She was now sure that in the morning, before leaving the swamp, he was going to kill both of them.
CHARLIE FRANKS LOOKED OUT the window for the fifteenth time. Beside the window, Bubba Oustellette sat hunched forward, his elbows on his knees, staring at the speckles in the terrazzo floor. Next to him, taking up the other two seats on the sofa, sat Grandma O, the fire in her dark eyes banked, her head moving almost imperceptibly from side to side. Across from her, Guy Minoux sat like a statue, one leg crossed over the other, a paper cup of cold coffee in one hand.
David Seymour appeared in the doorway and everyone came to life, their collective hope for good news so intense that, like every other time he’d had to do this, it made him hate his job.
“I wish I had happier news,” he said, and it seemed like the lights in the room dimmed. “But he’s simply not responding. We’re doing all we can, but it’s basically his fight now.” Having learned that it’s best not to linger after delivering bad news, Seymour turned and walked briskly away, hoping no one would follow.
“We got to stay hopeful,” Grandma O said. “He don’ need no negative energy from us.” She got up, a black taffeta mountain that dwarfed its surroundings. “Le’s all hold hands an’ form a mental picture of dat ol’ rascal doin’ a jig in his hospital gown.”
Franks and Minoux looked at each other, their discomfort at this suggestion obvious. Knowing she meant business, Bubba was already on his feet, with his hands out.
“Don’ stan’ dere, you two. Grab on.” She took Bubba’s hand and reached for Guy, who was too intimidated to refuse. Feeling like a fool, Franks completed the circle.
They stood quietly for what seemed to Franks and Minoux like an hour. Just as Phil Gatlin entered the room, she terminated the exercise.
“I don’t like the looks of that,” Gatlin said. “How’s he doing?”
“Not well,” Franks replied, his face flushed at being caught in such an absurd activity.
“But we’re all stayin’ positive,” Grandma O said in a warning tone to the others.
“That’s important,” Gatlin said, meaning it.
“Any progress on findin’ Kit?” Bubba asked.
“Actually, there is . . . a great deal. We almost had the kidnappers this morning, but they got away minutes before we arrived at where they were holding Kit, and most likely Teddy LaBiche.”
“They got Teddy, too?” Bubba said.
“I think so. Kit left us a message written on a dusty shelf telling us they left in a white truck, and she gave us the plate number. An hour ago, the truck was found abandoned about thirty miles from here. The plates were missing, but we found pieces of twine in it that matched twine found at their hideout. Not far from the truck, there was evidence a boat had been stashed in the brush for several weeks. We also found a lot of trampled weeds and grasses on the edge of a nearby swamp. So we think that’s where they are. It’s too late to get a search started tonight, but first thing in the morning we’ll be out there in force.”
“Where exactly was da truck found?” Bubba asked.
Gatlin told him and Bubba said, “Dat’s a big place.”
“We’ve got plenty of help lined up. But I’ll tell you, it’s hard to concentrate on anything with Andy lying in there so sick. I liked things the way they were and I don’t want to have to get used to somebody new running the ME’s office.” He looked at Franks. “I didn’t mean . . .”
“I know,” Franks said.
Gatlin stood sucking his teeth, thinking about all the years he and Broussard had been friends—the times the two of them had chartered a boat and gone deep-sea fishing; the arguments about who was the better writer, Louis L’Amour or Zane Gray; the look on Broussard’s face when he’d given the old pathologist a box of thin macaroni slices labeled as fish assholes for his birthday; Broussard’s irritating habit of asking a question and then answering it before you could say a word; the fine poem Broussard had written for them when little Andy died, two lines of which they’d put on his gravestone.
Then police business intruded on his memories, forcing him reluctantly back to his office.
Shortly after he left, Grandma O wandered down to Broussard’s room and went into the staging area, where she looked at him through the glass. It was the first time she’d seen him in the hospital, and the sight of all those wires and tubes coming out of him and his face covered with an oxygen mask hit her like a pickax. Murmuring encouragement to him, her hand went to the locket hanging on a chain around her neck. Inside the locket was a four-leafed clover, the locket and clover a gift from Kit to celebrate the opening of the restaurant.
