"You just better not let anything happen to her," Jake snarled in what for him was a chastened attitude.
"Or you'll do what?" Warren returned acidly, the fact that he still was connected to the call proof of his acquiescence.
"Warren, do you really know where she is?" The older man controlled his exasperation and his fear, both of which had joined forces to harness the anger which had been fueling him ever since he received confirmation that his son had, in fact, been murdered.
"I know that Leland Devereaux and two of his boys have her and that they drove her to Houma where they boarded a boat—”
"And they could'a tied rocks to her feet and dropped her in the fuckin' swamp by now." Jake was talking through clenched teeth and pounding his helpless thighs with his fists.
"Detective Graham, please," Dave Crandall said. "If either of us really believed that, there'd be no reason for this conversation. Would there?" And he accepted Jake's grunt as non-verbal confirmation of the logic of the statement. "What else, Warren?"
"My cousin, Herve, and your man Griffin, are following as best they can, without knowing exactly where they're headed; Leland owns land all over the place. My uncle, my aunt, my sister, and myself are positioned in different places along the bayou, and, thanks to you, Detective Graham, we're all connected."
"What's that mean?" Jake was too curious to growl.
"Means everybody's got a cellular phone. That was damn good advice you gave Miss Gibson," Warren said, and Jake grunted. Maybe this boy had some sense after all, he thought.
"Is everybody armed?" he asked.
"Yeah," Warren answered. “And Herve has a high-powered rifle with a night vision scope."
"Armed?!" Dave croaked in alarm and waited in vain for Warren to explain. "Are you saying that everyone has a weapon? Including your aunt and your sister?" And still he waited for more than the silence that Warren offered.
"Mr. Crandall," Jake said, clearing his throat and unclenching his teeth, "Leland Devereaux has killed six or seven or maybe even eight people, including your son. He now has possession of your son's wife and he intends to kill her, too. Our sole purpose in havin' Forchette and half his family, not to mention Tommy Griffin, runnin' around in a fuckin' swamp in the middle of the night is keep that from happenin.' And if it means blowin' his ass to kingdom come, then so be it!” Jake's voice was getting louder and louder so that he was shouting by the time he finished. Only he wasn't finished. "Tommy Griffin's job is on the line, Man. He got no damn business huntin' criminals down in Louisiana!" He said Loo-see-anna. "D.C. finds out about it and they'll fire his ass! But he'll risk that in order to save Miss Gibson. He'll also shoot Leland fuckin' Devereaux and feed his slimy ass to the crocodiles before he lets harm come to her."
"Alligators," Warren said quietly, and Jake failed in his attempt to suppress a giggle, causing Warren to think that maybe he wasn't such a jerk after all.
"Where are you right now, Forchette? And where is that location relative to where Tommy and your cousin are, and relative to where you think Devereaux is headed with C.A.?" Jake asked.
"I'm at Pointe Afrique," Warren said, straddling the cane-backed chair in Sadie Cord's tiny living room, "and everybody is headed in this direction. Devereaux could stop somewhere before he gets here, or by-pass us and head out into the Gulf, or he could head inland, though I don't know why he would. The plan was that Herve would follow as closely as he thought safe. But he can't run behind him with engines. They have to paddle, him and your man, Griffin. So, by now, they've probably dropped pretty far behind." He didn't want to say more. Didn't want to think more. Didn't want to think about how easy it was to get lost in a bayou. Didn't want to think how easy it was to hide in the tall swamp grasses in the day time, to say nothing of at night.
"Forchette?" Jake spoke the question softly, something in his voice both foreign and familiar.
"Yes?" Warren responded, the single word both question and answer, in the same dual tone in which it had been asked.
"Are there really alligators in the water down there? Near where people are? Near where you are? Near where C.A. and Tommy are?"
Nobody breathed in the hour-long seconds before the answer came. And when it came, there was nothing more to say: "Yes, Sir, there really are alligators in the water here. Very near."
