By the Numbers

By the Numbers

  A Cajun Murder Mystery

  Short Story

  Episode 1

  L. Scott Silverii

  A Cajun Murder Mystery Series

  By the Numbers – Episode 1

  The Shepherd – Episode 2

  Geaux Tiger – Episode 3

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2014 Louis Scott Silverii, Ph.D.

  All rights reserved.

  https://scottsilverii.com

  ISBN-13: 978-1499785678

  ISBN-10: 1499785674

  ASIN: B00KRK0ZN0

  "Laissez les bons temps rouler –

  until somebody gets killed of course."

  Chief of Police Scott Silverii (2014)

  - District Attorney Gaudet –

  "How much blood can one body hold?" I peered around the detective's shoulder and saw there was more than one body. Many more.

  The ancient Cyprus camp buried deep in the heart of Cajun country buzzed with flies as the humidity and creole sun baked the dismembered corpses. The taste of rotten fish heads and human blood sat thick on my tongue.

  “It’ll take days, maybe weeks for the coroner to piece parts together.” Detective James Walker's hand sandpapered his nail-hard jaw. "Headcount. Get it?" Walker tried that joke on me. I ducked my head as my lip twitched. The last thing I needed as the District Attorney in an election year was my ass on the front page chortling over decapitated bodies. I just pretended not to hear him, though he knew I did.

  The bayou boys did good work in a pinch, but I wasn't getting guts on a brand new seersucker suit. I needed it for the big Labor Day announcement. And hell yea – people do actually still wear them. At least the alums and I from Tulane Law School still wear seersucker. True Southern lawyers and gentlemen.

  "Y'all got any leads, Walker?" I knew better, but there was no need to debate the obvious. I figured best to play the back seat gawker and let the deputy dogs have a go at it.

  "We just got here. Ain't like they left a note." Walker replied, gnawing on the tip of his ink pen.

  I guess that question bugged him more than the house full of dead.

  "Settle down, old fella.” I'd worked with cops for twenty years and appreciated the challenges of their job, but they can be temperamental. I guess after all the crap they’d seen, the last thing they need is some smart-ass blue blood second guessing them.

  This one wasn't in the mood for my usual hazing. Walker curled his lip curled to release a low guttural sound as Walker flung his grizzled, bone-thin fingers open to release three blowflies into my face. Stupid hick thought I'd flinch.

  Though I'd never admit it, I hate the smell of murdered flesh, and I damn sure hate tasting it on the legs of those nasty blowflies when they landed on my lips. Hell, they look like metallic helicopters carrying death.

  “Them bugs scare you, mister lawyer-man?”

  “Not at all, deputy.” This gumbo of brackish bog water and sticky heat had me in no mood to tolerate him, and I wasn’t about to back down to this local yokel. “Ain’t my first time. Saw eleven sawed apart in Bossier few years back.”

  The big bastard stamped my shoulder with a soiled rubber-gloved hand, smashing a fly on my coat.

  "You son of a bitch. You gonna pay for cleaning."

  "Maybe so, but you stepped in that blood pool on your own. They used to be nice Saddle Oxfords." Walker's eyes sparked with silent sarcasm.

  I ducked out from under his hand and snaked into the camp's living quarters. Not much alive in there. Detectives were placing number tents near each of the displaced heads.

  "What'cha think?" Walker crowded me in the doorway.

  "I think the person's a badass killing machine. I mean, seriously -- twelve butchered and not a clue?"

  "How'd you know it was twelve?" Walker asked.

  "It doesn't take a G.E.D. to count a dozen in headless math." I jerked my jacket off on purpose and shoved it against his meatless chest. "Dry clean only."

  I heard the Sheriff's entourage arrive. Media whore. Camera crews tagged along, tripping over their equipment for a shot of “the law” stomping his way across the lawn. Why not beat him at his own game?

  I loosened the plaid bow tie, rumpled the front of my light blue button-down, and tugged it just a tad over my belt. Since the detective was paying to have my favorite summer suit cleaned anyway, I brushed the bloodstained leather shoe tips across the creased shins of my trousers.