As her fingers rubbed the locket, she was staggered by the strongest premonition she’d ever had.
Hurrying back to the waiting room, she drew Bubba aside. “If dey wait until mornin’ to start a search for Kit, it’ll be too late. You got to help her tonight.”
“DAVID.”
David Seymour looked up from Broussard’s chart and some very dismal data to see Mark Blackledge, his right hand resting on the counter, fingers curled around a small piece of Styrofoam bearing three plastic test tubes.
“I want you to inject Andy with the contents of these tubes,” Blackledge said.
“What is it?”
“Three monoclonal antibodies I just picked up at the airport. They’ve all been shown to react with CCHF virus in ELISA assays.”
“Are they neutralizing antibodies?”
“Nobody knows.”
“Are they safe?”
“Don’t know about that, either. This is all cutting-edge stuff. They were only isolated a week ago.”
“And you want to experiment on Andy?”
“What’s his prognosis now?”
“Suppose they’re like the antibodies produced in response to rheumatic fever strains of streptococcus. They cross-react with cardiac muscle . . . destroy normal tissue.”
“What’s his prognosis now?”
“It stinks.”
“So there’s really nothing at risk, is there? Without these antibodies, the virus kills him. With them, he might live.”
Seymour waited until a nurse walking by was out of earshot, then said, “But if they damage him and he dies, somebody might say we killed him.”
“Damn it, David. Be a man. I’m giving you a chance to save him.”
“I don’t want that responsibility.”
“Then I’ll do it,” Blackledge said. “Are there syringes on the isolation cart?”
“Yes. But if he dies, we’ve never had this conversation.”
BUBBA JOCKEYED HIS PICKUP so that the lights were directed into the swamp. Leaving the ignition on, he got out and went around to the back. The cops at the site where the kidnappers’ truck had been found had turned him away, as though there was only one way to get to the water.
He pulled his pirogue from the bed of the pickup and carried it to the water, where he launched it. He returned to the truck several times for the things he’d need—his cell phone, a paddle, his shotgun, a thermos of chicory-laced coffee, his frog-gigging helmet with the miner’s light on it, and something in a long white box.
With the pirogue loaded, and it was a full load indeed, he put on the helmet and returned to the truck to shut off the lights and the engine and lock up. Then he turned on the helmet light, made his way back to the pirogue, and shoved off into the darkening night.
In the shack deep in the swamp, Roy was reading at the table, the kerosene lamp duplicating him on the wall. Larry was asleep in his bed. The door was closed, but the frog chorus outside was so loud it could have been heard even if the window wasn’t broken.
Kit’s bladder was calling so urgently, she was just going to have to lower her standards. “I need to use the bathroom,” she said.
Without looking up from his book, Roy said, “Sorry, you can’t be trusted. You’ve already proven that.”
“I’m serious. I have to use it.”
Roy didn’t respond, but he
shifted in his chair, so he was facing away from her.
Outraged, Kit held it as long as she could, but then the inevitable happened. Embarrassed and humiliated, she began to cry. She didn’t want to, God knows, but she couldn’t stop. And from that moment, she was beaten.
Kit slept, mostly because sleep was the only escape open to her. Sometime during the night, she was awakened by the creak of a floorboard. The lamp was still on and in its light she saw a figure on the other side of the table moving toward Larry’s bed. For a moment, she was sure she was hallucinating. She glanced beside her. It was Teddy. Somehow he’d freed himself.
All this happened in a space of time far shorter than it takes to tell it. There was another creak—from Roy’s bedsprings as he sat up and quickly raised his hand. A gunshot rang out.
Caught in the open, Teddy spun to his right and threw himself at the broken window, disappearing through it as a second bullet thudded into the wall beside the window.
