Raw Wounds

by Matt Hilton

  ‘Why don’t you climb in the back and use that penlight I got you?’

  ‘No seats.’

  ‘You’ve a perfectly good ass to sit on, haven’t you?’

  ‘Huh. Perfectly good.’

  ‘Then climb on back there. I’ll need you there to open the door for me soon.’

  ‘You said that thirty-three minutes ago.’

  Zeke didn’t question the timing. It was as if Cleary had a clock counting down in his head, and another of his specific quirks was being on the button when it came to keeping time. He could be damn infuriating though: Zeke couldn’t say he’d be only a minute, because Cleary held him to exact timings and grew antsy if Zeke wasn’t punctual.

  ‘I’ve no control over when she comes, Cleary,’ he said, and knew he was wasting his breath. Truth was, having no idea where Emilia was when she phoned her dad, and with no clue whether she had transportation available, he couldn’t guess how long it would take her to arrive. The one thing he believed was that after hearing about her mom, Emilia would make every effort to get to the hospital as quick as she could. But there was the possibility that they could be camped out on watch all night. ‘I hope it’s soon. Besides, you’re reading aren’t you? Enjoy your book while you get the chance.’

  Appeased by Zeke’s logic, Cleary hauled his bulk over the seat and into the rear of the van. The vehicle rocked on its springs before the huge man settled down. A small penlight that could be clipped to his book came on, but the light made only a faint glow in the rear. Nobody passing on the street would notice it.

  Zeke’s cellphone buzzed. He checked the incoming caller ID and answered.

  ‘Whassup, Ty?’

  ‘Truck driver just dropped a young girl at the side of the road,’ announced Wayne Tyson, one of the guys assisting with the stakeout.

  ‘Hooker?’ Zeke asked.

  ‘Could be. Great ass, nice face: I’d give her my hard-earned. She fits the description of Emilia Chatard you gave us.’ Tyson shared a murmur of conversation with his pal, Jim Croft, before coming back on the phone to Zeke. ‘She’s just come off of Gonsoulin Street, heading your way. You got eyes on her yet, Zeke?’

  From his position Zeke didn’t have a clear view towards the cross-street Tyson had mentioned. If it was Emilia and she was heading in on foot from there, it was the perfect opportunity to grab her before she made it to the hospital. ‘Mark your spot in your book, Cleary,’ he commanded over the seat, even as he turned on the engine and the van began to crawl forward.

  ‘You said soon,’ Cleary said. ‘This is soon.’

  Zeke ignored him, craning forward instead so he could scan the darkness to his left before pulling the van fully onto the street. Once committed to driving out of the lot, he might have to keep moving if he didn’t want to cause the woman any alarm.

  Distantly a figure trotted across the road, and up onto the sidewalk adjacent to the hospital. If she made it onto Haik Memorial Drive, a turning circle at the front of the hospital, grabbing her without attracting attention might prove impossible. He had seconds to decide to move.

  He eyed the approaching figure. Was it Emilia or not? It was cold out, and yet he spotted bare legs flashing as the woman hurried along the sidewalk. She had her arms crossed under her breasts, clutching a purse to her stomach, perhaps in an attempt to stave off the chill. Her dark hair swung back and forth across her features, but it didn’t matter, because he’d already recognized her clothes. She hadn’t changed since he’d watched her sprinting for the swamp.

  ‘It’s her,’ he announced into his phone, and to Cleary. ‘Get ready to move. Tyson, Croft, you know what to do?’

  ‘On it,’ Tyson announced, and the phone went dead.

  Zeke hit the gas, but only with enough pressure to set the van rolling out of the parking lot. To avoid instantly alarming Emilia, he flicked on the headlights: a van approaching in darkness would set her hackles rising. If she were spooked before he got close enough, she’d run, and he knew from experience how fleet-footed she was.

  He kept the van rolling, approaching at a moderate speed. Tyson and Croft appeared from the gloom behind Emilia. They strode along the street, one to each opposite sidewalk, moving to cut her off if she did turn and run. Croft was on the other side from Emilia, and he began crossing the road, walking fast enough to alert the girl. His helpers were in perfect positions.

  Zeke hit the gas and the van shot forward.

