Pascal sighed heavily. “I’ve got other plans for me.” He looked around furtively, as if he hadn’t closed Gibby’s office door himself. “Bayou Billy plans.”
Gibby gasped and covered her mouth with an anxious hand. “You mean you’re going to…?”
Nodding solemnly, Pascal said ominously, “Does the pope poop in the woods wearing a big hat?”
Chapter Thirteen
From an article in Deadman Detective, ‘I Killed 3 Men and 2 Women on the Ole Miss!’, August, 1971, written by William ‘Bayou Billy’ McCall, edited by George Hathaway, pg. 18:
I Confess!
I killed 3 Men and 2 Women on the Ole Miss!
Bayou Billy Tells All From Inside a Federal Prison!
The third soul I liberated from this sorry world was a woman. I am sorry to say that I had done this despicable deed for women are God’s gift to man and ours to protect and nurture. But Mattress-Backed Mary was a whore, like a thousand other whores who walked the streets in the Great Depression. She sold her mouth for a dime and her jam pot for a quarter. We were acquainted in an old fashioned way, as I was a man and when I had coins she was available. But there was a night where Mattress-Backed Mary came looking for the money that I was said to keep sewn in my jacket lining, although the truth was that there was precious little. She had a bottle of moonshine that tasted like burnt corn and a giggle that set my ears ringing. I was amenable to companionship that night so long ago and sharing a drink with a sociable woman, even am affable whore, was not undesired. We set to drinking and in the course of an evening spent in a ramshackle shack not fifty feet from the bank of the Mississippi, we were not unfriendly to each other. Despite my underprivileged circumstances I was a first-rate lover and made my female acquaintances squeal with happiness. However, after the panting and thrusting were complete, in burst Mattress-Backed Mary’s foul-breathed pimp, a lazy personage by the name of Cock and Bull Bartold. Well, Bartold had himself a pistol, old and rusted as if it had been lying in a bayou. He aimed it at my very own head and bade me tell him where my coins were located else he would plug me proper between my eyes and ensure that I never breathed again. However, Bartold was as drunk as a Catholic on Mardi Gras. His weapon wavered amid my forehead and my testicles. Then it slowly dawned on the intoxicated man that not only was my clothing off, but so was Mattress-Backed Mary’s. Apparently, Bartold’s plans did not include an intimate act between myself and Mary and he grew enraged at the thought that Mary had been unfaithful without his express permission. I saw my opportunity and leapt upon the man, disregarding my unconcealed nakedness. We wrestled like bears and the gun went off. It was a terrible noise and there was a woman’s deafening scream, followed by a man’s hoarse cry of pain. The pistol had shot Mattress-Backed Mary, going straight through her throat. Then the bullet ricocheted on an iron skillet, bounced off a rusted Benjamin Franklin stove, creased my ear, and finally lodged in Bartold’s right eye. I believe it went directly into his brain and fell him dead on the floor, next to Mary’s writhing form. There was nothing that I could do, save to say a prayer for the two lost souls, the first woman I ever killed, and the third man that I sent to hell.
The Present
Tuesday, July 18th
Albie, Louisiana
It was yet another stunning day. It was a clement eighty-five degrees at seven AM. Not a cloud could be seen in the sky. A southern wind was blowing moisture up from the Mexican Gulf ahead of the early hurricane huffing and puffing near Cuba. And early as usual, Ophelia Rector was happily whistling as she parked her BMW in her regular parking spot behind Rector Mortuary. Pascal Waterford had proved to be an inept foe and hadn’t yet even filed a lawsuit. Furthermore, he hadn’t even gone to the press to complain that Albie, and Ophelia in particular, were acting like selfish clods. Not that Ophelia thought that she was acting like a selfish clod. He, or she in this case, who has victory has right. Her father had often said that boldness in business is the first, second, and third thing.
Ophelia had boldness, right, and victory. So she allowed herself a small, triumphant snicker and headed inside the building. Her good spirit was fleeting. The back door was unlocked and slightly cracked open. She pushed it with a tentative finger and called out for the security guard.
