Third Degree: A Novel

by Greg Iles

  “Best I could.”

  “Would you take care of them?”

  “Them?”

  “Laurel. My kids.”

  Sensing a route to life, Danny nodded.

  A quarter mile behind and below the doctor, more red lights spun and flashed on the bridge.

  “It’s not fair,” Shields muttered.

  “It never is,” Danny said, amazed that the man could have practiced medicine for years and not learned this lesson. Until his own diagnosis, Shields had actually believed himself immune to the vagaries of fate. Danny knew a lot of pilots like that. “The house always wins, Doc. It’s just a question of when. The way I see it, you’re alive now. Today. Let tomorrow take care of itself. Your family needs you. Let’s take this machine back to Athens Point and find out about your wife.”

  “They’ve sent up another chopper!” Shields said, pointing with his arm across Danny’s chest.

  Danny turned, scanning the night sky for lights. There was only one other chopper in the county, a JetRanger that belonged to a private businessman. Danny didn’t think they could find a pilot to fly it in this weather, but this was an extraordinary emergency. As he searched the sky, the Bell rose unexpectedly—maybe an updraft off the bluff, he thought. Then he turned to ask Shields what the hell he was talking about and saw that he was alone in the helicopter.

  Danny hung suspended in the darkness above the river, as alone and alive as he’d ever been. Shields was probably still alive, too, tumbling down through space. The nickel-plated pistol lay on the empty seat, unnecessary now.

  He’s hit by now, Danny thought, looking at the altimeter. They were high enough that Shields would have reached terminal velocity prior to impact. Danny had heard grisly stories from a Vietnam-era CIA pilot, comparative descriptions of what happened when a prisoner was thrown from a chopper and landed in water as opposed to smacking dirt or concrete, or was ripped to shreds in treetops, strung through the canopy like red and pink ribbons. Shields was dead, no doubt about it.

  Danny pushed down the collective and dropped toward the river, searching for the body. The two bridges threw off ambient light, but not enough to help him sight Shields. He didn’t really want to see the corpse, but Laurel was certain to ask, not to mention the sheriff. In that moment Danny realized that he believed Laurel was still alive, in spite of her wounds and unconsciousness.

  He started to switch on the searchlight, but then he noticed people lining the rail of the bridge above him. There was no way anybody had seen Shields leap from the chopper, but if Danny started searching the water with a light, it wouldn’t be hard to figure out what had happened. God, how Laurel would suffer if that story got out. Her kids, too. Grant Shields would go through life dreading questions about his father. What happened to your real dad? Uh, he died. How? Killed himself. Wow, dude, I’m sorry. Danny didn’t want the boy to suffer through that conversation again and again. And with a little luck . . . he might not have to.

  Danny executed a quick pedal turn, then swept upriver, jinking from side to side like a pilot under duress, but steadily cheating toward the Louisiana bank. The inside of a river bend is the shallow side, since it doesn’t bear the full pressure of the current trying to cut its way into the land. Danny headed into a patch of darkness along the inner shore, not far from a seafood restaurant, a place where he knew there was a sandbar. When he saw the pale line where the water met the sand, he picked up the shiny automatic and fired two shots through the windshield.

  Then he rolled back the throttle, shut off the fuel, and pulled his second autorotation of the night.

  He wouldn’t have done it if the chopper wasn’t insured—Lusahatcha County couldn’t afford to replace an aircraft—but it was. Had there been no chance of witnesses, he might have done things differently—jettisoned the doors, for one thing, SOP for ditching—but with towns on both sides of the river and the levee close, someone might well witness the “crash.” And the aircraft might be recovered. He needed all the witness statements and physical evidence to bear out a scenario in which two men had fought until the end. That would be the story for the sheriff, anyway. Laurel’s children could be told something more palatable, at least until they were old enough to understand.

  As the Bell fell toward the shallows, Danny took his feet off the pedals and let the ship spin beneath her rotors, as she might if her pilot had been ripped away from the controls. After four or five rotations, he felt like puking, but he steadied the craft just in time to flare before impact. As the dark water rushed up to meet him, he made sure he was less than twenty feet from shore, then dropped the Bell into the river.

