The Storm Protocol (4 page)

I saw the blade before the hand. Someone was pitching a knife against a gun. They were foolhardy, overly confident or supremely skilled; it does happen. I waited until the arm was extended halfway through the doorway.

I dropped my left hand across the forearm and spun violently, driving my elbow with precision into his kidney. I heard a grunt of pain as the knife dropped. Seizing the advantage, I slid sideways slightly and reached my right arm across his throat, throwing him downwards across my extended right leg. He hit the ground with a thump, and I followed up with a knee to the solar plexus. He jerked upward in a reflex and then collapsed back. He wasn’t going anywhere fast.

I was just about to rise
, when the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I trusted my body implicitly, so I threw myself backwards and rolled away, as a bullet thudded into the cheap plywood panelling of the fire door. I was up and aiming as the second bullet struck the solid concrete of the floor, sending up sparks and chips of floor paint. As the shadow filled the doorway, I fired three times in quick succession, feeling the satisfying recoil on each. I heard a thud and then another, followed by a sigh. I waited a couple of seconds, index finger increasing the pressure on the trigger, until the dark suited figure dropped to the ground a few feet in front of me.

I walked over and felt for the carotid artery, nodding in satisfaction when I found no pulse. I waited a further minute, my senses on high alert until I was satisfied that no one else was coming.

It made sense; most of the Mancini cleaning squads operated as quads and I had definitely seen at least one of these guys before.

I walked back to the prone assailant, kicking away the knife that his scrabbling fingers had been reaching for. He must have been in agony, but he didn’t show it; just a healthy dose of bravado. They were always the same, these lads.

‘Who sent you?’ I asked pleasantly.

‘Fuck you,’ he coughed
, with some venom and some blood too.

I brought the butt of my gun down on the centre of his mouth like a hammer. I felt a few teeth go, and saw a nice fountain of blood from his lip.

‘Who sent you?’ I asked again, softer this time.

‘Go to hell!’ he spat in my direction, along with some blood and the remainder of one of his teeth.

With those two defiant actions, he had told me what I wanted to know.

‘After you,’ I said quietly.

I placed the gun barrel between his eyes and pulled the trigger in one fluid motion. He barely had time to register surprise.

I quickly walked over to John and knelt beside him. His breathing was coming in agonising rasps rather than breaths and the carpet under his back was stained a deep red. I felt for the pulse on his neck; it was erratic and skittish, like a kitten at play.

His bloody fingers plucked loosely at my sleeve. I silently cursed the dry cleaning bill, but leant closer. He was flailing at my arm wildly now and I could see in his eyes the panic; he knew he was dying.

‘Stop them,’ he stuttered, so low
that I could barely hear him.

‘Stop who?’ I asked, puzzled.

He shook his head weakly in annoyance.

‘It’s all about
Storm
,’ he said. ‘You have to stop them creating it or there will be a perfect Storm.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked, puzzled, but then realised it was too late.

The light had gone out from his eyes; I could feel the spirit vacating his body, as it relaxed and slumped further to the ground.

I closed his eyelids and made the sign of the cross. Old habits
did indeed die hard. I holstered the 9mm and picked up the carrier bag; some light reading.

I was going to find out what the hell was going on, even if it was the last thing I did.

I pictured the two brothers, apoplectic with rage, and realised I had another chore. I had a resignation letter to write.

And all the while, the words echoed in my ears from old.

‘Be careful what you wish for, Thomas.’

11
th
May 2011 – The morning after the Storm.

It may well be doubted whether human ingenuity can construct an enigma, which human ingenuity may not, by proper application, resolve.
–
Edgar Allan Poe.

Something was bothering him. He had not been sleeping too well of late, but a six pack and a heavy night had seen him slip into one of those intense and overriding sleeps.

Deep in his subconscious, there was an agitation in the soporific splendour of his dreams; a fly in the ointment. Even though he was not aware he was asleep, he didn’t want to wake up, but the annoyance wouldn’t go away. It was like an inspect bite; easy to resist the irritation at first, but once scratched, the flood gates would open.

Eventually, awareness penetrated the soft grey tissues, his eyes opened, and he saw the blue LED flashing on the side of his phone. Someone had been looking for him. He checked the display. Ten missed calls; someone wanted him really badly. As consciousness flooded back like a rip tide, the phone resumed its strident ringing.

He glanced at the slightly garish glowing green digits on the ancient clock radio. It had been a purchase for college to ensure he was never late for classes; when his ambition still glowed as brightly as the luminous numbers. He sighed and then scowle
d with real venom; six forty am, this had better be damn good. He banged around on the bedside table with his hand, searching behind the clock radio until his scrabbling fingers gained purchase on the elusive instrument. He stabbed the green button and thrust it up to his ear.

‘Roussel!’ he barked into the microphone.

