by BJ Bourg
Something didn’t look right with one of the trees to my left, about forty yards out, and I studied the leaf and branch pattern. I grunted. A man in a store-bought ghillie suit was crouched amongst the foliage and he was holding a scoped rifle. The rifle wasn’t pointing at us, so I figured he was one of Simoneaux’s boys.
I nodded subtly in his direction and asked Mr. Simoneaux if the man was part of his crew.
“I’ve got five good men out there.” Mr. Simoneaux said. “Wellman Boudreaux and his boys won’t know what hit them if they decide to pay us a visit.”
I turned away from the railing and walked to the far side of the porch with Dawn—our boots echoing against the hollow porch floor—where Orville and Quentin were sitting on a swing. Both men wore long faces and appeared drained of life.
Dawn introduced us and I nodded to them. After pulling a wooden stool from the wall and sitting in front of them, I looked to Quentin first. Dawn had told me he was the eldest son, but, while he was better dressed than Orville, he didn’t act like it. He seemed unsure of himself and timid. His yellow hat was stained and crooked on his head. Dried blood was smeared on the bid of his coveralls and on his white T-shirt.
I pointed to the blood. “Did you try to save Norris?”
Quentin rubbed a rough hand through his salt-and-pepper beard and nodded, staring absently at the floor.
“Can you tell me what happened out there? What went wrong?”
“I told them I had a bad feeling,” Quentin said, his voice quivering. “But they wouldn’t listen to me. The last words Norris spoke were to make fun of me.”
“What do you mean by a bad feeling?” I asked.
“I get bad feelings sometimes. Like a premonition. And every time I get the feeling something bad happens.”
I nodded, not knowing whether I should take him serious or have him evaluated. “What happened after you got this bad feeling?”
“They killed Norris, that’s what happened. One second he was there laughing at me and the next second he was dead on the ground.”
Tears slid down Quentin’s puffy cheeks and disappeared amongst the underbrush of his beard.
“I saw the shell casings where you fought back against the killer. Were you shooting at something in particular, or just firing blindly into the trees?”
Quentin was crying now. Orville pulled his bandana from his head and handed it to Quentin, who wiped his face and blew his nose with it. I was mildly disgusted when Quentin returned the bandana to Orville and he wrapped it back around his bushy hair.
“We were shooting blindly into the trees,” Orville said, taking over for his brother. “We couldn’t see nothing. It was foggy and the sun hadn’t come fully up yet, so it was still shadowy in the woods.”
“I understand y’all stole four alligators from Wellman Boudreaux’s property.”
Orville tore his eyes from me and glanced at his father, who nodded. “It’s okay, son. You can talk to these people. They promised to help us find the person who killed Norris.”
Orville sighed and nodded. “When Wellman’s dad was alive he used to let us hunt the north shore of the lake, and that’s how we’d make most of our money to survive for the year. Since the old man died, Wellman refused to give us permission to hunt the property and we can’t get alligator tags anymore.”
“So, y’all steal from him now?”
Orville shuffled his feet. “I wouldn’t use such a strong word. I’d just say we take back what’s ours. You know, like reclaiming your property?”
“I’m sure Wellman would view it as stealing.” I was thoughtful for a minute, and then asked how they were able to sell the alligators without tags. There was more shuffling of the feet, but he just sat quiet.
“Look, I know my boys broke man’s law,” Mr. Simoneaux said from behind me, “but we’re just trying to survive the best way we know how. We have clients that’ll pay top dollar for alligators—tagged or not—and it’s the only thing that keeps us going throughout the year. If we didn’t do that we’d lose everything. Isn’t it better that we’re doing what we have to do to survive instead of getting a government handout?”
I couldn’t argue, but asked, “If you live off the land and own this place, why do y’all need to steal for money?”
Mr. Simoneaux removed his hat and rubbed his tired face. “When the oil disaster happened five years ago, I was forced to take out a mortgage on this place. Wellman knew about the loan and he cut us off a year later, hoping we would run out of money and lose the place to the bank.”
