Chapter Twenty-Nine
WALKER TWISTED HIS shirtless torso so that Belle could better see the wound on his upper back.
“You are going to need stitches,” she said.
“No stitches. Just pour some peroxide in, cover it with gauze, and tape it up. If we need to, you can squeeze in some superglue. I wouldn’t have called you if I could reach it myself.”
They were in Walker’s van parked at a new location along the river, sitting on the bench seat in the back. Paladin watched them from the passenger chair.
Walker grunted as Belle poured the peroxide into the wound.
“Oh, don’t be a baby.”
“You are supposed to warn me first.”
“Sorry,” she said. “I’ve never picked glass out of someone’s back before.”
She was dressed in her uniform: Doc Martens, dark jeans, and black tank top.
“I think there might still be some shards in there,” Walker said.
“I’ll get them,” she said, blowing a strand of raven-black hair away from her eyes.
Belle set the bottle down on the swing-out table and picked up the tweezers. She adjusted the headlamp Walker had given her and pulled the wound apart with her left fingers, probing for glass shards.
“Take your time,” Walker said with a hint of sarcasm, focusing on the ticking of an old clock by the bookshelf.
“Fuck you, I’m doing my best.”
“I’m just kidding, but really, try to get them all.”
“You Jacques Cousteau?”
“What?”
“What’s all that SCUBA stuff in the back for?”
“Breathing underwater.”
“I know that. I’m just trying to keep your mind off the pain.”
“That’s thoughtful of you.”
“Ah, there’s one,” she said, picking at it with the tweezers.
Walker winced.
“Stay still,” she warned. “Almost got it.”
“Damn it!”
“There, see? I got it.”
She dropped the glass shard in the bowl with the others, poured a little more peroxide into the wound, covered it with gauze, and then taped it in place.
“Just like bandaging a large tat. Like that one,” she said, touching the bone frog tattoo that covered Walker’s right rib cage.
“I remember,” Walker said, turning to face her.
“The artist did a good job. What is that thing anyway?”
“It’s a Bone Frog.”
“What’s a Bone Frog?”
“Like a frog, but just it’s bones.”
“Why?”
“It was a military thing.”
“I don’t get it.”
“It’s a tribute to those we’ve lost.”
“Like Connor’s dad.”
“Yeah, like Connor’s dad.”
“Well, that’s depressing.”
“Says the woman dressed in head-to-toe black.”
“Fuck you. I thought you were going to take a shower, but it doesn’t look like you have one. You smell worse than you did at the diner.”
Walker smelled his armpit.
“I guess I do.”
“And hey, you owe me for a couple tats I would have done tonight. The Quarter was full of drunks looking to make some bad decisions.”
Walker laughed.
“I got you, don’t worry,” he assured her.
Walker had escaped out the back of the house and through the garden as the first squad cars arrived, bolting through a neighbor’s yard and working his way to his van, which was parked well outside the initial cordon.
With the wound on his back unreachable, he called the only person he thought he could trust in New Orleans. He had told her about the evening’s events as she pulled glass from his back.
“So, what now?” Belle asked.
“Now, I pay you for the tats you missed out on tonight along with a healthy tip for patching me up, and you go back to your life.”
“The fuck I am. Chris, whoever killed Leigh Ann was looking for those journals,” she said, pointing to the leather notebooks on the van’s sink.
“We can’t be sure.”
“I thought you were in the CIA.”
“I never said that.”
“Yeah, well, you didn’t have to.”
She rubbed her eyes, smudging her thick mascara further. Despite the outside veneer, there was a frailty to her.
Walker turned his head and looked at the notebooks.
Maybe the best thing to do is burn those things and get out of town before anyone else dies.
“Earth to Chris,” she said, reaching out, gently touching his chin and turning his head back to hers.
“Sorry,” he said. “I just don’t know what else I can do here.”
She crossed her arms.
“I thought you said you owed Connor’s dad a favor.”
“I do.”
“Well.”
“Well, what?”
“Well, stop feeling sorry for everyone, especially yourself, and let’s get to work.”
“Belle, this isn’t a game. This is serious business.”
“You don’t have to tell me that. I fucking know it.”
