Chapter Eighteen
The smell of the Arceneaux house lingers on my clothes as I park in front of the small police station. Margie looks up when I enter the front door. I called her on my way to let her know I was coming.
“He’s waiting on you,” she says, pointing down the short hall.
Tom Bordelon and Chief Wilson are sitting in the chief’s office when I walk in. I place the security tape on the desk. Tom picks it up, and a part of me wants to grab his hand and stop him. Tell him to be gentle. Mabry’s on there. Sweet, innocent Mabry. A fissure in my chest is starting to reopen.
“Anything else you need to share with us?” Tom asks.
“I’m worried about staying here. Is there any way I can go back to Fort Worth? If you need me, I promise I can get back here quickly.”
Tom Bordelon shakes his head before I can even finish. “We need you to stay put. There’s nothing to be worried about. We have a suspect in custody.”
“What if that’s the wrong suspect?”
“Dr. Watters,” the chief says, disregarding what I said. “Thank you for bringing this tape to our attention. If we need you for anything else, we’ll let you know.”
In other words, shut up and get out.
“I don’t feel safe here,” I say to them.
The men exchange a look that tells me they are tiring of me.
“Lock your doors,” Tom says. “Call 9-1-1 if you need us.”
As I sit in my car with the engine running, I pull out my phone and text Travis to please call me, then see my mother has called, many times. I haven’t talked to her since watching the rest of the tape. She has no idea how that night ended.
Mama coughs in my ear when she answers.
“Hey, Mama.”
She coughs again, and this one sounds deeper and full of phlegm. She moans after the fit passes. “Are you home?”
“Not yet.” I glance at the police station. “We need to talk about someone. Zeke Johnson.”
“Who?”
“Don’t do that. We’re way past pretending.”
She clears her throat. “Well, what?”
“He’s alive. He’s serving time in a federal penitentiary.”
A long silence fills the line. I wait.
“This sounds like a conversation we need to have in person,” Mama says.
“That’s not an option at the moment, so we’re going to have it right now.”
“You know people listen in on cell phone calls.”
“The only person I need listening is you.” I lower my voice even though it’s just me in the car.
“That night, and you know the one I’m talking about, your boss got out of the trunk.
I watched the security tape. The whole tape.
I saw it. I saw him get out of the car. And I saw who was driving, Mama.
I know what happened. And I know you knowingly sent me there, as a child, to clean it up.
” That familiar hard-edged anger starts to worm its way into my gut, but instead of choking it down, I let it burn.
Maybe it’s time to feel that anger, set it free.
Holding it inside may be good for my mother, but it’s eating away at my core.
Consuming me. I think of what I’ve told so many parents: It’s okay to be angry.
“You sent me there to dispose of a body,” I say, each syllable coming out in bitter spurts. “Your daughter. Your child. You were supposed to protect me, not send me into harm’s way. What kind of mother does that?”
A deep, still silence follows. My breathing is ragged.
I expect to feel slightly better, but I don’t.
I feel the same. Except now a new emotion creeps in, anger’s twin, sadness.
When Mama doesn’t answer, I forge on. “The police down here know that car was yours. I went to the station yesterday with a lawyer.”
“Good God, Willamena. Only guilty people hire lawyers.” The phone shuffles as she works to cough something up.
After everything I just said to her, that’s all she can think to say back.
I rub my face. Several seconds pass before she adds, “If what you told me is true about him, then sounds to me like there’s nothing to talk about. ”
“Oh, there’s plenty to talk about. Human remains were found in the car’s trunk when it was fished out of the bayou.”
I hear her wheezing across the miles. “But . . . what? You’re confusing me. This doesn’t make any sense.”
“That’s why I’m still here. That’s why I’m staying here.”
“Sweet girl, I’m tired. Whatever they found in that car has nothing to do with us.
And the police are nothing but troublemakers, if you ask me.
They’ve got a lot bigger fish to fry than you and me.
I watch the news. I see what’s going on down there.
It’s sick, and you need to leave that dirtbag town before you find yourself up in that bayou too.
Who knows what other sickos are roaming around? It’s not safe there.”
Mama’s right. It’s not safe here. But here is where I have to stay. “I’ll be careful.”
“Willamena, this might be bigger than you.” Her voice has lost its luster, its energy.
