The Darkest Night

by Rick Reed

  “Understood,” Jack said, and followed Liddell inside.

  * * *

  Sheriff Bo Guidry met Jack in the doorway of his office and invited him in.

  “Would you like something to drink, Detective?” Bo asked. “I’m afraid all we have is water and soft drinks. I understand from your partner here that you’re a Glenmorangie man. I’m a Glenlivet man myself, but I’ll forgive you.”

  Jack accepted the man’s strong handshake. Bo Guidry was in his sixties, but fit and with jet-black hair that belied his age. His freshly pressed uniform shirt displayed a chest full of commendation ribbons. His nails were perfectly manicured, but his hands were calloused, like those of a bricklayer or carpenter.

  “Detective Blanchard has been telling me a little about this case, and I’m ashamed to admit it, but, like I told him, my office was shut out of the investigation by the PD. Apparently Bitty was killed at her home. That’s just inside city limits and not my jurisdiction, so they aren’t obligated to tell me squat. But Liddell tells me that you all have been kept in the dark as well. Is that right?”

  It wasn’t asked like a question. “Yes sir,” Jack said, remembering his promise to Katie to be respectful. Besides, he was warming to this guy.

  “Elizabeth—Bitty is—was—one of mine. I understand Chief Whiteside’s hesitance in letting us help with the investigation, but I won’t tolerate my department being disrespected. If they think someone in my department was involved in the killing, Whiteside should have come to me.”

  Guidry didn’t invite them to have a seat, so Jack figured they wouldn’t be in his office long. He wondered what the sheriff was leading up to. He didn’t have to wait long. Sheriff Guidry was a direct man.

  “I found out Liddell here was released into your custody last night and I tried to call him. No answer. So I called your Chief of Police—Pope, right?—and he said he hadn’t heard from either of you. But he gave me your number, Murphy, and I couldn’t reach you either. One of you should have damned well called me last night.”

  Jack could feel his face getting warm. “Sheriff, you’re right. We should have thought to call you. Now that you mention it, I did see an unknown number come up on the phone late last night and didn’t answer.”

  Guidry gave Jack a hard look and said, “Apology accepted. But you will give us your number and any other contact information before you leave this building.”

  “Okay,” Jack said though he hadn’t apologized and technically he didn’t have to give them shit, and the sheriff should know that. Guidry wasn’t in on the investigation, and the murder took place within the city’s jurisdiction, not to mention Jack didn’t work for him and wasn’t under arrest. But Jack would rather have Guidry and the Sheriff’s Department as friends. They already had enough enemies.

  “Second,” Guidry said. “You found the body, Liddell. That gives them the right to hold you as a suspect long enough to ascertain you did, or did not, kill my investigator. But you’re telling me they didn’t read you Miranda, or ask you any questions, even though they held you in a jail cell for half a day. Am I right?”

  “True,” Liddell said.

  “And Bobby Troup arrested you,” Guidry said. “I’m told he used to work here. As a detective, no less. Heard nothing but bad things about him. So the third thing I wanted to tell you gentlemen is that you need to watch your asses. Troup is bad news. From what I hear he’s a liar and got a mean streak a mile wide. He pretty much does what he wants—to hell with the law or police procedure. You boys stay away from him.”

  “I know Whiteside wouldn’t talk to you about the murder, but you seem to hear a lot. Can you tell us anything about what happened?” Jack asked.

  “I’ll do better than that,” Guidry said. “I called the District Attorney’s office and let them know how important this case is, what with Bitty being one of my detectives. The D.A. is a personal friend of mine. He offered to bring the State Police in, but I talked him out of that, and he agreed to sanction our office ‘assisting’ with the investigation. The Plaquemine PD is still the primary on the case, and anything we find we’re supposed to turn over to them.” He said this last as a promise waiting to be broken. “Chief Whiteside has been notified this morning that she has a partner, and I don’t have to tell you—she wasn’t too happy. Called me an interfering old goat.”

  Neither Jack nor Liddell said anything to that. Obviously Guidry didn’t have any love for Whiteside, or Troup for that matter.