“I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”
“I’m already hurt, Chris. And guess what?
You come to town and next thing you know, Leigh Ann is dead.
If these assholes who killed Connor are willing to kill his mom to find those journals, how long do you think it is before they come looking for me?
Maybe they track me down to my grandmother’s, do to me and her what they did to Leigh Ann. ”
Take a breath. Think this through.
“Chris, the only way to protect me is to decipher those journals and print Connor’s story. Otherwise, I think whoever killed Leigh Ann is going to keep tying up loose ends.”
His head ached as his internal philosopher began to stir.
Was the DA mixed up with corrupt cops? Could the information in Connor’s journals keep her from becoming the next governor of Louisiana?
You lit the fuse. You knew the risks. You chose to act.
Next came the darker voice, the one shaped by years of reading Schopenhauer.
The one whose internal voice was more whip than whisper.
The old question of misguided actions from free will.
Walker’s dissertation had argued that Schopenhauer’s will was not moral, not rational.
It simply was. A blind, ceaseless force that drove all beings to act, to strive, to suffer.
And if that was true, then what of guilt? What of responsibility?
If I am merely the puppet of a blind will, then am I not absolved?
But he didn’t believe that. Not really. Not anymore.
You knew what you were doing when you came here. You knew what would follow. You didn’t act blindly. You knew.
He exhaled sharply, frustration boiling over from the endless loop of philosophical self-condemnation.
Get it under control.
The guilt, the grief, the circular logic.
“Stop!” he barked.
Paladin’s ears perked. Belle’s mouth opened slightly.
Walker swallowed hard, embarrassed. “Sorry,” he muttered. “Sometimes I overthink things. I need some fresh air.”
He moved to the sliding door and pulled back on the handle.
“Put some clothes on. The mosquitos will eat you alive,” she said, grabbing a denim shirt from a pile of dirty clothes and throwing it at him as he stepped from the van.
“Thanks,” he said, slipping into the worn button-up.
“Now, build us a fire,” she said. “We need to plan.”
“You don’t take no for an answer often, do you.”
“I don’t even know what that means. Camping means a campfire. And it means bourbon. You have any bourbon in this relic?”
“Yeah, in the galley.”
“Okay, get a fire started.”
Maybe she was right. Maybe the only way to end this was to finish Connor’s story and expose the corruption. If not, anyone who knew about the journals remained a threat.
“And stop feeling sorry for yourself,” she added.
She was perceptive.
“Heir,” Walker called. Paladin bound from his seat.
“Hey, while you are out there, grab my leather jacket from my car.”
His eyes flicked to the Martin guitar in its ceiling rack. Belle caught him looking.
“I’ll even let you play for me.”
He pressed his lips together.
“I don’t really play for anyone but Paladin.”
“You are a strange character, Chris. Hot tip: when a girl asks you to play for her, play for her. Now, start a fire. I’m going to find that bottle.”
Perched on a hunk of driftwood, Walker gazed at the faint glow of the city beyond the swamp, where the haze blurred the stars and the skyline shimmered like a mirage. Belle poured two fingers of whiskey into the only two cups he kept in the van.
With Paladin curled at her feet, Belle sipped the whiskey and stared through the leaves at the ink-black water.
“I’ve lived my whole life in this city,” she said, her voice low over the crickets.
“I’ve heard stories about when it was grand.
You can still see it; the bones of something beautiful.
People used to take pride in what they built.
Now?” She shook her head. “Now it’s partiers on Bourbon Street looking for their next high.
Addicts in the streets. We call them homeless, but most of them are just lost in a fog.
The city’s rotting from the inside out. And the people in charge?
They’re selling it off piece by piece. That’s the bullshit Connor was trying to expose,” she added. “The rot.”
She glanced at him over the rim of her cup, one leg bouncing on her knee. “You’re into philosophy, right? I mean that’s what the rolling library is about, isn’t it?”
“I studied it for a while.”
“Where?”
“NYU.”
“You know,” she continued softly, “people love to get philosophy quotes inked on their skin. I did a bad hand of cards across a guy’s back once.”
“What does that have to do with philosophy?”
