The Glass Rainbow: A Dave Robicheaux Novel (56 page)

Swan opened his mouth to speak, and I realized that something was wrong with his throat or that something was broken inside his chest. His words were clotted, wrapped with phlegm, blood leaking over his lip from a dark gap in his teeth. “Under the hay,” he said, almost in a whisper.

“What hay?” I asked.

“Baled hay. Go through the door. It’s under the hay.”

“What’s under the hay?” I said.

“The place they were taking her. By the river.”

“What place? Which river?” I said.

“I’m not from here. There’s a tractor—” he began.

“Say it.”

The coulee was running higher, the current sweeping along the crown of his skull, startling him, his eyes opening wide. “I don’t know the name of the place.”

“Who took her?” I said.

He twisted his head and looked straight into my face, his ruined eye protruding obliquely from the socket, his good eye almost luminous, as though it were seeing through me, watching a scene or images that no one else saw.

“Talk to me,” I said. “Don’t let go. Don’t let a collection of shits write your epitaph.”

Then he did something I had seen in a dying man only two or three times in my life. His face became filled with dread, the jaw going slack, the tissue transforming to a puttylike gray, even though his blood had already drained into his head. The exhalation of his final breath was as rank as sewer gas.

I hit the side of the car with my fist.

“What was he talking about?” Clete said. “A tractor? Baled hay?”

“By a river,” I added.

Clete’s face was round and hard in the reflection of the flashlight. “What are you thinking?” he asked me.

“The video from Herman Stanga’s DVD player,” I said. “The stones in the wall. They’re not indigenous to Louisiana. They’re the kind that were carried as ballast in nineteenth-century sailing ships. The place in the video was a barracoon.”

“I didn’t get that last part,” he said.

“A jail for slaves. A lot of blackbirders were bringing in slaves from the West Indies after the prohibition of 1809. Jim Bowie and Jean Lafitte brought them up the Mermentau River and sold them into the cane fields.”

“That shack or whatever full of hay bales where we got into the shoot-out?” Clete said. “There was a rusted-out tractor next to it. You think that’s the place where the girls were?”

“Maybe,” I said.

Above us on the road, someone was setting up a generator-powered bank of flood lamps. Suddenly, the coulee was lit by an eye-watering white brilliance. The state trooper in charge of the accident scene was silhouetted against the glare, the rain blowing like bits of crystal in the wind. “We got the Jaws,” he called down. “You guys find out anything?”

“The guy’s name was Andy Swan,” Clete hollered up the slope. “He worked with the execution team that fried Bundy. He’s probably checking in with him about now.”

But Clete’s cynical remark served as a poor disguise for our mood and the hopelessness of our situation. Our investigation into the accident by the coulee had eaten up time that Alafair may not have had. While we dithered, she suffered. We got back on Interstate 10 and headed west toward Jeff Davis Parish while I tried to get through to someone in the sheriff’s department there. Finally the 911 operator patched me through to a plainclothes detective who was working an extra duty shift that night. His name was Huffinton. At first the name didn’t register. Then I remembered him. “What is it this time?” he said.

This time? “You responded to the ‘shots fired’ at the river?” I said.

“I’m the guy,” he replied, sucking on a tooth or a mint. “What do you need?”

He was the same detective who had gotten into it with Clete and who had made a remark about my history with alcohol. “Down by the river, at the same location where I had to pop those guys, there’s an old Acadian cottage. It’s stacked with bales of hay. There’s a tractor not far from it.”

“What about it?”

“My daughter has been abducted. I’m not sure where she’s being held, but one of the perps in the abduction described a house or cabin just like the one by the river. I’m on I-Ten west of Crowley, but I need you guys to jump on the place right now. You copy on that?”

“No, I don’t copy anything. A kidnap victim is being held in a shack full of hay?”

“I think it was a barracoon.”

“A
what
?”

“A place where slaves were kept. We have video that came from—”

“Is this a put-on?”

“I’m talking about an underground jail. It may be underneath that old Acadian house. It’s the place where Bernadette Latiolais may have been murdered.”

There was a pause. “I tell you what. I’ll drive out there. I’ll look around, just so everybody is happy. Then I’m going to forget our conversation. But I think you need to get some help, Robicheaux.”

