by BJ Bourg
I had nodded politely and entered the room with Amy. The color had returned to Camille’s face and she had regained a lot of her strength. She was smiling and seemed happy to see us. Now, though, her face was pale and there were worry lines etched into the corners of her eyes. Just talking about her ordeal terrified her.
“So, you were abducted from the water?” I asked slowly, trying not to reveal my skepticism.
“No, I was abducted through the water.” She shifted in her bed and winced when she moved her left arm, in which the IV had been inserted.
Questions raced through my mind, but I wanted to start from the beginning and proceed in chronological order.
“Let’s begin with how you got into the water if you don’t mind,” I said. “If you could, start with your activities and interactions right before entering the lake. I’d like to know who you were talking to, what y’all were saying, was anyone upset—things like that.”
“My boyfriend, Otis Williams, was flirting with Chrissy Graves and it kind of upset me,” she said. “He wasn’t paying any attention to me and it really hurt my feelings and it made me mad. I’m not going to lie—I did have quite a bit to drink, so I wasn’t making the best decisions. I’m not making excuses, but I wouldn’t have done what I did otherwise.”
I nodded and waited for her to continue.
“I decided to make Otis jealous, so I took off my bikini top and jumped in the water. I swam away from the shore for a ways and was hoping he would come after me.” She frowned. “I knew there were alligators in the water and I knew it wasn’t safe. I shouldn’t have done it, but I just didn’t care about anything at the moment.”
“This isn’t your fault,” I said. “Don’t blame yourself for anything. People swim in the lake every day and they’re never attacked by alligators. In fact, alligators are more afraid of you than you are of them.”
She nodded. “After I got away from the land, I turned around and started treading water. When I saw how far I had gone, I started getting scared. I was about to swim back to shore, but then I saw three guys from school heading for me. I don’t know them, but I do know they play football. I think they’re going to college to play ball, too. Anyway, I didn’t like the way they were looking at me and I knew I’d made a horrible mistake. I started drifting farther away from the land. I was trying to think about how I could get around them and get back to shore with them touching me.”
Camille paused and smiled a little before continuing with her story.
“That’s when I saw Otis get on the jet ski. He was fixated on those three football players and I knew he was coming to rescue me.” She stopped talking and began shuddering beneath her blanket. “Before he could get to me, I felt something clamp around my left leg. As soon as I felt it, I instinctively took a deep breath to yell, but I didn’t have a chance. Whatever it was, it pulled me underwater and started dragging me away.”
I could feel my brow furrowing. An underwater abduction was a new one for me. From what I knew of aliens, they came in from outer space, not from under the surface of our waterways.
“So, you were abducted through the water?” I asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“And it was pulling you away from your group of friends?”
“I couldn’t tell what direction we were going, but it seemed like it was away from the party.” She nodded. “It was definitely away from the party. When I first went under, I remember hearing the music vibrating under the water, but then it got lighter and lighter until I couldn’t hear it anymore.”
“This thing that clamped around your foot,” I began, “what did it feel like?”
“I don’t know how to describe it. It felt weird. At first, I thought it was an alligator. I had read about alligators before we came here and I read that you should play dead if you’re attacked, so that’s what I did. I just went limp and allowed myself to be dragged across the water.”
“Did you feel pain when it clamped onto your leg?”
“I didn’t and that’s what confused me, but then I remembered reading that your body goes into shock when you first get injured and you don’t feel the pain right away. I thought that’s what was happening. I figured I’d feel the pain later.”
I glanced at Amy with an “I don’t owe you $100” expression and turned back to Camille.
“How fast do you think you were being dragged through the water?”
“Fast, but not that fast,” she said thoughtfully. “It’s not like I was being dragged by a boat. It felt much slower than that.”
“And you just remained limp?” I asked.
“Yes, sir. I didn’t move. I tried real hard to hold my breath. I opened my eyes at one point to see, but the water was black. It was really scary.” She shuddered violently. “I thought it was over. I really thought I’d run out of lives.”
CHAPTER 19
As I sat there watching Camille talk, I couldn’t help but remember the stories her dad had told me about the adversities in her young life. She was definitely a tough lady and a ferocious fighter.
“This thing that was dragging you through the water,” I said, “did it let you go at some point?”
She nodded. “I could hardly hold my breath anymore. I was straining not to breathe. I knew if I took a breath, it would all be over—I would drown. When it had first grabbed me, I just stopped moving and went limp. I let it drag me through the water. After a long moment, and when I felt like I was about to explode, the thing let go of me. At that point, I still thought it was an alligator and I thought it would start eating me. I was terrified. I remained deathly still, praying it would lose interest in me and leave me alone. The thing poked at me—”
“Poked at you?” I asked, interrupting her. “How?”
She reached over and poked at my chest. “Like that. It felt like it was checking to see if I would move or respond to the poke. But I didn’t. I just stayed floating in the water, not moving a muscle. After the poking stopped, I felt it bump against me—like, against my legs. It actually scraped me.” She lifted her hospital gown and pointed to her leg, where a small scrape was visible. “I thought it was the claw from an alligator or something. Afterward, I could feel myself rocking in the water, like the thing had made some waves.”