“I asked him the same question. He said it was from Voltaire. ‘Each player must accept the cards life deals him. But once they are in hand, he alone must decide how to play them.’ ”
“It’s not really Voltaire,” Walker said.
“I looked it up. Google says it’s Voltaire.”
“Google’s wrong. It’s from a book about Voltaire.”
“Oh well, somebody has a 7-2 off-suit tattooed on their back for life and is telling people it’s because of an eighteenth-century philosopher.”
They both laughed.
“You’re not cursed, Chris,” she said. “You’re just someone who’s been dealt a brutal hand. But you’re still here. Still choosing. That means something.”
He looked away, but her words lingered. Voltaire’s words. Not guilt. Not fate. Choice.
“Philosophy is about how we, well, human nature, doesn’t change. Isn’t that the gist of it?” Belle asked.
“Some people think so.”
“What you are is what you were when,” she said.
“Massey. Impressive,” he said.
“What is?”
“That you know Massey.”
“I went to college.”
“Though he’s a sociologist not a philosopher, but yeah, I’d say that’s it.”
“So, what were you doing ‘when’?”
“Is this where we get to know each other?”
“This is what normal people do, Chris.”
“Okay. My ‘when’ stage. I was with my mom in the van behind you. She wanted me to see the country.”
“That’s it?”
“Well, there’s more.”
“Spill it.”
“She was my foster mom, and she was dying.”
“What?”
“The doctors gave her a year to live. She never told me. She took me out of school, and we traveled the country in the van. She didn’t want our last trip together to be overshadowed by her diagnosis.”
“How old were you?”
“Eleven. We were on the road for two years before going back to Oregon. She made it until I was sixteen. The doctors couldn’t believe she survived as long as she did. Then I was on my own.”
“Chris, I am so sorry.”
“I didn’t know any different.”
“And your dad?”
“I’m adopted, but the guy who would have been my dad split early on. I don’t even remember him.”
“So, you joined the military to find a family?”
“You are perceptive, aren’t you?”
“It’s not a big leap, Chris. Well, did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Did you find the family you were looking for?”
Walker thought of the SEAL Teams, the CIA, and the man who bridged them both: John Staub.
“I guess I did,” he said, feeling the alcohol warm his system.
“Then why did you leave? I mean, you are old, but not that old.” She smiled.
“Afghanistan. I lost Connor’s dad and then we lost the country. Abandoned so many people who helped us fight a lost cause over all those years.”
“So, it’s about abandonment?”
“What?”
“For a philosopher you are not very observant. You have abandonment issues. So do I, so cheers.”
She leaned forward and touched Walker’s cup with hers.
“Every generation thinks the next one’s doomed,” she continued. “That they’re soft. Lost. Hopeless. You think the world’s gone to hell and that we’re all just dancing on the ashes. But you’ve got it backward.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Enlighten me.”
She tilted her head, studying him by the firelight, petting Paladin, who had taken a liking to her.
“You got screwed,” she said, slicing through him with surgical precision.
“You were told to fight for a country, and instead of finishing it, they let you wallow in shitholes around the world while defense contractors got rich and you got hollowed out. And now you think the whole thing’s beyond saving so you want to leave it behind. ”
Who is this girl?
She sipped her whiskey, eyes on the water. “But it’s not. You don’t see the ones who are still trying. People like Connor. People like me.”
Paladin shifted beside her. She reached down and ran her fingers behind his ears.
“Connor was trying to make a difference,” Walker said quietly. “Is that your point?”
“Yeah,” she answered. “That’s my point. He saw his dad fighting for a sinking society.
Leigh Ann was doing that too, working in that ER like it was a battlefield hospital.
Connor wanted to fight, but he was different.
His weapon was a pen, not a gun. And he saw the enemy for what it was: corruption from within.
The ODs made it personal. We can finish what he started. You can still make a difference.”
“How old are you again?”
“I’m wise beyond my years,” she said, taking another sip of bourbon.
She leaned toward the fire, elbows on her knees. Her eyes were sharp.
“We’re not going to let these bastards get away with this, are we?” she asked.
“No.”
“What’s next?”
Walker looked at the thin young woman across the flames of the fire, a girl he was now responsible for protecting.
He bent forward and met her gaze.
“We finish Connor’s story.”