Blood in the Lake

by Anne L. Simon

  Tom continued. “The trooper who found Mrs. Falgout is coming in at one this afternoon, and after that the detectives will bring us their investigative file. We’re responsible for their material as well as ours. We need to go over everything they have and put a package together for Sarah. You can help me with that.”

  I’d show Tom I could look at all this like a lawyer.

  “We only need to turn over the evidence that’s exculpatory, right?”

  “Technically. But exculpatory is not only what now looks as if it might diminish the defendant’s fault. We have to predict what some appeal court down the line might one day consider could have led to a possible defense. It’s impossible to make the call. We just give the defense everything we have, including the investigators’ files.”

  Tom took a big stretchable fastener off the red file and patted the chair for me to sit down. I had some questions.

  “May I ask you about the defense? Sarah Bernard is putting out to the newspaper that her client is really not guilty. She told the paper he was around for what happened to Mrs. Falgout but didn’t beat her up, and he was nowhere around for PawPaw. What about that?”

  “Bullshit. Defense lawyers always sing the same tune at the beginning. ‘I will prove at trial my client is not guilty of the offense with which he has been charged.’ Then a few months later they stand next to the guy while he owns up to everything and pleads guilty. Sarah’s just waiting to see what we’ll offer. Standard operating procedure. Like every defense lawyer, Sarah’s all about the deal.”

  There he goes mentioning deal again. Is Tom considering taking the death penalty off the table? I don’t think I showed my concern, or perhaps Tom just didn’t notice. He kept talking.

  “I have to go to St. Martin Parish this morning to cover a couple of tricky motions. My regular duties don’t stop, you know. I’ll be back this afternoon. How about you study up on our file between now and then. That’ll give you some background.”

  He touched my hand and left, answering one question in my mind. I wouldn’t get an invitation for lunch. Fine. I wanted him to leave. I’d be able to turn my attention to what I’d spent three years learning to do and let my heart rate slow to normal.

  * * *

  No time to go anywhere to find something to eat, but I needed something. I had no idea how long workdays were in the office. I picked up one of those triangular, cellophane-wrapped sandwiches from Jacques, the blind man who ran the snack stand in the basement. When I came back upstairs and entered the reception area, a handsome, just-past-middle-aged man dressed in the distinctive bright blue uniform of the State troopers sat on the visitors’ bench. He held his Smokey the Bear hat in his left hand and displayed a colorful collection of badges and pins on his upper chest. State Trooper Ron David. I stood on one foot and then the other. Was it my place to invite him back to the library? Just before my awkwardness caused me to say something idiotic, Tom appeared and took charge. We settled down at the table in the library.

  “You’ve met Mandy Aguillard?” Tom asked.

  The trooper dipped his head. “Howdy, ma’am.”

  Yup, that’s really what he said. I guess talking western went with the hat.

  Tom got the trooper’s OK to tape the conversation. I knew how to operate a tape recorder so I snapped in a cassette. Tom reached across and punched the start button.

  “So tell us, Ron. From the beginning.”

  “Sure thing. I finished my shift doing traffic on Highway 90 and called in my last report of the day. I shoved a stick of gum in my mouth to stave off the craving for those damn cigarettes I gave up for the umpteenth time, and headed home. I turned off at the Coteau exit. The radio was cracklin’ on my dashboard, dispatch reporting a house fire close by. I took a little detour to see if the firemen needed a hand.”

  “I suppose a good trooper is never off duty.”

  “Right you are. Three fire engines had pulled up into the yard of a house on Captain Cade Road—two old fire-engine-red rigs and a shiny new yellow pumper.”

  “The infamous yellow pumper, I suppose.” Tom turned to me. “You’ll enjoy this story. When the Coteau Volunteer Fire Department got a federal grant and bought a new rig, they threw a celebration. All the firemen in the parish congregated at the station for red beans and rice, with plenty of beer for those not on duty. Maybe you heard about that?”

  My Dad actually cooked the red beans, but I didn’t come clean. Best to let someone recount a story he’s itching to tell, and I was pleased Tom had included me in this exchange.

  I shook my head. “No. Tell me.”

