The bargains he had made to reach that point—the Speakership, the pinnacle of his career. Horrible bargains with this father’s friends, all designed to further the work ongoing at the lake. Duchamp shivered. Ungodly work. The project of a deranged scientist once in the Fuhrer’s employ, a project now nearing its culmination.
He could not stay in this place. He made a phone call.
•
Bobby checked Jimmy Lee Monroe’s phone out of the Sheriff’s Department evidence locker. The device was of a more recent vintage than the one Marisol swiped from Duchamp’s safe. Sleek—and crusted with blood. The coroner had cut it out of the pocket of the Jimmy Lee’s stained jeans, just an inch from where Marisol had stabbed the killer in the groin.
Marisol had her souped up laptop and her kit of gizmos. She wore latex gloves. She found the right adapter and plugged both phones into the computer. Then she got to work with the data recovery and encryption software. And soon she determined that Monroe’s phone had received photos of her and Geoff from Duchamp’s phone, had also received coded instructions to murder Dr. Eileen Kim.
A slam dunk. “The sheriff’ll have to bring in the asshole now,” Bobby said.
•
With the evening sun burning orange through the pines, they drove up to Duchamp’s faux-plantation house—Bobby in the lead with Geoff and Marisol as ride-alongs, two more deputies in another Sheriff’s Department car close behind. They did not blare sirens or flash lights. Seastrunk had made it clear: he would not tolerate a scene, would abide no ruckus. Media personnel still milled about the courthouse square; the sheriff did not want to risk any of them following the deputies, creating a frenzy at the scene of the former Congressman’s arrest.
So the sheriff held back. Waiting at the office. Not drawing attention to himself or the operation. Detached.
And none of them doubted the Duchamp would come quietly. A sophisticated man, he knew resistance would only make matters worse for himself.
“Y’all wait here,” Bobby said, leaving Geoff and Marisol in the car as the trio of deputies approached the house. It did not take them long to figure out the place stood vacant.
Marisol and Geoff left the vehicle and walked up to Bobby, who said: “He’s fled.” And as Geoff stood looking around without aim, fingering his head scar, and Bobby began to order a search of the premises, Marisol hurried over to the six-car garage.
“These tracks aren’t more than an hour old. Looks like a big SUV.”
“He drives a Hummer.”
“Put it on the wire.”
“Hold on,” Bobby said, scratching his head. “He also keeps a plane, a private jet …”
“Where?”
“Municipal airport, edge of town.”
Judging by her posture at that moment, standing in high boots on a narrow strip of red clay between manicured lawn and Duchamp’s driveway, the sun’s final red blast framing her before the silhouetted trees, Geoff could not doubt that his private eye was back in the game.
“I got a guy from ATF who went TSA and owes me a favor I can call in,” she said. “And then we’d better shake a leg.”
•
Sheriff Seastrunk sat alone in his office, picking out an old Jimmy Rogers tune on his guitar to work off the nervous energy. He leapt to the phone when it rang.
Bobby: “The Speaker’s run.”
“Shit and goddamn.”
“I got a hunch he’s headed for his hangar at the airport. The detective, Solis, got a buddy at Homeland Security to ground all flights out of there—”
“Lord have mercy.”
“But it’ll only hold for half an hour. And we’re clear across the county from there—”
“Nearly an hour’s drive, through town.” He paused, knowing he could be there in twenty minutes. Knowing that he could not by phone order the dingbats at the airport, maybe a two man staff, to detain the Speaker, to keep his plane on the ground. They all worked for Duchamp in some form or another.
“I’m on my way.”
•
Duchamp skidded to a halt outside the hangar and leapt from his Hummer and grew enraged at sight of his pilot dawdling beside the gangway to his Learjet, idling on the sole runway.
“Why the hell aren’t you in that cockpit? We gotta move, son.”
The pilot dropped his cigarette and stomped it out and shrugged and said, “All flights grounded.”
The rage turned to terror in an instant. They had him. An assassin in transit, probably. He took a second to wonder why they hadn’t just sabotaged the plane. But then he acted, pulling out his pistol, an old police-issue revolver, and leveling it at the pilot. “Now you get up there and fly that bird.”
