*** No One Left To Burn ***
Chapter 1
17
The bottom of the Huey P. Long Bridge quickly came and then was gone, a
blur in my rear view mirror. In
short order I propelled westward post haste toward Pont-Rouge.
As I neared the
I hadn’t yet convinced myself on taking the easy way out when I brought
the Town Car to a stop in front of the
As the heavy door swung open, the hand holding the knob was not that of
John Burton. Nor was it the flexible
fingered hand of his daughter, the very delectable Meagan Burton.
It appeared that the missing domestic troupe had returned from where ever
they had been the last and only other time I’d visited the
She stood right at six feet and was well proportioned.
Her body looked rock solid with very pronounced muscular definition in
her upper arms and thighs. A wasp like waist, large full breasts and powerful
shapely legs accentuated her curvaceous figure.
All were snuggly wrapped in a black with white trim housemaid uniform.
I must concede, her age eluded me. I
didn’t have a clue. It was
somewhere between not too young and not too old.
Which, when you think about it, makes it about right.
If I were forced to guess, for whatever reason, I’d place her somewhere
in the thirty to thirty-five-year-old bracket.
She wore her shiny, curly black hair in a short Afro.
Although out of style, it looked nice.
Her dark green eyes were large and wide spaced. And the whites were
sparkling clear, the color of fresh snow. She
wore a dark shade of purple lip-gloss on full lips, which heightened the
contrast with her straight, even, white teeth.
Her skin was as black and shining as a piece of coal.
“Yes sir?” She spoke without a smile.
A tough nut.
“My name is Rick Stevens. I’d
like to see Mr. Burton on a personal matter.”
“Yes sir, Mr. Stevens. Please
come in. Mr. Burton is out back in
the greenhouse by the nursery.”
The tone of her voice was strictly business-like. Not harsh.
Not curt, but professional. It
said, you’re a visitor to see Mr. Burton and I am his employee.
Therefore, I must sound like this. It’s
strikingly odd, some of the shit that passes through my mind.
She led me down the hall and through the kitchen to a back door.
The house was very quiet. All
I could hear was the faint whooshing sound from the air conditioning vents.
She opened the door and pointed toward a dome shaped building made of
metal and glass. As I stepped
through the door she held open for me, the chiming of a clock somewhere in the
back of the house mixed its sound with the cooler.
Just before the door closed behind me, she spoke again.
This time she spoke with a friendly ring to the tone of her voice.
“Mr. Stevens,” she said with a smile on her purple lips.
“I was just about to fix Mr. Burton something to drink.
Could I get something for you?”
“No thank you. Maybe
later,” I answered. I didn’t
want to close the door on her offer because I wasn’t sure how I would fair in
my visit with John Burton.
“All right,” she said, smiling. “You
just let me know.” Christ, I
thought. It must be the smile, the fucking smile on her face.
It changed her entire personality. Her
voice got warmer and friendlier and her eyes seemed to twinkle and her shoulders
swaged lightly. Jesus! I thought, as
more of that weird shit passed through my mind.
When I walked into the very warm greenhouse, John Burton looked up from
what he was doing, which I thought, but wasn’t sure, was repotting a petunia
plant.
Horticulturalist I’m not.
“Mr. Stevens,” he said, and paused.
Then he changed it to Rick. He
put down a small trowel he was holding, then picked up a towel and wiped his
hands. “I wasn’t expecting
to hear from you so soon.”
“I know, Mr. Burton - John, but I’m afraid that I have some bad news
for you.”
“Oh, no!” He stuttered
when he spoke and had trouble swallowing.
“It’s about Lila, isn’t it? She’s
in some kind of trouble. That’s
it, isn’t it? Lila is in some kind
of trouble?”
His last statement was more of a question than a declaration of fact.
I wished that some kind of trouble were the case.
Yes, indeed I did. I wished
very strongly that her absence was because she was in some kind of trouble.
Any kind.
I also wished it were because she’d been shacked up for a week.
And, I wished it were because she’d fallen and broken her fucking leg.
And lastly I wished it were because she’d joined NASA’s corps of
astronauts and blasted into orbit.
I stood there and wished a lot of things, but none of them supplied me
with the answer to his question, so I said, “I’m sorry to tell you this,
John, but your daughter, Lila, is dead.” Just
like that I said it, not very gentle and not very compassionate.
I tried. At least I thought I
had, but I failed. How the fuck can
you be gentle and compassionate when you’re telling a man that one of his
children has been found dead. I was
relieved after I said it. Glad it
was over.
John stared at me silently in wide-eyed disbelief.
Slowly his eyes began to fill with tears.
His lower jaw hung down limply. Finally,
after what seemed like several minutes but was actually only a few seconds, he
regained control of his lower jaw, wiped his eyes with a handkerchief, and spoke
very softly. “Dead?
