The Storm

by Blake Banner

  Fifteen minutes later, I was crawling along Main Street at 20 MPH, leaning across the steering wheel, trying to peer out into a desolate world of torrential rain and bowing, bouncing trees, seen through a dense mist of spray.

  I came to the gas station at the junction with Route 61 and crawled through six inches of water onto the main road. There wasn’t another vehicle or another person to be seen. As I crossed over the blacktop toward Carmichael’s drive, the Zombie was rocked by the force of the gale. The only sounds were the deafening drumming of the water on the roof and the hood, the hiss from the road, and the wild screaming of the wind in the pylons and the trees.

  I pulled up outside his Greco-Roman portico, and in the five seconds it took me to climb out of the car and run up the steps to his door, I was drenched and almost blown off my feet. I rang on his bell and hammered on the knocker. After a few moments, it was wrenched open by James. He looked astonished to see me.

  “Cap’n! What in the name of all that’s holy…?”

  “Good morning, James. I need to se Mr. Carmichael. I’m guessing he’s in.”

  “Sure! He’s in his study. Right this way…”

  “I know the way, James. It’s fine.”

  He watched me cross the checkerboard floor, knock on the door, and step in without waiting for an answer.

  The fire had been lit and Carmichael was sitting in one of his chesterfields. He had a silver coffee pot and a china cup on an occasional table beside him. He was staring at the flames and blinked and looked up after I had closed the door.

  “Lacklan. I didn’t expect you today.”

  I approached and leaned on the back of the other chair. “I need to talk to you.”

  “By all means.” He gestured at the chair I was leaning on and I came around and sat.

  “Coffee?”

  I shook my head. “I’m not sure you have been totally open and up front with me, Mr. Carmichael.”

  He frowned, but he kept his eyes on the fire. “What are you talking about?”

  “Your relationship with Sarah. You knew it was in trouble. You knew it wasn’t as good as you made it out to be.”

  “This again? We were having a few difficulties, like any couple. Clearly, they affected her more than I thought.”

  “That’s fine as far as it goes, Mr. Carmichael. But when you hide the fact that she had started sleeping in a separate room, that can seriously hinder the investigation, Jackson’s and mine.”

  He glared at me, but turned his gaze back to the wavering flames. “It was temporary. It wasn’t relevant.”

  “I disagree. Amongst other things, the crowd she was hanging out with and…” I hesitated a moment. “Going to jazz clubs with, they all knew you were in separate rooms.”

  He closed his eyes and the color drained from his face. “How much of this humiliation do I have to endure?”

  “The sooner we get to the truth, the sooner it will be over.”

  “Yes, we were sleeping in separate rooms. She said she wasn’t clear in her mind about… us.”

  I nodded. “And Bat Hays knew that, Mr. Carmichael. Do you see why that is significant?”

  He turned to look at me, frowning, with tears in his eyes. “He wouldn’t…” He let the words trail away. I finished for him.

  “If he had intended to kill Sarah, he would not have gone to that room.” I gave that a moment to sink in, then went on. “In fact, nobody from that crowd would have expected her to be in the master bedroom.”

  His breathing had quickened and his eyes were staring. “No…”

  I watched him carefully. “I need to know that you understand what this means, Mr. Carmichael.”

  His breath shuddered, his face clenched like a fist around his pain and he leaned forward into his hands, sobbing. “Oh God, no, how could I have been so stupid?”

  I gave him a moment longer, until his breathing had settled. “Mr. Carmichael, Charles, do you understand that you were probably the intended target?”

  He nodded, then leaned back into his chair. His cheeks were wet, and when he spoke, his nose was blocked, as though he had a bad cold.

  “I didn’t think the pain could get any worse, but now…”

  “You can’t think that way.”

  He turned his head toward me. “It’s my fault she’s dead. It should have been me in that bed. It should have been me…”

  The wind rose from a howl to a scream, a squall lashed the glass in the window, and the flames wavered in the grate. His eyes seemed to cling to me, and for a moment, I was reminded of a man clinging to a raft in a storm, knowing that in just a short while, he would have to release his grip and drown.

