He walked down a long hall to the library, where the others stood mixing drinks from a trolley. The last to arrive, he got a drink, and Joel called the meeting to order. Auguste Dauphin’s chair was empty as always.
Junior wondered if Joel’s anger at the funeral director had ebbed, but in a moment he heard the chairman advise why he’d called another meeting so soon. Landry Drake persisted in nosing around the parish.
“You recall that our friend David here left Landry with a challenge to learn about the mysterious goings-on in Asher. Even though we’ve heard nothing from the Sons of Jehovah in years, there’s fresh evidence that not only are they still in existence, but our investigator Mr. Drake knows about them.”
He talked about Em Savary, the girl whose picture was on TV. She lived in New Asher, and the Conclave therefore had a problem.
The governor said, “This is the most serious crisis we’ve faced. If the rest of you aren’t upset, you should be. What do we do next, Joel?”
The cult girl’s appearance complicated things. Before only Landry was their issue, but now there was a girl and a priest.
Whom should he use? He weighed each of the Conclave members in his mind. Waymon Ferrara possessed power and influence, but in his high-profile position, people would ask questions if he became involved in this situation. Not only did David Hebert have nothing to offer, Joel now believed he was even stupider than the sheriff, if that was possible.
Joel’s vast wealth couldn’t fix this problem. Stopping Landry and the girl required finesse and careful orchestration so things would appear normal. They must die, but making it happen without arousing suspicion would be tricky.
The last man standing, so to speak, was Junior Conreco, a man with faults. Unintelligent, brash and crude, he was also loyal and followed orders, albeit simple ones he could understand. Joel would guide him; he would be the puppeteer to Junior’s Pinocchio.
Junior drove home that night weighted by a heavy burden. According to Joel, he was the only one who could fix the problem. Eliminate Landry, the priest and the girl, Joel had ordered. Get rid of them so they could never tell their secrets.
Eliminate them? Junior had asked if he meant murder, and Joel stared back in silence.
The chairman had said he would guide Junior every step of the way, but Junior saw this as his big opportunity. There had to be another way to solve the problem without killing three people, because Junior refused to do that. The Conclave had faced scares before — times when people got too close to the truth — but they’d never discussed eliminating people — especially a girl and a priest.
He would come up with a better solution. His ingenuity would impress the others. A lowly sheriff steps up and saves everyone’s skins. That would show them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Four people sat around Val Broussard’s kitchen table. A fifth — Landry’s cameraman Phil — joined them at first, but Em flew into a tantrum, refusing to be on video. She said Landry could record her words but not her face, and he sent Phil back to the station.
Father Paul sat on one side of the girl and Val on the other, and she gripped their hands as Landry took out his notes and turned on the recorder. She did well during his questioning; she lacked formal education, but she had intelligence and keen powers of observation. She told a bizarre tale of a cult more suited for the eighteen hundreds than today.
Em slowly accepted that instead of being a threat, Landry wanted to help her like Father Paul and Val. She opened up, offering personal opinions, experiences, and taking them deep into the inner workings of life in a commune.
One important fact was that the current elder passed down oral histories to young people. This was one of the few things female children took part in, and Em had memorized many of them. She recounted the tale about the night the vigilantes burned Asher from the cult’s perspective. The men who came down the river that night were drunk and crazy with rage, and they murdered several men. Even worse, they did something awful to a young girl. Em refused to discuss it; either she didn’t know, or she wouldn’t tell.
“The deacons caught one of them,” she continued. “The others were already in their boats, and they watched the deacons hang their friend. He was the baddest of all — after what he done to that girl, he got what he deserved.”
She related how the cult had moved far away to a place in dense woods near a bayou and built New Asher, where she was born and raised. Landry asked her about girls from Abbeville who had disappeared over the years, including the three whose bodies turned up.
“Guess our folks still hold a grudge,” she replied without emotion.
“Are you saying the Sons of Jehovah sometimes kidnap girls and kill them?”
“No! I ain’t sayin’ that ’cause I don’t know. I never saw anybody take girls. But maybe it happened because those men from Abbeville did some awful things that night.”
“You didn’t see it, but did you hear stories?”
“I don’t want to talk about that anymore. You want to ask me something else?”
Landry’s next question evoked a powerful reaction. A split second after he asked about Billy Whistler, her face went dark, she shook her head violently, beat her fists on the table, and screamed, “No! No!” Then she jumped up and ran from the room.
Afraid she’d leave again, Val followed her to the bathroom, but Em slammed the door and told her to go away. She left the sobbing girl alone for a few minutes before coaxing her out. She brought her back to the table and gave her a Dr Pepper, something that was her favorite thing.
He apologized for upsetting her, although he wished he could coax information out of her about Billy Whistler. He turned to another topic.
“Do you know what a rougarou is?”
She nodded her head. “That’s what he is.”
“The — the name I said a minute ago that upset you? Billy?”
Another nod, and she said she was through talking about bad things.
