Fever Moon (6 page)

The things he’d seen and done had changed Raymond. The consequences of his actions sat beside him in the passenger seat of the car like an always watchful corpse.

Perhaps that was why he felt so compelled to help Adele. In a strange way, they were both prisoners of external forces. He’d gone to war because it was his duty. He’d followed the orders given him, killed when commanded to do so, taking no pleasure in the men who fell before him. Until Antoine. After his brother’s death, Raymond had taken satisfaction from the dead. Against his father’s dictates, he’d killed with grim pleasure. And he’d learned that killing couldn’t stop the nightmare parade of images that haunted his sleep.

Sometimes at night he heard Antoine’s whistle, the shrill, clear sound of a hawk that had been their secret signal.
Kay-ie
. The sound would pierce his head. Drops of blood leaked from his ears, and he would awaken to the sound of his own screams.

Adele was haunted, too. She was lost in her nightmares, and perhaps had chosen to let the fever boil her. Madame Louiselle had hinted that someone had cast a spell on Adele. A spell or something more sinister. To him, Adele seemed poisoned, but he had no idea what could cause such behavior.

The question that intrigued him regarding Adele was why? If this delusion was more than a fever dream, who would select an unmarried Cajun woman as patsy to a vicious murder?

If someone had done this to Adele, he would find that person and make them pay the ultimate price the law allowed. He no longer lived for laughter, only for justice.

He came to a narrow dirt trail that led through a canopy of towering trees. There were no road markers, but this was the way to Bayou Caneche. The road wound, clinging to the highest ground as the land on either side became more liquid than dirt. With the smallest rain, the road would flood. Bernadette Matthews lived her life in perpetual threat of isolation. For many Cajuns it was the preferred way of life.

The road narrowed and limbs and branches began to swipe at the car. Overhead, the tree limbs were so dense the sun didn’t penetrate, leaving the area filled with tall trees and little undergrowth. The stark beauty of it made him stop the car.

If a man was patient, he could come upon the wild hogs that roamed the swamps. Because of the shortage of meat, the hogs were highly favored as ingredients in the andouille sausage made locally. They were ferocious beasts who attacked rather than ran. Razor-sharp tusks grew from their snouts, and he’d been on manhunts where the missing person was found dead, the hamstring muscles cut by a boar’s tusks.

Alligators, too, watched from the sloughs, dead pools, and wallows like the one to his right. Also favored as meat, the beasts ranged up to ten feet in length and were fast enough to bring down a cow or horse that strayed too close. Those who thought the gator’s six-inch legs would slow it down often didn’t live to learn differently.

While the hogs and gators had a certain value, the water snakes did not. Large moccasins the color of a dead stick would coil in the leaves and dirt, undetectable except for a stench young boys learned to recognize as soon as they were old enough to walk in the woods.

There were many predators and dangers in the woods, but no wolves. And certainly no
loup-garous
.

He drove on, wondering if he’d somehow chosen the wrong path. At last the trees parted to reveal a cypress cabin set on pilings at least twelve feet in the air. He saw a child’s curly head looking over the railing of the porch, and then another. An older girl was swinging in the front yard, a book on her lap. She watched him with solemn eyes. At last a woman with Adele’s dark hair and eyebrows stepped onto the porch and waited, her expression neither welcoming nor forbidding. Two children followed at her side.

As he got out of the car, the woman watched him, unmoving. It wasn’t until he put his foot on the step that she spoke.

“If you’ve come to talk about Adele, I got nothin’ to say. My sister is a sick woman and needs medical help. She’s not responsible.”

“I’m Deputy Thibodeaux.”

“I don’t care if you’re Jesus Christ. I got nothing else to say about my sister, me. I got my hands full here with my young-uns. Adele wants to go and put on another circus freak show to ruin the family name, she can go right ahead. Me, I got kids to think about. These here and three more.”

Raymond gauged the ages of the children. The girl and one of the boys were old enough to hunt or fish. The Matthews children would not be in school, of that he was certain.

“Mrs. Matthews, I’m a representative of the law. I need to ask you some questions. Could we talk for a few minutes?”

