Crimson Bayou Read online

  Mignon took another deep breath and tried to look away, but she found she could not. The girl was wearing a white shirt, almost businesslike in its appearance, with a wide collar and two breast pockets. A girlish black tie was knotted loosely around the collar, pulled out of its proper position by a struggle that had resulted in this tragic occurrence. A black skirt that ended just above her knees was the completion of what the girl had been wearing. Mignon couldn’t see if the girl had shoes on or not; her legs and feet disappeared into the black waters.

  When Mignon’s eyes began to burn, she forced herself to look up and discovered that the sun had made its appearance above the tree line. She had been standing there staring at the dead body of a young woman for the better part of ten minutes. The most shocking aspect of the woman’s appearance was that she seemed so young. So damn young. Mignon’s previous thoughts came back to haunt her. Here was another child, a girl perhaps in her middle to late teens, abandoned in the worst possible manner. Someone who didn’t want her had simply chosen a cowardly way to deal with her.

  As Mignon had learned, murder was an ugly word. She had hoped that once the mystery of her own mother’s disappearance had been solved that she would never again experience its like. She deliberately attempted to find refuge in rediscovering Louisiana’s intrinsic magnificence and instead, bumped into death there.

  She put a hand down and touched the young woman’s neck just below the jaw line. Her body was the same temperature as the water, and the blood in her veins most likely hadn’t moved for many hours. Mignon braced herself mentally. “Don’t worry,” she whispered to the dead girl. “I won’t leave you alone.”

  Putting her hands into the water, Mignon slid them under the young woman’s shoulders and began to tug her gently toward the bit of dry land that held the isolated dirt road. She didn’t dare leave her in the water to float away. Certainly because of that, she pulled the body to where it wouldn’t be subject to the whims of an unsympathetic flow and animals in the bayous who didn’t care if their meals were alive or not.

  As they reached the sloping bank, Mignon put her back into it and hauled the limp figure upwards. Her fingernails dug into the limp flesh, and she winced at the feeling. Carefully pillowing the young woman’s head on a clump of monkey grass, Mignon looked down and saw that the feet were still in the water. Barefoot, something had already been nibbling at her toes. Mignon closed her eyes for a moment, tamping back the gag reflex. When she could move again, she circumspectly placed the young woman’s feet on the dry bank so that none of her remained in the water.

  Then she reached into her jacket and pulled out a tiny cell phone. She flipped it open, punched in a speed dial number, and waited for an answer. Mignon hoped that she would sound calm when the person on the other end answered.

  Then he did. “Roque,” John Henry said roughly, his voice thick with sleep. He normally would be up at this hour, halfway to work, or in the little café in La Valle drinking a cup of the coffee that he said reminded him of boiling lava. However, only hours after picking her up last night, there had been a terrible car accident involving three vehicles and an eighteen-wheeler. He’d been up half the night making sure everything was properly cared-for. Three people were in critical condition. One of the drivers had been pronounced dead upon arrival at the hospital, and the frozen food the truck had been carrying was still strewn over half the median. When he’d returned to his home at half past three, Mignon was still sleeping in his bed. She’d slipped out at five and turned off his alarm so that he would sleep a few more hours instead of stoically going into the office.

  “John Henry,” she said carefully, marveling at how amazingly serene she sounded.

  “Mignon,” John Henry drawled, “I was planning on waking you up this morning, chère, but you went and ran off on me.” He paused for a second. “Is that the time? Oh Lord, did you turn my clock off again? I told you that—”

  “John Henry,” she repeated.

  Despite a lack of sleep, John Henry was in a good mood. “It’s all right,” he said. “If you come on back and scrub my back in the shower, you can turn off my alarm anytime you’d like. I know the voters won’t like it, but the hell with them.”

  “John Henry,” Mignon said for a third time, and this time the underlying strain of her voice got through to him.

  “What is it?” he said urgently. “Your car? Did you have an accident?”