  “Charles, try to think. Who? Who would want to do this to you?”

  He gave a damp, shuddering sigh, wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, and reached in the pocket of his cardigan for a handkerchief. He dried his eyes, then blew his nose noisily.

  I stood and went by the fireplace, where I was in his line of vision.

  “Charles.” I said it again and his eyes, almost resentful, finally focused on me. “You are going to have to face this. I’m going to tell you something. The possibility that you were the target was on my mind from day one. It struck me that the killer might still be stalking you, so I followed you.”

  He scowled.

  I ignored him. “I followed you to your attorney’s place in Baton Rouge, then to his country house where you celebrated some deal, and then to the Full Moon, where you went into the back room. I am guessing that there, you played poker and relaxed with business associates.”

  His face had gone hard. “How dare you…!”

  “I dare, that and a lot more. Don’t waste time on that. You have to face the reality of this, Charles. Get a grip!”

  His covered his eyes with a shaking hand. “Jesus! What a mess…”

  “For crying out loud, Carmichael! I’m on your side! I’m trying to help you!”

  “I know…”

  I spotted the tray of decanters on a sideboard against the far wall and went over. I poured him a stiff bourbon and brought it to him. He stared into my face for a moment, then at the glass, and finally took it in a trembling hand. He took a slug and it seemed to steady him. He said, “Let me think. Give me a minute to think…”

  I went and poured myself a measure of whiskey and rested my ass against the sideboard while I waited. Rain lashed the glass and outside, trees waved through the mist of spray. For a second, my mind drifted and I wondered where Marni was at that moment. Was she in the same storm?

  Carmichael’s voice drew me back. He seemed to be talking to the fire, half in a trance.

  “Regeneration,” he said. “Regeneration has become big business in Louisiana. Katrina, now Sarah…” He took another sip and stared into his glass as he swallowed. “We have seven thousand, seven hundred miles of shoreline. Did you know that? It’s disappearing at a faster rate than anywhere in the United States. That is just one of the side effects of climate change.” His voice sank into a sullen mumble. “Everything in life has a knock on, Lacklan. Nothing ever happens in isolation, especially in…” He waved his hand at the rain-spattered windows. “Especially in the ecosphere. Sarah would have told you that. You re-introduce a wolf into its old habitat, and within six years, rainfall has increased and you have forests growing where before there were plains…” He turned to look at me as though I might not believe him. “That happened, in Yellowstone Park in 1995. Did you know that?”

  I shook my head. He looked back at the fire. “It did. You introduce a predator into an ecosystem, it changes the whole system, down to the physical geography. By the same token, change the physical geography, and it affects everything else.”

  “What are you telling me?”

  “Wherever there is change, you will find speculators looking to make a buck. Change always means winners and losers, you know that. And winners and losers are people who can be exploited. So the changing ecosystems of Louisiana mean business o
pportunities for speculators.”

  “And you are a land developer.”

  “Sarah and I had a dream. To regenerate the rivers, the bayous, and the forests of Louisiana, and encourage the state and the university to invest in the project and use it for research. We had generated a lot of interest. But a project like that needs a lot of backing, a lot of money. So we were also encouraging investors to put money into land development.”

  I returned to my chair and sat. “Go on.”

  “There was one potential investor, from out of state, Grumman. A cool customer with a lot of money to invest, but he was aggressive, very aggressive. He didn’t give a damn about the vision, the broader picture. He wanted the land we were offering, on his terms, and he also wanted to exploit the land that we were intending to develop as natural habitat. If we had given in to his demands, he would have had a damn Disneyland there, with alligator theme parks and God knows what else. He said if we did it his way, it could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.”

  “You upset this guy?”

  He shrugged. For a moment, he looked like a sulking child. “I’m a plain-talking man, Lacklan. You know that. I told him there would be no compromise on the natural park. It was my way or the highway. He didn’t like that, but I didn’t think he would go to this kind of extreme.”

  I frowned. “What would he gain by killing you?”

