Wolfsbane Read online

  Janette was pale.

  “The steel box was sealed in concrete at the cemetery,” Victoria finished.

  “Were the murderers caught and punished?” Sheriff Vallot asked.

  Madame Bauterre laughed. “How does one punish an entire village?”

  “1934,” Sheriff Vallot said quietly. “Victor Cargol would have been in office then.” Briefly, his eyes touched those of the old woman. His eyes quickly fell away.

  “Yes,” Victoria said. “There are those who still maintain—I am sure—that it was my husband who killed Sheriff Cargol.”

  “Did he?” Vallot asked.

  She shrugged. “I cannot say. I was not there when Cargol was killed.” A slight movement of her fingers dismissed the sheriff. “Good day, Sheriff. Do come back when you have something of substance to report, bon? Sylvia? Please see Sheriff Vallot to the door.”

  Sheriff Vallot drove to the offices of the local paper and checked all the papers published in 1934. But the papers from October and November of 1934 were missing. He asked the owner/editor, Eli Daily, about the missing newspapers.

  Eli shrugged. “I don’t know, Edan. They’ve been missing since I took over from my dad in ’65.”

  “Who would know about them?”

  Eli shrugged; did not appear to be terribly interested. “My father, I suppose.”

  Sheriff Vallot waited, but the editor did not volunteer any information as to his father’s whereabouts.

  “You mind telling me where I might find him this morning, Eli?”

  “If he’s not home, he’s fishing.”

  “Want to ride out there with me?”

  “Sure,” Eli replied, but Edan could detect some hesitation in his voice. And no enthusiasm at all.

  The sheriff and the editor found the elder Daily on - the banks of a bayou, engaged in his favorite pastime: fishing.

  “What happened in ’34?” the man said. “Oh, Germany invaded Poland; the war in Europe was heating up; Jews being persecuted. Let’s see, who won the World Series in ’34 . . . ?”

  “No, sir,” Sheriff Vallot interrupted. “I mean, right here in Ducros Parish.”

  The old man grinned. “Well, that was the year Alon Sonnier was caught in the back seat of his Packard with Mayor Touchet’s wife. Fine-looking woman. Caught by some Boy Scouts coming back from a camping trip. I bet that really put the cap on that field trip.”

  “Claude Bauterre.” Sheriff Vallot dropped the name.

  The man’s face did not change expression. “I believe he was killed that year. Yes. His killer was never found.”

  “Why was he killed?”

  “Why all this interest in something that happened forty years ago, Edan?”

  “Was he really murdered and his body burned to ash? Sealed in concrete?”

  The elder Daily smoothed his pencil-line moustache. “I really don’t know, Edan. I was out of town at the time. Baton Rouge.”

  Sheriff Vallot looked at the man for several long seconds. He’s lying, Edan concluded. But why?

  “Someone desecrated his grave,” Edan said. “That doesn’t happen ’round here very often. You know he’s buried in the older part of the cemetery; lots of folks saw the open crypt. Yet no one came to me about it. Had to have happened three, four weeks ago. I find it odd no one reported it. Don’t you, Mr. Daily?”

  The man shrugged.

  “Thanks so much,” Sheriff Vallot said dryly, then abruptly wheeled around, walking back to his car. He stopped, turned around. “Mr. Daily? did you know about Trahan’s child? The one that’s called the dog-boy?”

  “Lot of people knew about him.”

  “That he was chained up like some goddamned wild animal! Why would they keep him like that?”

  Once again, that shrug. “Let it all alone, Edan,” Daily said. “You’ve done your duty; taken the boy off to a cell. As far as Claude Bauterre is concerned . . . all that is old news. Why drag it up now?”

  Edan looked at the young Daily. “You ridin’ back with me?”

  “I’ll stay out with dad for a few minutes, Edan. He’ll take me back to the office.”

  Edan knew it would do no good to ask about the missing papers; he would just receive another lie, another shrug. He nodded then walked to his car.

  “Now, what, Dad?” Eli asked his father.

  “Nothing,” the man replied. “Nothing at all.”

  Chapter Five

  Sheriff Vallot talked with a dozen or more older citizens of Joyeux. But every time he brought up the name of Claude Bauterre, their faces went blank and their memories suddenly numbed.

