“Look,” said K-Paul, digging in the ashes with a stick. “Dog tags.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure.”
“He looked like a warrior.”
“When you saw him, you said he was dead.”
“He was. I had a vision of him. But I’m positive he didn’t have his tags on.”
“Some vets, once they’re home, take them off. Put them in a drawer.”
At the hospital, she’d seen hundreds of veterans with PTSD, startled by noise, anxious in crowds, and self-medicating with drugs and alcohol. Louisiana had tons of poor boys who’d fought.
“L’Overture must’ve just returned from Afghanistan or Iraq,” she said.
K-Paul kicked a pile of ash. “Damn shame to survive war. Then come home and die.”
“Be murdered.”
K-Paul rubbed the silver tags. “Blood type: AB negative. Faith: None.”
“For a southern Louisianan, that doesn’t seem right. No faith? Doesn’t make sense.”
Louisianans were famous for their faith; their churches might be a no-name, hole-in-the-wall, a converted storefront in a strip mall or a high-flying cathedral, but Louisianans always believed in things unseen. They had faith.
“At least he could be a holy roller,” K-Paul remarked.
“A lapsed Catholic.”
“Or one of your people.”
Her lips thinned. “He would’ve been one of Nana’s people. Maybe that’s why he was living on the outskirts of DeLaire. Maybe he’d disavowed Nana and voodoo. Or at least the kind of voodoo as practiced by Nana. I’m still not confident that the community isn’t involved in the deaths.”
K-Paul slipped the dog tags into his pocket. “He probably disavowed the army, too. Some soldiers do.”
“The only thing he didn’t disavow was his family.”
“Maybe they moved here to start a new life.”
“To find some peace,” responded Marie.
“I can understand that.” K-Paul walked the crime scene, sticking a branch into ash, shoving aside crumbling wood. “Marie. Some bones here. And a skull.”
“Let me see.” With two hands, Marie gently clasped the hard bone. “It’s an adult female. The mother’s skull.”
“Father and baby must be here, too.”
Her fingers traced the eye sockets, the cheekbone arcs. She murmured, “Not quite a cremation. Too much bone is left. For some cultures, even a purifying cremation doesn’t necessarily override a violent death.”
“You mean like Vietnam?”
“Yes. But also in Japan, Nepal, and South Africa. Many cultures believe spirits can remain tormented and vengeful. Purification by fire isn’t always enough.”
“Two more skulls,” said K-Paul, pointing with his branch. “Should we pack them up?”
Marie crossed to him, cradling the mother’s skull next to the father’s and baby’s.
“A sad trinity,” she said, yearning for Marie-Claire.
Inexplicably, Marie thought of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.” Small, medium, and large skulls; child, mother, and father.
“The baby’s skull hadn’t fused,” she said. “I’ve never seen an infant skull without,” she paused, “skin.”
Fire and animals had scored, picked the bones clean.
She could see it—after the blaze, creatures waiting for the sight to cool. Then they did what creatures do, forage. Feed.
“I’m surprised bones are still here,” said K-Paul. “Wouldn’t murderers want to hide their crime? Clear evidence?
“Walker came after you. Why? What do you think? Arrogance or stupidity?”
“Arrogance. And a complicit sheriff.” She turned, studying the trees, the patches of cloudy sky. “Country people stick together. They didn’t imagine that once burned anyone would visit the L’Overture homesite. The burning, itself, was a warning.”
K-Paul sucked air between his teeth. “While the city is overflowing with unknowns. The unexpected. Though they failed, maybe that’s why your murder was planned.”
“Maybe they knew I wouldn’t give up.”
Marie and K-Paul stared at each other. Eventually, K-Paul said, dryly, “I can’t imagine having you as an adversary.”
Marie didn’t speak.
Uneasily, K-Paul shifted his weight.
The good, honest doctor, the religious Cajun, Marie thought, was uncomfortable. K-Paul only knew her inside the context of the hospital. Just as she’d only half-known him until today, until she’d seen him in the bayou, he’d only half-known her.
