One Must Wait

by Penny Mickelbury

  They were on a wooden dock, like the one at the Terrebonne Museum where Herve had docked his boat. There was a building at this dock, too, and several parked cars. She ran toward them, screaming. The third man gave chase, cursing and almost begging her to stop. The door to the building opened and she ran faster, toward it. And then stopped. It was Leland who emerged. She stopped running and screaming and turned to face the man who'd never have caught her had she had some where to run. Somewhere to hide.

  Leland beat her badly this time, punching her with his fist in her stomach and side and shoulder; and when he was finished beating her, he bound her feet and tore off a strip from the bottom of his shirt and stuffed it in her mouth and tied it in place with another piece of the shirt. Then they carried her down the dock to the edge—Leland had her feet and the other man her shoulders—and tossed her into a flat bottomed boat. The kind of boat Herve had. Except Herve's boat had been clean and orderly, all of his tools neatly organized and his ice and fish chests clean. This boat was filthy and crammed with junk and it stank of dead fish and old oil and spilled beer and unwashed bodies. They threw her into the bottom of the boat and walked back up the dock and that's when she knew she would die. As she was fading to black, into sleep or a darker form of darkness, she understood clearly that wherever the boat was going, she wouldn't be on it when it returned.

  Some segment of her awareness heard them return, felt them clamber aboard the boat, heard the engine being coaxed into a choking existence (Herve's engines had purred smoothly) and felt the boat moving through the thick water and the tall grasses. She didn't try to open her eyes or try to move, even when Leland nudged her with his foot and asked the other man to look and see if she was awake. She didn't feel awake, and she most certainly did not want to be awake. So she drifted, on the water, in her mind. She told herself that she appreciated being able to see the man who had killed her husband, and she was surprised to find that Leland and Larry Devereaux looked nothing alike. Leland very much resembled Eldon Warmsley, much more so than did Larry, who was his full brother; and, interestingly enough, there were aspects of Warren in Leland...or of Leland in Warren...pieces and places of resemblance, though the wide streak of evil that resided within Leland like oil beneath the bayou floor, differentiated him from all three men, especially from Eldon, whom he most resembled.

  Leland was tall and athletically trim, though he had more of a weightlifter's bulky build than a runner's lean one, and no one would guess that he was sixty-two years old. His hair was light brown with well-placed streaks of silver, and thick and luxurious, like Eldon's. And his eyes were hazel, like Eldon's. But Eldon's mouth was generous and sensuous and Leland's mouth was a stingy slit—he barely had lips—and the slit curved downward in an arc of permanent distaste. She exercised her mind by remembering the dates that Ella Mae Scarborough's seven children had been born. Ella Mae was the first born, and Leland was second. The first-born boy and the first-born white child. Was that the reason for his domineering nature? Eldon and Larry were the middle children, separated in age by a year. Lafayette was the middle Devereaux, older than both Eldon and Larry. Was he a good big brother to them? She recalled the story of the "friendship" that had developed between the Parish Petroleum doctor and the shopkeeper, between Dr. Lafayette Devereaux and Eldon Warmsley. Of course they were friends. They were brothers. Did Eldon know where Lafayette was? Did Eldon know that Lafayette was dead? Had that just been more subterfuge, his telling her that it wasn't wise to interfered with Leland Devereaux?

  They'd now left her bound and gagged in the dirty boat for...she didn't know how long. She had lost all concept of time, drifting as she did in and out of states of darkness. She didn't call it sleep. Sleep was rest and she was not at rest. But she was oddly at peace. She had redeemed herself for her lack of awareness of Al's concerns in the final months of his life. And she had avenged his death. Though she would not live to see it, Leland and Larry would be punished. And not merely punished for a murder—or for several murders—but humiliated for deeds more heinous than murder, for what Leland had done to Earlene was worse than if he'd killed her. And what Larry had done to himself was worse than death and he knew it. And soon millions of people would know it. Jake would see to that...Jake! She hadn't called him tonight. He'd be worried, now, and very angry.

