Race with Death

by Gilbert, Morris

  “Where is she?” Savage demanded. “Why didn’t she come out when she heard us coming?”

  Fontenot was staring at the boards stripped from the sides of the cabin. He turned and went through the open door. When Savage came inside, Fontenot cried, “She ain’t here! She must have got away!”

  “Got away?” Savage was bitterly disappointed and considered the idea that Fontenot had been lying, hoping for a chance to escape. “Was there a boat?” he demanded.

  “No,” Fontenot said, looking around. He stared at the gaps in the cabin wall, and exclaimed, “Maybe she made some kind of boat!”

  “You’re lying,” Savage said quietly. “Trying to save your hide. You brought her out here, but you killed her.”

  “No, she was alive when I left! Look, she’s been eating the food—see? Most of it’s gone.” He stared at Savage and said, “She’d never make it in a boat—not through this swamp!”

  Savage studied the man, then waved the Colt toward the door. “Outside,” he commanded.

  Fontenot stiffened. “You ain’t going to shoot me?”

  Savage shoved him outside, and looked across the lagoon, thinking hard. She’d head north, he thought. She’d know that was the way out.

  “Get in the boat—and you better pray we find her, Fontenot!” He allowed the big man to go first, and when he was in the stern, Ben climbed down and took his seat. “You know these swamps,” he said. “She’d head north.”

  “We’ll find her!” Fontenot started the engine, turned the boat, and when they were clear of the lagoon, said, “She can’t have gone far!”

  Savage found himself praying, much to his surprise. Help us find her, God! was all he could say. He knew these swamps could be deadly, and the thought of Dani alone in the depths of this one pained him.

  “Look—up ahead there!”

  Savage jerked at the sound of Fontenot’s shout, and when he looked ahead and saw the strip of white cloth, a thrill of hope shot through him. “She’s marked the way!” Fontenot cried. “Keep lookin’!”

  He need not have said that, for Savage was straining his eyes. It was growing darker now, the shadows falling over the waters as the sun dropped behind the tall trees. Then he saw another one. “There—to the left,” he called out, but Fontenot had seen it at the same instant and had turned the boat toward it.

  “Go faster,” Savage shouted. “Dark’s coming on and we won’t be able to see her sign!”

  Fontenot stepped up the speed as much as he dared, and they followed Dani’s trail rapidly. Then, somehow, they made a wrong turn. When they found no cloth for some time, Savage grated out, “We’ve missed one. Go back to the last strip!”

  By the time they got back to the point where they’d seen the last strip, it was almost dark. “Go to your right,” Savage ordered. “She must be in there.” He took the flashlight he’d brought from his car, and trained the feeble ray on the waters. Batteries are almost gone, he thought.

  He sat in the prow, his eyes straining to see through the falling darkness. For a few moments despair came over him—and then out of the gloom he saw a faint strip of white.

  “There it is!” he shouted. “Keep going!”

  Five minutes later, the last feeble ray of light from the batteries picked up something white. Savage stood up in the boat, peering desperately at the object. Then he cried out, “Dani! Dani!”

  Fontenot had seen Dani’s small raft and had skillfully brought the flat-bottom next to it. Savage kept calling, and when the white sheet moved, he reached out and pulled it free.

  And there she was!

  Dani came free of the sheet, blinking against the dim light. When Ben called her name, she smiled and put out her arms.

  Savage reached out, picked her up, and drew her into the boat, which rocked precariously, causing Fontenot to shout, “Hey—watch out. There’s gators in here!”

  But Savage was not thinking of gators. He was holding Dani in his arms, crushing her to his chest. Dani threw her arms around him and buried her face against his chest. She began to cry, and for some time he held her fiercely.

  Finally she looked up, but could see only the outline of his face. Reaching up, she touched his cheek—and was shocked to find tears there.

  “Why, Ben—!” she whispered.

  But she could say no more, for he held her too tightly.

  “Dani—I’ll never let you go again!”

  She lay in his arms, listening to the hoarse tone of his voice, and suddenly she knew what it was she wanted.