Raising his hands, the pilot said, “Now hold on, Speaker—”
A siren’s blare, a screech of tires, and the sheriff’s bull-horn amplified voice: “Robert Duchamp, drop your weapon.”
Duchamp did not and could not know whether the pathetic Seastrunk was in on the fix, had gone to work for the Group. He lowered the gun and turned to the plane and ran up the stairs, saying, “To hell with it, I’ll fly the thing myself.”
•
Sheriff Seastrunk muttered shit and sprinted to the jet and bounded up the stairs and was out of breath by the time he reached the top, just as the plane was pulling away with Duchamp leaning from the pilot’s seat to close the cockpit door. He tapped some reservoir of strength he had not used in decades to leap into the plane, forcing his way in with his shoulder. His momentum carried him into Duchamp’s arms and they struggled and stumbled in the cramped space and then crashed through the door to the cabin in a heap, Seastrunk on top. The jet had stopped its taxi before it had moved hardly a foot.
Duchamp forced the sheriff off with a painful kick to the ribs and said, “Dammit John, you’ve got to let me go.”
The two men sat hunched and facing each other in the cabin’s narrow aisle, panting and glowering like prizefighters between rounds. Registering the hot, crazed fear in his old nemesis’ eyes, Seastrunk moved to raise his weapon. “Now what’s gotten into you, Robert?”
“Nuh-uh. Drop that gun.” Duchamp beat him to the draw, leveling his revolver and standing over the sheriff. “Get up.”
The sheriff did so, arms raised, his pistol thunking to the floor. “Come on, Robert, be reasonable.”
“I’m getting out of here, you can’t stop me.” His eyes burned as if a demon residing deep within him had come to the fore.
The sheriff forced a chuckle, trying to demonstrate—maybe to himself as much to the deranged Speaker—the absurdity of the situation: two old pols going at it with guns and boots in an idling jet. He had seen a fistfight or two on the floor of the capitol building in Austin back in the sixties, but this …
“Put that dang thing away, Robert. You’re fixin’ to turn a possible conviction with a chance at parole into a sure-fire death sentence.”
“Don’t laugh at me you son-of-a-bitch. You people have always laughed at me. You people have had your fill of laughing at me. First I wasn’t country enough. Just a prep school dandy—isn’t that what your father called me behind my back? Then I got elected and they said I was a crook. Well I got elected again and they nipped at me and they jeered at me and finally they forced me out. And I said you people wouldn’t have the Speaker to laugh at any more.”
Seastrunk stopped smiling and held a hand palm down waist high before him as if smoothing a pile of sand on an invisible table. “Dang it Robert, just calm down. What in God’s green earth do you think shooting me would accomplish?”
Duchamp seemed not to hear. “You people kept laughing. But you know what? We won. We beat you people. While y’all were laughing and howling, we took over. My people took this county, and we took Austin, and we took the whole goddamn South. And then we took the country. So your time is up. The only reason we’ve let you hang on this long is because it keeps a few old folks happy to see a Seastrunk on the ballot. But, hell, Sheriff, they’re all about
dead.”
The sheriff crept his hand across mid air to the space above the Speaker’s gun. He began to lower his hand, but Duchamp firmed his grip and leveled the weapon at the center of Seastrunk’s chest. His eyes bugged and he smirked.
“This is bigger than you, Sheriff.” His eyes had gone cold, and his voice dropped to a low whine. “Bigger than both of us.”
“Rob—”
Duchamp turned red and now he seemed one beat shy of a coronary. “Let me talk I’m a serious man!”
“You’re not making sense, Robert. You’re all worked up. Just put the gun away and let’s talk, rational like. Before you do something that really does put you on death row.”
Duchamp’s wrenched, panicked mouth turned up into a full, sick grin. He cocked the pistol and said: “Shit, Sheriff, you don’t get it. I’m already on death row. May as well start shooting.”
Steps pounded on the metal stairs outside. The cabin door swung open.