  “I’m telling you all of this because I’m going to use my authority as Sheriff of this Parish to hire the two of you as consultants on this investigation. If you agree, you will answer only to me. No one else. You will not talk to the media or to any other law enforcement agency or release any information regarding this investigation to anyone without my specific permission. If you find anything, you will give it to me and me alone. You will not identify yourselves as deputies for this department, but you can say you are assisting us with our investigation.” Guidry asked, “Is that agreeable?”

  “Do we get mileage?” Jack asked, and Guidry laughed.

  “I heard you were a smartass, Murphy. Your Chief knows what I’m offering, and he said I had the right guys for the job. He also said you were in hot water when you get home. Said someone named Dick wants your asses.” He looked at Liddell and then at Jack. “He wasn’t making me the butt of a joke, was he?”

  “No, Sheriff. Chief Pope doesn’t have a sense of humor,” Jack said. He didn’t give a dick what Dick was planning. Right now he wanted to ask about practical concerns, like carrying guns. For example, what if they had to shoot someone? More than once? But maybe now wasn’t the best time.

  Liddell said, “I’ll get a temporary cell phone and give you the number, Sheriff.”

  Guidry took a cell phone out of his pocket and handed it to Liddell. “I already got you one, courtesy of the Narcotics Unit. The number is taped to the back and it has my number programmed in it.”

  Jack said, “Now that we’re ‘consultants,’ I guess we should tell you that we’ve talked to one person today. He suggested we talk to Bitty’s ex-partner.”

  “Parnell. Dusty Parnell. I’ll arrange for her to meet with you two in a little bit. She’s out on a missing-person case right now.”

  “I was led to believe she was in Hawaii,” Liddell said.

  “She’s not been on a vacation for six months.” Guidry’s expression went stiff and he said, “Bitty was—how do I put this—she and Dusty were sort of an item.”

  Liddell said, “I knew Bitty was lesbian. Parnell was living with her last I knew. Something happen there?”

  Guidry seemed relieved that he didn’t have to broach that subject, the world being politically correct as it was. He said, “They split a couple of months ago. I offered to move one of them to a different shift, but they seemed to be okay with working together. Damned hard when they work in the same office, same shift, and had already weathered out the macho bullshit they had to put up with from these guys.”

  “Does Parnell know about Bitty?” Liddell asked.

  “Hell, everyone around here knows by now.”

  Jack didn’t understand. If Parnell was as close to Bitty as he’d heard, why was she working today? He assumed they must have had one hell of a falling-out for Parnell to be so unfeeling. But he’d learned through experience that every person handled grief in their own way.

  “Meantime,” Guidry said, “you boys should go talk to one of our retired detectives. Cotton Walters. He and Bitty were pretty tight. Detective Parnell actually took his job when he retired. Missing Persons. He was good at it.”

  Jack noticed Guidry didn’t give Parnell the same praise.

  “Thanks, Sheriff,” Liddell said. “I know where he lives.” Neither of them told Guidry they had talked to Cotton Walters earlier.

  “You leave your numbers with Jon and be sure to keep me updated. I want to know if a gnat takes a piss, you read me?”

  “Gnats. Piss,”
Jack said. “Understood.”

  “Chief Pope’s got his hands full with you. You’d better be as good as he says, boys.”

  Outside, Jack stopped Liddell at the car and said, “Do gnats piss?”

  Liddell responded with, “Does the Pope shit in the woods?”

  “I talked to Katie and everything is fine there, Bigfoot. They were having a late breakfast. Marcie said to tell you to come home soon and the usual.”

  “I need to call her today.”

  “What’s stopping you? I’m sure the sheriff wouldn’t mind you using the phone he gave you to call your wife.”

  “Oh yeah,” Liddell said and took the phone out of his pocket.

  “Hold up there, Bigfoot. We have to decide where we’re going next.”

  “The sheriff is supposed to have Detective Parnell call us as soon as she’s got a minute. Let me drive, and I’ll take us by Plaquemine’s version of Donut Bank.”

  Jack couldn’t turn down an offer like that. They drove into a run-down part of town where the houses had room enough between them to squeeze through. Can you spell fire hazard? Some of the houses were missing, with only foundations to show where they once stood.

