FEVER DREAMS: A Bracken and Bledsoe Paranormal Mystery

by April Campbell Jones

The sound seemed to come from all around me, a plaintive, echoing entreat, a child-like sobbing. My skinned crawled. I kept playing the light over the gray walls about me.

  “Amy--?”

  The beam fell over the crypt door.

  Or where the crypt door would have been--had it been closed.

  It stood open. Cormac’s sardonic smile was fixed on me.

  My hand shot down for the service revolver—imagining his own round bullet already crashing through my skull—and I swung it up, black bore of the .45 shaking amateurishly.

  But Cormac just kept smiling. “Wouldn’t do that if I were you, Austin!”

  I heard the plaintive sob again. My glance dropped slowly from Cormac’s face to his neck, down to his shoulder: Katie’s wide, terror-filled eyes gleamed bright in the beam’s glow. The big cop’s hand was pressed tight against her groaning mouth.

  His service revolver snugly under her chin.

  THIRTY-SIX

  I stepped backward carefully, legs like rubber, Jimmy’s .45 lowering almost with a will of its own in my hand.

  “Just put it gently on the stone floor,” Cormac said grimly, “those things cost money…and slide it over here.”

  I bent cautiously at the knees, recalling a line I’d heard on some police show: “Never give up your weapon.”

  I slowly placed Jimmy’s gun on the stone, put my toe against the back of it, pushed hard. The gun spun rattling to within a few inches of Cormac’s boots.

  I already had my hands up, took another tentative step backward into the dark crypt.

  “How?” I managed drily, everything inside seeming to slip away.

  The sheriff kicked Jimmy’s gun out of the way sharply, stepped inside the door, dragging a rigid Katie like she weighed nothing. “You tell me, Sherlock. You’re the big time investigator!”

  “I’m a schoolteacher,” I reminded him.

  Cormac started to smile, winced suddenly and yelped, his hand snapping away from Katie’s teeth, flapping painfully at the air. “Ow! Fuck!”

  “The bastard had a duplicate key made!” she spat, and a second later reeled as Cormac back-handed her hard and gripped her waist again in one smooth motion.

  I glanced down at Jimmy’s gun lying beside the north wall—but Cormac’s revolver came up again quickly, already ahead of me. “Uh-uh, Hoss! Bad idea!”

  I froze in place, hands high.

  Cormac yanked Katie hard against his shoulder again and I saw a thin line of red creep between his fingers, scallop down to freckle Katie’s straining blouse front, maybe his blood, maybe hers, maybe both.

  “Little wildcat, huh?” the cop chuckled. “She like that in bed? Maybe we’ll find out in a second! You can watch, Austin!”

  “How?” I asked evenly, steering from the subject.

  “Huh? Oh, the key!” She shrugged. “In that manila envelope with Dean’s effects. Passed through my hands for a few hours before Jimmy gave it to you, but that was long enough! All you need’s a quick impression from a piece soft of clay to make a good duplicate!”

  “I see.”

  “Don’t think I didn’t try to worm the original from Dean over the years, on the pretext of guarding or cleaning the crypt! But ole Dean, he was an obdurate man! He knew where his money was hidden!”

  “In his missing child’s vault,” I grunted. “Kind of sick.”

  Cormac grinned. “Maybe, but like I say, Robichou was no fool! Who’d ever think to go lookin’? ‘Specially there?”

  “Roger, obviously,” from Kate.

  Dean turned, laid a wet kiss on her twisted-away cheek. “Take care of you in a minute, hot-buns,” his eyes snapping back to me, gun stiffening.

  “And Dianne obviously wormed it out of Roger,” I stalled.

  Cormac nodded. “She was the one got him on drugs years ago. Roger Robichou was a fool to begin with, mind you, but that white powder is terrible stuff. Dianne played him like a fiddle over the years between powder and pussy. Good chess player, that Dianne. And finally one day she had his King surrounded--him with no money and her Queen with all the powder.” Quid pro quo, I thought.

  “Breaking the criminal’s golden rule,” I said.