“Did it make waves like a boat?” I asked.
“No, not that much. It felt like it could’ve been an animal swimming away.”
I nodded, an idea starting to brew inside my mind. She continued talking, and I continued mulling over this idea.
“When everything got still again and I couldn’t take it anymore,” Camille said, “I began swimming as fast as I could to the surface. I opened my eyes again—they burned really bad—and I could see that the black water was getting brighter. I could see the sun. I tried so hard to keep holding my breath, but I couldn’t make it to the top. I had blown the water out of my lungs and I needed to take a breath. It felt like my lungs were burning and I thought I was gonna pass out. My body wouldn’t listen to me anymore, so I gave in and took a small breath. The water rushed down my throat. I tried to swallow it so it wouldn’t choke me, but it was no use.”
“Oh, wow,” I said breathlessly, hanging on her every word. It was right then that I realized how very close we had come to recovering another drowning victim. “Did it work? When you swallowed the water, did it help?”
“Not at all.” She actually started laughing. “I don’t recommend it.”
Amy and I laughed, too.
“I was so afraid that my movements would attract this thing that had grabbed me and that it would come back and pull me under again. I knew I couldn’t survive a second round of dunking and that I needed to be quiet, but I couldn’t help it. I came up coughing. There was water in my eyes and I couldn’t see. I went under again and sucked in more water. I was flailing with my hands and legs, trying to stay afloat. I finally just took a deep breath and held it and rolled onto my back. I stopped moving and just floated there, taking short breaths whi
le I cleared my throat.”
“Did you see anything on the lake when you first made it to the surface?” I asked. “Anything at all?”
“Not the first time. Like I said, water was in my eyes. But when I was floating on my back and had stopped choking, I was able to blink my eyes until they were clear and I started treading water again. I couldn’t hear or see the party anymore. I didn’t know where I was, so I just headed for the closest shore.” She frowned. “I think I got turned around, because when I got to land I started walking in the direction of the party—or where I thought it was supposed to be—and never found it.”
“Could you see the opposite bank from where you were?” I asked. “Otis said he took a jet ski and began searching for you by riding up and down the lake near where you went under.”
“I didn’t hear the jet ski. I just kept walking in the same direction until I couldn’t walk anymore. I was hot and thirsty. I had a headache from drinking so much alcohol and I was tired of walking. I was so thirty that I drank water from the lake. I knew it was dangerous, but I needed water really bad. I was starting to get lightheaded.”
“What’d you do when you couldn’t walk anymore?”
“I went into the woods a little ways and fell asleep. I felt really uncomfortable being topless, so I slept on my stomach. When I woke up, it was dark and mosquitoes were eating me alive.” She shivered again. “That’s when I got really scared. I started walking toward the water, but it turns out I was going in the wrong direction—again! I didn’t realize it until I’d walked for what felt like an hour and I didn’t find the lake. I turned around again and started heading in the opposite direction, but when I still didn’t find the lake, I knew I had really messed up.”
Amy and I hung on her every word.
“Since I didn’t know which way was up, I decided to sleep until morning. I thought I might be able to figure out where I was at that point.” She grunted. “When I woke up, I knew it was daytime because it was brighter, but it was so dark in the swamps that I really didn’t know where to go. I don’t know how to follow the sun, but I would’ve tried if I could’ve seen the damn thing.”
She threw a hand to her mouth and apologized for cursing.
“Don’t worry,” Amy reassured her, “Clint has heard worse language from his dogs.”
“Have you really?” Camille asked jokingly.
“My dogs love me,” was all I said.
We talked about my dogs for about a minute, and then Camille went back to telling her story.
“I walked all day. It was getting dark again and I was really hungry and thirsty. I ended up finding this little canal—it was where you guys found me—and I drank some of the water. It definitely quenched my thirst. I also found a frog and I ate it. I gagged once or twice, but I managed to keep it down.”
“Wait—you ate a frog?” Amy asked, gagging a little.
“Yeah. It was crazy.”
“Juices and all?”
“Juices and all.” Camille actually seemed proud of herself. I—for one—was very impressed.
“During the night, I started getting sick. I vomited several times and then I had diarrhea. I couldn’t sleep because every time I’d get settled and start to doze off, I’d have to get up to use the bathroom—well, the tree—again.”
“Could you hear any sounds?” I asked. “We were patrolling the lake all night looking for you.”
“I did hear some roaring sounds, but they were far off and I wasn’t about to start walking through the woods at night. I decided I would head toward the noise in the morning.” She frowned, staring off toward the far wall of the hospital room. “I didn’t realize how bad off I’d be by morning.”
“You must’ve lost a lot of fluids during the night,” I said. “Could you tell you were getting dehydrated?”
