by Jana DeLeon
“Ida Belle and Gertie had to vote and we stopped by the sheriff’s department afterward. Some shrimpers and a couple of roughnecks—one who dives—got your boat up and towed it in to the sheriff department’s dock.” I took a breath and blew it out, knowing Carter was going to be seriously pissed when I told him the next part of the story. “Then those ATF agents showed up and kinda forced Deputy Breaux to give up the boat.”
“Damn it!”
I cringed a bit as Carter continued his rant. Finally, he came up for air.
“Does he know where they took it?”
“Some storage facility up the highway a bit.”
“I know the place. Maybe when I get out of here, I can sweet-talk the owner into letting me give the boat a look-over.”
“Anything’s possible.” Except convincing Big and Little Hebert to run up against the ATF as a favor to another cop. But that was another piece of unfortunate information that wouldn’t do Carter any good to have at the moment.
“Why hasn’t Deputy Breaux called and told me this?”
“There’s probably three reasons, and all of them good.”
“I’m listening.”
“First off, when the diver went down to secure your boat, he found wreckage of another boat nearby. It belonged to a guy named Hank Eaton. His wife was there when we walked in, and she was pretty upset to hear the news.”
“Hank Eaton’s boat is in the lake? Man, we searched every bayou and channel for weeks looking for any sign of Hank and his boat, but that storm was so fierce, it was impossible to know what direction to look, especially given we didn’t know his whereabouts when the storm hit.”
“That whole ‘looking for people lost in the swamp’ is definitely one of the suckier parts of your job.”
“Yeah. Poor Laurel. I mean, we all knew the score when Hank never returned, but…”
“Gertie said hearing this was probably like hearing it all over again for the first time.”
Carter nodded. “I think until people have proof, they still have this tiny sliver of hope that their loved one isn’t dead.”
“I can see that. I mean, you hear about those strange reunions decades later on the news. I guess it’s like the lottery—you figure it has to happen to someone, so it may as well be you.”
“That’s one good reason for Deputy Breaux’s delay, but you said you had three.”
“Number two is that the election has proven to be a bit of a hassle for law enforcement, and with the Feds muddying up the local waters, you out of commission, and Sheriff Lee moving at negative light speed, Deputy Breaux has been stretched a little thin.”
Carter cringed. “I wasn’t in Sinful for the last election, but I’ve heard the horror stories. With Celia running, I can imagine it’s worse than anything Stephen King has ever written.”
“She was making a public spectacle of herself downtown. I mean, that’s nothing new, really, but with every citizen in Sinful down there crowded into one spot, there’s bound to be trouble.”
“And the third reason?”
“That one’s easy. Deputy Breaux knew how mad you’d be when you found out the ATF agents confiscated your boat, so he left that last on his list of emergencies to handle.”
“Ha. You nailed that one.”
“I told you I had three good reasons. So now that you’re up to date on the unfortunate Sinful situation, what can I do to help?”
“Get comfortable,” he said and pointed to the chair. “This could take a while.”
I poured us both a glass of water and slipped into the chair. “Then let’s get started.”
Carter reached for a pad of paper and pen on his table. “I made some notes about Saturday. It’s all there. At least I think it is. But for the life of me, I don’t remember thinking something was off-kilter.”
“And whatever you saw happened Saturday, so it makes no sense that you wouldn’t remember that when you remember everything else.”
“Exactly.”
“Okay. So what is the last thing you remember from Saturday?”
He stared at the wall for several seconds, his brow creased. “I remember taking you home, and I definitely remember our kiss at your front door.”
“That would be impossible to forget.”
He smiled for a moment, then his expression turned thoughtful again. “I remember going home and taking a shower. Then I poured myself a beer and turned on the television in the living room.”
“What was on?”
“Huh?”
“What was on the television?”
He frowned. “I think…no.” He looked at me. “I don’t know. Why don’t I know?”
I was pretty sure I knew what had happened to him. In my line of work, it wasn’t exactly an uncommon problem, but I needed to present my thoughts in a way that screamed nerdy librarian who reads all the time and not CIA agent who deals with this on a regular basis.
“I read a book on how the brain works once. It had this section on amnesia, specifically when associated with traumatic events. Most were victims of crimes and forgot the circumstances at the point of attack.”
“But that’s not what’s happened to me. I can’t remember but a minute or two after Saturday night, and the attack wasn’t until Sunday morning.”
I nodded. “There was an investigator they did a case study on. He was closing in on a serial killer and ended up being kidnapped by him. He was rescued, but the serial killer was long gone, and the investigator couldn’t recall anything after dinner the night before.”
“Sounds familiar. But how does any of that help me?”
“He finally remembered, and when he did, he realized that his memory blanked at the exact moment he put together who the serial killer was. Something on television triggered a thought and all his clues came together with the identity of the killer.”
Carter nodded slowly. “Then he was kidnapped and his memory flashed back to the first unrelated event.”
“That’s what the doctor’s theory was.”
“But the investigator still remembered that he was working on the case. If I saw something that I thought was suspicious before our dinner, then why didn’t my memory shoot all the way back to that moment?”
