Mac made a noise that lay somewhere between a curse and a growl. “If Don Gateau’s telling the truth, then both Amelia and Ray are lying. Let’s look around and then let the sheriff know.”
The Patout’s Seafood van was still in the back lot, but the pickup and boat were gone. In their place sat a muddy black sedan—a recent-model Nissan Sentra. Jena took a photo of it with her phone and made note of its license plate.
“That was a white boat hitched to their pickup when we were here before, right?” Mac turned into the lot and parked near the front door. One other car sat nearby, so at least Amelia was doing some business today.
“It was—not too different from Ray’s except older.” Jena climbed out of the truck. “I guess Amelia’s still driving, but I can’t imagine she’s out in a boat wrangling gators.”
The tinkling bell that sounded when they opened the door caught the attention of Slade, who was behind the counter, wrapping up fish for an elderly couple whose clean white tennis shoes immediately marked them as tourists.
“Game wardens!” Slade said, smiling broadly. Jena pretended she didn’t see the elderly woman raising her phone and turning to take a selfie-on-the-sly with real live game wardens, but Mac had no such reservations. “Hey, Sinclair, why don’t you take a photo of me and these nice folks. Slade, you wanna be in the picture?”
The woman tittered, the man grinned, and Slade nodded vigorously. Jena couldn’t refuse without looking like a bitch, which amused Mac. Besides, interacting in a friendly way with the public was a key component of their job. They wanted people to call them when they had a problem, not be afraid of them.
Way too many photos later, the couple left, heading down to Cocodrie for a commercial fishing tour.
The bell hadn’t finished ringing from their departure when Jena asked Slade about Amelia. “Is your mom here today? We need to talk to her.”
“Yeah, sure. Mom!” Slade didn’t need an intercom system; nothing wrong with the kid’s lungs. A few seconds later, Amelia came out of the back. She took one look at Mac and Jena and turned to her son. “Slade, honey, would you go and put away all that fish that was brought in yesterday?”
“Sure thing.”
Mac waited until Slade went into the back before speaking. “We wanted to ask you some more questions about your business with Ray Naquin.” He’d borrow Jena’s story. “We’re trying to account for all the nuisance gators that have been bought in the parish since the attacks started a couple of months ago. The nuisance-gator hunters are behind in their paperwork, so we thought the sellers might keep more up-to-date records.” Damn, he was a good liar.
“That why you folks were asking about Raymond Naquin the other day, and I’ll tell you again. He was a good friend of my late husband’s, but he don’t come around like he used to.”
Amelia looked like shit. Her skin had a grayish cast and she was too thin. Today, she still wore a scarf around her head but she also pulled a portable oxygen tank on a wheeled backpack. Chemo had taken its toll.
“Ray told us the same thing—said he’d been selling over at Don Gateau’s, but Don’s been closed, so we thought maybe he’d gotten confused.”
“No.” Amelia didn’t bother pulling out her laptop this time and, sick or not, Mac would describe her expression as stubborn. “I mean maybe he’s confused, but no, he ain’t been selling to me, not since the first of the year. Maybe check up in Bourg or over in Lafourche Parish. Or ask Ray again yourself.”
Mac changed tactics; from the corner of his eye he could track Jena’s movement as she wandered around the refrigeration cases. He had no doubt she was listening and watching, though. “Where are you in your treatment, if you don’t mind my asking? My dad had cancer and it can turn around really quickly.”
His dad had survived and been free of cancer for several years, but Mac didn’t think the petite, dark-eyed Amelia Patout was going to have such a good outcome.
“My chances aren’t too good.” She spoke in a flat, emotionless voice. “It was all them damned cigarettes me and my husband both used to smoke like nobody’s business. The cancer doctors up at the center in Houma done told me to get my affairs in order.” She shook her head. “It ain’t that easy, getting affairs in order. I got an eighteen-year-old who wants to run wild and a fifteen-year-old who’s going to need some kind of care the rest of his life.”
