Chapter 11 All Your Fault

Chapter 11

All Your Fault

Gator needed very little direction in turning our eight-thousand-pound pontoon boat into a graceful flying machine, and we climbed out over the vast expanse of the Louisiana bayou. From five hundred feet, it would be easy to believe the whole world was nothing but endless swamp, with fingers of semi-dry land winding through its interior, making way for mankind to infiltrate the timeless firmament. But from a thousand feet, the green and blue of the Gulf developed on the horizon, turning wasteland into the promise of a world beyond black water—a world of color and fragrant breezes whispering their siren call of distant paradise. Turning for home, the skyline of New Orleans formed like apparitions dancing in the distant haze and crying out to the souls of men—souls both godly and pagan—enticing them into the Quarter, where sinner and saint toil side by side, each peddling their own spiritual escape from the madness of modernity.

When we leveled off in cruise flight with the shoreline stretching out beneath us, I said, “You don’t have to hand-fly the whole route. Set the autopilot and relax.”

The two-and-a-half-hour flight back to St. Marys gave us more than ample time to reflect on what we’d seen, heard, and felt in a world so distant from ours.

“Do you have a theory yet?”

Gator scanned the panel. “Yeah, but you’re not going to like it.”

My eyes followed his across the instrumentation, not because I didn’t trust his scan, but because I didn’t trust his inexperience behind jet-fuel-burning turbines. Everything was in the green, and the propeller pulled us through space and time exactly as it had been designed and built to do.

“I don’t have to like it for it to be true. Let’s hear it.”

He said, “I think the old man is crazy. Maybe he’s doing it in some kind of voodoo trance brought on by smoking too much whatever and rattling chicken bones, but I think he’s killing people and dragging their bodies out to that island so he can burn them. Who knows? Maybe it’s some kind of ritual thing. Maybe he does it—like I said—in a trance, and when he comes out of it, he finds these body parts and has no memory of where they came from. I wouldn’t say this to Earl, but maybe the old man belongs in Angola.”

I sat in silence as the hum of the engine lulled me toward a nap.

Gator said, “See? I told you that you wouldn’t like it.”

“It’s not that I don’t like it. It’s just that I hope you’re wrong.”

“Let’s hear your theory,” he said.

“Mine’s the same as yours.”

* * *

Overconfidence is the only thing more dangerous than lack of confidence, and I was guilty.

Gator flew the traffic pattern at our private airport adjacent to Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in St. Marys, Georgia, and I was more interested in watching a massive ballistic missile sub motor up the channel behind Cumberland Island than monitoring my student’s performance in the left seat. By the time the sub was out of sight and my brain was back in the cockpit, Gator had the Caravan so slow that any aft movement of the yoke would’ve stalled the wings and destroyed a two-million-dollar airplane and her occupants. My reaction was quick, but not quick enough. My left hand shoved the throttle ahead at the same instant my right eased the yoke forward just enough to keep us flying while the turbine spun up.

The airspeed continued falling, and the Earth kept climbing. I wasn’t certain we were going to make the runway. In fact, I wasn’t certain we were going to survive.

Finally, the turbine howled and produced the power to save us and the airplane from pranging into the trees. The airspeed increased, and I slowly raised the nose. Soon, we were climbing away from the airport and turning left.

Gator sat with his hands in his lap and the look of defeat on his face. “I’m sorry. I was…”

“Don’t be sorry,” I said. “Be better. I should’ve been paying attention. Let’s try it again. You have the controls.”

We exchanged control, and he flew the pattern beautifully, nailing the approach speeds perfectly, and we gently touched down exactly where we should’ve.

“Much better. Always fly the numbers, and never forget which airplane you’re in.”

“I know. I’m—” He caught himself. “I’ll do better.”

A small Citation jet parked near our main hangar caught my eye. “Whose airplane is that?”

Gator peered through the windshield. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen it before, but the bigger question is, what’s it doing here?”

We taxied in and shut down just as Don Maynard, our airport manager, drove up in the fuel truck.

I filled out the logs and climbed down the ladder. “Hey, Don. Whose Citation is that?”

He glanced at the glistening white airplane. “Oh, that’s Ms. Anya’s, apparently. She brought Skipper and Dr. Mankiller home in it this morning.”

“Did you fuel it up yet?”