  “Well, caution lost out to the effects of the brew. The firemen mounted the pumper for a celebratory spin ‘round the town in the new rig. Following the victory lap, the captain drove the pumper back to the firehouse, its new home. That’s an accurate statement. The captain drove the pumper to the firehouse, but not inside. When the lift on top hit the lintel over the door, the captain pulled up short. He backed the pumper into a side yard, and went hat in hand to the fourth floor of the courthouse to appeal to the parish government for money to raise the station house roof. The council had to come through. They couldn’t have that expensive piece of equipment left out in the elements.”

  The trooper slapped his hand on his thigh in appreciation of Tom’s story. Actually, I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn he’d also heard it before. The trooper resumed his report.

  “A thick canvas hose stretched from the pumper, across a dry brown field, to a frame house set back a couple hundred feet from the road. Correction. I couldn’t really see a house. All I saw was a great cloud of smoke and flashes of flame, but I soon learned a building was burning down in there. If y’all recall, last summer we had a drought. No rain for over a month. It’s hard to imagine, but we were looking forward to the hurricane to bring us some rain.”

  Tom nodded. I remembered also. My uncles were worried about the cane crop.

  “Anyway, every twenty-five feet or so, a fireman in high boots and bunker gear held the hose off the ground. Water arced into the air and dropped into smoke so thick you couldn’t see the nozzle. When the wind swirled the smoke, the fireman took a step away from the blaze and bent double in a choking cough. I shouted out to ask if I could give ‘em any help.”

  Up to this point the trooper had told the story smoothly, without a prompt. Now he pulled a little note pad out of his shirt packet and flipped a few pages.

  “’We’ve got it under control,’ the fireman shouted back. I asked if there was anyone in the house. ‘Sure hope not,’ he answered. ‘No one could survive in this inferno’”.

  A frequent first responder, the trooper must have been called upon often to give testimony in court. In preparation, he had made a practice of taking down direct quotes.

  “I turned to walk to my unit, thinking that as usual ‘under control’ meant the firemen had saved the ground the house was built on.” Trooper David smiled, appreciating his own joke. He would not only be a smooth witness, he’d charm the jury—especially in his Louisiana State Trooper blues. Tom’s relaxed expression told me he agreed.

  “Then I saw something odd. When I was almost back to the road, next to what was left of an old fence marking off the boundary between the front field and the neighboring farm, I saw a white stick waving out of the top of a pile of brush. The stick jerked, fell back down, poked up again, and dropped once more. Something’s wrong. I walked toward the pile. Damn! The stick looked like a human arm. Arm? I know I cried out loud. ‘Ho-lee shit!’

  “I was running now. The white stick rose, fell down, and lay still. I dropped to my knees. As fast as I could, I picked off sticks and leaves with my bare hands, trying to clear away debris. I heard a whimper no louder than a hungry kitten.”

  Trooper David’s bright eyes flashed.

  “The leaves were damp and sticky. Blood. I picked at the trash with my fingers and a face appeared.” The trooper instinctively rubbed his fingertips on his pant leg.
/>   I had already read the trooper’s initial statement, but the story straight from his mouth made my throat tighten. My face must have betrayed me. Tom touched my hand.

  The trooper continued. “I yelled to the guys to call 911. Two firemen came running, tore off their big gloves, and dropped to their knees. We worked fast, but carefully, and uncovered the upper torso of a woman. The face, really just a lump, moaned again. Through blood and dirt, one terrified eye stared up at us. The other eye dangled out of its socket.”

  I swallowed hard.

  “I leaned close to where the woman’s lips should have been. I couldn’t make out most of her mumbles, but I did hear a few words.” The trooper looked at his notebook and read, “‘Don’t let him get me again. Please! Oh God! Please don’t let Remmy get to me again.’”

  Tom and I were totally into the scene. Tom recovered first.

  “Good stuff, Ron. Damn shame I can’t start this trial with you on the stand. The jury would give me a unanimous verdict of guilty in no time.”

  I forgot law clerks should be seen and not heard. “No way you can introduce that evidence in the trial for the death of my grandfather, Tom. What happened to Mrs. Falgout is a clear example of evidence of another crime.”

