The Darkest Night

by Rick Reed

  “Look. We got off to a bad start,” she said. “I’m not always easy to work with. I know. I’ve been told. And I see the looks on my people’s faces. But I’m not a bad cop. Or a bad Chief. I have reasons for everything I do.”

  Jack didn’t know if a response was asked for, so he listened. He watched the expression on Liddell’s face and couldn’t tell if he was angry or happy. Whiteside hadn’t exactly apologized for Liddell’s treatment. But she didn’t seem the type to roll over and give up her belly like a submissive dog.

  “I’ve examined what Kurtis found,” she said.

  “Okay,” Jack said. He hoped she didn’t have everything.

  “I rushed to judgment,” she said. “I wanted this to be over. My troops were demoralized enough when Detective LeBoeuf was murdered, and they were led to believe another policeman had killed her. Liddell should never have been brought in like he was. I blame Barbierre and Troup for that.”

  “I accept your apology,” Liddell said.

  “I’m not apologizing. Just explaining,” she said, and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I’m still touchy. I apologize. As Chief I’m where the buck stops.”

  “We understand. Who wouldn’t be touchy after all of this?” Jack said. “What can we do to help?”

  “Well, Kurtis told me you found soil samples at the place where Barbie was found.”

  Kurtis gave Jack a sheepish look.

  Jack said, “He did? I mean we did find samples.” Apparently Kurtis had lied to Whiteside, but Jack didn’t know why. “We gave the samples to Kurtis to see if he could tell us where they came from. I hope we didn’t overreach, Chief.”

  “Did he tell you I caught him going through our files? Or that I found out he’s been running dispatch logs without authority?”

  Jack acted shocked.

  She continued. “Well, he did, and I was going to suspend him. But when I went through the logs I could tell he was on to something.” She appeared pleased, reached in a drawer, and put a stack of papers on top of her desk. “When you boil all this down it tells you something. Know what this is?”

  “No,” Jack said, thinking that Kurtis hadn’t told her he’d made copies. Another lie for Kurtis.

  “For one thing, Detective Troup and Officer Barbierre didn’t use proper radio procedure. They know better. I’ve already had a talk with Detective Troup and warned him in the strongest way that this is unacceptable.”

  Jack didn’t know what to say, so he just tried to look like he was listening.

  The Chief took a few pages from the stack of papers and handed them to Jack. It was full of scientific terms and all Greek to him. Jack saw the words “sulfometuron methyl” and figured this was the soil sample result.

  Jack held the papers where Liddell could see them.

  She said, “As you can see, this report tells us that whoever left that soil on the floor had been in a sugarcane field. I had the State Department of Agriculture confirm the results. We can assume that the soil hadn’t been in that house very long. And Kurtis assures me he found no such soil or fiber in the treads of Barbierre’s boots or on his clothing.”

  Jack was disappointed. He’d hoped she had done more with these samples than Kurtis. But he wondered where she got the samples. He had his answer when he saw Kurtis’s face turn red.

  Kurtis said, “I gave Chief Whiteside the samples you guys collected at the scene. But don’t worry. I put it in a report that I’d collected the samples. I mean, we were all there at the same time. And I saw the stuff and all. I just didn’t get around to collecting it yet. And since you guys are policemen I didn’t figure it would hurt if I took them from you.”

  Whiteside was looking away while Kurtis talked. Jack could see she didn’t believe a word Kurtis was saying, but she didn’t give a rat’s ass who collected it. All she wanted was this case to be closed.

  “The State Department of Agriculture have samples of soil from all over the state. And they have a list of every chemical that is used on crops. They were able to narrow the samples down to two places, and both are outside this Parish. They are nearer Baton Rouge. So the murderer might not be one of our cops after all. I don’t think Officer Barbierre killed Cotton Walters. Or Detective LeBoeuf. I don’t think he committed suicide. Gentlemen, I think we have a serial killer on our hands.”

  Jack was stunned at the level of denial the Chief was capable of. First it was Barbie who killed Cotton and killed himself in a fit of conscience. Now it’s a serial killer from Baton Rouge. As long as it’s not one of hers, like Troup, or a local cop, like Dusty, she’s happy as a clam.

