Bill Hopkins - Judge Rosswell Carew 02 - River Mourn (15 page)

Heading out of Bloomsdale in the growing darkness after the
interview, Rosswell broke the silence.

“Someone’s been prepping Frankie Joe.”

“Sure enough.” Ollie stared into the darkness. “Who do
you think did it?”

“His father-in-law.”

Ollie scratched his nose, which Rosswell took as a
sign of thought. “Frankie Joe lied about the time. You saw the body tossed off
about seven, not six.”

“And he lied when he said it was the first run. It was
the second run.”

“Notice his hands?”

“Soft as a baby’s.” Ollie faced front and changed the
subject. “Damn, it’s hot. Doesn’t this truck have an air conditioner?”

“Yes, it’s hot and yes, it’s got an air conditioner,
and, no, I’m not turning it on. Gas is too expensive.”

Ollie bitched under his breath. Rosswell thought he
heard the word “skinflint” before Ollie continued speaking aloud.

“You’re saying that the Right Honorable Sheriff
Gustave Fribeau is coaching his daughter’s husband how to answer the questions
of a snoopy judge and his faithful research assistant?”

“I am.”

“For what reason?”

“Something’s happening here that we’re not seeing. Frankie
Joe is supposed to steer us in some direction with his lies, but I don’t know
which direction we’re supposed to go.” Rosswell turned on the truck’s
headlights. “Lazar somehow makes contact with Charlie Heckle—or whatever his
name is. Then he sends Charlie to us. Gustave knew about that. He had to.
Gustave knew about us going to see Maman Fribeau before it happened. And Gustave
knew every detail down to how much silver we took her.”

“We’ve got three or four versions of what went on when
the ferry was crossing the river.”

“I’ve told you before that eyewitness testimony is
worthless.” Rosswell dimmed the lights to oncoming traffic. “Everybody’s lying.
I aim to find out who is lying and who is telling the truth.”

“And you think we’re going to stumble around in the
dark tonight and find answers?”

“I do.”

Ollie pinched his nose. “It’s better than sitting on
our thumbs.”

“That’s a disgusting simile.” A feedlot on Rosswell’s
left demonstrated the concept of disgusting, with its smell of fresh manure. The
cows mooing sounded like sick babies crying in the night.

“A simile likens one thing to another dissimilar
thing. It used to mean resemblance or similarity.”

Ollie brought out evil thoughts in Rosswell, causing
him to bite the inside of his cheek hard enough to draw blood. He wondered if
he could claim that Ollie had accidentally fallen from the truck while it was
speeding on one of the many curves in the road. “A disgusting metaphor, then.”
Sometimes he thought the world would be better off without Ollie. Then he again
faced the reality that his research assistant was indispensable. He wanted to
sigh loudly, but stopped himself.

“A metaphor compares two things, pretending they’re
identical. Then it substitutes one for the other.”

Rosswell said, “Okay, then, a disgusting saying. How’s
that?”

Ollie hung his head out the window for a moment after
they passed the feedlot, then noisily sucked down a deep lungful of air before
he brought his head back in. “What’s disgusting is us playing detective. I’m
all for dumping this whole thing in Gustave’s lap. You and I are outsiders in
this county. Someone’s playing us for fools.”

“Yes, they are. Someone’s also trying to get away with
murder. Gustave hasn’t shown the least interest in pursuing this case. It was
you who said he was bent.”

“You think he’s the murderer?”

“I doubt it.” Rosswell slowed to go around a sharp
curve. He wasn’t ready to dump Ollie after all. “Nathaniel is the big gun
behind this assault. There’s got to be something he’s holding over the sheriff’s
head.”

“The big gun is holding the poisoned sword over the
lawman’s head.”

“ ‘And David lifted up his eyes, and saw the angel of
the Lord stand between the earth and the heaven, having a drawn sword in his
hand stretched out over Jerusalem.’ ” Rosswell stared through the darkness. “King
David saw the Angel of Death, flourishing a sword dripping poison.”

Ollie said, “When you try to sound like me, you come off
as a big gas bag.”

A full moon hung in the midnight sky, hidden by thick clouds.
The humidity must’ve been close to a hundred percent and the temperature had
cooled only a fraction after the sun had set. Sweat dripped down Rosswell’s
face. Driving in a night deprived of all light lulls a man into ignoring his
surroundings.