  “Got kilt. Don know who kilt him. Don care, neither.”

  “Claude Bauterre? Oh, yeah. Amour House. Got kilt ’bout forty year ago. Naw . . . don know who kilt him.”

  “I don’t know anything about it, Edan. I was in the navy.”

  “Forget it, Edan. He was a bad man. Forget it.”

  And so it went.

  Just after noon, Sheriff Vallot parked his car, got in his bass boat, and headed up the bayou toward Blind Bayou and the dark swamp. If she would talk to him, he knew one person who could tell him what happened: Annie Metrejean.

  At the chute, Edan headed the boat northwest, into the black water. Here, even during the day one almost needed lights to see. The trees touched overhead, branches intertwining, as if touching in a subtle caress only they could understand.

  Not many people came up this way. Not that anyone would admit to being afraid of the old woman; no one nowadays admitted any belief in her mumbo jumbo. But the fishing was no good up there—for some reason; boat might get hung up; nothing up there ’cept cottonmouths and rattlesnakes and old mossy-back ’gators; too far to go, anyway.

  Edan nosed his boat against the pilings of the old woman’s home, part of the home built out over the dark waters, and cut the engine. The air was still, the dark swamp silent in early afternoon.

  “Annie? Sheriff Vallot—you home?”

  She stuck her gray head over the railing and frowned at him. “Where else I be—hah? What you think, I got maybe a big fancy power boat lak you to run up and down the bayou, aggravatin’ peoples? What you want, boy?”

  Annie was almost ninety, but still spry and active, her mind sharp as a skinnin’ knife. Her home was a potpourri of herbs and plants and flowers—some to do good, some to do bad.

  “Information, Annie.”

  “Information, I ain got. Sell you a gris-gris, maybe. It do you rat, boy.”

  Sheriff Vallot climbed the ladder to her porch. “Don’t want no gris-gris, Annie.”

  “You got troubles wit your lady, boy? I fix you someting make you fine to her.”

  Sheriff Vallot stood impassively on the porch and waited until she was through attempting to peddle him any of her wares.

  “Ho-kay, Edan, cain’t sale you nuttin, so what you want?”

  “I want to know everything you can tell me about Claude Bauterre.”

  She sat down in a rattan chair and allowed shock to pass over her face. “Coowee, Edan! You don believe in wastin’ no time, do you? Where you hear ’bout dat devil man?”

  “Devil man, Annie?”

  “Roo garou, den.”

  “I’m . . . not familiar with that, Annie.”

  “Ah—dat’s rat. You study the propre French at the big university, din you? Ho-kay. Loup-garou.”

  Sheriff Vallot raised an eyebrow and smiled. “Werewolf, Annie? Are you saying Claude Bauterre was a werewolf?”

  “Non! I’m sayin’ Claude Bauterre is a roo-garou. One of dem kind you cain’t kill.”

  The sheriff rose to pace the small porch overhanging the bayou. “What you are saying is . . . what you want me to believe is: the supposed . . . ah . . . presumed deceased was not actually slain that night?”

  “Hah!?”

  Edan sighed. Patience, he told himself. Knock off the police academy wordage. Just be grateful she’s even talking to you. Five years ago she almost blew a game warden clean
out of his boat for just saying good morning to her. The sheriff sat down.

  “How come you never marry, Edan?” Annie looked him up and down, a twinkle in her eyes. “Someting wrong wit you?”

  “No, Annie—nothing is wrong with me.”

  “Yeah, I heard ’bout your lady-friend from up nort. Cain’t truss dem norten women, Edan.”

  Edan didn’t want to talk about his old girlfriend, but he felt obliged to defend her. “Annie, she was from Shreveport!”

  “Dat’s nort, ain’t it?”

  He couldn’t argue that.

  “You seen ma Stella lately, Edan? Now, dat’s a woman!”

  He couldn’t argue that, either.

  “She’s beautiful, Annie. I sure agree with you on that. Now, can we get back to Claude Bauterre?”

  “Why you want to talk ’bout dat man for? Ain’t he done caused you nuff troubles?”

  “What do you mean, Annie?”

