Catahoula: Shallow End Gals (A Shallow End Gals Book 4) Read online

  Sasha straightened up, “Okay then.” She could tell this lady was not going to leave. “You gotta wait your turn. There still be four people ahead of you.”

  Sasha turned and walked casually down the sidewalk and back into the store. She ran from the door, through the red curtain and stood panting in front of Spicey.

  “You got one mean lookin’ spooky lady that ain’t gonna leave no how. She be about thirty somethin’ and all Goth.”

  Spicey laughed at Sasha’s expression. It didn’t take much to send Sasha off on a tangent.

  “You let her in first and we’ll get it over with. Girl, you must be goin’ soft on me. Since when is a spooky lookin’ lady in Nawlens somethin’ special?”

  Sasha gave her a neck waggle and snap, “We’ll just see ‘bout that.”

  A few moments later Sasha pushed the red velvet cloth to her side and held her arm out to gesture the lady to take a seat with Spicey.

  “Here ya go. You two have fun now.” Sasha’s eyebrows were raised in defiance. She nearly laughed at Spicey’s weak attempt to mask her shock at the lady’s appearance.

  Spicey swallowed as Goth lady slowly lowered herself to sit. Her huge eyes practically glowed in the dimly lit room. Spicey watched her slowly un-wrap the scarves from her neck exposing deep ragged marks and purple bruising.

  The lady placed her hands on the table near the crystal ball. The long, contorted nails began drumming as the black pools of her eyes darted about the small room. She suddenly focused on Spicey and leaned forward.

  “I want proof you speak to the spirits.”

  Spicey’s crystal ball began to cloud and a blue mist began to fill the room. Spicey was drawn to the crystal ball like a moth to a porch light. Her Spirit Advisor appeared in a white gown in the center of the ball. Spicey placed her palms on the ball and the Spirit said, “She is Dakin, a Hoodoo princess. She survived evil that buried her.” The ball unclouded and the mist cleared.

  Spicey peeked over the top of the ball. “Hear tell you be a Hoodoo princess named Dakin. Been killed and buried by evil.”

  A loud thunk confirmed Sasha had been outside the curtain listening and had fainted.

  Dakin slowly leaned forward, “Your Spirits speak the truth.” Dakin focused her large, black eyes on Spicey. She pointed her index finger at Spicey’s eyes and made circular motions with her long black nail. The corners of Dakin’s mouth twitched as she curled them up in a faint smile. “We will combine our powers. You shall help me obtain revenge.”

  The 1969 Chevy pickup used to be red. The parts not rusted through now boasted a variety of colors from spray cans left in the streets by graffiti artists. Claude had traded two goats and a block of frozen squirrel meat for it five years ago. The rope tailgate supported a salvaged sign piece that fit snugly in the bed concealing his often illegal cargo. Claude figured it was part of some old billboard, since it was the first half of a bikini lady lying on her side smiling. He had artistically added an extended middle finger to her hand. He also wrote Betty Sue next to her face in honor of his deceased wife. A somewhat ironic tribute considering he had killed her.

  Earl gingerly opened the moaning truck door and hefted his oversized torso into the passenger seat. He carefully placed his feet on the hump in the middle of the floorboard since his side was gone. He scowled at Claude, “What the hell Mason want us to do now?”

  Claude gave the truck some gas and waited for the delayed jolt forward. The fact that he had four different size tires on the truck, two of which were sized for small cars, and the muffler was wired too loose, made for a noisy and erratic ride.

  “He’s all pissed! Said we should have left that witchy lady in the cemetery after killin’ her.”

  Earl rubbed his temples, “If she hadn’t seen what we be doing we wouldn’t be in this mess. It’s Mason’s fault - wantin’ those bodies hid in crypts.” Earl looked out the window, “So what are we doing now then?” Earl was worried about Mason being mad. He was counting on that money to keep coming in.

  “Wants us to dig her up and take her to the swamp. Says we can’t risk going back in town in daylight.”

