Sarah Armstrong - 01 - Singularity (28 page)

“I thought we agreed that you wouldn’t do this,” he said. “The governor, everyone in the department, is up in arms, asking how you could have gone public against explicit orders.”

“I’m sorry this has caused a problem for you, Captain. That wasn’t my intention. Believe me,” I answered.

“Sarah, I have orders for you to report to my office today to turn in your badge. I’m instructed to tell you that you’re suspended without pay until further notice, so that this matter can be fully investigated,” he said.

“Captain, I’m not coming in. Not until tonight.”

“You’re disobeying another direct order?”

“Yes,” I said. “I am.”

“Sarah, I can’t cover up for you. What will I tell headquarters?”

“I don’t care. Tell them I refused. Tell them you couldn’t reach me,” I said, my heart pounding in my chest. “I’ll have my badge on your desk before morning, but I can’t come in now. It’s just not an option.”

“Where are you?”

“I have a few days off, remember?” I said. “I have a personal matter to take care of.”

The captain was quiet, considering, and then said, “Garrity called in. He said he didn’t feel well and wouldn’t be at his checkpoint this morning. Is he with you?”

I looked over at David.

“I’ll talk to him,” he said, taking the phone.

“Captain, yes, I do understand,” he said. I wished I could hear the captain’s side of the conversation. I should have considered how asking David to come with me would affect his career. This was my war, not his. I hadn’t been fair to him, I now realized.

“I’m acting on my own accord, and I’ll accept responsibility,” David said. He listened for a minute before he said, “I’m sorry you feel that way. I’ll put Sarah back on.”

“Captain, this is my decision. David had nothing to do with the article. He didn’t even know about it until a reporter called early this morning,” I protested. “He agreed to accompany me today at my request.”

“You’re both about to lose your jobs,” said the captain, ignoring my explanation. Rather than angry, however, he now sounded resigned. “I won’t say anything about Agent Garrity’s involvement unless or until it becomes an issue.”

“Thank you.”

“What should I tell the governor, Sarah?”

“Tell him that this is about only one thing, saving lives,” I said. “Tell him I’m sorry, but I had no real choice.”

“Sarah.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Be careful.”

T
he drive uneventful, we arrived in Bardwell before seven. We’d called ahead, and Sheriff Broussard waited for us at his office in the center of town.

“I didn’t figure I’d see you two again,” he said with a warm handshake and a smile. “Seemed like you’d moved on.”

“We did, but we’re back and we need your help,” I said.

“Anything I can do.”

“We need you to paper the town with these,” David explained, handing him a stack of the flyers I’d made the night before, displaying both sketches.

“That looks like that poster your office sent us. I’ve got it up on the wall in my office,” Broussard said, pointing at the original composite. “This the same guy as a kid?”

“Yeah, we had it age-regressed,” I explained. “Sheriff, don’t just post one in your office. We need you to make sure these are displayed in all the main spots in town. Hand them out on the street. As many people as possible need to see this flyer as quickly as possible.”

“Hell, that’s easy. I’ll have the town papered with these by noon,” said Broussard, looking over the drawings. “You think this kid killed old Miss Fontenot?”

“Yeah, we do,” I said.

“He looks a little familiar, but I’m not sure why,” said Broussard. “I’ll think about it. How long you staying?”

“Until we’ve done all we can here,” said David. “We’re here to finish the canvass we started. We need someone to guide us through the Thicket, to help us find the places someone might hide, as well as to help us connect with anyone we missed interviewing the first time. Who knows the area better than anyone?”

“You gotta talk to Gus Warren,” he said.

Half an hour later, Warren, the local mechanic, had wiped the black motor oil from his hands on a soiled rag and closed his car repair shop, and the three of us headed in my Tahoe down a country road that looked no bigger than a gravel driveway. The farther we drove the less sunlight fingered its way through the umbrella of trees: pines mixed with beech, magnolia, and oak, already unfolded into leaves the tender green of spring. Indian paintbrush speckled the roadside a bright orange. Had we been in the Thicket for another reason, I might have enjoyed the scenery.

“I can’t promise you I know everybody, but I know quite a few folks living back here,” he said. An avid outdoorsman, Warren had grown up in the Thicket and knew nearly every road that led to a fishing hole or a hunting blind. As I drove, in the backseat he and David divided a map of the surrounding area into six pie-shaped pieces. The first covered a slice of the forest north of town.

