Mostly Murder

by Linda Ladd

  A good distance away from the angry reptile, she stopped and listened again. She couldn’t hear the sound of the snake slithering and sidewinding along the pipe anymore. It must have writhed off in the opposite direction or coiled up where it was, ready to strike anybody who came close. She wondered if it was poisonous, and if it could see in utter darkness. She had a bad feeling that snakes could probably see a lot better than she could. She couldn’t see anything at all. She had never been closed up in such complete darkness. She couldn’t see her hand in front of her face. And she didn’t know if he’d constructed the pipes into a circle and she’d run into the snake again, no matter which direction she chose. She hoped it didn’t slither its way around to Zee.

  Suddenly, that very thought materialized. Zee cried out and then groaned again, and Rene started laughing. He was tormenting him somehow, probably jabbing him with the knife. But now she didn’t know exactly where Zee was, confused by the serpentine meanderings of the tunnels. He must be up another level from her because Rene had dropped her down a level and then she’d fallen on the tacks. So she felt her way along until she found a pipe that ascended. She cringed as the pipe under her seemed to echo and vibrate with her every move. She tried to think straight. Fear was beginning to overwhelm her again. She couldn’t let that happen. Rene had to have some kind of scaffolding outside the maze where he could climb around, up and down, and lots of trapdoors out of which he could torment his victims.

  Panting hard, she stopped moving after a while, fighting back a burgeoning kind of despair. The darkness was getting to her and the fear of running into the snake. Bud had been bitten once by a timber rattler, and she knew what snake venom could do to a human being. But she had not heard any hollow rattling sounds when the snake landed in front of her, just hissing and its twisting movements atop the metal.

  Then suddenly, Rene struck again. A panel in the metal opened up just above her and she was hit with a deluge of something grainy and coarse. At first, she didn’t know what it was, and then she felt the scurrying of the insects swarming all over her hair and face and down into the neck of her jacket. Fire ants, she realized with absolute horror—he’d dumped a nest of fire ants on her. She screamed as they began to bite into her skin, couldn’t stop herself, and slapped desperately at them, trying to brush them out of her hair and out of her eyes. But it felt like hundreds of them, crawling all over her and inside the jacket. She crawled away from the trapdoor, jerking off the jacket, before he could dump anything else on her. Outside, she could hear Rene laughing.

  Scrambling several yards down, she took off down a different tunnel and stopped there in the dark, getting the clinging ants off her as best she could with her fingers and trying to kill them with the palm of her hand. She was trembling all over now, utterly terrified, just as he intended, but she set her teeth again and forced herself back into icy control. The ants weren’t going to kill her—bite her, yes, bother her, yes—but they weren’t deadly, not if she could get them off of her. He had done nothing designed to kill her yet. He was getting his kicks tormenting her at the moment, and he probably would do so until he grew bored with it. That meant she had a good chance to survive. She just had to keep her wits about her until she found a way out. She shook the insects off the jacket, put it back on, and darted off again, feeling above her for the hinges of trapdoors so he couldn’t drop anything on her again, and along the floor for the hinges of drop-offs. She was going to get out. She had to. Zee was lying somewhere in the dark behind her, dying.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Nick Black and Jack Holliday were making progress toward their target. They were deep inside the swamp now, and the GPS signal tracking Bourdain’s sat phone was blinking steadily, and so was Claire’s St. Michael’s medal. They were heading right at them. But Nick was scared this time. She and Zee and Bourdain had been gone for a long time. They had never shown up to meet Friedewald and his men. Somebody had them. He felt it in his gut, and he feared it was the voodoo killer they had gone after.

  This time he might get there too late. This time he just might find Claire dead, murdered in some horrible way and propped up on a goddamn voodoo altar with her eyes and mouth stitched shut. Or she might already be buried somewhere, and they’d have to dig up her body, like they’d done with Jack’s sisters. His heart reacted to that, squeezed by some invisible hand until it felt like all the blood gushed out of it and plummeted down inside his chest as heavy as liquid lead. In that moment, he felt violently ill.

  “Look, Nick, up there. See, in the trees?” Jack Holliday said softly from his seat in the bow of the boat.