  “No, I’m fine.” Mignon hesitated, unsure about how to tell him that she just happened to have stumbled upon the body of a young woman in the bayou. Oh, things just happen to me. No, no, the last time, I brought it on myself. No one could dispute that. But not this time. This time it’s purely accidental. At least, the part about me finding her is accidental. “It’s not me.”

  John Henry took that in with aplomb that Mignon found herself admiring. “It’s not you,” he repeated. “Then someone else had an accident?”

  “Not an accident,” Mignon said. “If I had to guess, I think she’s been strangled. And she’s very, very dead.”

  •

  John Henry was mad. Mignon thought that he probably wasn’t mad at her. He was tired, and he didn’t like homicides. And he especially didn’t like homicides involving children. Furthermore, he didn’t like it when someone he knew so personally was concerned, even in the most peripheral manner. Consequently, he was irritated, and she was the only one around for the time being for him to take it out on.

  He’d arrived at the Kisatchie Bayou twenty minutes after she’d called him. Because his parish vehicle was four-wheel drive, he was able to come almost to the point where she’d pulled the girl’s body onto the bank. John Henry spared the dead young woman a single piercing glance and then taken Mignon firmly by her shoulders, towering over her five feet six inches as he stood so close to her. Staring down into her eyes, he said, “Are you hurt?”

  Mignon shook her head.

  “Was there anyone else here?” he asked insistently.

  “No, whoever did this is probably long gone. Her body is cold to the touch.”

  John Henry blinked. A muscle in his face twitched in a telltale manner. She knew what that meant. It was like a signal. She had done something he didn’t approve of. “Cold to the touch?” He took a breath and continued calmly, “You touched her?”

  “Yes,” Mignon said after taking her own calming breath. John Henry was such a policeman. What did he expect me to do? Scream for the nearest real man to help?

  John Henry saw her eyes narrow, and his duplicated the action, trying to read her thoughts. Then his gaze flickered toward the body and came instantly back. He could see where the body had been dragged up the shore. The scrapes on the mud bank were dark with moisture, having not had time to dry out. “You touched the body,” he said again. “You moved the body?”

  Mignon decided that she should stare in the middle of John Henry’s chest instead of his astute sherry-colored eyes. Buttons were half done. He had been in a hurry to get to her. He hadn’t had time to shave; the stubble on his face was reddish-gold in the sunlight. His shirt was tucked in on only one side. The tail hung out haphazardly. His dark brown hair appeared pretty much as it did when he had shot out of bed to come to the rescue.

  “A turtle,” she gritted, “was trying to eat her toes.” Then she shivered, and John Henry sighed. He tugged her into his embrace and tucked her head into his shoulder with a restful stroke across her hair.

  “You moved the body,” he said again. “Where was it?”

  Mignon took exception to the word “it.” She pulled back and looked defiantly up at his face. Then she pointed. “She was floating about ten yards into the bayou, straight out from where I pulled her in. The current was taking her away. If I hadn’t moved her, then I’m not sure you would have been able to find her very quickly, if at all.”

  John Henry cursed under his breath. “I didn’t mean anything by calling the girl ‘it,’ Mignon. You know that. Stop being so perverse.”

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p; Mignon’s expression remained mutinous for a moment and then relaxed into neutrality. She said, “I didn’t deliberately run out and look for a body, John Henry. I wasn’t trying to thwart you in some manner. I was just doing research for my series.”

  “The bayou paintings you’re planning,” he confirmed with reluctant patience.

  “Yes. But then something…happened, for lack of a better word.”

  John Henry deftly guided her to the cab of the Bronco. He opened the door and sat her down inside. “Nice waders,” he said.

  “Miner Poteet lent them to me,” she said, but her voice was flat. “A month or so ago he showed me this trail and said the locals call it Crimson Bayou. It’s actually part of Kisatchie, but he said the sun makes it light up like it was on fire.” Her somber gaze went to the girl’s body. “She didn’t get to see it. Can we cover her with a blanket, John Henry?”

  John Henry’s face contorted, and she fruitlessly tried to identify the expression. “No, we can’t. Not until the medical examiner comes. She’s not feeling any pain right now, Mignon.”

  “Do you know her?” Mignon asked after a moment.

