The Levee: A Novel of Baton Rouge

by Malcolm Shuman

  It became clear that Delmos Bridges was a cunning liar who had committed many crimes but told the truth about few of them, and that he was enjoying making fools of the police.

  I’d read the newspaper accounts with only ordinary interest. It was only after his letter landed in my mailbox that the possibility of writing about his crimes occurred to me.

  Dear Mr. Douglas:

  I have read your book the MAN KILLER about the man who killed all those women & being somebody with experience in that aria I thought Id write & see if you want to talk to me about writing my life too. I have a lot more experence killing then he does & I can tell you things you probably dont know about how it feels. You can write me at the above address in Huntsville, but you better hurry because they aim to put a needle in my arm before too many more apeels. Looking forward to hering from you,

  Sincerly,

  Delmos Bridges

  At first I thought it was a bad joke, but then I realized the postmark was real. I showed the letter to Carolyn, as one of those curiosities that pops up with some frequency in the life of someone in my profession, and I assured her that I had no intention of replying.

  I’d just refresh my memory of Bridges’ crimes by scanning some of the news accounts from 1996, the year the first murder had occurred.

  And then I’d read about his trial and the search for more victims.

  And when Gordon Gayle asked me what I planned to write next I told him I had an idea.

  Carolyn was horrified.

  I’d told her about the levee and what had happened nearly fifty years ago, how some of us had been caught up in something we couldn’t understand at the time, and how I guessed it was part of the reason I did what I did now, trying to see how other people reacted in similar situations. But there were things about the levee I’d never told her or anyone else, and up to now they’d stayed buried. When I explained about going to see Delmos Bridges she immediately sensed that it might start a process that couldn’t be stopped.

  I told her she was an alarmist, that this was a once-in-a-life-time chance. He could have written to Ann Rule or a host of other true crime writers, but he’d chosen me. Up to now, I’d written books based on what policemen said, what the families of victims said, what coroners and reporters and judges and lawyers said. I’d observed the accused at pretrial hearings, at trial, and during appeals. But never before had I had the chance to sit down across from a confessed serial killer and hear him tell me in his own words what he’d done.

  “You don’t think this is just the kind of attention he wants?” she asked.

  “It may be. But this is what I do, hon. And he isn’t talking to anybody else, not the FBI profilers, not the Rangers or anybody. He led them all over six states with a bunch of lies and when they gave up, he shut up. But whatever he is, he has a past, a childhood, parents, maybe brothers and sisters. If I can get through his ego to whatever makes him the way he is, maybe that will help keep somebody else from turning out that way.”

  “And that’s why you’re doing it?” she asked.

  I shrugged, unable to look her in the eye. “One reason,” I said.

  My relationship with Delmos Bridges lasted two years. It started tentatively, with a trip to Death Row, then became a series of monthly visits.

  He seemed to look forward to my coming, but I dreaded every minute.

  The bastard enjoyed telling what he’d done, as if he were reliving every delicious moment. And he could see my revulsion, because he would leer with ragged yellow teeth, and cackle. He knew no matter how much he disgusted me I was hooked.

  And every once in a while he’d slip in a question about myself. What was my wife like? Did I have children? Grandchildren?

  He’d back off when my jaw set, give a little shrug as if to say I was overreacting, draw on his cigarette, and then say, “Where were we?”

  Every time I came home to Colorado, Carolyn noticed the change.

  For one thing, she said, I seemed to take longer in the shower, as if I needed more time to wash myself clean. For another, our sex life began to falter: When I should have been thinking about her, I would see his leering face.

  “Do you have to write it?” she asked one night as we lay together in the upstairs bedroom of the old house we’d bought thirty years before and fixed up, the house where our kids had been reared.

  “I’ve signed an agreement with him. He’s giving his share of the royalties to an abused children’s fund. I think that’s his sick joke. But maybe it will help some kids.”

  “And when the time comes?”

  I exhaled. “He wants me there.”

  She frowned. “How can you?”

  “I’ll have to force myself. But I’ve come this far. I can’t just back out because I’m squeamish.”

  She turned toward me then in the big bed, put her hands with their long fingers along my face and looked into my eyes.

  “My poor Colin, what’s this doing to you? This isn’t about him, is it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said truthfully.

  Two months later I was seated opposite him for the last time and he asked the same question a psychologist would ask weeks later: “Why do you think you write about murders, Mr. Douglas?”

  He smiled his ragged, yellow-toothed smile and I didn’t have an answer. And four hours later, while I watched him die, the only person he had invited, I still didn’t know. And I started to dream about the levee.

  I started to dream about that night, walking along the grassy top with Stan, heading for the old cemetery with the flickering light, and I dreamed about walking by myself down the dirt track toward the leaning gravestones. And I dreamed about the moans and about what I saw, wavering ahead of me in the night.

  But when I’d awaken I could never remember what it was. A form, a face, a person?

  Intellectually, of course, I knew what it had to be, because I knew what had happened afterwards, but the more I had the dreams, the more I began to wonder if I’d ever walked down that lonely stretch at all. Had Stanley and I ever left the campsite or had we both gone to sleep and waked up the next morning to find our world forever changed? Had I only invented what might have happened, let my guilt thrust me into an imaginary situation where I became an actor instead of an observer? If so, why?

