by JoAnn Ross
Nate skimmed the papers. “Dad arrested them, they pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct, and they were sentenced to give ten percent of their crawfish catch to the parish food bank for the next six months.”
“That sounds like something the judge would come up with,” Jack agreed.
“Not that there was any excuse for shooting guns off in a crowded dance hall, but I can kind of understand how they might have been moved to passion. I was in love with Christy myself in those days.”
The Blue Bayou Mardi Gras queen had gone on to be Miss Louisiana, landed a job as weather girl on KATC in Lafayette, then began working her way up the network ladder through larger and larger markets. She was currently a foreign correspondent for NBC’s nightly news, and although her long, dark hair was now a short, perky blond bob, Nate still enjoyed looking at her.
“That’s not surprising, since you tended to fall in love with just about every girl in the parish on a regular basis.” Jack took a swig from a can of Dr Pepper. “Though I have to admit, Christy was pretty cute. So, got any other hot sheriff prospects?”
“Don’t I wish.” Since the case had been settled a dozen years ago, Nate tossed the papers and the slug into the circular file.
“How about the guy who was just leaving when I got here? The goofy-looking long-haired guy with the gold stud in his ear.”
“Strange criticism from a man who returned to town sportin’ an earring himself.”
“I’m not applying to be a cop. Besides, Dani likes it. She says it reminds her of a pirate.” Jack flashed a rakish grin Nate had to agree was damn piratelike.
Jack had always been the most dashing of the three Callahan brothers. And the wildest, having earned his teenage nickname, Bad Jack, the old-fashioned way: by working overtime to be the baddest-assed juvenile delinquent in the parish.
“The guy was some sprout eater from Oregon who wanted me to know right off the bat that he refused to carry a gun because he was a pacifist. Then asked me if there were any good vegan restaurants in town.”
“Not much call for tofu burgers here in hot sauce country.”
“That’s pretty much what I told him.”
“Question is, why he’d want the job in the first place?”
“He’s a former soc major.” The scent wafting from the bag was mouthwatering. One bite confirmed that the sandwich tasted as good as it smelled. “Seems he’s got new liberal ideas ’bout law enforcement that none of the other cities he’s interviewed with seem eager to embrace.”
“Let me guess. The theory is based on the idea that all those murderers and rapists up there in Angola Prison are merely victims of a harsh, vengeance-driven society.”
“From the little I let him tell me, that’s pretty much it.”
“Hell, that’s an old retread idea.”
“Well, like I said, it probably isn’t real popular in the cop community. Which was why he was willing to come all this way to interview.”
“So he thought we were so desperate we’d be willing to end up with him by default?”
“That’d be my guess. I explained that even though the last crime spree was Anton Beloit’s kid taking that can of John Deere green paint and spraying his love for Lurleen Woods on the side of every bridge in the parish, I’d prefer the chief law enforcement officer in Blue Bayou to carry a weapon. And know how to use it. He told me he’d have to think about it. I told him not to bother.”
“Lucky for you Blue Bayou’s a peaceful place.”
“Since the town’s entire police force consists of Ruby Bernhard, who mostly sits behind her desk and crochets Afghans for her hoard of grandchildren while waitin’ for someone to call in a crime so she can play dispatcher; Henri Pitre, who refuses to tell me his age, but has gotta be on the long side of seventy; and Dwayne Johnson, who’s eager enough but green as Billy Bob Beloit’s damn paint, I sure as hell hope things stay peaceful.”
Nate studied the former-DEA-agent-turned-thriller-novelist over the top of the crusty round loaf of French bread. “I don’t suppose you’re startin’ to get bored, being out of law enforcement these past few years?”
“Nope.” Jack shook his head. “I figure it’s damn near impossible to get bored with a perfect life with the world’s sexiest pregnant wife, two terrific good-lookin’ kids, a great dog, and getting to tell lies for a living.”
The yellow dog in question lifted her huge head, looking for a handout. She swallowed the piece of cheese Jack tossed her in one gulp.
