PART II SWAMP COUNTRY #5
‘But you were so eager. Why’d they reject you?’
‘I didn’t pass the personality tests.’
(I am rarely disappointed but I was when the FBI rejected me after I got my doctorate in criminology. Apparently, my scores for ‘interpersonal relations’ were not good enough.)
‘That’s a shame,’ Cyrus said. ‘I thought you were very clever, much cleverer than the FBI agents who have interviewed me over the years. It’s nice to have you visit. The days here are long.’
He turned fully to face us.
‘Is she your girlfriend?’ He looked Audrey up and down.
‘No. She’s an FBI agent. She’s helping me on a case.’
Audrey said, ‘I’m Special Agent Mills, Audrey Mills.’
With deliberate slowness, Cyrus assessed her.
He snorted. ‘Young, female and mixed race. You’re a diversity--hire jackpot, aren’t you, Agent Mills.’
‘I hold my own,’ Audrey said.
‘Of course you do.’ Cyrus turned from her to me. ‘Honestly, Dr Speedman, does it bother you to be working with an FBI agent who is so obviously lesser than you? Seriously, the Bureau hired her but not you. I imagine it hurts your ego.’
‘I don’t think that way,’ I said.
(This was actually true. While my rejection was disappointing and confusing at the time, it didn’t bother me that the FBI employed other people. It did that every day.)
‘Why are you here?’ he asked.
‘I want to know about that tree tattoo on your chest. Where does it come from?’
‘Why?’
‘That same drawing was found in connection with a dead baby.’
‘Near Victorville?’ Cyrus said with an amused smile.
‘Yes . . .’ Audrey said, stepping forward.
‘Oh, they’re definitely gonna kill you. They take out anybody who gets too close and you just got too close. Like that Brewster fella did.’
That was Bill Brewster.
The former Army CID guy and one of my missing investigators.
Brewster had been investigating the disappearance of four sex workers from Dallas in 1988 when he himself had disappeared—after child pornography had been discovered on his home computer.
That Cyrus knew about him was interesting, but before I could ask about this, Audrey pressed on.
‘How do you know the baby was found near Victorville?’
Cyrus looked down at the tattoo on his chest.
I noticed that it was far more detailed than the version that had been scrawled onto the doll.
Cyrus sighed. ‘My tattoo, if you must know, depicts the Tree of Fear.’
‘It’s a lynching tree?’ I ventured.
‘It is the lynching tree. The ultimate lynching tree, a symbol of fear designed to instil terror in the hearts of Black men and women.’
‘How did you know the baby was found in Victorville?’ Audrey asked again.
‘I can smell the mud on your shoes. I’d know that smell anywhere: the unique mix of swamp scum, alligator shit and toxins from the Kingman petrochemical plant. Spent a lot of time there in my youth with the kids of some other old Southern families. Oh, yeah, they’re gonna kill you for sure.’
‘Who’s going to kill us?’ I said.
Cyrus gave me a long look.
‘You’ve given me a true gift today with this visit.
A rare moment of intrigue in my otherwise dull existence.
And family doesn’t visit anymore, the fucking assholes.
’ He shrugged. ‘My execution is, at best, only a couple of months away now and since we’ll both be dead soon, I might as well indulge you, Dr Speedman. ’
‘Who’s going to kill us?’ I repeated.
‘The empire.’
‘Empire?’ Audrey frowned. ‘What empire—’
‘Tell me, whose baby was it?’ Cyrus asked suddenly.
My eyes narrowed.
‘A young woman I’ve been searching for. A sex worker from Houston named LaToya Martyn. She disappeared back in 2018.’
‘Was she Black?’ Cyrus asked.
‘Yes,’ I said quickly.
‘2018 . . .’ Cyrus said slowly as a faraway grin spread across his face. ‘Bubba’s party. I heard it was a wild one. Shame I missed it.’
‘Who’s Bubba?’ Audrey asked.
Cyrus didn’t answer, lost in his memories.
I leaned forward. ‘What party? And who’s Bubba?’
Cyrus said wistfully, ‘Gosh, this all reminds me of my childhood. I used to hang with Bubba and the other kids in the old gator farm at the duke’s estate in Slavers’ Key.
Used to play with the bishop’s collection—his baker’s dozen—that he kept under the LaSalle mausoleum at the priests’ graveyard out past the end of the world, well, up until Andrew drowned ’em all.
Had to plan for hurricanes and Andrew came in too fast that year.
Saw the good ones transported out, saw the bad ones thrown to Goliath in the old storm drain. ’
‘The bad ones?’ Audrey said.
‘Who’s Bubba?’ I pressed.
Cyrus turned away from us.
‘I’m done for today,’ he said. ‘Just don’t forget.’
‘What?’ I said.
‘They’re definitely gonna kill you.’