Her voice had gotten more shaky as she talked. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, rubbing her eyes. “I didn’t mean to go off like that. Is there anything else you need to know?”
“I hate to ask, but could you check your laptop again and find out the exact date when Ray brought in his last gator? Or any gators that have come in from other hunters since Christmas?”
“My computer’s at home. I hadn’t planned to stay here so long.” As if to prove her point, Amelia pulled over a stool and sat down with a pained expression. “I been doing most of my bookkeeping at home since the chemo.”
Mac wanted to get his hands on that computer, but they’d pushed it as far as they could.
“Well, that was not exactly illuminating,” Mac said as soon as he’d pulled back onto the highway, headed for Thibodaux so Jena could give her presentation.
“Well, we know Ray or Amelia—or both—are lying,” she said. “But we’ll have to figure it out later. Now, I have to convince an arrogant DEA agent that his local drug mules have four legs, a tail, and seventy-two big white teeth.”
CHAPTER 26
Friday morning dawned overcast, with gray clouds building to the southwest. Cole hadn’t been fishing in a while, not to mention the law enforcement officers had pretty well laid waste to what was in his cooler.
He might have time to fish a little farther down the bayou before the rain moved in, though he wouldn’t stray too far. Spring storms could be unpredictable. Might be a quick, hard rain that turned to nothing in an hour, or it could turn black as midnight and rain buckets for hours. In either event, he didn’t want to be in a pirogue when a storm hit.
He optimistically packed a sandwich for lunch, gathered his bait and gear for channel catfish, and used the pole to push the pirogue away from the bank. Catfish were not picky eaters, so any bait would do. Cole had some raw chicken pieces and cheese and liver. He’d rather have gone farther south for red drum, but didn’t want to risk the weather.
He set the pole aside and took up his oar, propelling himself southward on Bayou Pointe-aux-Chenes, stopping in different spots to fish for a while and keeping one eye on the clouds. He’d pulled in three good-sized fish before the sky turned the color of charcoal. Time to turn around and get home.
He spotted a boat just past the outlet to his house, and realized the guy was trying to pull in an alligator. Instinctively, he pulled out his pole and gently pushed himself closer to the bank, where he was camouflaged by the tall grass. He didn’t think the guy had spotted him.
Was it the same man who’d been watching the day both Doris and Cole had found their alligators? Hard to tell. This guy had on a navy nylon jacket with the hood pulled up even though the rain hadn’t yet started.
His gator was not happy, but the guy handled him like a pro. Cole waited for him to tape the jaws and zip tie the feet, then squinted through the first drops of light rain and saw the gator was already secured. The man was . . . what the hell?
He wasn’t catching the gator; he was letting it go. First, he sat on the gator’s back and cut the zip tie on his front legs, then the powerful back legs. The gator thrashed but, to give the man credit, he stayed on its back with one hand holding most of his weight on the back of the gator’s neck. Reaching over, he cut the tape on both sides of the animal’s powerful jaws and shoved it into the water.
Cole watched as the guy pulled out a second gator from the bottom of his boat and did the same thing, then a third. If Jena’s theory was true, this might be the trafficker who’d picked up the gators near the Gulf and now was releasing them to be caught locally. He hoped the man had medical in
surance. Releasing an angry gator would be tricky business. Sooner or later, the gator was going to spin and this guy was gonna lose an arm.
A fat dollop of rain hit Cole on top of his head, the precursor to the storm. Not a lot of rain yet, but the wind picked up. He decided to wait a few more minutes to see if the guy was going to call it a morning. Craning his neck, Cole thought he saw at least one or two more gators in that boat.
For the first time, Cole wished he had one of those fancy smartphones with the cameras in them. The guy pulled a black box and a crumpled sheet of paper from his pocket. After consulting the paper, he turned some dials on the black box and watched it for several seconds.
A gust of wind almost blew Cole into the middle of the bayou. He only stayed hidden by grabbing two handfuls of marsh grass and praying they had enough roots left to hold him secure.