My Lila dead? Why?
How?” He lowered his head
and stared at the floor, and then he repeated, “How?
Why?”
There was a long period of silence, then just as I was about to speak the
door to the greenhouse opened and the limbo queen entered.
True to her word, she carried a tray holding a large pitcher of iced tea,
a bowl of sugar, and two tall glasses.
John looked up and when he saw her, his face brightened slightly.
“Martha, this is the young man from
He said it to her just about the same way that I’d said it to him, not
very gentle. I wondered if he were
as glad it was over as I’d been. Probably
not. He became wobbly and his knees seemed to grow weak.
He held the edge of the bench in front of him for support and then
suddenly dropped heavily onto a nearby wooden stool.
His entire body shook violently as he sobbed.
He’d really let go.
Martha and I stood there for several awkward moments not knowing for sure
what to do or what to say. Then she sat the tray down, wheeled and started to
leave. She spoke without looking back,
“I’m going to call the doctor and have him come over here right away.
This is not good. I knew
something bad was going to happen to that child.”
Her last comment was barely audible as the door swung shut behind her.
John regained some of his composure but his eyes were still glassy when
he looked up and spoke. “I’m
sorry, Mr. Stevens, very sorry. But
it’s so sudden. It’s such a
shock. Lila gone.
How? How did she die, Mr.
Stevens?”
I thought about how I wasn’t as gentle and as compassionate as I could
have been when I told him his daughter was dead.
I need to work on that. “Drug
overdose,” I replied.
What a schmuck! Jesus Christ!
I was afraid he was going to loose himself again, and frankly, the way
this was going, I wouldn’t blame him. “I’m
sorry, John,” I said. “I
know this is difficult for you. If
there’s anything I can do for you, anything at all, I’ll be more than happy
to do it.”
“Drug overdose? I
can’t believe it. I don’t
believe it. Are you sure?
How can they tell?” He was
speaking now, but he was still stunned. His
eyes were glassy and staring through me like I wasn’t there.
“The Medical Examiner’s office identified the cause of death, Mr.
Burton. Drug residue was in most of
her body fluids. There was only one
needle mark on her arm, which might very well mean that Lila had only tried
intravenous injection this one time.” I
offered that bit of speculative bullshit information to make acceptance of her
death a little easier. I knew, of
course, that it wouldn’t.
I also knew that some junkies could shoot up every day for years and
still survive, if you want to call an existence like that surviving.
And some people can take their first, one and only hit, and the body
reacts with such violent intolerance that the Grim Reaper is on the scene almost
immediately.
First come nausea, vomiting and dizziness.
Next, excruciating cramps that hold the victim a prisoner inside his own
doubled over body. Then, the
deep silent sleep of coma. And soon
there’s death. It’s all very
quick, very painful, very sad and very permanent.
“You said, Rick, that you would do whatever you could to help me.
Well let me say that there is something you can do for me - for Lila.”
His eyes continued to glaze over and tears ran down his cheeks again as
he continued.
“I want to know how this happened, how she got the drugs, and who was
responsible for this. Lila didn’t
just die, Rick. Healthy young women
as young as Lila don’t just die. She
was murdered. Whoever supplied her
with the drugs murdered her, just as surely as if they had held a gun to her
head and pulled the trigger.”
He wasn’t the same shattered man I had just watched sob like a child
for almost five minutes. “I
want that murdering son of a bitch brought to justice,” he said.
“I don’t want this to happen to someone else.
I don’t care what it costs or what you have to do.
I want whoever did this to pay! Do
you understand?”
I got his message loud and clear, and I acknowledged with, “I
understand quite well, John. I’ll
do whatever I can.”
“Thank you very much, Rick. You’re
most understanding. You may keep the
check I gave you the other day as a retainer.”
“You didn’t owe me anything for finding your daughter, John.
I destroyed that check.” I
didn’t expect his reaction to what I thought was a rather nice thing for me to
have done. He stood up and looked at
me hard for a moment, then said in a crisp voice, now hard as steel, and razor
sharp,
“Goddamn it. I don’t
believe you do understand me, Rick. You
see, I want to owe you something. By
God, I want to owe you enough that you’ll work your ass off to find whoever
caused my daughter’s death.” His
jaw was set and his eyes were wide open and not blinking.
He paused, swallowed hard and then let his breath out slowly before he
spoke again.
“I’m going to make a check to you, Mr. Stevens, a check for five
thousand dollars. That money is for
your expenses. If you use that up
you are to call. Do you understand?
There will be more. When you
find the person responsible for this and justice is served, there will be
another check for you in the sum of twenty-five thousand dollars.
Does that seem fair enough to you?”