“Many lie in unmarked graves in unknown places,”
Rosswell said. “When a woman you’ve made love with dies, part of you dies with
her.”

Ollie shifted in his seat and leaned toward Rosswell. “Speak
up. I can’t hear you over the roar of this truck.”

Rosswell didn’t realize he’d spoken the words he’d
once read in some book. Oddly, for him, he couldn’t remember the name of the
book. All he could remember were those depressing words.

“Nothing. Talking to myself.” Hoping to distract Ollie
from asking more questions about the quote, Rosswell let off the gas for a
second and then floored it. The truck’s muffler made a sound like a dragster’s
car out of a 1960s teenage flick. “The guy at the shop said the glass packs
made it sound cool.” Rosswell could smell the stink of the exhaust through the
open windows.

“Very cool.” Ollie coughed but didn’t sound convinced.
“Sounds better than those weird quotes.”

Rosswell slowed as he passed River Heights Villa. “Most
likely everyone’s asleep.” Orange sodium lamps burned on half a dozen poles. In
the huge house, dim light showed from a couple of windows. None of the
outbuildings was lighted.

Ollie said, “Let’s hope your glass packs didn’t rouse
them from their slumber.”

A quarter of a mile down the highway, Rosswell pulled
off onto a field road. He reversed the truck, pointing it toward the highway,
and backed into a grove of trees. “This makes for a fast getaway.”

“If we live through this, we’ll need a fast getaway.
Tell me what we’re doing here.”

“When you were in the alley asking Charlie where the
cave with the dead woman was, he said, ‘There’s that big bluff with all the
trees and shit on it. Look out—’ ”

“Yeah, that was when the garbage truck arrived. And?”

“But he didn’t say
look
out
,
he
said
lookout
.”

Ollie sucked in a deep breath and rubbed his head. “Not
a verb but a noun!”

“Exactly.”

Ollie stretched his arm out, down the highway toward River
Heights Villa, now hidden from their view by the trees. “That place has two
towers. In other words,
two
lookouts
.”

“Let me return the favor, Ollie Groton. The cigar is
in the mail.” Rosswell drew out two flashlights from the glove box and handed
one to Ollie. “This has two AAA batteries and a little bitty light. I’ve got my
grandfather’s radium dial watch tucked away in a lead lined box. That watch puts
out more light than these do.”

“It’s enough. We’re not filming a movie out here in
the dark. All we need is enough light to keep from tripping over something.”

Rosswell observed the mansion for a few moments. “There.
The tower on the north end of the building, the one closest to us, is above the
face of the bluff. That’s where we need to search, because if it were daylight,
we could see the cave of one eye.”

“No, we couldn’t.”

“The cave of one eye holds treasure. Treasure needs to
be guarded. The towers have guards. Below the towers is a cave with one
entrance. One eye.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Ollie, that indeed is what I don’t know right now. But
something is what I aim to find out.”

Rosswell and Ollie, poised for action at the base of the dark
cliff, inspected the antebellum chateau. Fortunately, no nasty critters (human
or animal) had attacked them on their hike from the truck to the house.

“Rosswell, this is not a good idea.”

“We’ll just sniff around a little bit.”

Keeping to the woods, they tramped up the backside of
the cliff. Great caution was Rosswell’s byword. The last thing he wanted was to
trip and sprain his ankle. If Ollie had to carry him back to the truck, he’d
die from embarrassment, not to mention he loathed the thought of being up close
and personal with Ollie. At one point on the climb, Rosswell heard the snuffling
of a feral pig thrashing in a dead fall covered with kudzu. A wild pig is a
treacherous animal to meet any time, but especially dangerous in the dark. When
he shined his flashlight toward the noise, a reflection from beady eyes met his
gaze. Rosswell flapped his arms and hooted. The beady eyes disappeared.

Now, shoulder to shoulder with Ollie, Rosswell
silently appraised their goal.

“Judge, you know that place is loaded with burglar
alarms.”

“There’s a good way to trump a burglar alarm. A fire
alarm.”

“We’re going to start a fire? Now that sounds freaking
frost brilliant.”

A rhythmic whooshing noise overhead caused Rosswell to
cringe. His breathing quickened while nausea conquered his stomach. But the
noise wasn’t the faint sound of a helicopter in the distance that would bring
death as it had during the war. Only an owl, flying overhead, answering
Rosswell’s hoots.