Lee Alard called Billy Whistler a ghoul and said some called him a rougarou. She thinks so too. Are the rougarou real?
He asked if she’d ever been to old Asher. She’d been there only once, for a Remembering Day celebration a long time ago. People from New Asher went there by wagon or on foot. He asked how long the trip took. Instead of telling him in hours — she didn’t know the concept of time — she said they left after sunrise and were there by lunch. They spent the night and returned the next day. From that, he deduced that New Asher was around ten miles east of the Vermilion River.
Lee had called Remembering Day a legend, but now Landry had proof. And he was certain it fell on May 26th. It was unlikely anything was more important in the cult’s history, and a “remembering” ritual made sense.
She described huge bonfires built among the foundations of long-gone buildings, and people who sat in groups and talked throughout the night. They spoke of the ones who died, and they visited graves in the cemetery that lay in the woods behind the ruined town.
He was glad she’d mentioned the cemetery.
“How many people are buried there?” Cate had thought around seventy.
“A whole lot. They still bring people there to bury ’em.”
I thought so. “Even now? Why, after all these years?”
“Because Asher’s so important. Elder Johnson says we can never forget what happened that night. They carry bodies over from New Asher whenever somebody dies, to let them lie beside their ancestors.”
“How many people live in New Asher?”
“There’s over forty families, and every family has four or five people if you include the Strange Ones.”
“The strange ones?”
“The ones who aren’t right, know what I mean? Like touched in the head or messed up in the body. Stuff like that.”
“Are there a lot?”
“Yeah, every family’s got some. They’re born that way. They aren’t fit for breeding, but the women take care of them. Some of them grow up and all,
but they die way earlier than regular folks. Usually they behave, but sometimes one has to be put down if he gets ornery.”
Landry wrote a word on his yellow pad and turned it toward Father Paul.
Inbreeding.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The Conclave wasn’t the only group interested in finding Em. Elder Johnson Lafont wanted her even more than they did. She belonged to the cult, and he knew ways to deal with errant members of his flock.
One shopkeeper in Erath welcomed Elder Johnson when he and his deacons came to town for supplies. The strange men had something the merchant liked very much — ninety percent silver dollars. When he asked the elder about it once, the man shrugged it off, saying his people had accumulated a lot of the old cartwheels back in the old days when people used them as money.
Today they were worth twenty times their face value because of their rarity and silver content, but the elder spent them in the store like they were only worth a buck. The merchant made more profit on the coins than the goods they bought. The shopkeeper performed a delicate balancing act, keeping the Sons of Jehovah as customers while assuring his neighbors he wasn’t aiding and abetting the devil’s work.
Elder Johnson secretly used his cell phone for more than emergencies. He also sent and received text messages, although he kept that modern convenience a secret. The night Em appeared on New Orleans television, the sympathetic merchant texted Elder Johnson. His lost sheep was found, and the cult leader offered five hundred silver dollars if the man captured her.
Five hundred silver dollars converted to about $10,000! He said he’d find her, and the next morning he began his quest.
Getting information proved simple. He called the police station, identified himself as her uncle, and learned she had left with a friend, a priest from Abbeville named Paul Broussard. A lady at the church said that the cleric went to see his sister in New Orleans. He crossed his fingers that the sister was single, and sure enough, he found Valerie Broussard’s listing in the online white pages. She lived off Magazine Street in the Warehouse District.
The merchant drove to New Orleans, found the house, and saw a Channel Nine news van in the driveway. It meant she was there, because he’d seen her picture on that same station. He thought they could be interviewing her; he parked down the street and walked to the house.
_____
Landry had just finished interviewing Em when the doorbell rang. Val went to answer it and returned a moment later. It had been a man looking for a house, but he was on the wrong street.
Exhausted from the questions, Em went to her bedroom for a nap. Father Paul and Landry sat at the table as Val poured coffee.
“She can’t stay here any longer,” the priest said. “She didn’t want the police to put her picture on TV, and she was right, even though we found her because of it. Now the world knows she’s in New Orleans, and that means she’s in danger if she stays here.”
The others agreed, but no one could think of a solution. It couldn’t be in Abbeville because of the issues surrounding Asher.
He had an idea. He called Cate, summarized the situation, and put her on speakerphone. He laid out the plan, and it seemed perfect. In a place far from New Orleans that no one would suspect, Em would be safe.
Cate had to put everything together. Thirty minutes later she called back to say everything had been arranged.
For now, Em and Valerie would be Callie’s guests at Beau Rivage.
The merchant sat in his car a safe distance away, watching Father Paul and Landry load an SUV with suitcases and boxes. He knew the girl was there; he’d heard a young person’s voice when the woman answered the door. Em Savary came out of the house with that woman. They hugged Father Paul and Landry, got in the car, and drove away.
As he pulled into traffic behind them, he considered texting Elder Johnson, but decided he’d wait until he knew their destination.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Callie met Val and Em on the highway at the turnoff to her B&B. They stood on the shoulder, ignoring the only other car on the road as it crept past them. Callie led them to her house and set them up in adjoining bedrooms upstairs.