“Did you hear me? My daughter was abducted.”

“Yeah, I heard you. That doesn’t change anything. Every time you and your fat friend come here, you leave shit prints all over the place.”

“Call me when you get to the river.”

“No, I’ll call you when I have something to report. In the meantime, don’t patch in to my radio again. Out.”

I handed my cell phone to Clete as the truck veered toward the shoulder. “Get the state police,” I said.

“Take it easy, Dave.”

“You didn’t hear that idiot.”

“Which idiot?”

“Huffinton, that Jeff Davis plainclothes who got in your face. If this goes south for Alafair—” My throat was closing on my words, and I couldn’t finish the statement.

Clete was dialing 911 with his thumb, looking at me in the dash glow, his eyes full of pity. “We’re going to get her back, big mon. Andy Swan was working for old man Abelard. I suspect Weingart took over control of the old man’s affairs, then decided to do some payback on Alafair. But he’s a survivor, Dave. He’s not going down in flames just to get revenge against you and me.”

“What if Weingart isn’t pulling the strings?”

The 911 operator picked up before Clete could answer. He handed me the cell phone, and I made the same request to the state police that I had made to the Jefferson Davis Sheriff’s Department.

“Repeat that about Weingart. You don’t think he’s behind this?” Clete said.

“You already said it. He’s a sexual predator and a con man and a bully, but he’s not a serial killer.”

“You think the old man killed the girls?”

“Think again.”

Clete bit the skin on the ball of his thumb, his green eyes dulling over; he was obviously wondering if both of us had not been played from the jump. “Sonofabitch,” he said. Then he said it again. “Sonofabitch.”

T
HE ROAD WAS
empty as we drove into the southern end of Jeff Davis Parish and looked out on the sodden fields and the gum trees bending in the wind along the river. I could see car tracks winding through the grass toward the doorless Acadian cottage that was used to store hay. But there were no vehicles in the field.

I turned off the two-lane and approached the cottage, my headlights bouncing on the rusted tractor and the tips of the grass waving in the wind. The car tracks we had seen earlier went past the cottage and down to the river. I stopped the truck and cut the headlights. Steam was rising from the hood, the engine ticking with heat. I got out and approached the front of the cottage, my flashlight in one hand, my .45 in the other. Clete was to my right, his blue-black .38 pointed in front of him with both hands. He gave me the nod, and we both went in at the same time.

The building was a typical Acadian dwelling of the mid-nineteenth century. At one time, it had probably contained two small bedrooms, a front room, a kitchen, and a sleeping loft for visitors. But all the partitions had been knocked out, and the floor was stacked to the ceiling with hay bales that had long ago become moldy and home to field mice.

Except for one area in the center of the kitchen. Three bales had been piled lopsidedly, and muddy footprints led from them through the back door into the field. Clete stuck his .38 into his shoulder holster and shoved two of the bales tumbling into the wall, then dragged the third one aside, exposing a trapdoor that looked made of oak. At the bottom of the door was a hole the size of a quarter. I inserted my finger in it and lifted.

Underneath it was another door, this one constructed of several iron plates, cross-fitted with iron bands and big rivets that were orange and soft with rust. It was the kind of door you expected to see on a Civil War ironclad, one that could resist almost any assault short of a direct hit by an exploding cannon shell. An iron ring was attached at the bottom. And so was a padlock.

“Alafair?” I called, my voice breaking.

There was no response.

“It’s Dave and Clete,” I said. “Can you hear me?”

There was still no answer. I ran to the truck and opened the steel toolbox in back and returned with a crowbar. I wedged it inside the padlock and snapped it loose, then dropped the crowbar to the floor and pulled on the ring with both hands. Clete got his fingers under the lip of the door, and the two of us flung it back on its hinges. I shone my flashlight down into the darkness.

“Jesus, I can’t believe this,” Clete said.

A set of steep wood steps led down into a subterranean room whose walls were made up of the stones we had seen in the video. The walls were sweating with water seepage, coated with lichen at the bottom and inset with chains at the top. But the chains were not ancient ones that had fettered rebellious slaves. They were steel-link, shiny, practical, economical in design. They had probably been purchased at a local hardware store by somebody who looked just like the rest of us.

