Accused

by Michael Kerr

  Nathan’s mind raced. If he whacked Clayton and arranged for both his and Dwayne’s bodies to disappear, then would that safeguard him from any repercussions from the police? The answer was probably not, now that Logan had coerced both men to talk and had their cell phones, which contained solid links to him, allegedly including a video confession made by Clayton. They couldn’t indict him with just an unsubstantiated confession made by a dead man, but they would know that he had instigated the visit to Dicky’s, that had gone pear shaped. He would be put under tremendous scrutiny, however much he denied being implicated. He would have to assure Logan that he and the waitress were off the hook and had nothing to fear from him, and then hope that Ed Jansen could find them, retrieve the incriminating video and kill them.

  “Okay, Logan, you’re holding the high cards. As long as that video stays buried, you and the broad are safe. But if it surfaces all bets are off. Do we have an understanding?”

  “I’ll send you a copy of the video, now, just to let you see how much of your operation LaSalle went into detail over. The phone with the original on will be locked away safe and sound, and I’ll be gone, but keeping in touch with the waitress to make sure that she stays safe and well.”

  Logan switched off the phone as the girl came to the table with a pot of coffee in one hand and a plate with the fully-stacked burger he’d ordered in the other.

  “Enjoy,” Tina Williams said as she slid the plate in front of the big guy that she decided was a hunk. If he had been just ten or even twenty years older than her, she would have hit on him. She liked men a lot, was single, and not averse to coming on strong and seizing the moment. She was the Terrytown queen of one-night stands. But he looked to be the wrong side of fifty, and at nineteen she thought it would be like screwing her father, or maybe a favorite uncle, which was something she had done.

  Logan put all thoughts of the present situation out of his mind as he savored the large burger and the piping hot coffee. Being able to do that was something he’d learned first in the army, then as a cop. You had to be able to back off and give your brain time to regroup.

  After he’d finished eating he poured the last of the coffee out and reflected on the conversation he’d had with Cassidy. Decided that he couldn’t trust the guy to back off. Just knowing that there was a damning video of LaSalle ratting on him would make him paranoid. He would do his best to find them, get the tape back, and then kill them. The threats Logan had made against Cassidy’s wife and daughters were empty. He had no intention of harming the women, but Cassidy didn’t know that. It was a cat and mouse game, and Logan knew that his only sure way of wrapping it up would be to kill Cassidy. Some things only got resolved by way of employing ultimate force. Even the video from the cell phone would not be considered viable evidence, due to it being obvious that LaSalle was under duress and would have said anything to save himself from real or imagined coercion and/or violence against him, and would retract every word that he’d said. But he would send it to Detective Pleshette anyway, once present danger was dealt with.

  Logan had choices; bail out and convince Ellie to do the same and start over in another state, or finish something that Cassidy had started. Commonsense told him to get the hell out of New Orleans without a backward glance over his shoulder, but letting Cassidy win would stick in his craw like a fishbone. He liked things to be done and dusted, not left like an open sore to prey on his mind and perturb him. It was an inborn stubbornness that he had been governed by since childhood that drove him. He had the kind of mindset that could not back down in the face of adversity. You could go through life turning the other cheek from all forms of conflict, or meet a bad situation head on and give it your best shot in an attempt to negate it.

  His decision was made. If he was in Cassidy’s shoes he would put more of his crew to work in an attempt to find Ellie and him. As a rule Logan didn’t trust most of what he saw or heard, or the word of strangers, ever. Nothing is necessarily what it appears to be. You had to let your instinct be your guide, and always be prepared to be disappointed by others. Cassidy wouldn’t trust him either, it was a two-way street.

  He would return to the cabin in the morning and decide how best to get to Cassidy and do what he had always done as a cop; close the case.

  Leaving the burger joint, Logan walked until he came to a grungy-looking motel set back off the street between a nail parlor and a closed down auto body repair shop. The Take 5 Motel offered hourly rates. It was the kind of no-tell dump where folk met for a session to cheat on their spouses, and where hookers plied their trade.