Kit heard Teddy hit the water; then there was a hideous reptilian roar and more splashing. Roy grabbed the lantern and rushed to the window, Larry close behind. Roy leaned out, holding the lantern above his head and searched the darkness.
After a minute or so, he pulled his head and the lantern back inside and walked over to Kit. “Looks like Ted’s been taken by an alligator. It’s probably best if you don’t think too hard about what that’s like.” He lifted the lantern and inspected the floor where Teddy had been sitting. He bent and picked up a piece of glass that he showed to Larry. “He cut himself free with this. Where do you suppose he got it?”
Larry looked at the floor.
“You’ve got to be more careful.” Roy rolled Kit to the side and looked for glass behind her, under her, and in her hands, exposing the still-damp stain on her slacks.
When she’d seen Teddy across the table, Kit had felt hope, but again it had led nowhere, except to Teddy’s death. It was too much; there was no emotion left. She’d been manipulated until, like Roy, she was empty. Making no attempt to sit up, she again fled into sleep.
She woke in a sitting position, to see Roy and Larry eating the last two cans of beans. Larry finished first and tossed the can in the sink. “Now what?” he said.
“Kill her,” Roy replied. “Then we’re leaving.”
Larry’s face radiated pleasure. He picked up his gun from the table, walked to Kit and, with his foot, rolled her onto her side, facing away from him. She felt the barrel of the gun pressing behind her ear.
Drained as she was, she still wanted to live, and that translated into a fear that made her tingle. She closed her eyes and tried to follow the hawk she’d seen the day before, but the way was blocked by the image of the frightful damage a head shot causes when the bullet exits. Then she heard herself crying. . . . No . . . not her . . . a child.
Larry and Roy heard it, too. Larry removed the gun from Kit’s head and listened hard. “It’s out front,” he said, going to the door. He opened it and saw at the end of the dock a large stuffed rabbit with long, drooping ears and wearing a tiara of fabric roses and a purple velvet dress trimmed in lace. Clothespinned to a string around its neck was a white envelope.
Before Roy could stop him, Larry stepped out onto the dock and headed for the rabbit.
“No,” Roy yelled. “Get back in here.”
Larry hesitated.
“Eh bien, mon cher,” a voice shouted from Larry’s right. He looked that way and saw Bubba standing in his pirogue, a shotgun to his shoulder.
“Eh bien.”
Twenty yards from Bubba was another pirogue and another shotgun, held by the old man they’d seen fishing.
“Eh bien.”
Another pirogue and another shotgun.
“Eh bien.”
And another.
Larry threw his gun onto the dock and raised his hands.
In the shack, Roy turned and made a step toward Kit, obviously intending to use her as a hostage. But he was stopped from a voice at the window.
“You’re finished, Roy. If you so much as blink, I’ll send you to hell.”
Teddy . . . with a shotgun.
His eyes fixed on Kit, Roy’s gun hand came up. The shack was rocked by an explosion and then another. The bird shot from Teddy’s gun ripped into Roy, turning the side of his face to hamburger and driving him off his feet. Teddy came through the window and pumped another shell into the gun. He walked over to Roy, looked at him, then knelt and felt the undamaged side of his neck for a pulse. He fished in Roy’s pants for his knife, picked up the chrome pistol, and went to Kit. Setting the guns on the floor, he grabbed her in his arms. “It’s over, baby. It’s all over.”
“Untie me,” she said against his ear.
Teddy released her and cut her loose. He helped her to her feet and tried to put his arms around her again, but she pulled free and went to Roy’s body. Dropping to her knees, she slapped the side of his face that still looked human, then began to sob into her hands.
A CURSORY INSPECTION WOULD not have found the black stallion, for he lay quite still, hidden by the tall prairie grass, unable to rise, his eyes open but sightless. The crushed grass on which he lay kept him from the ground, insulating him from the faint vibrations passing through it.
Gradually, the vibrations grew stronger. Soon, even the grass was set aquiver. A muscle on the stallion’s flank quickened. One staring eye twitched in its socket.