“What should we do with the bones?” asked K-Paul. “Take them with us?”
“No, leave them. Parks would have already scolded me for disturbing the crime scene. But I have a feeling that no one is ever going to investigate this but us.”
K-Paul laid the skulls gently on the ground, and placed the visible bones nearby. Marie squatted next to him. “Prayers, K-Paul. Let’s say prayers.”
Bowing his head, K-Paul made the sign of the cross. Marie spread her hands—high—above the bones, murmuring, “Peace. You shall forever be remembered, honored by me.”
“Like Huan,” K-Paul added, unashamedly wiping tears from his eyes.
“Like Huan,” she responded, sorrowfully, thinking about how so many she’d known and loved had died.
“We should hide the bones,” she said.
“You mean bury them?”
“Later. We’ll bury them later. I don’t know why, K-Paul, I just know it’s right. We’ll bury them later.”
With their hands, and strong branches, she and K-Paul began scraping dirt, fallen leaves, moss, and dried brush over the bones.
“Look, Marie.” K-Paul pointed at a shallow trench, a foot behind them. “I bet it surrounds the house. Whoever set the fire knew what they were doing. The trench would’ve prevented the fire from spreading.”
“A country technique? Something the sheriff would’ve been good at?”
“You bet. The bayou doesn’t have sanitation drivers. Every kid learns how to burn trash, brush, even cook with fire without igniting a larger one.”
Marie scooped soil. An inchworm crawled in the small mound. Marie knew that inside the dirt were seedlings, millions of bacteria. She dusted off the dirt, then stared at her palms. Dirt particles clung to her skin. Mud traced both lifelines.
K-Paul cupped her hands. “Traces of water and oil. Not just ordinary dirt.”
“No. Not at all.” She didn’t tell K-Paul that she still felt a trace of the soil’s energy in her palm. The ground they stood on was alive. “I’m missing something.” She studied the desolate yard.
K-Paul wiped his dirty hands on his jeans. “The latent oil would’ve raised the heat by several degrees.”
“And the added gasoline would’ve been perfect fuel.”
“There’s got to be a pipeline near,” said K-Paul, studying the ground once more, trying to see patterns, subterranean trails, in the dirt. “Vivco probably leases this land. Maybe the L’Overtures were unwelcome squatters.”
“But how would that hurt the oil? Or be reason enough to die for?”
K-Paul shook his head, plunging his hands in his back pockets. “I don’t know. This cloak and dagger stuff is beyond me. I feel like Dr. Watson.”
“Maybe now that Nana’s gone, Malveaux will stop lying.”
“Maybe he’ll lock himself inside his own damn jail. As in ‘Physician, heal thyself.’ ”
“Policeman, arrest thyself?” Marie smiled.
“If the crime fits.”
“I’m glad you’re here, K-Paul.”
“Even though I’m not a detective? Like your friend Parks?”
“No more teasing about Parks, okay? Parks was—is—a good friend. He’s already in New Orleans.”
“Well, you set this Cajun boy right,” said K-Paul, loudly, slapping his chest.
“Stop it, K-Paul.”
K-Paul reached for her; she stepped back, sidestepping his grasp.
> “I need,” she said emphatically, “Dr. Girouard’s help. I need the country and city man who works in the ER. The Cajun Catholic who serves the poor.”
K-Paul looked at the sky, the ground, then at Marie. “Let me say this,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I’ve been attracted to you from the first day I saw you.”
“Don’t.”
“I won’t keep embarrassing you or myself. But tell me you’ve known.” Vulnerable, he gazed at her. “Haven’t you?”
“Yes, I knew.”
The simple words satisfied him, and they confirmed her sense that she’d stayed away from him these past four years not just because he was a colleague, but because of his intensity and, maybe, too, because of her own repressed desires.
“What do you want me to do?” asked K-Paul, squaring his shoulders, his voice serious.
“Let’s agree to stay professional. Both of us.”
