Fever Moon Read online

  Madame Louiselle touched the woman’s cheek. “Move the lamp closer, cher.”

  He did as she asked and heard her sharp intake of breath.

  “I know this woman, Raymond. Her name is Adele Hebert.” She pressed a finger to Adele’s neck, checking her pulse. “Two weeks ago she came to me. Her twin boys were sick with the fever.” Louiselle slowly straightened in the chair. “There was nothing I could do.” She brushed her fingers over Adele’s cheek and looked up at Raymond. “Such perfect little boys, just learning to walk. They died in her arms, she trying to force them to drink her milk.” She shook her head. “I’m too old for such grief.”

  “This was two weeks ago?” Raymond hadn’t heard of burial services for two children.

  Almost as if she could read his mind, she spoke. “Adele wouldn’t give up the bodies. She said she would tend them herself. She said they were her babies and no one else had loved or wanted them, so she would bury them herself.” Louiselle took a deep breath and stood. “Let me make some tea for her fever. If she doesn’t drink, she’ll join her babies.” Madame placed her fingers on Adele’s neck, pressing lightly. “And her sister.”

  “Her sister?”

  “Rosa Hebert.”

  “The woman with the stigmata was Adele’s sister?” Raymond stepped back. Rosa Hebert had died a senseless, tragic death. A woman with mental problems, she’d been harried and pushed to the point she’d hung herself last winter. Now, here was the sister, found drooling over a dead man as if he were her next meal.

  Madame stood up straight. “The Hebert family has seen too much tragedy, cher. Adele has lost all she ever loved.” She covered the sleeping woman with a quilt.

  Raymond said nothing. The death of a child could drive a woman to madness, and Adele had lost two children and a sister. “Is it the fever that sickens her, or is she …”

  Louiselle stared at Adele’s sweating face. Steam rose from her damp clothes in the chill cabin. “This is more than fever.” She sighed. “I will not say more now. Take off the handcuffs and wait outside.”

  Raymond stood his ground. “She’s my prisoner.”

  “And so she will remain, only dead, if you don’t leave us alone. Her wet clothes must be stripped.”

  “She’s stronger than she seems. Perhaps very strong.” When Madame didn’t respond to his words, he unlocked the cuffs and walked outside, but he took the precaution of leaving the door cracked.

  He lit a Camel cigarette, blowing the smoke into the cold eddies of air that circled the cabin. The weather touched the metal in his hip and back like an electric wire, reminding him that he had no guarantees in his future. Each step could be his last. Inhaling more deeply, he thought about Henri Bastion’s body lying by the roadside for anyone to stumble upon. Raymond hadn’t called the sheriff or anyone else. Not yet. There were no phones near Beaver Creek. None here at Madame Louiselle’s. His car was not equipped with a radio. Everything electronic had been put into the war effort. Not even aluminum foil could be had here at home. He could do nothing but wait for his prisoner and smoke.

  Five cigarette butts were lined on the wooden balustrade of the porch by the time Madame stepped out to talk to him.

  “She’s dry and more comfortable, cher. The fever is less, but I have no medicine to make it leave. It’s claimed her as its own, for now. She will live or not. It’s in the hands of God and her will.”

  “I have to take her to jail.”

  She nodded slowly. “It would be best if she could remain here, so I can care for her.”

  “No—”

  She put up a hand. “I understand she must be taken. Do these things, Raymond. Keep her dry and warm. Give her these herbs every four hours. Pry open her mouth and pour them in. Feed her soup. Force it down if necessary.”

  He saw in Madame’s eyes what she would not say. “What of her mind?”

  “Perhaps it is burned away.” She shook her head. “There’s a point where not even the strongest person can bear more. Adele has suffered.” Her fingers lightly touched his arm.

  “Do you think she had the strength to bring down a grown, healthy man? He was gutted, Madame. Like a pack of savage animals had beset him.”

  She looked into the trees that soughed around her home in the wind. “Good and evil walk the earth, Raymond. You know it because you’ve touched it. No man can measure the power of either. She was covered in blood, some of it her own. She is cut and scraped as if she’d been struck by a wagon, but most of the blood was not hers.”

