What Washes Up (15 page)

Boudreaux sat back in his brown leather chair, fingers steepled beneath his chin, staring at an oil painting of shrimp boats headed out to sea.

His gaze shifted to the door from the hallway, as Patrick opened it and came inside. He closed the door behind him and stopped, looking at Boudreaux. He was dressed as impeccably as always, if a tad too much on the GQ side, but there were shadows beneath his eyes.

“I’m here,” he said.

Boudreaux’s left eye twitched almost invisibly, and he slowly straightened up and leaned his elbows on his desk. “Sit down,” he said quietly.

“I’m on my way to work, so I don’t have much time to chat,” Patrick said, as he made his way to one of the leather armchairs in front of the desk.

“No, you don’t,” Boudreaux said flatly. He could see that Patrick was trying to amble, to walk as though he had no concerns, but he was failing.

Patrick glanced up at him as he sat, then looked away. “So what’s up?” he asked.

Boudreaux took a cleansing breath, staring at Patrick as he did. Patrick attempted to meet his gaze, but held it for only a moment before he needed to look elsewhere.

“You’ve done a remarkably foolish thing, even for you,” Boudreaux said.

Patrick threw an ankle onto his knee and fiddled with the cuff of his five-hundred dollar trousers. “Is this about the pot again, Pop?”

Patrick had admitted, almost proudly, that he had been the one to kill Myron Graham and steal Fain’s pot, after Graham had told him he wouldn’t be paying any more “commissions.” He’d also been pretty proud that David Seward had taken the blame for it.

“It’s about Fain,” Boudreaux said. “And this man Charlie Harper.”

Patrick glanced up nervously, trying visibly not to look it, then looked back down at his cuff. “Yeah, I heard about Fain,” he said, and tried for a sardonic smile. “Ironic, huh?”

Boudreaux placed his palms on his desk, splayed his fingers. “You didn’t really think anyone would suspect Maggie Redmond, did you?”

This time, Patrick skipped the smile when he looked at Boudreaux. “I don’t really care, actually.”

“Tell me about you and Charlie Harper,” Boudreaux said, his bright blue eyes hard and steady.

Patrick cut his eyes to the lamp rather than look at Boudreaux. “I don’t know him.”

“Charlie Harper is the man who shot Maggie Redmond,” Boudreaux said.

“Everybody knows that,” Patrick said. “It was in the paper.”

“At your behest,” Boudreaux said.

Patrick flicked at the corner of his mouth with his tongue. “Fain hired him. He likes to make examples of people who steal from him.”

“Lie to me again,” Boudreaux said quietly.

Patrick knew better than to accept that invitation, but he did it anyway. “I hear Fain hired Harper to kill her.”

“They thought Fain killed Graham, too,” Boudreaux said.

“Look, Pop. We already went over that,” Patrick said. “But I don’t have anything to do with Harper.”

“When you hire someone to kill a person, because you don’t have the guts to do it yourself, you need to avoid contracting imbeciles who think they’re on a TV show,” Boudreaux said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Boudreaux shifted in his chair, and Patrick shrank almost imperceptibly into his beautiful black suit. “It means Harper thought he needed to issue a soundbite before he finished Maggie off.”

“What do you mean?” Patrick asked, the corner of his mouth twitching just a bit.

“I mean he said he was ‘tired of cleaning up Boudreaux’s messes’,” Boudreaux answered.

The two men stared at each other for a long moment. It took a good deal of effort on Patrick’s part; it was effortless for Boudreaux.

“I don’t make messes,” Boudreaux said finally. “And if I did, I’d clean them up myself.”

Patrick swallowed hard.

“Who killed David Seward? Fain or Charlie Harper?” Boudreaux put his hand up as Patrick opened his mouth. “Be careful. Make certain that anything that comes from your mouth at this moment is true.”

Patrick took a moment to answer. “Harper,” he said quietly.

“So you steal Fain’s drugs, sell them to some other lowlife, and then use how much of your profits to kill poor David? Which I can only assume you did so Fain wouldn’t get hold of him and find out he didn’t steal anything after all.”

Boudreaux waited, but Patrick just stared at him. He sighed before speaking again, slowly. “How much did you pay Harper to kill David Seward?”

Patrick chewed the inside of his cheek a moment before answering. “Ten thousand.”

“So you shop at Walmart for your assassins,” Boudreaux said. He took a breath and let it out slowly. “And how much to kill Maggie Redmond?”

It took Patrick just a bit longer to answer that one. “Ten thousand.”

Boudreaux scratched at his left eyebrow for a moment and took a calming breath. “I should think if you were going to defy me, to do something which presented that grave a danger to yourself, that you would have paid much more to someone far more proficient.”

Boudreaux watched Patrick’s pupils expand, saw him lock his teeth together, saw the vein on the side of his neck pulsating. “I told you, in terms even you could understand, not to go anywhere near Maggie Redmond.”

Patrick’s left leg started vibrating up and down against the leather armchair, and his face slowly grew pink. Boudreaux thought it was like watching someone get a sunburn through time-lapse photography.

“Well, Pop,” Patrick said quietly. “You have my sincerest apology for trying to kill your little girlfriend.”

Boudreaux got up slowly from his chair, the creaking of the expensive leather the only sound in the room. Patrick’s eyes followed him, blinking rapidly, as he walked to one of the French doors and stood, hands in his pockets, looking out at the yard.

“That comment will go unaddressed, in the interest of continuing this conversation without bloodshed.”