  Cormac nodded, impressed. “When you partner a crime, you make an oath—nobody talks! Roger and I were already blood brothers as kids…”

  “The tattoos.”

  “The tattoos. Had ransoming the kid in mind from the start, every facet of it clear back in our teens. Kept it close, planned and perfected.”

  “Except for the white powder.”

  Cormac’s expression morphed, went almost wistful, eyes taking on a brief—very brief— reflective sheen. I imagined he and Roger then, lofty plans in callow heads, posing before the mausoleum door, brimming confidence and swagger. World-beaters.

  “The white powder…” he muttered, shaking his head. “I should have gotten rid of that Dianne bitch decades ago. She was poppin’ and snortin’ in the sixth grade. But Roger always had her back—insisted it would only endanger the caper if bodies started showin’ up beforehand.” He gave me a cynical look. “Cunt-struck is what he was. Then later, coke-struck. Bad combination. Remember that, Austin,” he chuckled. “Tell your class when you get back to Texas!”

  “So you killed him. Snuffed your childhood pal.” I grunted disgust. “Some blood brother.”

  Cormac’s face was strangely blank, almost innocent. “What choice did I have? I knew sooner or later he’d blab to Diane about the money. Just turned out to be sooner!”

  “So naturally she had to go too.”

  “The way the mop flops, Austin.”

  “And Dean?”

  Cormac shrugged. “I had nothin’ against the ole miser. But I couldn’t get him to loan me that damn key, and I couldn’t figure out how else to get into the crypt. So I started tailin’ him. Discreetly over the years. Mostly at night. And one fine night he ended up here.”

  “On the roof. So it was Dean who built the trapdoor?”

  “Far as I know. If Roger helped him he never mentioned it to me. That Dean, he was one cautious dude! Had every bet covered concerning that money, every trick in the book! Didn’t you ever wonder why someone would make a crypt door with no inside lock?”

  “We did after it shut behind us,” Katie said evenly.

  Cormac laughed, turned to look at her, mainly her blood-coated chest. “Wasn’t me, sweetie. Must have been Dianne. Or hell, maybe just the wind.”

  “A door that heavy?”

  Cormac shrugged. “Weight’s got little to do with it when the breeze picks up from off the swamp. You landlubbers. How you think a few yards of linen pulls a heavy sailboat?” He chuckled again, remembering. “Knew you’d gotten yerselves locked in! Knew it that day we caught you snooping around the crypt!”

  “Proving it was another matter,” I said.

  He grinned “How the hell’d y’all ever find that crazy trapdoor anyway?”

  “Luck,” I said flatly.

  Cormac nodded. “Uh-huh. Somethin’ you’ve both had a lot of here in Manchac.”

  “Not enough,” Katie said, “not in time to identify little Amy’s kidnappers and report them to an honest cop!”

  Cormac hauled off and slapped her with the butt of the gun. I heard a tooth crack as Katie danced hard into the crypt wall.

  I leapt forward. Cormac stuck the dark bore in my face.

  “Ever see what a .45 round can do to a human skull, Austin? Not a pretty sight. Cherry bomb in a ripe melon. Stringy. Which is why I’m going to have to ask you nice folks to step back outside with me. Hands up again, please, Austin.”

  I raised my hands but started around Cormac anyway to help Katie up. Her mouth was trickling blood, bottom lip already swelling, but her eyes were bright, focused. “Okay?” I asked, pulling her back to her feet.

  She wiped her mouth, glared at Cormac. “Prick!”

  He stepped forward with a face gone to stone and planted the dark barrel in her forehead, grinding the tip until
she whimpered.

  “Wait!” I begged.

  His lips spit flecks. “What do you know about honesty? What do you know about anything but getting your nails done and tennis at ten and Maxine’s at two? How much did your old man pay to put you through them fancy schools?”

  “My father left us when I was two. I paid my own way through school. He gave my mother nothing but back taxes and the clap.”