I leaned forward in my chair. “Okay, this is just a theory, but what if you saw something suspicious, but it didn’t register that way to you at the time. What if it was sitting in your subconscious and when you turned on the television, you saw something that brought whatever you saw into your consciousness because it put it into perspective.”
Carter stared at me for several seconds, and I began to wonder if he was going to call for the nurse, but for me this time. Finally he shook his head. “It’s a bizarre theory for sure, but it makes more sense than anything I can come up with.”
“It’s just a guess. I mean, we have no way of knowing for sure. Not until you remember, anyway.”
“True, but at least this gives me something to start with.”
“But what can you do with that information?”
“For starters, I can call my mother and ask her to swing by my place and tell me what channel the television is on. Then I can backtrack to what was playing Saturday night when I turned it on.”
“Oh!” I sat up straight in my chair. “That’s a great idea.”
Carter grabbed his phone and called his mother, explaining what he wanted her to do. I could hear the anticipation in his voice as he told Emmaline why he wanted the information. I felt my excitement brew for a moment, then wane when reality hit. Whoever had searched Carter’s house could have easily changed the channel during their poking around. And even if the channel was still the same, it could have been a commercial that prompted his breakthrough. If that was the case, the television idea would be a complete bust.
“What’s wrong?” Carter asked.
“What…oh, nothing. I was just trying to process it all. It’s sort of overwhelming.”
He gave me a sympathetic look. “You’ve been
tangled up in some pretty awful stuff since you arrived in Sinful. I imagine your life back east isn’t nearly as dramatic.”
“No, the drama level is pretty low there.” It wasn’t a lie. Drama had no place on a CIA mission. Everything was calculated and clinical. Bringing drama into that line of work was exactly what had landed me in Sinful.
“Things will settle down,” he said. “I know it seems overwhelming now, but I swear this used to be a pretty quiet place. Whatever this current upheaval is, it can’t last. Pretty soon, I’ll be back to poaching and drunk-and-disorderlies.”
“I’m sure you’re right.” What else could I say? It’s not like I could blurt out that if Celia was elected mayor he wouldn’t even have a job to return to. His health was already stretched enough. Until that bomb dropped for sure, no way was I even going to bring up the possibility.
I slumped back into my chair, holding in a sigh. This not giving away anything was so much harder when you cared about the person you were keeping secrets from. Especially when the secrets were about them. “So what now? We have a starting point, but is there anything else you thought I could help with?”
“I’m not sure it will help, but I wanted you to tell me everything you saw on our boat ride to the island.”
“Okay.” At least this was something I could do comfortably and without lying. “Where do I start?”
“Start with everything you saw after we left downtown Sinful and got down the bayou past the residential area.”
I closed my eyes, hoping it would help me remember, and the bayou appeared in my mind as if I were back on that boat ride. I relayed a description of every boat we passed and a description of the occupants if I didn’t know their names. I recalled the fishing camps I’d seen on the way and which ones had a boat docked out front. I remembered passing a shrimp boat as we entered the lake and Carter waving at the captain as we went by.
“You’ve got a good memory,” Carter said. “Do you recall the name of the boat?”
“The Neptune.”
Carter frowned. “That’s Lucas Riley’s boat. He usually doesn’t shrimp the lake.”
I nodded, now remembering where I’d seen Riley before—at the Swamp Bar. He was one of those tall, muscled guys with a shaved head, piercing blue eyes, and far too many tattoos. “He was dumping ice on a chest of fish when we passed. I don’t know what kind—they were long and had dots on them.”
“Speckled trout. He must have been fishing.”
“Is the lake a good place to catch speckled trout?”
“Oh yeah. If you hit a school of them feeding, you’ll be eating fish for a week.”
I shrugged. “Then that’s it. I don’t remember seeing any other boats after that one. No camps, either.”
“No, there aren’t any more until you get across the lake. The banks on the other sides shift too much to be stable.” Carter slumped back in his bed, and I could tell he was disappointed.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t help.”
“No. It’s not your fault. It was a long shot anyway. It’s far more likely that whatever I saw was when I was setting up for our dinner and not after I picked you up.”
I had a feeling he was probably right. Part of my makeup was watching people very closely, looking for any shift in their expression that might indicate a branching thought that could be followed by a new and unexpected action. But I’d never seen a shift in Carter’s expression that night. He was entirely focused on me and our date. I never saw a twitch of indication that he’d left “us” for even a moment and returned to police work.
“I wish I could do more,” I said.
Carter narrowed his eyes at me. “Don’t go getting any ideas about doing anything more than you are already. I was in the sheriff department’s boat. Whoever shot at me had to know I was law enforcement. If he’ll take that kind of risk, he wouldn’t hesitate a moment to take out anyone else who got in his way.”
“I know,” I said, raising my hands in surrender. “Besides, I wouldn’t have any idea where to start. And I’m not foolish enough to take that chance.” Unless one considered breaking into a public storage facility owned by mobsters to access a boat confiscated by the ATF a foolish move.
He stared at me several seconds more, but I had been trained to look someone directly in the eyes and lie without flinching. Carter was a good cop, but the CIA trained assassins for an entirely different skill set.