  Helicopters always roll when they fall into water. The rule is to not fight the roll but assist it, but Danny never got the chance. When the first rotor hit the water, the ship was slammed onto its side as though by the hand of God. River water poured through the smashed Plexiglas, and the Bell began to sink. Danny knew he should have taken a big breath before impact, but he hadn’t thought of it. Now he fought to escape his harness with barely enough air to keep his brain alight. The massive power of the Mississippi carried the chopper downstream like a piece of driftwood. A millisecond before fear became panic, Danny’s training asserted itself, the belt disengaged, and he swam through the hole where the door should have been, praying he was still close enough to the bank to swim to safety after he surfaced.

  He broke through to the air and into what seemed a ring of flaming islands. Pools of JP-4 floating on the water. By the light of the burning fuel he saw the sandbar. Kicking hard, he fought his way toward the grainy shingle, then crawled high enough on the sand to be safe if anything exploded.

  “Be alive,” he said to Laurel. “Just be alive.”

  • • •

  Fifteen minutes later, Danny was led to the backseat of Sheriff Ellis’s cruiser and given a blanket and a hot cup of coffee. He stank of kerosene. He was lucky that he hadn’t caught fire during his swim to shore. A dozen cruisers were parked on the crushed-oystershell lot of the seafood restaurant, some from Lusahatcha County, some from Adams County, and others from Concordia Parish. A crowd of officers stared at the burning wreckage floating downriver. Before long, Ellis heaved his bearlike form into the front seat. He cranked his bulk around, laid his forearm on the seat, and studied Danny, his eyes unreadable.

  “They told me Laurel’s in surgery,” Danny said.

  Ellis cleared his throat. “Mrs. Shields grabbed her husband’s arm at the instant Carl fired. To save your life, apparently. Carl’s bullet hit Dr. Shields’s gun. Mrs. Shields was struck by shards of glass and fragments of the gun, but also by some fragments of Carl’s bullet.”

  Danny steeled himself for the worst. “How bad?”

  “She just got into surgery. They stabilized her in the ER.”

  “You’re not telling me anything.”

  “They don’t know yet, damn it. They don’t know what all got hit, because the wound tracks have to be probed.”

  “Any head wounds?”

  “No.”

  Thank God. “What about her stomach?”

  “The verdict’s still out on the baby, according to the ER doc. You rest and get your head clear. You’ve got a lot of questions to answer.”

  Danny looked downriver at the burning fuel, fading now as it slid southward toward Athens Point. The lights on the bluff across the water seemed to look down in reproach, but he didn’t care.

  “You should have told me about Mrs. Shields,” Ellis said. “You and her, I mean.”

  “What would you have done if I had?”

  “Probably sent you home.”

  “Exactly.”

  Ellis grunted. “Well, look what’s happened this way.”

  “Shields’s kids are alive. Laurel’s alive, at least for now. It could have ended a lot worse.”

  “Trace Breen is dead.”

  “Whose fault you figure that is?”

  A long and weary sigh seemed to shrink the sheriff.

&n
bsp; “Don’t say that around Ray. Not if you want to live another day.”

  Danny took a sip of coffee, savoring the heat as it migrated down to his chest. “Ray has no business leading the Tactical Response Unit. He hasn’t got the temperament for it.”

  “I agree with you there.”

  “I want to go to the hospital, Sheriff.”

  Ellis grunted again, disagreeably this time. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea. You don’t want the rumors starting any faster than they have to.”

  “I don’t care about rumors.”

  “She might.”

  “St. Raphael’s, Billy Ray. Come on. Back to Athens Point. Haul ass. I’ve chauffeured you enough times to earn a ride.”

  Ellis took a deep breath, then blew out more air than Danny could hold in both lungs. “Don’t spill that coffee.”