  They came to an area where the homes had been converted into small one-owner businesses: a salon here, a tire-repair shop, and one with a carport turned hand-car-wash. Tiny sidewalk cafés had multiplied like rabbits.

  “Donuts, pod’na. Right down the street. The best you ever tasted. I promise. And the coffee is great.”

  Liddell had to wait for another car to leave before they could park outside a place called Mama JuJu’s. The shotgun-style house set on a stained cinderblock foundation. The walls were white vinyl siding. A mural of a giant glazed donut was painted on the side wall and one on the picture window. Built on the side with the donut was a railed wood deck with a handicap ramp. The deck was full of people eating themselves into a sugar coma.

  “This is Mama JuJu’s,” Liddell said. “She’s been here since I was a kid. Katrina didn’t put her out of business because the community wouldn’t allow it. All the work you see was done with volunteer labor and material. Mama JuJu’s is like a historical landmark.”

  The woman Jack assumed to be the owner turned out to be a white woman in her thirties, and very shapely underneath a knee-length white apron sporting an embroidered donut on the left chest area where policemen wore their badges. She saw Liddell come in and hurried over, giving him a hug. She was tiny and it was like watching a child hug a redwood.

  “How’s yo’ mama?” Liddell asked her, to which she responded, “Who’s your daddy,” and they bantered back and forth.

  Jack found a table while they were catching up. The tables were small and round, and the legs were just about to come off. The chairs were painted in pastels with colored specks to imitate sprinkles on icing. The tabletop was hand-painted to look like a big donut. Stenciled inside the donut hole were the words “Mama JuJu’s.”

  Liddell came back, and the chair groaned under his weight but held him. The woman came to their table with two steaming mugs of coffee and a tray piled high with king-size glazed donuts.

  “Jack, I want you to meet Mama JuJu,” Liddell said. “We went to grade school, high school, and college together. She got her MBA and I got you,” Liddell said with a chuckle.

  She slapped at him with the towel and wiped her hand before taking Jack’s hand. “My real name is not Mama JuJu.” She shook his hand. “Denise. Any friend of Liddell’s is always welcome.”

  “Glad to meet you, Denise. I was beginning to think he didn’t have any friends,” Jack said, and Denise laughed.

  “Do you want something to eat? This one will eat all of these by himself.”

  “I’m fine. He’s eating for two,” Jack said and pointed at Liddell’s stomach.

  “He’s eating for five.”

  “Hey,” Liddell said, “I resemble that remark.”

  A bell rang on the counter, and Denise hurried away.

  Liddell inhaled a donut and said, “Denise is the granddaughter of the original owner. I forget her name, but she was called Mama JuJu by the locals. The Creole believed she could cure illnesses, bless people, and stuff. The Creole are a combination of French, Blacks, Indians, Spanish, Caribbean, Acadian, South Americans, Chinese, Russian, German, and the list goes on. The term Creole covers any ethnicity that was born in Louisiana during the French or Spanish era. They consider themselves royalty among the Cajuns.”

  “Blanchard. Is that Creole?” Jack asked.

  “Cajun. My family roots go back to Nova Scotia. The Acadians were called Cajuns. Still are.”

  Liddell’s phone rang. It was Sheriff Guidry. He’d arranged a meeting with Parnell at her house. The address wasn’t far.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Liddell drove back to Main Street and headed west, where they entered a stretch of road with cypress trees on one side and massive Southern live oak trees with branches sweeping across the ground on the other. Jack could smell the Mississippi. He imagined Bigfoot piloting an airboat through this and how his world must have changed, trading this for the flat, populated, concrete jungle of Evansville.

  “Dusty’s house is in Bayou Goula, about twenty minutes away. It’s unlike anywhere in Indiana.”

  “Reminds me of Oak Meadows Country Club,” Jack said. “Minus the trees and the Mississippi River and the yuppies.”

  “If I remember Dusty’s house correctly, it sets on a twelve-acre lake. Bitty and I used to fish in that lake. Trout, crappie, catfish, you name it. Of course, Dusty didn’t own the house when I was fishing here. I wonder what she paid for this place.”

  Liddell’s phone rang. IBERVILLE SHERIFFS DEPARTMENT showed in the display. He answered, and it was the young man working the desk.