“I want you to promise me you’ll be doubly careful,” he said finally. “It doesn’t look like you saw whatever prompted my search, but we can’t be certain. If the shooter suspects you saw whatever I saw, then you could be in danger, too.”
“I promise to sleep with all the lights on and a pistol on my nightstand.”
“I’m not sure whether to be happy or frightened. Just make sure you don’t shoot Ally or that stray cat you took in.”
“Merlin is smart enough to duck. I’ll give Ally fair warning.”
“Maybe if she needs you and you’re sleeping, you should have her call your cell phone.”
I nodded. It actually wasn’t a bad idea. Ally had narrowly escaped my misdirected attacks on several occasions.
Thinking about narrow escapes flashed me back to my eventful relay with Tiny. That was a sticky one. I had no intention of telling Carter I’d been inside his house—ever, if I could avoid it. But Riker, Mitchell, Sheriff Lee, and Walter all knew Ida Belle and I had been on location for the dog-running, burro-climbing festivities. I doubted Sheriff Lee or Walter would call Carter about the incident while he was in the hospital, but I was certain he’d hear about it as soon as he was released.
“There was a sorta…um, incident at your house earlier today.”
“What kind of incident?”
“I’m not really sure about all the particulars. Ida Belle and I were talking a walk, mulling everything over, and when we rounded the corner to your block Tiny was loose and running down the sidewalk.”
“How did he get out?”
“I have no idea.” I went on to tell him about Riker and company being there, and on to the glorious conclusion with the burro atop Riker’s car.
At first, he stared at me as if I were joking, but when I kept going, he realized it had happened exactly as I was describing. He started to grin, then chuckle, and by the time I got to the part when the burro climbed onto Riker’s car, he was laughing so hard he was clutching his injured side. I glanced at the monitors, worried that any moment an alarm was going to go off and the medical staff would rush in thinking Carter was having a seizure.
Now that I thought about it, it sorta looked as if he was having a seizure.
“Are you all right?” I asked and rose from my chair.
He nodded and waved a hand at me before downing half his water. “I would have given anything to see that.”
“Oh, you can see most of it. Ida Belle filmed it with her phone.”
“Nothing fazes that woman, does it?”
“Not that I’ve seen so far. It’s kinda scary.”
“No shit,” Carter said. “I bet Riker was fit to be tied.”
“Oh yeah. He was completely apoplectic. So mad I thought he’d burst into flames.”
“So how did you get the burro off the car?”
“We didn’t. Far as I know, he’s still up there.”
Carter’s mouth dropped open and he stared at me. I tried, but I couldn’t keep my poker face on more than a couple of seconds and my grin broke through.
“You’re joking,” he said.
“Yeah, but for a couple of seconds, I had you.” I went on to explain Walter’s arrival and procurement of the angry Tiny and the dismounting of Riker’s car.
Carter chuckled some more, then shook his head. “What was Riker doing at my house, anyway? He knows where I am.”
“This is another one of those things that’s going to make you mad, but he had a warrant to search your house. Sheriff Lee was there to make his access legal. Riker was going to break down the d
oor but Walter said he’d let him in so you didn’t have to return home from the hospital and worry about fixing your front door.”
“You called Riker right with that douche bag label.”
“I’ve met enough of the type. He’s hardly original. Anyway, I have no idea what happened after that because Ida Belle remembered she needed to vote and we figured it was best to hightail it out of there before Riker could find something to blame us for besides witnessing his less-than-manly response to a dog and a burro.”
“Smart. So I guess Riker doesn’t believe my lost memory claim.”
I shrugged. “Or he does believe it and hopes you made notes somewhere about what you went looking for.”
Carter frowned. “I guess I could have…I wish I could remember. All of this would go away if I could just remember.”
“I don’t think it’s going to be as simple as that. Whatever is going on, someone shot a law enforcement officer and left you to drown. And if whatever happened involves the ATF, it must be something big. Even once you remember, my guess is there’s still a lot that has to happen before the ATF would move on the shooter.”
“True.” He smiled at me. “You’re pretty sharp for a librarian. I would tell you to consider a job in law enforcement, but then you’d be allowed to tote a gun around all the time.”
“What difference would it make in this town? Everyone here seems to be packing. Heck, Gertie carries more weapons around in that huge purse of hers than they probably have down at the pawnshop.”
A monitor behind Carter beeped and I saw his blood pressure shoot up. Ooops.
“I really didn’t need to know that,” he said.
“Know what?” I put on my best innocent face.
He reached his hand out toward me and I placed my hand in his. He winced as he squeezed my hand. “Do you need one of those pain medicine shots?” I asked.
He shook his head. “But I’m pretty sure a kiss would make me feel better.”
“I can call the nurse back in, but I doubt your PPO is going to cover the charges for kissing.”
“I had something a little less clinical in mind.”
He tugged on my hand and I stepped closer to the bed, but as I began to lean over to kiss him, the door opened and Emmaline walked in. I planted a frozen smile on my face, feeling like a kid who’d just been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. Fortunately, Emmaline didn’t seem to notice she’d almost interrupted our medical attempt at reviving Carter.