Chapter Sixty-Five
Jean Lafitte Nature Preserve, Louisiana
WALKER’S DRIVE OUT of the city had felt like slipping through layers of time, leaving behind the neon pulse of the French Quarter for the shadowed stillness of the bayou. He kept one eye on the rearview mirror the entire way, watching for tails, police helicopters, and drones.
The Travois cabin sat at the end of a gravel lane in a quiet bend of Bayou des Familles, surrounded by cypress and live oaks that leaned over the water like sentinels.
The inlet was narrow, the water black and still, broken only by the occasional ripple of a frog or the distant slap of a fish.
Technically, it was part of a neighborhood of vacation homes, but the trees and water had long since isolated each property into its own world.
He spent the night on a creaky hospital bed in the back room, the windows open for airflow and so that Walker could hear the noise of an approaching vehicle. The frogs croaked in the inlet beyond the screens, and the air smelled of damp earth and dusty linens. He woke at every rustle.
By morning, he was sitting in front of Gloria’s Royal De Luxe typewriter. The pieces were there but parts were still missing. Derek Matheson and Genyra Pharmaceuticals, Fulgencio Vargas, Dorado Freight, Nectar Corporation, Cornelius Bates’s COPE Unit, and Irene Isaacson. This was big business.
Would Matheson and Bates be at Isaacson’s event at the Shaw Center for the Arts in Baton Rouge?
Are you judge, jury, and executioner?
There had been a change in his tactics, one he had been ignoring, but in the solitude of the swamp he had to confront it.
He had no choice at the Staubs’ home or at the trap house in the Ninth, his first visit to Dorado Freight or with Dupuis.
Those kills had been righteous. What about Gormley and Kimbel?
Did you have to kill them?
It was justice.
Was it? Not according to Plato or Aristotle.
I told myself I was doing it for justice, for Connor and Leigh Ann. For John.
You told yourself… What about honesty?
Honesty?
What would all your philosopher friends say about honesty? Kant, Hume, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, how would you justify your actions to them?
I thought I was doing it for justice, but when I killed Gormley and Kimbel, was it for justice or for me?
Then turn what you have over to Greer and finish what you started in Washington State; put the gun to your head and pull the trigger.
Not yet.
You’ve done enough damage.
He tried to put the debate in his head to rest by walking the perimeter of the property, noting the terrain: a narrow dock, a shallow inlet perfect for boat access, and a thicket of palmetto and cypress.
It was peaceful. He imagined Gloria and Alexandre sipping sweet tea on their porch.
By late afternoon, as the sun filtered through the moss like golden smoke, he was back at the typewriter.
Finish this, attach what evidence you have, turn it over to both Greer and someone you trust at the federal level, and then put that pistol in your mouth. Or you could kill Bates, Matheson, Isaacson, and Vargas.
Philosophers have debated the merits of justice for centuries.
While you continue to debate, get that swamp boat running, and build more bombs.