We went down the steps into the darkness. I touched the stones in the wall with my hand, then wiped it on my shirt. The air was dense and smelled of mold and feces and stagnant water and maybe human sweat. I could hear my own breathing and feel my pulse jumping in my throat. A plain wood table and a chair stood in the middle of the room. On top of the table was an opened toolbox. I did not want to look at the contents. I did not want to do that at all.

Clete bent over and picked up a piece of crumpled paper from the floor. He smelled it. “They were here. I think we just missed them,” he said.

“What is that?”

“A hamburger wrapper.” He wiped his fingers across it. “Look, the mustard is still fresh.”

“They were eating down here?” I said.

“Let’s follow the car tracks down to the river. The state troopers ought to be here soon,” he said.

“Don’t count on it. It’s not their bailiwick.” I was trying to think and not having much success. The only words that went through my mind were
Where to now?
And I had no answer to my own question. “Maybe they went back into St. Mary Parish,” I said.

Then headlight beams flooded into the kitchen area above our heads. I climbed back up the steps and went outside, my .45 hanging from my right hand, the mist damp on my face. I stared into the high beams of an unmarked car driven by the plainclothes detective Huffinton. He got out of his vehicle, hitching up his pants, his shapeless fedora pulled low on his brow, his expression as blank as a dough pan. “Y’all got here, huh?” he said.

“Where’ve you been?” I asked.

“I was here. I didn’t see anything. Then we had an armed robbery and a shooting by the exit on I-Ten. I took the call.”

“You looked in the cottage?”

“I didn’t say that. I pulled up on the road and put my spot on it. There wasn’t anybody around. Then I got the shots fired on the radio.”

“Two sets of car tracks go right past the cottage and down to the river. You didn’t check them out?”

“I saw maybe one vehicle down there. But that’s not unusual. High school kids fuck down there. What’s the big deal? You didn’t find anything, either, did you?”

I could hear my breath rising in my throat again. “Go through that back door and look down into the room below the floor. That’s where I think my daughter was being held. It’s a torture chamber. I want you to go down below and put your hand on the stones. I want you to look in that toolbox on the table and tell me what’s on the tools.”

I felt myself moving toward him as though I had no willpower, as though a dark current were crawling from my brain down through my arm and hand into the grips of my .45. “Don’t just stare at me. You get your ass down those stairs.”

“Dave,” I heard Clete say softly behind me. “Maybe at least Huffinton stopped it.”

I didn’t move. My fingers were opening and closing on the grips of the .45.

“Time to dee-dee,” Clete said. “The Bobbsey Twins from Homicide are keeping it simple tonight, big mon. We’re getting Alf back.”

“He’s not gonna talk to me like that,” Huffinton said.

“You shut up,” Clete said.

I felt my right hand relax, and I saw Huffinton’s face go in and out of focus then suck away from me in the wind, that quick, like an electronic blip disappearing on a screen. Then I was walking with Clete toward the truck, his arm as heavy as an elephant’s trunk across my shoulders.

W
E HEADED EAST
, back toward New Iberia, with no plan or specific destination, the speedometer needle nearing ninety. At Crowley we picked up an Acadia Parish sheriff’s escort in the form of two cruisers with their flashers rippling. I called Molly and told her what we had found. “They took Alafair there?” she said.

“I can’t be sure, but I think so. Has anybody called?”

“Helen Soileau, that’s it. Where are you going now?”

“Maybe back to the Abelards’ place. Is the cruiser parked outside?”

“It was ten minutes ago.”

“Go look.”

“It’s there.”

“Go look, Molly.”

She set down the receiver, then returned to the kitchen and scraped it up from the counter. “He’s parked by the curb, smoking a cigarette. Everything is fine here.”

“Call me if you hear from anybody. I’ll update you as soon as anything develops.”

“What did they do to her in that room, Dave?”

“There’s no way to know. Maybe nothing. Maybe they didn’t have time,” I said, forcing myself not to think about the toolbox.

The Acadia escort turned off at the Lafayette Parish line, and a Lafayette Parish deputy picked us up and stayed with us almost all the way to New Iberia.