Jake Graham hung up his telephone and rolled himself into the dining room, where every light was blazing bright in defiance of his wife's preference for moody dimness, but Jake needed light to see the table where he had laid out, in very orderly fashion, Carole Ann Gibson's equally orderly case against Leland and Larry Devereaux and the Parish Petroleum Company. She had sent him by Federal Express, three days ago, her complete notes, including a copy of every document she'd unearthed during her searches, along with a copy of Al's notes and files. Her notes were detailed and thorough and more than sufficient to hang the brothers Devereaux from the top boughs of a very high tree; more than enough to keep his reporter friends occupied for several days. He followed her train of thought, the tracks being the documented evidence, and earned a new if grudging respect for criminal lawyers, especially those who worked with this degree of proficiency. He also came to agree with her conclusion about who killed Al Crandall; and his suspicion was confirmed when Leland Devereaux, after receiving a telephone call from Larry, hired a private jet and set off for New Orleans. Carole Ann's call to Larry had had the desired effect: He'd left Washington for New Orleans within twenty-four hours. But Leland beat him out of the gate by half a day. That's when Jake called Tommy, who flew south on the same plane with Larry, though not in first class.
Jake had tried to talk Carole Ann out of baiting Larry, but she was too tired and too hurt and too scared to listen to his reason, and too damn stubborn to do it his way: Jake wanted media justice. He wanted to leak the file to the press and let the reporters nibble Leland and Larry to death with their piranha teeth. But not only did Carole Ann hate the press, she hated Larry Devereaux and wanted to confront him face to face, not nibble him to death. But she did agree to send Jake the information for him to do with as he pleased; and of course it pleased Jake to share it with two reporters with whom he had traded information and favors for a decade. But he knew the reporters could do nothing until they checked and double-checked the facts themselves, and by that time, Carole Ann herself could be nibbled to death—by the goddamn alligators! That's why he'd called Dave Crandall.
Dave Crandall leaned back in his desk chair and put his feet up on the desk and noticed that he had the beginnings of a hole at the big toe of his left sock. His wife was always after him to cut his toenails on a regular basis so he wouldn't ruin his socks, and he was sorry that he didn't pay more heed to her requests. Just as was sorry that he hadn't paid more heed to his only son's requests that they spend more time together. And now his son was dead. Murdered by his own law partner. And his son's wife, whom he'd had to learn to like, had taken it upon herself to avenge that murder, and it seemed that she would succeed if she could avoid becoming a victim herself. Victim number seven or eight or nine, depending upon how one counted.
Dave and Adrienne Crandall had divorced when Al was a very young boy, and he had had very little contact with his son until he entered law school. Then Al, believing that they must be connected in other important ways since the son had chosen the profession of the father without paternal inspiration, advice, or example, had pursued a relationship with his father, and the two had come to like and respect each other. Al and Carole Ann had visited at least twice a year, and, as Dave observed them—observed her—he began to change his impression of her. He'd originally thought she had edges, and he didn't like women with edges. Then he'd had to admit that what he objected to was what he had perceived, erroneously, to be Carole Ann's competition with Al. Not only did she not compete with her husband, they so rarely discussed their work that the casual observer would never have known that they shared a profession. What Dave observed was that Carole Ann was as good a
wife as she was a lawyer; that his son was as good a husband as he was a lawyer; that the two of them were as perfect a couple as he'd ever encountered.
And now this son who had become his friend and confidant, was dead and the woman who had become his daughter-in-law was in danger and a foul-mouthed cop from Washington, D.C. had had the nerve to tell Dave Crandall that it was his responsibility help save her life! Dave Crandall the tax attorney. Dave Crandall the sixty-seven-year old tax attorney who abhorred violence in any form, including details of it in the courtroom. Yet, he supposed there was a certain rightness to it. After all, he had put Carole Ann in touch with Warren Fourchette, even though he'd believed at the time that he was doing nothing more than being polite.