  And suddenly her acceptance of her impending death evaporated. Perhaps brought on by the thought that her final memory of Jacob Graham would be his anger with her. Or by the hurt she knew Tommy would feel. He cared deeply for her, and she very much appreciated that. Her mother would be devastated, as would Mitch, and she didn't want them to suffer that kind of pain. They didn't deserve that. They deserved more and better than her giving in and giving up.

  For the first time since being snatched from her hotel room however many hours ago, she wept. And not because of the pain in her body or from fear of death, but because she was helpless and had willingly embraced her helplessness. Then the anger kicked in, as it always did when she was feeling sorry for herself. She welcomed it, her old familiar friend, and as she wondered why the hell it had taken so long to arrive, she used it to work herself into a sitting position. She imitated Jake Graham and cursed Leland for all she was worth and rolled herself around in the bottom of the boat, rocking and wiggling against the ice and fish chests, trying to inch upright. Every motion, every breath, was agonizing, but she told herself that nothing could be more painful than death by acquiescence. Sweat was pouring off her now, stinging and burning what felt like millions of lacerations. God! How many forms of pain were there?

  She finally managed to sit up, her back resting against one of the metal chests, and she was rewarded by the sight of a fat full moon that provided enough light for her to study her immediate surroundings. The boat that was her prison was tied to an old wooden dock between two other craft—a raggedy cabin cruiser with huge, new twin motors, and another flat bottomed boat full of junk. She looked over the side of and into the water and thought that it was probably not as dead as that at Pointe Afrique. The moonlight swayed and danced in the ripples of this water, and the marsh grasses grew tall and thick. She looked inland from the dock but could see nothing. There was no dockside building, and no light visible in any direction.

  Where the hell were Leland and his stooge? She wanted them to return. She wanted to confront him now. She had so far refused to speak to him, a tactic that had produced the result of rage. Leland was not accustomed to having people ignore him, and Carole Ann had ignored him. Had refused to look at him or speak to him or acknowledge his presence or his power and that had infuriated him. Now she wanted to change her tactics. She wanted to talk to him and she was afraid that he wouldn't return; that he'd left her here and gone inland, to a waiting vehicle, denying her full vengeance.

  The panic rose swiftly and the gag did not permit her to hyperventilate so she forced herself to calm, and to take slow, deep breaths, inhaling through her nose. She counted as she inhaled and counted as she exhaled. Slowly, deeply. She wriggled her fingers and toes and kept herself breathing through the pain that galloped back and forth, up and down her arms and legs. She closed her eyes and continued counting and breathing and thought she was imagining the sound the voices. But they were real. She opened her eyes and looked inland down the dock and soon two figures appeared, at first too distant to determine their identities. As they came nearer she saw that it was Leland and the other man and that they were hurrying; and though they were all but running, their feet made only a muffled sound on the rotting wood of the dock.

  "What have you done to me?" Leland shouted at her as he jumped down into the boat, almost capsizing it, and leaning down over her, his face not six inches from her own. She made sounds in her throat and it seemed to take a moment for him to understand that she could not speak because of the bindings about her mouth.

  "Take that off," he snapped at the other man with a flick of his wrist at her face, and the other man reached into his pocket and withdrew an
ancient Swiss Army knife, which he hastily opened and just as hastily used to slit the material that was covering her mouth. As soon as the cut was made, Leland reached out and snatched the binding away, taking with it skin attached to the blood that had dried on her cracked and split lips, forcing from her throat a sound that startled and surprised her, so un-human was it.

  "What have you done to me?" Leland demanded again, his face in close to hers.

  She tried to open and close her mouth, tried to make sound come out of her mouth, tried to swallow, but could not; her tongue and lips were parched and swollen and her face ached from Leland's abuse. She tried to lick her lips and could not; tried again to make sound and could not. So she merely shook her head, then dropped her chin on her chest. Leland reached around her and opened one of the coolers. He brought out a beer that hadn't been cold in several days and unscrewed the top. He slapped her lightly then forced up her chin and put the bottle to her mouth. She ignored the discomfort of the stinging and burning—and the awfulness of the beer that wasn’t what Warren and Herve had served her—and welcomed the wetness on her lips and in her mouth and down her throat. She gulped in relief until the bottle was empty.