I nodded my understanding. “And then he would buy it for pennies on the dollar at auction.”
Mr. Simoneaux nodded and shoved the hat back on his head. “We decided to beat him at his own game. If you want to arrest anyone for it…arrest me, because it was my idea and my son’s won’t do nothing without me approving it.”
I waved him off and turned to Orville with my next question. “Did y’all take a different route each time y’all went from the Boudreaux land to your own?”
Orville gave me a blank stare. “Why would we do that?”
“So, you didn’t?”
He shook his head. “We followed the same trail all four times. Well, we made eight trips all together—four going and four coming back.”
“Did y’all see or hear anything that was out of the ordinary on any of those trips?”
He dabbed at his bushy mustache. It was a seventies variety perv-stache, and I was sure it was food from an earlier meal I saw stuck in the hairs on the left side of his face. I tried not to stare at it, but it was difficult.
“Well,” I asked, “anything?”
“We heard a branch break on one of the trips. I think it was the last one, but it could’ve been from an animal. I can’t remember anything else.”
“Did y’all hear a boat at all? Either before or after the shooting?”
Orville shook his head.
“Do any of you have enemies? Anyone who hates y’all enough to kill one of you?”
“Wellman and his boys.” Orville shrugged. “Other than them, we don’t have problems with anybody.” He pointed toward the front of the house. “You saw all of those people in there. They live in these parts and they’re all our friends. They hate the Boudreaux family as much as we do.”
Mr. Simoneaux nodded his agreement. “Our family has never had problems with anyone until Old Man Boudreaux died. When that happened, Wellman took over and he cut off a lot of families from hunting the lake. If one of them boys turned up dead, I could name a lot of people who would want them dead…but not my boys.”
“Any of the Boudreaux boys an expert with a scoped rifle?” I asked. “Maybe had some sniper training in the past?”
“Every hunter out here is an expert with a rifle,” Orville said. “If you can’t shoot, you can’t feed your family.”
I started to explain that “expert” was a relative term and there was a vast difference between a hunter and a sniper, but decided against it. “What about threats? Has Wellman or any of his boys threatened y’all in the past?”
Orville shook his head and looked up at his dad, who agreed.
I sighed. As I’d feared, they couldn’t give us anything concrete. All we had was a guess, and that was not enough to arrest Wellman Boudreaux or any of his people.
CHAPTER 10
Dawn and I didn’t speak much on the boat ride back to the landing, both of us trying to solve the case in our minds. It was dark when we arrived and Louisiana’s state birds—mosquitoes—were out in full force.
After we gathered up our gear and Norm had secured the boat on the trailer, we said our goodbyes and agreed to meet at the boat landing in the morning to pay Wellman Boudreaux a visit.
“I’m waiting with the boat next time,” Norm said. “I ain’t built for all this SWAT team shit. I hired on to write lifejacket tickets and yell at teenagers for speeding through no-wake zones, not to get murdered and eaten by Deliverance-style clans out in the swamp
s.”
As I walked toward my unmarked truck, I passed a row of tents nestled against the pier. I could hear soft whispering from inside the different tents as the occupants were talking the night away. When I reached the last tent I saw a shadowy figure in a folding chair staring out over the water. Mosquitoes swarmed around the figure, but it didn’t flinch. Although it was dark, I could easily make out Shannon Reed’s lanky shape. I stopped and shifted my drag bag to my left shoulder. “What are you doing out here all alone?” I asked, trying to sound cheerful.
Shannon didn’t turn around. A cigarette dangled from his fingers and he took a long drag from it before speaking. “Why do they do it, law man?”
Scrunching my nose, I asked what he was talking about.
“Why do they slaughter so many alligators?”
I was surprised by how sad he sounded. I’d taken him as the opportunistic sort and figured he was just riding someone else’s cause right into the ground, trying to gain as much popularity and exposure as he could in the meantime.