  He closed his door, started the cruiser, and swung it up over the levee. Soon they were on Louisiana 15, headed north through empty black cotton fields with Ellis’s lights flashing red against the rain, the kind of night run Huey Long had favored in his heyday. This was the fastest route back to Athens Point, since Highway 61, on the Mississippi side, ran southward through Woodville, thirty miles east of the city. As the cruiser roared along the deserted highway at ninety-five miles per hour, Danny went over the sequence of events prior to the assault, when Warren had caught Laurel sending her final text message: U haf 2 kil hm! Danny didn’t understand why she’d risked so much to send that message, for it had seemed only to state the obvious.

  “Tell me about those last few seconds in the chopper,” Sheriff Ellis said, breaking Danny’s reverie. “They told me you said you were fighting with Shields, lost control, and crashed in the water by the sandbar.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And he was ejected through the windshield?”

  “The door,” Danny amended. If Shields had gone out through a shattered windshield, his body would show severe lacerations. “His door was knocked off or open. I don’t know which.”

  “I heard you said he went through the windshield.”

  Danny shook his head. “Door. But he wasn’t wearing his harness, so he hit the instrument panel first. He’s probably broken up pretty bad. I was too busy to see much.”

  Ellis drove without speaking for a while. Then he said, “Did you see him drown?”

  “No. I was trying to save myself.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What is it?” Danny asked angrily. “Spit it out.”

  “Well, Jimmy Doucet’s an Adams County deputy. He was parked on the bridge, and he says he saw somebody fall from the chopper before you dropped down low.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Danny said mildly. “He couldn’t see anything from up there. It was pitch-dark and raining.”

  “Jimmy’s got good eyes. He says he saw something big fall past your lights.”

  “A buzzard, maybe. I was a quarter mile north of that bridge, and two thousand feet above it.”

  “That’s what I told him.” Ellis looked back over the seat with an inscrutable expression. Not anger, and not outright suspicion either. It was almost a sly look. “Come on, Danny. You took him out, didn’t you?”

  “What?”

  “Shields got cute with you up there, and you killed him.”

  “How the hell would I kill him? He had the gun.”

  “Maybe you took it away from him.”

  “You’ll find the body. Halfway to New Orleans maybe, but you’ll find it. And you won’t find any bullet holes, except in his shoulder. Auster shot him.”

  “If the gar and the gators don’t eat him first,” Ellis said. “Maybe you pitched him out, then. You could fly a chopper sideways through a keyhole if you wanted to.”

  Danny felt himself going pale. “I told you what happened. I’ve got nothing to add.”

  Ellis smiled. “Course you did. Better for everybody this way, anyhow. The helicopter’s insured, so what the hell. I’ll have a brand-new one sitting on the pad in two weeks. And I still want you to fly it. We just have to get past whatever bullshit inquiry Ray Breen will try to bring on your head.”

  Danny sighed. “I think my flying days are over.”

  Ellis looked back again, his disappointment plain. “How come?”

  Danny just shook his head.

  The sheriff faced forward, the downward angle of his big head radiating disappointment.

  Up ahead, the lights of the Athens Point Bridge shone out of the darkness. The cantilevered span had been built during the Stennis era, when Mississippi had expected to get a bigger share of the space program than it ultimately did. Danny still remembered the ferry that the bridge had replaced, and how he’d stand on the thrumming deck with his father while the green hills receded behind them and the Louisiana lowlands slid closer. Some people believed the bridge had kept Athens Point alive during the lean 1980s, when the oil business crashed. Now there was talk of a big new bridge at St. Francisville, just thirty miles down the river. As Danny wondered how that might affect his hometown, he suddenly understood why Laurel had sent that last text message. She wasn’t instructing him to kill her husband. She was giving him permission. She’d realized that after the revelation of Warren’s cancer, Danny might be too mired in guilt to act without mercy. And she’d been right. He had remained on his feet to confess his guilt when he should have been diving to cover her with his body. That mistake might yet cost Laurel her life.

  Sheriff Ellis barely slowed down as he crossed the Athens Point Bridge. A minute later, they turned into the parking lot of St. Raphael’s Hospital. As Ellis parked under the admissions bay, Danny leaned forward and squeezed his shoulder. “You did all right, Sheriff. I’ll see you around.”