“Not without your permission. The fuel isn’t mine to hand out.”

“Top it off for her,” I said. “If she’s hauling Skipper and Celeste around, it’s the least we can do.”

* * *

Inside the op center, Skipper, our analyst, had the rest of the team assembled and awaiting our arrival.

“Sorry I’m late,” I said. “We tried to crash the Caravan on the way in, but we failed.”

Gator shook his head. “You used the wrong pronoun, Chase. We didn’t try to crash. I tried to crash.”

I said, “We’re a team, and have I got a story to tell you guys.”

I laid out what we knew about the situation concerning the floating body parts and Kenny LePine’s father in the bayou. It should’ve taken two minutes, but I struggled to find the right words to describe what Gator and I saw on our little excursion.

Clark, a former Green Beret and my current handler, knocked on the table. “Great story, but what’s it got to do with us?”

“Earl asked us to look into it for Kenny’s father, and saying no to Earl isn’t something I can stomach.”

“What does she expect us to do?” he asked.

I glanced at Gator, and he stared back with a blank expression. Since he didn’t have an answer, I did my best to pull one out of the air. “I guess she wants us to figure out who’s killing people and dumping their body parts in the bayou around Kenneth LePine’s house.”

“You guess?” Clark asked. “You don’t have a definitive objective?”

I said, “That is the objective, unless Mr. LePine is the guilty party.”

Mongo, our big-brained giant, asked, “Are you saying Kenny’s father might be killing people?”

I shrugged. “It’s possible, and at this point, it seems like the most likely answer. The first thing I learned in this job, though, is that things are rarely as they appear, and if they are, we perceived them incorrectly the first time.”

“I’m not finished,” Mongo said. “Are you telling us we’re doing this gig, or is this just a roundtable to brainstorm some ideas?”

I said, “You know I don’t assign missions. I invite you to join me, and that’s what’s happening here. Gator and I are in. I’d love to have your help, but as always, this one’s not mandatory.”

Mongo was first to answer. “I’ve got nothing better to do. Count me in.”

Our chief pilot, Disco, said, “It sounds like somebody needs to come along who doesn’t try to wreck perfectly good airplanes, so I’ll go.”

Singer, our Southern Baptist sniper, picked at his fingernails. “They like to mess around with a little voodoo down there, don’t they?”

Gator huffed. “That’s the understatement of the year. Those people are crazy.”

I jumped in. “I just happen to know you don’t think all of them are crazy. There’s a pretty little Cajun queen you seem to have a great deal of admiration for.”

A chorus of “Ooh” rose from the table, and Gator retaliated. “Chase has it all wrong. She came to me. I didn’t go after her.”

“Yeah? I noticed you didn’t push her away.”

He groaned. “Why don’t we get back to business and leave my love life out of it?”

That scored a second round of reactions from around the table, and I couldn’t resist saying, “Oh, so now it’s love, is it?”

Gator threw a pencil at me. “Cut it out.”

I threw up my hands. “I’m just telling the truth. You know she woke up in your bed two days ago, and you’re carrying her rosary beads around.”

Singer perked up. “Rosary beads? What are you doing with those?”

“Nothing,” Gator said. “I’m not doing anything with them. She gave them to me to ward off the voodoo spirits.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Singer said. “Give me those beads.”

Gator glared at me. “This is all your fault, and you know it.” He pulled the beads from his pack and slid them across the table.

Singer caught them with a hooked finger and held them up in front of him. “Hmm. So, this is your shield against voodoo, huh?”

Gator shook his head. “If I had known what this meeting was going to turn into, I would’ve stayed in the bayou. This is a tough crowd.”

“Don’t change the subject,” Singer said. “We’re talking about this string of beads.”

Gator sighed. “Okay, okay. Here’s the truth. I like the girl. She’s cool. She gave me the beads, and I like that they make me think of her.”

Singer slid the icon back across the table. “In that case, put them around your neck. What good are they hidden away in your pack?”

Gator froze, obviously uncertain how to take Singer’s advice, and Skipper spoke up for the first time. “I think that’s great, Gator. Good for you.”

“Thank you,” he said as he tossed the beads over his head and around his neck. They disappeared inside his shirt, and I reclaimed the floor.

“How about you, Shawn? Are you in?”

