Kirk/Kuo was still trying to shut the freezer door. A frozen alligator carcass had slipped from the side of the stack. Kirk/Kuo kicked at its tail, trying to clear the door jam.
The tail, stiff and frozen, wouldn’t budge.
The door couldn’t close.
“Stand back a minute. I’m going to have to restack these.” Kirk/Kuo went to one of the tables, opened a drawer underneath it, and pulled out a pair of thick gloves. “If you’re not careful, you can get caught on the claws or teeth.”
With both hands, he pulled at the tail that was jamming the door. He yanked hard, trying to get the offending alligator out of the freezer. He pulled on it again and it moved. As he dislodged it, a portion of the stack inside the freezer shifted.
Backing out of the freezer door and hauling the dead gator with him, Kirk/Kuo let it slide on the floor in front of the group. It was almost ten feet long. One or two of the men prodded it with their feet, marveling at its size and its five-toed front legs and four- toed rear ones.
Kirk/Kuo returned his attention to the freezer door, but it was too late.
The pile inside the freezer had continued to shift.
The gator that Kirk/Kuo pulled out had set off a chain reaction.
The middle of the pile slipped forward.
More tails and claws and jaws flowed toward the freezer door.
The top layer moved as well.
Slowly but inexorably, one body slid over another, and the door was blocked even more than before.
Still the movement continued.
Then, from inside the pile, as the frozen alligators spilled out of the door, something unusual became visible from under the top layer – a man’s arm, followed by the head and shoulders to which it was connected. His eyes were glassy and his skin a cold, deadly pallor.
Myrna fainted.
Weegie gasped.
I took a step forward to get a closer look.
It was Spider.
Chapter 34
Sheriff Isaiah Brown slammed his pad down on the counter in the lunchroom of Wholesale Flesh and Fur. The cheap wire spiral top came undone and the pages started to come loose.
He could engage in all the theatrics he wanted. It wasn’t going to faze me in the slightest. I did what Catch taught me. If you’re engaged in a battle, you have to be in the battle; you can’t be anywhere else. You can’t let any other thoughts distract you from the immediacy of the moment, whether that moment is the middle of a trial, the critical part of a negotiation, or, in my case, the midst of having a law enforcement officer try to intimidate me into saying something I’d later regret.
So, I put all thoughts of why Spider was dead out of my mind and stopped thinking about who could have killed him and how he had gotten in the freezer. I would deal with all these later. Now, I concentrated on flowing with the moment.
I leaned back in the chair, stretched out my legs, and yawned.
That made Sheriff Brown rant even louder. “You’re in a hell of a fix, as I see it counselor. Yesterday morning you’re sitting in my office in the courthouse, acting as the lawyer for Taylor Cameron. You’re the lawyer who bailed her out. Why the judge would even fix bail on this murder rap I’ll never understand. That’s strange, I’m thinking. Then you’re with Cameron right down the road at Poirrier’s, and you admit that you met Spider Louiviere there last night as well. That’s even stranger. And then this Spider guy shows up murdered, and you’re here when the body is found. Now why shouldn’t I hold you as a material witness? In fact, why shouldn’t I go to the judge and get her to revoke Cameron’s bond and hold you as a suspect at the same time? Give me one good reason.”
I remained completely calm. I wasn’t on the stand. I wasn’t under oath. I could freely ignore any question I didn’t want to answer.
“Are you finished with me yet? I’ve been more than cooperative.” Of course I had cooperated. There was no reason not to, given all the witnesses who could identify Spider, Taylor, and me from last night.
“And that’s all you’re going to say, Mr. Law School?”
“It was a pleasure meeting you again, Sheriff.” I got up to leave. I knew that would set him off, and it did.
“Sure, sure, you know all your rights. Got a head stuffed with cases and statutes. Got a fancy degree hanging somewhere. Think you’re smarter than lots of us. Well, go ahead. Don’t level with me. Play coy and pretend I don’t know about your being at the public meeting at the gym.”
