Accused

by Michael Kerr

  Logan was wide awake. Went out for a stroll and called in at the nearby DQ Grill & Chill restaurant; ate a loaded burger and took one back for Boo. Dairy Queen offered tasty junk food at a reasonable price.

  Up at six a.m., Logan and Boo set off on the second leg of the journey, stopped for breakfast in Marianna, and arrived at Boo’s aunt’s house in Ozark before noon.

  Boo had phoned the previous evening and said that they were on the way.

  Vera Caitlin appeared at the door of the small timber-framed house seconds after Logan parked at the curb. He was surprised. He had thought that Boo’s aunt would be a little like the granny character that the late Irene Ryan had played in the Beverley Hillbillies. He couldn’t have been more wrong. Vera was a vivacious forty-something redhead with a trim figure and a warm smile.

  She walked down the path to meet them. Logan was taking most of Boo’s weight.

  “What happened?” Vera said, looking from Boo to Logan with a depth of genuine concern in her emerald eyes.

  “I got my foot caught in a bear trap,” Boo said. “This is Logan; he helped me out and drove me up here from Fort Myers. He’s a solid guy.”

  Vera nodded at Logan. It was as near to saying thanks as she would allow for the time being. She thought that the stranger seemed distant; a man alone. He was enigmatic and easy on the eye. She guessed that he stood six-four or five and that he was happy in his own skin, which fitted him well. He could have been anywhere between forty and fifty-five years old, it was impossible to tell. His slate-gray eyes looked at her with a disconcerting intensity, and she felt as though he could read her thoughts and know her secrets.

  “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Logan,” Vera said as they reached the door and went inside. “Can I get you a cup of coffee or a glass of iced tea?”

  “Coffee would be good,” Logan said. “And please drop the mister; I’m more comfortable with just Logan.”

  “Okay, Logan, what’s the plan?” Vera said as they sat around the kitchen table and drank coffee.

  “Boo needs treatment for his leg. I’ll drop you both off at the local hospital, and then I’ll be on my way.”

  “You can stay the night if you want. I’ve got a spare bedroom. And I don’t have to worry about my reputation. We live and let live in this neck of the woods and do our best not to get too judgmental.”

  Logan allowed himself a small smile. Vera Caitlin was a down to earth straight shooter, and had decided that he was no threat to her. She probably kept a gun in the drawer of a night table in her bedroom and would use it without hesitation if she felt in danger.

  “Thanks for the offer,” Logan said. “Maybe I will.”

  After a three-hour wait, Boo was examined and admitted to the public hospital. His leg was infected but not gangrenous. They needed to operate on it, though, to fix up the splintered bones. They asked him how he’d broken it, and he told them the truth, that he’d stepped in a bear trap. He just omitted telling them where and why it had happened.

  Back at the house, Logan accepted the offer of a hot meal and a bed for the night. The evening was spent in the living room, where Vera talked plenty for both of them, and had the radio on low, tuned to WAQP; a local contemporary Christian music station.

  “What really happened to Boo?” Vera said as she poured large measures of cheap bourbon into two tumblers.

  “He put his foot where he shouldn’t have,” Logan said. “He worked for a lowlife, but I think he wants to keep clear of trouble from now on, stay up here in Alabama and find work.”

  It was almost one a.m. when Vera took Logan by the hand and led him to her bedroom. He didn’t complain. She was old enough to do what she wanted, and the bourbon had loosened him up and got him to thinking that making out with her was a good idea.

  Boo was discharged forty-eight hours later. He was going to be fine, apart from maybe having to walk with a slight limp for the rest of his life. He accepted Vera’s offer to stay with her for as long as he wanted or needed to, and a cousin with a small house painting business said that when he was fit enough he would take him on for three days a week to start with and see how it worked out.

  Logan let Vera drive him partway down to I-10, and told her to do what she wanted with the Ford when she got back to Ozark. They had a coffee, hugged in the diner’s parking lot, and went their separate ways.