“Steve?” she said loudly. Silence was her answer. Rector Mortuary policy was to have a full time security guard in the building after close of business. Some of the caskets and funerary supplies were quite valuable and a security system only went so far, especially since the local police stopped answering burglar alarms because of the high incidence of false alarms. A burly man named Steve Cooper had been hired three years before to ensure the business’s security. Another man named Nabil Johnson worked the weekend shifts. They worked ten hour shifts without complaint and there had been no criminal mischief as of yet.
Inside the back door was a long hallway that led to the main viewing room and the mourning parlors to one side, and to the other the employee’s lunch room, and a kitchenette. To one side was a set of stairs that went up to the second floor and the offices. A smaller door led to the basement where the secular vestiges were prepared. Steve could usually be located walking around the interior of the building, checking windows and doors, or in the lunch room reading up on which Harley Davidson was currently ‘the shizznik.’
“Steve?” Ophelia said into the open hallway. There was a muffled sound in response.
“Elmo tiup. Bakher,” drifted out, faint like a whisper on the wind. It was so light that was nearly questionable as to whether she had actually heard it.
“Steve?” Ophelia said again.
Something began to rattle, like a flummoxed flock of boisterous children jumping up and down on a bed.
Ophelia opened her purse and took out a stun gun. It was a very nice model, a Taser M26. It looked somewhat like the kind of plastic replica of a space hero’s pistol from a lengthy time ago in a galaxy many lights years away. Or however that phrase goes. Who has time to see a movie when I’ve got to build a monument to the majestic brutality of the scars that death brings all human beings? Most importantly the Taser M26 was the type only sold to official law enforcement agencies. It had been procured for Ophelia by one of her many admirers, a sheriff from the next parish over.
She turned it on and glanced at the LED device. The indication was that weapon was on and capable of firing. Furthermore, she had just recharged the batteries and replaced the set that had been in the Taser previously. Her sheriff friend told her confidentially to aim for the stomach and groin area. Anyone who came after her wouldn’t be getting up anytime soon if she hit what she aimed for. Additionally, if they died, she was instructed not to worry about it, because Ophelia had lots of friends to cover for her.
Weapon in ready mode, Ophelia went inside. The rooms were empty, so she followed the subdued banging until she found herself in the prep room. The speakers were on and XM radio was playing, ‘Breaking up is hard to do,’ by Neil Sedaka. The muted clamor had become infuriated thuds and urgent bumps as something rattled furiously around inside a walk-in closet on the far side of the room.
She carefully turned on the light and saw that the prep room itself was empty. Equipment was cleaned and sat quietly. Storage drawers were all in order. The large vat that was used for special orders was covered and the green lights on it denoted that it was active at its job keeping the chemicals within at a constant temperature. All tools were put away in their various places. The floor shone as if freshly mopped. The room looked ready for another day of work.
However, there was that annoying garbled yelling and pounding from within the walk-in closet. The closet was used as a storage area for various chemicals and apparatus too valuable to be left out in the open or too bizarre to be left where a chance encounter with a client would reveal its gruesome purpose.
“Lemeow. Lemeow. Lemeow,” someone was saying over and over while rattling the door.
“Steve?” Ophelia said loudly.
Ble
ssed silence. Then, “Pweeleeah? Sorree. Plezgemeow.”
Ophelia opened the door and saw Steve Cooper sitting in one of the chairs from the cafeteria. The problem was that he was confined to the chair with duct tape. It was wrapped around more times than an Egyptian mummy. It covered his legs, thighs, and waist. It secured his arms to the arms of the chair. Then it was wrapped around his chest several times, making certain of complete coverage. Taping on the face had been somewhat more lenient. The duct tape only covered his mouth. Someone had carefully slit a hole in the portion of tape directly over his mouth.
“Pweeleeah,” Steve said pitifully. “Lemeow. Plez?”
“Oh, dear Lord,” Ophelia prayed avidly. “What happened, Steve?”
“Pweeleeah,” Steve said again. “Lemeow. Biyewww billeee gow. Pooolees.”
