One Blood

Chapter Seventy-Four

Chapter Seventy-Four

Lake City, LA

Randy sat alone in his father’s study. The room was as silent as a grave. The muted flat panel television screen on the far wall silently broadcast Isaac’s rapid progress. The storm, which had inexplicably hung suspended in the Gulf of Mexico earlier that morning, had finally chosen its course. Swirling radar imagery depicted the hurricane’s outer wall over Lake City and most of Southwest Louisiana. The bleak visual resembled a death scythe.

The meteorologists had it all wrong, though. The storm wasn’t causing irreparable damage to the oil refineries along the Gulf Coast and decimating the wetlands. It was right here in this office. Randy felt its energy pulsating throughout his frame.

He stared at the expansive desk before him and stroked the solid, reassuring surface, remembering what he’d done to possess it. This desk had long ago belonged to Walter Simmons, the only item salvaged after that fateful fire. Randy took the desk places Walter could never have reached. He and Coral once joked, that Randy would one day replace the famous centerpiece of the Oval Office with this simple cypress desk from Louisiana. That dream had fizzled, however, after his failed presidential bid in 2000, his first unsuccessful political campaign since losing the mayoral election to Simmons back in ’72.

Randy’s thoughts turned to his father. “Well, Joseph, I didn’t get to the White House,” he said aloud. “But I got further than you ever thought I would.” 

And if he could go back in time, he’d do it all again. He had no regrets about the life he’d lived. He’d chosen this life path and set everything in motion, starting with the bullet that stopped his father’s heart.

A small piece of him wished he could have handled Kristopher better. He wondered if his own father ever felt the same way after his mother’s death.

Randy pushed back from the desk and turned toward the credenza behind him. There was a safe imbedded in the second drawer. Here Lafitte’s had safeguarded important things, secret things, for over eighty years. Randy pulled out a slim, leather portfolio with the letters RL engraved in gold leaf on the cover.

He avoided his father’s dingy old Klu Klux Klan hood, which stared at him from the back of the safe like a headless ghost. He gently opened the portfolio and stared down at several pieces of paper, ripped years ago from Kristopher’s journal. Randy read slowly, digesting every syllable of every word, even though he knew them by heart.

There is no curse. Abby hit me with that one tonight. Just an urban myth invented by the slaves and recycled over the centuries to scare massa. But how can that be? Isaac and Melinda are in my head; they offer me no peace. They are real. I should run a knife through Randy tonight, just in case. But I can’t risk getting caught. I’ve got to get to Link tomorrow. Once I save him, I’ll take care of Randy once and for all. Curse or no curse.

A single tear fell onto the journal pages. Randy acknowledged these foreign tears as the first he’d cried for his dead son. Staring bleary-eyed at Kristopher’s last recorded thoughts, Randy sat up rod straight. His tear had plopped down on top of a name he hadn’t thought of in years.

Abby.

It had been Coral’s idea to hire the old Cajun woman. Randy hadn’t been particularly fond of having a black woman around his children, but he’d been too busy running for Senate re-election to offer much protest. And by all accounts she’d done a good job with Kristopher and Karen, hadn’t she? Still, something tickled the back of Randy’s mind, waiting to be scratched and sniffed.

He’d planted Carla Bean all those years back to seduce Walter Simmons. What if Abby had been a plant, too? Everything made sense now. Panama X had planted Abby inside his home. She had filled his children’s heads with tales of the Lafitte curse. Kristopher had believed her and sacrificed himself to save Randy and Karen!

By orchestrating the events leading up to the gang war, Randy had succeeded in ensuring his own son’s demise that day at Simmons Park. And why?

“Because I could,” Randy said stonily.

Well here it was. The cold, hard truth, out in the open. And damn it hurt. But Randy knew how he could make things right again. He should have done this long ago.

He removed a smooth walnut box from the safe. Inside was Robert E. Lee’s most famous gun, which he lifted out of its crevice with the care it deserved. He felt the weight of legacy and responsibility as he opened the chamber. Clean as a whistle.

The case also held six thirty-six caliber lead round ball bullets. Randy removed the bullets one at a time and lovingly placed each one into a sterling silver-lined chamber. The weapon had been the first piece of his enormous inheritance.

Randy placed the barrel into his mouth. It tasted like a billion bitter, black roses. Another tear snaked down his cheek.

Please forgive me.

Randy stilled his shaking hand and depressed the trigger.