“Don’t expect me to ask you in.” She turned on her heel, a child dragging at her skirt, and strode inside. Raymond was surprised to see the door and windows screened. It was a touch he hadn’t expected.

The sitting room held two rockers in a corner by the fire. Above a stove was a shelf that held a radio and a collection of delicate glass figurines. Pallets for the children, neatly made, were on the floor. A picture of Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane hung with a rosary beside it.

“You children go outside and play.” She pointed to the door.

“Is Mrs. Bastion coming today?” the oldest boy asked.

“Maybe later. To get me to work.” She waved them toward the door. “Go. Let me finish with the deputy.”

The older boy took his brother by the hand and led him outside. Raymond, alone with Bernadette, took a seat in one of the rockers.

Bernadette stood in the center of the room. “Ask your questions. I got supper to cook.”

Raymond had hoped for some insight into Adele. Into the strange behavior of both of Bernadette’s sisters. “Do you believe Adele is possessed by the
loup-garou?”

Her lips curled. “I believe my sisters, both of them, wanted folks to notice them. Since the day they were born, they cried and whined, demanding everything. Of the two, Rosa at least believed in God. Adele is sick. She had those babies and then couldn’t remember to care for them. She’s always been off.” She tapped her head.

He rocked slowly in the chair. Bernadette’s portrait of Adele contrasted sharply to that of Madame Louiselle. “Who fathered Adele’s twins?”

“She gave herself freely. Perhaps one of the men she slept with bit her and made her believe she was the
loup-garou
. Adele was simple. Men influenced her in bad ways.” Bernadette leaned forward. “That doesn’t mean she’d kill a man, especially not Henri Bastion. She used to work for him.”

“Do you know what man she was seeing?” He brought his notepad and pen from his pocket.

Bernadette took a breath. “My sister slept with lots of men. When she worked for Henri Bastion, she was fired because she couldn’t stay away from one of the prisoners leased to Henri. A prisoner! She couldn’t find a decent man who would marry her, so she took up with a convicted murderer.”

The practice of leasing prisoners from the state penitentiary at Angola had once been accepted all over the state. Now it was a special arrangement. The leaser provided food and shelter lowering the cost of incarceration to the state. Henri Bastion had been working a crew since before the war. “Do you know this man’s name?”

“Armand Dugas. Adele spoke of him sometimes.”

“And he was a murderer?”

“So I’ve been told. Maybe he killed Henri and fixed it to look like Adele did it.”

“Where is your husband, Mrs. Matthews?”

The change in subject took her by surprise. “What business is that of yours?”

“It would be helpful if you answered the question.” He didn’t want to threaten her, but her evasiveness made him suspect she might be abandoned. The cabin held small luxuries, though, and a single woman could never afford such things.

“Bodine is hunting with Clifton. They took a rich man from Shreveport into the swamp to hunt the wild hogs.” She snorted. “This rich man wants adventure. Perhaps he would pay big dollars to hunt the
loup-garou
. We could turn my sister loose and let him track her through the swamps. Imagine her head on the wall of his Shreveport home.” Tears sprang from her eyes, and she dashed them angrily away with her fists. “Why must Adele do these things to shame me?”

Raymond put his hands on his knees and leaned forward. “Tell me about Rosa.”

“What can I say?” She shrugged, gaining control of her tears. “On her knees from morning to night, praying, crying out for God’s mercy. It was horrible to watch.”

“Did you see her hands bleed?”

She stepped toward him. “I saw the blood, and I saw the wounds on her hands.” Her mouth hardened. “In her room, I found the hammer and spike, too. There was blood on the spike. What would a lawman call that? Evidence, maybe?”

“You’re saying Rosa hammered a spike into her own hands?”

“I’m only telling you what I found.”

“Why would she want to do something like that?” A greater point was that she would have had to have help. She couldn’t hold the spike and hammer it, too.

Bernadette shrugged. “Rosa was Papa’s favorite. When he died, she said she saw him standing in the yard, beckoning her. She believed she was destined to die soon, and when she didn’t, she believed God had a special purpose for her.”

“And Adele?”