He resumed reading his book and would speak no more.
We left Death Row.
Outside in the parking lot, I scanned the distant rise.
The Hammer and his Chevy with the big bull bar were gone.
‘Well, that was creepy,’ Audrey said. ‘Thoughts?’
‘I need to do some more research,’ I said. ‘Verify a few of the things Cyrus said.’
Audrey said, ‘I’ll follow up on some of the locations he mentioned from his childhood: Slavers’ Key; some kind of priests’ graveyard. How about we meet tomorrow for lunch and swap notes?’
‘Great,’ I said. ‘We can meet at my regular place.’
I got back to my home in Houston really late, around 2 a.m.
I actually own two houses.
They face each other across Colquitt Street.
The first house—a small white cottage with a neat front garden—is my registered address but I only ever go there to collect the mail.
The second is owned by a shell company and is an ageing dump.
This is where I live.
It has high chain-link fences and a bunch of cars and trucks in the rear yard: it looks like the home of a car nut, which it was when I bought it.
I use all the cars.
There’s a 2011 Chevy Avalanche pickup, a 2009 Ford Mustang, a 2010 Toyota Camry and a 2007 Hyundai Elantra.
(All my cars were built before 2012. This is a must, since most cars built after 2012 have GPS navigation pre-installed. Trust me, with a sat-nav system, your modern car is very trackable by people like me. I use it all the time, especially in divorce and -cheating-spouse cases.)
I drove my Minnie Winnie into the rear double garage.
The reason I own two houses is because when I was a young private investigator just starting out I made a rookie mistake.
It was a typical track-the-cheating-abusive-husband case.
Only the cheating abusive husband turned out to be a cop.
When he saw me following him, he had tracked me down—using my modern car’s GPS—and came to my house late one night, armed.
It got ugly.
I’ve slept in my second house across the road ever since.
Still in my Minnie Winnie in the rear garage, I opened a can of Mountain Dew—it’s very high in caffeine—and started up my -digital whiteboard.
I added the information I’d acquired at Victorville and from Cyrus Barbin:
VICTORVILLE
Baby in doll flowed out of DEAD MAN’S CREEK.
Who owns that land?
Who ordered the Hammer to follow us?
CYRUS BARBIN
Knew baby was found near Victorville.
Knew about brEWSTER, missing private detective from 1988.
Mentioned ‘Bubba’s party’
SLAVERS’ KEY – old gator farm – at ‘the duke’s estate’?
‘The bishop’s collection – his baker’s dozen’ – Kept under LaSalle mausoleum at ‘old priests’ graveyard out past the end of the world’
Drowned during Hurricane Andrew.
‘Good ones’ transported out.
‘Bad ones’ thrown to ‘Goliath’.
‘They’re definitely gonna kill you. They kill anybody who gets too close.’
The empire.
Looking at all this information, one might wonder where to start.
Honestly, beginning an investigation is like counting the stars in the sky: you start at the left and keep going till you get to the right.
I started with the scene of the crime or, rather, the scene of the discovery: Dead Man’s Creek.
I brought up the website for Louisiana’s State Land Office.
Property records in Louisiana are a complicated thing. Ownership of many parcels of land goes back centuries to grants that were made when France owned the region. These are kept in ledgers known as tract books.
The State Land Office has done an admirable job of scanning those old handwritten records and collating them online.
Soon I was looking at a scan of an ancient tract book that displayed a hand-drawn map of Cameron Parish with every property outlined and labelled in cursive writing.
I found Dead Man’s Creek.
And I paused.
It flowed into the Acheron River from an enormous single property.
And I mean enormous.
According to the records, the property stretched from Victorville in the north almost all the way to a petrochemical terminal to the southwest, just across the border. It was marked:
TOWNSHIP: VICTORVILLE
SECTION: LOT 15/B76A
TRACT: A-001
GRANTED: APRIL 2, 1875
OWNER: KINGMAN TRUST
Attached to the scan was a modern addendum:
CURRENT OWNER: KINGMAN TRUST V
Kingman Trust V.
When a landholding trust is renewed, it’s renumbered. This trust had evidently been renewed five times, which meant the land owned through it had been held for at least five generations.
I remembered that the bridge leading into Victorville was named the Kingman Bridge.
I also recalled that the petrochemical plant and terminal to the south of Victorville was owned by the Kingman Corporation.
And Cyrus had said he’d spent time at the Kingmans’ property in his youth.
It didn’t take me long to track down the beneficiary of the landholding trust.
Theodore James Kingman.
Chairman and majority shareholder of the Kingman Corporation and one of the richest men in Louisiana.
This discovery, I should add, wasn’t exactly earth-shattering.
That the Kingman family owned a vast tract of swampland adjoining their petrochemical plant was unsurprising.
I did some more online searches on Theodore Kingman.