Papa had a grim two-handed bulldog grip on Nicky’s ankle, but Trask slammed him beside the head with his gun butt, followed him down, smashing again and again until Nicky dragged him away.
“C’mon, for Chrissake, the old guy’s finished.”
Vangie slid down the bank in pale moonlight like an otter down a mud slide. There was mist over the water. She jumped into her father’s boat, snapped shut the padlock on the chain around the tree, ran down to the stern. Hand-over-handed up her scow on the towrope. She threw in the attaché case, jerked open the slipknot on the towrope.
“Here! She’s here!” yelled a badly limping Maxton when he saw her below just about to jump into the flatboat.
Without even looking back, Vangie dove into the water. The boat started to swing free. Maxton tried to scramble down the bank, fell, slid and rolled right down to the water’s edge. Nicky and Trask, on the bank above, started firing wildly over his head at the drifting scow, even though Vangie was nowhere to be seen in the concealing river mist.
Her sleek head broke water on the far side of the scow so it was between her and the shore. She reached up for the gunwale, but it splintered and flew apart. She grabbed a breath, ducked under again so she didn’t see two more slugs hole the side of her outboard motor. Maxton, flat on his back in the mud, was yelling hysterically at his cohorts firing over his head.
“Quit firing, quit firing, you fucking apes!” He struggled to his feet as they slid down the bank, waved his arms wildly. “Get after her, for Chrissake!”
Neither man moved. They weren’t about to dive into that cold fucking water in the dark, there were gators and snakes and turtles, oh my...
“The boat, you stupid fuckers! Use the boat!”
They scrambled for Papa’s fishing scow. Nicky grabbed the prow. Trask tried to unwind the mooring chain from around the tree. Nicky shoved. Nothing happened. Trask took out his gun.
“She locked the fucking chain to the tree.”
Maxton said, “It doesn’t matter,” in a subdued voice. They turned to look out over the mist-covered slow brown river. There was nothing to be seen but mist. “She got away clean.”
Actually, the flat-bottom scow had wedged itself up against a cypress knee. Vangie’s forearm and lower leg came up to hook themselves over the gunwale, she rolled up into the boat. It sent out silent wavelets, Vangie herself was silent, listening to their distant voices echoing off the sounding board of fog.
“Hell, I hit the motor a couple times,” said Nicky’s voice. “She ain’t going anywhere with it.”
Vangie saw the holes, with cold fingers loosened the clamps holding the motor to the transom. She was shivering in the night air. Maxton’s echoing voice transfixed her.
“What about her folks?”
Trask said in bragging tones, “I took ‘em both out.”
Vangie sat down abruptly on the bottom of the boat, terror and despair washing over her in great waves. She started to sob even as Maxton’s voice came again.
“Terrific work, Trask! Let’s get out of here before someone finds ‘em.”
Suddenly all fear was gone. She stood up, knuckling her eyes like a little girl, but her face was a mask of hatred. She jerked lose the gas line, with one wild heave sent the motor into the water with a heavy splash.
Maxton’s distant, muffled voice demanded, “What was that?”
“Me, you fuckers!” she screamed into the fog. “I’ve got the bonds! Come and get me, I’ll be waiting for you! Especially you, Trask!”
24
When Minus turned into the dirt track to Broussard’s Store, his headlights swept across three fishermen just getting into their big four-door sedan. They spun gravel and came right at him, lights on bright. Minus had to slew over to one side of the dirt track, his horn braying angrily, so their fenders could clear his by scant inches.
He yelled curses after their retreating taillights until his Cajun good nature prevailed. Then he shrugged and started up the steps to the store. He stopped. The place was dark.
“Vangie?” No answer. He went further, craned forward cautiously like a cat in a doghouse. “Eh la bas! You, Vangie!”
Still no answer. With sudden decision, he grabbed the screen door and pulled it open.
Inverness kept the motor barely chugging as their flatboat went down the broad river. Dain was twisted around so he could shine a flashlight low under the fog ahead of them. He found it quite remarkable that Inverness could navigate at all in the drifting mist. His light picked out Papa’s moored boat.
Inverness cut the motor entirely. “This is the one.”
“That’s what you said at the last three landings.”
“I’m bound to get it right eventually.”
Together they pulled the boat up, followed their flashlights up the bank to the level ground by the store.
“What the hell?” said Inverness.
His light had picked up Minus, slumped against the fender of his pickup with his face in his hands. At the same moment a sheriff’s car came roaring down the dirt track.
“Whatever happened,” said Dain hurriedly, “you’ll want to talk to that dude before your country cousins bottle him up.”
The cop car slowed to a stop in front of the store, its revolving roof light casting a pulsing intermittent blue glow over the scene. Dain was already halfway up the front steps.
“Hold it right there, mister!”
Inverness whipped out his shield. “New Orleans police. Working a possible homicide case that might connect with this.”
Dain used a ballpoint pen to pull the screen door open enough to get a shoetip in. If the girl was dead, it would once again be his fault. No wonder she had been replacing Marie in his nightmares!
The first thing he heard was the triumphant chirping of a thousand crickets. His flashlight showed him the smashed box, the little crickets leaping everywhere, flooded one of them like a spotlight on an entertainer. The cricket began to perform, sawing away. It was sitting on a dead and broken and blood-splattered Cajun face. Vangie’s dad. Had to be. Jesus God.
The full charge of buckshot swept him back against the table. A widening red pool began to spread beneath his chest...
He had to handle it. Another new memory, jarred loose from his subconscious. Dain followed the flashlight beam down the store, sweating with the nightmare image of his own death.
The shotgun had killed Eddie, had left only Dain.
A woman was sprawled facedown over stacked soft drinks in old-fashioned wooden boxes, head at an unnatural angle. Dain’s light moved down her and up again, and away.
Eddie saw the shotgun belch yellow flame to smash Marie back and up and out of this life...
Vangie’s mother. He leaned against the wall, fighting nausea. Another siren — an ambulance this time. Nobody in this slaughterhouse would need an ambulance. His moving eye of flashlight stopped on the half-open door to the living area.
No sign of the bonds here in the store, and...
Jesus, no! Let the cops find Vangie.
He pushed the door open silently, looked down a narrow hallway to a kitchen. His flashlight showed a table, two coffee cups, a plate with a few beignets still on it, two smaller plates sprinkled with powdered sugar. The coffeepot on the stove was warm, as was the cast-iron pot of gumbo. The oven was cold.
No bodies. Praise God, no bodies.
Back up the hall. Bedrooms. One was obviously her folks’ room, the dressertop crowded with framed family portraits dimmed by age. A gilt-backed hairbrush with strands of gray-shot black hair in the bristles. An age-slicked cane rocker with a thick missal in French on a small round hardwood table beside it. Hand-hooked antimacassar covering the table.