  Cormac sneered, cocked the hammer. “Don’t break my heart, princess! He gave you a quick mind, generations of breeding and a white face! Your mamma gave you a northern accent, decent neighborhoods and great tits! Things all the money in the world won’t buy. Not enough luck? You and yer buddy here were born lucky. Just made the mistake of comin’ out here to the real world sticks where luck don’t count for nothin’! Only one way to go out here—up or down! I’ll let you guess which way I’m headed!”

  He slammed her against the stone blocks, slid a big hand down her front.

  “Cormac!”

  For a second I thought he wasn’t going to look at me.

  “Let her go! You got me, let her go.”

  He grunted. Finally turned with a sneer. “I ain’t even going to dignify that!”

  “Don’t keep stacking up the killings, Cormac! She’ll keep her mouth shut! Let her help you!”

  Cormac pulled the .45’s bore from Katie’s face and planted it in my own forehead. “Like Diane helped Roger, you mean?”

  I couldn’t think of a quick rejoinder.

  Cormac grinned at me, teeth yellow in the moonlight from the open door. “I’ll let her help me. After I put a bullet through your head I’ll let her dig your grave out there before she digs her own! Now,” he gestured with the gun toward the back of the crypt, “both of you get over there by the east wall. I got something to show you before you die.”

  I put an arm around Katie and we did as told, Cormack bringing up the rear.

  Still holding the gun on us, he came around to wall and stood before the shiny metal doors of the rows of vaults. He smiled at us as he walked beside the wall, ran his free hand along the gleaming inscriptions. “Now I’m going to show you what you were looking so hard to find, Austin!”

  He stopped before Dean Robichou’s vault.

  Katie moaned.

  I felt a grisly knot forming.

  Cormac took hold of the handle and motioned me over. “Come have a look at more money than you’ve ever dreamed of in your fancy-ass life!”

  I stepped over.

  Cormac tugged on the handle. The vault’s steel coffin rolled out on its casters. Cormac kept his eyes on me, anticipating my reaction.

  I looked inside.

  Then I looked back up at Cormac. “What’s the joke?”

  His big smile faltered…crumpled into a frown as he turned to the vault. It was empty.

  Cormac went apoplectic.

  He grabbed my collar and slammed me against the vault, slamming it back in place with a metallic echo around the stone room. “What did you do with it?”

  As flabbergasted as he was, it took me a moment to realize Cormac really didn’t know where the money was—really thought I’d somehow taken it.

  “How the hell would I know?”

  “You found it!” he spit, “and hid it in one of the other vaults! Where is it?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sheriff…”

  He shoved away hard, grabbed Katie and slammed the barrel so hard into her temple I was afraid he’d knocked her out. “Show me! Show me or I cover these walls with her brains!”

  The chamber grew suddenly darker as a cloud passed trailing over the moon, partially blocking it.

  Katie glanced that way and gasped.

  When Cormac and I followed her gaze. There was no cloud. Angel Robichou’s figure was blocking the light from the doorway.

  I think Cormac was even more shocked than Katie and me.

  He whipped the revolver around but Angel got the deer rifle up first.

  “No more killing, Cormac...” Angel said softly. “I heard enough to know you killed them all, my little Amy included…”

  “I didn’t, Angel, I swear! Amy escaped into the swamp! I dunno what happened to her!”

  Angel stared at him a long moment.

  “You’re lying.”

  “I’m not! Maybe the rest, but not Amy…”

  Cormac smiled at her engagingly, coaxingly.

  “Angel—“

  She lifted the rifle.

  And maybe—at that last microsecond—she hesitated, somehow, somewhere inside her coruscating mind she still wanted so desperately to believe him…to believe in anything.

  But with a man like Cormac, a microsecond’s hesitation is all you need.

  He fired the big service revolver toward Angel. Missed.

  But Angel didn’t…

  Her bullet hit him right between the eyes.

  He actually turned and looked at me, expression childlike, as if I might know the answer to all his questions; then his knees gave way and he went straight down on them, balanced there a second with that still uncomprehending look to finally topple over on his handsome face.

  “Oh,” Angel Robichou said, after a moment, staring down at my waist. “Oh, there it is…”

  I looked down at myself, saw the length of gold chain hanging from my front pocket. Angel walked over, took it, and pulled the shiny gold locket free.