That did catch me off guard for a moment. I didn’t know that anyone from the sheriff’s office had seen me at the meeting, or, if they had, that anyone had recognized me. Then I realized I had told Rad and Weegie, and the Sheriff had already questioned her. Maybe she was the source. Or Rad. Or both. My being in the gym was no secret in any event.
I didn’t show any reaction, however. I simply started toward the door, but the Sheriff moved to block my way.
I stood my ground. “Why don’t you open the door for me, since you’re in front of it? I’m sure you don’t intend to have a wrongful detention.”
“What a crock!” Sheriff Brown said. “You disgust me. Go ahead. Don’t let me ‘wrongfully detain’ you from getting your ass out of here. Just remember, Counselor, you and me are going to go another couple of rounds before I’m finished.”
Chapter 35
I edged my way past the Sheriff and into the crawfish processing area we had toured hours earlier.
The ladies who had been working on the assembly line had taken off their lab coats and were talking among themselves. A group of uniformed state police officers, some of them still wearing dark glasses and their tall, broad-brimmed hats, were joking with uniformed members of the St. Bonaventure Sheriff’s office. A police photographer, his camera gear slung heavily around his shoulders, was conversing with two ambulance drivers in medical green.
And, coming toward me, were Weegie, Kirk/Kuo, and a husky man with a big grin – Beauregard “Trey” Sanders, whom I had headed out here to see.
Trey paused in front of three uniformed officers, raising his voice to be heard above the machinery. “How much longer y’all gonna be?” They shrugged their shoulders.
Trey came toward me, right arm outstretched, pumped my hand in greeting. “Schex! Haven’t seen you in a coon’s age. Terrible thing, Schex, to meet like this. Kirk told me you were here; seems the Sheriff has commandeered part of my plant for his investigation. Hell, come on back to my office. Let’s catch up on old times.”
Trey’s interior enclave was paneled in aged cypress. A large desk, spotless, with only a fancy pen set on its surface, stood in one corner in front of a high-backed leather executive chair. A laptop computer was open on the credenza. Pictures of wildlife hung in expensive frames on the walls. Geese in flight. A nutria raising its head out of the water at sunrise. An alligator coursing through the water. An egret perched on a cypress tree. Each photo was signed and dated, products of a prominent Louisiana nature photographer. Intricately hand-carved duck decoys rested artfully on illuminated shelves built into the walls.
“Kirk called me at home. When I got here all hell was breakin’ loose. Kirk told me all about the poor guy in the back freezer. Discovered right in front of Weegie here and her tour. Damn shame. I had hoped to make this a special day for EarthResponsible. I guess they’ll remember it, but for all the wrong reasons. Sent ‘em all back on the bus. They were as skittish as a turkey during hunting season. I’ll get Kirk here to take Weegie back when we’re done.”
I was sitting on the leather sofa. Trey settled into one of the deep armchairs and Weegie occupied the other. Kirk/Kuo remained standing, awaiting Trey’s bidding.
Trey gestured around his office and toward the plant beyond the door. “Look at all this great shit! Who’d have guessed? There we were, years ago in law school, me struggling like hell to understand all that first year stuff and you managing to fly through with high marks. Boy, was my family fried when I bombed out, despite all your help. Damn law scho
ol professors didn’t seem to care about helping a football star pass. Ol’
Calandro’s grade knocked me completely out of the running. Really skewered me good.”
I humored him. “Looks like it was my assistance that let you down, but the Red Knight seemed to have done you a favor, giving you the opportunity to go into business.
You’ve done quite well for yourself since then.”
“‘Quite well’ ain’t the half of it. If I had been a lawyer I’d be slavin’ away, night and day, to make a buck. Here, I got other people to do the work.” He reached over and gave Kirk/Kuo a heavy pat on the back. “Right, Kirk?”
Kirk/Kuo replied with a dutiful employee’s obsequiousness. “Right, Mr. Trey.”