  “Ain’t all dem Bauterres back at the big house? Ain’t that roo-garou’s grave been bust into? Or,” she smiled, “bust out of? Ain’t his black ashes gone? Ain’t dey been reports of wolfmen seen ’round the parish?”

  “Annie?” Edan leaned forward. “Those so-called sightings of monsters have not been released from my office. I don’t want a bunch of out-of-town reporters crawling around here. We’re sitting on those rumors. And how did you know Bauterre’s crypt was smashed? You haven’t left this swamp in weeks.”

  “I know tings you’ll never know, Edan. In ways you don understand. Old ways; all dyin’ out, now. But some folks still believe in the cauchemar. I one. He come to me in the night and whisper in ma ear. Tell me tings. I listen.”

  Edan sighed and leaned back in his chair. He shook his head. The cauchemar: a night-riding spirit. The bugger-man. “What does the cauchemar tell you, Annie?”

  “Death come to Ducros Parish. Allratty come, you jist don know it.”

  “When do more deaths come, Annie?”

  “Soon.”

  “What kind of death, Annie? Natural death? You don’t need a spirit to tell you that.”

  “Se moquer de, Edan?”

  “No, Annie,” he quickly denied that. “I’m not making fun of you. I just don’t understand how you know these things, that’s all.”

  “When you was a little-bitty boy, Edan, you and Stella used to play together. I used to try to teach you tings ’bout the roo-garou and the cauchemar and the letiche.” She leaned forward and tapped him lightly in the center of his forehead. “You ain’t got de power lak me, Edan. I give de power to Marie, she give it to Stella. You ’member, Edan, years back, when you and me and Stella see de fee folay?”

  The feu folie, the fire balls?” The sheriff nodded. ”Oui, Annie, I remember. You made them come. But I didn’t understand how you did it then, and I still don’t. ”

  “So you ’mit dere tings you don understand, but you believe dem?”

  “Oui.”

  “Den how come it is you don believe me when I tale you someting bad gonna happen in Ducros?”

  “Maybe I do believe you, Annie—but I just don’t want to admit it.”

  She smiled. “All de fine education in de world don’t take away from your mind what ever good Cajun boy know in his heart be true. You believe, Edan. I keep you ’live comin’ months.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You wait where you sit. I be rat back.”

  She returned presently with an amulet and a small leather pouch. She put the amulet around Edan’s neck and handed him the pouch.

  “What’s this?” Edan questioned.

  “Keep you safe. All kind of dried animals in dat pouch. De amulet be for extra protection.”

  “What am I suppose to do with it?”

  “Keep it wit you all de time. Gonna be bad in Ducros—soon. Spirits out—bad spirits.”

  Sheriff Edan Vallot didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He felt the amulet around his neck and hefted the leather pouch.

  “You make me a promise, Edan?”

  “Oui, ” he said quietly.

  “It’s a small bag. Don take up much room in your pocket. So you promise me you wear the amulet and keep de bag in your pocket all de time.”

  “I promise, Annie,” he surrendered to the old ways.

  Edan thanked the old woman and climbed down the ladder to his boat. He left Annie Metrejean sitting on the porch of her bayou home, singing a French song. It was only when he was halfway back to Joyeux that Sheriff Vallot realized she had not told him a damn thing about Claude Bauterre’s death.

  But he did have an amulet around his neck and a leather bag full of . . . God alone knew what. And he had promised to carry the bag around with him wherever he went.

  “Shit!” Edan said.

  He thought about tossing the bag and the amulet into the bayou. But, better not. He put the bag in his pocket. He’d carry it around.

  Of course, he thought, superstition has nothing to do with it.

  “Of course not,” he said aloud, smiling.

  By the end of a month, Pat, having no scales, guessed he had lost about twenty pounds. His arms, legs, and shoulders were firming up, but he was still a long way from being the man he once was. And he knew he would never again be that man. His belly was shrinking in size almost daily, due to the good diet and hard exercise.

  And he still could not think of a reason why he was putting himself through all this agony.

  Pride, he told himself. But he wasn’t certain that was it, at all.

  He had put himself on a meat, fish, and vegetable diet, with powdered milk he kept cool in the well-wall compartment. The damn stuff almost made him gag, but he forced it down, several glasses a day. When his checks from the government came, he bought several kinds of vitamins, to supplement his diet.

