Swamp Boat

The former low man in the Wilson County D.A.’s office, Frank McCready, sitting in Bea’s Diner, wished he hadn’t made the short walk from the office to the diner. The once uncrowned king of the Wilson County Courthouse, senior judge Kessler, now knew the secret the former D.A., Husker Shellman, a retired Superior Court judge, kept hidden for two decades. Not Shellman but a woman in a black dress brought down the Road Devils- the motorcycle gang camped out in a once prosperous amusement park.

McCready knew Rose, the woman Kessler spoke about, would call him.  When she called, she didn’t talk about how she fingered the Road Devils responsible for the college student’s rape and murder two decades ago. Rose talked about an innocent man who confessed to a crime he didn’t commit- killing a televangelist’s son. It didn’t happen on Lookout Point in Glenside, but in the bayou in Louisiana.  

In the autumn of her life, Rose insisted on going to Norleans to help a troubled soul. McCready had to go with her. She insisted on it. In a weekend of chaos and confrontation played out on a visit to a televangelist’s home and a trip through the St. Tammany Parish bayou, Rose, a clairvoyant, helps a former Tulane dropout, Pearce Meachem, confront the demons haunting him since he and three fraternity brothers picked-up a young woman on Bourbon Street after a Tulane football game.