  “Told you, weren’t no good buryin’ her out at Pete’s place. Hell the swamp only a stone’s throw from where she be.” Earl lit a cigar and crossed his ankles on the floorboard hump. “Won’t take but a few minutes no how. Best be careful nobody at the rental place sees us though.” Earl snorted as he laughed, “Hate to ‘splain how we know a body be in their back yard!”

  Claude turned the truck down a dirt lane that announced Pete’s Swamp Boat Rentals. A narrow drive off to the left led to a storage barn. In the distance they could see activity at the swamp boat docks.

  Earl sat up straight and pointed, “Park over yonder in the shrubs. We’ll take the shovels, drag her back here. This damn thing makin’ too much noise.”

  Claude pulled the truck into a row of shrub trees and shut off the engine. Earl watched the people at the docks. Nobody turned to look their way so he was pretty sure they hadn’t been heard. They walked the long narrow drive, all the while looking toward the docks.

  Behind the storage barn they stood leaning on their shovels looking at a large earthen hole.

  Claude spoke first. “Ain’t this where we put her?” His head swung around surveying the ground.

  “Yup.”

  “Think some damn animals dug her up already? Don’t seem like they’d take the whole damn body.” Claude scratched his head, “Don’t see no blood.” Claude’s eyes opened wide and his face froze. “What if she came back to life?”

  The longer Earl looked at the hole, the spookier it felt. “Looky there.” Earl pointed the tip of his shovel to long scratch marks in the dirt, all along the sides of the hole. “She done dug herself out. She is a witch!”

  Claude quickly started walking back toward the truck. Earl caught up to him wheezing and choking back coughs. “What the hell we do now?”

  Claude didn’t answer until they were both in the truck and the engine started. Claude pointed the truck back toward town and looked at Earl. “Pert near got no choice but to kill ‘er again.”

  Jackson flipped through the receipts on his desk looking for the one Abram said he had left right on top of the pile. Not there. Jackson pushed his chair back to look at the floor a second time and pushed all of the papers on the desk into one big pile. He flipped the entire pile over and began to pull each piece of paper up and wave it in the air before he examined it and put it to his right.

  One of them was goin’ crazy. He was betting on Abram. Just then he noticed an invoice stuck to the back of a report. Jackson peeled them apart and saw sticky fingerprints all down the side of the missing invoice. Ah ha! Abram been snackin’ again and left his sticky mess on Jackson’s desk.

  Abram popped his head in the door, sporting a grin from ear to ear. “Got a party of six goin’ out in ‘bout twenty. You comin’?”

  Jackson dangled the sticky invoice in the air, “See what I found? A sticky ass invoice! I wasted a bunch of time here messin’ on this.”

  Abram displayed a toothy smile, “I do all the hard work around here. Man gotta eat!”

  Jackson and Abram had each been given reward money for helping the FBI last fall. They had decided to use some of the money to go into business together. It wasn’t easy staying on the right side of the law when you didn’t have any money. This was a shot at a second chance. They bought out Pete’s Swamp Boat Tours, mostly because it was so far out of town and away from the hood. After doing some much needed repair on the office building, they also invested in three new boats. They now had a fleet of five boats for rentals and one big boat for swamp tours.

  Business had been better than they had expected. All of law enforcement and many of the locals recommended them as local heroes. Now that it was spring, the tourist trade was picking up and they were already showing profits. Only one obstacle remained. They were both terrified of the swamp.

  Jackson pointed to the TV and turn
ed up the volume, “You hear this yet? News guy says some helicopter dumped a screaming man into the middle of that big sinkhole in Assumption Parish.”

  Abram listened for a minute and shook his head. “Now that be a pretty efficient way to get rid of a person, ain’t it? Hope this catches on. Might slow down the number of bodies floatin’ in the swamp.”

  Mathew Core walked into the gym and saw Zack sitting on a wooden bench wiping his neck with a towel. The gym pulsated with the rhythmic drumming of the punching bags and the clangs of the free weights. The grunts from the fighters on the mats were interrupted by frequent shouts of their trainers. This wasn’t a social gym. This was a serious business that had one customer: the federal government.

