LONGARM AND THE VOODOO QUEEN
By: Tabor Evans
Synopsis:
Half of a deputy federal marshal was pulled out of a New Orleans swamp, and Longarm's sent to pick up the scent--undercover, of course. At first, the city is a regular Mardi Gras of Maryland rye, Louisiana cooking, and the steamy French sheets of Miss Annie Clement. But like good weather, it don't last. Seems the truth is uglier than a gulch town madam. There's smugglers--lots of them. Smellier than a low tide lunch and more than happy to kill a man several times over just for bathing. And there's the matter of a mysterious Cajun beauty named Claudette. She may know something about a real mystery... like the voodoo doll made in the likeness of a deputy federal marshal. 228th novel in the "Longarm" series, 1997.
CHAPTER 1
The sun was just peeking over the moss-draped cypresses when the children came running along the bank of the bayou, laughing and capering, waving the bamboo poles they clutched in their hands. They came to a stop at their favorite fishing spot. Hands were plunged into the wooden bucket full of chopped mullet, and the slimy little bits of dead sea creatures were carefully impaled on bent pins that served as hooks. Here under the trees, the air was already hot and still despite the early hour, and the surface of the bayou lay flat and silent, broken only by an occasional ring of concentric ripples caused by insects landing on the water and then taking off again. The soft, liquid voices of the boys were the only sounds.
Hooks baited, they cast out into the water, and the bent pins made more ripples as they struck the placid surface. The ripples ran outward from the points of impact and gradually died away. The boys fell silent, content in their companionship and in this time and place.
The water roiled suddenly. Bubbles rose and burst, and following them came the humped shape of something foul, arching up out of the bayou. All the boys let out a common yell of alarm and scrambled backward on the nearby bank. They all managed to hang on to their fishing poles, despite their fear.
The shape in the water moved slowly toward shore. One of the boys, the tallest and oldest--who, because of those things, felt that he had to be the bravest as well--stepped forward tentatively. His eyes narrowed as he saw that the mysterious hump-backed shape was covered with some sort of cloth. A moment later, he realized it had to be a shirt.
"Hey! That be a man in the water!"
Now the boys clustered closer to the edge of the bayou. Part of the mystery had been explained. Young as they were, all of them had seen death before. It was a part of everyday life for those who lived on and around the waters of the great river and the gulf into which it flowed. They were Delta boys, and they knew death, all right, and feared it only slightly.
The oldest and tallest boy pulled his line from the water and cast out toward the floating shape. It took him a couple of tries, but then he hooked the shirt. "He'p me pull 'im in," he told his friends, and eager hands reached for the line. "Careful, careful," he cautioned. "This here line, he ain't gon' hold too much weight."
Slowly, they hauled the floating thing toward the shore. A few moments later, it bumped against the bank, and the tallest, oldest boy said, "Hold 'im there. Maurice, Richard, you gimme a hand."
The three of them reached down and caught hold of the waterlogged shirt and pulled. An arm broke from the water and flopped onto the bank. The hand at the end of that arm was as white and pale as the belly of a gar. The flesh had been gnawed in places by small fish.
The boys pulled harder and the man's head came out of the water, his long, lank hair streaming water as it fell over the empty holes where his eyes had been. All the boys felt a fresh surge of fear as they saw the tattered, incomplete face of the dead man. But they kept pulling, the weight of the body heavy from all the water it had absorbed, and the other arm came out, and the torso down to the waist, and then the boys fell backward on the bank because that was all that was left of the man and there was nothing to hold him in the water. They let go of him and scrambled away, and all of them looked in horror at the ragged place where the corpse ended, and knew that more than likely a gator had chomped the man plumb in two.
Released of their hold, the half of the dead man that they had pulled from the bayou rolled from its side onto its back in a ghastly semblance of life. A shaft of sunlight, green-tinged from the thick vegetation through which it filtered, struck the chest of the dead man and reflected dully from the bit of tarnished metal that was pinned there. The tallest, oldest boy saw the reflection and edged closer to take a look, the need to be the leader once again overcoming his fear. He put his hands on his bony knees, bare beneath the cut-off trousers that were his only garment, and his lips moved a little as he read the words engraved on the piece of metal. He'd had enough schooling so that he could make some sense of them, though he had no idea why such a man--or at least, part of such a man--had been floating in the bayou.
The dead man was wearing the badge of a United States deputy marshal.
CHAPTER 2
"You a superstitious man, Custis?" asked Billy Vail as he dropped a thin sheaf of papers on his desk.
Longarm cocked his right ankle on his left knee and leaned back in the leather chair in front of Vail's desk. He took a puff on the cheroot he had just lit and then said, "Not so's you'd notice, I don't reckon."
The chief marshal, whose pink face and balding pate made him appear deceptively cherubic, said, "Black cats don't scare you when they cross your path?"
Longarm frowned, wondering what in tarnation Vail was getting at. "I ain't overly fond of the critters," he said, "but I don't run home and stay in bed for the rest of the day whenever I see one. Leastways not alone." He grinned, but Vail didn't seem to notice.
"Good, because I'm sending you to New Orleans."
Longarm didn't see what that had to do with superstition. True, there were parts of Louisiana that could be downright spooky: the swamps and the bayous and those mossy old plantation houses that had been abandoned to rot with only ghostly memories left to inhabit them. Longarm had never considered himself an overly imaginative man, but as he thought of such places, he had to admit that a tiny shiver went through him deep inside. But he had been to Louisiana and New Orleans itself many times, and he certainly didn't feel nervous about going there again.
"That's a little out of our usual territory, ain't it?"
"That's why you're going," said Vail. "I know some of your cases have taken you to New Orleans in the past, but you're not well known there, by any means. You wouldn't be as likely to be recognized as you would be in, say, Cheyenne or Deadwood."
Longarm inclined his head slightly in acknowledgment of his boss's point. "I reckon that's right."
"We got a request from the U.S. marshal's office in New Orleans-"
"For somebody to work on a case incognito, as they say," Longarm concluded for Vail.
"That's right." Vail shoved the stack of papers across the desk toward Longarm. "Take a look at these reports, Custis."
Longarm leaned forward and picked up the documents, then began reading them quickly. He was long since accustomed to scanning official reports like these and picking out the essential elements in them, so that he could mentally digest the important information without wasting any time. In this case, he saw right away that the reports concerned the murder of a U.S. deputy marshal named Douglas Ramsey.
Longarm's eyes narrowed as he read how Ramsey's body had been pulled from a bayou by some boys who had been out fishing before making their grisly discovery. Half of Ramsey's body had been pulled from the bayou, Longarm realized as he read further. That was all that had been left. The rest of the lawman had undoubtedly wound up as alligator bait.
"Damn," breathed Longarm. "That's one hell of a way to go."