  Raymond tossed his sixth butt to the ground. “Thank you. The county will reimburse your expenses.”

  “No charge. I don’t take money for those I cannot heal.”

  He left Madame on the porch as he stepped through the door. Adele Hebert lay beneath three colorful quilts. Cleansed of blood, her face was angular and pale. Her long hair, now dry, fanned about her head like a dark aura. She looked dead, like a figure in one of the church windows. He crossed himself without thinking, a habit from a past life.

  “She is breathing but just barely.” Madame touched his arm. “There is great tragedy in this woman, Raymond. Don’t let it slip from her to you.” Her touch increased to a squeeze. “You carry enough tragedy of your own, cher. Whether you deserve it or not.”

  Raymond felt his breath catch. No one else in town would dare to speak to him like that. He gathered Adele Hebert in his arms, tucking the quilts around her. “I’ll return these.”

  Madame nodded. She stood in the doorway, watching him maneuver the steep steps as he went back to the parish car. As he put Adele in the front seat beside him, he saw no need to replace the handcuffs. She was beyond slumber, almost in a trance. When he looked up, he saw that Madame had begun to light a series of candles. She was cleansing her home of evil. Despite his lack of belief, he felt a chill trace along his spine.

  The study was crammed with books, most of them leather-bound. For the past ten years, they’d been Father Michael Finley’s closest friends, his comfort in the wilderness. A musty odor of mildew rose from them, and Michael made a mental note to have Colista clean them again when drier weather set in. Humidity left unchecked would ruin them, and some were old and valuable.

  He hurried, barefoot and in his underwear, across the colorful rug to answer the ringing telephone. Dawn had not yet broken, and the demanding peals of the phone could mean only one thing—death had come calling. Few people in Iberia Parish could afford the convenience of a telephone. He’d justified the luxury by pointing out that his services were often in immediate demand. There were times that he regretted his superiors’ decision to honor his request.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “It’s Raymond Thibodeaux. Something bad’s happened, and I need you to go out to the Bastion plantation as fast as you can.”

  Michael hesitated. Raymond had not used his title, but there was no doubt he spoke with the authority of the law. Of all the people he’d expected when he picked up the phone, it wasn’t Raymond. A dark cloud hung over the deputy. The scent of death clung to his hair and clothes and in his dark eyes Michael saw torment. Even now, months after Raymond had returned home, stories circulated how he’d been one of the army’s most efficient killing machines, a loner shifting through the war zone like a vengeful ghost. Or a man who wanted to die.

  “Father, did you hear what I said?” Raymond didn’t hide his impatience.

  Michael gathered his thoughts. “What’s happened?”

  “Henri was murdered last night out by Beaver Creek.”

  Foreboding touched Michael’s heart. Something bad had indeed happened. Raymond Thibodeaux rode the vanguard of tragedy yet again. It seemed God cursed him. “Do you know who killed him?” he asked quietly.

  There was a slight hesitation before Raymond spoke, as if he weighed his words. “Henri was attacked by some kind of wild beast. You might as well hear the truth because gossip will be all over town by morning. Adele Hebert was found at the body. It’s already spreading that
she’s possessed by the loup-garou.”

  Michael swallowed. The images were vivid in his mind, and they brought to life his dark suspicions that the swamps were filled with unholy creatures. “A werewolf?” He shivered, aware that his bare feet were freezing. “You don’t believe that, do you?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I believe. I’m worried what the town believes. It was a gruesome murder. I want you to go to the Bastion plantation and prepare the family. Don’t let Mrs. Bastion buy into the werewolf business.”

  Michael bristled at Raymond’s tone. “Marguerite Bastion is an educated woman. She’s not a fool.”

  “Father, you and I both know it’s easier to believe in evil than good. Many people believed Rosa Hebert was a stigmatic. You among them, I think.” Raymond’s point was quietly made, and it opened the door on the box of Michael’s personal demons. It wasn’t his belief in Rosa that tormented him, but his lack thereof.