They held, and Cole glanced up at the other boater. The wind was playing havoc with the guy’s jacket, which was way too big for him. The hood finally blew back, and Cole got a look at the guy who might be one of the real drug traffickers of Terrebonne Parish.
Shit. It was a kid. Cole got a good look at his face, and spotted a vine tattoo on his neck. He was maybe seventeen or eighteen, skinny, with short white-blond hair that had probably gotten him called “towhead” a few times when he was younger. A kid dealing in dangerous drugs. It was a scenario that brought an eerie déjà vu over Cole, and sent a shiver down his back that had nothing to do with the dropping temperatures.
The rain was coming down harder now, and the boy seemed to have released his last gator. He pulled his hood back on, punched a number on his cell phone, and talked for maybe thirty seconds. Then he stuck the phone back in his pocket, started his outboard motor, and headed north. But not before Cole saw the prow of his boat. The white paint had been a recent job, he’d guess. Definitely a sloppy job. The boat’s original name, “Gypsy,” was still visible beneath its white topcoat.
Cole couldn’t have kept up with him even if he’d wanted—not in a pirogue with a paddle. He made sure the guy was out of sight, then pushed himself away from the bank and rowed for home. By the time he reached the point where the inlet ran into his side yard, the rain was coming down so hard he ran the pirogue aground.
No time to waste, so he gathered up the catfish and threw them into the cooler, snatched his truck keys off the worktable, and managed to escape Sugarcane Lane before it turned into Sugarcane River, which could happen very fast.
Turning north on the state highway, he drove until he spotted a convenience store with pay phones. He dug out quarters, but each one slid straight through the machine and clinked back into the coin return. None of the damned things worked.
A young woman and her blond-haired child stood outside the door to the convenience store, watching the rain. Cole faltered for a moment, seeing Rachel and Alex, but shook the cobwebs loose. Now’s not the time, Ryan.
“Excuse me.” He approached the woman and hated the look of fear and doubt that crossed her face upon seeing him. “I hate to ask, but do you have a phone I could use? The pay phones aren’t working. It’s a local call.”
Something about him must have sounded better than he looked because she nodded and handed him a phone.
He looked down at the screen, frozen. He had no idea how to use the damned thing. It didn’t look anything like his old iPhone.
The woman laughed. “They can be complicated, can’t they? Here, tell me your number and I’ll punch it in for you.”
Thanking God for kindhearted people and cursing himself for forgetting there were kindhearted people, Cole handed it back to her and dug into his pocket for Jena’s number. This time, if she didn’t answer the phone, he’d act like a normal person and leave a message.
But she answered with her brisk, “Sinclair.”
“Jena, it’s Cole. I just saw—”
“Where are you calling from?” Her voice sounded amused. “Caller ID says your name is Susan, and it sounds like you’re in the rain forest.”
“I saw him, Jena. One of the traffickers.”
Any hint of joking left her tone, and he thought from the change in pitch and background noise that she’d put it on speaker, probably so Mac could hear.
Her voice was all business. “Okay, start from the beginning.”
He gave her a truncated version of the gator releases. “His hood flew off in the storm and I got a good look at him.”
“Describe him.”
Cole could imagine her with her little notebook, writing furiously. Mac might have been taping it with his own phone. “Medium height, skinny kid. Just a kid, Jena. Maybe eighteen, with a vine tattoo on his neck. Short blond hair.”
There was a long pause. “How blond?” she asked.
“Almost white. He was in a boat that had been painted white, but you could see its former name through the last coat of paint: Gypsy.”
“Damn.” That was Mac, but through the falling rain, all Cole could understand was “asswipe” and “Marty.”
“Where are you, Cole?” Jena asked. “Whose phone is this?”
He told her. “I need to get back home while the road is still passable, unless I can help you with something.”
“You helped a lot, more than you know,” she said. “Go on home and I’ll touch base with you as soon as I can.”
Cole had a bad feeling as he handed the phone back to the woman and thanked her. “Where’s the best place to buy one of those?” he asked.