When Em saw the beautiful oak trees that ringed the home and watched a boat moving down the Atchafalaya River, she fell in love with Beau Rivage. There were no other guests, and that evening as they sat on the veranda, Em relaxed. She and Val turned in early, and as she snuggled down under a thick duvet, she hoped the bad things had ended.
The man from Erath had slowed when the SUV pulled to the shoulder where a young woman waited. He drove a half mile and stopped. This part of the state was unfamiliar to him; a sign had indicated to St. Landry Parish, and a few miles back they’d passed through a little town called Krotz Springs.
After a few minutes he doubled back to find the cars gone. There was a sign: “Beau Rivage. Bed & breakfast in an antebellum mansion.” An arrow pointed to a dirt road.
He crept down a one-lane road so narrow that trees on both sides brushed his car. He came to two brick pillars spanned by wrought iron with the name Arceneaux. Down a long driveway flanked by magnolias was a beautiful old house with the SUVs parked nearby.
He could go no closer for fear of being spotted, and he couldn’t stay put. If another car came down the road, he’d have to go to the house to turn around.
He put the car in reverse and backed a mile to the highway. In Krotz Springs, he gassed the car and walked in the station through an ancient screen door. The man behind the counter was gruff, but he answered a few questions. The girl who owned Beau Rivage was a member of the Arceneaux family, who had built the mansion. Her name was Callie Pilantro.
Armed with that information, he texted Elder Johnson.
The girl is in hiding, but I have located her. I will bring her to you soon.
His text sounded more optimistic than the situation warranted. He had been a merchant with a predictable life. Now, enticed by ten thousand dollars, he plotted to kidnap a girl and return her to the cult she’d escaped from. The concept sounded simple, but how to do it confounded him.
Interstate 10 ran just a few miles south, and he stayed the night at the first motel he found. He slept little, worrying that he wasn’t up to the challenge. Finally he thought of something that might work.
He passed through the brick gates and drove to Beau Rivage. The two cars hadn’t moved; he parked beside them and went into the office.
No one was around, although there were voices somewhere in the house. He walked through another door into a spacious hallway and looked around the magnificent old house.
“Sorry, I didn’t know you’d come in.”
He turned to face the same attractive girl he saw on the highway yesterday.
“May I help you?”
“I’d like a room.”
She apologized and said she had none at the moment.
“But the parking lot’s empty.”
In the hall behind her, the priest’s sister walked by.
“Sorry, but I can’t help you. Perhaps another time.”
“I’ve read about your B&B, and I’ve come a long way. If it’s not possible to stay, may I at least walk around and see the place?”
There’s something not right about this. Here stood a single man who wanted to stay in her secluded bed-and-breakfast. She never had solo guests; couples and families made up her clientele.
“Where are you from?”
“Uh, Georgia. I’m just passing through on the way to California to visit family.”
“I’m way off Interstate 10, and you came all the way up here just to stay at my place? How did you learn about Beau Rivage?”
He felt beads of sweat on his brow. He hadn’t expected an interview. “I … I looked you up on the internet.”
She stuck out her hand. “I’m Callie Pilantro.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“And your name is —”
He glanced around the room and noticed a filing cabinet in the corne
r. “Files. Uh, John Files. Nice to meet you. Do you mind if I look around after I came all this way?”
Callie was concerned. The man was lying, and she wasn’t about to let him in the house with Em here. “That won’t be possible, Mr. Files. Maybe another time.”
She watched through the window as he got into his car and drove away. He’d said he was from Georgia, but his car had Louisiana plates. She took down the tag number and decided turning him away was a good thing.
Father Paul called and talked to Em for over an hour. When she brought the phone back to Callie, she said, “I’m going to Asher with Father Paul and Landry.”
Callie wondered what Landry was thinking. Em was here for her own safety, so why would he take her back to Vermilion Parish? It made no sense.
She called Father Paul and challenged him. “How can you do this?” she asked, and he explained how he intended to keep a low profile and ensure her safety.
“She’ll be back with you before anyone knows she was there,” he assured Callie, and she reluctantly agreed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
People loved the middle of May in south Louisiana. It brought everyone outdoors. Abundant sunshine, warm temperatures, and placid lakes and rivers teeming with fish invigorated everyone. “Sportsman’s paradise,” Louisiana license tags declared. May was a glorious month indeed.
Landry had a busy morning taping segments for upcoming shows. When they broke for lunch, he walked to Central Grocery on Decatur next to the French Market. It was where the muffuletta sandwich originated, a New Orleans tradition that tourists and locals alike savored.
He bought a beer and crossed the street to Latrobe Park, where he found a bench in the shade to eat his lunch. On days like this he yearned to be anywhere but in a soundproofed room crammed full of equipment, with a director on the other side of a glass wall cueing him when to speak. He had an hour of taping left, and he promised himself by five he’d be sitting outdoors somewhere in the Quarter with a cocktail in his hand.
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