  Logan was back in the groove he enjoyed being in. He had enough money, a new canvas rucksack on his back, and a blacktop stretching ahead of him through a pine forest. His loose plan was to head west when he reached the Interstate, to take his time moving through southern Mississippi and then into Louisiana. Spending a few weeks in New Orleans appealed to him. He liked Jazz and the Blues, and Cajun food. The Big Easy was laid back, and like the Big Apple it was a city that never seemed to sleep.

  It was almost a month later that Logan found himself at the Mississippi/Louisiana state line. He was now fast approaching a dilemma, and life or death events that he could not possibly foresee, because the future is like a book; you have to turn the page to find out what lies up ahead waiting for you.

  CHAPTER THREE

  IT was late afternoon when Logan angled across the grass to a rest stop and fed a machine with five quarters for a paper cup full of hot but weak coffee. As he drank it, he watched a bearded, middle-aged guy wearing a sweat-stained ball cap climb down from a Peterbilt cab as bright red as a fire truck, to make his way to the rest room. The trucker, one Seth Norris from Atlanta in Georgia, came out of the rest room combing his gray brush cut with the fingers of one hand as he held his cap with the other. He headed towards the row of drink and snack machines and nodded at Logan as he dug in a jeans pocket for coins.

  “The coffee sucks,” Logan said.

  “How’d you know I wasn’t going to have a Coke?” Seth said.

  “You look like a strong coffee kind of guy. And this is like colored tap water.”

  “Right,” Seth said as he thumbed his quarters into the cold drinks machine and hit a button to select a can of Mountain Dew, which rattled down the chute into the tray.

  “Are you hitching?” Seth said as he rolled the ice-cold can across his forehead before pulling the tab and taking a large gulp of the soda.

  Logan knew that the observant trucker had seen the rucksack on the ground next to him and joined the dots. “I’m not too far from where I’m heading,” he said.

  “New Orleans?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s where my load is going. You want a ride?”

  “That would save some boot sole leather,” Logan said by way of accepting the offer.

  They talked about the state of the nation and old times gone by, as Seth – running late – crossed Lake Pontchartrain on I-10.

  “I’m a little overdue, so I won’t be able to dump this load till morning,” Seth said. “I’ll be staying the night at a motel just off Lapalca Boulevard, south of the city. Do you want dropping off nearer the center?”

  “South of it will be fine,” Logan said. “Somewhere I can grab a meal.”

  “I’ll join you for one if you can stand the company,” Seth said. “There’s a country-style diner that does great surf and turf just a couple minutes drive from the place I stay at, which always has vacancies and is easy on the wallet if you want a clean room with a comfortable bed for the night.”

  “Sounds like a good way to begin my visit to New Orleans,” Logan said.

  They booked in to rooms eight and nine at The Pilgrims’ Rest; an old but nicely renovated single-story motel on a lonely stretch of highway bordering the Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve, which to Logan looked like any other forest.

  After a shower and donning clean clothes, Logan stashed his rucksack in a closet, after first taking a brick of hundred dollar bills from the bottom of it and placing it in the metal wastebasket in the bathroom, under the plastic liner that now held a couple of small and empty shampoo bottles and some crumpled paper tissues.

&nbs
p; Seth was outside smoking a cigarette and enjoying the night air. They climbed in the cab, and soon after Seth parked up next to a Kenworth at the side of a diner.

  They were nursing coffee cups and waiting for the food to arrive when a guy with shoulder length hair and wearing a sharp suit walked past them to where a waitress was standing behind the counter. He spoke to her, and she spoke back, and then after hearing a loud clatter from the kitchen, a taller guy appeared and grasped one of the waitress’s wrists.

  Logan made to get up. It was awkward to move fast. His legs were muscular and long, and the space between the front of the bench seat and the edge of the table was narrow and slowed him down.

  He never made it. Didn’t even know that a third guy was approaching from behind him, or that he had been clubbed twice with a gun and was now on the floor and out to the world.