“If you’re not picky about it, you can buy a cheap one in the store here,” she said. “Won’t do much except make calls.”
That was all he needed.
Cole went inside and came out with a brand-new cell phone. Now he just had to learn how to make the damned thing work.
CHAPTER 27
“No way is Marty Patout working alone on this; he’s not that smart. Have you heard if the DEA has any idea where the supply is originating?” Jena sped down Highway 665 along Bayou Pointe-aux-Chenes. They’d picked up a patrol boat and hitched it to the back of her truck; since the rain had slackened, they’d nose around and see if Marty finished unloading his gators.
“Only that it’s probably New Orleans or Houston,” Mac said. “They’ve really clamped down in both cities, and O’Malley figures the supplier thinks Terrebonne is so isolated and scattered that it makes an easy entry point. So far, that’s proven true. What did the guy think about our gator theory?”
Jena shrugged. “Well, he didn’t laugh me out of the room.”
“It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack if you don’t catch Marty Patout in the act of releasing a drugged gator,” Warren had said after Jena called him with the newest information. “Rather than run up and down the bayous looking for him, stake out the area we know the gators were released this morning. Somebody’s gonna come and pick them up. As soon as you see something, call it in. Don’t get caught alone with any of these people.”
“Marty Patout doesn’t strike me as particularly dangerous,” Mac said.
“Yeah, well, tell me that after he shoots your ass,” Warren had said. “That kid spent his whole life on those bayous with his father before Martin got himself killed. There’s a lot of money at stake, and money makes people do desperate things.”
They launched from the Pointe-aux-Chenes landing and motored north along the bayou, with Mac steering and Jena handling the binoculars. They passed the inlet to Cole’s house and went a few miles farther before conceding that Warren was right.
“Let’s just turn around and watch the area where Marty released those gators.” Jena shouted to be heard above the motor. “They’ve already lost two that we know of, Doris’s and Cole’s. I bet they won’t risk letting them sit for long.”
Mac nodded and maneuvered the patrol boat into a tight U-turn, navigating back south of the inlet to Sugarcane Lane. They chose a spot along the bank where the grass hanging over the side was thickest and took cover as best they could.
Then
they waited, and Jena wondered how many hours of her life had been spent waiting. Waiting for lawbreakers, waiting for that indefinable thing that would make her feel whole and happy. Maybe no one ever found that thing, whatever it was. Maybe the happy-looking people were acting, playing the role.
She had a lot to be grateful for. She had a job she loved, and she was alive to enjoy it. She had colleagues she enjoyed working with, who were more family to her than her own family had ever been. She and Ceelie had formed a close friendship, so she had someone to do things with—at least when they could give Gentry the slip.
And then there was Cole Ryan, whose face had somehow slipped into her mental recounting of things for which she was grateful. They barely knew each other, yet her heart knew him. She understood him; he understood her. They were both coming out of really screwed-up places. Maybe something would come of it, at least after some plastic surgery. But she was still grateful for him. At the very least, she’d found another friend.
Three hours passed, then four, then five. They’d agreed to wait at least until dark set in, or maybe a little longer, but they’d both gotten fidgety from sitting too long. Jena kept stretching her legs out in front of her, then squatting, then tucking them underneath her, just to let one set of muscles rest while another set grew uncomfortable.
They were both in uniform, which increased the discomfort exponentially, especially with the humidity and their required life vests and duty belts. The vests were lightweight, but any extra layer added to the misery.
It was almost five thirty, and they agreed to give it another half hour before heading in to find something for dinner.
“Outboard coming from the north,” Mac said, settling back onto his perch and pulling out his own binoculars.
The white bass boat looked very familiar, as did the man driving it. “Our old friend Ray,” Jena murmured. “Let’s see if he stops.”
He did stop, and they watched—and Mac filmed with his camera phone—as Ray looked down at a black box and then maneuvered his boat slowly into place. He stuck a long pole in the mud and hung a line of chicken from it, positioned only a few inches above the waterline.
Black Diamond (Wilds of the Bayou Book 2) Page 18