  TWENTY

  Driving direct, Emilia could usually accomplish the twenty-five-mile journey from Lafayette to New Iberia in thirty to forty-five minutes, but it was entirely different when relying on the kindness of others. After hearing the news of her mom, her first instinct was to begin a fast clip south, but there was no way she could walk home, not if time was as short as Darius had made clear. She’d thought of returning to Rachel Boreas and begging a ride from her, but it still meant a walk across town. She’d called Rachel from the convenience store payphone to ask if she’d pick her up but she wasn’t home. Emilia left a brief message asking her to call back on the store’s number, but after only a few minutes she gave up waiting, and, defeated, left the store and began walking towards a shopping mall alongside Evangeline Thruway, where she recalled there was a twenty-four-hour ‘drive thru’ and perhaps a kind hungry stranger to take her home.

  She lucked out with the first half-dozen or so, locals who were not prepared to go an hour or more out of their way for her. Then there was one man, so overly keen she feared he’d drawn the wrong impression from her skimpy clothing and desperate look. She thanked him for his offer, then told him to fuck off when he tried to grab and load her inside his car. A truck driver came to her rescue.

  ‘I’m heading down to Morgan City,’ he told her. ‘You’re welcome to jump in with me if you like.’

  Emilia told him she needed to get back to New Iberia, that her mother was in hospital. The driver was a good man: he even left the highway to take her nearer to the hospital. On the drive down from Lafayette, Emilia had been thankful of the blanket the driver offered her, but she left it, despite his protestations when he dropped her at the curb. She only need walk down Gonsoulin, and then the hospital was a stone’s throw distant; she wouldn’t freeze.

  It was evening, and already dark. The sky was still heavy with clouds, but thankfully the rain was holding off. She walked quickly to fight off the chill, but also through urgency to get to her mother’s side.

  Her relationship with her family was complicated. The one with her mother was much simpler. Clara wasn’t the most loving towards her, in fact she wasn’t the type to display her emotions unless they were anger or spite, but she was still Emilia’s mom. Their differences were usually childish, easily set aside by Emilia, and for all of their blistering rows over the years Emilia still loved her. Hearing that she might lose the one person in her family she held any genuine affection for had come as a great blow, and she’d travelled from Lafayette in a state of shock. What if she was already too late? She rushed towards the hospital grounds, her purse clutched tightly to her body, the soles of her borrowed sneakers slapping the sidewalk. At first she wasn’t aware of the footfalls matching hers for pace, because she thought them echoes of her own hasty steps.

  Ahead and to the right of her a van pulled out of a vacant lot. It turned towards her. She paid it no heed. She swung her head round for a glance at the figure following close on her heels. It was a youngish guy with a sculptured beard, and his hair gelled flat to one side along a severe parting. The guy’s face pinched when he caught her looking, and she caught his glance to the other side of the street. A second young male, heavier, clean-shaven, but wearing a stud earring in his right eyebrow, began striding across the road. For the briefest moment she feared they were trying to cut her off, but she told herself she was being paranoid. Haik Memorial Drive wasn’t too far away now, she picked up speed, intending entering the hospital grounds by the first entrance.

  The van swerved towards her, stopped fi
fteen feet away.

  Emilia practically slid to a halt, a wordless question squeezed between her teeth as a sharp exhalation.

  Behind the headlights, she couldn’t make out the driver. But there was no good reason for him to swerve towards her like that … unless …

  She knew who it was.

  She should have run for the hospital, but her instinctive reaction was to flee.

  Except the young guy with the beard blocked her passage. The other man was charging towards her across the road, and she caught the glint of his eyebrow stud winking in the wash of headlights from the van. His lips were open in a grimace, but his teeth were clamped together in determination.

  Emilia danced from foot to foot, with no clue where to go. A wall enclosed the hospital grounds. Not tall. She lurched for it, was about to spring over, when a hand clutched her left elbow. She struggled to break loose, but another hand was now round her face, pulling her backwards, clamping down over her mouth to stifle her cries.