  Holliday was scouting ahead with the night scope on his rifle, but Nick was working the trolling motor and couldn’t see anything at first. Then the outline of a small structure sitting out on dry land loomed out of the darkness, directly in front of the boat. As they neared, it looked like several buildings. They were way out in the middle of nowhere now. Nick had fished and hunted in the bayous many times with Jack and other friends, and he’d never been this deep into the swamp. But according to his GPS readings, Claire was on that island somewhere, and he was going to find her. They switched to paddles now, afraid that even the quiet motor would announce their arrival. He dipped the paddle soundlessly into the murky, slimy water.

  If Claire and the others were being held inside that house, they had to catch the killer unaware. That was imperative. They eased the craft up against the bank beside a big racing boat that had been run haphazardly onto the bank. Rene’s boat? There wasn’t another one, not that Nick could see, but it could be beached out back. Neither he nor Jack said a word. They’d been on this sort of mission together before, but it had been a long time ago when life-and-death situations were daily occurrences. Neither had done anything like this in a very long time, but it wasn’t a skill you easily forgot.

  There were no sounds, other than night creatures. They got out and moved in a military crouch up to the front door. There was an oil lantern sitting on the floor beside the door. Nick gestured for Holliday to go around and take the back. It was very quiet except for the wind, rustling up high in the cypress trees surrounding the house. Nothing was moving inside, no noise, no talking, and they went in stealthy and fast. Old Nat Navarro was on his side, tied to an overturned chair, dead for quite some time, it looked like. There was crusted blood spatter all over the wall, a large pool of fresh blood on the floor, and an overturned table and chairs and an electric lantern and radio with the batteries scattered around. There had been a fight inside that house, all right. And he didn’t think it was the old man who’d put up that kind of struggle. But Claire would have.

  Jack pointed out a blood trail leading out through the back door, and they followed it across the weedy backyard to another structure that looked like a barn. They stopped again outside its door. Somewhere inside, they could hear someone moving around. They entered quietly, one at a time, weapons up and ready. It was completely dark inside, and they switched on their flashlights and stared wordlessly at a big, elaborate system of pipes and barred cages winding all around the interior, from the floor all the way up to the ceiling. There was a planked walkway threading through it, a sort of scaffolding, with safety railings and steps. Good God, what the hell was it? And then he remembered the killer’s maze.

  Suddenly, in the extreme quiet inside the building, he heard Claire let out a bloodcurdling scream. Then a man laughed, and Nick’s blood ran cold. He headed toward the sound with Holliday right behind him.

  After Rene got her again with the knife, Claire decided that her only chance was to attack him. She found the nearest trapdoor above her by feeling for the hinges, and pretended she was sobbing so he’d know where she was, and then inched to one side of where she figured it would open. He would do something with that door, sooner or later. So she waited there a few seconds, muscles quivering, heart beating like crazy, and then, finally, it was thrust open. Before he could drop anything down on her, she lunged up through the hole
and grabbed his arm. He had the knife in his hand, and she screamed as he tried to slash her. He started laughing, but he cut it off pretty quickly when she jerked his arm down into the hole as hard as she could. She twisted the elbow backward, bracing her feet on the side of the tunnel and pulling it down at that impossible angle with every ounce of her remaining strength until she heard a crack as his bone gave way. Rene screamed shrilly. The sharp filet knife dropped onto the floor beside her. But she kept hold of him, didn’t dare let go, twisting and twisting the broken arm, wanting to hurt him so badly that he couldn’t fight back anymore. She ground her teeth together and tried to break another bone.

  Rene screamed and yelled, but he managed to get away when he thrust his gun into the hole. She let go of him and grabbed the knife and took off in blind panic, as he slammed the door with a clang. She could hear him screaming at her, and she quickly renewed her search for an escape hatch while he cursed and beat on the pipe, pretty sure he wasn’t going to be able to play any more games for the time being.

