by Jana DeLeon
Rumble on the Bayou
by Jana DeLeon
Copyright © 2010 Jana DeLeon
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CHAPTER ONE
"This day just keeps getting better." Deputy Dorie Berenger stared at the alligator in front of her. It had to be the swimming pool.
Why anyone below sea level and not even a mile from the Gulf of Mexico would install an in-ground pool was beyond her. Even the houses in Gator Bait, Louisiana, sat on fifteen-foot stilts. An in-ground pool was just asking for trouble.
And trouble was just what they had.
Maylene Thibodeaux bulged out of a lawn chair next to her pool's cloudy water, jug in hand. She wore a pink bikini and was sitting in stoned silence. Which was rare when you considered her usual mouthiness, but understandable since it was almost evening and she had probably been at happy hour since before noon.
Dorie stepped right up to the pool's edge and studied the alligator more closely. He was a good-sized one, probably ten or twelve feet and currently floating like the dead in the center of the pool, with what looked like a backpack hanging out of his mouth. His eyes were half-closed, as if he would drop off into sleep at any moment.
"What do you think?" asked Deputy Joe Miller. Joe had been the first to arrive at Maylene's, but had immediately called for backup. This one was definitely out of his league.
Dorie blew out a breath. "I think this is not my usual fare. What about Curtis? This is his specialty."
"I tried. He's still on a call at the shrimp house. Turned out to be three gators instead of just one."
"Damn it, Joe, that's four times this month. Did Buster get those traps repaired?"
"Not that I'm aware of."
“Man, I'm charging him this time. The taxpayers aren't paying us to keep his shrimp house running, and trappers like Curtis don't come cheap."
"I agree," Joe said, "but what about the problem we have here?"
Dorie sighed and tossed a sideways glance at Maylene, who was working her jug like a prizefighter with a water bottle. "How much homemade wine has Maylene had?"
"She was drinking when I got here."
It figured. Maylene Thibodeaux was hard enough to please sober. Drunk was a whole different story. "You didn't let her give you any, did you? That stuff's worse than drugs." And it seemed to produce the same kind of hallucinations. In the past, they'd been called out for everything from aliens in her garden to unicorns in the bedroom. Dorie had been slightly surprised to learn the gator was real.
Joe looked shocked. "No way, boss. I'm still thinking that's how she bagged Mr. Thibodeaux."
Dorie smiled. Joe was probably right. Maylene Thibodeaux had been making her own stash since she was a little girl. Rumor had it Mr. Thibodeaux had behaved oddly and had a strange tone to his skin on the day of their wedding thirty-five years ago. Folks around town said his skin was the same exact color when they buried him six months ago, making Maylene the most patient hunter in the parish.
It had taken her only minutes to trap her prey, but thirty-five years to kill it.
Maylene's ears must have been burning because suddenly she came alive and rose from her chair. Actually, the chair rose a bit with her, and there were a couple of seconds of detachment necessary. Then she glared at Dorie.
"Damn it," she said. "I did not have this expensive piece of concrete put in to swim with the gators. I could go down to the bayou to do that. And I'm at least a mile from any water whatsoever." She hiccupped and staggered a little toward the edge of the water. "What the hell is this one doing in my pool?"
"I don't know," Dorie replied. "Did you ask him?"
Maylene shook a finger at her. "Don't you get smart with me, young lady, or I'll have a talk with your daddy." She pointed back at the gator. "Now, just what are you going to do about that?"
Dorie squatted for a moment and assessed the situation. At five-foot-ten, she towered over most of the women in Gator Bait and a whole heck of a lot of the men. Sometimes getting an eye-level look at things was the first order of business. She noticed, however, that all six-foot-four of Joe didn't feel compelled to hunch down on the cement with her, but then, standing at the edge of the pool was probably much closer than he ever wanted to be.
"You poked him with the cleaning brush, huh?" she asked Joe as she rose.
He nodded. "Not a peep. If I didn't know any better, I'd swear he was drunk." They both looked at Maylene.
"Maylene, you didn't put any of your special brand in the pool, did you?" Dorie asked.
She looked offended. "Why, I'd no more waste the good stuff on a dumb animal than I would a woman."
Dorie glanced over at Joe, who tried not to smile, then grabbed the pool-cleaning brush and pushed on the gator's side. His body moved a couple of inches across the water, but only because she was pushing, not because he was helping. She shoved again. Still nothing. He seemed perfectly content to be propelled through the pool.
Dorie looked at Joe, who shrugged. "Got me," he said. "I ain't ever seen anything like it."
She continued to push the gator until he was next to the far wall, then crept around the pool, first tapping his tail with the brush and slowly working her way up to his head. When she got to the front, she poked him square in the nose. He didn't even flinch.