  Mathew saw FBI agent Jeanne Manigat on the far side of the room grab a gym bag from a bench and drink from the fountain against the wall. She pushed the double doors open to the outside as she gave a brief wave to Core and held up three fingers.

  Core nodded, knowing she was referring to their three o’clock date with the New Orleans SWAT team. He had heard rumors she was more lethal than she was beautiful. He looked at Zack, “Did I tell you she was assigned to help me evaluate SWAT progress in self-defense training?”

  Zack rolled his neck and took a big gulp from his bottled water. Zack was every bit as well trained and muscular as Core. Ex-Special Forces, ex-ATF, owner of the gym and part time employee of Core’s security company. Zack often chose Core as a workout partner. Zack tilted his head and looked up at Core. “That chick is spooky strong. And skilled. She just beat the shit out of me.”

  Mathew Core watched Zack roll his shoulders and stand. Zack started walking away and Core noticed a slight limp. Zack stopped and looked back, “And she was holding back.”

  The Director of the FBI watched out the jet window as the stripes on the runway flashed by. He thumbed through the report he had just received from the Department of Justice. New Orleans remained a hotbed of criminal activity and corruption. The DOJ made it quite clear that the FBI would shoulder the responsibility of supervising the mandated consent decree transition.

  The Director’s phone flashed an alert that Louisiana Senator Dalton was missing and presumed in danger. Baton Rouge FBI field agents found the Senator’s pilot dead in his personal car at the airport. All of the pilot’s identification was missing, and surveillance cameras showed the Senator boarding a helicopter scheduled to arrive in New Orleans.

  A second alert: agents were heading toward the site of a reported helicopter crash near the Assumption Parish sinkhole.

  Third alert: local police had eyewitness reports of a man pushed from a helicopter over the deadly whirlpool.

  The Director looked back out his window as he felt the jet leave the runway and take to the air. He had no doubt of the Senator’s whereabouts.

  The New Orleans field office headed by SSA Dan Thor was already overworked and understaffed. The reorganization required by the consent decree had the FBI assisting the local police in both law enforcement and training. This had originally been planned as a multi-agency effort. Now it had been dumped entirely on the FBI. There was no way the New Orleans field office could take on the additional murder investigation of a Senator.

  The Director exhaled as he dialed Supervisory Special Agent Roger Dance. He knew Roger was taking a long overdue vacation, but would not refuse him. “Roger? Any chance I can talk you into heading back to New Orleans?”

  Roger handed Kim a bucket filled with peat moss and sat on the ground next to her to finish planting the last four tomato plants. She had seen Roger take a call when he was standing by the wheelbarrow. Kim raised an eyebrow as she held out her dirty hand for another plant. “Let me guess. Your vacation is over.” She glanced at Roger and smiled.

  Roger put a plant in her hand and smiled back. In spite of the bizarre circumstances of their meeting and the connection they both had to Kim’s mother and her friends that are now angels, Roger knew he would spend the rest of his life with Kim. He had hidden an engagement ring in his desk drawer in the house. Tonight he had planned to propose.

  “I need to leave for New Orleans, right away.”

  Kim still had nightmares about Roger in New Orleans from six months ago. “Just you?”

  Roger stood and held Kim’s hand to help her up. “I’m going to call Paul and probably try to put our team back together.” Roger knew Kim would understand the implication of him wanting the entire team.

  “This is a big problem then?”

  Roger nodded. His face broke out in a boyish grin, “Maybe our angels will give us a hand?”

  Kim kissed his cheek and whispered, “I’ll ask Mom to watch over you.”

  Supervisory Special Agent Dan Thor sat at his desk in the New Orleans field office and tried to reorganize the duty roster. He didn’t have nearly enough agents to cover the mountain of active cases. As it was, he was trying to keep up with reports and do field work. His intercom buzzed and Thor hit the button, “Yeah?”

  The voice on the other end said, “SSA Roger Dance is on line three for you.”

  Thor pushed the line three, “I want your first sentence to be: I’m coming to New Orleans.”

  Roger laughed, “The whole team is coming to New Orleans.”