  Emilia fought. She rammed her free elbow into the bearded man’s gut, but it was ineffective, and he pulled her in tighter. The second man was on her in seconds, and he didn’t pause; he scooped her up with his arms behind her knees even as the van crawled forward so it was alongside them. She got a glimpse of Zeke Menon grinning at her through the side window, his eyes flashing in triumph beneath the peak of his battered old cap. Emilia screeched behind the palm that forced her lips painfully against her teeth. Kicked and twisted. But the two young men had control of her and weren’t for letting go. A door in the side of the van swept open, and two huge hairy paws reached for her.

  She felt weightless in the brute’s grasp, until she was hurled down on the bed of the van. Flattened cardboard boxes deadened the sound but took little of the brunt of the collision. It was as if she’d fallen from a great height. Sparks flashed across her vision, but darkness edged her mind. She heard Zeke giving curt instructions to the two thugs then the door slammed, enclosing her in almost total darkness with the shaggy behemoth that now crouched over her. Clipped to the front of his jacket was a small pinpoint of light, and Emilia felt her vision tunnelling around it, as if it were the promised light that would lead her to the afterlife.

  ‘Don’t kill her.’

  She wasn’t sure if Zeke’s words were a blessing. The instant the van door had swept wide and she’d seen Cleary leaning forth like a grinning gargoyle, she’d thought her life expectancy could be counted in seconds. But she knew that continued existence would only mean horrendous pain and suffering at the hands of the Menons.

  Zeke clarified things for his brother, if not for her. ‘We need to hear where she’s been these last few days, and who she’s talked to, before you get to have her, bra.’

  ‘Hurt her.’

  ‘Not yet. Just shut her up, ’til we can get her outta here.’

  ‘Then hurt her.’

  ‘Yeah, then you can hurt your prize.’

  Cleary’s huge right palm smothered Emilia, covering most of her face, his fingernails digging painfully into her scalp behind her ears. Emilia bucked against him, but he flattened her out with a meaty slap of his opposite elbow. His palm ground her head down into the cardboard as if he intended squashing the breath right out of her. But in the next instant he yanked away her purse, threw it towards the back door of the van, and snatched up a pair of balled socks. She couldn’t see what he was doing, but she felt his hand adjust on her face, and then he prized open her jaws and jammed the socks in deep. She gagged on the damp wool. In the next moment Cleary was wrapping duct tape round and round her face, securing the impromptu gag in place, matting and snagging her hair to her skull. Her nostrils were covered. She began to truly panic when her lungs jumped in her chest, begging for air. Cleary yanked the tape off her nose and she inhaled so harshly she was positive a train whistled its progress down inside her.

  ‘You got her?’ Zeke demanded from the front.

  ‘Got her. Got her good.’

  The van began rolling.

  ‘Good. Now keep her quiet. And Cleary …’ Zeke paused for effect. ‘None of your goddamn howling ’til we’re outta town, OK?’

  TWENTY-ONE

  ‘This has got to be the place, but I don’t believe the Thibodauxs are home, me.’

  Pinky’s local network of contacts had come through, one of them offering directions to the trapping and fishing camp the Thibodaux brothers worked from. To Tess, the nearby shacks barely perceptible in the lights from Pinky’s van, the scene was reminiscent of the set of one of those stupid horror movies where a group of hormonal teens visit for a weekend of debauchery only to be hacked limb from limb by a hockey-mask-wearing maniac. She wasn’t keen on getting out of the van, but she followed the menfolk as they alighted and slowly approached the camp, both of them with pistols at the ready. Tess had left the gun supplied to her by Pinky in her bag, but was itching to take it out. She had great reservations about them arming themselves – especially illegally the way they had – but the second they’d entered the glade and spotted the ramshackle camp some of her disquiet had slipped, replaced by a worse feeling.

  Her gaze darted around the edge of the clearing. Ancient trees strung with banners of moss hemmed it in. In the near-total darkness the forest appeared as impenetrable as a brick wall. She kept moving forward, placing her feet carefully so that they didn’t break a twig underfoot.

  ‘There’s been a fire recently,’ Po said, at much the same time Tess smelled the bitter aroma that only came from a bonfire dampened down by days of rain. She couldn’t tell where the stench originated.

  ‘Over that way,’ Pinky announced, nodding towards the western boundary line of the clearing. ‘You think they have a fire pit out there?’