  Then she heard the trapdoor open again, and the gun fired inside with a deafening booming reverberation and the metallic ring of bullets ricocheting all over the sides of the tunnel. She cried out as one grazed her leg. She heard Rene laugh maniacally, and then she heard more shots and yelling. He was going to kill her this time, and she clutched the filet knife in both hands and stayed as far as she could from any of the trapdoors so he couldn’t get at her.

  Then as she backed away from the running footsteps coming closer on the outside, she went off a drop backwards and fell about six feet and landed on her back on a concrete floor. It knocked the breath out of her, and she struggled to breathe as she looked frantically around the barred cage into which she’d fallen. There was a glimmer of light coming from somewhere now, probably Rene’s flashlight, and she could see the rotting body of a woman lying near her feet, and she backed away from the gruesome corpse in horror. She couldn’t climb back into the maze; it was too high. Oh God, she was trapped there. When Rene found her, he could just shoot her through the bars as he probably had with the other woman.

  Then she heard Rene coming, right above her now, and he jumped down and landed in the darkness right outside the cage, close enough for her to get him with the knife. A flashlight beam hit her in the face, and she started stabbing hysterically through the bars, trying to wound him.

  “Stop, Claire, stop, it’s me!”

  Black’s voice. Oh, God, it was Black’s voice. She sank down on her knees and couldn’t move. She just couldn’t move a muscle. Black grabbed the bars and started jerking hard on them, trying to get the cage open and get inside to her. When he finally got the door off the hinges, he grabbed her up and pulled her outside. She lay against him for a moment, unable to speak, and then she said, “It’s Rene, Black. He’s the killer. He’s still here. He’s got a gun. He’s trying to kill us.”

  “He took off when he realized we were in here with him. Jack’s gone after him. C’mon, Jack might need my help.”

  “He shot Zee. We gotta get Zee out. He’s inside the maze somewhere. He’s hurt bad—he’s bleeding, Black. We’ve got to get him out!”

  Black gripped her arms, kept his voice low. “You’re okay, Claire. We’ll get him out, and I’ll take care of him. But we’ve got to make sure Bourdain’s down first. C’mon, I can hear Jack yelling.”

  Black ran for the door, but Claire was just too exhausted. She couldn’t run anywhere. She was shaky, her knees were wobbly, but she followed him slowly, guided by his flashlight. When she got outside in the fresh air, she just collapsed to the ground and couldn’t move another step. She could see two men fighting down by the boats. The moonlight faded behind a bank of clouds, but she could make out Black running down the yard toward them. Then the moon burst out again, and she could see that Jack Holliday was on top of Rene Bourdain, looking absolutely huge on the smaller man, his knees holding down Rene’s arms while he hit him in the face with his fists, first one and then the other, over and over again.

  Claire got up and limped toward them and found Black standing there, calmly watching Jack beat the life out of Rene Bourdain. She tried to catch her breath, cradling her injured arm, but she recognized that Holliday was caught up in pure blood lust and blind fury. When she saw the absolute, utter rage possessing him, she knew that he was going to commit murder. She couldn’t let that happen. She feebly grabbed at his arm, hung on weakly to make him stop, but he barely felt her weight and she was too tired and dizzy to hold on to him. So Black grabbed Jack’s arm and yelled at him to stop. Holliday finally faltered and gradually returned to reality, his bloodied fists still poised in the air over Rene’s face, which was now cut and swollen, already beaten beyond recognition.

  Claire sat on her knees and breathlessly tried to reason with him. “Jack, we got him. We’ve got to take him in, question him, find out who else he’s abducted and murdered, where their bodies are. I want to know why he did all this. Tie him up. We’ve got to get Zee out of that maze. He’s been shot. Do you hear me? We’ve got to get him to the hospital.”

  Holliday rocked back on his heels and stared mutely at her, coming down out of his adrenaline rush of hatred and vengeance, his face still twisted with fury. But he had finally avenged his sisters and parents, and he seemed to realize it. Claire began shaking all over, still supporting her elbow inside her palm. Black must have sensed then that she was seriously hurt, too, and he took off his coat and wrapped it around her, and then he sat her down and examined her injuries. “How bad is it? What’d he do to you?”

  “My wrist is broken, but Zee’s the one who’s hurt bad. Rene shot him. Jack, tie him up and get him in the boat. We’ve got to get Zee out.”