  “Rosa was a child of God chosen to bear the marks of Christ’s suffering, a living sign of God’s love and sacrifice. She was God’s emissary. The loup-garou is a superstition used to keep wicked children in line by parents who fear to use the rod.” The distinction was clear in his mind.

  “I somehow don’t see bleeding from the hands and feet as an example of God’s love.”

  Raymond was baiting him, and Michael wouldn’t allow himself to respond in anger. “Raymond, I know you suffer. You’ve lost your way.” Raymond hadn’t set foot in the church since his return from the war. The man mocked and defied God.

  “Well said, Father. Still, if wounds opened up in my hands and feet every Friday, I’d hang myself, too.”

  “That’s blasphemy.”

  Raymond’s voice took on a different tone. “You saw the wounds, didn’t you? They were real. Not self-inflicted.”

  He hesitated, wondering what Raymond’s angle might be. “Rosa was given a gift and a burden. It was too much for her to carry. She failed our Father and took her own life. There was nothing I could do to change any of it.”

  Silence hung between them for a long moment. “That’s not an answer to the question I asked, but it’s an answer to another question. Good-bye, Father, and good luck with Mrs. Bastion.”

  Michael heard the click of the phone. He replaced the receiver and walked to the window, his bare legs covered in chill bumps. First light would arrive soon; it was pointless to go back to bed. Raymond had left him with images and memories as wicked and sharp as the devil’s pitchfork.

  His curiosity urged him to the parish jail, but his duty directed him to the Bastion home. He didn’t want to drive there in the dark. Not on this night when a strange, moist wind howled down the chimney and the past had reawakened like a sleeping corpse. Adele’s anger at her sister’s excommunication was fresh in his mind. She’d cursed him and the church. She’d called down the vengeance of God on him because he’d followed his bishop’s orders and closed the sanctified ground of the church cemetery to Rosa’s body. A suicide could not be buried in hallowed ground.

  Adele had taken Rosa, and then the bodies of her twin boys, into the swamps to a secret grave. He’d never gone to counsel her, at first not wanting to agitate her more and then finding it impossible to overcome the inertia that touched him whenever he heard her name. Even if he’d found her, she wouldn’t have listened to him. Her grief and fury had obviously driven her mad.

  A log in the fireplace snapped as a gust of wind rushed down the chimney. A shower of sparks, vaguely in the shape of a woman, blew across the room. The priest moved quickly, stepping on the tiny burning embers that had fallen on the rug. The fireplace was dangerous, the night even more so.

  He’d wait for dawn to face the grief of Marguerite Bastion. This night, he’d pray to overcome his own inadequacies, which were plentiful.

  3

  CHULA Baker put her car in neutral and set the hand brake before she got out. She left the motor running. It was an old car and sometimes unreliable about starting. The first light of a cold October morning was creeping up the eastern sky, and she saw the clutch of cars and men standing in the road just beyond Beaver Creek. The letter on the front seat of her car was a tragedy for the Lanoux family. What straddled the road and blocked her path was another. Death always came in threes.

  She headed toward the men who hadn’t yet noticed her approach. Her heavy skirt, belted around a small waist, swung against bare legs. There were no stockings to be had since the war, and post office regulations prohibited a woman from wearing pants. On this cold October morning she wore her skirts long and stout shoes padded with thick socks. Eighteen-hour days had quickly disabused her of a longing for high heels.

  “Ms. Chula.” Sheriff Joe Como blocked her path. “What are you doin’ out here, cher?”

  She studied his face. Even though the temperature was in the low forties, sweat beaded on his forehead. His eyes looked left and right but never into hers. “Got a letter last night for the Lanoux family. From the army. I didn’t want to be out in that storm, but I figured I should bring it on this morning.”

  “Is it Justin?”

  “I can’t read people’s mail.” She thought of the official envelope and the hundreds of others she’d delivered like it. “Never saw good news come in a letter like that, though.”

  The sheriff spit a brown stream into the still muddy road. “Iberia Parish gone dry up and die. All our young men killed over in Europe. Gotta have an old man like me keepin’ the law.”