He sighed, and gathered his thoughts, and his emotions, as he watched a squirrel sifting through the fallen fruit beneath an avocado tree. “I told you that I was working on something with Maggie. Exactly what that is, is none of your business.”

He turned around and regarded Patrick, who tried not to shrink from his gaze.

“So, you going to chop me into little pieces and dump me in the ocean, Pop? Because if you are, I’d like you to get on with it,” Patrick said. “Just don’t subject me any to of your ‘family first’ bull while you’re doing it.”

Boudreaux’s eyes narrowed, while Patrick sat there looking like he might jump from the chair at any moment.

“Actually, Patrick, because of that very sentiment, I’m going to accept half the responsibility for your actions.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that I think you’ve lost your damn mind,” Boudreaux said quietly. “I think you’ve lost it to drugs and greed and bad raising.”

“You and Mom raised me,” Patrick said.

“Precisely,” Boudreaux said. “And failed. Something I’ve been thinking about quite a bit over the last few weeks.”

Patrick’s relief must have caused an acute hysteria, for he actually almost laughed. “Are you apologizing to me?” he asked, then instantly seemed to regret it, as Boudreaux slowly walked toward him, his hands still in his pockets.

“Don’t be ridiculous. You’ve fallen too far from grace for me to apologize to you, even for my own mistakes.” He stopped a few feet in front of Patrick’s chair. “What I am doing is trying to atone, in some small way.”

“What way is that?” Patrick asked uncertainly.

“You have one week to get out of the country.”

“What?”

“I suggest you go somewhere that doesn’t have an extradition agreement with the US,” Boudreaux continued. “And make it someplace you can stand to live for the rest of your life, because you won’t be coming back.”

“I have a career here,” Patrick said. “Damn it, I’m the Assistant State’s Attorney!”

“You’re retiring,” Boudreaux said. “You will take whatever money you have left, you will take what is in your trust, and you will get your ass to Venezuela or wherever it is you decide you’re going, and you will arrive there no later than one week from today.”

Patrick opened and closed his mouth a couple of times before finding his words. “Are you serious?”

“Are you unfamiliar with my serious face, Patrick?” Boudreaux asked quietly.

“I can’t just…go into exile and lose everything!”

“Is there something you haven’t already lost?”

Patrick didn’t answer, just licked his lips nervously.

“One week. I’ll release the funds in your trust account when you’ve arrived where you’re going.”

“That’s not enough to live on indefinitely,” Patrick said.

“I suggest you pick someplace with a low cost of living, and develop a marketable skill.” Patrick shook his head, his mouth open slightly. “It’s time for you to leave this room, Patrick.”

Patrick stood up, his hands on the armrests of his chair as though he needed some support. He walked slowly to the door.

“Patrick?” Patrick stopped and turned, his hand on the door knob. “You need to understand that I’m giving you this option because I do feel some responsibility for the man that you’ve become. I don’t want to add you to my already overburdened conscience.”

Patrick looked at him a moment, seeming slightly dazed, then walked out of the room and closed the door.

Boudreaux turned around and walked back to the French door. His eyes scanned the yard, but the squirrel was no longer under the avocado tree. His eyes filled suddenly with warmth and moisture, and he pinched at their inner corners, blinked a few times, and stared out at the empty yard.

M
aggie breathed in the smell of salt and the slight, metallic odor of rain from tin-colored clouds off to the east. There were few other boats out, and once she checked her coordinates and cut the engine, there was very little sound, outside the slap of the wake against the fiberglass hull.

Maggie dropped the sea anchor, then stretched her back and walked to the port side. She leaned over the rail, hung on with one hand, and just managed to trail the tips of her fingers through the water. When she lifted her hand up, she wondered if any of David’s ashes lingered here where they’d spread them, in David’s favorite shrimping hole, or they’d all scattered miles away. Still, this was as close as she would get.

She touched her fingers to her neck, and closed her eyes a moment as the sea water cooled her. Then she sat down on one of the bench seats and sighed as she looked out at the water.

She sat there for almost an hour, willing the sun and the water and the sounds of the occasional gull to help her feel grounded again, to remind her of who she was, where she came from, to bring her back to herself.

She stood up and leaned over the rail again, cupped some water and dribbled it over the top of her head, seared by the mid-morning sun. Then she sat back down and sighed.

“So, I hope you realize that you left me with almost nobody to talk to,” she said quietly. “Not like us, anyway.”

She looked up as a couple of gulls flew overhead, arguing about something pertinent to gulls, then she looked back out at the water.

“I’m not sure how much you still care about what goes on around here, but I gave Sky your truck. I see her sometimes when she’s leaving or getting home, and she sits in it for an extra minute or two. Kyle has your guitar, the new one, and he’s gone back to practicing almost every day.”

Maggie chewed at the corner of her lip, as she watched the two gulls dive, then take back off, one of them with a small fish in its beak.

“Wyatt’s angry with me,” she said finally. “I may even have…I don’t know, I think maybe that’s not fixable. I would never have asked your advice about it, but I bet you would have given me some if I did.”

Maggie blinked back tears as she got a scent memory of sun-warmed flannel and Jovan Musk. “Or maybe…maybe I would have just forgotten about Wyatt, because how good is a man who would give that kind of advice to his ex-wife?”

She laughed softly, but she had to blink a few more times. “You know, I keep wondering if they have baseball in Heaven, because every time I picture you there, you’re taking practice swings. Or rounding second base.”

She suddenly felt a little self-conscious, and looked down at her hands. “Anyway,” she said. She picked at a hangnail on the middle finger of her right hand. “You know I loved you, right?”