Every Dead Thing

Two shots burst through the door. Leon raised his H amp;K and appeared to be about to fire, but Lionel raised his hand, looking past Leon to where I stood. I advanced forward and waited behind Leon’s back as Lionel pushed open the door with his foot, then pressed himself flat against the wall as two more shots rang out, followed by the click of a hammer on an empty chamber, a sound as final as the closing of a tomb.

Leon entered the room first, the H amp;K now replaced by his knives. I followed him, with Lionel behind me. The walls of Joe Bones’s bedroom were marked with holes and the night air entered through the shattered window and sent the white curtains swirling in the air like angry ghosts. The blonde who had lunched with Joe on his lawn earlier in the week lay dead against the far wall, a red stain on the left breast of her silk nightgown.

Joe Bones stood before the window in a red silk dressing gown. The Colt in his hand hung uselessly at his side but his eyes glowed with anger and the scar on his lip seemed painfully pinched and white against his skin. He dropped the gun.

“Do it, you fuck,” he hissed at Lionel. “Kill me, you got the fucking guts.”

Lionel closed the bedroom door behind us as Joe Bones turned to look at the woman.

“Ask him,” said Lionel.

Joe Bones didn’t seem to hear. His face seemed consumed with a look of terrible grief as his eyes traced the contours of the dead woman’s face. “Eight years,” he said softly. “Eight years she was with me.”

“Ask him,” repeated Lionel Fontenot.

I stepped forward and Joe Bones sneered as he turned, that look of sadness now gone. “The fucking grieving widower. You bring your trained nigger with you?”

I slapped him hard and he took a step back.

“I can’t save you, Joe, but if you help me maybe I can make it quicker for you. Tell me what Remarr saw the night the Aguillards died.”

He wiped blood from the corner of his mouth, smearing it across his cheek. “You have no idea what you’re dealing with, no fucking idea in the world. You’re so out of your fucking depth, the fucking pressure should be making your nose bleed.”

“He kills women and children, Joe. He’s going to kill again.”

Joe Bones twisted his mouth into the semblance of a grin, the scar distorting his full lips like a crack in a mirror. “You killed my woman and now you’re gonna kill me, no matter what I say. You got nothing to bargain with,” he said.

I glanced at Lionel Fontenot. He shook his head almost imperceptibly, but Joe Bones caught it. “See, nothing. All you can offer is a little less pain, and pain don’t hold no surprises for me.”

“He killed one of your own men. He killed Tony Remarr.”

“Tony left a print at the nigger’s house. He was careless and he paid the price. Your guy, he saved me the trouble of killing the old bitch and her brood myself. I meet him, I’ll shake his hand.”

Joe Bones smiled a broad smile like a flash of sunshine through dark, acrid smoke. Haunted by visions of tainted blood flowing through his veins, he had moved beyond ordinary notions of humanity and empathy, love and grief. In his shimmering red robe, he looked like a wound in the fabric of space and time.

“You’ll meet him in Hell,” I said.

“I see your bitch there, I’ll fuck her for you.” His eyes were bland and cold now. The smell of death hung around him like old cigar fumes. Behind me, Lionel Fontenot opened the door and the rest of his men walked quietly into the room. It was only now, seeing them all together in the ruined bedroom, that the resemblance between them became clear. Lionel held the door open for me.

“It’s a family thing,” he said as I left. Behind me, the door closed with a soft click like the knocking of bones.

After Joe Bones died, we gathered the bodies of the Fontenot dead on the lawn in front of the house. The five men lay side by side, crumpled and torn as only the dead can be. The gates to the plantation were opened and the Dodge, the VW and the pickup sped in. The bodies were loaded gently but quickly into the trunks of the cars, the injured helped into the rear seats. The pirogues were doused in gasoline, set on fire, and left to float down the river.

We drove from the plantation and kept driving until we reached the rendezvous point at Starhill. The three black Explorers I had seen at the Delacroix compound stood waiting, their motors idling, their lights dimmed. As Leon sprayed gasoline into the cars and the pickup, the bodies of the dead were removed, wrapped in tarps, and placed in the backs of two of the jeeps. Louis and I watched it all in silence.

As the jeeps roared into life and Leon threw lighted rags into the discarded vehicles, Lionel Fontenot walked over to us and stood with us as they burned. He took a small green notebook from his pocket, scribbled a number on a sheet, and tore it out.

“This guy will look after your friend’s hand. He’s discreet.”

“He knew who killed Lutice, Lionel,” I said.