  He got out and walked toward the double doors, the pressure of Ellis’s gaze on his back. Then a voice caught up with him.

  “I hope she’s all right, Danny.”

  Danny held up his right hand but kept walking.

  “I’ve got to ask,” Ellis called. “Is that kid yours or what?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Danny murmured. “That’s the thing.”

  He walked into the hospital, ready for anything.

  EPILOGUE

  Three Weeks Later

  Danny stood sweating outside the city courthouse in the only suit he owned. May had arrived, and it was already eighty degrees before noon. He was waiting for Marilyn Stone, his lawyer, whose office was around the corner. They were due for a meeting at the office of Starlette’s lawyer.

  Starlette herself had left town soon after the rumors about Danny and Laurel began filtering out of the Sheriff’s Department. She’d taken the children and flown back to Nashville, threatening to file for divorce and take everything Danny had—his money and the kids. Danny had been in a daze since the night of the standoff, so he hadn’t argued too much. He’d simply called Marilyn Stone and asked her advice. She’d promised to do all in her power to ensure that Danny didn’t lose custody of Michael, and also to get him reasonable access to his daughter. Starlette ultimately chose to file for divorce in Mississippi rather than in Tennessee, where they’d married, because Mississippi was still a “fault” state, and you could pay a heavy price for adultery.

  “Danny!” called a female voice. “Over here!”

  He looked down Bank Street, which housed many local attorneys’ offices. Marilyn stood on the sidewalk in the bright sunshine, looking nothing like the plain Jane who showed up at the airport twice a week for flying lessons. She wore a navy suit and lipstick, and she appeared to have curled her hair. Danny waved and walked slowly forward. He dreaded having to sit across a table from the woman who was willing to institutionalize their son to get revenge on her soon-to-be-ex-husband.

  “Guess what?” Marilyn said, her eyes twinkling.

  “What?”

  “Starlette caved.”

  He stopped. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean she’s willing to give you custody of Michael.”

&nbs
p; Danny blinked in the sun, trying to process this unbelievable statement. “What do you mean? When did this happen?”

  “She didn’t even get on the plane in Nashville this morning.”

  “What?”

  Marilyn nodded. “I just found out myself.”

  “But . . . why?”

  “I’d like to say it was my great lawyering, but the truth is much simpler. Three weeks as Michael’s sole caregiver was all it took. When Starlette’s lawyer told her she couldn’t institutionalize Michael if you were willing to take him, she cracked.”

  The sudden release of weeks of tension nauseated Danny.

  “This won’t be free,” Marilyn cautioned. “Nobody’s that lucky.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ll have to pay a price to get Michael. A big price.”

  Danny shrugged. “Whatever.”

  “Starlette wants your interest in your last oil well. Your entire interest.”

  Danny rocked on his feet. He didn’t even want to calculate what twelve feet of pay sand was worth at $60-a-barrel oil. Whatever financial security he had, that was it. “Okay,” he said. “Done.”

  Marilyn put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “I already said yes for you.”

  He laughed ruefully. “I guess you know me.”

  “A potential client once told me that he’d heard divorce was expensive. I said it was—very expensive. When he asked why, I quoted another client back to him: ‘Because it’s worth it.’ “

  Danny was still trying to anchor himself in time and space. “When do I get Michael?”

  “Starlette’s loading him on a Continental flight in about an hour. You can pick him up at the Baton Rouge airport at six fifty-three p.m.”

  Danny decided right then to rent a plane; the distance was short, but Michael loved to fly with his dad. “I don’t know what to say. You’ve changed my life, Marilyn. And you’ve saved my son’s life.”

  “Come with me,” she said, smiling strangely. “I have one more thing to do for you.”

  She took his hand and led him into her office, past the male receptionist, then up a flight of stairs to a door at the end of a narrow hall. “This is my VIP dining room. I had some food brought in, because I figured we’d be hungry after our meeting.”