“I didn’t say anything about starting a fire. If we
set off a burglar alarm, then we trip the first fire alarm we find. Everyone
will run from the building and we’ll have five minutes to search before the
fire department arrives.”

“Search for what?”

“An entrance to the cave inside the house.”

The odor of rotting leaves underfoot mixed with the
fragrance of new, rampant growth. A not unpleasant smell. The forest was a
place where humans rarely visited. Between the farm fields below and the house
on the cliff, the land belonged to wild animals and untamed vegetation. Humans
were trespassers.

Ollie tapped a finger on his lips. “You know for a
fact that there’s an entrance to the cave in the house?” Ollie tapped his lips
more rapidly.

“No.”

“Why’re we going in there then?”

“I told you. To search.”

“And how do we get into the house to trip these alarms?”
Ollie commenced to wringing his hands, clearly demonstrating his reluctance to
trespass.

“We open the door. I doubt that the rules on residence
homes allow locked doors.”

Rosswell put his finger to his lips as they crept toward
the house. In the illumination cast by a pole light, Rosswell saw Ollie nod.

When they passed a large garage and reached the back
of the house, Rosswell put his hand on the doorknob of a sunroom. This was it.
Open that door and in they’d go. A simple flick of the wrist and the deed would
be done.

Locked.

“Damn!” Rosswell whispered. “I guess they want the
place locked up after all. Now what?”

Ollie clasped him on the shoulder, making a motion
with his thumb, jerking it backward, indicating his desire to leave. Rosswell mouthed,
No,
and pointed to a window next to the door. The windowpane was raised
about three inches. Only a screen prevented Rosswell from reaching into the
house and opening the door.

Rosswell whispered into Ollie’s ear, “Do you have a
pocket knife?”

Ollie’s face grew pained and he again used his thumb
to make the plea to leave.

After searching his brain to remember what he could
use to burgle, Rosswell removed the necklace that Maman Fribeau had given him.
He felt the points of the star and nodded. The points were sharp as a new nail.
Within a few seconds, he cut the screen enough to allow him to reach inside.

Ollie whispered, “I’m pretty sure you just committed a
felony.”

Rosswell replaced the necklace and whispered back, “I’m
pretty sure you’re right.”

Snaking his hand through the slit screen, Rosswell turned
the knob, pulled open the door, and jumped when a burglar alarm beeped a
warning that it was fixing to blow its top. Enough glow from the pole light
seeped through the windows to allow him to find a fire alarm. He pulled it.

Both the fire alarm and the burglar alarm exploded
into a rage at the same time, shrieking up and down the scale. To Rosswell, the
sound aroused memories of the screams he’d heard on television, watching the
Twin Towers fall.

Rosswell and Ollie hastened their butts to the garage
and knelt behind a car.

Within milliseconds, people poured out of the house from
every exit, running as far away as possible once they cleared the doors. More
than half of them wore pajamas. The rest had donned jeans and tee shirts. The
noise level made it impossible for Rosswell to make sense of the shouting he
heard. Most of the people screamed or cried, disregarding the directions of the
staff to remain calm. At least twenty flashlights bobbed in the dark. Rosswell
counted six women who resembled Tina and all were showing pregnant.

One
woman, stick thin and homely as a mud fence, couldn’t have been any older than
Tina. She looked like an ugly stick. Rosswell had seen that woman before.
Where? Had she been to court? Had he seen her in the shops? He didn’t remember.
The concern flew away.

Sirens whined in the distance. Disaster training was
paying off. Everyone eventually fled to the same place far from the house.

Except for one person.

His arms akimbo, Nathaniel towered in the doorway of
the sunroom. Rosswell watched as the white man with orange hair swept his gaze
everywhere, scowling like a hawk searching for a mouse. Nathaniel stopped his
survey of the pandemonium, peered down at the cut window screen, then swept his
head left and right, obviously searching for someone who didn’t belong there.
Someone who was the type of person who’d slit a screen.

“That would be me, Nathaniel,” Rosswell said. “Me and
my sharp star from Maman Fribeau.” Buried in a pit of noise, Nathaniel made no
response to Rosswell’s words.

Going around the house to another entrance was
impossible. Too many people were in the yard surrounding the place. Nathaniel was
blocking their only way in.

Ollie cupped his hands around Rosswell’s ear and yelled,
“You have a Plan B?”