Page 21 of Broken Bayou
He follows my gaze to the area downstream where the divers’ boat launched. A man and woman stand at the water’s edge. The woman is crying. Another woman moves to where the couple stands. It’s a woman I saw in Nan’s Café this morning, sitting at the media table. She’s wearing an expensive navy pantsuit. Her slick hair swept from her face in a tight black ponytail, a microphone clutched in her hand, and a cameraman following closely behind. In her element, I recognize her. Rita Meade, an investigative reporter for a national news program. She’s got quite a following, both on and off air. And earlier, at Nan’s, I’d caught her staring at me.
“Oh, hell,” Travis says, looking her way. “Stay here.”
Travis tries to block Rita from getting to the couple as a young deputy steps in and escorts them away from the water and toward me, Rita fast on their heels. The deputy tells Rita to leave these poor people alone, but he obviously doesn’t know who he’s dealing with. Rita Meade’s reporting style is notorious, ruthless. She’s famous for helping solve the Kansas City murders back in 2016. An entire family was slain as they slept, and Rita pounded on doors and interviewed neighbors, coworkers, lovers for almost a year. She’d even interviewed the family’sminister, who, it turned out, was in a long-term affair with the wife and distraught over her calling it off. Rita had used that footage to help the police get enough evidence to arrest him. Covering that case put Rita on the map and thrust her into a new echelon of investigative reporters.
And now she’s here, feet from me, homing in on this sad-looking couple.
A light on the camera behind Rita flares. She glances in my direction, pauses on my face, then refocuses on the man and woman. She pulls them off to the side, ignoring the deputy who is trying, and failing, to stop her.
“What are you hoping will happen here today, Mrs. Boudreaux?” Rita says.
Boudreaux. The last name from the newsclip I watched on Travis’s phone. These are the missing teacher’s parents, Alice and Calvin Boudreaux.
Alice looks directly into the camera. Her husband keeps his head down. “I’m hoping we’ll learn something, one way or the other.”
“Are you prepared for what the divers might find today?”
My stomach clenches. I know I’m not.
Alice shakes her head. “We just need closure.”
Indeed you do. Alice holds her tears in check now. Much stronger than I would be in that situation. She’s got a good wall up, but I have bad news for her. They haven’t invented a wall strong enough to keep grief out. Eventually, it will find her. And when it does, I hope she has someone besides the man next to her to help her get through it. The husband, Calvin, has my attention. He hasn’t spoken a word, but his body language is interesting: arms crossed over his chest, eyes constantly shifting to the muddy water, jaw working side to side. Like he’s nervous. Like he’s hiding something.
Rita turns her attention to him.
“Mr. Boudreaux,” Rita says, “do you think your daughter could be a victim of foul play?”
He snaps his head up, eyes wide. He flexes his hands, then balls them into fists as he glares at Rita. Probably not an uncommon reaction to her, but the way he watches her makes the hair on my arms rise. He looks like he wants to punch her.
Mrs. Boudreaux answers, “No! We know our child. She’s not a drug addict or a runaway like the one they found in that barrel. She’s a schoolteacher. And she had an accident. I just know it.”
I’m tempted to go to her, put my arm around her shoulder, and get her the hell away from Rita’s hyperfocused gaze. I want to comfort her and tell her she will survive this. But really what will happen is she’ll feel like it should kill her, she’ll pray for it to kill her, but it won’t. Then the slow realization will hit that she will have to live with it. And there’s no comfort in that. I stay rooted to my spot, watching.
Calvin Boudreaux is still now, very still. Almost like a child who thinks if he closes his eyes and doesn’t move, he can’t be seen. But Rita sees everything, and she turns her focus on him again.
“What about you, Mr. Boudreaux? Do you have anything you want to say?”
His eyes narrow. “What’s it matter. She’s gone.”
Rita lowers her chin. “Maybe you’d like to comment on some information I’ve recently become aware of, regarding your domestic-abuse charges?”
Mrs. Boudreaux gasps. “Those charges were dropped.”
Mr. Boudreaux balls his hand into a tighter fist. But before anything else can be said, a sharp whistle cuts through the thick air.
Rita, the Boudreauxes, and I all swing our heads toward the tow truck. Chief Wilson is motioning for it to back up even more. A winch begins to unspool. I barely turn back to the scene in front of me before Rita snaps at her cameraman and rushes back toward the water’s edge. Mrs. Boudreaux is fast behind her, yelling “My baby” over and over.
Pulsing energy ripples through the crowd around me. Locals yell about something coming out of the water. Travis yells “Get back!” to everyone. Then police and divers swarm to the tow truck’s back end. Alarge heavy chain lowers from the tow truck into the bayou. One diver on shore walks into the depths with a hand on the chain, and both disappear under a layer of algae.
I crane my neck to get a better look. The young deputy tries to move me back, but I refuse to move. My orange boots stick to the dry grass.
Chief Wilson shoves his radio to his ear, then places two fingers in his mouth and whistles to the tow truck driver again. The chain stops.
The silence that follows is deafening. Even Rita falls quiet. A bullfrog croaks from its hidden spot, and a woman in the mass of people screams. Nervous laughter follows.
It’s the teacher’s car, I tell myself over and over. But something in my gut twists to the point that I want to double over.
Then the thick chain reverses direction. The back tires of the tow truck start to sink into the bayou mud, and men begin to shout again. The driver grinds the gears, and the smell of smoke fills the air. One of the divers yells, “It’s a car, all right.”
