Louisiana Lament

by Julie Smith

  But she never finished the rest of the sentence, having become distracted by the stomp of motorcycle boots. “Wayne, close the door and lock it!”

  But of course he didn’t. Instead, he walked to the doorway and looked down the hall. For some reason, it didn’t occur to him to be nervous. Merely puzzled, Talba thought. “Hi, guys,” he said. “What’s up?”

  They were smiling. And why not, considering the morning’s systematic substance abuse? “Hey, Wayne,” Austin said. “Thought we’d help you teach your class today.” He was wearing jeans, a T-shirt that showed off his torso, and one of those oversized belt buckles that look like they’d work fine if you forgot your brass knuckles. And then there were the boots, actually cowboy boots; but nonetheless the whole effect was threatening. Rashad was… well, he was still a skinny poet but in Austin’s shadow, he might, just barely, have passed for an outlaw.

  Wayne showed no sign of alarm, but he did grab for the door and step over the sill, attempting to close it for what he probably imagined would be a man-to-man talk of some description.

  Austin stuck out one beefy hand and slammed it open, striding past the startled professor and into the room. He was strutting like a rooster. Rashad herded Wayne and Talba back into the room: “Have a seat, Professor. Baroness. We’re teaching the class today.”

  Austin said, “This is the lecture on plot you’ve all been looking forward to.”

  It was a simple statement, but Talba realized, in retrospect, that it was brilliant. At the moment she was just dazed.

  “Y’all heard of Murder One? Today we’re doing Murder 101. Come on up here, Professor, and sit down at this nice little table. Might as well be comfortable.”

  Taylor said, “You can’t—”

  But before he got any further, Austin grabbed him by his lapels and manhandled him to his feet and over to the table, Taylor resisting hardly at all as Austin shoved him into one of the chairs, so that he now faced the class like somebody on the witness stand.

  Talba glanced nervously at Janet and saw that she was smiling, a faint blush of excitement tinting her cheeks. Far from being nervous, most of the students looked excited, anticipatory—in fact, as if they were enjoying themselves very much.

  Austin said, “How many of y’all are working on detective novels?”

  About half the class raised their hands.

  “Well, we’re gonna plot one today.”

  With a shiver, she saw what they had done—they had turned Wayne Taylor’s own strategy against him. He was the professor who invited monsters to class—to his students, this looked like business as usual. The class was completely up for whatever was happening. Even his wife was.

  Truth to tell, Talba was herself. This could definitely get interesting. There was just one thing that worried her. Where these nutballs were going with it.

  Austin began to write on the chalkboard, simple words and phrases like thwarted love, revenge, gain, betrayal, knew too much. “What do you think these are, class? Murder motives; that’s right. Okay, here’s our story. Professor Taylor here has a lover—let’s call her Goldilocks. But she dumps him because the wife’s pregnant and she knows he’ll never leave her. Or maybe Wayne gets an ounce of conscience himself, and he dumps her. So she moves on. And whom do you think she moves on to? Why the professor’s best friend, that’s who—the Second Bear, shall we say. How’m I doing, class?”

  Almost everyone was smiling. A couple of kids were giving the thumbs-up sign. Talba thought Janet was looking a little ambivalent, but she couldn’t be sure.

  “But that doesn’t work out, and Goldilocks wants him back. Or maybe he wants her back. Which is it—shall we vote?”

  A white kid in the front row, a guy whose legs must have been six feet long and stuck straight out in front of him, said, “He wants her.” A chorus of “yeahs” backed him up.

  “Okay, that’s what starts the argument. But things get out of hand, and he realizes just how mad he is, just how mad at everything—Goldilocks, his wife, his kid, his so-called best friend, the stinking university—and he stabs her and stabs her, and stabs her, and he can’t stop. But then he does stop. And she’s dead. He can’t believe it—he’s killed his lover! But, like her, he moves on. So—what does he do next? Call the police?”

  “Hell, no,” said a female voice.

  “Good. What does he do instead?”

  “He cleans up the evidence,” the girl said. She wore glasses and a halo of dark, airy curls.