  There was no one left to tell me the truth. Stan was long gone, and Toby and Blaize hadn’t been there. But if I’d said something to one of them in the days immediately afterward, maybe if I could talk to one of them, it would reveal whether my memory was truthful or trying to drive me insane. And maybe if I went back, stood where my memory told me I’d been—maybe then it would all shake loose.

  And so I am back, grabbing at the shreds of the white, fleeting ghost as it melts back into memory, and I am once more afraid.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I awoke in the grayness of dawn, staring up at top of the tent. I struggled out of my sleeping bag and pulled on my jeans, sooty-smelling from the campfire. Stan still slept in his own bag, beside me. I shivered in the cold mist, found matches and some tinder and started a fire.

  In the gray, enveloping fog the only signs of the river were the sloshing of water against its banks and the smell of mud.

  I untied the provisions from where they dangled in a paper bag from the limb of a gum tree and put bacon into the skillet. When it was done, I cracked four eggs, scrambled them with the camp spoon, and was just taking the skillet off the fire when Stan emerged from the tent, rubbing his eyes.

  “Did Toby come back?” he asked.

  “Do you see him?”

  “That bastard.” He stumbled over to the edge of the clearing and relieved himself. When he was finished he ambled back to the campfire and reached for a plate.

  “You want me to make some coffee?” he asked.

  “That would be good.”

  He poured water from his canteen into an aluminum pot and then stuck the pot into the flames.

  “Colin, about last night …”


  “Yeah?”

  “What do you reckon that light was down there?”

  I shrugged. “Beats the shit out of me.”

  We ate, drank hot black coffee that tasted of wood smoke, and said no more about the strange events of the night before.

  When we’d finished eating and scrubbed the pots and pans, Stan went to sit on the river bank, his legs hanging over. Below, lazy waves slopped against the mud verge, and as the fog lifted we could see logs and other flotsam bobbing and turning in the current on the way to the Gulf.

  “You ever think about what it’s like to be dead,” he said suddenly.

  “What?”

  “To be dead. Not to exist.”

  “Yeah, I’ve thought about it. But there’s got to be something afterwards.”

  “You mean like there has to be something afterwards for those logs out there after they fall in the river?”

  “We ain’t logs, for Christ’s sake.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure I’m not a fucking log. What’s got you thinking about this kind of crap?”

  He didn’t answer. “Maybe none of this is real. Maybe if I swam out in the river and drowned, I’d wake up in bed, somewhere else.”

  “Maybe if frogs had wings they wouldn’t bump their asses on the ground.”

  “I’m serious, Colin.”

  “You want to wake up somewhere else?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Why, for fuck’s sake?”

  He didn’t answer, just stared moodily out at the brown river.

  I never knew if it was the dirt overhang giving way under his weight or whether he lurched forward intentionally but I saw the movement, heard the crack as the dirt began to thunder downward. I reached out reflexively and caught him as earth crashed into the water ten feet below and he thrashed in my grip.

  “Jesus, hold on,” I panted, reaching out my other hand. He grabbed it and I slowly dragged him up the bluff and onto the bank. For a second he didn’t speak and then he heaved a sigh.

  “I guess it gave out from under me.”

  “I guess so.”

  He got up and brushed himself off, but I was still shaking.

  “You fall in the river, I’m not going after you,” I warned. “That current’s going twenty miles an hour. They won’t find your ass ‘til you get to Cuba.”

  “Don’t worry.” He slapped a last chunk of mud off his jeans. “You ready to take down the tent?”

  We struck camp, stuffing the tent back into its canvas pouch, and dousing the fire. He didn’t say more than the bare minimum as we carried the equipment down to the canoe and then shoved off across the placid borrow pit. A water snake, usually fair game for the rifle, uncoiled itself from a nearby branch, but Stan ignored it. When we reached the levee he jumped out, pulled the canoe onto dry land, and held it while I clambered out.

  I looked up at the top of the dike, hoping to see Toby’s car, but instead what I saw was a white sheriff’s cruiser, making its way slowly along the levee top in the direction of town.

  I got a sinking feeling. We weren’t breaking any laws, but you never knew what new rule they’d come up with. The cruiser slowed and came to a stop as the deputy sighted us.

  “Shit,” I said under my breath.

  “You boys want to come up here?” the deputy called down, opening his door.

  Stan laid the rifle against the side of the canoe and we headed up the levee.

  The deputy was a paunchy man with a ruddy face, white hair and sky-blue eyes, and I wondered if Toby’s old man had the pull to handle him if we’d committed some obscure infraction.

  “You find anything to shoot with that rifle?” the man asked.

  “Snakes and tin cans,” I said. The deputy nodded.

  “You boys been out here all night?”

  I nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “Just you two?”

  Stan and I exchanged glances. “Toby left last night,” I said. “He didn’t want to stay. Toby Hobbs.”

  I waited to see if the name would mean anything but nothing registered in the deputy’s face.

  “Y’all come out here very much?”