“The damnedest thing is this guy in the gator cooler. Horrible. Really is. But we’re not going to let it ruin the party tonight, are we Weegie?”
Weegie chose her words carefully. “I don’t think the success of a party, even a party for EarthResponsible, can be equated with the death of a human being. I came a long way for all this, but it’s not the most important thing now, is it? I mean, we all support the environment, which is another way of affirming life, yet a man is dead.”
“Dead. Right in my place. A damn shame. But,” he said cheerfully, “life’s gotta
go on.”
“And that’s all you have to say? ‘Life’s gotta go on?’”
“Come on, Weegie, you know what I mean. I’m sad, all right. See how sad I look? Well, shit, it’s true that I don’t look that sad, but I’m sure-the-fuck upset. Got the Sheriff’s people and the state police and who knows who else crawling ‘round my processing plant, poking their noses into everything, shutting down production. Big- haired reporters out there in the parking lot, acting like this was the crime of the century. For God’s sake. I saw the body. Bullet through the temple – close range it appeared. Not a big weapon – ‘22 pistol I’d guess. If someone had been hit with a ‘38 or a ‘44, it would have made a mess. But this was small caliber and neatly done. Wish some of the hunters who sell me pelts could do it as neatly.”
Weegie crossed her arms angrily. “You’re complimenting the murderer and comparing a man to a pelt?”
“You do beat all. For someone who knows so much about the environment, you ought to know something about hunting too, just to even things out. A hunter would know what I meant. A clean kill. Not a long, painful death.”
“You mean,” Weegie said, shaking her head in disbelief, “not like the slow death that the environment is suffering, the slow death that the residents of Cancer Alley along the bayou are suffering from. Death is death; don’t rationalize it away.”
“Yeah, dead is dead is dead. But a slow death is worse – for man or animal. It’s needless suffering. At least the guy in the freezer didn’t have that.” “Not a slow death,” said Weegie, “but certainly a needless one.” Silence.
She glared at Trey. “Do you really plan to go through with the party?”
I had been waiting for an opening to bring up the subject of what Wholesale Flesh and Fur had sent to Camellia Industries, besides waste from the crawfish, shrimp, and
crab processing. I wanted to ask why their receipts gave no detailed information. I wanted to ask about how Trey disposed of the toxic chemicals in the alligator area, but the conversation kept spiraling further and further away.
“I didn’t set all this up not to go through with it, little lady. We’re gonna raise big money tonight for EarthResponsible.”
Weegie stood up. “I’m not your ‘little lady.’ I didn’t come down here just to raise money. And I’m not at all comfortable about this. I’d like to go back to my hotel now.”
“Now, don’t get all huffy. You really want to go all the way back to D.C. and tell your boss that you came all the way down here to skip out on the event and miss out on bringing back that big check?” Weegie paused.
“Now you and I both know that EarthResponsible needs the funds. Probably already got it budgeted for the next quarter.”
Weegie pondered the situation. “It doesn’t seem right at all. Not right at all. And yet . . .” She seemed to resign herself to her predicament. “OK. I’ll be there tonight to pick up the check at the ceremony.”
“That’s the way. Kirk, you run along and take this nice lady back to her hotel. On your way out, however, you tell those pickers to stop that yakking and get back to work. We’ve got a load that’s got to be out tonight, and they’re gonna have to work double hard to get it out on time.”
Kirk/Kuo escorted Weegie out.
Trey, with a big conspiratorial grin, turned to me as the door closed behind them. “What you gonna do? Washington, D.C. woman – thinks she’s hard.” He gave a boisterous chuckle. “Let me get in her pants. Then I’ll show her something hard.”
Trey, still amused at how clever he perceived himself to be, went over to the illuminated shelves that lined the walls. He pushed a button and a panel popped open revealing a refrigerator. “Get you a beer?”