“It’s their livelihood, Mr. Reed. It’s how they feed their families and put clothes on the backs of their kids. No different than a carpenter or a doctor.”
“Yeah, but carpenters and doctors don’t have to murder other creatures to get their jobs done.” Shannon smashed the cigarette out on the arm of the chair and shoved the butt in his shirt pocket. He then lifted a finger. “I take that back—some doctors do, indeed, murder people in the course of their jobs, and they never pay for it.” He sighed. “But that’s a conversation for another time. Today, I’m trying to save these beautiful crawling dinosaurs from certain extinction.”
“Well, I wish you luck,” I said, and walked to my truck, leaving him to mourn in peace. Once inside my truck, I swatted at the few mosquitoes that followed me and turned my phone back on. It immediately lit up with a dozen or so text messages and a few missed calls. All of the text messages except one were from Sally. She apologized for getting angry and asked that I call her. As the text messages had come in throughout the day from her, they seemed to grow more hostile. She accused me of ignoring her messages and her phone calls. I sighed and checked the calls, figuring I’d get to hear her screaming voice over and over. The first missed call was from Dean. His son was going to be shipped off to boot camp at the end of next month and he was throwing a going away party for him tomorrow night, so he asked if I’d like to go.
“You can even bring your new girlfriend if you want,” he said, laughing hysterically. I could hear Jerry and Ray laughing in the background, too. I smiled and went to the next call, but grunted when I heard the voice. It was from Sally, as were the next four voice messages. I deleted them without listening to them. The last message was from Dawn. I immediately sat up in my seat.
“London,” she said, “I just wanted to thank you for your help today. I’m going to place the bullet in evidence and ask that they enter it into IBIS (Integrated Ballistics Identification System) to see if we can get a hit. Also, if you’d like, we can meet in Seasville tomorrow morning and ride to the launch together. No need to waste two tanks of the public’s gas.” There was a pause where I could hear her soft breathing, and then she said, “Well, then, if that’s cool with you, I’ll see you in the morning.”
Smiling to myself, I started to put my phone away when it rang in my hand. I quickly hit the answer button and shoved it to my ear. “Hey, Dawn, sorry I missed your call—”
“Dawn?” Sally’s voice was laced with anger. “Dawn Luke? Why in the hell is she calling your damn phone? Are you screwing her now? Huh? Answer me, damn it!”
I sighed and sank into my seat. “Sally, you’ve got to stop. We’re done. It’s over. You need to move on.”
“You can’t just walk out on me in the middle of an argument. We need to talk this through—figure things out.”
“There’s nothing to figure out, Sally. You said you didn’t trust me and we’re not right for each other. Like I’ve told you many times before, there’s nothing more to say.”
“I know I said those things, and I’m sorry. I was just feeling a little insecure and when I thought back to how you slept with me while you were dating Bethany, it caused me not to trust you. I just overreacted and said some things I shouldn’t have said.”
I began to grow impatient. Someone had stomped a gigantic mud hole in the hearts of Norris Simoneaux’s family—a hole that would never be filled—and here I was listening to poor Sally complain about our ex-relationship. I was certainly tired of hearing what an asshole I’d been for cheating on Bethany, especially from the very woman who threw herself at me in the hotel room that night.
“Look,” I said, “I’m hanging up the phone. I don’t want you calling me or texting me unless it’s about work. We’ve got nothing more to discuss.”
“Who the hell do you think you are?” she demanded. “You’re lucky I even slept with your dumb ass—”
I hung up the phone and tossed it into the center console. As I drove home, my thoughts went back to the sniper hide in the woods. I tried to put a face to the kneeling impression on the ground. Who killed Norris and why? Did he go sideways with some bad people? What if he wasn’t the target? What if someone killed him to get to Frank Simoneaux or one of his other boys?
The questions raced through my mind and they went unanswered all the way to my front door. Maybe tomorrow will bring about some answers, I thought.
