PART II SWAMP COUNTRY #2
Once I was back in my Minnie Winnie, I pulled up Victorville on Google Maps.
It was a small town in western Louisiana out by the Sabine National Wildlife Refuge, close to the Texas border.
It wasn’t far from Lake Charles but in Louisiana, once you get a hundred yards off the interstate, things get very remote very fast.
The region around Victorville was serious swamp country, a long way from cell phone towers and civilisation, home to alligators, rednecks and probably several dozen serial kidnappers with women in their basements.
I keyed the ignition and headed for Victorville.
I drove along Interstate 10 at the speed limit.
Some drivers honked angrily as they sped past me.
One of them, a young man in a sports coat driving a 3-series BMW, gave me the finger as he overtook me.
I saw him ten minutes later, pulled over on the shoulder, getting a speeding ticket from a state trooper.
Cameron Parish is the largest parish in Louisiana yet it has the second-smallest population of any in the state.
This is because it is mostly composed of swamps, including the Sabine Refuge, the largest coastal marsh in the Gulf.
Bayou country.
Vast, primal and very, very empty.
As I drove across the parish, I saw several petrochemical plants on the horizon: with their colossal towers, maze-like pipe systems and ever-burning methane flames, they looked like hellish cities from science fiction novels.
In addition to being very wet, Louisiana is also very poor.
It’s the second-poorest state in America, with only Mississippi being poorer.
The houses in regions like Cameron Parish are testament to this: they’re old and warped, somehow slightly out of plumb or boarded up.
Random vehicles on bricks are often parked beside them: mobile homes, airboats, taco trucks.
I turned off the I-10 near Vinton and wound my way south for ten minutes.
The roads became narrower and shabbier.
No gutters. Just muddy edges.
This was indeed swamp country.
Empty and still.
I rounded a sharp bend and came to a bridge spanning a sheer-sided river whose flooded waters came almost to the underside of the bridge.
A sign announced:
kingman bridge
acheron river
please drive carefully
accident black spot
I could see why it was a common location for car accidents.
The bends both before and after the bridge were sharp and if someone was driving even slightly too fast, it would be very easy for them to slide off the edge of the asphalt, skid across the muddy shoulder and topple into the river.
I drove extra carefully.
I obey all warning signs.
A few minutes later, I drove into Victorville.
It was a small town on the edge of the bayou.
Two streets. Gas station. General store. Sheriff’s office. Some whiteboard houses that backed onto the vastness of the Sabine Refuge to the south.
It was also, by local standards, relatively clean.
Many of the towns in this remote part of Louisiana get annihilated regularly by the hurricanes that hit southern America every year. Many are never repaired since no insurance company will insure homes here.
Victorville must have got hammered many times but it looked okay.
Whoever lived here was houseproud enough to repair and repaint their structures every time.
A young red-haired deputy with a moustache smoked a cigarette on the porch of the sheriff’s office.
He watched me as I drove by.
He would probably follow me soon because (a) he had nothing else to do and (b) they don’t like strangers in places like this.
At the end of Main Street, I came to a boat ramp that serviced the Acheron River.
The river was still heavily flooded.
Cypress trees with veils of dangling Spanish moss hung low over the water, the bases of their trunks hidden beneath the surface.
The banks were submerged as well. Whatever solid ground existed here was currently covered by brown water.
I parked my Minnie Winnie and unloaded my kayak.
It was a Sun Dolphin Excursion 10-Foot Sit-in Fishing Kayak. I like this kayak because it’s small: it fits on top of my Minnie Winnie and I can carry it by myself.
(It averages 4.3 stars on where it is ranked #505,500 in Sports & Outdoors.
It costs $645.99 plus tax and most reviewers on consider it to be a very good starter kayak.
One reviewer named hellfisherman5471 didn’t like its fishing attachments but since I don’t use it for fishing, I don’t care for hellfisherman5471’s opinion.)
Soon I was paddling down the engorged Acheron River and after about thirty minutes, I spotted the half-submerged house on which the crucified doll with the baby in it had come to rest.
I paddled up to the house.
I could see how the doll had washed up on it: the flow of the river had pushed the floating doll onto the flank of the hou—
Boom!
A shotgun blast rang out.
I spun to see a skinny old bearded man standing on the opposite bank holding a shotgun pointed at the sky. He was white and he wore a stained singlet and ill-fitting shorts. He had a hideous growth on his forehead and no teeth.
‘Hey, motherfucker! Git the fuck outta here ’fore I blow your goddamn head off!’
He stood upstream from me, by the mouth of a side creek on the other side of the river.