  “Joe, you’ve still got a good thirty years.” She craned to see around his body. “What’s going on here?”

  He moved to block her view. “Been a murder. Something you don’t want to see.”

  “Murder?” Such things didn’t happen in New Iberia. At least not out on a public road. If a man wanted to kill, he did it in the swamp where the body could be slipped into a canal for gator bait. “Who is it?”

  “Henri Bastion.”

  She registered the name with even more shock. Henri was the wealthiest man in the parish. His money had bought him the most fertile land, a high-blood French wife, and hellion children. It had also bought fear of him. “How’d he die?”

  “We’re trying to figure that one out.”

  She snorted. “How hard could it be? Gunshot, stabbing, what?”

  The sheriff finally stared into her eyes. “Looks like some kind of wild animal tried to eat him alive.”

  “Good Lord, Joe. You said murder, not animal attack.” She had no desire to see this mess. She had mail to deliver.

  “We got someone who confessed to killing him. Says she’s the loup-garou.”

  Joe wasn’t the kind of man who joked about swamp creatures. They were part of his background, like hers. A dense web of superstition connected the parish. It had come to the land with the Acadians and been mingled with the folklore of the Indian tribes and the Negroes. Such a rumor could start a panic.

  “I wouldn’t be talking any loup-garou if I were sheriff.” She lifted an eyebrow. “What with the war taking the boys and men, womenfolk don’t need another reason to be afraid.”

  Joe nodded. “Can’t help what Adele Hebert claims, though. She says she killed him. Looks like she tracked him through the woods while he was walking, jumped out, and tried to eat his liver.”

  Chula put a hand on the sheriff’s chest. “I’d stop that talk right here. I know Adele. Her brother is Clifton, the trapper. She’s no more the loup-garou than I am, and if you say that to the wrong person, it’ll be all over the parish in half a day and you’ll see what real trouble is.”

  He drew back and she saw she’d offended him. There were times, though, when Joe Como acted like the brains God gave him were insufficient. Chula Baker knew she was viewed as uppity and overly educated. She’d spent time in Lafayette and Shreveport, cities without respect for the values of the rural parishes. She’d gone to a teachers college where she’d discovered a love of learning and acquired the skills necessary to pass the postal department’s civil ser
vice test—an accomplishment that several men had failed. She’d learned to speak her mind from her mama, who at sixty-two was still feared for her sharp tongue and ability to cut a man in half and leave him bleeding in the dirt.

  “I thank you for your concern, Miss Chula.” Joe slid back from her.

  “I’m not tryin’ to run your business, Joe. I’m trying to keep a wild rumor from turning into some kind of vigilante lynch mob.” Her softer tone was more acceptable. “People are tired of doin’ without. Most every family has buried a son or brother or father. We’ve carved a living from land that would’ve killed a lesser people. These swamps’ve done their worst to us, but we didn’t leave. A tall tale about a werewolf on the loose could be the final straw here.”

  The sheriff took off his hat and wiped his forehead on the long sleeve of his tan shirt. When he looked at her some of the resentment was gone from his brown eyes. “You make a point, cher.”

  “What does Doc Fletcher say?” While she’d stood in the road trying to talk some sense into Joe, the sun had climbed over the top of the trees. The morning was still chill, but it would be warm and sunny by afternoon. One of the most effective tools in vaporizing foolish ghost stories was a good strong sun.

  “Doc was over to a convention in Baton Rouge last night. He’ll examine the body when he gets back to the area.”

  She patted Joe’s arm. “Just tell folks you’re waiting to get Doc’s professional opinion. Tell ’em it’s a puzzle, but don’t let on like it’s anything supernatural.”

  She felt him begin to tense under her hand. She was stepping across that invisible line again. “I’d best tend to my business and let you handle yours.” She smiled innocently and was relieved to see him return it. “Come by for some whiskey. Clifton brought Mama a new bottle last week. She’d welcome your company for a drink.” She winked at him. “On the sly, of course.”