“Fair enough. Though from this Cajun’s view, the flirting’s been one-sided. Four years, I’ve felt like a frog trapped in a gator’s throat. You don’t give a man hope.”
She couldn’t suppress her smile. “K-Paul,” she said, slightly scolding, “let’s keep doing what we do well.”
“Working together.”
K-Paul smiled, extending his hand; Marie clasped it, and shook.
Though country, K-Paul had the soft hands of a city doctor. She studied their clasped hands, noting the contrast between her brown skin and his ruddy flesh. Black oil smudges were on both. Connect the clues, she thought.
“You said oil and water caused wetlands devastation. Could it have caused murder?”
“Historically, it already has.”
Marie didn’t quite hear him. She was distracted by the well, and the glare of the setting sun on the bright new pail. The sun striking it was bright and luminescent.
The ghosts were gone.
Rocks had been cemented together to form the well; digging, forming, then setting the stone would have been hard. But it would have been essential. And this well with the moss, weathered stone, and rusty chain had probably been built generations ago. Maybe during slavery? Or maybe, post slavery, as part of the L’Overture homestead? Without utility services, water would have been needed for any family’s survival.
L’Overture’s ghost had been fixated on the well. The new water pail.
What was it that Nana had said? “Mind the water.”
She walked to the well. Turned the rope turnstile, pulling the bucket high, higher. It was heavy with water.
“What’re you thinking?
“Not sure. Before she died, Nana said, ‘Mind the water.’ Deet delivered the message.”
She dipped her hands into the pail. The water was clear, and she washed her palms clean. She cupped water in her hands, and smelled it as it dripped, disappeared through her fingers.
Plain water. No special odor. She tasted it. Just water. How did it connect with the shape-changing spirit’s words: “Watch the waters?”
“What’re you thinking?”
“I don’t know. A hunch. We should take samples.”
“Test the water?”
“Soil, too.”
“I’ve got a medical kit in my Jeep. Some test tubes for blood. Urine cups.”
“That’ll work.”
K-Paul headed toward the Jeep. He stopped, turning around, his hand sweeping, encompassing the yard. “This is where you saw the threads, isn’t it?”
“Yes, and I’m certain now that it was malevolent. Not just earth, not just oil. The farthest thing from a benign, organic substance.”
She saw it again, among the tree roots—taunting, like a charmed snake. Then, like a mirage, she didn’t see it. She saw only shadows and light.
“Whatever it was, is,” she corrected, “I think it would’ve affected the soil, and soil affects groundwater.”
K-Paul nodded. “I’ll collect samples.” He walked to the car.
Marie let the pail drop. She could hear, but not see, its splash.
She leaned over the stones, trying to see into the black bottom of the well. In Marie-Claire’s picture books, ogres or dragons always lived at the bottom of the well. Fearsome, furtive. Cannibalistic.
Did John L’Overture suspect something foul in the water?
That something had fouled the well? She looked at the scarred and charred house remains. “They had a small garden, K-Paul,” she hollered. “Nothing was growing well.”
“It could’ve been the oil.”
“It could’ve been.” But she didn’t think so. Oil, despite all the troubles it caused, had a useful purpose. A balance of good and ill effects. Whatever corrupted the garden or possibly fouled the well was just wrong. Nature didn’t survive without replenishing itself.
“A ceremony here,” she stated flatly, knowing as she said it that it was right. “A ceremony here, in the L’Overture yard, on this hallowed ground.”
A ceremony beside the victims’ bones.
A gun fired. A startling, cracking sound tore through the trees.
“Marie!” K-Paul shouted. “Down!”
Shrieking egrets and herons flushed, flew high, streaking wings against the blue sky.
Marie stood her ground, feet firm, facing southeast.
“Are you insane?”
“It’s Walker.” She just knew: Walker, in the wild, with a rifle and a scope.
“Marie, please, we’ve got to get out of here. Back to the Jeep. I’ve got a hunting rifle in the trunk’s gulley.”
“No,” she said sharply. She turned away from K-Paul and looked back into the marsh. Grasses swayed, curtains of gray moss trembled.