  Jack said, “I don’t understand why you want us to know all of this. Look, I appreciate you telling us that you no longer think we’re interfering morons, but I still get the feeling that you don’t like us being here. So what is it that you want from us?”

  Whiteside leaned back in her chair and cocked an eye at him. “I’m going to let that one pass. In fact, I’m going to let all of your smart remarks pass as long as I get you to agree to help us out. I need your help finding whoever is killing cops.”

  “Why would we help you now?” Jack asked. “We’re doing pretty good without you.”

  “I’ll tell you why. Blanchard needs to clear his name. You need the closure of catching Detective LeBoeuf’s killer. And you have a pretty good reputation of catching serial killers. Not many cops have ever dealt with that level of crime. I’ll put all my resources into finding Evelyn Blanchard, and I’ll even look into the shooting out at Landry’s place last night. If you will work for me.”

  Jack and Liddell exchanged a look.

  “What do you say?” she asked.

  “I’m thinking,” Jack said.

  Whiteside stood and put her hands on her hips. “Look. I don’t need this. If this leaks to the news media we’ll have every Tom and Harry dick in town. If we catch them quick, I think I can keep it down.”

  Jack said, “You know the harder you try to keep something like this quiet, the more the news media will make of it. And they’ll bury you for even trying. We’ll work on this, but we have conditions.”

  “Name it,” she said and sat on the edge of the desk again.

  “Okay. We get all of the case information. All the cases. Evidence. Dispatch logs. Telephone logs. Everything. You open your personnel records to us. Pay records. Anything we deem important.”

  “Well, I don’t know if . . .” she said, and Jack interrupted her.

  “In that case, I don’t think we can help you. You said it yourself. We’ve dealt with these kinds of nut jobs before. You’ve got to decide, Chief,” Jack said with finality.

  She stood and put her hand out. “You’ve got yourselves a deal.”

  “And we want Kurtis,” Jack said. “And no interference. That means Troup stays away.”

  “I won’t take Troup off the cases,” she said. “He’ll share everything with you, and I hope you’ll share with him. Three heads are better than two. And you might as well take Kurtis. He’s working for you anyway. Ah hell. He’s doing a good job.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Kurtis followed Jack and Liddell outside. “Meet me at the pie place,” Kurtis said, smiled, shook hands with both men, and walked away.

  When they got in their car, Liddell asked, “What do you think that’s about?”

  “I think things are not as happy in Happy Valley as the Chief would have us believe. Kurtis told her some big lies, and I think she knows it. But she’s a quasi-politician, and her ass is hanging out if she doesn’t catch this guy. Or gal,” Jack said.

  “We’ll make Kurtis pick up the check this time. I’m hungry, pod’na.”

  “When are you not?” Jack put the car in gear, checked the mirrors, signaled, and eased out onto an empty street. He continued checking the mirrors.

  “You think someone’s following us?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t really care. I just hate to be surprised,” Jack said. He wasn’t too confident that Chief
Whiteside could control Bobby Troup. And Troup was still a suspect.

  Jack pulled in front of A Slice of Heaven and left the motor running.

  “Did I mention that I was hungry?” Liddell asked.

  Jack shut the engine off. “Do me a favor and tell me if you see any unmarked cars or Dodge Challengers.”

  “Don’t you trust Whiteside?” Liddell asked.

  “I trust you and me. And Landry.”

  They went inside and sat in the booth that was the clandestine site of their first meeting with Kurtis.

  Tooty was beside the booth before they even got situated in their seats. “You boys want your regular?”

  “We’ve been in here once, Ms. . . . ?” Jack said.

  “It’s just Tooty,” she said, putting pencil to paper. “Everyone calls me Tooty.”

  “That’s an unusual name,” Jack remarked and smiled.

  “It’s my name,” Tooty said. “You want something to eat?”

  Liddell said, “Yes please. Two big slices of cherry pie and two coffees.”

  “We got coconut cream, and black coffee. Ran out of creamer. Got sugar.”