  “No, Ben,” she whispered. “Don’t ever let me go—not ever!”

  19

  A Slight Case of Burglary

  * * *

  Dani felt warm and secure as Ben sent the Hawk hurtling through the darkness toward Baton Rouge. The terror of the past hours still lurked just below the surface of her mind, and she realized that time would have to soften and finally erase it. She knew, also, that she would never forget the moment when Ben had lifted her from her small ark and had held her close.

  He reached over now with his free hand and took hers, holding it tightly; she returned the pressure. Curiously she turned to consider his profile, thinking, He’s not as hard as I thought. Nothing about him had ever shocked her so greatly as the tears on his cheeks when he’d held her. She had long known that he had a core of toughness—which she secretly admired. But now she was happy to have evidence that underneath that outer toughness was a tenderness that she had only seen briefly.

  He turned to her suddenly, meeting her eyes, and smiled. “You gave me quite a scare,” he said quietly. “I don’t want to ever go through anything like that again.”

  Dani leaned against him, placing her other hand on his. It gave her a strange sense of completeness to hold his square hand, to feel the strength of his shoulder. “I knew you’d come,” she said. “When things got bad, and I wanted to just scream or quit—something inside me kept saying, Ben will find you.”

  Savage put his eyes back on the road, saying, “Got something to tell you—”

  Dani listened with a growing sense of happiness as Ben told her how he’d found Christ. She held to him tightly as he spoke, and when he finished, she found that tears were running down her cheeks. “Ben—” she tried to say, but she could not speak. He glanced at her, leaned forward, and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, handing it to her. She dabbed at her eyes, waiting until her voice was under control before saying, “I’m so happy, Ben!”

  Savage said, “It makes a difference.” His brevity told her that he meant much more than that. He finally spoke again, saying, “One thing bothers me about it, Dani.”

  “What’s that, Ben?”

  “I don’t want you to think it’s something I did just so you’d be pleased. It’s more than that.” He hesitated, seeming to try to arrange his thoughts, then said slowly, “I want to marry you more than I want anything in the world, Dani, but if that never happens, I know something’s happened to me. All my life I’ve had some sort of strange feeling—even when I was a kid. Kind of hard to explain, but it’s like I was made to do something and never found it. I guess I’ve been like the bear who went over the mountain to see what he could see. But until last night, the only thing I saw was the other side of the mountain.”

  “I felt like that, Ben,” Dani nodded. “Maybe we all do. St. Augustine said once that there’s a God-shaped cavity in man, and that no man will ever be complete until God comes in and fills it.”

  “That’s it!” Savage exclaimed. “And I just thought of something Annie Dillard said. Something wonderful had just happened to her, and she said, ‘I was still ringing. I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until that moment I was lifted and struck.’ That’s what it’s like.” He turned to her with a smile. “You’ve been waiting for this a long time, haven’t you?”

  “Since we first met, Ben. Now I wish—”

  “Hey—what about me?”

  Dani and Ben were both slightly startled by
the sound of the voice that broke into their conversation. Fontenot had been quiet since Ben had stuck him in the back seat with his hands cuffed behind his back and a warning to keep his mouth shut. He said now in a worried voice, “What you gonna do with me, Savage?”

  “My duty as a citizen,” Savage answered. ‘Take you to jail.”

  “Aw, come on!” Fontenot argued. “I didn’t hurt the broad, did I? She’s okay. I was gonna go back and turn her loose soon as Prejean fried.” He looked at Dani and said, “Look, it ain’t gonna do nobody no good for me to be locked up, Miss Ross.”

  “And if we turn you loose,” Dani said, “you’ll promise not to ever kidnap anybody again as long as you live?”

  Fontenot was so simple that he missed the thick irony in Dani’s voice. Eagerly he nodded, saying, “Yeah, sure—that’s it!”

  Ben laughed shortly. He was still smoldering with anger at the big Cajun. Dani had told him about how he’d left her tied, and it was all he could do to keep his hands off the man. “You clown!” he said roughly. “I hope they throw the book at you! In the good old days, kidnapping was a capital offense. Now about the best I can hope for is that you’ll get twenty years with no good time and no parole. That’s what I’m going to tell the prosecuting attorney to go for.”