  "Answer me now." Leland tossed the bottle into the water and squatted down next to her.

  "I...I..." She felt as if speaking were new, something she was doing for the first time, and the sound she emitted was hoarse and strange. "I...discovered the truth about who you are and what you've done," she croaked.

  "What truth?"

  "That you own Parish Petroleum," she said in a voice just barely louder than a whisper. "That you've concealed that ownership for more than twenty-five years. That you murdered my husband," she managed in an almost normal voice, which caused excruciating pain in her throat.

  "Who did you tell?" Leland hissed the question at her, blowing hot, sour breath in her face.

  "A lawyer friend and cop friend." Her voice felt and sounded normal.

  "Who else?" he snapped at her. "And don't lie to me!"

  "By now, a couple of reporters," she said, hoping she sounded off-handed, "thanks to my cop friend. Whom I think you know, Leland," she said in her best social swirl tone of voice. "A former homicide detective named Graham. I don't know if you met him formally before you put a bullet in his back."

  Leland slapped the words out of her mouth then stumbled backwards as if he'd been punched himself at the harsh and bitter force of the laughter she barked at him.

  "Stop being such a fucking coward," she snarled at him, ignoring the blood running from the side of her mouth. "Aren't you tired of that by now? Or have you been a coward so long it's part of your nature?"

  "I am going to kill you," he said.

  "You're going to jail, so I don't mind dying." She was almost shouting now, forcing her voice to have at least volume if not its usual power. "But before you go to jail, Leland, the whole world will know who you are and what you've done. Including what you did to Earlene."

  He looked like a confused dog. First his head tilted to one side, then to the other, and his mouth opened and closed like an aquarium fish at feeding time.

  "Oh, yes, Leland, I know about Earlene. Didn't Larry tell you?" And his reaction told her the answer. "I'd take that as a not-so-good sign if I were you, Leland. You know, every basically decent human being has a breaking point, and what you did to Earlene may be Larry's." She worked hard to keep her tone off-the-cuff conversational, which is difficult when speech itself is an effort. "I'm sure the U.S. Attorney would be happy to cut a deal with Larry."

  Leland pushed her into the side of the boat and she lost her balance and fell over, hitting her head on the side of the chest. She didn't have the energy to try to sit up again so she lay there wondering if her head would erupt from the pounding. Then she felt herself being jerked up to a standing position. Dizziness and nausea rushed up to meet her and she swayed and slumped and drifted back to the blankness that had become so familiar a place.

  Hello. Hello? Hello! Who is it? Answer the phone. Somebody answer the phone. The telephone is ringing . No, not that one. Not the big one. The little one. The cellular phone. The new one. The one Jake made me buy. Where is it? It's not here. Leland didn't bring it. Because he didn't see it. It was under the pillow. That's right. I put it there so I would hear it in case someone called while I was asleep. It's not here. Somebody answer the phone.

  She hit the ground hard, and groaned. They threw her on the ground! They'd been carrying her and they threw her on the ground when the phone rang. She landed on her back and, thanks to the full moon, she could see the panic on their faces. Even Leland appeared more panicked than mean and angry, which took her mind off the pain of having hit the ground so hard. Something was happening, something serious enough to frighten Leland.

  "What the hell was that?" he whispered.

  "Sounded like a telephone," the other man said, pulling a gun from his pocket and peering into the darkness. "One of them little portable kinds." He turned around and around, still looking into the darkness, fear pouring out of him with the sweat. "Who out there?" he shouted to the darkness.

  "Shut up, you idiot!" Leland hissed, and slapped him on the back of the head. "Get her and let's go," and he bent over and reached for Carole Ann's feet. But the other man didn't move. He was frozen in place, his eyes closed, his head cocked in a listening mode.