Dorie leaned the brush against a patio table and grabbed the long blond ponytail hanging halfway down her back. Twisting it in a knot, she secured it at the nape of her neck with a pen and rolled her sleeves up over her shoulders. Her usual "uniform" of jeans and a T-shirt would be able to withstand a splash of Maylene's pool water, but she didn't even want to consider what it would take to wash the slimy substance out of her hair.
Hair and clothes securely in place, she reached down and pulled on the backpack, but it didn't budge. "Damn. He's got it locked in his teeth."
"I hope he ain't got whoever was wearing it locked in his belly," Joe said.
Dorie shot him a derisive look. "Joe, you know we would have heard by now if someone's angel hadn't made it home from school. Besides, I haven't seen a kid around here actually carry one book, much less a whole sack of them."
Joe rubbed his forehead and nodded. "So what are we going to do?"
She studied the gator again. "Well, first I'm going to try and pry his mouth open with one end of the cleaning brush. Given his altered state, it might work. Then, I'm going to get the backpack out."
Maylene jumped up again, chair still attached. "Wait a minute," she yelled as she lumbered back toward her house, the piece of l
awn furniture trailing with her, swinging from left to right. "I gotta get my camera for this one."
The chair popped off Maylene's rear as she hurried between the stair railings and up to the house. She was back a minute later, camera in hand. "Okay. Do your stuff," she said, looking excited for the first time since Dorie had arrived.
"Be careful, Dorie," Joe said from the other side of the pool. She noticed he didn't offer to come any closer.
Knowing it was now or never, she made the sign of the cross and picked up the cleaning brush again. She gently inserted the pole into the gator's mouth right beside the backpack, then pushed down on the pole, prying his mouth open. To her utter amazement, it worked, and the lethargic animal still hadn't twitched.
Reaching down slowly, she carefully lifted the backpack from between the razor-sharp teeth, Maylene clicking furiously on her camera the entire time. Dorie rose swiftly with her prize and received cheers from Joe and Maylene.
Backing a few steps away from the pool, she opened the pack. "I think I found our problem," she said and pulled out a handful of wet plastic bags containing a white substance. She opened one baggie, dipped a long nail into the powder and tasted it, then made a face and spit into the grass next to the pool. "Heroin. He's higher than an eighties rock band."
Joe stared at her in obvious surprise. "Heroin! We ain't ever had no problem with drugs in this town. Well, I mean, except weed."
Dorie nodded and began to dig in the pack again. "I know. That's what makes it so interesting" She piled more bags of heroin on the patio table, then brought out a wad of wet money. "Hundreds. It's all hundred-dollar bills, and there's more in the bottom of the bag."
She looked back at the gator. He still rested peacefully, his mouth propped open with the cleaning brush. She bent down and studied him again just to make sure she hadn't missed anything.
"Shame everything got wet," Joe said. "We-probably can't get prints off anything."
Dorie nodded in agreement, then caught sight of something at the tip of the gator's mouth. It was small and cylindrical. About three inches long. "You got any salad tongs?" she asked Maylene.
Maylene put her hands on her hips and pursed her lips. "You're not putting my salad tongs in that thing's mouth"
Dorie looked at the woman's round figure. "Maylene Thibodeaux, when was the last time you actually ate a salad?"
Maylene glared for a moment, then started toward the house again, stomping as she went.
"What is it?" Joe asked.
Dorie shook her head. "I'm not completely sure. That's why I want to check."
Maylene returned shortly with the salad tongs. She handed them to Dorie who squatted back down next to the Bator and gently put the tongs into his mouth, clamping down on the object and pulling it out. Taking a brief look, she smiled. Joe had finally gotten up a little nerve and crossed to her side of the pool, although he still stood several feet away.
"Well?" he asked.
Dorie tossed the object at him. Reflex made him catch it, but when he looked down and saw what he held, he immediately dropped it.
"Damn it, Dorie! A finger?"
She smiled. "Guess we can run that print now."
It took Dorie and Joe another two hours and a little help from Billy's Heavy Equipment Service to get the alligator out of Maylene's pool and back into the bayou. As they lowered him next to the water, the gator finally started to come down off the high. He began to thrash and immediately broke the duct tape around his mouth. Billy hit the release button, and the gator fell the remaining foot or so to the ground and hightailed it into the murky water.
Their job complete, the law of Gator Bait climbed into their respective vehicles and headed back to the office. Dorie begged a Styrofoam cooler off Maylene and carried the finger inside. Reattachment wasn't a concern. The guy who lost it wasn't likely to post Want ads. But she didn't want it stinking up the station and wasn't really sure how long you kept this sort of evidence or in what manner. For the first time in her eleven years as deputy of Gator Bait, Dorie Berenger had seen something new.
And she wasn't exactly happy about it.
Joe had been right when he said drugs weren't a problem in Gator Bait. The small town had its share of professional drinkers and a whole lot of amateurs, but no drug addicts. Occasionally, Dorie or Joe caught teenagers trying grass they bought off other high school students at out-of-town football games, but no one seemed to be a recurring problem.