  Fontenot blinked in the darkness, and fear began to work on him. He’d already forgotten his fear of death, for he knew that Savage would not hurt him. But he knew about being in jail, having served a year in Dixon Correctional Institute for robbery. The shadow of Angola lay over his mind now, and horror stories about what happened to men in there came to him. He began to beg.

  “Please, listen to me—” he babbled. “It wasn’t my fault—taking Miss Ross out of circulation. I didn’t like her pokin’ around, ’cause I liked Cory and I want to see the guy who offed her put away. But I never kidnapped nobody in my whole life.”

  A memory tugged at Dani, and she asked, “Did somebody call you when I was in Annie’s place?”

  “Yeah, sure, that’s it!”

  Dani said slowly, “I think he might be telling the truth, Ben. He came over and tried to talk to me. I guess he thought I’d be so impressed with his muscles I’d fall into his arms. He wasn’t putting on an act, either,” she added slowly, the memory growing clearer. “He’s too simple for that.” She turned around in the seat so that she could watch Fontenot’s face. “But later I saw you glaring at me. You were standing beside a waitress, and you looked mad enough to kill.”

  “Well, I was sore, all right,” Fontenot admitted. “But I get sore a lot. Got a bad temper, me! But it don’t come to nothing usually.” His brow furrowed, and he shook his head. “It set me off when I found out you was tryin’ to get Prejean off. That guy deserves to burn! Cory was a nice girl.”

  “How’d you find out that’s what I was doing?”

  “Why, Skip told me.”

  At that name an alarm bell went off in Dani’s head.

  “Skip told you?” she said, thinking of the cigarette lighter with that name engraved on it. “How did he know I was there?” She turned her head to meet Ben’s eyes and saw the fire in them. They both knew that this was the breakthrough they’d been needing. “How’d he know I was there? Was he in the bar?”

  “No. Lila, she called him and told him you was there asking questions about Cory.”

  “Lila’s the waitress you were talking to?” Savage demanded. “Her last name is Dennois?”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “What’s Skip’s last name?” Dani asked, keeping her voice casual. It was a critical moment, for a man like Fontenot could be led, but if he got stubborn, hot iron would not wring anything from him.

  But Fontenot was totally unsuspecting. “Skip Herndon.”

  At that moment it all came together for Dani, but she needed more. “Phil Herndon? The governor’s right hand man?”

  “Sure, that’s the guy.”

  “Why would Lila call him?”

  “Aw, ever since Cory got killed, he’s been hanging around,” Fontenot said. “He come to ask a lot of questions, and then he got tight with Lila. They been goin’ together since then.” He thought for a moment, then added, “She’s a hot number, Lila is. We went together for a while.”

  Dani added it all up in her mind, then said, “Let me get this straight, Fontenot. Herndon’s been hanging around ever since Cory was killed. He asked Lila to call him if anybody came around asking questions about the murder?”

  “That’s it. I dunno what he’s so uptight about, but he was pretty shook up when I talked to him.”

  “What’d he say to you?” Savage asked.

  “Said that the Ross woman could make a lot of trouble,” Fontenot answered. “Told me she was trying to get Prejean off the hook and said that could cause lots of trouble for lots of important people.”

  “He mention any names?”

  “No. Just said for me to take you someplace and keep you quiet until Prejean fried.” Anxiety threaded Fontenot’s voice, and he begged, “Look, Miss Ross, that’s all it was. I was a little rough, I guess. I’m sorry about that lick in the head, but twenty years in Angola is a bad scene. Just let me go, huh?”

  Dani was only half listening. “Did Herndon ever give Lila expensive presents?”

  “Presents? Sure, all the time—jewels and stuff.”

  “What about her? Did she ever give Herndon anything?”

  Fontenot paused, and Dani and Ben held their breath.

  “Oh, sure,” Fontenot nodded. “Not expensive stuff, I guess—except for the lighter.”

  “The lighter?”