  Tom could have put me down for stating the obvious, but he didn’t. “Right. Not in the guilt/innocence part of our trial, Mandy, but I can go full speed ahead in the penalty phase. If that evidence doesn’t show Richard’s character and propensities, admissible evidence for penalty, I don’t know what does.”

  Tom was right-on. The trooper clearly heard Mrs. Falgout nail Remmy as a monster. If we got a verdict of guilty in the guilt/innocence phase, hearing from the lady with one eye would lock up the capital penalty.

  Trooper David said the EMTs arrived and took over the scene. Deputies and detectives came later.

  Tom had a question for the trooper. “I guess you know we found the defendant in a Birmingham hospital with a nasty tear on his arm. He said something about cutting himself on a fence. Did you examine the fence near where you found Mrs. Falgout?”

  “I didn’t examine the fence, but I do remember it. Barbed wire, partly falling over, rusty.”

  No chance for DNA. The hurricane rains would have washed all that away.

  Tom turned off the tape recorder. Trooper David held out his little notebook, which Tom waved in my direction and placed in the file. “Something else for your review.”

  I must have been smiling like a ninny. I was so damn excited to be there.

  I wondered what Tom thought about having me at his side.

  Detective Aymond Reports

  DETECTIVE BUDDY AYMOND showed up an hour late and alone. Thick-set, probably pushing sixty, his face pillows of rosy flesh, ears as bumpy as an old boxer’s. I always thought a detective wore a suit and carried a briefcase but maybe only in big cities and on TV. Detective Aymond wore khakis and carried a red accordion file like ours. He paused at the door. When he looked in my direction a deep crease cut between his brows.

  “You’re one of the Boudreaux family.”

  “Yes. I’m Mimi Aguillard’s daughter, Mandy.”

  “And you’re here for this meeting?”

  “As of today, I work here. I’m very happy to meet you.” I’d be gracious even if he wasn’t.

  All this amused Tom. “It’s OK. She’s had the standard instruction from Mr. Strait.”

  The set of his mouth told me Detective Aymond still had reservations. “Have any coffee around here?” he asked, adjusting the holster on his hip.

  A frown flicked across Tom’s face. “Too late in the day, Buddy. Solid acid by now. We need to get going. Is your podnuh Deuce behind you?”

  “No. The boss called him to another duty. You’ll just have to make do with me.”

  Tom reached for the phone. “And what piss-ant excuse did the sheriff give for sending Deuce away? This case is top priority. I’m callin’ him.”

  “Ease off, Tom. I can cover. The narcs in Lafayette needed reinforcements for a big operation. The boss sent everyone in our unit—and Deuce—over there. Remember Deuce used to be a narc before he came to me.”

  Tom pinched his lips together. “Big operation? How many times have I heard ‘em say they’re about to nab the biggest drug dealer in Iberia Parish—only to find out later they’re puttin’ on another one of those chicken-shit reverse stings?”

  Tom picked up the language of the detectives when in their company—fortunately not the full repertoire of expletives.

  “Easy, Tom. The Feds are all over this one. Something about cocaine coming in from Mexico under pallets of lettuce. Not money, the leafy kind. Operation Rough Romaine, they’re callin’ it. Deuce is a key player ‘cause he recruited the inside snitch.”

  Tom’s face relaxed; he accepted the situation.

  “Are you happy with Deuce as a partner, Buddy? The word is you’re doing a fine job bringing along the rookie detective.”

  Buddy put up his thumb in a sign of approval. “He’s damn good. I don’t mind telling you I was pissed when the boss assigned him to me. Four years until my retirement, I thought the sheriff was pushing me out the door and piling on by making me train my replacement. A nig—,” Detective Aymond cut an eye in my direction. “A black man to boot. But a couple weeks with Deuce as my partner and I was OK with him. He’s got my back.”

  Tom had told me the story. The pair answered a call to assist patrol with a domestic disturbance in a four-block grove of house trailers on Shotgun Alley. A crowd gathered and the scene turned ugly. Deuce stepped in front of his older, white partner, figured out who was instigating the trouble, and whipped the punk’s shootin’ arm behind his back. Then Deuce talked the all-black crowd quiet. The code of the cops: nothing ranks higher than fast action and loyalty at a time of trouble.