  No one expected me to be on scene, so I flung open the old cabin’s tattered screen door. Sheriff Benjamin Martin pitched onto the heels of his box-chain bought cowboy boots, standing stiff in the yard at the civilian side of the stretched tight plastic. The media crews nearly ran up his ass. In control, I coolly eased off the crooked porch toward them.

  "Benji. Grizzly sight in there. Not sure what's with the crime in this parish, but you need to get a handle on it." I stuck out my rubber-gloved right hand. Typical white-hat, he froze. I let my hand linger in the emptiness across the yellow ‘Do Not Cross’ tape. The cameras devoured Martin's indecision.

  "Gill, why you here?"

  I played to the same television stations that just abandoned their escort. "I'm helping these dedicated officers determine who's responsible for the vicious murder of twelve innocent people."

  “But why you Gill?” he’d just opened another door of opportunity and I hesitated while tucking in my shirt tail. Even the mosquitoes stopped buzzing to hear my answer.

  “Because somebody gotta do it, Benji.” Rolling my neck around, I eased my chest out and planted my hands onto my hips. The way my elbows pointed in opposite directions musta made me look like a giant grinning scarecrow. That was the purpose, and that little birdie stood there – fat and silent.

  The media panned over to Sheriff Martin in time to see his bulbous cheeks flush like cherry tomatoes. He tried to fan himself with that ridiculous Stetson. Thinning patience led the reporters into a barrage of questions that bit into his soft, chubby hide like anguished piranhas, while I basked in the stench of rotting flesh that wafted from indoors.

  The million-dollar question about crime details surfaced, and I thought -- Don't do it, Benji.

  He stuttered, "I, uhmm, don't know how many are dead. They didn't tell me."

  Yep, and there it was -- the career killing comment.

  - Detective James Walker -

  It was just a matter of time till the earth shook. In this case, the earth was Sheriff Martin. The shaking was his career tumbling apart with an election year looming and a potential challenger with fearless intentions set on the office.

  “I want this case solved ASAP. You hear me detective?” The jowls flopped blood red against his spaghetti-stained white shirt. The neatly stitched Sheriff’s star and his name overextended across a gut enlarged since he was first elected to his initial term four years ago.

  Never much of a cop, the entitled public official really pissed me off when he tried throwing his weight around.

  “Yeah Benji, I’m on it. Matter of fact – we’re all on it. You think it sets okay with us that twelve of our friends in this parish were butchered?” For his safety, it was best to not make eye contact. One more word and I was about to explode. I was retirement eligible – didn’t need his shit.

  “Just stop dicking around and get ‘er done.” He pointed to the “Re-elect Martin” button pinned onto his shirt. “If I’m out, you’re out Walker. I’ll make damn sure of that.”

  “Excuse me, Sheriff Martin,” my frame
shook like it was full of rocket fuel and fury as I stretched over him. The whites of his eyes were a dulled yellow and the red in his fat neck had drained colorless.

  “Maybe you should think about the dozen families grieving this tragedy instead of your next campaign plate lunch.” I lowered my voice back to its usual whisper.

  “I have Walker, but maybe you should also think of me.” I think even he was shocked at how stupid that sounded bumbling from his mouth.

  “I’ll get with the District Attorney tomorrow to give him an update and see if he or the Coroner had gathered any more information.” It was best I change the topic. I could be diplomatic on occasion. Rare, but I could.

  “Boy, you stay away from Gill Gaudet you hear me? He’s the enemy. Don’t tell him shit until we’re ready to break this case.” Martin had stepped back to give his wagging finger room to fling in front of my face. Being diplomatic and remaining diplomatic were two very different things.

  -D.A. Gaudet-

  “Lucy, anything from the Sheriff’s Office on them killings?”

  It’d been almost a week. The Sheriff was still pissed at me, but I didn’t care.

  “I tried a few times but they keep telling me he ain’t in.” My administrative assistant, Lucy Bates, knew the game of political cat and mouse. She’d attached herself to me shortly after graduating from UL-Lafayette and worked for me in one capacity or another over the last twenty years.

  “I know them lying bastards are covering