As Dorie pulled into town, she studied the sturdy, redbrick building on Main Street. The hand painted, wooden sign on the front of the structure read GATOR BAIT SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT in big black letters. The building itself was representative of everything in Gator Bait; strong foundation and none of the new flash and glamour of things today.
Heroin here? It just didn't make sense.
She looked down Main Street and sighed. Jesus Christ on a stick, the whole place fit in a stretch smaller than a city block. Only eight buildings made up the entire town. How in the world had a place so small come up with a problem so big?
Pushing the questions out of her mind and focusing instead on the finger and what she hoped the print would yield, she grabbed the cooler out of her jeep and headed into the sheriff's office. It was best to take things one step at a time. Getting ahead of yourself generally only made you trip on your own feet, and Dorie was in no mood to stumble, especially over something this important.
Joe already had the computer up and running and the equipment for fingerprinting out on the table. It was getting on toward evening, and his favorite show was on television tonight. Dorie knew he hoped whatever they found from the print could wait until tomorrow, but considering the amount of drugs and money in the backpack, she didn't see Joe lounging in his easy chair anytime soon.
"You ready?" she asked, plopping the cooler on the table next to the equipment.
He looked a little uneasy, but nodded. "May as well get it over with."
She removed the finger from the cooler and passed it to Joe. He made a funny face but took the digit, dried it off and began the printing process. "You know I've seen people lose body parts," he said. "Hell, I've helped clamp off the bleeding, and that didn't bother me. But finding this finger in a gator's mouth without its owner anywhere around is creepy."
Dorie nodded. She understood what he was saying, even though she didn't feel the same. Everyone had fears to deal with. Or not deal with and just live with. It didn't really matter, she always told herself. The outcome was still the same. After all, she lived every day with her biggest fear, and no one in Gator Bait was the wiser.
"'That should do it," Joe said. He handed her the card with the print, and she took it over to the scanner. She carefully scanned the print into the computer and typed in a request for a trace. Whirling sounds came from the yellowed computer tower on the table, and the screen began to flicker.
"This will probably take a while," she said.
Joe pulled a deck of cards from his desk drawer. "Loser takes Saturday night patrol?"
Dorie smiled. "You love Saturday night patrol, and you suck at cards. Make it worth my while."
Joe considered for a second. "Okay. I win, you clean my house. You win, I help paint your boat."
She opened her mouth to agree when he raised one finger in the air. "But," he said emphatically. "I will not play poker against you. I've seen you make professionals cry."
Busted. "Fine. So what do you think gives you a fair shot?" Besides my being drunk or dead.
He gave her a mischievous grin. "Go Fish."
Dorie laughed. "What the hell," she said as she took a seat across the desk from him. "Deal me in. It's not like you have any silver to polish."
It was almost an hour later, and Joe was already indebted for a half day of painting when the computer beeped and paper started to roll out of the printer. Dorie rose quickly from her chair and grabbed the printouts as soon as they emerged.
"Anything?" Joe asked, jiggling the change in his pock
et.
She scanned down the papers, slowly shaking her head. "Not a thing. And these messages make no sense at all."
The jiggling stopped. "What do you mean?"
Placing the printouts on her desk, she motioned him over. "You see the message here from the national database out of D.C.? It says, 'No Match Found. But the usual message for no match with D.C. is 'No Matching Records.'"
Joe shrugged, clearly not understanding. "So maybe they changed their message. It's not like they'd notify us if they did. Hell, D.C. wouldn't notify us if they shut down"
Frowning, she stared at the papers again. "I know it seems minor, but something about it really bothers me. I don't have a good feeling about this whole thing." She sat down at the desk and drummed her fingers on the old, scarred wood.
"What do you think is going on?" he asked, now looking a little concerned.
Dorie had a history of "getting bad feelings," and her success rate was one hundred percent. Her bad feelings were no longer something Joe ignored.
She slowly shook her head and looked out the front window across Main Street. "I don't know. But something's coming. I can feel it." She looked up and gave him a grim smile. "Better prepare yourself, Joe. I think life is about to get complicated."
He nodded and blew out a breath. "What are we going to do?"
She rose from the chair and gathered up the printouts. "First, we're going next door for supper at Jenny's Cafe. You know I can't think on an empty stomach."
Joe perked up considerably, but then everyone knew he had been in love with Jenny Johnson since the crib. “That sounds great," he said and headed out the door, his television show completely forgotten.
Dorie smiled at his retreating figure. Men were so easy. Which was exactly why she didn't have one. No challenge, so what would be the point?
Jenny's Cafe was busy, but it almost always was, being the only place to eat in town except for frozen pizza at Pete's Bar. Taking a seat at the counter, they studied the menu on the board and waited for Jenny to make her way over. Dorie glanced at Joe and noticed his eyes fixed on the cafe owner with an adoring gaze. She couldn't help smiling.