  “You know he’s got the genes for this work. His father, Thomas Washington Sr., was the first black State cop in Troop I. He was good. Died way too young,” Tom said.

  Tom indicated where the detective should sit and got permission to run a tape. Detective Aymond reached into his file and extracted a folder labeled FALGOUT in black ink and BOUDREAUX in blue. He unclipped papers attached to the inside front cover and handed them to Tom, who set them on my side of the table. Statements. The detective unclipped another stack of papers from inside the back cover. More statements. I guessed all these would be part of my copying task. He pulled out the one remaining item—a notebook. Tom signaled me to turn on the tape recorder. Ah-ha. A promotion.

  “So Buddy, let’s start with your call to go to the fire at the Falgout’s house on Captain Cade Road. That’s the beginning of the investigation into the Pierre Boudreaux murder, right?”

  The detective nodded. “Right. Boudreaux starts with Falgout. As you see, we’ve got them in the same file.”

  “So what time did you and Deuce get there?”

  Buddy thumbed through the notebook to find the page he wanted. “September 1, 2006, 1600 hrs. We got there at 4:00 p.m.”

  “Wait. Are you reading directly from that notebook?” Tom asked.

  “Yup. Deuce kept a detailed record, even drew us some pictures.”

  Tom turned to me. “A job for you, Mandy. We’ll have to go over every word and every drawing in that notebook. Any discrepancy between the contemporaneous notes, the sworn statements, and testimony on the stand at trial is an opportunity for Sarah to go to town on cross. I can hear her now. ‘You mean you wrote down one thing at the time and now you say something else? Were you lying then or are you lying now? Which is it, detective?’”

  Buddy knew a few more verses to the song.

  “Sarah’s a piece of work, that one. When she’s got no legitimate defense, she puts the cops on trial. ‘You mean to tell me you talked to twenty-five people before you found one who knew anything about these events?’ You bet we did! That’s how fuckin’ hard we work to get information. But Tom,” the detective raised his eyebrows, “the notebook a problem? Any tim
e you want me to lose it, or maybe a page or two, just give me the word.”

  “We’ll see about that down the road. Mandy’ll look for any inconsistencies.”

  Whoa! Red flag. Did Tom just sign me on to be party to compromising evidence? He picked up the alarm on my face.

  “Easy, Mandy. If we find discrepancies, we work on an explanation to have ready for the trial. I’ve seen Deuce’s work before. His meticulous detail will make our case better.”

  Detective Aymond narrowed his eyes.

  “You know, Tom, when we prep Richie we don’t turn over everything some fuckin’ defense lawyer might use to mow us down.”

  “Drug cases are a whole different ball game, Buddy. No matter how serious the charge might be, Richie’s not lookin’ at the endless post-conviction process we have for capital convictions. He can count on no more than three years of post-trial scrutiny.”

  I already knew capital cases were damn near eternal. In Baton Rouge I’d done research on convictions over fifteen years old. Who could predict what an appeal court judge—probably just trying to dodge signing an execution order by sending the case back down for another hearing—might think should have been done differently? The U.S Supremes were constantly moving the bar.

  Detective Aymond smiled. “At least for this trial, we get Sarah Bernard doing the grilling. Some eye candy to go with the abuse she dishes out. Flashy broad, that one.”

  I felt better about Tom, but I’d keep an eye on Detective Aymond, especially when those eyes narrowed into a leer. His comments about Sarah Bernard made me feel like a dull little mouse.

  Tom prodded. “You say you arrived at the Falgout house at 4 p.m. Then what?”

  “Yeah. That afternoon I was nodding over computer printouts stacked up on my desk in the basement of the courthouse when the sheriff’s voice came over the intercom. The voice of the man himself, not Elnora from the switchboard, so I knew there was something big going on. I was damn glad to put aside that white-collar crap I’d been working on. I hate paper cases. At the end, there’s always some deal to get restitution, and the crook doesn’t spend a day in jail. Now violent crime? That’s good duty. Find the guy who did it, and your boss and mine marshal all forces to put him behind bars for very long time.”