Dead Man’s Creek, I recalled, was its name.
‘I’m sorry, sir!’ I called out.
‘Sorry, fuck! Beat it, this is my swamp!’
I knew his type. They could be found in many a bayou in Louisiana. Homeless, penniless and probably mentally ill, he’d taken up residence in the swamp.
Beyond him, I could see some low forested hills in the distance: the source of Dead Man’s Creek’s flow.
I looked from the creek to the half-sunk house and back again—and a thought struck me.
This is why you must always actually go to the scene of a crime.
Some things you only see by going there.
As the homeless redneck glared at me, I watched a tree branch flow out of Dead Man’s Creek beside him and cross the Acheron River.
The current from the side creek pushed the branch across the river and right up against the house.
It was easy to imagine the doll with the baby in it doing the same: floating out of Dead Man’s Creek and across the river until it had run up onto the house.
So what was up Dead Man’s—
The roar of a fan engine made me snap around.
It was followed by a voice on a megaphone.
‘Hey! You there!’
Three airboats—shallow-hulled aluminium boats with huge fan engines at their rears—swept down the river, slowing as they approached my little kayak.
Sheriff’s deputies manned them, among them the red-haired one I’d seen earlier.
An older overweight man with a drooping grey moustache, a big hat and a sheriff’s badge sat in the jump seat of the second boat: the sheriff of Victorville himself.
Standing beside the sheriff was a wiry man in tan cargo trousers and a black shell jacket: he wasn’t a cop. Looked like private security to me.
In the third and final boat, also driven by a deputy, sat a passenger who very obviously did not live in Victorville, Louisiana.
Woman.
Mid-thirties.
Light brown skin.
Pale green eyes.
Curly blonde hair.
Tailored grey suit.
A Black woman in a fitted suit was not common out here in the swamps.
I could tell instantly who and what she was.
She was FBI.
The airboats’ fans fell silent and the three boats eased to drifting halts around my kayak.
The skinny homeless man called, ‘Sheriff! Git this fucker outta my area, will ya!’
‘Quiet, now, Eli,’ the sheriff said. ‘He ain’t gonna be here much longer.’
He turned to face me.
‘Hey there fella, I’m Sheriff Hank Thompson, the law in these parts. Whatcha doin’ out here?’
‘I’m a private detective from Houston. I’m looking into the disappearance of a young woman named LaToya Martyn.’
‘That so?’ He looked at me with steely eyes. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Sam Speedman.’
He regarded me for a long moment.
‘Tell me, what brought you to this spot, Mr Speedman?’
‘A clue,’ I said. ‘I use them in my investigations.’
One of the deputies sniggered.
Sheriff Thompson silenced him with a look.
The private security guy hadn’t moved a muscle. He gazed at me in silence.
‘Smart-ass, huh?’ the sheriff said evenly.
‘No, sir. Just answering your question.’
(I get this sometimes. I answer people’s questions honestly and for some reason they think I’m being insulting or rude. I’m just being honest.)
‘What clue?’
It was the young Black woman in the suit who had spoken.
She was evaluating me closely, too.
She seemed entirely unfazed at being out here in the middle of a secluded swamp in a low-slung airboat with a bunch of Southern deputies and their good-ole-boy boss.
I liked her instantly.
‘A baby that was found here yesterday. A dead baby encased in an antique doll,’ I said.
The deputies all glanced at each other.
‘How do you know about that?’ Sheriff Thompson demanded.
‘I have sources.’
‘The discovery of that child hasn’t been released. I might want to know who your sources are, Mr Speedman.’
‘Sheriff, I’m not only a private detective, I am also a member of the Louisiana State Bar. That makes me an officer of the court. It also makes my sources privileged.’
The sheriff scowled.
He knew I was correct.
‘I see you’ve met Eli Gage,’ Sheriff Thompson said, turning to the old vagrant. ‘Eli, you know anything about a dead baby that was found here?’
‘No, sir. No way. Nothin’ at all,’ Eli Gage said. ‘I been down at one of my other barges this last week on account of the storm and only got back this morning. Swear on the Bible to that, I do. To the good lord Jesus Christ.’
The sheriff said to the woman in the suit, ‘Crazy Eli here has got a bunch of derelict barges stashed all over the bayou, four or five of ’em. Moves around from one to the next.’
I assessed Eli as the sheriff said this.
Eli Gage was almost certainly an undiagnosed schizophrenic and in need of both medical and psychological attention.
Could he kill someone?
Maybe.
Could he keep LaToya Martyn prisoner for seven years?
I wasn’t so sure about that.