Ophelia stared for a long moment. The garbled words made twisted sense. It sounded as if Steve was saying that…he was saying that… She turned and looked at the large vat in one corner. Without saying anything else, Ophelia stepped to the vat and expertly popped the lid.
“Shitfuckcocksucker,” she screamed venomously.
“Pweeleeah,” Steve said, shocked.
Ophelia slammed the door of the vat down and said a few other choice words. It didn’t really matter what she said because the crux of the matter was that William Douglas McCall’s body was no longer inside the chemical mix. She proceeded to check each of the storage drawers and found not one corpse that even remotely could be confused with the 110 year old felon’s.
A mask of twisted outrage tearing her features apart, Ophelia came back to Steve Cooper. “I can’t believe you let someone walk out of here with the last remnants of a mortal soul. You’re six foot six and you weigh over three hundred pounds, for Christ’s sake. What the hell is wrong with you?”
Steve’s eyes were as round as a pair of bowling balls on league night. He said, “Pweeleeah, dindonutwron. Plez, lemeow.”
Ophelia wasn’t listening. All the plans that she had made were unraveling like a ball of yarn in a litter of playful kittens. If there was no body, there could be no ceremony. If there was no ceremony, then attention wouldn’t be drawn to the magnificent memorial park. If Albie Cemetery didn’t garner the attention it so righteously deserved, then it would be forgotten. The gravestones would sink into the ground in years to pass. Only rusting iron would denote proud fences that once stood shining in the sun like majestic warriors guarding the remains of emperors. Monuments would tumble in the inescapable rotation of seasons and the march of time. Everything would be for naught.
Her eyes turned bleak. Sorrow filled her. The unwavering knowledge that Pascal Waterford wasn’t so worthless a rival seeped through her brain. Then anger percolated though the same areas, expanding a cascading fall of rampant thoughts to capacity. It wasn’t over. She had the power of attorney. Signed and notarized. Ophelia, not Pascal, had the right to decide the location of burial for William Douglas McCall.
Steve, at the most inopportune moment that he could have chosen, said, “Pweeleeah! LEMEOW!”
Not having Pascal Waterford on whom to take out her incredulous wrath, Ophelia shot Steve with the Taser instead.
•
Albie Chief of Police Paxton Andrews sat in front of Steve Cooper as the large man related his story.
“-Knocked on the back door and said he had a special delivery for Rector Mortuary,” Steve said. Then his entire right side twitched convulsively. He glanced at Ophelia who was leaning against the far wall of the main mourning parlor, examining her nails. Other police officers came and went. Some were downstairs fingerprinting the walls and equipment to see if they could come up with any evidence.
“He said it was going to spoil if it was left outside,” Steve said plaintively. “So I opened the door. It doesn’t have a window or a peephole on it, you know.” The last part was said more to Ophelia than to Paxton Andrews.
“What did he look like?” Paxton asked wearily. The chief of police was a long time Albie resident and knew Ophelia Rector very well. He was one of few people who could not be coerced by one of her patented nasty looks and it was he who had initiated the no-response policy of police officers to burglar alarms. The policy had infuriated Ophelia, who felt that Rector Mortuary deserved special treatment, but Paxton had held firm. Her ongoing ire with the chief of police did not stop her from going on at length about exactly who she thought was the perpetrator of the foul and villainous deed.
Steve mumbled something and looked at the floor.
Ophelia perked up, inclining her head to listen carefully to Steve’s answer.
“What was that, son?” Paxton said.
“He had a mask on,” Steve said quickly. “I think it was a Richard Nixon mask. I wasn’t too good at history in school. You know, the president who almost got fired.” Steve twitched again, a ripple of involuntary muscle movement traveled down his face and into his neck. It was the last remnants of the electrical charge he would be feeling for up to forty-eight hours.
“A mask of Richard Nixon,” Paxton said thoughtfully. “What else was he wearing?”
“Jeans, dark shirt, gloves. I noticed the gloves first, because they were that big heavy kind you wear when it’s real cold,” Steve held up his hands as he spoke. Then one hand trembled spastically. “It seemed kinda weird, you know what I mean? It’s like ninety degrees at midnight. Who needs gloves?”