  Austin actually prodded Wayne with his forefinger. “Yeah, that’s a start. But there might be more. What else?”

  The girl with the curls was on a roll. “How about framing somebody?”

  Rashad said, “Good idea. But it would have to be just the right person. Maybe somebody he wants to kill anyhow.”

  “And as luck would have it, he knows just the right person. So he does it,” Austin said. “He makes it look like murder-suicide. He is unbelievably cold-blooded. He goes to this woman’s house and he has a drink with her, and he shoots her. And then, he takes the glass she has just drunk out of—with her fingerprints on it—back to the first victim’s house. How am I doing so far, Wayne?”

  Wayne’s smile was thin. He looked distracted, as if his mind was on something—like a way out.

  “I like it,” said the girl with the curls. “Very noir.”

  Wayne bowed his head. “Thank you, Miss Weatherby.”

  “But he overlooks one thing,” Rashad said. “It doesn’t work because there are already prints on the glass—the prints of the person who washed it and put it away.”

  Wayne started. Talba realized he hadn’t known about that part.

  A kid in the back raised his hand, one of two African American students in the class. This one was heavyset, with a big, round, jowly face, baggy jeans, and short hair. “Somethin’ funny here,” he said. “How does he keep from getting his own prints on the glass?”

  “Easy,” Miss Weatherby said. “He wears gloves.”

  “Which he just happens to have handy?”

  “He rifles the first victim’s drawers,” Weatherby said. “And maybe he finds some. If, not, maybe she colors her hair—and she’s got some of those latex gloves like the dentist wears.” She paused a moment. “Hey, we’re plotting, right? Could go either way.”

  Talba was getting increasingly nervous. As long as Wayne went along with the game, he was fine (which made you wonder what on Earth Butch and Sundance were trying to accomplish)—but she couldn’t help wondering about Janet. Had she ever suspected something about Cassie? Maybe even known? She might believe for a while that this was some kind of skit, but she had to wonder why Wayne had gotten her down there to put up the Berlin photos if he’d scheduled something else. And she had to know Rashad and Austin were talking about two real murders. Talba tried to shrug it off, hoping the worst that happened was she’d learn about the affair the hard way.

  “Right,” Austin said. “It’s just a story. So he goes through all these machinations to get the police to think it’s murder-suicide, but that extra set of prints throws everything off—along with other stuff that doesn’t add up. So what does Wayne do next?”

  A boy with a bad case of acne looked up long enough to say, “Maybe he lies low.”

  The other black student, a girl with straight, neat hair disagreed. “I don’t see him as that kind of guy. He’s an action player.”

  “And not only that, he sees another opportunity,” Austin said. “There’s something else you gotta know. Rashad here’s a tenant of the second victim. He comes home and finds her dead, and he’s got a little something in his background, so he splits, thinking he might be a suspect. But here’s the kicker.” Austin held up a finger. “Rashad’s the Third Bear. He’s a real good friend of Goldilocks, and also Wayne, the First Bear, and also the Second Bear, Goldilocks’s new man. So Rashad doesn’t know where to go or what to do, and he calls his buddy Wayne for advice. And what do you think Wayne does next?”


  Miss Weatherby’s eyes were shining. “He sets Rashad up.”

  “Yeah,” Rashad said, and his voice was surprisingly calm. “Yeah. My best buddy sets me up. But he doesn’t set me up to take the fall for the murders, because I’m not the one he hates. The one he hates is the one he thinks took Goldilocks away from him. He sets me up to set that guy up.”

  A chorus of near “boo”s went round the room. “Uh-uh,” Miss Weatherby said. “He does not do that. It’s way too complicated.”

  “It’s worse than you think, Miss Weatherby,” Rashad said. “He makes me think the Second Bear did it, but I don’t think he wanted me to rat him out. Uh-uh.” He looked Wayne full in the face. “He wanted me to kill him. Because he knew the shit he was telling me was just garbage—that the Second Bear could easily shoot it down if he got arrested. But, see, he knows I’m a killer. Remember that little thing in my past? Wayne figured it out because of something I wrote.”