  “I guess give us our regular,” Jack said.

  She left without writing anything on her order pad.

  Liddell leaned in conspiratorially and said, “Do you trust Tooty?”

  “Crazy name, crazy unpredictable person,” Jack said.

  Jack heard a door open in the back of the business. Kurtis slid into the booth opposite them keeping his back to the front door.

  “I thought the Chief said we could have you?” Jack asked. “Why all the Secret Squirrel stuff?”

  “Because I don’t trust her,” Kurtis said, pulling a piece of folded white paper from inside his shirt and spreading it out on the table. “She wasn’t being truthful with y’all about the ag report.”

  Jack pulled the paper across and he and Liddell read it. “Kurtis, this is just a bunch of map coordinates, and chemical terms, or whatever.”

  Tooty came back with a whole pie, three mugs, and a pot of coffee. She set these down and remained standing beside the table.

  Jack took two twenty-dollar bills from his wallet and handed the money to Tooty. She took the money and left.

  Kurtis watched her leave and after she was gone he said, “I didn’t send the samples to the State Ag people. LSU must’ve done that and faxed over the results. The Chief don’t know shit about soil, and I doubt she had enough sense to contact the State Ag people. But anyway, the map coordinates are numbered, most likely to least likely. The first one is near Baton Rouge, like she said. But this one here,” he said, putting a finger on a line of print, “this is the Laveau Plantation.”

  “Laveau?” Liddell said. “I should have remembered it when I heard the name Marie Laveau. Cotton told us Marie is also called Mamba. She is represented by, among other things, sugarcane. That plantation has a mansion, church, five or six shacks, and a cemetery. It’s been deserted since I was a kid. We used to take girls to the cemetery. No police patrolled out there, so we could do pretty much what we wanted. I thought that was cool when I was younger.”

  Kurtis said, “It was unoccupied until about six or eight months ago. Someone bought the plantation from the State. Some long-lost family member. Claims to be a Laveau anyway. Long story. They did a lot of remodeling and construction on the mansion and the buildings. Sugarcane is growing there again.”

  “Who’s responsible for patrolling it? PPD or the Sheriff?” Jack asked.

  “Part of it is claimed by the city and part by the Parish, but I don’t think it gets regular patrol. At least not now that it has a reputation.”

  Jack asked, “What kind of reputation?”

  “Not a reputation, but more like it’s taboo around here. This Parish—hell, most of the State—is Catholic. But there’s a group of these fanatics. Voodoo people. They hold secret rituals out there; at the church and maybe even in the old shacks.” He laughed and said, “Well, I guess they can’t be secret rituals or nobody would know about them. But you know what I mean. Anyway, this Laveau woman is running that. She has some big ol’ guy out there running the sugarcane production. Nobody messes with them because they pretty much stay to themselves. I don’t recall there ever being a problem there.”

  Kurtis gave Jack a questioning look. “Why you so interested? Besides the dirt coming from there, I mean. You think something’s going on?”

  “So who all knows about this plantation, or the Voodoo stuff?”

  “It’s a big Parish, but there isn’t a big population here. I guess everyone that doesn’t live in a hole knows about the Voodoo stuff. All the cops know, I guess.”

  Jack asked a question. “Why is that, Kurtis?”

  “Well. I don’t know for sure, but I know most of the cops avoid the place on purpose. Maybe they’re superstitious. I don’t ever have a reason to go out there myself.”

  Jack followed up with, “Whose beat is it on the PPD side? What officer is responsible for it?” In Evansville, officers are assigned to beats or sectors and that’s where they spend the bulk of their time. If something is going on in their beat they know about it, or someone tells them. That’s the advantage of having regularly assigned sectors.

  Kurtis got a strange look on his face, as if a light had just been turned on. “No one would go out there because the Chief told them to stop running radar. But I heard Barbie’s gone out there.”

  “Why would Chief Whiteside tell them to stop?” Liddell asked.

  “I don’t know. You’d have to ask her that.”

  “But we’re asking you, Kurtis,” Jack said. “You’re on our team now. You’re allowed to think for yourself.”

