Agent Brad Wilmot - Personal Journal - Thursday December 11^th 2008, 2032hrs

You can't go back.  Isn't that what they say?  It looks like Devereux knows a thing or two about that, at least according to Beverley who got partnered with our ‘Mysterious Redhead' today.  Even after cigarettes, ice cream and a soda she couldn't get her to open up about whatever was making her go all insular after a day out in the Bayou parishes.  See, that's the difference between us Marines and the rest of the world.  No secrets in a USMC platoon.  Your life is theirs and their life is yours.  Personally, I think it's a lot healthier. Okay, I admit I lost it a little after Parisi disappeared into the breeze.  I have seen many things I'd rather forget but that just moved into top slot. 

My day began with a team meeting.  Y'know, maybe we are beginning to gel as a unit.  People seem to be getting their collective shit together on that score as time has gone by.  There's a tipping point whereby you've all gone through enough together to know you can relate and trust the man next to you.  I'm at that stage with everyone except Pierce - he takes extra work.  We reviewed John Edwards's evidence which was substantial enough to open up a few new lines of enquiry into Stenneau and his crew (or should I say Krewe - more on that later).

The first was the Haitian, Derek Leauville, Stenneau's cadaverous Ninja like paymaster who comes and goes like the wind.  Apparently he appears, usually when you least expect him, hands you your dirty money and then vanishes again.  On the face of it, not the worst possible event except for the lingering sense of cosmic wrongness he leaves behind.  I know the feeling - every time the IRS sends me a letter, I have exactly the same reaction.  Anyway, hard to see how we can interdict someone whose ability to travel is at least ‘unconventional' so we moved on to target 2.

This was Boy Teche's boss and the rumoured leader of an occult underground crime gang known as the Zobop.  Frost and Pierce shook down an informant who used to be LCN but now specialises in hot dogs and warm goods.  He was reluctant to speak about our man whose name is Django Jones.  Jones is Jamaican by origin and an arts and crafts dealer with his own gallery and big house over in Gulfport.  Jones is also known to own several bars in the Algiers region of New Orleans - low rent dives mostly where pink skins are rarely seen.  Other than getting a load of warnings about Jones being bad news, they didn't get too far.

Target 3 was industrialist and squeaky clean philanthropist Elgin Thibodaux and his right hand man, Christian Lomax.  Chief and I took a ride down to Poydras Avenue in the Central Business District to try and meet Mr Lomax only to find him away on business and his PA overly interested in our business with him.  We did pick up a very intriguing prospectus on the Krewe of Honourable Swords whose sigil happens to be the Yellow Sign that has been seen all over the city.  Part of their ‘marketing' campaign apparently. 

Now, Chief and I weren't aware of this at the time but as it turns out, the team were already aware of this sign, having uncovered an open gate to the place where the King in Yellow is due to come from - the dread city of Carcosa, in the French Quarter of the city.  The signs are ‘draining' the spiritual reserves of the denizens of New Orleans and channelling them to Carcosa which in turn is becoming more materially real out in Lake Pontchartrain.  Stenneau is heading towards a critical conjunction on January 15^th when presumably enough spiritual power will be available to power his transformation - and as of this moment there's nothing we can do to stop him.

Or is there?  Edwards's main information was on Stenneau's right hand and I wonder how much his plans would be affected if we were able to take this guy down.  I've only met him once but Charles H Dupont is not a man you easily forget.  He looks like he stepped out of a TV commercial for Del Monte - white suit, panama hat and cane.  No denying Dupont is well connected but he may also be a mass murderer.  Edwards opened an investigation on him when a mass grave containing the skeletal remains of 10 men was uncovered in the Attakapes Wildlife management area, following Katrina. 

The Iberia Parish Sherriff's department ran the initial investigation until Edwards handed it over to the State Police.  By all accounts Sherriff's Detective Dave Robicheaux got a lot further than his state counterparts.  Only four of the incomplete bodies could be identified and Dupont became a person of interest as his plantation home is 30 miles east of where the grave was found.  A long way you'd think but his land is the first you come to - the intervening terrain being bayou swamplands.

Bev and Red headed out to Iberia Parish, deep in Bayou country to find out more about the case and working their charm managed to befriend Sheriff Helen Soileau, a career law enforcer and a lady the USMC would have been proud to have serve in the Green Machine.  The case file gave us the names of the four dead that could be identified - Darius and Dwayne Bowe, Lawrence Cross and Robby Gee. 

Detective Robicheaux had followed up on these men, all of whom had been involved in petty crime and had all lived in either Henderson or Breaux Bridge in St Charles Parish.  That was the girls' next stop where they met Danisha Bowe, mother of the deceased brothers.  Danisha was welcoming although her house guest, Jenette LeFavre who had gone to school with the Bowe boys was less so.  Bev observed the trappings of Santeria around the home - the hybrid religion of African Gods mixed with Catholic saints that negro slaves brought to the plantations of Louisiana. 

Something weird happened in that house that spun Devereux out and left Bev a little spooked.  Jenette insisted ‘the others' should come and meet with her mother - Mama Marie, a Santero or Priest of the faith.  Devereux asked why and was shown something that shocked her - an egg floating in water that when cracked was just blood.  Long and short of it, something wicked this way comes...

I think Chief spoke to Devereux when she got back although she had already spent half the drive back to the city in deep conversation with a male friend who spoke French (Hamblin?).  Whatever he found out clearly didn't impress - he left her alone and looked a little pale.

Just another day in the Crescent City...