“Mabry thought she killed a man, Mama.”
My mother gasps. “Shut your mouth. Don’t say things like that.”
“It’s true.” My chest tightens under the weight of that truth.
“I can’t do this anymore, Willamena. Come home. I’m tired.”
She sounds tired. She’s come down. The lows are hard, no fun.
I’ll bet she’s having a hard time getting out of bed in the mornings.
I’ve got to start thinking outside of this zip code.
Life is going on back at home. And like it or not, children aren’t the only ones who need advocates. Sometimes parents do too.
“I’m going to call your doctor, Mama. Okay?”
It’s like I can hear her nodding. In a sad whisper, she says, “Okay, sweet girl, you do that.”
She hangs up. I immediately punch in her doctor’s number. He’s given me his cell, the saint of a man. I leave him a message and then back out and head toward Main. Nan’s catches my eye, and my stomach growls.
The patrons inside Nan’s all look shell shocked. I fit in nicely. I find a table in the back corner and settle in. A waitress arrives and turns over my coffee mug and pours coffee.
“Know what you want?” she says in a tired voice.
“Something greasy.”
“Well, you come to the right place.” She points to the plastic menu. “Special this morning is buttermilk biscuits with crawfish gravy and a side egg with hollandaise. Sound greasy enough?”
I can almost hear my arteries clogging. I hand the menu back to her. “Sounds perfect.”
I study the room. Everyone has their heads down.
Some are whispering as they look at their phone screens.
I think about Travis and what he said yesterday about us not being so different.
He’s right. We’d been on parallel paths.
Then the bayou spits up its carnage, and I come to town, and our paths collide again.
I foolishly thought I could bury something and keep it buried.
What a joke. Travis and I had both been so naive.
He probably more so than me. I knew who I was dealing with.
My mother. I understood, somewhere in the back of my mind, I shouldn’t have helped her.
Travis trusted me. And now his job is in jeopardy. And miraculously, mine isn’t.
Broken Bayou has surpassed my on-air tirade. To the rest of the world, my moment in the social media glare is gone. Just like that. The notifications have slowed. The voicemails have stopped. Yet here I am involved in something much worse than viral videos.
I pull out my phone and type “Emily Arceneaux, Broken Bayou, death” into the search engine.
The waitress tops off my coffee on her way to another table.
I stare at my screen. Several hits come up, most for social media accounts.
I scroll until I find an old newspaper article that grabs my attention.
But it’s not about Emily. It’s about a man who drowned.
I click on it. A picture of Travis’s father pops up.
As I read, I discover he’d been fishing with Doyle the day he died.
Doyle said his father was drunk and slipped on the dock, hit his head, and slid into the water.
Doyle jumped in after him, but it was too late. The drowning was ruled an accident.
Seems the sticky web surrounding this small town has another thread, and Doyle has my full attention.
What if he knew I dumped that car years ago?
Travis could have told him, or more likely, Eddie could have followed us and told him.
But then what? Why would Doyle go to a half-sunk car in the middle of the night?
I sit up straight and clank my coffee mug onto the table. To hide something.
In college when I worked with the sex offenders’ group, I’d briefly studied forensic psychology.
I knew enough to know serial killers get better with each kill.
The first one is usually messy. Then they learn.
I glance down at my phone. Emily was found in the woods.
By Doyle. Their father died in the water.
Doyle was there. Now, bodies, long buried, are coming out of that same water.
Someone clears their throat above me, and I jump and look up to see Charles LaSalle II. He’s exchanged his bow tie for a purple-and-gold necktie today. He grins down at me.
“I saw you come in and wanted to say hello. How are you?”
I clear my throat, refocus on where I am. “Pretty good, I guess.”
“I’m glad I was able to help you yesterday.”
I’m not sure I’d call what he did helpful, but at least I had an ally. I nod.
“Listen, I really just wanted to come over and thank you.”
“For what?”
“For little Charlie. What you said about him stayed with me. I called his pediatrician and got a recommendation for a testing center in Baton Rouge. We go next week.” His pink cheeks grow even pinker.
I smile a real smile for the first time in days; then I frown. “Oh, Charles, I told you I’d help you with that. I’m sorry. I’ve been . . .”
“Busy,” he says for me. “It’s okay. We got it handled.”
“I’m so glad. For you and for Charlie.”