  “Well, if you want my opinion, I’d have to say the plantation people put a stop to it. The plantation people primarily use that road. I’m guessing, but I think a lot of their crew is illegal immigrants. They probably don’t have driver’s licenses.”

  Liddell changed the subject. “If Barbie goes around the plantation, what was he doing at Bitty’s house? They’re not even on the same side of the city.”

  “Beats me,” Kurtis said. “He was a supercop.”

  Jack finished his coffee. He was ready to get back to work. “Can you check on the ballistics again, Kurtis?”

  “Where are you guys going?”

  Jack said, “Check the ballistics and call me. I think we’ll scout out the plantation.”

  “I’ll call Landry. See if he’s heard from Evie,” Liddell said.

  * * *

  This was the third time the plantation had come into a conversation, and there were too many coincidences. Jack didn’t believe in coincidence. Cotton had said something big was going on and Jack had put the old man’s ravings down to paranoia and psychosis. What if Cotton was right? If most cops knew about the plantation and the Voodoo rituals being held out there, it was a good bet Bitty knew about it too. And did any of this connect with Evie being missing? If so, how? Landry had told Liddell he hadn’t heard from her. Or the police. Liddell had assured him he was still looking.

  Before they left A Slice of Heaven, Jack had asked Tooty about the people living at the Laveau Plantation, and she was a wealth of information. She wasn’t much of a talker in general, but she proved to be a gossip ninja.

  Tooty told him she’d attended a couple of the “ceremonies” held at the Laveau Plantation church. She said the woman identifying herself as Marie Laveau was very charming and charismatic, and the man, Papa Legba, was beyond hot. Nevertheless, she quit attending the rituals. She felt like Marie Laveau wanted a donation. She didn’t give them anything. She didn’t go to any church that expected money in return for salvation.

  Tooty had gone on to say that thirty to sixty people took part in these rituals, and it was like a nightclub floor, but with different kinds of spirits. She said Marie Laveau was called Mamba. Tooty gave Jack and Liddell a fair description of Marie Laveau and too much information concerning Papa Legba.

  Tooty
told him the rituals she had attended were held at the church, never the mansion. The setting she described was like Halloween minus the candy. She said it reminded her of the religion where they danced with a snake, and people spoke in gibberish, and lots of smoke and touching and whirling. To Jack it sounded like a Congressional hearing.

  Tooty also said that there were lots of girls and boys at these rituals. Jack asked how old, and she shrugged. She wasn’t good with ages. She said she’d seen some cops at the rituals too, but they weren’t in uniform, so she thought they were there to check the place out. That’s another reason she quit going. Her business thrived on policemen.

  Jack thanked her, and she held her hand out.

  “You pay for his kind of stuff, don’t you?” she asked, and he gave her another ten.

  Outside he handed Liddell the keys. “You’re going to owe me some serious bucks. Let’s go see Mamba and Papba.”

  “Papa, not Papba,” Liddell corrected. “Loa to the Underworld. I wonder if Barbie’s visiting there right now. The Underworld that is?”

  Kurtis was dead on about the road leading to the plantation. It ran off Highway 1 to the north and there were no street signs. The traffic on the street was almost nonexistent to the point Jack wasn’t sure they were on the right street until he saw the sugarcane fields. The fields stretched for what seemed like miles on both sides of the road. They reminded him of the cornfields at home, but with shorter stalks, and more narrow rows that gave a dizzying effect as you drove past. Coming up on their left was a packed gravel road that wound through the cane, and Jack lost sight of it as it disappeared into a stand of giant oak trees. They drove past the turn.

  “That led back to the mansion and the old church building. There are a dozen cottages and buildings that at one time were homes for the workers, and supply stores. Most of the buildings had collapsed when I brought dates to the cemetery.”

  Jack said, “You were such a romantic. I’ll bet your dates always wanted to go to a cemetery.”

  “I’ve changed, pod’na. I take Marcie to nice places.”

  “Yeah. Real nice places. Burger King, Donut Bank, Sam’s Pizza Shack. She has to be impressed with your style,” Jack said, and they laughed.