  Tuesday 12:00 pm

  Catahoula pulled Reuben’s card from his shirt pocket and dialed. Reuben answered on the first ring. “Yes, sir?”

  Cat shut his car door and started his engine. Court had gone quicker than he had thought. “I have about an hour, right now, if we could meet somewhere.”

  Reuben stopped breathing for a moment, his mind went blank. “I…I can’t think where…”

  Cat interrupted, “I’m not too far from Loyola University. How about the park?”

  Reuben sputtered, “Yes, sir.” and heard the phone line go dead. He glanced at his half -finished report on his monitor, hit save and closed it down. He was nearly finished with his sinkhole story and had just started working on the helicopter crash. Reuben looked at his watch. There was no way he would finish by deadline. His eyes scanned the newsroom and landed on Marla, his favorite columnist. He quickly dialed her extension and watched her pick up.

  “Swear to God, you have to help me!”

  Marla turned and looked at Reuben with her brow furrowed. “What do you want?”

  “I have a story I need finished by 12:30 deadline and I have to leave. You have to make it sound like me or Trayer will have my ass.”

  “Means I have to use bad grammar, lots of typos…”

  Reuben interrupted, he was nearly in tears. “Please? I will pay you back somehow. This is really life or death.”

  Marla hung up her phone and walked over to Reuben. “What’s your passcode?” She could see his hands shaking as he wrote it on a blank page of his notebook.

  “He can’t know.” Reuben had tilted his head toward Trayer’s door.

  “Got it.” Marla waltzed back to her desk and Reuben ran for the elevator.

  Marla glanced at her watch again. She had less than twenty minutes to make sense out of Reuben’s shorthand and finish his column. She made a quick call to the police that had responded to the sinkhole call and she did a quick phone interview with a representative from the FAA on the helicopter. She figured she could probably write the story better than Reuben just from what she had found out on the phone.

  Marla flipped a few pages into the notebook and saw where Reuben had scratched, Catahoula / today / Take proof. Catahoula? Her curiosity peaked, she flipped a few more pages. Nothing. Reuben had certainly been upset and in a hurry. Her gut told her he was working on a big story. Catahoula was not a name you casually tossed around. While Marla still had his passcode she searched his recent computer activity. She saw where he made a copy of a video file and retrieved its file number. She walked over to her desk, grabbed a blank flash drive and returned to Reuben’s desk. After making a copy of the file, she finished Reuben’s story and sent it to the deadline desk.

  Marla
dropped the flash drive in her pocket and returned to her own story. She barely got it submitted by deadline. Reuben said he owed her. Maybe he would let her help with his big story. This could finally get her into something juicy.

  Izzy crouched down by a bush and watched Gram’s house from across the street. A police car and a coroner wagon had their lights flashing. Neighbors stood on the sidewalk talking and soon two men came out of the door with a bed on wheels and a sheet over a body. That was her Gram. Izzy wiped her eyes with the back of her hands and watched the coroner van pull away.

  A male voice boomed behind her, “Isn’t that your grandma’s house?” Ed had seen the activity from his living room window and noticed Izzy standing by his front bush.

  Izzy jumped. She hopped on her bike and sped away as fast as she could. Sure wasn’t easy being invisible.

  Stone walked into the casino lobby and walked over to the reception desk. A bright eyed blonde pushed her chest out and asked, “May I help you?”

  Stone smiled. “I’d like a room for a couple of days.” He winked. “Make it a nice one.”

  The girl blushed and quickly hit a few keys on her computer. “I have a VIP suite available for tonight and tomorrow?”

  “That will be fine.” Stone laid a charge card from an alias on the desk. “Use this and process checkout now. I don’t want to have to stop back.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Williamson.”

  Stone winked and slipped the room key in his pocket. He grabbed a drink from a passing hostess and surveyed the game floor. He was feeling lucky.

  Acer had placed a message with his contact requesting a face-to-face. That kind of request had better be important or you just arranged your own death. He waited at the outdoor café and skimmed a newspaper left by an earlier diner. His contact joined him.