  “And he knew one other thing about Rashad,” Austin said. “He knew Rashad couldn’t stand to see women in trouble. So he started a rumor about the Second Bear that was guaranteed to make Rashad so mad he’d come after him. Only it wasn’t a rumor—it was true.”

  “And I found out what he’d done,” Rashad said, “and now I’m here.”

  A blonde in the first row spoke for the first time. “Oh my God! What happens next? It’s like we’re living the story! This is fantastic, Dr. Taylor. I’ve never had such a sense of how plot and character fit together so perfectly, how they’re really one and the same, mirror images of each…”

  Wayne wiped sweat off his face. “What happens next,” he said, “is we applaud.” He stood. “Very nice, gentlemen,” he said to his tormentors.

  Rashad put a hand on his shoulder and shoved him back into the chair. “Sit down, Papa Bear. The story’s not over yet.”

  Talba heard a rustling in the back of the room. “You sonofabitching bastard asshole douchebag.” Janet was standing, her face twitching, spittle flying, almost as if she were foaming at the mouth. She wasn’t sweating, but her face was red, much redder than when she blushed; she looked as if she were burning up, powered by a heat that came from inside and had barely begun to crackle. Her hands were shaking, which terrified Talba: She was holding a gun.

  She held it in both hands, like detectives do on television, and she was pointing it at her husband. Probably he had given it to her. Half the men in New Orleans had bought guns for their loved ones, so they’d feel safe coming and going on the two-foot section of mean street between car and house.

  Automatically, Talba’s hand went to her phone, to her speed-dial button for the campus police. She punched it, but what to do next? Did she dare take the phone out of her pocket and talk? No way she wouldn’t be overheard. And might a sudden action of any kind set Janet off? Her heart stuck in her windpipe.

  But she saw that a lot of the students were smiling, some outright laughing, thinking it was all part of the show. Wayne had gone white; his face and neck glistened with sweat. Rashad looked bemused, as if he himself half thought it was fake. But Austin was beginning to wake up a little. He actually looked slightly alarmed. Talba half hoped Janet would shoot him, she was so angry at the whole performance.

  But what she mostly was was scared. What if this woman started shooting up the classroom? Janet walked to the front of the room, never taking her eyes off Wayne. “I found the fucking gloves.”

  Talba thought, Oh, shit, and Wayne actually said it.

  The black kid from the back hollered, “Great acting, Dr. Taylor,” but Talba noticed that Miss Weatherby’s jaw had begun to twitch. The curly-haired girl’s eyes were as bright as before, but earlier they had been flashlights, soft and large and searching; now they were lasers.

  “You left them in the pocket of your jacket,” Janet said. She was now in front of the class, but far enough away from the Hardy Boys and her husband that they couldn’t make a sudden grab for her. Talba wondered if she could, but decided she’d have to run a few steps, which would give Janet time to whirl and shoot her.

  “Cassie was my friend,” Janet said. “How could you kill Cassie? And that poor mother of hers. She was just an old lady. Just a harmless old lady. You bastard! How could you? All this time, you and Cassie… and then… you killed her.”

  Austin picked that inauspicious moment to say, “He killed Hunt Montjoy, too.”

  Wayne turned on him. “You don’t know what you’re talking about! Hunt beat the shit out of me, and all I did was give him a few drinks to calm him down.”

  “All this time,” Janet said, still telling herself the story, “you were a sonofabitchin’ lying bastard.”

  “Put the gun down,” Miss Weatherby said. She was standing now, and holding her own gun, much more steadily than Janet was holding hers.

  Oh, SHIT! Talba felt sweat running down her back. Janet said, “Shoot me, I don’t care.” Talba’s blood curdled. “My husband is going to tell me exactly why and how he killed those two women, or I am going to shoot him dead. And I’ll do it too, because I just don’t give a fuck!” Her voice, slow and deliberate in the first part of the speech, got louder and louder on the last part.

  Talba was thinking, She just can’t shoot him—she has a baby! She just can‘t. A movie was running in her head, images, sounds, smells… far, far from the scene unfolding in front of her.