“I couldn’t tell at first, but I figured it was happening. When I was little, my mom would make me drink a lot of water when I’d throw up or have diarrhea. Since I didn’t want to drink the water again just in case, I knew things were getting bad.” She scowled. “I didn’t realize how bad it was until I woke up the next morning and noticed I was passing blood. I thought I was gonna die. I didn’t know if I was sick from the water or if I’d eaten a poisonous frog.”
I tried to imagine the horror she must’ve experienced. It wasn’t hard to imagine, because it was painted across her face as she was telling about it.
“The very things that were supposed to help keep me alive were trying to kill me.” She chuckled dryly. “Anyway, I didn’t move from that spot. In fact, I couldn’t. I was too weak. Every time I tried to stand up I’d get dizzy. I kept falling asleep and passing blood. It was around the middle of the day and although I knew it was hot, I was freezing cold and began shivering violently. It was horrible. I just thank God you found me.”
“It wasn’t me,” I admitted. “Takecia Gayle, one of our officers, she spotted the vultures circling over your location. That’s what led us to you.”
Camille recoiled in horror. “Vultures were going to eat me?”
I silently cursed myself for including that little detail. Instead of answering her question, I decided to switch gears.
“You were under water the entire time this thing was dragging you around, right?”
She nodded.
“So, you never got a chance to see it?”
“That’s right.”
“Other than trying to drown you, did it hurt you in any way?”
“No, and that’s got me worried. Like, what did it want from me?” She stared from me to Amy and then back to me. “If we don’t know what it wanted from me, how do we know it won’t come back for me?”
“You’re safe here,” I assured her. “We’ll put a guard outside your door if it makes you feel better.”
“I’m fine with my dad here, but what if it follows me home?”
“We’ll catch it long before that happens,” I said with more confidence than I felt at this point. “Can you tell me what it felt like?”
“What do you mean?”
“When it grabbed you—what did it feel like? I know you said you hadn’t felt pain at first, but did you feel pain at any point afterward?”
“No.”
“When it grabbed you, did it feel like something biting you? Or like a trap snapping around your leg?”
She was thoughtful. “No,” she finally said. “It actually felt like a hand.”
“A hand?” Amy and I asked in unison.
“Yeah, it felt like someone had grabbed me, but I knew that wasn’t possible, because no one was in the water in that area except me.”
“The Letiche,” Amy said, her jaw set and her eyes boring holes into mine.
“The what?” Camille asked, watching the visual showdown between Amy and me.
“It’s nothing,” I said dismissively.
“Oh, it’s something,” Amy told me when we walked out into the parking lot a few minutes later. “It’s supposed to be part human and part alligator, which means it can survive under water.”
I stopped on the driver’s side of my Tahoe and stared across the hood at her. “You know what else can survive under water?”
“What?”
“A human in scuba gear.”
“Huh…” Amy’s face scrunched up. “No shit! But why would someone do that?”
“That’s what we need to find out.”
CHAPTER 20
Mayor Cain was in Susan’s office when Amy and I arrived at the police department. I could hear them talking from down the hall where Amy and I stood in front of my office. I asked Amy if she could do some research on diving shops in the area and see what she could learn.
“If we can get a list of the local divers, we might get lucky when we run their names.”
“Lucky how?” she wanted to know. “Do you think there’s a database of divers who routinely drown people?”
I chuckled. “You might be that lucky, but I’m not.”
“Well, I actually have a better idea.”
I raised an eyebrow, eager for any suggestions that might help bring this case to closure. However, I grew immediately suspicious when I realized she was trying to stifle a smirk.
“I could just get some sonar equipment and go find Letiche.”
I was about to respond when Mayor Cain stuck her head into the hallway.
“Clint, can you come here when you get a second?” she asked.
I shook my head at Amy and turned away.
“You’ll really thank me when I have the body of Letiche strapped to the front bumper of my pickup truck,” Amy called from behind me. “And when that happens, I expect a pay raise.”
“What was that about?” Pauline asked when I stepped into Susan’s office. “Please tell me she’s not quitting.”
“No,” I said, laughing. “It was nothing.”
Pauline Cain was a wealthy woman. Instead of standing here in the police department, she could be off leading an easy and uncomplicated life. However, after Mayor Dexter Boudreaux had been violently killed in town, she had abandoned the lap of luxury to lead a life of public service. Not only did she give up her former life for the town, but she also put her money where her mouth was by donating much of her wealth to noble causes within the town. She was never absent from community events and was known to bid on auction items only to return the item to the organization so they could make more money on it.
“I really appreciate all you’ve done,” Pauline said. “Your good work saved at least two lives.”
“It was a team effort,” I said simply.
“Do we have any idea what’s going on out there on the lake?” she asked.
Susan was seated behind her desk and Pauline was standing near the door, so I walked past Pauline and dropped wearily in a chair opposite Susan. I looked up at the mayor. Her long brown hair flowed like a silk mane over her shoulders and her makeup had been applied with precision, but it didn’t mask the concern on her face.