The earth strummed the grass and the stallion’s nostrils flared.
The tremors in the dirt became sound in the air, like the rumble of a distant storm. The stallion lifted its mighty head and its ears swiveled toward the thunder.
Over the horizon they came, muscle and sinew, a juggernaut sweeping over the prairie. The great stallion struggled to rise, its feet kicking at the air.
On they came, thousands upon thousands, their eyes wide and determined, driving startled insects from the grass until the musky air was thick with them. On his grassy bier, the stallion kicked and squirmed and gained his knees . . . and then his feet.
The first wave of buffalo rolled past, mere yards away, coaxing the stallion after them in a trot. Then, as his blood began to flow and his muscles loosened, he broke into a gallop. In the TB isolation ward of Charity Hospital, Broussard’s fever broke.
23
“The alligator roaring after I went out the window . . . that was me,” Teddy said, taking another sip of iced tea.
“It certainly made Roy think you’d been eaten,” Kit said, scratching Lucky under the chin and withholding the admission that she, too, had believed it.
After their rescue, Kit and Teddy had been taken to the hospital, where they were given a thorough physical examination and Teddy’s burns had been treated. Concerned that they’d been exposed to the virus, David Seymour checked them for tick bites and samples of their blood had been sent to Blackledge for viral analysis.
While waiting for the results on their blood test, the public health people thought it best that they both be socially isolated, a decision Kit welcomed, as she was in no mood to talk to anyone, not even Teddy. So they’d remained apart.
In her time alone, which Kit spent in her own house, she fulfilled a fantasy she’d had in the shack, taking the longest shower of her life. Afterward, she’d slept for twenty-four hours straight, so exhausted not even the specter of hemorrhagic fever disturbed her slumber. She’d been awakened by the telephone, bringing news that there was no sign of the virus in either her blood or Teddy’s. Nor was Roy or Larry infected.
Free now to have visitors, she’d agreed to receive them, even though she still felt too shattered to be sharing herself. The still-vivid memory of being forced to live for days without changing clothes or bathing and that supremely humiliating moment in the shack had dictated Kit’s attire, turning her from her usual slacks and blouse in favor of a paisley print red silk dress with an English tan belt and matching Italian calfskin pumps. At her throat was a double-linked gold necklace; at her ears, ruby ear
rings. And still she felt dirty and unattractive.
She looked at Bubba. “If you hadn’t arrived when you did, I’d be dead. What can I possibly say to express my thanks?”
Bubba blushed and studied the ice in his tea. “You could say you’re not mad at me for gettin’ your rabbit dirty.”
“I’m sure it can be cleaned.”
Bubba looked up and grinned—a Cheshire cat with a bushy black beard.
“I heard there was an envelope attached to the rabbit,” Phil Gatlin said. “What was inside?”
“Nothin’. We weren’ plannin’ on lettin’ anybody get close enough to open it.”
“Clever.”
Bubba looked at Kit. “But it was Gramma O who tol’ me you needed help right away. She should get da credit.”
Kit turned to Grandma O, whose dress practically covered the upholstered chair in which she was sitting. “How did you know?”
“Cookin’ ain’t my only talent.”
“I can sure vouch for that.”
“Which reminds me, it’s time Ah got back to da restaurant. No tellin’ what kin’ of goofy things dat knucklehead who’s been runnin’ it for me has been up to.”
She rose from her chair, bringing everyone else in the room to their feet. Losing the lap he was in, Lucky jumped to the floor.
“Kit, honey, you come by and Ah’ll cook you somethin’ special to make you forget what you been through. An’, Teddy, dat goes for you, too.” She looked at Gatlin. “You ain’t been through anything, so you got to eat from da menu.”
Kit saw Grandma O and Bubba to the door, kissed both on the cheek, and fondly watched them cross the courtyard and disappear into the parking alcove. When she returned to the living room, Gatlin and Teddy were still standing.
“When do you think Andy will be able to have visitors?” she said to Gatlin.
Louisiana Fever Page 24