Warren Forchette had not wanted to meet Carole Ann Gibson Crandall but he'd had no choice, for two reasons: First, he'd known the woman's husband and should have been able to predict that the man was in danger, so he felt guilty in her presence and he didn't like feeling guilty. Second, he'd been asked by a colleague to extend a professional courtesy to another colleague, and to refuse would be bad form for a lawyer, and, worse, bad manners for a Southerner. So, though he agreed to see her, he'd made the decision to limit his contact with her even before he met her, though he later could not explain or define his reasoning. His Tante Sadie sucked her teeth and rolled her eyes at him; his big sister Lillian called him a horse's ass; his Uncle Eldon called him uncharitable; and his Auntie Merle opined that he'd been bitten by the love bug. Even Herve, who did not and had never liked anybody not related to him, felt something different and special for this woman from D.C. And still Warren did not want to forge a connection. And still he had no choice, for the deeper she dug in search of the reasons for her husband's murder, the muddier she made the soil that supported Warren and his family and his way of life.
So Warren had driven to Atlanta for a heart-to-heart talk with Dave Crandall the day after he'd witnessed Carole Ann demolish the two thugs on the track, and when they finished talking to each other, he was committed to doing whatever he needed to do to help her. But he would keep his distance, and that turned out not to be a difficult proposition, owing largely to her distrust of him which, perversely, he found annoyed him. How dare she mistrust him! She was the stranger, the interloper, the Bigfoot clouding the water in the bottom of the pond. But put off as he was, Warren acknowledged a healthy respect for the reputation of Carole Ann Gibson the criminal lawyer. He'd thought his paralegal was joking when she dumped the two-inch thick file in the middle of his desk; and he'd laughed out loud when he finished reading about Carole Ann Gibson—her courtroom successes and her out of court skirmishes with the media. He'd laughed but nothing was funny. This woman was the kind of lawyer he'd dreamt of being, and she'd relinquished her hold on the brass ring because she'd found it was tarnished and her hands were being stained.
He walked outside and his senses began their automatic adjustment to the night. Since he was a very young boy, Warren had always felt like a nocturnal being when he prowled Pointe Afrique in the dark: Believed that he saw with cat's eyes and walked with their careful, padded feet; believed that he heard with owl ears; and that his nose received scents with wolf-like clarity. These things Warren had felt all his life and felt them without ever needing to claim awareness of them, but tonight was different. Tonight there was danger. The Jake Grahams of the world no doubt would consider the presence of water moccasins and alligators a danger; but those born on the bayou learned early how to share life with every other being born on the bayou, and danger existed only when one being—usually it was the two-legged human variety—forgot how to live and let live. And indeed, as always, it was the human variety responsible for the danger this night.
He felt a moment of heavy sadness for the misery human beings had caused for each other and for so many other species. Then he tried to feel what one particular human being was feeling at this very moment, and in doing so, resolved that he would not allow Carole Ann Gibson to be prey for any vulture this night.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Sound travels at the speed of light. Light travels at warp speed. That's absurd. There is no light. Or sound. Or anything. And no feeling. Especially no feeling. There are no feet or hands. And if there is no light what is flashing behind my eyes? And if there is no feeling what in God's name is this pain!
Carole Ann would not have moved even if she could have, and she could not, though she wasn't certain why. She was bound, hand and foot, that she knew; but she was not certain that situation alone accounted for her inability to move. Had she not been bound, she could not have moved her hands and feet because she could not feel their presence, though she could feel extreme pain in the places where hands and feet belonged. Most of her body she could not feel. Specific places on her body she could feel as intensely as if every nerve ending were being probed: Her right shoulder and the left side of her face, from the eyeball to the corner of her mouth, and the exact center of the top of her head. These specific places pulsated with pain so excruciating that Carole Ann didn't have the energy to fight the nausea that ebbed and flowed with her consciousness. Some part of her self, until this moment unknown to her, seemed to be commanding her responses, for she certainly could not claim credit for controlling the nausea, yet it was controlled; and mercifully so, for surely she would suffocate on her own regurgitation and die. It would have been better to have remained unaware and unconscious.