  The office was dimly lit. Logan opened the door to be met by the combined and unsavory smell of stewed coffee, sweat and stale cigarette smoke. The porker at the other side of the counter was wearing a beer stained muscle T-shirt to show off meaty biceps going to fat under fading tats. He was a big guy with a ‘seen it all and don’t take shit off anyone’ attitude.

  “I need a room for what’s left of the night,” Logan said.

  “Sixty bucks,” Herbie Keyhoe said in a reedy voice that belied his size as he fired up a Winston.

  “Forty, cash” Logan said.

  Herbie frowned and said, “Forty-five, or walk.”

  The room was as tacky as Logan had known it would be. There was a small and ancient TV bolted to a wall, but no coffee machine or any other mod cons. He didn’t need them. He put the chain lock on the door and wedged the back of a nicotine-coated cane chair under the handle. Unfolding his sleeping bag on top of the sagging mattress, with his rucksack next to him on the bed, he stretched out and went to sleep.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  HE came round moaning aloud as the pain in his head and feet overwhelmed him. Panic soon took precedence though, as he realized the predicament he was in. Maybe if he could have walked he would have stolen a car and left town for pastures new. He had money in a wall safe that he’d put by for emergencies, but being shot in both feet stopped him from going anywhere soon.

  It took him a while to crawl across the carpet and somehow pull himself up to rest his elbows on the bar top as he shifted sideways to sit on a stool. He shakily picked up the bottle of Scotch from the counter, twisted the top off and drank a large amount, straight from the neck. He looked at his wristwatch and estimated that he had been out of it for at least twenty minutes. All he could do was phone Nathan. He needed help, and would have to rely on his ability to talk the talk to save his ass.

  Using the wall phone, he punched in his boss’s number. After three rings there was a click.

  “It’s me, Clayton,” he said. “Logan paid me a visit.”

  “I know,” Nathan said. “I just got through talking to him on your cell. He told me what you’d had to say, including details about my wife and daughters.”

  “I can explain, boss. I―”

  “You were under a lot of pressure and said whatever was necessary to save your skin, Clayton. I can understand that, but I’m obviously not feeling much in the way of compassion for you. Technology can be a blessing or a curse. In this case it is the latter. Logan forwarded me the video of your outpouring to him. He has the original, which puts me in a very problematic position.”

  “The bastard killed Dwayne and then shot me in both feet, boss. I held out for as long as I could.”

  “You got off light. He could have shot you in the head.”

  “Can we get past this?”

  “In time, Clayton, in time. Things happen. You did what you had to. I’ll arrange for you to be taken to a private clinic and treated, and for Dwayne to be removed and your apartment cleaned. Just hold on to the thought that you owe me, big-time.”

  “Thanks, boss.”

  Nathan pressed END and made a couple of calls. Fifteen minutes later two of his men were outside the house in a dark blue Ford Escape, and Strother Cully and an assistant were on route to Clayton’s apartment.

  Strother Cully operated a registered crime cleanup company, and was kept busy working for law enforce
ment agencies to attend murder scenes and the locations of fatal accidents and suicides that warranted the removal of blood, bodily fluids and other potentially infectious materials. His work began when the coroner’s office or other official government body released the ‘scene’ to the owner or other responsible parties. That was the legal bread and butter side of what he did. As a sideline he also sanitized properties and removed cadavers from locations for underworld contacts that paid large amounts in cash to have the work done.

  Living next to a small bayou adjacent to Blind Lagoon off Ridgeway Road was a perfect spot to get rid of bodies. Strother had a liking for alligators, and they were numerous around his house on stilts, which stood on the bank of what he had christened Gator Gulley. Two or three times a week he would go down to the edge of the bayou to slap the water with a plank, which was his way of letting the reptiles know that it was feeding time. Up to a dozen of the modern-day dinosaurs would soon appear and approach, to be thrown chicken carcasses, road kill, and every so often a more substantial meal of human body parts.