  “Sometimes on weekends.”

  He stared at us as if the silence might make us crack open but we didn’t offer anything else.

  “You got names?” he asked then. We told him.

  “We breaking some kind of law?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer. “Your folks know where you are?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What did you do last night?”

  “What do you mean?” Stan asked.

  “I mean did you stay over by the river or did you come over to the levee side, maybe do a little exploring?”

  Stan looked at me. I decided it wasn’t a good time to lie.

  “About midnight we wondered where Toby was and we came back over to this side and walked down the levee to see if we saw his car.”

  “About midnight, you say?”

  “More or less.”

  “And did you see any cars?”

  I hesitated. “Only car we saw was one coming from the cemetery down there.”

  The deputy was staring at us now.

  “What kind of car?”

  “I don’t know. We were on top of the levee and there was a lot of dust. It was white.”

  “Or light brown,” Stan put in.

  “It was white,” I insisted.

  The deputy looked from one of us to the other. “Either of you see the driver or how many people was in it?”

  “No, sir,” we both said, shaking our heads.

  “Which way was it heading?”

  “Toward town,” I said. “It had its lights off. At least, ‘til it got about to Bergeron’s.”

  “You didn’t see nothing else?”

  I didn’t say anything but then Stan blurted out, “There was a light.”

  “A light?”

  “Out by the cemetery. Like a flashlight or something.” It was clear now that the deputy wasn’t interested in us except as witnesses, so I gathered up my courage.

  “What’s this about, Mister? What happened?”

  The deputy heaved a sigh. “Down by the cemetery last night—Somebody got killed.”

  My blood turned to ice.

  “Who?” I finally managed.

  “Dunno yet. They found her about a half hour ago.”

  “Her?” Stan said.

  The deputy nodded. “A woman.”

  “Jeez,” Stan said.

  The deputy wrote down our names and addresses. “You got somebody coming for you?”

  “I reckon,” Stan said.

  “Maybe I better give you a ride home.”

  “What about my canoe?” Stan asked.

  “You can come back and get it later. Won’t nobody steal it.”

  He helped us haul our gear up the hill to his car and took my rifle, removing the box magazine and then handing it to me. He loaded the gear into his trunk and as he called in on his radio I looked down the levee toward the cemetery. There were a couple of white cars parked on the River Road, but that was all I could make out.

  As we made our way back to the city, I tried to think what my dad would say. We hadn’t done anything, but you never could tell about parents.

  It was Sunday morning, warm and quiet, with only a few cars out. Stan gave directions to his house in College Town, a university community just south of the campus gates.

  The Chandlers lived in a two-story Spanish style home with a tile roof, spacious lawn, and a swimming pool in the back. The cream-colored Olds wasn’t in the driveway so I figured Stan’s father wasn’t home. But his mother was—the cruiser had barely come to a halt before Mrs. Chandler shot out the front door, her thin face stricken.

  “What’s happened? Is something wrong?” she cried. The deputy unlimbered himself and shook his head:

  “Everything’s fine, ma’am. You this boy’s mother?”

  Mrs. C watched
Stanley get out of the squad car. “Stanley. Did you do something? Is somebody hurt?”

  “No, ma’am,” the officer said. “Nobody’s in trouble. Your husband around?”

  “No. He’s at a medical conference in Atlanta. Why?”

  “Just thought maybe I should talk to him, too. But that’s okay. The boys aren’t in trouble. It’s just there was a dead body found down on the River Road this morning and I thought your husband might want to go pick up the canoe. I didn’t have a way to carry it back.”

  “A dead body?” Her hand flew to her throat. “Oh, my God. Who?”

  “I don’t know, ma’am. We’re investigating now. But you may want to keep your boy away from the levee until we clear it up.”

  “Yes, of course.” She grabbed Stanley then and crushed him against her. “Oh, my lord.”

  The deputy opened the trunk and helped lug Stan’s gear up the walk to the front door. He and Stan’s mother talked a little longer, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Then the deputy patted Stan on the back and ambled back to the car.

  “Dr. Chandler,” he said. “My wife went to him once. Good doctor. Where does your dad work, son?”

  “The university,” I said. “English Department.”

  “He’s a professor?”

  “Yes, sir. A poet.”

  “A poet,” he mused. “Well, I never was any good at poetry. You like poetry, do you?”

  “Some of it.”

  “Yeah.” He grinned. “Well, let’s go see your folks.”

  “Just my dad,” I said. “My mom’s dead.”

  “I’m sorry. Look, I feel like a chauffeur with you back there and everybody sees us will think I’m taking you to jail. You want to ride up front with me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good.”

  We headed past the lakes to Roseland Terrace, which would later become known as the Garden District, a tranquil area shaded by camphor trees and oaks. The district had been formed in the twenties when the university had been built on old Gartness Plantation, south of town, and a mix of university people, lawyers and state workers built the California-style bungalows, fake-Tudor cottages, and occasional Victorian mon-strosities. Our own house, which my parents had bought right after the war, was a bungalow type with brick pillars holding up the screened front porch and a swing that rocked slowly in the breeze on rusty chains.