  Tess hadn’t a clue. She wasn’t familiar with the activity fur trappers got up to, but could picture what they might throw on a fire: the glistening entrails of forest creatures, spitting and popping as the fat was rendered down.

  Po had made it to the stoop of the brothers’ shack. He paused, one foot on the top step, a hand held behind him to halt Tess. She obeyed without comment. Pinky slunk off, circling towards the rear. Tess finally drew her gun, and racked the slide on the Glock 20 as silently as she could.

  They weren’t there for trouble with the Thibodauxs, only for information. But Po’s advice that it was better to approach carefully than react after they were blasted at with a sawed-off shotgun made sense. Not that she feared ambush: the camp felt deserted.

  ‘Hal Thibodaux,’ Po called out. ‘Jamie Thibodaux. If you can hear me, we’re not cops, and we’re not here for trouble.’

  The shack creaked, but it was Po settling his weight on the porch. He stepped up. The door was ajar. He ignored it, took a quick peek through the nearest window, glanced back at Tess and gently shook his head. He touched the door with his pistol barrel, and the door swung in on squeaky hinges.

  ‘Hello?’ he tried again.

  From the rear of the shack there was a corresponding creak, but Po wasn’t concerned. Pinky materialized from the gloom of the left corner of the room, having entered through the back door. Po waved Tess up on the porch. ‘They ain’t home.’

  Tess peered past him to where Pinky was moving slowly. ‘Nobody has been home for a few days,’ he said. ‘Woodstove’s cold. They’d have had a fire burning in this cold, them.’

  It was an assumption, but one Tess could accept. She could see her own breath. People used to semi-tropical warmth would definitely be chilled in this icy snap. She wondered if that was why a bonfire had been lit outside.

  Po went inside for a closer look with a flashlight. Tess stayed on the porch. She turned and again scanned the clearing for any clues to the Thibodauxs’ whereabouts.

  ‘The place is a wreck,’ Po declared.

  Tess watched him sweep the flashlight beam over a living space equipped only with the basic necessities. The few sticks of furniture were overturned and smaller belongings scattered on the floor. It reminded her so
mewhat of the state of Emilia’s room when they’d checked it out, but more so that of Ron Bowen’s house in Portland, where a disturbance had taken place and a man left dead. Underfoot the planks of the porch were sticky. She lifted her foot and felt the tug on the sole of her shoe.

  ‘Can I see that flashlight a minute?’

  Po returned to the stoop.

  ‘Shine it here,’ she said, stepping aside.

  Po held the beam steady on a dark patch on the faded wood.

  He glanced up at her knowingly.

  ‘Blood.’

  She nodded in agreement, but for confirmation held up the sole of her shoe, which he bathed with light. There was a red tint to the sticky mess adhering to it.

  ‘Blood,’ Tess repeated back to him. ‘But then we are in a hunting camp.’

  ‘Nobody would butcher an animal on their porch,’ Po told her. He nodded over at various trestles situated around the camp, where the carcasses of animals would be hung while the Thibodauxs flayed them before butchering them for their meat.

  He swept the flashlight outward and found another glistening patch of moisture nearby. Deep ruts in the dirt indicated that a truck had recently been parked next to it. Po walked past Tess, and approached, again settling the beam on his discovery. He pushed his pistol into his belt and crouched, as Tess moved alongside him. Behind them Pinky had also vacated the shack.

  ‘You smell that?’ Po asked.

  ‘Putrefaction.’

  ‘A few days old,’ Po suggested.

  ‘You don’t think …’ Tess didn’t want to say it.

  ‘Emilia’s blood?’ He went silent for a long beat. Then shook his head. ‘For all we know it’s animal blood. You see the tire tracks? The Thibodauxs could have off-loaded a deer or hog they shot, and the blood got spilled then. I’m betting we’d find animal blood all over this property if we started looking.’

  Pinky had progressed from the shack to join them. He peered down balefully at the wide stain in the dirt. ‘I know you don’t want to think about it, Nicolas, but it could be Emilia’s blood. She came here with her beau to buy weed. What if the deal turned sour and bad things happened? You ax me it’d explain why there’s been no sign of the girl or Jason Lombard since. Would explain why the Thibodauxs have lit out.’