“That should keep you busy for a while.” Mallory pointed to the deputy’s flashlight lying on the ground. “I’m sure you’ve got fresh batteries in that thing.” She smiled. “You check them every morning, don’t you?” Unspoken was the word fool.
Lilith’s hands balled into fists as she stared at the break in the trees where her gun had disappeared. Every other emotion was displaced by anger, and it was in her voice as she said, “So, Mallory, maybe I’ll chase you down again – real soon.”
When she turned back to the place where Mallory had been standing, there was no one there.
“Yeah, right,” said a voice in the dark.
Near the edge of Finger Bayou, Mallory waded through the waist-deep water and the morass of floating plants. She grabbed at exposed roots and saplings along the bank to drag herself forward. It was slippery work, a real fight to keep her balance. Her feet had no traction in the slime. The blood ran freely from her wounds. It trickled down her body and mingled with the black bayou water, leaving no track to follow.
Shock was working on her, slowing her steps as she weakened with the loss of blood. She had no warning that her legs would fail her. She fell to her knees, not feeling the cracked branch on the bottom of the bayou cutting into one leg of her blue jeans and her flesh. She reached out for a sapling and missed, falling back into the water. Now she was out of reach of the shore. She tried to make a stand, but her feet were sliding undirected with the loss of handholds. She floundered in eerie silence, making no splashing noises, but gliding this way and that, tiring more, losing more blood, and finally – exhausted. Her eyes were closing as she fell forward and lay face down in the water.
When her eyes opened again, she lay on solid ground. Rough hands were pressing on her back, and water streamed from her open mouth. Her eyes closed again. She was only vaguely aware that her heels were making ruts in the grass as she was dragged along the ground.
For an hour, the woods were lit with stalks of electric-yellow flashlight beams waving through the trees. Finally the quest was abandoned for the night. Malcolm and Ray Laurie had given up on finding Fred. They cursed their brother for a bastard as they made their way back home, preparing a story for Fred’s wife, something to keep her from jumping to the conclusion that he was shacked up with a peep-show bimbo, which they figured he was.
The woods were quiet again, but for the owls and smaller creatures. On toward morning, another pair of men broke the silence, walking the gravel path of the cemetery, spooking the field mice and the night birds who hunted them. With great stealth, the men approached the stone angel. They bound her wings with ropes and pulled her to the ground. Then she was also dragged away in the dark.
CHAPTER 14
Charles Butler had lost his tie and gone native. The soft denim shirt was a bit tight at the shoulders, but otherwise wonderfully comfortable, as were the blue jeans and the hiking boots. The owner of Dayborn’s dry goods store had been thrilled to unload all the giant-size clothing, for there was a dearth of giants in St. Jude Parish. The storekeeper had despaired of ever selling this stock until yesterday, when Charles had walked into the shop, the top of his head just grazing the eighteenth-century doorframe.
Today, Charles sat on a wooden bench and stared up at the skylight in the chapel studio, watching all the stars that were left in the early morning sky and sipping fresh coffee.
“It’s an obscene hour” said Henry Roth. “But this kind of work is best done in the dark. I appreciate the help.”
“My pleasure.”
Charles followed the sculptor and his rolling pallet to the ramp at the back of the studio. A single bare light bulb hung over a group of white-shrouded figures, all in a circle on the platform which had once been an altar. Charles counted eleven draped pieces in staggered sizes. “Is there some reason why they’re covered?”
“It’s my private collection.”
Henry began to pull the sheets away. A procession of tall statuary emerged from half the circle, their backs turned on Charles. The tallest angel must be at least nine feet high. And then the coverings were pulled from the smaller statues facing him.
Winged children.
Stunned, Charles stepped into the ring of stone figures to see the faces of the larger angels. And now he revolved slowly, watching Mallory grow from a cherub to a full-blown avenger with a sword in her hand.
The sheriff was kneeling in the wet grass, looking down at the blood. The trail petered out three yards from Trebec House. In sidelong vision, he saw Augusta at the kitchen windows flanking this side of the brick foundation. After he heard the door slam in the basement wall, he gave her a few seconds more to come up behind him and commence a tirade on the damage he had done bringing his car across the grass, stinking up her air with his exhaust and frightening her birds. It was always the same exchange between them. She had gone to a lot of trouble to block the old road with trees. And why, she would ask, did he take it as a challenge to scratch the paint on his car working around all her obstacles? How many kinds of a fool was he? And then he would have a few choice words of his own. But today this old game would be a bit different.
He looked up to see her calm face, which never gave away a damn thing.
“Why’re you creeping around my yard, Tom? You can’t knock at the door like a normal person?”
The game had already been altered. So Augusta must have bigger things to worry about today.
“Fred Laurie’s wife came in this morning. Said he never came home last night.”
“Well, good for her,” said Augusta, in a rare good mood that didn’t quite ring true. “That must be the first peaceful night she’s had in twenty years.”
He stood up and smacked the loose grass off his pants. “I guess you heard the gunfire late last night.” Of course she had. Augusta was a chronic insomniac, and everyone knew it. “I sent Lilith into the woods to arrest him for trespassing ‘cause I didn’t want you to find him first. Lilith said the man just disappeared. Couldn’t find a trace of him, and she was looking for a long, long time. But now I gotta wonder if Fred left the woods feet first, maybe with a hole in him.”
“He’s probably in the next parish, sleeping it off in a strange bed.” She might as well have been talking about the morning rain.
“Using what for cash? You know Malcolm never gives those idiots any money, and I don’t think a church voucher would buy him anything outside of Owltown.”
“So you’re thinking foul play?” Augusta was grinning.
He had several categories for her grins. Some were downright evil, and some were dangerous. But this one was only malicious.
“If his wife shot him,” said Augusta, “then I owe that woman an apology. I’ve sorely underestimated her, taking her for a mouse all this time.” She shook her head. “The way that bastard beat on her. You sure he was here last night?”
“Oh, yeah. Two people saw him go into the woods with his rifle. I found bullet holes in a few trees, but I’m pretty sure the trees didn’t put up much of a fight.”
“I see where you’re going with this. Well, if he shot himself, this is the last place he’d come for help.”
“Damn right.” He pointed to the trail she had been tactfully ignoring, as if she might be accustomed to seeing her grass splattered with bloodstains. “Maybe that’s not Fred’s blood. Maybe that fool actually hit something this time, and whatever it was, it came here. Is that Kathy’s blood, Augusta?” He was careful in his wording. If it was Fred’s, he didn’t really want to know.