  “Hey. This is Dempsey. I just got a call from Dusty. She’s going to be a few minutes, but said to make yourself at home. The back door is open.”

  Jack heard the last part of the conversation. “Her door is open?” In Evansville the people who leave their doors open are overinsured. Jack had a cable over his hot tub, with a padlock and alarm on the door of his river cabin.

  Liddell turned on a gravel road that went through more of the sprawling oaks, some with a trunk diameter of at least four feet, and the low-hanging limbs were draped with Spanish moss. They emerged into a field of wildflowers as far as the eye could see, with a two-story antebellum house smack in the middle.

  Jack couldn’t help but think of Katie. She would love this. Maybe he would bring her back on a short vacation. They could do a plantation tour. Liddell had told him about one mansion that was reputed to be haunted—and another that had turned into a five-star hotel with a restaurant.

  Squared shrubs encircled a rose garden that was the showpiece of the crushed brown-stone circular drive. The crushed stone made loud popping sounds under the tires. Liddell stopped in front of the house.

  “She lives here?” Jack asked. “With twelve acres of woods and a lake? In Indiana, a property like this would cost at least five million.”

  Liddell turned the engine off, leaned the seat back, crossed his arms, and closed his eyes.

  “She said we could make ourselves at home. Are we going in?” Jack asked. He wanted to see the inside.

  Without opening his eyes, Liddell said, “You can if you want. Not me. Last time I did that I ended up spending the day in a jail cell.”

  A white Land Rover bearing SHERIFF decals came down the gravel road and pulled in behind them.

  They exited their vehicles, and Liddell made the introductions. “Dusty, this is Detective Jack Murphy from Evansville, Indiana. Jack, Dusty.”

  Dusty shook hands with Jack but gave Liddell a hug. She was average height with an athletic build that was enhanced by the painted-on blue jeans that were tucked into the tops of Western boots. She wore a tight-fitting short-sleeve uniform top and was packing heat up there as well as the .45 on her gun belt. He guessed her age as late forties. She smiled. Th
at she had heard the news of her former life partner’s death showed in the redness of her eyes.

  “How you doing, Liddell,” she said and rubbed the backs of her hands across her eyes. “The door was unlocked. Come on inside. It’s like a furnace out here.”

  Jack and Liddell followed her down a pebble path leading to a side door. At the back of the house was a large aluminum carport over a raised concrete pad. The concrete and the carport were new, as were the two dirt bikes and Harley-Davidson motorcycle parked there. One of the dirt bikes was covered with mud, but the Harley was spit-shined, and the sun glinting off its surface was blinding. They followed her into a room Jack assumed was the kitchen. One entire wall of the kitchen was taken up with a stone wood-burning fireplace. The fireplace opening was large enough for a man to walk into without touching the sides or roof. A hardwood table that seated eight faced the fireplace. Everything in the kitchen came out of a Better Homes and Garden magazine. Dusty put a teakettle on the gas stove and turned a burner on. “Have a seat, and I’ll make coffee.”

  Jack and Liddell sat in heavy wooden chairs at the conference-room-sized table across from each other. Liddell pulled a chair out beside him for Dusty.

  “I’ve got instant,” she said.

  Jack didn’t want coffee again, and he hated instant, but he said, “Thank you, Detective Parnell.”

  “Dusty, all right? I hate being called Detective Parnell except by dirtbags.”

  “I’m not a dirtbag, so Dusty it is,” Jack said.

  She stood with her back to them while the kettle heated, took three mugs from a cabinet, filled them with hot water, and set them on the table. Next came a tray with spoons, sugar, cream, and ajar of Folgers instant coffee. “You can add your own coffee. I like mine strong,” she said.

  Her leather gun belt creaked as she sat in a chair next to Liddell.

  “New leather,” she explained. “Like wearing new shoes. You got to break it in. Today’s the day.”

  Liddell and Jack waited for Dusty to broach the subject of Bitty’s murder. Aside from the red eyes, Jack hadn’t seen any real emotion. She didn’t say anything and wasn’t asking questions, so maybe she already had some answers. He hoped she would share that with them and make it worth his choking down instant coffee.