“She always walked on the dark side, her. She was wild and willful, always running out at night. She told stories that scared us to death. She told my mother one time that she could fly. Mama believed Adele had special powers. It’s true Adele got around the parish. She’d be at one place dancing and then before the night was over at Breauxbridge or St. Martinsville.”

Raymond could clearly read the jealousy in Bernadette’s face. They were alike, physically. The difference was in their expressions. Even burning with fever, Adele’s face had more softness. “Do you believe Adele’s possessed?”

“Only by a need to be the princess, all eyes on her.”

“What’s your relationship with the Bastion family?”

“I work there some, when Mrs. Bastion needs me. I took Adele’s place when she was fired. They pay regular.”

Raymond made a note. Bernadette’s life had been hard, made harder by the public spectacle that her sisters had each created, deliberately or not. “Do you know if Adele had a reason to want Henri Bastion dead?”

“Why don’t you ask Veedal Lawrence, the overseer at the Bastion plantation, what happened to Armand Dugas? That might answer your questions about Adele and then you wouldn’t have to come here and bother me. Now you better leave before my husband gets back. He wouldn’t think kindly of a man sitting in his rocker in his home.”

J
OLENE paced the small office, her face flushed with anger. “We drove all the way out there, and she wasn’t home. All of that food! We couldn’t leave it on the porch. There were ants everywhere. The high water had them out. We had to feed everything to the prisoners, and let me just say they looked like they hadn’t eaten in a week of Sundays.”

Michael wanted to sigh, but he kept his expression neutral. “Mrs. Bastion has suffered a terrible loss. She isn’t herself, Jolene. You can’t hold her to standards of conduct when the situation is so difficult. Her husband was torn apart in the middle of the road, for heaven’s sake.”

“Where in the world could she be? There wasn’t a trace of her. Do you think she’s okay? Folks are saying Henri was meeting the devil, walking so far from home on a stormy night.” Jolene’s pale brown eyes, almost golden, glittered with fear.

Michael blinked. Even he was beginning to be affected by all the wild talk of werewolves. “Probably, he walked to assist his digestion. People with money …” He didn’t finish his thought, which went to eccentricities.

“There are those who say he traded his soul for wealth.” Jolene had stopped pacing and stood in front of him. “What do you think of that, Father Michael? Do you believe the dark master walks the night, his hooves striking sparks on the gravel?”

Ever since Rosa, questions of belief had become difficult. Satan was a reality, and the line dividing angels and demons was clearly defined in his mind and bolstered by the rules of the Bible. When he’d chosen to enter the Dominican Order, he’d done so because he wanted to be a soldier of God, not a teacher or a scribe or a monk who spent his life tending animals and praying. He wanted to wage war against Satan and his demons, against the evil that afflicted mankind.

“If only Satan showed himself with his forked tail and cloven hooves, my work would be so much easier.” He forced a smile. “He’s a master of disguise, Jolene, but you have nothing to fear. Not from Satan or the
loup-garou.”

“I heard Henri Bastion was a wicked man—”

“Jolene, let us not speak ill of the dead. It does no good.” He felt a prick of hypocrisy. Henri Bastion had sat in the first pew of the church each Sunday, his wife and children beside him, but Michael had never seen evidence that the Lord had been able to touch Henri. The prisoners working the fields were evidence of that.

Jolene started to say more but continued her pacing instead. He could see the anger was dissipating, and he spoke softly. “I want to thank you for all the help you’ve given me this past year. I don’t know what I would have done without you. Especially with poor Rosa.”

Jolene walked to the chair in front of his desk and placed her hands on the back of it. “Was she a real stigmatic, Father Michael?”

He could so clearly see her desire to believe. In this land where superstitions were the principal religion, people wanted a sign. They needed God to show them that he’d not left them to rot in the mosquito-infested swamps. The months of the past year followed a series of nature’s obstacles, from the first spring plague of insects to the snakes and malarial infestations of summer, and on to the latest epidemic of fever that had claimed the lives of at least forty of his parishioners. Many of the young men were dead on the battlefields of France and Germany. The parish suffered daily.

“I saw Rosa’s hands bleed. The manifestations of the nails had begun to appear in her feet.”

“And her side? Did it bleed, too?”