“There could be another shot. Please, we’ve got to go.”
She kept staring toward the southeast. “Walker wants to frighten me,” she said softly. “Cat and mouse.”
A thin, hot breeze touched her face. K-Paul, charged with adrenaline, breathed heavily.
“We should go, Marie.”
“It’s okay, K-Paul.” She bent, gathering soil in the plastic cup. “He’s already gone.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Just am.” She thought of Marie-Claire. “How do you know?” She’d asked her daughter how she’d known Beau’s name. “Just do,” her daughter had answered.
“I just am,” Marie repeated. “Sure.”
She was in Walker’s territory. His last shot was letting her know that he was powerful and in control.
K-Paul pulled up the water pail and held it as Marie filled two test tubes with water.
Her head tilted. “Mind, mine the water.” She saw the words hanging in the air. Saw water changing into a woman’s form.
“You’re sure you’re all right, Marie? We’ve got to be careful. Cats usually catch their prey.”
“Except when they’re arrogant.” Her voice, dry and harsh, she let the pail drop and splash into the water. “Walker should’ve killed me from a distance. His mistake will be to try and kill me up close and personal. He won’t succeed.”
She felt strength coursing through her, as if Ogun, the warrior god, was filling her up—but it wasn’t spiritual possession or the memory of it. It was her strength—the part of her, as in all humanity, that could be courageous and cruel.
She stood erect, jaw rigid, her hands balled into fists.
“Where are you? What’re you thinking?” K-Paul clutched her shoulder.
Her brow furrowed. She was starting to change. She was no longer just the book-educated doctor, but more Marie Laveau’s heir. She recognized, here, now, that there was a link between Nature and humanity’s failure to nurture.
DeLaire acreage and the bayou had been fouled, undone.
Her heart racing, she felt her ancestry rail and rebel. As a doctor, she had a passion for health and social justice, but her spiritual lineage, the memory of the gods who had possessed her, all fueled the heat in her blood. In her own right, she was a warrior, anything but passive.
“Who are you?”
She looked at K-Paul, her expression purposefully neutral. “I’m your friend, K-Paul.”
She walked back to the Jeep. Parks had seen and accepted the fierceness inside her. She missed him. Maybe, for her, he’d be willing to give New Orleans another try. Out here, in the country, she was alone, with no DuLac, no El, no Parks to encourage and help her thrive.
She was strong, still human. But vengeance was rising inside her. Battle lines were being drawn. Between her and Walker. Between her and the evil awake in the world.
Any man who loved her would have to accept that.
She looked out the Jeep’s front window. K-Paul pulled out his keys.
The bayou was an intense world. She was ready to be possessed, ready to find justice, ready to be the other woman she was—Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen.
TEN
DELAIRE PLANTATION
SUNSET
At dusk, they drove into DeLaire. Seeing streaks of sun, red, orange, and yellow, made it seem sad, unreal. A trick of the light, a rerun of a Twilight Zone.
The no-name bait shop; just bait in cheap neon, now turned off, dangling in the window. The sheriff’s office looking closed, and rag-tag. The mechanic’s shed with its graveyard of Chevys, trucks, and high-speed boats on trailers looked deserted. Only the spiraling, barbershoplike red light at the two-pump gas station suggested any life.
Had DeLaire ever been a vital community? She knew it was a community gone mad. Crazy, just like she’d felt when she first drove south.
Historically, Louisiana meant centuries of enslavement—backbreaking work, deaths, beatings, and rapes for African descendants.
What made newly freed slaves stay on the land where for generations they’d been persecuted? Why would a black person stay? Most didn’t.
During Reconstruction, the newly freed migrated north, went west. To cities. Chicago. New Orleans. Tulsa. On foot, by horseback, or by train.
Those who stayed in DeLaire—why, why did they remain?
Were they too comfortable? Too passive? Or was it an act of defiance to stay? They didn’t want to be run off their land.
This was the crux of the matter.
The Legend of Marie Laveau Mystery Trilogy Page 54