Shawn was the newest member of the team, but far from the least experienced. He was a Navy SEAL special warfare combat crewman, so having him aboard multiplied our team’s capabilities exponentially. Having lost Hunter from the team, Shawn quickly became our waterborne operations officer and was already proving his value every time we got wet. His skill set would prove invaluable in the flooded world of the bayous.

Shawn studied the faces in the room and said, “I don’t understand.”

“What don’t you understand?” I asked.

“Does anybody ever opt out of a mission?”

“It hasn’t happened yet, but it’s always an option.”

He scowled. “If I’m an option, why am I on the team?”

I leaned back in my chair. “I understand your confusion now. Think about it this way… If we’re on a mission and you get shot in the head, are we supposed to abandon the mission, pack up, and go home? Everybody in this room is a hardcore operator, and we rely on each other every step of the way. However, no one here is so important that we can’t work without them. I want you on every mission, but I’ll never turn one down just because you aren’t coming.”

To my surprise, Shawn scribbled on a scrap of paper, quickly folded it into an airplane, and tossed it toward me. I snatched it from the air. “What’s this?”

“It’s my proxy. If you’re in, I’m in.”

Clark shoved the SEAL. “Nice! Way to suck up to the boss.”

“That’s not sucking up. That’s commitment.”

In seconds, the air above the conference table was congested with tiny paper airplanes full of comments soaring my way.

“I guess that settles it,” I said. “Now to the paperwork. Skipper, what do you have for us?”

She struck a key and spun to face the team. “I just sent you the briefing packet. Let’s talk about Gator’s girlfriend first since she’s the most interesting character in this play. She’s Cecilia Lachaussee, no middle name. Undergrad in geology and master’s degrees in agronomy and soil science. She’s put in the hours for her doctorate but apparently hasn’t defended or published her thesis yet. I’ll keep digging for that. She’s a recent contractor for Flambeau Exploration, an enormous oil and natural gas exploration company based in Buenos Aires. And get this… She holds a sixteen-hundred-ton Coast Guard Master’s license and a commercial helicopter license.” She paused and eyed Gator. “Did you know any of that?”

“Nope, but I do know she can suck the brains out of crawfish faster than anybody I know.”

Skipper frowned. “Is that a euphemism for something dirty?”

“No, it’s a real thing they do down there. Just wait. You’ll see.”

Skipper rolled her eyes. “Anyway…back to the briefing. Let’s talk about Kenneth LePine the Second. He’s almost as interesting as Cecilia. He was a long-range reconnaissance patrol Ranger in Vietnam. He came away with a Silver Star, a Bronze Star for valor, two Purple Hearts, and Airborne and Air Assault qualifications. After nineteen seventy-one, he dropped off the face of the Earth. No driver’s license, no Social Security records, and he’s never filed a federal income tax return. But…” She looked up, apparently to make sure we were all paying attention. “But, he owns almost six thousand arpents in two parishes in Louisiana.”

I raised a finger. “Okay, I’ll be the one to ask. What’s an arpent?”

Skipper said, “It’s okay. I didn’t know either. It’s like a French acre. It works out to be about eighty-five percent of an American acre, so that means Kenneth LePine owns around five thousand acres of bayous.”

Disco said, “Who would want five thousand acres of bayous? That’s gotta be worth at least two or three hundred bucks, wouldn’t you think?”

That got a chuckle, but I had questions. “Do you have a plat of the property he owns?”

She grinned. “I thought you’d never ask. Feast your eyes on the big screen.”

Gator and I stood in unison and approached the monitor. Our fingers landed on the slough at the same instant, and he said, “That’s where he claims to have found the body parts.”

Skipper widened her gaze. “Okay, that’s unexpected, but I’m not finished.”

I said, “Hold on a second. Is this all the property he owns?”

Skipper moved the cursor to highlight the boundary of Kenneth’s land. “Yeah. Everything inside the yellow line is his.”

“And it’s contiguous?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

I stared at the map for a long time, trying to imagine it overlaying the bayou where Gator and I had spent the past several days. “Did he buy it a little at a time or all at once?”

“It’s all on one deed from nineteen sixty-one.”

“What about his prison time?” I asked. “Didn’t that show up in his background check?”

“It did, but that’s the other strange thing I want you to see. He went to Angola State Prison Farm in September of nineteen seventy-four, but there’s no record of him being transferred, released, escaping, or dying.”