“Where to first?” asked David.

“Well, there’s this couple name of Gibeteaux. They’ve been
around here longer than almost anybody. I thought we’d stop at their place first. They know quite a few people living in the Thicket. Thought they might recognize your guy.”

“Good,” I said. “Just point me in the right direction.”

The road wound through the trees, many dying under thick coats of vines crawling up their trunks and Spanish moss hanging from their branches. Warren, clearly delighted with the prospect of an adventure, plotted in the backseat, talking with David, describing people he knew and places a criminal on the run could hide.

“Turn left, here,” he said, pointing into an opening in the trees that led into a clearing. “That’s their place back in the woods.”

I pulled over, put the Tahoe into four-wheel drive, and then followed tire tracks between the trees and through low brush into a clearing. Straight ahead, on the porch of a double-wide trailer home surrounded by trees, an elderly man dressed in coveralls rocked on a chair. When he saw us, he jumped up and ran inside, emerging, moments later, followed by his wife and carrying a shotgun.

I pulled to a stop.

“Hey, Willie,” Warren yelled out the window. “It’s me, Gus, and I got a couple folks here to see you. A Texas Ranger and an honest-to-God FBI agent.”

“That you, Gus?” the man said, popping his Caterpillar tractor bill cap back on his head as if that would give him a better look.

“Yeah, it’s me all right.”

“A ranger and an FBI agent, you gotta be pulling my leg.”

“Nope, it’s the real thing. They’re looking for Miss Fontenot’s murderer.”

“Damn,” he said, waving toward us. “I’ll put this thing down, and you bring them in.”

Up close, rust pocked the trailer’s siding and much of the wood porch flirted with rot. Inside, family photos covered walls and tables in every style of dollar-store frame imaginable. We congregated
around a worn aquamarine Formica kitchen table with matching vinyl chairs, and Edna Gibeteaux invited us to sit down.

“We need your help,” I told them. “We’re trying to find the person who killed Louise Fontenot.”

“A Texas Ranger and an FBI guy come all the way out here to find out who killed Louise Fontenot?” Willie Gibeteaux scoffed. “That don’t sound right. Must be more going on here than the killing of one old biddy.”

“Willie, you stop that,” his wife ordered, waving a crooked, arthritic finger. “Louise was a good woman. Why wouldn’t they come here to help?”

“Well, we do have one other reason,” confided David, conspiratorially drawing them in. “We believe this same person may have killed others.”

“That the truth?” asked Willie, his eyes widening in wonder.

“Yeah, that’s the truth,” I answered.

We stayed nearly half an hour. The Gibeteauxs were good people, and they tried to help. They examined both composites and thought long and hard. Finally, they shook their heads.

“Maybe he looks a little familiar,” said Willie, pointing at the composite of our suspect in his younger years. “But I can’t say why. And I sure can’t tell you who he is.”

That settled, they gave us the names of others they hoped could help more, and then waved good-bye from the porch as we drove away. Disappointed, I knew we’d accomplished no more than supplying the couple with a bit of entertainment.

From the Gibeteaux place, Warren directed us through the Thicket to other trailers, shacks, and remote hunting and fishing camps along the river, more secluded than anything we’d seen so far, most without electricity or telephone. The folks we encountered offered no more answers than the Gibeteauxs, and we found no sign of anything amiss. No evidence of an intruder, a killer hiding on the
run. Throughout the morning, I checked my cell phone, wanting to call Sheriff Broussard, to find out how he’d fared with the composite in town, but we’d traveled so deep into the Thicket the screen on the phone shone blank. Angry with myself that I hadn’t asked the sheriff to lend us a radio, I realized we no longer had any connection with headquarters or, for that matter, the outside world. If we needed help, we had no way to get it. I said nothing. Instead, as Warren directed, I circled back, to begin yet another loop on a road as remote and inaccessible as the first.

Just before noon, we’d been at it for four and a half hours and we’d exhausted every possibility Gus Warren, the Gibeteauxs, any of those who’d tried to help us had supplied. We drove toward town to drop off our guide and begin the ride home. The morning had begun with hope but ended with frustration that hung between us like a curtain, stifling conversation. I knew what David had to be thinking, I’d brought him all this way, laid his career on the line, and we knew no more about Gabriel than we had when we’d left Houston. I thought about Maggie and Mom. How would I explain the suspension to them? When Bill died, I told myself I’d take care of Maggie for both of us. I promised myself that she would never suffer because she no longer had a father. Now I’d buried myself in my work and jeopardized my job, all for nothing.