  “…there it is! I must have dropped it when I came to replace her violets!”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Banes and his police backups got there seconds after Angel fired her deer rifle, immediately setting up crime perimeters and taking statements from the three of us. It was obvious to Banes that Angel had fired in self-defense, and after he heard what Katie and I had to say about Cormac’s confessions, he apologetically let her go on her own recognizance. Angel herself had little to say except:

  “I don’t want him in here.”

  Some of the color seemed to have seeped back into her waxen cheeks, her shoulders had a slightly different set and—maybe it was just my imagination—but there seemed to be more of her now. A returning strength of resolve was hard to describe. As if something had been lifted, as if something was over. Something finally at rest.

  “I don’t want him in here,” she repeated a little louder, until it made just the barest echo against the hard mausoleum walls—said with conviction but not with command, not as if she were ordering anyone to do anything about it, only that it was it was the obvious thing, obvious to her and obvious to everyone else.

  I didn’t want the prick in there either. And I’m sure Katie didn’t.

  So Banes, after a minimal amount of fuss, had Cormac’s body removed from the crypt. A couple of officers stayed behind as Angel turned to take a last look.

  “I have to bury my husband tomorrow,” she said to Banes. He nodded. “No problem, ma’am.”

  And even as Angel pulled the heavy door shut behind them, I nearly cried out, started forward on one foot—Wait! Wait! We have to go back—it isn’t finished!

  But go back to what?

  And so I turned my back on the ancient mausoleum and walked with the two women to the beat-up truck and the motel proprietor’s borrowed Firebird and found myself hating the mausoleum and the cemetery and the swamp and all it stubbornly insular secrets, as if those collections of inanimate objects were somehow responsible, as if somehow in some way those things should have shown us something, told us something, led us in some way that little Amy herself could not…as if they refused, for their own silent, immutable reasons, to cooperate. Or was something out there--mysterious and translucent as the soft marsh mists—refusing to permit them. Some things we can never know the glade breeze seemed to sigh, and I found myself hating even the betraying breeze but especially the vast primordial swamp which had witnessed all, but would divulge nothing.

  And I walked silently between the two women, not even turning my head when one or the other, I’m sure,
said something softly to me. It doesn’t matter, I thought, it’s over. It’s all over now and it doesn’t matter now and if something this tragically obscene doesn’t matter than maybe nothing else did or ever will…and I imagined the dark water closing over my head as Amy and I sank together, and I was glad to be with her, to hold her hand as we sank into the final night and I whispered to her a fervent hope: that after all this something would follow soon that would matter a great deal and make everything right…

  * * *

  I didn’t say much on the drive back to Angel’s house beside Katie, either.

  And that, as they say, was that.

  After triple-checking to make sure Angel would be all right all alone in her house again, Katie patted her hand at the table, looked down and took a last glimpse of the gold locket, turning over and over absently in the ivory fingers . Katie smiled half-wistfully, shook her head. “It always looked like it should open,” she said softly, “but I could never find a seam.”

  Angel glanced up at her in surprise. “Oh, you can’t open it that way! It’s a very clever little locket!”

  And she rapped it once light on the hard wood table and the heart-shaped piece of gold split apart and became two halves.

  “Shit!” Katie exclaimed forgetting Angel was even in the room and maybe forgetting even me.

  Too occupied at the moment with the little threads and sticks and ribbon of gris-gris that had spilled from the gold halves…

  * * *

  “Shit!” Kate exclaimed again, half an hour later, pouring the same tiny litter of gris-gris from the leather pouch the old lady had given her. I could barely hear her over the roar of the outboard. We had left Garbanzo temporarily with Angel, much to her delight as she caressed the tawny fur and exclaimed in a growly voice: “Puss puss puss!”

  I leaned into Katie as she poured the contents back into the pouch before the wind could snatch them. “What did you say?”

  She squinted and shouted against the rushing swamp. “I said shit!”

  I nodded, hand gripping tiller choke, shouted back. “It’s going to get a lot deeper than that! This is stealing, you know! Twice in one night! Two different vehicles of transportation!”