“Nice to hear you put Dani in first place.”
“We might have taken a thirteen-year detour, but she’s always been first. Always will be.” Jack took another hit of the Dr Pepper. “You know, marriage could be the best invention going, right up there with the combustible engine. You might want to give it a try someday.”
“No offense, bro, but I’d rather—”
“I know.” Jack shook his head. “Go skinny-dippin’ with gators. Anyone ever tell you that line’s getting a bit old?”
Nate frowned. Three weeks later, and the debacle with Charlene still irked. “Do you think I have a Peter Pan complex?”
“Probably.”
This was not the answer Nate had been expecting. Or hoping for.
“That’s why it’s gonna be so much fun watching when you take the fall, you,” Jack said with a pirate’s flash of white teeth.
“I wouldn’t hold your breath, you. ’Cause it’s not going to happen.”
“That’s pretty much what I said, before Dani came back to town. And I’ll bet Finn sure as hell never imagined getting hitched to some Hollywood actress.” Jack shrugged. “When it’s right, it’s right.”
“Marriage might be right for you guys, but it’s not in the cards for me. Long-term relationships are just too much heavy lifting.”
“Never known you to be afraid of hard work.”
“It’s different in construction. Eventually things come to an end.”
“I doubt Beau Soleil will ever be done.”
“That’s beside the point.”
“And that point was?”
“When I’m building something or restoring an old house, eventually I have something to show for the effort, something I can be proud of. The more time you put into a place like Beau Soleil, the better it gets. The more time you put into a relationship with a woman, the more likely it is that you’ll fuck it up. Then everyone just ends up angry, with hurt feelings. The trick is to know when to bail, before you get to that pissed-off point.”
Granted, he hadn’t pulled that off with Charlene, but usually he was able to remain friends with a woman after the sheets had cooled.
“Never met a woman yet who didn’t feel the need to change a man,” he grumbled.
“Dani’s never tried to change me. Guess that’s ’cause I’m already perfect.”
“Talk about telling lies.” Nate looked out the window at the January rain streaming down the glass. “Do you ever just want to take off?”
“I did that thirteen years ago,” Jack reminded his brother. “But like the old sayin’ goes, there’s no place like home.”
“Easy for you to say, since you’ve been just about every place in the world.”
“That’s true.” Jack studied him more closely. “Is there a point to this?”
“I’ve never been anywhere.”
“You went away to college.”
“Tulane’s in New Orleans, which is not exactly much of a journey. And I came home my freshman year.”
“When Maman was dying.” Jack frowned. “I don’t know if I ever thanked you for that—”
“That’s what brothers are for. Finn was tied up with that manhunt, and you were off somewhere in the Yucatán Peninsula chasing dope dealers.”
Since he’d loved his maman dearly, Nate had never regretted his actions. He was happy in Blue Bayou; it was where his friends were, where his life was. Life was good. And if truth be told, there wasn’t anywhere else in the world he’d rather live.
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But there were still times, on summer Saturday afternoons, when he’d be watching a ball game on TV and wonder whether if he’d stayed in school and not given up the athletic scholarship that had paid his tuition, he might have made it to the pros. After all, the scouts had called him a phenom, possibly the most natural third baseman since Brooks Robinson.
He stifled a sigh. Yesterday’s ball scores, as Jake Callahan used to say. He tore open the last evidence envelope.
“Hey, look at this.” He fanned the yellowed papers out like a hand of bouree cards.
His brother leaned forward. “Stock certificates?”
“Yeah. For Melancon Petroleum.”
Jack whistled. “They’ve got to be pretty old, since Melancon must’ve quit givin’ out paper certificates at least two decades ago. If they’re real, I’ll bet they’re worth some dough. ’Specially now that the company’s rumored to be bought up by Citgo.”
“There’s also a death certificate for a Linda Dale.”
“The name doesn’t ring a bell.”