  “She looks like she belongs to one of the families who live in enclaves near parts of the Cane River Lake,” John Henry said mildly, trying to assess Mignon’s mental state. “They tend to marry within themselves frequently. There’s a bunch of them. Hugons, Xaviers, Lioutaus. They keep to themselves. The sheriff’s department gets called over there once in a while.”

  “Those are all French-sounding names,” Mignon commented quietly.

  “French and Spanish. The area is rotten with them.” His frank gaze returned to her face. “Although a name doesn’t get more French than Mignon Thibeaux.”

  “I’m all right, John Henry,” Mignon said suddenly. She brought her gaze up to his.

  John Henry noticed that her eyes were brown now. When he’d met her they’d been pale green, the result of contacts, but now they were a warm brown, the shade of freshly grated nutmeg, the color she’d been born with. She was a redhead with brown eyes. It doesn’t seem quite right, he thought, but when he looked into her face, it didn’t matter. Mignon was all Mignon, unique and beautiful, intelligent and contrary, all in one special package. It should have been a simple matter of questioning an individual who’d found a dead body, but it was never as uncomplicated as it should be. “Of course you are,” he said right back.

  “You don’t have to worry about me,” she said soothingly. Her eyes slid over his shoulder to the girl who lay lifelessly on a mud bank. “It was just…unexpected.” The brief hesitation between the last two words revealed more about Mignon’s state of well-being than she was willing to disclose herself.

  There was a rush of movement from behind them, and two sheriff’s deputies made their way onto the scene. John Henry looked at them and then back at Mignon. “I’ve got to work, Mignon. Are you sure—”

  “I’m sure,” she said quickly. “I’m not made out of cotton candy.”

  Mignon watched the three men mark off the scene. One deputy was sent to search out the location where the girl’s body might have been dumped into the bayou. She could hear John Henry and a deputy named Elvis Brandt talking quietly. “It wasn’t here,” said John Henry. “There weren’t tire tracks or any footprints other than Mignon’s, and she wasn’t hiding her trail.”

  “That gal looks familiar,” said Elvis with an eye on the young woman lying on the bank. “I cain’t rightly remember from where. She looks so young, too. Did you notice her clothing?”

  “Yeah,” John Henry concurred, and Mignon had to prevent herself from tilting her head to better hear what he was going to say to Elvis. “Blessed Heart. There isn’t a logo, but it sure looks like what those girls wear over there.”

  Elvis looked around, and Mignon dropped her gaze to her feet. Her feet were so very interesting, all concealed in thick rubber waders. Elvis said after a moment, “I reckon that place ain’t much more than a mile as the crow flies from here.”

  Mignon’s eyes went back up. Neither man was looking at her now. John Henry tucked his errant shirt tails into his pants and shrugged. “Through the bayous, I guess it is. Maybe she floated from there to here.”

  “I think the current runs that direction, sheriff,” Elvis agreed. “Somebody plunked that girl into the water and hoped the animals would get to her before anyone else did.” His head swiveled to look back at Mignon. “But your-uh…your-uh…but Mignon found her first.”

  Mignon stared back. Some of the locals had trouble with the concept of the pair being lovers. Elvis blushed, showing a swatch of unflattering pink skin under a cloud of freckles.

  John Henry captured Elvis’s attention again. “You think you know this girl, then?” While Elvis was studying the flaccid features of the dead girl again, John Henry shot Mignon a look that stated clearly, “Stay out of this.”

  Mignon shrugged lightly and looked away. Both men resumed their conversation in lower tones. She heard the words “Blessed Heart” twice more along with several other names, and once, John Henry said, “Creole, right?”

  Elvis nodded shortly. “Betcha.”

  There was another muttered conversation where John Henry was undeniably giving instructions to Elvis. Mignon found it interesting because she didn’t get to see this side of John Henry that much. He liked to keep work and personal life as separate as he could. When work issues bothered him, he kept them stoically inside. Mignon found it so completely at odds with her work because her work was her life. Art was so much an ingrained component of her that she could never split it from the life she lived.

