The squad car ran silent, no lights flashing nor siren roaring, the entire feel of the climax of Medical Examiner John Thorpe's search for Tattoo Man's roots coming to a “Blue Bayou” ending in this remote comer of the universe. Dry potato dust sand, kicked up under and around the squad car, heralded their arrival at what once was Tattoo Man's home, as all leads had brought Thorpe to this place.
“There ain't no way the family's gonna have known anything about this tragedy,” moaned Deputy Sheriff Luther Whitney Frizzell, who continued to whine in an irritatingly nasally voice for which Thorpe thought he ought to apologize. “Kate, that po' woman; she's just a spiritless woman, older'n her years. Sanocre done that to her. Story is he'd lock her up, tied up, all night in their damned root cellar if she looked cross-eyed at him, but damned if she ever pressed a single charge, and ain't nothin' our office can do if the wife don't press no charge, Doctor. Well, you know that. But as for their knowin' he come to a bad end in New England-”
“New Jersey,” Thorpe gently corrected the man. “Yeah, New Jersey
… ain't New Jersey kinda in New England?”
“Not technically speaking, no. Mid-Atlantic states.”
“Gotcha, right. Anyhow, I don't think you're gonna find none a them clues you're lookin' for here if he was kilt way up there.”
“But we can put to rest who he is, Deputy Frizzell, and that's a good portion of the battle won. We can have Sanocre shipped back here for burial, return the body to the family. That way, he won't be buried-”
“At taxpayers' expense,” Frizzell finished for J. T.
“-in, I was going to say, a potter's field full of John and Jane Does. This way he can be buried at the local churchyard or wherever the family wants.”
“Can't 'magine any church 'round here'd want his carcass stinkin' up the ground, not even the pet cemetery'd take him'd be my guess.” He chuckled at his little joke.
“He was hated that much?”
“Hate ain't narry a strong enough word for what folks thought of Sanocre. He was Satan walkin', that man. I thought a killin' 'im myself once or twice, if you want the God's honest truth.. J. T. suspected that Frizzell had often wanted to make good on his thoughts. The lawman's sense of legality or fear or both likely held “Whitey” in check. He dared not ask the man with the guns, but he did ask, “Was there any saving grace, any trace of good in the man you might point to?”
“None by me. Certainly none by his family. Tell you what, Dr. Thorpe, when no one in your own family can stand the sight of you, maybe you ought to go off and get yourself killed up in New England, ahhh, Jersey.”
“So you think my bringing news to these people about Max Sanocre's death and possible murder is a mistake?”
The deputy had been bitching, moaning, complaining, and whining the entire way out to the house in the cypress wood, the deputy's car now rounding a tight bend in the dirt road, red-rimmed and clay-colored, giving way to sand, loose and pulling. He whined about too much rain, the flooding in the bottom land, crop failures, something about a bovine disease and scrawny hogs this year, went on about too much humidity, not enough wind, the condition of Fords, that Chevys had gone “commie” and foreign trade would one day destroy all that America ever stood for. He bitched about the squeak in his right rear tire, the distances he had to cover in his work, the long hours, short pay, lack of help and understanding from the sheriff to his wife, and that he feared his wife hated being married to a cop. He bemoaned the fact he hadn't ever seen New Jersey or New York or none of them New places up North until he finally, winding up with an enormous sigh, wound down like a clock gone dead, his entire, hefty chest deflating in balloon fashion with a few remnant words: “Well, here we are. The Sanocre place.”
Medical Examiner John Thorpe, riding in the passenger seat, had squirmed into the small Nissan and felt jammed next to the officer's thirty-ought shotgun, which the deputy nervously and often fondled. J. T. looked up now at the Sanocre house, a shack really. One could hardly call the place a house. Weathered clapboards put together like so many cards in the wind, it leaned to one side as if more fatigued than any living thing on earth.