  Tim Garvey parked the SUV between two other vehicles, fifty yards from the apartment building. Don Collins climbed out of the front passenger seat and opened the rear door for Nathan, and the three of them walked down a wide alley that gave access to the rear of the building. There was a keypad set into the wall next to the door at chest height. Nathan pulled on a pair of unlined leather driving gloves and entered the four digit number to gain access.

  They took the elevator to the sixth floor to find the door to Clayton’s apartment closed but not locked.

  Nathan glanced down at Dwayne’s body stretched out in the foyer and said, “Check him out,” to Tim, as he and Don walked around the corpse and into the living room.

  Clayton was still on the stool at the bar. He’d consumed more than two thirds of the Scotch, just guzzling it from the bottle in an attempt to dampen the pounding in his feet. He knew that he should have somehow got back down on to the floor and put his feet up to elevate them and reduce the blood flow, but was in too much pain to do it.

  When Nathan walked in he felt a surge of relief. Up until tonight he had been a faithful employee, and knew that his boss valued him highly. He would be okay now. He’d soon be on the mend, and would be looked after.

  “You really fucked up tonight,” Nathan said as he looked down at Clayton’s feet, to see the blood dripping from the bullet holes in the soles of his shoes.

  “What can I say, boss? Logan had got my address from Dwayne. He must have been outside, and when Dwayne came in he was behind him.”

  “So it’s Dwayne’s fault that you gave this fucking vigilante my wife’s and daughters’ names and a lot more besides. Is that what you’re saying?” Nathan said as he walked up to Clayton, grasped him by the arm and yanked him off the stool.

  Clayton cried out as his feet slammed on to the floor. He dropped down into a sitting position and almost passed out.

  “If you’d sell me out to Logan, you’d rat on me to the police if they offered you a deal,” Nathan said as he nodded to Don, who reached inside his jacket and pulled a gun from a shoulder rig.

  “No, boss, please don’t do this,” Clayton said, now wholly aware that he was about to die.

  Don casually took aim at the fallen man and put a bullet through his right temple, which ripped up brain tissue and erupted from the left of his skull, just behind his ear, with a substantial amount of its contents. There was no need to fire again. Clayton LaSalle was as dead as yesterday’s news.

  Billy Haynes drove the Dodge panel truck down the alley, to make a left into the apartment building’s rear parking lot and reverse it into a slot near the door.

  Strother made a call to Nathan, to let him know that they had arrived.

  “The door’s open,” Nathan said. “We’re in six oh three, and there are two items to be removed.”

  Strother was over sixty, but tall, rangy and strong. He kept fit, ate healthily, and had never smoked cigarettes or drank alcohol in his life. He was ‒ with the exception of illegally disposing of bodies, cleaning the scenes, and having committed one murder ‒ a law-abiding individual, a regular churchgoer, and a man whose word was his bond.

  Billy Haynes was Strother’s nephew. He was thirty-two years of age but was a little slow on the uptake and didn’t have a lot to say to anyone about anything. It was believed that he had a touch of autism, but he’d never been tested so his slightly eccentric ways were just overlooked. Billy’s mother, Janet, had been left to fend for him when her violent drunk of a husband, Frank Haynes, went out drinking one evening and was never seen again. Janet died of cancer a couple of years after that, without ever knowing that Frank had been knocked out with a shovel in an alley to become Strother’s first offering to the gators in the bayou.

  Strother and Billy took the elevator up. Strother pushed a large rolling linen hamper that only just fit alongside them in the modest sized car.

  Nathan met them at the door of six oh three, let them in and locked it.

  Strother pushed the hamper up to where Dwayne’s body lay in the hall, and then followed Nathan through to the lounge and studied the scene.

  “Apart from some blood and brains, it don’t look too bad,” Strother said. “But there’s some bullet damage to the carpet and the wall in the hall. How much of a cleanup do you want, Mr. Cassidy?”

  “Just get rid of the bodies.”

  Tim had removed the wallets and wristwatches and other jewelry from the two corpses, and Don had searched the apartment for anything that could link LaSalle to Nathan. The only article of interest was a laptop in a small den next to the main bedroom. There were also some flash drives in a desk drawer, so he pocketed them.