  Seth reacted, grasped the slim stranger by the throat with one hand and reached for the gun with the other.

  He knew as the gun was quickly lowered and pushed up against the front of his shirt that he was going to be shot. He felt the first round rip into his stomach, high up, but didn’t feel the second one that followed it in. Jolted backwards, Seth put his hands over the wound and began to slowly slip down and sideways, as if he was just going to stretch out on the bench seat and catch a few ‘z’ s.

  Ellie Mae had ran pell-mell across the parking lot, faster than she had moved since she had left high school the best part of three decades ago, past two eighteen-wheelers and a large black Buick sedan, to reach the low boundary fence and climb over it, to trip and roll down an incline through spiny bushes, to crash into the unyielding trunk of a bald cypress that, with a dozen others, stood on the edge of a small, foul-smelling swamp.

  Winded, and with her ankle pounding with pain; hopefully just sprained and not broken, Ellie Mae sat up in the murk with her back against the tree and let what had happened sink in. She had seen a big guy getting up from his seat, only to be hit by a man from behind. And then there had been two gunshots. Taking her chance, she had made it out through the kitchen, only to see the cook, Gabriel, curled up on the floor as still as ditchwater, either out cold or dead. And then there was another shot fired.

  What to do? She couldn’t phone for help, because her cell was on a shelf under the register, due to her skirt having no pockets.

  Another two shots rang out, shortly followed by a louder, deeper blast, and then three more cracks that she knew was gunfire.

  Using the trunk of the cypress for support, Ellie Mae managed to get back on her feet. Her right ankle was on fire, but fear overcame pain and she limped slowly through the trees in the direction of the highway.

  Standing behind a thick row of buttonbush, Ellie Mae was afraid to venture any farther. What if the killers left the diner and saw her standing at the side of the road? It was reasonable to assume that they would stop, not to give her a ride, but to do away with her. She had been a witness to some of what they had done, and she could give the police descriptions of them. She had also seen the one that had grabbed her by the wrist before, recognizing him mainly because of the long scar on his face. He had visited her boss a few weeks previously, and Dicky had been in an ill temper and seemed unduly nervous for the next couple of days. She hadn’t asked him why; if he’d wanted to tell her anything he would have. One thing that she had learned in life – if nothing else – was to mind your own business. Poking your nose in where it wasn’t wanted could bring you nothing but grief. She’d had her share of heartache with a husband that had treated her like a punch bag for twelve years. She’d been scared to stay and scared to leave, and so had ridden it out until he did the world a favor and fell fifteen floors off a building he was a construction worker on. His death was the biggest relief of her life. She wouldn’t have been happier if she’d won a million bucks on the state lottery.

  Sitting on a thigh-thick tree root, Ellie Mae waited. She was safe here, hidden in the darkness. At some point the police would turn up, and eventually she would cautiously make her way back to the diner.

  By the time the first State Police Chevy Tahoe pulled into the lot of Dicky’s Diner with light bars flashing, Logan was just coming to. He had no idea what had happened, and did not even realize that he was holding a pistol in his hand as he groaned and pushed himself up onto his knees. He clenched his teeth against the pain in his skull and took deep breaths, and then noticed the blood dripping down onto the floor from the bench seat opposite him.

  State Troopers Alvin Brown and Kenny Sutherland entered with guns drawn, to take in the scene as they moved into position at the archway leading into the main dining area. There were bodies and there was blood, and there was a guy on his knees with a gun in his hand.

  “Police,” Kenny said in a loud, clear voice as he aimed his handgun at the man’s back. “Lose the weapon, and then lay down with your hands linked on your head. Do it now.”

  Logan turned his head slowly to the right and saw the gun in his hand. He had no idea how it had got there. Didn’t matter. A cop obviously had him in his sights and was probably nervous and had taken up the slack on his trigger. He slowly lowered his hand to the floor, slid the weapon away from him and stretched out and assumed the position.

  “Right hand behind your back, nice and easy feller,” Trooper Alvin Brown said.