“Of course, there’s a bunch more places out in the Thicket,” I heard Warren explaining to David. “Nobody knows who all is living out here. Some parts would take a boat to search. Gets swampy, and no way you can drive in. Most of the time the forest is too thick to see anything much from the air. Could take days, maybe even weeks to cover.”

Weeks. I was lucky if I had hours.

With that dismal assessment, I noticed the service lines flash
across the panel on my cell phone; it beeped and a series of messages popped onto the screen. Most were from Captain Williams and headquarters. I knew he was under pressure to produce me, to answer for my wayward ways. Ignoring the others, I focused on a call at the very bottom of the list.

“Where the hell you been?” asked Sheriff Brousssard.

“Out of range,” I said. “What’s up?”

“We may have a hit for you over at J. P.’s joint. You know? The bar on the outskirts of town.”

W
e dropped Gus Warren at his garage and arrived at J. R’s just after noon. The place was populated with a few women but mainly men wearing cowboy boots and blue jeans, sleeveless T-shirts and plaid cotton shirts with snap-down pockets, most limp and stained with sweat. Sheriff Broussard led us to the bar, where J. P. stood jawing with a cache of paying customers.

“J. P.’s got someone he wants you two to meet,” Broussard said.

With that, the proprietor motioned us forward and introduced us to one of his patrons, W. O. Harris, a man so old his hands looked as gnarled as the thick black branches of the ancient live oaks surrounding the joint.

“Well, J. P. here showed me that picture of that boy. He told me what you two was asking for, and I got some questions. Give me the right answers, and I might have a name for you,” he said, his short gray beard flapping with each syllable.

“What questions?” David asked.

“Ain’t no way this freak is ever gonna know I was the one who first said his name?”

“No way,” said David. “My word on it.”

“No way this old man’s ever gonna have to testify against no one. ‘Cause if that takes place a bad case of that amnesia stuff might just hit this old man and he won’t remember, not one thing.”

“I can’t answer that until I know what you’ve got to tell us,” David replied, looking sympathetic but stern.

“But we understand,” I said, ignoring a look from David that radioed be-careful-what-you-promise. “Agent Garrity and I know that a man with amnesia probably won’t be much good to us on the stand.”

The old man assessed me. He surveyed David. He scanned Sheriff Broussard’s blank face.

I knew he wanted to talk.

“Hell,” he said. “That being the case, I suggest you look for a boy, about twenty, maybe twenty-one. I can’t say as I’ve seen the kid in years, but that drawing of yours, the younger one, sure does remind me of Doyle Tyler.”

“Who is he?” I asked.

“He lived back in the Thicket with his mother, a pretty woman considering that she used to make money by supplying what a man needs to some of the old boys in town,” J. P. interjected. “No one ever saw much of that boy after the time he turned a teenager or so. Never did come to town much. He and his momma didn’t much care for people.”

“He was a strange one,” flapped W. O. “Let’s say, I used to avail myself of his mother’s charms at times, when my old lady was out of sorts. You know?”

“Sure,” said David.

“Thelma Tyler was an odd woman,” he explained. “She wasn’t like a normal person in her profession.”

“Explain that,” I said.

“Well, her daddy was a preacher, not formal educated but kind of
his own religion, real fire and brimstone, talked in tongues and laid on hands to heal the sick. He held services in the front room of the house for some of the folk living out in the Thicket. Her momma died when Thelma was a little one. Her daddy raised her after that, and they lived a real solitary life out there, living off the land, him making a little with his preaching. Then the daddy disappeared, when she must’a been about fourteen or so. Just up and left when he felt a calling to preach the gospel in other parts, the way she told it. That point on, Thelma made her living on her back. But that girl had her daddy in her. All the while a man was cranking away, she was spouting Bible verses, just like her old man on the pulpit. Some of the boys in town didn’t care for it much. Said it hindered the natural flow of things, if you know what I mean. They stopped coming around. Me, it never bothered. Don’t much believe in all that religion mumbo jumbo.”