  “Perhaps he thought that he could manipulate Sarah more easily. There were several investors who liked his ideas. Sarah was very influenced by my opinions. Our love life was going through a difficult time, but she still loved and respected me.”

  I took a deep breath and considered my whiskey for a moment. “Did you take Grumman to the Full Moon?”

  “It was Wilberforce’s idea. He’s a bit of a character. His view is that businessmen are the modern day knights and warriors, and they need to let off steam just as the warriors of old did.” He shrugged and gave a rueful smile. “Wine, women, and song. Maybe there is some truth in that, after all.”

  “From what I saw, the Full Moon is into a lot more than wine, women, and song.”

  “Yeah, well, we are all grown ups, right? I stayed clear of the drugs and the whores, but a lot of our investors enjoyed a bit of that and expected it. It happens, from Anchorage to Tierra del Fuego. And a happy investor is a generous investor.”

  I waited. He just sat slumped, staring into his glass, then shifted his eyes to the burning logs. Finally, I prompted him.

  “So did Grumman meet Ivory?”

  He went very still.

  “Ivory?”

  “Don’t bullshit me, Carmichael. So far, I am on your side and I am a good ally. Let’s keep it that way.”

  “Yes, he met Ivory. Ive runs the club at the back, the poker games. He also provides the coke and the girls, and any other services…” He swallowed. “Are you telling me that he…?”

  “Ivory framed Bartholomew Hays for Sarah’s murder.”

  “Jesus Christ…” He closed his eyes and sat very still. “I may as well have put the gun to her head and pulled the trigger myself.”

  “Charles, you will have time for self-recrimination later, and nobody is going to save you from that. You will just have to go through it and find a way to deal with it. But right now, you need to man up and fix this mess. If Grumman is responsible for this, I need him and Ivory to confess, or at the very least, incriminate themselves.”

  He put down his glass and rubbed his face with his hands. “Yes. Yes, of course, I see that. I’m sorry, Lacklan, this has been… This has all been such a…” For a moment, he couldn’t talk and looked away. He took a couple of deep breaths. “You need a trap. We need to trap them somehow.”

  “Is that feasible? Can we do that?”

  He nodded. “I’ll think of a way, just give me a minute.”

  I ignored his request and asked, “Charles, who is contesting her will?”

  He flashed a glare at me. “Is there anything you don’t know?”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Is there anything I shouldn’t know? If you don’t volunteer, I need to get it myself.”

  “Simone. But we are resolving it amicably. Wilberforce has it in hand.”

  “What are the grounds? What’s her standing?”

  “As her sister, she feels she is entitled to something. I am not averse to that, within reason. It just seems at the moment that everybody is trying to steal Sarah from me.”

  He levered himself to his feet and for a moment he looked like a very old, broken man, but the emotion drained from his face and he glared at me.

  “We can do this,” he said. “But on one condition.”

  I frowned. “What condition?”

  “We’ll get the evidence to get Hays off the hook, but I want Grumman and Ivory dead.”

  TWENTY

  I followed him across the room to a mahogany door. He pulled a set of keys from his pocket and unlocked it, pushing it open onto a small room, maybe fifteen feet square. The walls were lined with mahogany and glass cabinets from floor to ceiling, each lined with green baize. These were constructed over sets of drawers, each about four feet in width and a foot in depth.

  The cabinets contained firearms. I counted twenty-four rifles, ranging from antique Winchesters to the latest model HK416 A5 assault rifle, by way of some badass shotguns. There was also at least double that number of handguns: antique flintlocks and Colt revolvers, as well as Glocks, a Browning Hi Power, CZ, two Smith & Wesson 500, the snub nose and the long barrel, and the 357 Magnum Dirty Harry made famous. And more besides.

  He pointed at the drawers. “I have more in there, and plenty of ammunition. Some of them are registered, not all. This federation is founded on the right of every man to carry a weapon with which to defend himself against tyranny, whomever that tyrant might be. If ever Burgundy needs to rise up, I’ll be able to arm a couple of hundred of them.” He paused a moment, staring blindly at the cabinets. “You’ve opened my eyes today, Lacklan. From what you have told me, Grumman and Ive are two just such tyrants. They have taken from me that which I most loved.” He gazed at me with tears in his eyes again. “I can’t bring her back, but I can punish the men who took her, and ensure they don’t ever do this to anybody else, ever again. Will you help me?”