  Wayne was shaking, and sweating, paler still if that was possible, and visibly shrinking—unconsciously trying to make himself a smaller target. “Janet, please! Honey, I can’t even remember. I just couldn’t stand to see Cassie throwing herself away on that asshole, I just couldn’t, uh…”

  She was going to shoot him. Talba could see her eyes squinching up, her arms tensing. And if she shot him, good riddance, but, oh, God, how could she do that to herself?

  She heard herself shouting, not even believing she was doing it, barely recognizing the words, shocked at the volume: “I smell pine disinfectant!”

  It was so incongruous—and so insanely loud—that every head turned to her. She kept shouting:

  And the floor of my cell is painted stone.

  And the walls are cinder blocks.

  And from that concrete wall Georgia looks at me,

  Her blue, baby eyes

  As big and innocent as

  Forget-me-nots—

  She was bellowing as if she were training to be an opera singer, and walking forward, forward, holding out her hand for the gun…

  And I wonder how she is

  And I wonder where she is,

  And I wonder if she misses her mama…

  Janet whirled, and fired on “mama.” Talba winced and dodged, late, automatically, knowing the bullet had been for her, but she kept her eyes on Janet, kept shouting the improvised poem, which was pouring out of her almost without thought….

  Oh, Georgia, Georgia,

  Child of murder,

  Child of violence…

  She heard Miss Weatherby say, “Drop the gun, or I’ll blow your fucking head off,” and saw Janet’s face fold in on itself, perhaps at the repeated sound of her daughter’s name, perhaps at the shock of actually having shot at someone. She let the gun dangle uselessly, though she didn’t drop it.

  At that moment, the hubbub of what sounded like an entire army unit boomed and clattered down the hall. The door burst open, to a good part of the campus police force.

  And Janet did drop the gun.

  Miss Weatherby dropped hers, too, piling her hands on her head as if she did it every day.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  This was not a caffeine story. The further Ms. Wallis got into it, the more jangled Eddie felt. He wasn’t sure why that was, but he was pretty sure the coffee wasn’t helping. He put up a hand to stop the disturbing flow of words. “Eileen!”

  Ms. Wallis looked a little affronted, but Eileen Fisher was only her usual eager self when she appeared in the doorway. “Yeah, Eddie?”

  “Don’t we have a bottle o
f wine left over from Christmas or something? You mind gettin’ that open and findin’ us a couple of glasses? One for yourself, too, if you like.” He really didn’t want Eileen drinking in the daytime, but he couldn’t see a way around offering.

  “No, that’s okay,” she said, and Ms. Wallis began, “I don’t know, Eddie…” but he cut her off.

  “It’ll calm us both down,” he said, wondering how to describe the peculiar jumpy feeling that was on him like an animal, wriggling and jiggling and itching and generally making him want to get up and run like hell. Part of it was fear, he thought. He absolutely could not believe the inconceivably dumb thing Rashad and Austin had done, which would have given him the willies in concept alone—but considering the various near-misses, his brain (as well as his knees) had pretty much liquefied in the hearing. And part of it was something else. He didn’t really like thinking about it, but it could be envy. It could very well be that. Ms. Wallis had a way of being where the action was. He could remember being like that.

  Eileen came back with the bottle and two wineglasses. “Talba?” she offered.

  “Sure, why not? Here’s to you, Eddie.”

  “Here’s to everybody being in one piece. Would you mind just tellin’ me what those two orangutans thought they were up to?”

  “First of all, you’ve got to remember they were seriously wasted at the time. I can’t even believe they made it all the way over on Austin’s Harley. They spent the morning drinking and smoking pot, and anything seemed possible to them. They thought they were going to pull some Agatha Christie thing and make him confess.”

  “Oh, boy.”

  “Guess you’re going to have a pretty hard time accepting Austin as a son-in-law.”

  “Christ, I liked it better when I thought Angie was a dyke.”

  “Well, anyhow, it worked, in a sort of a way—I mean, Wayne would never have broken. He was sweating like a can of beer in the sun, but he wasn’t about to ’fess up. Pure luck Janet was there.” She took a sip of wine. “Bad luck for her and Wayne—good luck for the cops. They got him on the gloves.”

  “The gloves don’t prove anything.”