Bobby Henderson said, “Drop your weapon.”
Duchamp did not avert his eyes or release the sheriff from his aim. The three men stood in a triangle, only Seastrunk unarmed.
Duchamp said, “You best back on out of here, deputy, or I’ll put a bullet in you and your boss.”
“I’ll blow your stinking head off.”
“And the blood of the sheriff will be on your hands. And that of a former congressman.”
Seastrunk said, “Shoot him, Bobby. It’s alright.”
The Speaker’s face turned a deeper red. “Shut up you old fool. Bobby, you’ll be standing here, in my goddamn plane, with two dead bodies, one of them unarmed. It won’t look as clear cut as you think.”
The sheriff kept his hands raised to the Speaker but shifted his eyes to meet Bobby’s. He kept his voice even, as if working out the logistics of a Sunday picnic. “Son, he’s bluffing. In that scenario, he’d be dead and he wouldn’t have a chance to get a shot off.”
Duchamp’s mouth and eyes twitched. “Shut up shut up shut up—the hell I won’t!”
It seemed to Seastrunk only a matter of time before Duchamp would pull the trigger in spite of any reason or logic, out of the sheer force of his rage. Bobby’s expression was calm, and his gun was level. He stood about six feet from Duchamp, at an angle, so his weapon was pointed at the Speaker’s ribs. The sheriff winked his left eye once. He did not know how or whether the deputy would interpret the signal, but as he winked, the sheriff dove to the floor and prayed. He heard a pistol shot. He did not know which pistol it was.
Seastrunk smelled cordite and blood. He saw Duchamp’s gun fly loose. As it approached the floor in front of him, he had time to wonder if it discharge on impact and shoot him in the face. But it did not hit the thin carpet; it made contact with his temple, hard. As the world turned gray, Seastrunk saw the Speaker on the floor before him, Bobby’s knee on his back. He saw too the blood darkening and spreading on Duchamp’s pressed jeans—the bullet had found his thigh. And he heard the Speaker moan like a sick and lonesome child as Bobby put the cuffs on him, saying: “You’re under arrest for assault with a deadly weapon and God knows what else.”
•
Geoff and Marisol stood on the edge of the runway at the tiny airport—ramshackle hangar, a wind sock—watching the paramedics carry Duchamp and the sheriff to the ambulance one by one. Bobby had ordered them to stay in the car, so they missed the altercation—a fight both men, Geoff imagined, had fantasized about for decades.
Bobby directed the scene around them. “It’s like he’s acting-sheriff now,” Marisol said. She had been annoyed when Bobby forced them out of the action, but now she sounded relaxed, even happy, as if the adrenaline of that day had served as a tonic against whatever bad humors this case had stirred in her.
“One of the other deputies told me Seastrunk just had a nasty bump to the head. He’ll be back on his feet in no time.”
Exchanging a half-smile with Marisol, breathing deep of the fragrant night air, Geoff felt punch drunk. Duchamp—behind bars, his wife ready to testify—would have to open up about whatever went on at the refinery, and all the others involved. Or face a possible death sentence for his string of crimes. It could lead to a huge victory for Willie Kincaid and the rest of the client group—not only an end to the seeping pollution but a cleanup of the entire site.
And most importantly, Duchamp, as the mastermind of the brutal deaths they had witnessed, would do some serious time. No matter how much he talked.
Marisol said, “Looks like he’s awake.”
He looked over to see the sheriff struggling to rise off the stretcher as a paramedic loaded him into an ambulance. Geoff nodded at Marisol and walked over to pay his respects to the old man, the dinosaur. Maybe calm him down. But when he got close the paramedic held up a hand and said, “He’s delirious.”
Looking down at the stretcher, Geoff locked into the sheriff’s feverish gaze and drew cold at the depth of the terror he saw there. He saw in that old face the eyes of Marisol after New Orleans. The eyes of T-Jacques.
“You, Waltz,” Seastrunk said. “Where’s Willie? Kincaid’s going down. And he’s taking the boy.”