  I nodded. “Yes. I will. What’s your idea?”

  “It won’t be easy, with the storm.”

  “Where is Grumman?”

  He seemed to think about it for a long moment. “Last I heard, he was sitting out the storm with Wilberforce in his country house. What we need is to get him and Ive together, talking.”

  “I can bug Ivory’s room at the club.”

  He eyed me. “You can? Have you bugged me?”

  I half-smiled. “Not yet.”

  “I’ll get a message to him, from an anonymous email address, purporting to have knowledge of Jackson’s investigation, claiming that evidence has come to light connecting Grumman and Ive to Sarah’s death, and that Hays is no longer a suspect.”

  I shook my head. “No. It needs to be something they can act on, we want them discussing a plan. The email will claim to have information connecting Grumman to Ivory, and thereby to Sarah’s murder. That information is for sale. If they won’t buy it, it goes to Jackson or the sheriff.”

  He nodded. “OK, that’s good. We tell them to be at the Full Moon, in the back room, at a given time tonight to negotiate a pay off.”

  I finished it for him. “They’ll meet there long before the arranged time, to discuss their options and how to handle the situation. We record their discussion, and once we have enough evidence to convict them…”

  “We execute them.”

  I gave him a moment, then asked, “Have you got the stomach for this, Charles?”

  He looked at me with dead eyes. “Yes. This is something I need to do.”

  “Fine. Give me a couple of hours. The place is bound to be empty right now. I’ll go and set it up. If I can get a signal, I’ll send you a messa
ge when I’m done. Either way, I’ll come back to get you. We don’t want your vehicle seen anywhere near the Full Moon tonight.”

  He nodded. “Agreed. What about you? Your car is easily recognized.”

  “Yeah, but it’s silent, and if it comes to the worst, I have friends who can get me out of trouble.”

  He stared at me a moment, then frowned. “Hasn’t Hays got the same friends?”

  “No. And in any case, this isn’t worst case yet.”

  I thought I saw a flicker of fear in his eyes, but he turned and stepped out of the room. I followed him back into his study and he closed and locked the door. I went and stood by the fire. Carmichael sat back in his chair.

  I said, “Don’t drink any more until after it’s done. I need you sharp. You need to put Sarah out of your mind until we get back.”

  He nodded. “I don’t want any more.”

  “What about Jackson?”

  “What about him?”

  “He warned me off. I got the feeling he was protecting them.”

  He shrugged and his gaze was lost in the fire again. “I’d be surprised, but I guess it’s possible. If he is involved, they are bound to incriminate him. If he’s there, we kill him. If he’s not, I’ll make sure he spends the rest of his life in prison.”

  “OK, I’m going. Stay focused. Don’t go to pieces on me.”

  He looked at me again with those same dead eyes. “I won’t. Not till it’s over.”

  I stepped out into the screaming gale. The driving rain lashed my face and stung my skin as I struggled to my car. By the time I got the door open and climbed inside, I was soaked through. I fired up the silent engine and slipped up his drive and out of his gate onto the road. There I paused a moment to think, and instead of turning south toward St. Francisville, to pick up Route 10 to the Full Moon, I turned left and crossed over onto Main Street.

  The windshield wipers were going like they were in a frenzy, but the road was a river, a foot deep in water, and the rain was so dense visibility was no more than four or five yards ahead. I took a left at Chartres Avenue, crawled a block to Congress Street, and pulled up outside Hays’ house. It was a small, green clapboard place with a gabled, slate roof and it looked like it was about to collapse under the weight of the water. I leaned on the horn until he opened the door with a heavy coat on and an umbrella in his hand. He slammed the door shut and ran for the car. It was only four strides, but by the time he got there, the umbrella was inside out and he was wiping water from his eyes so he could see what he was doing.