The awareness that she was alone was only marginally comforting. She was bound and gagged and laying in the bottom of a boat and absolutely unable to help herself. The darkness was as complete as anything she could have imagined, and the night sounds were painfully loud. She must not be, she thought, anywhere near Pointe Afrique, because everything in that bayou was dead. So much seemed to be alive here, even the water, which lapped and tapped gently against the side of the boat. She found the rhythm and the gentle rocking of the boat soothing. Perhaps she could sleep...or die. She'd like to die before Leland returned. She very much would like to thwart his plans by dying before he could kill her. She'd already witnessed his childish displays of rage when confronted with adversity: His rage at finding that every file had been deleted from her computer; that every one of her legal pads contained blank yellow pages; that every file she'd copied had been sent to Jake Graham and Dave Crandall, though she hadn't given him those names; and he had raged at her refusal to tell him what she'd done with the information she'd collected.
He'd done his questioning of her in a house somewhere outside of New Orleans, though not too far from the city. They'd driven about half an hour before stopping in an area that was sparsely populated, though not really rural, as she could lights from other houses. She hadn't been blindfolded, though she had been forced to lay down in the back well of some kind of four-wheel drive SUV, so she'd seen where she was, though she did not know where she was, and could not have provided directions. Just that it was a modest house with a well-tended yard and twenty-year old, inexpensive furniture. The place was in total darkness when they arrived and only the lights in the kitchen and bathroom had been turned on. Leland sat at the white Formica kitchen table with rounded, fat silver corners and sorted through her things and threw his first tantrum by turning over the table and then smashing her computer. And he'd hit her again, this time with his fist squarely on the right shoulder that she thought was dislocated. She'd fallen and was yanked to her feet by the waiter. She still thought of him as the waiter; how else could he have known about the concierge and the beer?
By the time Leland accepted the reality that he would find no clue as to how much Carole Ann knew, his rage was a tornado, touching down here and there, shattering whatever objects and people happened to be in the path of the destruction: He broke two lamps and a chair; he hit the waiter in the chest with a wind-up cuckoo clock; and he hit her twice more and kicked her once, on the shin of her right leg—perhaps that was why she couldn't move that limb? That's when she'd gone down and decided to stay down; that
's when she was still thinking about what she was doing, still thinking she had choices about her life. So when she crumpled to the floor, she remained there, eyes closed, breath held. He kicked her again, on top of the head, and the choice to remain down no longer was hers.
When she awoke they were riding again, she in her position in the back of the vehicle next to the spare tire, the rubber smell new and oily. This time, her hands were tied behind her back but her feet were free. She wriggled her fingers and pain ran up her right arm and lodged in her shoulder socket and became bright colors that danced behind her eyes. The drive this time was much longer and reminded Carole Ann of the drive she'd taken to Houma, of the drive into the Gulf. They were heading to the water. She could feel it. Could smell it. Only this time the smell wasn't full and heavy and soft and wet. It was more like the shape of an alligator—all sharp points and rough ridges. She recalled instances of senses merging; of something tasting like the smell of another thing; of describing the feel of an object as being like the taste of a food. That's how she experienced scent at that moment: In a tactile fashion. Hard and sharp and dangerous.
She must have fallen asleep—or something—because when she became aware of herself again the vehicle was still and empty. She attempted to sit up and was glad she was alone because the pain caused her to groan. So far, she had managed not to cry or cry out at Leland's brutality, though she did not know how much longer she could manage such macho self-control. She was contemplating another attempt at sitting up when she heard voices. Then the back door of the truck opened but she could not see because she was laying on her side with her back to the door, and she did not move. A voice told her to get out—she thought it was the waiter—but she still did not move. Then her legs were grabbed and she was yanked out of the truck. Gravity and instinct took over and Carole Ann struggled not to lose her footing. She stood up straight and looked directly into the face of the waiter. She did not see Leland or the third man. The waiter, perhaps beginning to realize his mistake, took a step backward. Carole Ann kicked him in the groin so hard he could make no sound. He doubled in half and she kneed him in the face, breaking his nose and propelling him upright. She turned and kicked him a third time, shattering most of the bones in his face. Then she ran. Screaming.
One Must Wait Page 23