  “Yeah. Skip’s a big hunter—deer and bear. He bagged a record buck, and Lila had a lighter made for him. It was pretty nifty—gold and made out of a rifle shell.”

  Dani touched Ben with her elbow slightly. “Fontenot, we are going to take you to the police, but maybe the charges won’t be so bad. That is—if you cooperate with us.”

  Fontenot said at once, “I don’t want no twenty years in Angola. What kind of deal you talking?”

  “You tell the police what you just told us, and I’ll drop the kidnapping charge. Just assault and battery.”

  “Why, that’ll only be a month or so in the county jail,” Dax said with surprise. His face grew crafty, and he asked, “What’s the catch?”

  “We don’t think Eddie Prejean killed Cory,” Dani said. “And we want the real murderer to pay for killing her.”

  Dax Fontenot was not much as a man, but he had a primitive streak of blood justice in him. Cory was his kin, and among Cajuns, that exceeds most other facts. He sat there thinking in his slow fashion, and neither Dani nor Ben spoke, knowing their man well.

  Finally he said, “I want the guy who killed Cory to burn. If Prejean didn’t do it, I’ll do anything you say to get the guy who did into the chair.”

  The Hawk probed the highway relentlessly, the twin beams dividing the darkness, and the three occupants grew silent. Dani wondered about Eddie Prejean, what he must be thinking as the fated hour drew closer. Ben’s mind was going over the hours he’d spent seeking God at the Leonard Hotel. Dax Fontenot slumped in the back seat, thinking of the time he and Cory Louvier had gone to Mardi Gras in New Orleans. The thought of her as she’d been when the police had taken her from the raw earth came to him, and a smouldering anger began to build in his primitive spirit.

  “Time to get you home, Dani,” Ben said as they left the Baton Rouge police station. The session with Catlow and Oakie had been long, for the two officers had been cautious. Both Dani and Ben were glad that Catlow was in charge, for if the case against Eddie Prejean was set aside, they would come in for some censure.

  Catlow had pressured Dax Fontenot relentlessly, until finally he was content. He’d said, “Book him for assault, Lou.”

  Oakie had been angered by the minor charge. “He’ll be on the street in an hour, Riley!”

  “Can’t help that.” When Oakie had left, taking Fontenot with him, Catlow had
turned to the pair and studied them with half-shut eyes. “Well, what does that get us?” he asked. “Nothing here to get a new trial—and we all know the governor’s not going to give a stay.”

  “But the lighter was found at the scene of the crime!” Dani protested.

  “No, it wasn’t. It was found at the grave. The girl wasn’t killed there. And it wasn’t found by the police, but by a twelve-year-old kid. Who knows what he’d say on the stand? Might deny the whole thing.”

  “But what about Herndon? He ordered me to be kidnapped.”

  “You hear him say that? No, all we have is the word of a slow-witted roughneck with a bad police record. And he might change his story at any minute. You both know that.”

  A wave of fatigue washed over Dani, and she was aware of the aches and pains that probed at her body. Worse than the fatigue was the sudden sense of hopelessness that accompanied it. She slumped in the chair, saying no more.

  “Look, Miss Ross,” Catlow said, a ray of sympathy in his eyes. “I know you were hoping for more, but Savage has been in my spot. He’ll tell you there’s not much I can do at this point.”

  “That’s right, Dani,” Ben nodded. “It’s just not enough.”

  Dani nodded and got to her feet. She tried to smile at Catlow saying, “I know, Lieutenant. Thanks for trying.”

  Catlow rose, and as the two turned, he said, “We’ll keep working on it, Miss Ross.”

  But when Dani and Ben got back to the car, and Ben said, “Time to get you home, Dani,” a streak of anger ran through her. She settled down in the car, and when Savage slid behind the wheel, he noted the look on her face. “What’s that mean? That look on your face?”

  Dani turned to face him, her lips drawn tightly together. “Ben, we don’t have time. Eddie’s going to die if we don’t do something!”

  “Do what?”

  “Oh, I don’t know!” Dani wanted to go home, to fall into bed and sleep—but she shook her head rebelliously. “The killer is laughing at all this! And Eddie’s going to die!”