He tossed me one and grabbed another for himself, popping the top and slugging it down in a continuous gulp. He settled back into his chair, boots on the glass table. “Kirk works his tail off. Best manager I’ve had.”
“He seems very competent.”
“Competent as hell. The place almost runs itself now. Shame I’m gonna have to fire him.”
Chapter 36
Trey’s firing Kirk/Kuo seemed heartless, but I didn’t care. I knew I had nothing to do with Spider’s death, but the Sheriff seemed to be trying to pin it on Taylor and implicate me. I had an incentive to find out anything that could help point to the real killer. “If he was involved, why would he open the freezer in front of a tour group or move the gators knowing there was a body in there? So, why fire him?” Ask the question with open curiosity. That was Catch’s technique.
“Because he fucked up bad,” Trey said. “It was his job to lock up the freezer yesterday. He’s supposed to check daily on everything before he leaves. Now, how do you think that body got there? Just crawled in and buried itself among the gators?”
“You think one of the other workers did this without his knowledge?”
“Shit no. None of my employees would dare do anything that would slow down production. They’re paid by how much they do. Any pause for any reason, like right now, costs them big bucks.”
“So someone inadvertently left all the doors open?” Catch always said that the best way to get an answer is to make an effort to appear more dense than the person you’re talking to. Because I was talking to Trey, I had to make an extra effort.
“You are the goddamnedest thing, Schex! You don’t know nothing about this business, do you? In fact, from what I hear, you don’t know much about any business right now, including the law business.” He reached into a drawer. “Want some of these peanuts? No? Well look, we lock the freezer doors and drop the shutters to the equipment rooms, but we don’t lock the dock entrance when we’re expecting shipments. We leave the bays on the bayou open so that the trappers can pull the gators up next to the freezer. If they come in after dark, as they often do, then the next morning we run a tally and put ‘em in the freezer. So all the trappers and all their kin – and that about covers this and all of the neighboring parishes – know how we operate. That’s why Kirk fucked up big time by leaving the freezer unlocked. I really don’t give a damn about the body, you understand – as long as the cops get out of here soon so that we can resume production – the fuck up is that someone could have taken a couple of the gators. Those critters are worth beaucoup bucks.”
“I still don’t understand.” This time it was true. Trey seemed more concerned about losing alligators than having a dead man in his freezer, but I wasn’t going there. “If they didn’t know the freezer would be open, why bring him here at all?”
“Damned if I know. Maybe he was shot here. Maybe he was dumped here. Everyone around here knows that those alligators in the freezer weren’t going to be pr
ocessed for quite a while. Maybe whoever did this figured they still had a couple of weeks before anyone got down into that pile. Maybe one of them did it. Gators have been here for almost two weeks, waitin’ for the Wildlife and Fisheries agents to get here for the skinning. Those trappers don’t get paid their money until the cutting is done. Maybe it was one of those Laotian or Cambodian fishermen. They deliver stuff here all the time and have been all over the plant. They’ve got a grudge against some of the gooks who work in the plant. Something to do with that old war, or maybe with fishing rights out in the Gulf or maybe it’s some gang shit. Can’t figure out what they get so excited about all the time. Can’t understand a damn thing most of them say anyway. Could even have been one of the truckers who pick up the refrigerated shipments – I got to keep on friendly terms with them. Give them a couple pounds of fish or crabs. They like to watch some of the processing when they come. Could have been almost anyone, once the stupid door was left unlocked.”
“So you think he was shot here?”
“Beats me,” Trey said. “Lots of ways to clean up blood here, and lots of blood accumulates in that freezer. Gators are brought in and they keep on dripping until they’re froze solid. We put drains in that freezer when we built it. But, anyway, someone got in here and I’ll not let this ruin me. Spent too much time building this place up to have some publicity like this shut me down. I’ve ordered all new locks; ordered an electronic alarm system too, just this morning since I’ve been here. Here I was concerned that someone could get in and ruin some equipment. Never thought I’d need an alarm system to keep dead bodies out.”
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