  “Are we done here?” Nathan said to Don.

  “Yeah, boss.”

  Nathan took an envelope from his pocket and handed it to Strother, who stuffed it in his jacket without opening it. He knew that there would be more than adequate payment inside it for the work he was about to undertake.

  On the way back into town Nathan looked forward to his meet with Ed Jansen the following day. He needed this episode to be dealt with post-haste. Logan was out there, dangerous and with lethal intent.

  It was dawn when Strother and Billy unloaded the hamper from the truck and wheeled it into the shed at the side of the house. Strother left Billy to cut the bodies up. He climbed the stairs to the deck that ran along the front and one side of the house and washed-up and set the old coffee machine going. Twenty minutes later he was back in the shed to inspect Billy’s work. The boy – which was how he thought of him, even though he was an adult ‒ had dressed the corpses like deer, quartered them and chopped the heads off. The kidneys, hearts, livers and a few choice cuts of flesh had been put aside. Some would be barbequed later for lunch, the rest frozen. Waste not want not being one of Strother’s golden rules.

  Billy ferried the pieces of Clayton LaSalle and Dwayne Nash down to the grassy bank of the bayou in a large wheelbarrow, and Strother hit the water several times with the plank to summon the scaly denizens for their takeaway meal.

  A broad smile lit up Billy’s moon face as he tossed one of the heads up and out, to enjoy the sight of the first gator as it reared up and snapped the offering out of mid air.

  A few minutes later the feeding was over, and the splashing of the big reptiles was replaced by near silence as the critters slipped back under the surface of the murky water.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  ED Jansen was purposely three minutes late for his meet with Nathan Cassidy in the lounge bar of the Ritz-Carlton. He had been outside the hotel on the other side of Canal Street, waiting to see his potential contractor arrive.

  A top of the range Mercedes pulled in to the curb five minutes shy of one p.m. Nathan got out and walked across the sidewalk and the car drifted off back into the traffic. Ed was pleased to see that the loan shark was alone, not shadowed by any of his employees.

  Ed glanced at his Rolex as he
approached the bar, acknowledging that he was a tad late: “Got a call I had to take,” he said as a statement, not apology.

  “No sweat, Ed,” Nathan said. “What’s your poison?”

  “I’m fine. I booked a table for lunch. Let’s go eat and you can tell me what you know about the two…packages you need tracing. And like I said, I’m Steve Harrison while I’m here in Louisiana.”

  They ate a light lunch. Nathan drank JD and Ed sipped coffee as they discussed the problem without mentioning names or any specifics.

  “All the details I have are here, along with half the fee,” Nathan said, taking a fat envelope from his inside jacket pocket and handing it to Ed as they finished their meals. “I would appreciate you completing the business with all due haste. My family is at risk every second that the guy concerned is among us.”

  “I’ll do what I can with whatever information you’ve given me,” Ed said as he slipped the envelope into a pocket. “Have two of your best men pick me up at the rear of the hotel on Dauphine Street in an hour.”

  That was it. Nathan couldn’t relax yet, but knew that he had the best guy that money could buy to find Logan and kill him. You had to speculate to accumulate. He had found out quite a lot about Logan from a cop on his payroll at police headquarters. Joe Logan had been a detective first-class, who’d worked in Narcotics Division of the Organized Crime Control Bureau before moving to the Detective Bureau. He was reputedly a force to be reckoned with; stood six-four and had a case clearance record of homicides second to none, plus a dozen allegations of brutality against him that had not been proven. He had also shot and killed a half dozen felons in the line of duty during his career, and had put his papers in and walked when he’d served twenty years, to then vanish without trace. He was single, had not been married, and appeared to be a law unto himself, just moving from place to place with seemingly no long term plan. He was, to Nathan’s way of thinking, a dangerous individual. He would not underestimate the ex-cop’s capabilities, or his doggedness to protect the woman and bring him down. Some guys just kept coming, and until they were taken out they were a threat.