Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 02 - Skeletons of the Atchafalaya by Kent Conwell Page A

together, or whether Ozzy had simply ingested the poison on his own.
    Why would he have done that? That was the question.
On the other hand, why did he pick up the screwdriver?
Was he deliberately trying to smudge the prints, or was he
indeed trying to help, however clumsily? Perhaps he poisoned himself out of guilt for murdering his own father.
    I paused outside Ozzy’s room. Reluctantly, I opened the
door and flipped on the light. A scurry of movement on the
nightstand caught my attention. A dozen two-inch-long water roaches scrabbled off the partially eaten ham sandwich.
I shivered. I hated cockroaches, noting with satisfaction that
a couple of the prehistoric creatures had drowned in the
half glass of Jim Beam. I studied the room once again,
hoping for a flash of intuition, or perhaps even divine revelation.
    Nothing.
    The same in A.D.‘s room.
    Frustrated, I went back downstairs and climbed back up on the kitchen table. With a sigh, I closed my eyes and
thought back over my years with Blevins’ Investigations
back in Austin. I tried to remember all to which I had been
exposed. I knew my limitations as a private investigator. I
didn’t possess the instincts of Al Grogan, the top sleuth in
my boss’s stable of P.I.‘s back in Austin. I was becoming
more perceptive. After five years, I had to be. But, I wasn’t
in Al’s class.

    One truth Al had taught me was that there is one unequivocal, indisputable, incontestable fact. Evidence does
not lie. It cannot be intimidated. It does not forget. It
doesn’t get excited. It doesn’t get bored. It simply sits and
waits to be detected, preserved, evaluated, and explained.
    Witnesses may lie, lawyers may lie, judges may lie, but
not evidence. The last thought in my head as I drifted off
into a restless slumber was that I had to gather enough
evidence so that when it was interpreted, it would point to
the killer.
    And if nothing else, I thought, I’ll e-mail all the evidence
to Al Grogan and sit back and wait for Austin’s own Sherlock Holmes to provide me the answer.
    Slowly, I became aware of a hand on my shoulder, shaking me gently. Then a husky voice broke into my dreams.
“Tony, Tony.”
    I jerked awake and stared up at Uncle Henry Broussard.
The deeply furrowed wrinkles in his sun-browned face reflected his apprehension. Outside, the gray light of morning
had replaced the darkness of night.
    “What? What?”
    In his lyrical Cajun dialect, he explained. “The radio in
the parlor, I listen. The storm, Belle, she is moving to Category Three. She be coming ashore later this morning west
of Marsh Island.” He paused, his face grim.
    I listened to the storm whistling around the house, rattling the windows, from time to time sending slight tremors
through the house itself. “Marsh Island?”

    He nodded.
    “For sure?”
    He nodded again.
    I sat up. “That means it’ll come straight this way.” I did
a few fast calculations in my head. From the coast to here
would take about six or seven hours for the eye, and then
about that long again for the last of the wind to pass.
Twelve to fourteen hours longer, plus the surge.
    Without warning, the lights flickered momentarily, grew
brighter, then went out completely. Uncle Henry and I
stared at each other in the dim light.
    I looked in the direction of the generator shed. “The generator. Something’s gone wrong with it.”
    Leroi stepped into the kitchen. “The freezer stopped.
What happened to the lights?”
    “The generator.” I banged the heel of my hand against
my forehead. “It must be out of gas. Why didn’t I think of
that? It’s been running since yesterday afternoon.”
    I jumped from the table and hurried to the door. All the
doors were shuttered and held in place with two-by-fours.
I reached for one, but Uncle George stopped me. “It’s too
bad out there, Tony. The wind‘11 knock you off your feet.”
    “The generator is out of gas, Uncle George. That’s why