“It was thirty-one years ago. Back when Dad first got elected sheriff.” Nate frowned. “She died of carbon monoxide poisoning.”
“Heating accident?”
“No.” His frown deepened. “Suicide.” He flipped through a small ringed notebook. “But Dad didn’t buy that.”
“He thought she was murdered?”
“Yeah,” Nate said.
“Blue Bayou’s only ever had two murders that I know of. That one back when we were in high school, when Remy Renault got wasted and shot that tin roof salesman he found fuckin’ his wife.”
“I remember that.”
He also remembered the long, hot, frustrating summer when Mrs. Renault hired him to mow her lawn and clean her pool. She’d liked to sunbathe topless. When he got a bit older and realized that she’d been purposefully tormenting him, Nate had been real grateful he hadn’t been the one Remy found rolling in the sheets with the woman who’d made the models in Finn’s Playboy magazines look downright anorexic.
He skimmed some more of the notes, written in a wide, scrawling script not that different from his own. “Seems Dad even went up to Baton Rouge, to try and get the state cops to come in on the case, but while he was gone, Dale’s sister showed up and had the body cremated.”
“Which would have destroyed any physical evidence he needed to make a case.”
“Yeah. But the ashes aren’t all the sister took away with her. There was a toddler in the house. Dad figured she’d been left alone about forty-eight hours. She’d obviously been scrounging for food; he found some empty cookie packages on the kitchen floor and an empty bread wrapper in her room.”
“Shit. What about Mr. Dale? Where was he while all this was going on?”
“Appears there wasn’t any Mr. Dale.”
“Single woman havin’ a baby out of wedlock sure wasn’t unheard of three decades ago,” Jack said. “But it could’ve created a bit of a stir in a small Catholic town like this one.”
“That’s what Dad thought.” It wasn’t that people were more uptight here than other places around the country; people in Blue Bayou certainly knew how to pass a good time. But whatever sexual revolution had taken place during the sixties and seventies had been kept behind closed doors.
“Linda Dale was a lounge singer at Lafitte’s Landing. Seems like it would have been hard to save up enough money from whatever salary and tips she was making to buy all this stock.”
“How much does it come to?”
Nate checked out the certificates again and did some rapid calculation. “The face value back then was twenty-five thousand dollars.”
Jack whistled. “Which means that there’s a thirty-three-year-old woman out there somewhere who’s due a tidy inheritance. Though if Dale was murdered, it’s strange the killer would leave the stock behind.”
“The sister was from L.A. When Dad tried to find her, he ran into a dead end.”
“That’s not surprising. L.A.’s a big place.”
“True.” Nate picked up a small bound book. “But Linda Dale kept herself a journal, too. If we’d never known Maman, but she’d left behind somethin’ that would tell us a little about her and then someone stumbled across it, wouldn’t you want them to try to find you?”
“Mais sure. But finding her’s gonna be a long shot. If Dad couldn’t find this Linda Dale’s sister back then, what makes you think you can after all these years?”
“He didn’t have the Internet. Besides, we’ve got ourselves an ace in the hole. Our special agent big brother.”
“Finn quit the Feebs.”
“Just ’cause he left the FBI doesn’t mean he lost his talent for trackin’ people down. And since he’s living in L.A., that’s gotta make things easier.”
Nate picked up the phone and began dialing.
4
Regan called in to Dispatch, requesting all available units in the vicinity to respond. While Van called off the intersections as they sped past them, she floored the gas pedal. The Crown Vic skidded around the corner and flashed through the rain-slick streets, the high-pitched wail of the siren shattering the night.
The police-issue sedan was no match for the Lexus, but the fact that she was a lot better driver was on Regan’s side. Working against her was the twinge of fear in the back of her mind at each cross street. It had been seven years since the car chase that had nearly cost her her life, and she still had the scars.
Dammit, homicide detectives didn’t do chases. They showed up after the killing and methodically began working a case that would take them from a dead body to a live suspect.