  Logan complied.

  “Now your left.”

  Seconds later Logan was handcuffed and roughly hauled up into a sitting position with his back against the edge of the seat.

  Within fifteen minutes an ambulance and three more police prowler cars arrived at the scene. Corpses attracted attention in the same way that road kill drew in buzzards and other critters.

  The cop standing a couple of feet away from Logan didn’t speak. Just looked down at him with a steely stare and kept his hand firmly on the butt of the gun that was holstered high on his right hip.

  Logan said nothing. Just took in the scene around him in the diner and wondered what the hell had gone down. He was dismayed that the trucker, Seth, was dead. And he could also see a guy lying on the floor a few feet away with a hole in his back that had ruined his jacket; not that he was caring about it or anything else anymore. At the other end of the diner a couple was slumped at their table. They looked to be in their late fifties or early sixties, probably with grown up children and grandchildren that they would never see again. Life wasn’t fair. If you happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, then you ran out of tomorrows.

  Homicide detectives Rod Reynolds and Lucy Pleshette sauntered in and took a minute to look around and assess what had gone down; spoke to the first attending uniforms and then made their way to where Logan was now sitting with his eyes closed and thinking about how this was going to work out as he also brought to mind what the two guys that had been at the counter – giving the waitress a hard time – looked like. The taller of the two was broad, had shoulder-length black hair and a serious looking knife scar on his left cheek that ran down from eye to chin. The other was a couple of inches shorter, wiry-looking, with cropped brown hair. His eyes were set too close together and his nose was overlong and pinched looking.

  “We’re New Orleans Police Department homicide detectives,” Rod said as he studied the handcuffed man seated on the floor in front of him. “I’m Detective Reynolds and this is Detective Pleshette.”

  Logan looked them both over and waited. It wasn’t in his nature to speak without good reason or inclination to. A bad choice of words could land you in a world of trouble.

  “Let’s start with your name,” Rod said.

  “Logan.”

  “Logan who? Or who Logan?”

  “Joe Logan.”

  “Okay, Joe Logan, why the shooting?”

  “I’ve no idea, I missed the action. But judging by the headache I’ve got I guess somebody cold cocked me.”

  “We are informed that you were kneeling on the floor with a gun in your hand,” the female detective said. “What’s
your story?”

  Logan stared her in the eyes, long and hard. She was made of stern stuff and wasn’t fazed by him. He estimated that she was in her late twenties, and she stood about five-eight in flat shoes and was slim but shapely. Her mahogany hair was slicked back and fixed in a ponytail.

  “This isn’t a pissing contest, Logan,” Lucy said. “It appears that you have no identification on you, just a few dollars in your pants pocket. You’ve obviously been in a gunfight, so do us all a favor and talk to us.”

  “Am I being accused of wrongdoing?” Logan said.

  Rod grinned, which did him no favors. The detective was tall but a little stooped with sagging shoulders. He looked to be in his fifties and probably had enough service under his belt to put his papers in and walk. His face was checkered with deep crisscross lines, his baleful blue eyes looked haunted by a million sights that he probably wished he’d never seen, and his thinning hair was more yellow than white. But it was the grin that Logan found off-putting. It was crooked, with no mirth in it, and the discolored and too-even teeth were as false as a politician’s promises.

  “Discharging a handgun and probably committing one or more murders would be a logical assumption,” Rod said.

  “So there would obviously be gunshot residue on my hands, shirt cuffs and probably on the side of my jacket,” Logan said.

  “Hey, Luce, we’ve got us one of those dudes that watches CSI on the box and thinks he’s an expert,” Rod said.

  Lucy frowned. The man was too cool and together. He gave her the feeling that there was a lot they were missing. Guilty people very rarely look you in the eye or are able to hide body language that shows inner turmoil over the predicament they are in, especially if it’s this serious.

  “Where do you fit in this bloodbath scenario, then?” Lucy said. “Give us your version of events leading up to when you suffered the head wound.”