He heard a chair scrape in the background; someone had hastily pulled themselves upright, as if they hadn’t been expecting him to pickup.

‘Sorry to wake you sir,’ said the disembodied voice.

It was Granger, the duty officer who covered the night watch.

‘But we’ve got a report of susp
icious activity out at the old mansion on highway eighteen.’

‘Which one?’
Roussel asked, suddenly interested, rubbing the sleep out of one eye while trying to stifle a yawn.

Granger chuckled to himself.

‘That’s right,’ he said, elongating the word
right
in his peculiar southern drawl, legacy of a misshapen bottom lip, acquired during a street fight in his delinquent youth. ‘There sure is a lot of em to chose from ain’t there.’

He paused and Roussel could hear the rustle of paper.

‘Ah here it is,’ he said finally. ‘It’s called Augustine mansion, near Vacherie. The person who reported it said it was on highway eighteen; the great river road. I dispatched uniform and they’ve already been out, but they came back to me with a request for a detective.’

Granger waited for almost a minute for a response. The only sign that someone was still at the other end was the sound of breathing coming from the receiver.

‘Sir, are you still there?’ asked Granger hesitantly.

‘I’ll be there in about forty minutes,’ said Roussel gruffly.

He stabbed the red button on his phone and tossed it roughly onto the bed. He looked around at the devastation that sufficed for normality in his small apartment. As he peeled the hot and sticky sheets away from his body, he noticed a semen stain. He tried to remember the last time he had sampled the delights of intercourse. Was it that long ago he had last washed them?

Swinging his legs out of the bed, he noticed the humidity level had dropped from
barely able to move
to
just about tolerable, but your shirt will look like you’ve swam in it after an hour
. He figured the scant weather-based relief must have been courtesy of the storm that had raged all night.

He picked his way gingerly across the debris of his life and into the small bathroom. The large stainless showerhead pumped cold water onto his body, making him start and shiver. It
was the only time he would feel cold until the same time the following morning.

He stepped out of the shower and dried himself off. He studied the tattoos on his upper arms. Celtic designs had seemed like a good idea at the time; now he was not so sure. He pulled on a two day old white cotton shirt, wrinkled and creased from prolonged exposure to the floor and clicked his tongue; a remembered imitation of his mother’s annoyance. Still, in his defence, the shirt would be dripping wet within the hour; it hardly seemed worth the effort to iron it.

He pulled on his light brown chinos, and slipped his feet into heavily polished tan moccasins; the ones with the double tassels, his only sartorial extravagance. They were so heavily buffed you could literally see your face in them. He grabbed his phone and stuffed it into his pocket; couldn’t forget that.

As he picked his way toward the espresso machine, he pressed the play button on the large silver faced stereo system, smiling at the first refrain of the song.

Agents of the law: luckless pedestrians.

He pressed the r
equisite buttons on the coffee maker. The machine hissed and clicked, as he opened the cupboard under his bedside locker and removed his gun and wallet. Shrugging himself into the shoulder holster, he casually opened the wallet and studied it for a second. There was a
St James Parish Sheriff’s Department, CID
logo on one side and a silver shield with
Detective Charles Roussel, 6566
below it with his picture.

The portrait had been taken when the smile still extended to his eyes; something that his jaded and disillusioned mind refused to allow his face to do anymore.

The espresso machine bleeped loudly, interrupting his self indulgence. He snapped the wallet shut and slipped it into his pocket. Grabbing his thin cotton jacket from the bottom of the bed, he eased himself into it before dispatching the bitter liquid in a single fluid motion. He banged the cup down on the counter in the kitchenette and then grabbed the keys as he went.

He rushed through the screen
door and then the front door, slamming both of them closed behind him in quick succession. Making his way across the parking lot towards a battered Ford Taunus, he noticed the weird shadows cast by the early morning sunrise. He slipped on his Oakley sunglasses, a spur of the moment birthday present from his then girlfriend, seven years earlier, and slipped a spearmint gum into his mouth. It would have to do; a trick he’d perfected in lieu of brushing his teeth on early morning call-outs.

Traffic was sparse on the great r
iver road, and he was thankful for the shades. The sun was dead ahead, and made it pretty much impossible to see where he was going. He almost missed the turn. It was a long time since he had made the journey; too long.

He pulled off the main road onto the verge and parked up; partly to investigate any possible tyre tracks or footprints for himself, but mostly for other reasons.

He walked about a hundred yards up the track and turned to his left. He pulled lightly on the wrought iron gate, and it swung towards him; not a hint of creaking on its well oiled hinges, his first surprise. The familiar twin emotions of guilt and annoyance threatened to overwhelm him.

Moving through the graveyard, he marvelled at how well tended it was. He thought about the smooth operation of the entrance gate. Someone was looking after it very well.