“Jeans, dark shirt, gloves, Nixon mask,” Paxton repeated. “You know what color he was?”
“White fella. But after I opened the door, he changed his voice and talked kinda like Donald Duck.” Steve shuddered helplessly. It wasn’t because he was scared; it was the aftereffects of the stun gun.
“You need to see a doctor,” Paxton stated. He glanced meaningfully at Ophelia. “Make sure you didn’t fry some axons and neurons up in your head. Oh, yes. How tall was the guy?”
“Maybe six feet,” Steve said. “Not fat either. Not skinny. I dunno. Around two hundred pounds.”
“Sounds just like-” Ophelia started to say but Paxton cut her off.
“Shut up, Ophelia,” he commanded coldly.
Ophelia’s mouth opened in shock and then snapped promptly shut.
“You see any identifying marks on him?” Paxton said.
Steve shook his head, then flexed spasmodically. His right foot uncontrollably tapped the ground like a hound scratching for ticks.
“So tell us about the gun,” Paxton directed Steve.
“Uh,” Steve started, looked at Ophelia once and then back at the floor. “There wasn’t a gun.”
“A knife?”
“No-ooo.”
“Any kind of weapon?”
Ophelia said, “You dreadfully miserable excuse for a dullard.”
“It was a grenade,” Steve said quickly. “He was going to blow both of us up.”
Paxton stared at Steve. “How did you know he had a grenade?”
“It looked like a grenade. It was green and had a little pin in it. Also he told me it was,” Steve added the last with a lame shrug.
“And once he got you all tied up in the basement storage room, what happened?”
“Fella banged around outside for a while,” Steve said. “Then he came back into see me and he asked where Bayou Billy was. Said he was real sorry about having to rip the tape off to ask me a question, although I think he sounded like a fag with that Donald Duck accent. I suppose he looked through the storage area where the stiffs, uh-I mean, where the recently deceased are usually kept. He dint find Billy, on account of that he wasn’t in the drawers.”
Ophelia muttered incoherently under her breath.
“I dint see the harm in telling him,” Steve said defensively. “I thought he was going to kill me if I dint, so I told him the old boy was in the pot.”
“The pot?” Paxton asked.
“He means the chemical vat,” Ophelia said derisively. “We were in the process of embalming William Douglas McCall.”
�
��What she said,” Steve said meekly.
“Then what did you hear?”
“Well, Dick,” Steve said, and stopped to convulse paroxysmally. “That’s what he told me to call him. Dick shut the door and there was more banging around. He was grunting and cussing like crazy. Something big thumped. I reckon he was getting Billy’s body out of the pot, uh, I mean, chemical vat.”
“Then what happened?”
“He came in the store room, made sure I was all taped up, then he put a coke with a straw in it, on the shelf near my head. He even asked if I needed to take a whiz. But I dint.”
Paxton blinked. “Mighty friendly thief.”
“Then he left again,” Steve continued with an abrupt tremor. “I think he mopped the floor before he left for good. The last thing I heard was Dick saying loudly, ‘I’m not a crook!’”
“Oh, son of a bitch,” Ophelia said with feeling.
•
Steve Cooper had gone to the hospital, driven by Oxford Rector. He had a check in his back pants pocket hastily written out by Ophelia. Paxton was speaking slowly and methodically to Ophelia, as if he was speaking to an impertinent child. “There’s no evidence that Pascal Waterford was ever in the building. We’ve got about thirty prints from a dozen people or so, and we’ll check them against you and your employees, but if the guy was wearing gloves, it’s doubtful he took them off.”
“He said he wished my tits would rot and fall off,” Ophelia snarled.
Paxton coughed into his hand. Then he cleared his throat. Ophelia stopped pacing in the large mourning parlor and turned her head to glare at him. She suspected he was choking back laughter. When her eyes connected with his, his face was neutral. “Be that as it may, Ophelia. Mayor Waterford didn’t threaten to steal the body, did he?”
Life and Death of Bayou Billy Page 16