“Shit!”
There was a flash from the Lexus. A slug hit the windshield, shattering it into a spiderweb of cracks.
Regan’s already hammering heart was flooded with a burst of adrenaline as the slug buried itself in the backseat. One of the reasons she’d worked so hard to make this division was because any adrenaline rushes were supposed to come from the thrill of putting together all the pieces of a crime so well that when she showed the finished picture of the puzzle to a jury chosen at random, those twelve men and women would find one human being guilty of murdering another. Murder cops weren’t supposed to be risking the lives of innocent civilians, not to mention their own, by acting out the raging pursuit myth created by movie and television scriptwriters.
“Shots fired,” Van reported.
“Shots fired,” Dispatch echoed. “Ten-four.”
“That was close,” Van said.
“Yeah,” Regan agreed grimly, trying not to think about the fact that her Kevlar vest had been supplied by the lowest bidder.
The chase had been picked up by at least five patrol cars. The screaming, flashing light parade, which was now hitting speeds in the sixties, left Sunset to barrel through a quiet residential neighborhood. Regan’s murder books—a stack of three-ring binders that contained all the homicide cases she was currently juggling—went sailing onto the floor when she hit a speed bump full-on.
The Lexus took a corner too tight, tilting onto its right two wheels and looking in danger of rolling over; Regan backed off a bit to avoid crashing into it. No sooner had it settled back onto four wheels than it careened over the center line, sideswiping two vehicles parked on the other side of the street, taking out two mailboxes and a section of Cyclone fence. Brakes squealing, it came to a shuddering halt in the front yard of a tidy 1930s bungalow.
Two males exploded from the car and took off into the shadows.
“Suspects are on foot.” Regan gave Dispatch their description, as best as she’d been able to tell from the spreading yellow glow of the porch light.
“Copy. All units, suspects are fleeing on foot. Ten-twenty. Officer needs assistance,” the disembodied voice announced as Regan sprinted between two houses.
She was within inches of the passenger when he swerved and ran straight into a darkened swimming pool. Water splashed into the air and over the deck, drenching her
already rain-wet sweatshirt and jeans.
“One suspect just landed in a pool,” she reported into the radio, pinned to her sweatshirt. “You scoop out Flipper,” Regan called to Van, who was on her heels. “I’ll stick with Double D.”
Having begun running years ago, to get back in shape after surgery and as rehabilitation, Regan was now nearly the fastest runner in the precinct. The only guy who could beat her was a former USC running back who had a good six inches on her and legs as long as a giraffe’s.
Heart pounding painfully against her ribs, Regan dashed through a hedge. As branches scratched her hands and face, all her attention was focused on her perp. The whop-whop-whop sound of the police helicopter reverberating overhead told her the cavalry had arrived. They beamed a light down on the scene, turning it as bright as day. “Freeze! Police!” she shouted, just like they’d taught her at the academy. Twelve years on the job, and she’d never seen it work. It didn’t tonight. “Dammit, I said freeze!”
She managed to grab the back of his T-shirt, but since he was as wet as she was, half her age, and outweighed her by at least fifty pounds, he jerked free, scrambled to his feet on the wet grass, and took off again, clearing the fence like an Olympic hurdler.
Regan followed, ripping both her sweatshirt and her arm on the barbed wire along the top of the fence. The shirt bothered her more than her arm; she’d just bought it yesterday. “There’s thirty dollars down the damn drain!” she cursed.
They pounded down an alley, splashing through the puddles formed by countless potholes, past huge dogs barking behind fences. Just when Regan was sure her lungs were going to burst, she launched herself into the air and nailed him with a flying tackle that sent them both skidding across what seemed like a football field’s length of gravel. They finally came to a stop when they crashed headfirst into a group of galvanized metal trash cans.
“When a police officer says freeze, you’re supposed to stop running!”
“How the hell I supposed to know you’re a goddamn police officer?” he shouted back. “You ain’t wearin’ no uniform.”