Fortune’s Favour

-1-

Through hazy eyes, Daniel Myers squinted up at the night sky and the dark clouds sweeping into Louisiana from the gulf. Another fat droplet of rain hit his upturned face, the impact taking a moment to register in his brain, as the forecast deluge finally came. Wiping his scruffy, brown hair from his brow as the rain’s intensity increased, Daniel smiled at the distant rumble of thunder.

‘Go on,’ he shouted at the sky as he unscrewed the bottle top from his latest purchase. ‘Smite me, you bastard.’

Daniel raised the bottle in mock salutation to the clouds before taking a swig. After several hours numbing his taste buds at the bar, the cheap burn of the budget whiskey barely registered. He took a longer swig, wondering what cruel twist of fate would see fit to curse him with an inability to get drunk when he most needed it. Feeling the familiar swirl in his stomach, Daniel put the top back on the whiskey. It was the same every time. The moment that warm buzz became strong enough to threaten his mental acuity his body would reject the poison. Knowing what would come next, Daniel strolled over to the nearest storm drain and waited, watching the thin rivulet of water forming in the gutter as the rain sought to return to the ocean. Placing one hand on his knee, Daniel hunched over and waited for his stomach to finish disgorging its contents. As several hours’ worth of whiskey and bar snacks spilt into the storm drain, so too did the buzz that Daniel had nurtured.

‘The definition of madness,’ he muttered as he wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his overcoat.

Daniel attributed the first time he tried to get drunk only to throw up all over the street to inexperience. As an eighteen-year-old whose exposure to alcohol was limited to stealing the odd shot of whiskey from his father’s liquor cabinet, hitting the rum hard with Jenny, his then girlfriend’s best friend, was a shock to the system. When he repeated the experiment, three weeks later, he had ruined Jenny’s dress as badly as her best friend had ruined his life. As he swilled his mouth with another shot of whiskey, Daniel reflected on how insignificant his ex-girlfriend cheating on him felt in comparison to the events of eight and a half years ago.

Spitting the whiskey-vomit cocktail into the storm drain, Daniel turned and headed back to his car.

‘Mr Myers,’ an unfamiliar voice called out as he slouched against the side of his rusty, green sedan and rummaged through his pocket for the car key.

Turning to look back across the street, Daniel exhaled sharply at the sight of the sheriff’s department uniform and the woman within it. He could tell from the way she stood, her thin hands resting on her hips, long fingers tucked into her pockets, that she was unamused. Straight-backed and scowling, her orange-tipped fringe partially obscuring the left-hand side of her face, Deputy Cleo Landry called out to him again.

‘I hope you’re not planning on driving that death trap.’

‘Nope,’ Daniel replied as his fingers found the car key buried within the empty sweet wrappers that filled his pocket. ‘Not in my condition.’

Cleo watched as he removed the key and peeled off one of the sticky wrappers before heading around to the trunk of the car. Pulling the whiskey bottle from his pocket, Daniel fumbled with the lock, succeeding in ramming the key into the slot on the third attempt.

‘No remote locking?’ asked Cleo, stepping off the sidewalk as the lid swung open, yanking the key out of Daniel’s hand. ‘That thing must be older than I thought.’

Daniel perched on the edge of the car’s open trunk and unscrewed the bottle cap. ‘The rust wasn’t enough of a clue?’

Bottle pressed to his lips, Daniel looked sideways at Cleo as she came to a stop next to the car and folded her arms across her chest. It was the first time he had seen the deputy sheriff up close and away from her desk. With the street lamp illuminating her from the side she cast a menacing presence as she towered over him. Daniel estimated she was close to matching him in height and easily in better shape than he was. His diet of whiskey and sugar had started to coalesce around his middle in the last eighteen months, his lethargy making it harder to stave off the negative effects of his bad habits as he entered his thirties, and he doubted he could walk to the end of town without getting out of breath. Cleo, on the other hand, looked ready to swim the gulf to Cancun.

Daniel lowered the bottle as Cleo’s eyes bored into him, leaving his guilt with nowhere to hide. Reaching up and gripping the lid of the trunk with one hand, he looked at the bottle and the brown paper bag that hid it from the world. ‘No parole.’

Cleo sighed and threw him the oh-so-familiar stare that people gave him when he spoke of his wife’s killer. ‘I don’t understand you, Daniel Myers. Isn’t that a good thing?’

‘Not when the woman you locked up is innocent.’

Cleo was still in school when the trial began, but the murder of Elodie Myers was well documented. The husband of the deceased appearing as a witness for the defence tended to draw media interest. Speculation of an affair between Daniel and the accused, Emily Doucet, was rife, but anybody who knew them knew that it was a story concocted to add drama to an already fraught trial. The prosecution levied claims of witchcraft and ritualistic sacrifice against Emily to provoke a reaction with the jury. The symbols carved into the floor around Elodie’s suspended body gave weight to the claim.

‘What makes you so sure she’s innocent?’ Cleo asked as Daniel tucked the whisky bottle behind the sedan’s brake light.

‘Emily loved Ellie. There’s no way she would have killed her. My wife’s killer is out there somewhere, and I don’t know where to look. Now, if you don’t mind, I have a drinking session to sleep off.’

Without waiting for a response, Daniel tucked his legs up and rolled into the sedan’s trunk, pulling the lid closed behind him.