  The other deputy returned with a fourth man. He wore a plain black suit and western boots on his feet. His black hair was slicked back from his face and showed a stark countenance beneath. Mignon studied him for a long moment because, although he wasn’t skinny, his flesh clung to the shape of his skull with a dearth of excess fat. The unidentified man walked like a police officer, and Mignon realized that he must be one because of the impatient way John Henry was waiting for him. They stood together, close to the same height, towering over the more diminutive Elvis. The other deputy headed back to the main road, having been directed to guide the medical examiner in when that individual arrived.

  Mignon tilted her head to hear better and caught a few more words interspersed with mumbled phrases she didn’t understand. “Girl’s school…Caraby…carefully…strangled…last night? Perhaps yesterday…medical examiner will…Mignon.”

  Three men all looked in her direction, and she didn’t bother to try to hide her interest. The man in the suit nodded and strolled over to her. “My name is Simon Caraby,” he said and offered a hand to her.

  Mignon glanced at her hands. They were covered with mud. She grimaced. “I would guess that you don’t want to get them dirty.”

  He put his hand down and shrugged. “I’m the St. Germaine Parish Investigator. You can call me detective or investigator if you’d prefer,” he said. He removed a PDA from his suit pocket and flipped open the cover. “Simon’s okay, too.”

  Mignon noticed his black eyes. They really were black, as black as deepest night. Black hair, black eyes, and lily white skin. It was an odd combination. But she knew people in New York who would love to use Caraby as a model. He had that look. Somberly handsome. No, not handsome. Striking. She wouldn’t mind drawing him herself, but there was no warmth in this man. His touch would be icy cold.

  “I’m just going to ask some questions about how you came to find the young woman,” Caraby continued.

  Over Caraby’s shoulder, John Henry appeared pleased that Mignon was suddenly too occupied to eavesdrop. She frowned and then answered Caraby’s deft questions while she tried to absorb what was happening in the background. But the investigator stood in front of her and effectively blocked her view.

  So Mignon answered all the questions and tried not to think about how the anonymous young woman had come to be in the heart-wrenching position she was in now.r />
  Chapter Three

  Wednesday, March 5th

  Policeman, policeman, am I going to jail?

  Policeman, policeman, am I in trouble bad?

  Policeman, policeman, my mamma’s sick and needs her mail.

  Policeman, policeman, my auntie’s frail and awful sad.

  Policeman, policeman, please tell the judge, I ain’t so mad.

  Policeman, policeman, can you count the days I’ll be behind bars?

  One, two, three…

  - Children’s jump rope rhyme

  After Caraby had Mignon repeat her account of the morning’s events three times, she noticed that she was missing the medical examiner’s inspection of the dead girl’s body. She gulped at the thought of the impending and unavoidable autopsy. She closed her eyes, and Caraby said, “Are you all right, Miss Thibeaux?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Just shocked. That poor girl. I don’t want to imagine who would do something as horrible as that.”

  “But you’ve had experience with a murderer before,” Caraby said astutely. He returned the tiny plastic stylus to its slot in his PDA and inserted the compact case in his jacket pocket with a deceptively graceful movement. Mignon took the action to mean that the investigator was finished questioning her.

  “I had the misfortune to have one or two run into me,” she said emphatically.

  A slight curve tickled Caraby’s lips, a knowing smile that instantly irritated Mignon. “There’s a little more to it than that,” he suggested.

  Mignon stared at the man in front of her. He was close to her age, and he had such an odd appearance that she wanted to ask him about his ancestry. He didn’t seem to be Hispanic or Caucasian, and she wouldn’t have thought he was Mediterranean. The name, Caraby, didn’t give anything away. It didn’t sound like any name she’d ever heard of before. She wasn’t sure of his heritage at all; guessing would be worthless. He possessed a slight Louisiana drawl that she found compelling. Mignon thought it was enticing and warming coming out of John Henry’s well-shaped mouth. But this man was like a statue of finely wrought ice. Despite the warm accent, his voice emitted frostiness. “You come from this parish?” she asked, taking a stab anyway.