Pecan trees intermingled with willows and cypress; Spanish moss tossed about like salad leavings everywhere, including the front porch and yard. A pastoral place for a lovely home if one were to build here, he thought. As J. T. climbed from the patrol car, he found himself out of his time, staring at the old shack of a home on cinder blocks and yes, about to topple, and then there were the Snuffy Smith characters arrayed on its peeling, cracking porch. FBI Agent and Medical Examiner John Thorpe wondered if he'd stepped out of the legal boundaries of the United States of America. Somewhere along the line of his trek to discover the truth about Tattoo Man, the flight he'd taken from New Orleans International airport on a private carrier, had landed in Gator Head Bayou-Home of Snoutnose, The Largest Alligator in captivity in America. All the cliches and nightmares J. T. had ever heard about or entertained regarding Louisiana proved true in this patch of place. From the single strip, dirt airport, they had taken the long, winding car ride into the interior of Diamondback, Louisiana. And wasn't Diamondback in America? Wouldn't a postage stamp cost the same here as anywhere? Sure-he silently answered his own thoughts- if you could locate a stamp machine in Diamondback. While J. T. amused himself with his own musings. Deputy Sheriff Frizzell continued the touchy-feely with his shotgun, his fingers displaying indecision on whether he should or should not unfasten the lock and take the hefty and quite visible weapon with him to the front doorstep of this place.
J. T. felt bemused by the local color, from the deputy down to the hanging vines, the huge cypress knolls and the gnarled and bubbled, toiled and troubled roots of trees here which he guessed the obvious residences of gnomes. J. T. had asked on local law-enforcement authorities in New Orleans to pave his way. Frizzell had been waiting for him at the local airport. For all Frizzell knew, the people here at the Sanocre home might well be harboring a murderer.
J. T. had made clear his suspicion that someone who knew Max Sanocre had had a hand in his death, someone who also knew dogs, and from the moment they pulled up to the front yard of this place, dogs appeared and approached, some on four legs, some on three, some inching forward, some crawling on their bellies, some straight up and fast, while others held back in the shadows. It gave J. T. a strange feeling, as if the dogs lived here and ran this place, and the people on the porch were being held hostage by man's best friend.
Dog attacks being on the rise all across America, J. T. hesitated at the side of the car undl Deputy Frizzell finally came out on his side, deciding to leave the shotgun, while unbuckled, on its pedestal between driver and passenger seat. J. T. noticed that the deputy had also unfastened his. 38 where it rested on his hip.
“Are you expecting trouble?” J. T. asked.
“Always prepare with these kinda folk for any possibility. You learn that when you've been here for long.”
“Then you're not originally from around here?” J. T. asked.
“Didn't saya that.” The deputy pulled up his pants and started to part the dogs, a few of them growling, and Frizzell in turn barked like a madman at the dogs, laughing at their cowed response. He then told J. T. to follow him up to the porch.
“I 'spect one or more of them that's living in Max's old shack here's done him in. Is that what you boys in Quantico wanna hear?”
“No, we don't wanna hear anything.”
“What you think, I mean. Is-at what ya think?”
“Yeah, some of us suspect family involvement in the murder, but first I just want a family member to ID the corpse from photos.”
“If he had no identification on him, how'd you trace him back to here?” asked the deputy, his nasally twang reaching to the family on the porch, all engaged in watermelon and lemonade, it appeared.
Some children waved madly at the deputy, shouting that they wanted to hear the siren blast. J. T. heard the children shout at the deputy as “Uncle Whitey.”
“You're related to the family?”
“I am. Something of a cousin to 'em. Kids I know from after-school programs, fund-raiser and like that.”
J. T. felt suddenly vulnerable. If the entire town knew that Maxwell Sanocre had disappeared one night, then tacidy covered it up, and the helpful law agent is part of that conspiracy against the hated Sanocre, then what might they do to a stranger from “New England” to shut him up? A cover-up of a cover-up, the family secret growing ever deeper with J. T. six feet deep?
As if reading J. T.'s visage and understanding his thoughts, Deputy Frizzell quickly and firmly assured him, “I