He spotted the grey and the pink granite stones, standing side by side like soldiers. He had been hoping against hope that they wouldn’t be there; that he had the wrong house.

He moved in front of them, his lips silently recounting the words. He already knew what was carved into the stones; he had written both of the inscriptions himself. He smiled without humour. He had referred to them as
Beloved Father
and
Beloved Mother
. And even through his deep sadness, sitting in the lawyer’s office, listening to their last wishes, he had blessed their foresight.

They ha
dn’t wanted an eighteen year old to be saddled with the twin burdens of a decaying plantation and a decaying plantation house, so they had ordered its immediate sale, with all proceeds going to a trust fund for his education and subsequent living expenses.

He looked back down th
e lane toward the main road. The last time he’d walked this strip of driveway, he had been sadly whistling his father’s favourite tune, with more than a little touch of melancholy. The death of his parents had been hard, but he couldn’t have stayed in the house; not close to so many shared memories.

He smiled in spite of himself. God
, he’d been a bright eyed and naive little fucker. He’d managed to get himself a set of grades in high school that enabled him to get into Yale to do law. And boy was he ready to change the world. He was the hardest worker in his class, but his earnest southern boy mentality tended to alienate him from the rest of his classmates; mainly WASP’s from East Coast money and privilege. Even so, he kept to himself, head down into his studies and managed to emerge top of the class.

The inevitable bun fight ensued between the best firms over the top graduate. With hindsight, he should have gone south, but his instincts told him that the money, and
ergo the real power, was on the East Coast. He still hadn’t given up his idealistic roots, so he figured it was also the place that he could make the most difference. He eschewed all the approaches from firms in the south with silent regret and accepted a position with Warner, Updike and Partners, the most prestigious law firm in Boston.

Initially it was great; the money was good and the kudos rolled in. He was feted as the most successful rookie in the practice. But then the cracks
slowly began to show. He was regarded as a bit of a trophy; a southern show pony for the amusement of the Yankee gentry. The slight misgivings he had felt at first began to crystallise into huge disappointment. He felt he was always on the periphery.

He was the butt of jokes; they were always laughing at him rather than with him. And the last straw had been an overheard conversation in the gents toilets that had definitely not been for his consumption (he had been given the executive washroom key only a day previously and word had not got around.)

It was like an epiphany. The role he’d been playing was peeled away like a badly fitting overcoat and the fiery southern boy was at last let loose. He had downed half a bottle of Jim Bean at lunchtime. This had provided the impetus and drive to barge into the managing partner’s office during a case conference, helpfully providing the man himself with a concise and honest opinion on his lineage and sexual preferences, to the widespread amusement of the folks gathered around the table.

His last act had been to drop his executive washroom key into the nearest storm drain and he had then gone on a five day bender. He
’d woken up in Shreveport with his belongings piled into a battered Ford Pinto.

Curiously, his calling to the l
aw had still been as strong as ever, maybe more so, as he was finally among his own people. So he’d found a small apartment in Convent and considered his future. He decided to approach law enforcement from the other end; the gritty and realistic end. He applied to join local law enforcement and after a spell at police academy, he joined the parish of St James as a patrolman. He worked hard keeping the neighbourhood safe, but there was still a small vestige of ambition left in him. He studied hard over the next couple of years for his detective’s exams, and it was the proudest moment of his life when he was given his badge and asked to join the CID.

But that had been five years ago; his trust fund had bled dry the day he
’d graduated from Yale and he found the constant dealing with the flotsam and jetsam of society, harsh and dehumanising. He also felt adrift in the community; he was effectively a ship without an anchor. And coming here to his childhood home had not had a positive effect on him. It had only served to highlight what was missing in his life. He had no roots and now, here, tonight, he realised where he needed to be. He needed to be on this land; his family’s land; his land.

‘Penny for them, Peeshwank?’

He chuckled in spite of himself. The county coroner always had a way with words.

‘Hey Guilbeau, enough with the pet names already,’ he said. ‘I’m no runt; not that I can say the same thing about you, little weasel man.’

Guilbeau was a small wiry Louisiana Cajun, who liked testing his fellow men on their knowledge of Louisiana Creole. He had a shock of white hair and leathered sun-beaten skin, the colour and texture of old shoes. But his eyes twinkled with a mischievous cobalt blue and there was genuine affection in his comments. He liked Roussel; they were kindred spirits.

‘What are you hanging around here for?’ he asked.

‘Paying my respects,’ said Roussel softly.

‘To whom?’ asked
Guilbeau.

‘My Mom and Pop,’ Roussel said.

Guilbeau guffawed, but his laughter awkwardly trailed off, as he caught sight of Roussel’s face.

‘You’re serious aren’t you,’ he said.

Roussel nodded.

‘And all of this?’
asked the coroner.