CHAPTER 11
I met Dawn at the Seasville Substation bright and early the next morning. After stopping for breakfast, she drove us to the boat launch. Norm was waiting for us and the boat was already in the water.
I snatched my drag bag and rucksack from the back seat of Dawn’s cruiser—a brand new, white Dodge Charger—and walked with her toward the pier. I stole a glance toward the tents. No one was up yet.
“Isn’t it illegal to camp out here without a permit?” I asked.
“I believe so,” Dawn said, “but I doubt anyone will complain about it. If we stop them from doing it, we’ll also have to stop the locals who camp here every weekend.”
I told her about Shannon Reed and she scrunched her nose. “He sounds like a weirdo.”
“I think he sincerely believes in what he’s doing.”
“As long as he doesn’t cross the line from activist to eco terrorist, we won’t have a problem with him.”
We continued walking until we reached Norm’s boat and he waved at us to board the vessel. Once Dawn and I were settled in beside each other, Norm pulled away from the dock and headed toward Devil’s Lake.
According to the map Norm had given me, the Boudreaux Camp was located at the mouth of the Cut, right where Bayou Magnolia spilled into the lake. The large patch of land was almost shaped like the panhandle of Florida, and it was surrounded on all four sides by water—Bayou Magnolia to the west, Pelican Pass to the north, Little Bayou to the east, and Devil’s Lake was south of it. The Boudreaux family owned a little more than half of the small island, and theirs was the lake side.
I leaned toward Dawn with the map. I pointed to the northeast corner of the island, where the Simoneaux homestead was located, and then to the southwest corner, where we were headed. Speaking up to be heard over the boat motor and the whipping of the wind, I asked if there were any other houses on the island.
She shook her head and pushed her hair back, trying to keep it from flying in her eyes. She grabbed my face and pulled my ear close to her mouth. “Two other families who used to own small patches of property along the lake, but Wellman’s dad somehow managed to get his hands on their property, and the family now owns the entire northern lakefront.”
Dawn had run rap sheets on Wellman Boudreaux and his sons so we’d know what we were dealing with, but none of them had much of a criminal record. Wellman had been arrested for DWI, felony theft, and simple robbery, while his oldest son, Septime, had been picked up for domestic abuse battery and a few counts of disturbing the peace. The only blemish on his youngest son�
��s record was terrorizing. His name was Maxille and he had done some time in the juvenile justice center for hacking into his high school’s computer system and sending a bomb threat from the principal’s email. Lucky for him, he was only sixteen when he committed the crime and it remained in juvenile court.
At long last, Norm slowed the boat and we drove by Pelican Pass to where Bayou Magnolia snaked toward the Cut. The bayou was narrower in that area and the trees hung low on both sides of the bank, casting deep shadows on the water. I’d seen a couple dozen alligators on the boat ride, and they were all huge. Beautiful crawling dinosaurs, I thought, and laughed to myself. Of all the animals Shannon Reed could’ve described as beautiful, he picked an alligator. Somehow, that descriptor did not immediately come to my mind when I encountered them out in the wild—or anywhere else for that matter. No, the first thing that came to my mind was, “Don’t fall in.”
“We’re almost there,” Norm called out. “And get ready—their place ain’t nothing like the Simoneaux camp. You’d better wipe your feet if they invite us in.”
CHAPTER 12
I had to blink twice when Norm slowed the boat to an idle and we drifted toward the bank of castle Le Boudreaux. It was a massive three-story home with its own concrete pier and a drive-up boat garage. The front of the home was comprised mostly of windows and glass, and there were two levels of wrap-around porches.
While the home and property were in pristine condition, the six men on the second story porch were anything but refined. Rough and disheveled—except for the one—they were armed for battle and had spotted us approaching the house. Even from that distance I noticed that the cleanest of the six men was brandishing a Remington Model 700 rifle topped with expensive glass—and it was comfortable in his hands.