grasped the car’s warm steel with both palms.
Brownlow tried to breathe. He released his hands from the roof and fished for the car keys in his pocket, opening the driver’s side door, the backseat, and put the box inside. After he opened the front door and pulled himself inside the cab, he felt even more ill. He sat down hard in the seat and leaned out of the open door to the ground, vomiting violently, a projectile. The second volley of vomit caused vessels to burst in his right eye.
“I think this is a good day to pass on,” he said out loud.
Instead of dying, he had the presence of mind to drive himself over to Dr. Dan Danly’s office. The doctor was about to retire after a day seeing patients. He was locking the glass doors to his office when he saw the marshal turn into the lot in front of the building. The marshal looked half dead, and the physician checked him as he sat in the patrol car in the parking lot. He called for an ambulance with the marshal’s police radio, knowing that the man was in the early stages of cardiac arrest.
Ten minutes later, a pair of medics placed Brownlow into the ambulance and put an oxygen mask on his face. They transported him to the Ninth Ward Hospital Emergency Room where he was treated by the doctor on staff, his world uprooted and sprung like a giant oak tree caught in a tornado, the entire landscape a dark pall.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
James Luke Cate’s hair was black except for some distinguished hi-lights of silver around the edges close to his ears. He lived with his third wife in Natchez, Mississippi, on South Pearl Street. The house, built in 1852, was called the Slocum Cottage. It was named after his wife’s maternal ancestors. Natchez was a city on the east side of the Mississippi River, a notorious river town with a seedy reputation, a sordid past that never seemed to die.
He had been away from Baxter Parish for almost a decade, ever since he left his first wife Nelda in the spring of 1965. He fled the parish and had almost no contact with anyone from the area since his departure. At first, he lived in the capital city of Baton Rouge, where he worked for the state highway department headquarters. He moved in with a wealthy woman from Baton Rouge, or “the red stick” as it is translated into English from the French.
The woman was only one of the reasons for his departure from Nelda, and it didn’t take long for him to marry again. His second wife caught him with another woman from Natchez, and she divorced him, too. But not before he could steal an ample amount of her money. He took the money with him to Natchez and his new job as a civilian manager with the Army Corps of Engineers, working on the levees on the Mississippi River floodplain. His ex-wife’s assets left him a solid business stake, and his profitable holdings grew rapidly.
In Natchez, he continued his love affair with the old money divorcee, Heloise Tartt. They married following a torrid romance. Her money did nothing less than compound his power and influence. His background in the military and years with the Louisiana highway department, followed by the job in the Army Corps of Engineers in Baton Rouge, not to mention his wife’s father, a scion of Natchez and the South, played heavily into his rapid advancement in the Vicksburg District of the Army Corps. His father-in-law lived in a mansion overlooking the river and was a banker, the son and grandson of Natchez and Vicksburg bankers. The family was prominent even before the siege of Vicksburg in 1863, a time when townspeople ate dogs, cats, and even rats to stay alive.
Today, James Luke was fishing in the brown silt-filled Mississippi River, the water the color of worn saddle leather. He stood on the bow of the fiberglass boat and cast his lure into a bramble of treetops on the edge of the bluff. He’d caught three small bass and tossed each one back into the water, none of them worth keeping.
He cast the stiff rod with a hard flick of
Brownlow tried to breathe. He released his hands from the roof and fished for the car keys in his pocket, opening the driver’s side door, the backseat, and put the box inside. After he opened the front door and pulled himself inside the cab, he felt even more ill. He sat down hard in the seat and leaned out of the open door to the ground, vomiting violently, a projectile. The second volley of vomit caused vessels to burst in his right eye.
“I think this is a good day to pass on,” he said out loud.
Instead of dying, he had the presence of mind to drive himself over to Dr. Dan Danly’s office. The doctor was about to retire after a day seeing patients. He was locking the glass doors to his office when he saw the marshal turn into the lot in front of the building. The marshal looked half dead, and the physician checked him as he sat in the patrol car in the parking lot. He called for an ambulance with the marshal’s police radio, knowing that the man was in the early stages of cardiac arrest.
Ten minutes later, a pair of medics placed Brownlow into the ambulance and put an oxygen mask on his face. They transported him to the Ninth Ward Hospital Emergency Room where he was treated by the doctor on staff, his world uprooted and sprung like a giant oak tree caught in a tornado, the entire landscape a dark pall.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
James Luke Cate’s hair was black except for some distinguished hi-lights of silver around the edges close to his ears. He lived with his third wife in Natchez, Mississippi, on South Pearl Street. The house, built in 1852, was called the Slocum Cottage. It was named after his wife’s maternal ancestors. Natchez was a city on the east side of the Mississippi River, a notorious river town with a seedy reputation, a sordid past that never seemed to die.
He had been away from Baxter Parish for almost a decade, ever since he left his first wife Nelda in the spring of 1965. He fled the parish and had almost no contact with anyone from the area since his departure. At first, he lived in the capital city of Baton Rouge, where he worked for the state highway department headquarters. He moved in with a wealthy woman from Baton Rouge, or “the red stick” as it is translated into English from the French.
The woman was only one of the reasons for his departure from Nelda, and it didn’t take long for him to marry again. His second wife caught him with another woman from Natchez, and she divorced him, too. But not before he could steal an ample amount of her money. He took the money with him to Natchez and his new job as a civilian manager with the Army Corps of Engineers, working on the levees on the Mississippi River floodplain. His ex-wife’s assets left him a solid business stake, and his profitable holdings grew rapidly.
In Natchez, he continued his love affair with the old money divorcee, Heloise Tartt. They married following a torrid romance. Her money did nothing less than compound his power and influence. His background in the military and years with the Louisiana highway department, followed by the job in the Army Corps of Engineers in Baton Rouge, not to mention his wife’s father, a scion of Natchez and the South, played heavily into his rapid advancement in the Vicksburg District of the Army Corps. His father-in-law lived in a mansion overlooking the river and was a banker, the son and grandson of Natchez and Vicksburg bankers. The family was prominent even before the siege of Vicksburg in 1863, a time when townspeople ate dogs, cats, and even rats to stay alive.
Today, James Luke was fishing in the brown silt-filled Mississippi River, the water the color of worn saddle leather. He stood on the bow of the fiberglass boat and cast his lure into a bramble of treetops on the edge of the bluff. He’d caught three small bass and tossed each one back into the water, none of them worth keeping.
He cast the stiff rod with a hard flick of
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