I was very much surprised at
the size of his offer, and it was my turn to stutter a bit when I asked,
“That’s a little steep, don’t you think?”
“No, I don’t think so. No,
I know it isn’t. I feel ashamed
that I only offered you twenty-five hundred dollars to find Lila in the first
place.”
Martha returned and informed John that the doctor was on his way. “He
told me to tell you, Mr. Burton, that you should go into the house and lie down.
And that he’ll be by shortly.”
“Fine, Martha,” he said. “Thank
you. I don’t think all this fuss
is one bit necessary but since you say he’s on his way....” Then John asked
Martha to go to his study and bring him a blank check from the center drawer of
his desk. When she turned to leave,
I saw that her eyes were wet with tears ready to spill.
A few minutes later we walked out through the greenhouse door and then,
just as if on cue, a black Lexus pulled into the driveway.
Martha came trotting out of the house and up to the car that, I assumed
was the doctor making his house call. I
saw Martha pointing our way while she spoke to the driver.
He quickly got out, dragging his black medical bag with him, and the two
of them headed over our way.
“The
“Of course I’ll do that. I’ll
want to make the necessary arrangements for Lila anyway.”
I remembered the photo of Lila that John had given me. I took it from my
jacket pocket and started to hand it to him.
“I’m sure you’ll want this,” I said.
He looked at me for a moment and then reached for the picture,
“Yes I do. Thank you
very much. I’ll never forget the
day it was taken. She was a lovely
girl wasn’t she?” His eyes
started to well again. “She looked
just like her mother.”
I looked again at the photo and just before John plucked it from me, I
took a closer look and pulled it back.
John gave me an inquisitorial look as I continued to study the picture.
It wasn’t the lovely subject that had caught my attention but her
watch. It was on her right wrist.
“Was Lila left-handed, John?”
“Yes she was, Rick. Why do
you ask?”
“No reason, I guess. Just
wondering.” John sat down at a
sturdy-looking white plastic picnic table under a big elm tree.
While he was filling out the check that Martha had given him I thought
about the needle mark in Lila’s left arm and tried to visualize my right hand
self-injecting into my own right arm. Impossible
you say, and I agree, unless the obvious was done and that would be to hold the
syringe in the left hand. But why,
for Chrissake? Just thinking about
sticking myself with a needle makes me shutter, and if I ever did try to do it,
if I tried to do it with my left hand instead of my right, my hand would be
shaking so badly that I’d be lucky as hell to hit my arm let alone a vein.
The needle mark in Lila’s left arm should have been on her right arm.
Unless…, oh, oh - I thought. Unless
someone else had done the job.
I handed the snap shot to John but my eyes never left the image on
Lila’s right wrist until he gazed at it once more then slipped it into his own
shirt pocket.
I wondered if I should mention my thoughts aloud.
But what were they? That
someone had purposely caused Lila to over-dose?
That it had to have been an intentional act?
That could also account for the absence of any kind of identification on
her when she was found.
John had said that he considered Lila murdered by someone because the
drugs that were supplied to her killed her.
He might be closer to the mark with that thought than he ever dreamed.
After a couple of beats of looking at the edge of the picture protruding
from John’s shirt pocket I decided not to share my thoughts on what my mind
was contriving. There would be time
for that later if first-degree murder proved to be the case.
“I’ll let you know as soon as I find out anything, John.”
He nodded and handed the check to me.
We shook hands. I looked at
the munificent payment then turned and started walking in silence toward my car.
I thought I was out of there. Not
so.
“Mr. Stevens,” was the call to me.
“Mr. Stevens?”
I immediately recognized the voice. No
smile this time, but still friendly. I turned and saw Martha walking rapidly
toward my car. I paused, opening the
door while she approached.
“Mr. Stevens, would you have some time for me later this afternoon?
I’d like to speak with you about this horrible affair.”
“What is it, Martha? What
is it you want?”
She stood before me looking exactly as she had looked when she first
opened the door for me when we first met. Only
now perhaps she looked a little older. Me
too. At least that’s how I felt.
“I knew, I just knew something like this would happen to that child.”
Her parting comment earlier when she had left the greenhouse flashed
through my mind.
“I can’t talk to you now, Mr. Stevens.
I have to go see to Mr. Burton. He’s
not well, you know. Hasn’t been
for some time. This will be very
hard on him, very difficult. It’s
so terrible.”
While rubbing her hands together she looked back toward John Burton and
the doctor as they walked into the house, then looking back at me she said, “I
want to talk to you about what happened to Miss Lila.
I normally leave here around
She handed me a small piece of notebook paper containing her address and
phone number. “Call me after five
please.”
The limbo queen quickly turned and without waiting for my reply, followed
the two men into the house.
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