security procedures put in place for those cases. Appeals courts have ruled that such procedures may have sent a message to jurors that their lives were in danger, influencing them to vote one way or another.”

“Hell, I’m not worried about any of that. But I do want you to have these things torn down and removed, placed out of sight, before the courthouse opens for business.”

“You want me to tear them down?”

“Right. Get rid of them.”

“Why? Why do you want them down?”

“Because I think whoever made those death threats against me is going to be here this morning. If it appears we are afraid of them, it will empower them. They will get stronger. If we don’t appear scared, I think they will go away.”

“You’re taking a risk I don’t want you to take.”

“It’s my call. You said it’s my call. May be the last time I am in charge of anything in this case, and I want these things gone.”

“You’re sure?”

“A shooter doesn’t call and a caller doesn’t shoot. If someone
was going to kill me, they would just kill me. There would be no advance warning.”

Sean brushed his hair back and let all his breath out. “A shooter doesn’t call and a caller doesn’t shoot? You’re gonna gamble your life on that?”

“Right. And I don’t want any cops at my house. I don’t want police riding around with me either. I appreciate what you’ve done, but please pull ’em off.”

Sean nodded. “You aren’t scared of the Devil, are you?”

“The Devil? Yeah, you bet your ass. I’m plenty scared of the Devil.”

Kate was standing in the kitchen when I walked in at first light. She crossed the room quickly and took a swing at me. I grabbed her arm and held off the blow.

“You crazy fucker. Look what you’ve done to us now. Cops are everywhere, all over our land.”

“Kate…”

“I told the chief cop to clear off our land. He said the DA ordered this. I called Sean Robinette and told him to go to hell. Some spook of a monsignor called yesterday to see if we were okay. Okay from what? I didn’t sleep all night. There were police flashlights everywhere on the property. I locked up the dogs in the house ’cause they were going crazy. Sasha’s horse freaked and almost ran itself to death in the corral. This is the last fucking time I stay up all night because I am married to Renon Chattelrault. This is the last night I’ll be married to Renon Chattelrault. Why are there cops everywhere? Nobody will tell me. Does someone want to hurt me or our children?”

“No, no. They don’t want to hurt you or the kids. Someone said they want to kill me.”

“Oh, that’s great. Some son-of-a-bitch is going to kill you in front of our kids.”

“Kate…”

“You brought all this into our lives. I told ya, dammit. I told you to quit this stuff. This is the Church’s crap. You’re just
somebody to stand between the public and the bishop to obscure the truth.”

“I’m home…”

“Fuck you! Look what you brought home with you.”

When I tried to pull her to me, to hug her, she jerked away.

“I told you in the little house the other night that I’d stay as long as I could. This is it. E – N – D. The fucking end.”

“Everybody’s fine now, Kate.”

“No. Everybody is not fine, dammit. Nobody is fine. Wednesday, Jake got picked on at school. Kids were screaming at him, attacking him in the playground, saying that his father is a pervert. Some kids fought with him.”

“Jake got beat up?”

“No. Jake did not get beat up. Jake kicked their asses. Who won the fight is not the point. Don’t you get anything? Winning is not always the point, dammit.”

“I know, I know.”

“It doesn’t matter. Wednesday night, Jake announced he was not going back to school. He did not go yesterday and I doubt I can get him to go today. When all this was discussed Wednesday night, Sasha refused to go to pre-school. Shelby even had a tough time at Saint Paul’s with his classmates, but it was only verbal.”

“I’ll talk to the children this morning.”

“Damn right you’re gonna talk to the children this morning. Damn straight.”

Kate walked over and poured a cup of mocha. She looked at me from across the room. “I’m gonna let the kids sleep a bit longer. You can clean up. It looks like you have mud all over you.”

“It’s just coffee. Spilled coffee. That’s all.”

The children were at the breakfast table. Sasha was still clutching her stuffed Disco Duck under one arm while she ate cereal. I hugged them and kissed them all on the cheek.

“Guys, I’m going to talk to you about what is going on in our
lives. I was dumb to think this stuff would not affect your lives. I believed it would only affect me.”

Shelby was stoic. “It’s not so bad. We talked about it in class some. Nobody understands why anybody would defend this priest for what he did. I don’t get it.”

“The people at your school aren’t alone, ya know,” I replied. “My dad and others are gonna have questions too, I think. The United States is better than some other places in many ways. Other places are better in some ways. But one thing we have is a good justice system, a constitution. We’re all equal in the eyes of our law, even a really sick guy like this priest. And I think he might be real sick.”

“Constitution?” Jake said.

“It makes us different than communists.”

“Does the Father have a consti-rution, Papa?” five-year-old Sasha asked.

“Yes, he has what lawyers call constitutional protections. This is one of the things that make us different from communist countries.”

“I know all that,” Shelby challenged me, “but tell me why you are doing this? I want to hear your reasons from you.”

“First, I believe this man is very sick. I hope to find out what made him do the things he’s charged with. And I hope we get a chance to have him treated medically to cure or arrest whatever his sickness is. He has been abandoned by everyone but his family and they are in no position to help him. Secondly, I really do believe all of us are equal under the Constitution, and I believe we all have rights that need to be protected and asserted on our behalf, which only a lawyer can do for us. Finally, I believe if I do my job right, maybe some good can come out of this. For the children – the little kids he hurt. I want to do something for the children who were hurt.”

Jake seemed more relaxed. He raised his hand like he was in class. “What about the cops in the driveway and at the stables? Do we need police to protect us?”

“They’re leaving today. Mr. Robinette sent them here so you would feel safe while I was bringing the priest home.”

“I like ’em. They’re really nice. When I was fishing yesterday, one of ’em put worms on my hook, yucky worms,” Sasha said.

“Well, I’m sorry, Sasha. I know how you like to have servants, but your worm hooker is leaving today.”

Turning to Jake, I said, “I’m going to the Bears football game at four today and I want to see you play. I know the rule. If you are not in school today, then you cannot play in the game.”

Jake nodded.

“And you, Sasha, will you be in school today?”

“Whatever Jake does.”

“Okay, you guys get ready for school,” I said.

“Can you help the little kids he hurt?” Sasha asked.

“I really hope so.”