  "Somebody out there," he whispered, the fear rendering his Cajun accent almost unintelligible to Carole Ann, who heard nothing but the usual night noises. In fact, so attuned to them had she become that she wasn't aware of hearing them until she listened. The bayou was a loud place at night, as loud as the city with its horns and sirens and music. Then the other man raised his arm, leveled his pistol, and fired toward the dock and the water. The sound ricocheted off the deep night and silenced the night creatures for an instant. Then they all screamed back at whatever the foreign sound was that had destroyed the cadence and rhythm of their night songs.

  "Help me pick her up so we can go!" Once again Leland bent over and grabbed Carole Ann's feet, and again received no assistance. He straightened up and was about to speak when his face changed. There was movement. Even Carole Ann felt it, like a shifting in the direction of the wind. Somebody was out there in the darkness.

  "I'm gon' outta here," the other man said, backing away, his head swiveling from side to side.

  "Shoot her first!" Leland screamed at him.

  He threw the gun at Leland's feet. "Shoot her yourself," he whispered, and ran off down the dock.

  Leland cursed and reached for the gun, but dropped it when he heard the unmistakable sound of running feet, feet running toward them, not away from them. He grabbed for the gun again, fumbled with it, cursing and sweating all the while. He finally got a grip on it and stood up.

  "Drop the gun, ass-wipe." The voice was cold and mean and very near and extremely familiar.

  But Leland did not drop the gun. He waved it at the darkness. Then there was a shot and Leland and all the night creatures screamed and Leland fell down, his left hand grabbing for the right shoulder that was covered with blood and bone fragments. Leland looked at his left hand, dripping blood and tissue and bone chips, rolled over, curled himself into a fetal ball, and cried like a baby. The spoiled brat deprived for the first time of having his way.

  Carole Ann, still laying on her back, looked up, and instead of seeing sky and moon, looked into the face of Tommy Griffin, who was shaking his head at her.

  "You can't take care of yourself worth shit, can you?" He stooped down and scooped her up into his arms and began working to untie the ropes that bound her arms.

  "What are you doing here, Fish?" she croaked at him.

  "Jake sent me," he said with a shrug and a grin.

  "But how did you get here?" she asked, and looked behind him when he gestured over his right shoulder with his head. And there was Herve, stepping out of the darkness. He had a rifle slung over his right shoulder and a very long, shiny knife in
his left hand. She looked up at him and tried to smile but couldn't. He nodded his head at her, knelt down, and cut the ropes from her feet with a single swipe of the knife. "Will you cook me a big fish, Herve?" she asked. She said it, "feesh," and he nodded again. And almost smiled.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  "He always was mean and he always was a hitter." Ella Mae Warmsley Forchette looked far into the past to explain the present, the soft cadence of her voice an equal mixture of anger and sadness. Though she'd had no personal contact with Leland Devereaux for almost forty years, he was still her baby brother and as the big sister, she still felt responsibility for him. During Carole Ann's recuperation from her twelve-hour ordeal as Leland's hostage, the Warmsley family had assumed Carol Ann as their joint responsibility. It was Sadie who had nursed her for two weeks, ignoring and abandoning from the first the medication prescribed by the hospital and relying on her own mixture and concoction of herbs and teas and vitamins and minerals; it was Eldon and Merle who had offered their home as sanctuary; and it was Lillian who had brought her books and ice cold beer and fresh popped popcorn. But it was Ella Mae, Lillian and Warren's mother and Leland's big sister, who had explained and apologized for the pain her brothers had caused Carole Ann.

  "He used to beat on poor Lafayette and Lawrence all the time. Jeanette and Earlene, he was just mean to them. Pulled their hair and dismembered their dolls and smashed their little doll houses. Mean, petty stuff like that. Me and Eldon he pretty much left alone after we showed him what would happen if he messed with us. Eldon went up side his head once with a two-by-four and knocked him out cold." She smiled wryly at the memory and patted Carole Ann's hand. "We sure are sorry, all of us, about what happened to you. And to your husband. We knew Leland was mean but we didn't any of us know that he had become a monster."