Chapter 32
Tasha had not expected a fight with her boss. Her goal: to turn the degenerate Tatum twins against each other. Separately, so that they would not have to look at each other to do it. Each with his own pathetic, ineffectual court-appointed so-called-attorney, they would fold in the face of a lethal injection. Tasha would end this case and the media circus without the years of appeals Bobby’s sloppy arrest otherwise guaranteed.
But Ben Hargrave wanted more.
“Turns out the Sheriff’s Department was onto something,” he had said. “I need you to get the Tatums to open up about Jimmy Lee Monroe. Both of them, I mean. And make it stick this time—”
“Sir, are we really going to buy their nut job theory that the Speaker’s flip-out is related to the Bordelon murd—”
“Oh cut the charade, Ms. Carter. Of course it’s related—Duchamp’s in this neck deep.” The District Attorney paused, took a sip from the can of diet Dr. Pepper on his desk. “And this office can’t, won’t, protect him anymore.”
“Yes sir.”
Her political instinct would have said to treat the twins’ crimes as distinct from Duchamp’s actions. Maybe Monroe had been on the bayou with the Tatums that night, had participated in the Bordelon lynching. Maybe he hadn’t. No matter—Monroe’s dead. And what hard evidence could the sheriff produce to link the Speaker to Jimmy Lee? The voodoo cell phone forensics work of a P.I.—a woman who makes her living skulking for the criminal class, now in the employ of a worthless Dallas trial lawyer? The phone in question stolen property? The ranting (hearsay, at that) of an angry political wife? Not the sort of questionable evidence the D.A.’s office should feel compelled to utilize. Or acknowledge.
So get the Tatums put away. Leave the Speaker out of it. He’d had a bad day—his wife had just left him. At most, Duchamp could cop a plea for pulling his weapon (and he had a valid concealed handgun permit, don’t forget). Or maybe the Sheriff’s Department would prefer to drop the whole thing. Seastrunk had barged aboard the Speaker’s own plane, after all, without a warrant. The old hick Sheriff would be lucky not to face a civil rights lawsuit for that little maneuver—a lawsuit Hargrave’s office would have to defend. Not exactly the best use of county resources.
All this she had advised her boss, leaving unspoken the unpleasant truth: no good could come of too much digging into the Speaker’s sordid dealings with the likes of Jimmy Lee Monroe. Best not to follow the money trail, to unravel the web of connections. Other local figures could be … embarrassed.
But Hargrave had surprised her with a bout of foolish conscience—his steely eyes told her not to push it.
“Your Uncle’s a man of God,” he said. “We have our political differences, but I respect Reverend Carter’s faith.”
“I don’t see what that has to do—”
“No, yo
u wouldn’t. Robert Duchamp—I believed in him. He represented us, took our values to Washington. Conservative, Christian values. The values I hold dear.”
Right. As a deacon in the same First Baptist Church that preached slavery and then Jim Crow to generations in this town. Don’t you dare try to preach to me. Tasha bit her tongue.
“But I’ve come to question Robert’s sincerity. Certainly his political handlers were willing to demagogue Evangelical Christians for electoral gain. But I always thought Robert’s faith was true. Now, in light of what we’re learning from the Sheriff’s Department, I’m not so sure.”
Hargrave paused and met Tasha’s eyes; she felt a twinge of embarrassment at the earnestness she saw there.
“I worry you’re like him, Ms. Carter.”
“Mr. Hargrave. Ben—”
“You’re bright, and you have a great career ahead of you. Maybe in politics. But I suggest you seek counsel from your uncle. You need to get in touch with a set of guiding principles.”
With that, Tasha grew cold. And she saw that this man, whom she had taken as a sort of mentor (at least, that’s how she had allowed him to see their relationship) upon moving to this backwater, would forever remain in this sorry place, would achieve no higher office, would take no judgeship. Because he lacked not only political sense but also another nonnegotiable attribute: loyalty. He had begun his career as one of Duchamp’s supplicants, a sort of above-board version of Jimmy Lee Monroe. The Speaker had repaid Hargrave by securing his election as District Attorney, and a chance at statewide office down the road.
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