  They left Jack to take care of Rene and found their way back inside the horrific maze. Claire was so exhausted that she could barely put one foot in front of the other, so Black made his way inside the metal tunnels until he finally found Zee. It took him a while, and he had to kill the snake, but he finally dragged Zee out, still unconscious and now half dead. In the light of the boat’s headlamps, Black treated Zee’s wounds as best he could, but Zee looked terrible, really terrible. Claire was terrified he was going to die. They hurried then, taking Rene’s boat and heading out of the swamp. Claire sat propped up against the side of the boat, holding Zee’s head in her lap. Halfway back to civilization, Black called on the sat phone and ordered ambulances to meet them at the nearest marina. Then he called Sheriff Friedewald and handed the phone to Claire.

  “Where the hell are you, Claire? We’ve been out here waiting for you to show up. Navarro’s gonna be long gone. We might as well forget it now.”

  “We got him, Russ. It’s Rene, Rene did all of it. He murdered Madonna and Wendy, and he tried to kill Zee and me. He’s hurt bad, and so is Zee. We’ve got a couple of ambulances meeting us down at the marina.”

  While Russ asked her questions, Claire answered them somehow, but her eyes stayed on Jack Holliday’s back. He was driving the boat, but his knuckles were cut up and bleeding down his arms. “Black’s with me, and so is Holliday. I think my arm’s broken, but I’m okay.”

  Then she hung up and they motored through the dark still water until they hit a big, swift-running bayou, the boat’s headlights the only illumination in the night. Black was on the phone with the ER doctors describing the injuries, and Claire sat and stared down at Rene, who had not moved since Jack had beaten him unconscious. He was still breathing, though, and Claire wished he wasn’t. He deserved to die for what he’d done to her and Zee and Gabe and so many other innocent victims. She sat there, silent and numb, feeling an uncharacteristic and almost uncontrollable urge to just grab Black’s rifle and shoot Rene in the heart and be done with it. Dump him over the side for the gators, the same way he’d done to Gabe and no doubt other innocent little children, whose names they’d probably never know. She focused her gaze on the water ahead of them, and said a prayer that Zee would live through this horrible night, as the moo
n guided their way down a long, shimmering path of silver lying on the water, as if leading them out of the darkness they had just endured.

  The ambulances were waiting on shore, along with the entire Lafourche Sheriff ’s Department. The EMTs took Rene and Zee out of the boat and placed them on gurneys and put them in separate ambulances. Black and Claire rode with Jack in a third ambulance, and an EMT named Meg put a new splint on Claire’s arm and placed it in a sling, bandaged her stab wounds, rubbed ointment on the welts caused by the biting ants, and then gave her an ice pack to hold against her head and dosed her with a couple of strong painkillers. Jack just sat there while Meg examined his bleeding fists, his head leaning back, his eyes closed, seemingly completely relaxed, now that he had captured the man who killed his family. Maybe she would feel good about it one day, too, and feel lucky to be alive. Funny thing, though, at the moment, she didn’t feel lucky, not one bit. She felt like an empty shell of herself.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Once they reached the hospital in Thibodaux, they rolled the injured men into the emergency room, and Claire and Black stood near Zee’s cubicle while the physicians worked desperately to stabilize him enough to get him into surgery. But Claire kept an eye on Rene, too, and made sure they kept both his wrists handcuffed to the gurney. He had gotten away with his evil for way too long. He wasn’t going anywhere this time. If she had to watch his every move for the rest of her life, he wasn’t getting away with his crimes.

  Still receiving blood transfusions and all kinds of IV medications, Zee made it through surgery alive and was transferred to a private room. Claire and Black joined him there, sat beside him, and waited for the doctors to tell them he was out of danger. It took several hours before they felt like they could say that he was going to make it, that he was a strong young man, physically fit enough to pull through. Then she went outside and found out they were transferring Rene to the Lafourche Parish lockup infirmary. Russ had made that decision, charging him with the murder of Madonna Christien with other charges pending as they finished investigating the case. Everything made sense now, a terrible gruesome, horrible sense.