  He had not had a drink of booze—of any kind—in over a month. And had tossed his cigarettes away, even though he had never been a heavy smoker.

  At night, after his evening meal, Pat allowed himself a pipeful of Captain Black while sitting on the steps of his house. The pipe was an ornate affair, one he had picked up in Mombasa, Kenya, years back. The pipe had a huge bowl, outlayed with silver.

  He had good memories of Kenya. He had made friends there, both black and white, and had enjoyed his stay at the old hotel by the Indian Ocean. Then, growing restless, Pat and the English mercenary, Travers, had hopscotched across Tanzania, Burundi, the bottom part of Zaire, and into Angola, to join up and fight with the Western-leaning rebels in that part.

  Pat rubbed his leg: he had picked up another piece of lead while in Angola’s bush.

  For a time on this pleasant, quiet evening, Pat allowed himself the luxury of memories: some good, some bad. Travers, he had later heard, had been killed in an ambush, his body mutilated and put on display by the communist-backed guerrillas. Pat, by that time, had wearied of war. He had long since slipped out of Angola, past the Caprivi Strip, and into Rhodesia.

  And it would always be Rhodesia to Pat—and most men like him. Never Zimbabwe, as the natives wanted, and called it.

  Pat was not a racist; he did not hate men for the color of their skin. To hate someone for solely that reason, Pat felt, was the height of ignorance, and he did not believe in apartheid, although he did understand the Afrikaners’ point of view. Indeed, Pat understood the mood of most white Africans. But he also tried to understand the passions of black Africans—those with some degree of intelligence—to govern themselves; to be as one, regardless of color.

  Puffing on his pipe, enjoying the new feelings of good health and sobriety, Pat shook his head at the maze of problems facing not just South Africa, but most of the continent. Someday, Pat felt, that part of the world was going to erupt into a blood bath.

  “Right and wrong on both sides,” he muttered.

  For a time, several months, Pat had roamed the southern part of Africa, not as a mercenary, a warrior, but as a tourist. From Salisbury all the way down to Cape Town, one of the mo
st spectacularly beautiful cities in the world.

  From Cape Town over to Port Elizabeth, then up the coast to Durban, then cross country to Johannesburg. But it was just north of Salisbury, Rhodesia, that Pat reminisced the fondest memories, the gentlest emotions. For it was there he had met Emily. And had they been allotted the time for their relationship to grow, to flourish, he would have probably chosen to remain in Rhodesia, and applied for citizenship. Even with all the problems facing that country.

  Emily, with her mother and father, worked a good-sized farm just outside the town of Kildonan. Pat stayed with them for almost three months, taking to the land, loving the hard work, and falling in love with Emily. He was a man grown, and was in love for the first time in his life. The family had asked no questions of him, but knowing full well he was, in all probability, an American mercenary.

  Then one night, suddenly, as it always happens, the terrorists swept out of Mozambique, attacking the farm. Pat was gone into Salisbury for supplies. He returned to find the farm house rocketed, still burning, smoking, bullet pocked. No survivors, and the women had died hard.

  Something the American liberal press always seems to ignore in their reporting.

  Pat stayed for the funerals, then, wearying of it all, went back home. To South Carolina.

  Didn’t do me much good to come back here, he reflected sourly, as soft night spread its dark shadows over the marshland. The sky was black velvet, touched with pockets of diamonds.

  He suddenly, and for the first time in years, the memory coming to him in a rush, wondered about the special forces captain he and his team had been sent in to rescue from that beleaguered outpost. What was his name? Simmons. Yeah, that was it. Lyle Simmons. Good man. Had a sensational-looking wife, Pat recalled. Rich, too. Met her in Paris, the captain had said.

  Pat laughed in the night, remembering how they’d all gotten drunk together after the successful mission.

  He wondered whatever happened to Lyle Simmons.

  Pat relit his pipe and puffed contentedly, as memories of his ex-wife drifted into his sober brain.

  He felt no malice toward her; never did, really, he recalled back over the years. She was marrying a war hero, a famous—or infamous—mercenary . . . and she felt that would bring her no small degree of fame. Pat tried to tell her differently.