by Sandra Brown
the witnesses were hysterical and hadn't actually seen what they had
claimed. That was one of Duvall's specialties. He'd mastered the
technique in hundreds of criminal cases. Witnesses who first swore to
one thing recanted their entire testimony after being cross-examined by
Pinkie Duvall.
"What about the mechanic?" the sheriff had asked."He says the priest
showed up here yesterday dressed in ordinary clothes and asked how he
could rig a hose to bust."
Pinkie drew the sheriff aside and pantomimed smoking a joint."Get my
drift?"
The sheriff did and acknowledged that the testimony of the mechanic, a
reputed pothead, might not be reliable. The woman who'd been paying for
her gas when the incident occurred was also adamant about what she'd
witnessed, but she, too, eventually wound up doubting her own eyes and
ears. The clerk, confused by the alternative possibilities that Pinkie
introduced, conceded that the priest had seemed more concerned about
getting Mrs. Duvall away from the scene than about harming her. As for
the rednecks who had tried to pursue them, they dispersed as soon as
they returned and saw the sheriff's car at the Crossroads. Those
remaining in the cafe didn't know nuthin' about nuthin' or nobody.
Pinkie Duvall was a living legend. The first thing the sheriff had said
to him was, "A real honor, Mr. Duvall. I've seen you on TV."
Having one's face on TV worked powerful voodoo on the minds of common
men.
He'd taken advantage of the sheriff's awe. The law officer's powers of
deductive reasoning and sense of duty were outshone by the radiance of
Pinkie Duvall's sun.
Pinkie had achieved the desired result to prevent an investigation and
all-out manhunt but the exercise had been time-consuming.
Consequently, his wife's abductors had a long head start. He turned
around to address Errol."Who were they?"
Errol swallowed hard and raised his meaty shoulders to his earlobes.
"They were priests."
"Don't tell me they were priests," Pinkie said, speaking in a voice so
soft it was sinister."Hasn't it penetrated that lump of shit that passes
for your brain that these two men weren't who they claimed to be?"
Seemingly impervious to the insult, Errol said, "All I know is, they
were the same two men who came to the house a few days ago."
"What do they look like?"
"Pr" He was about to say priests when he saw Pinkie's eyes narrow.
"Like I told you before, Mr. Duvall, Father Gregory is young and good
looking. Slender. Dark hair and eyes. Faggy. The guy never shuts up.
Father Kevin doesn't talk much, but he's the one in charge. No
question.uv "What's he like?"
"Smart and shifty. Right off, I didn't trust him. He's the one I caught
... uh ..."
"What?"
Errol nervously glanced at Bardo. He wet his lips. He rubbed his hands
up and down his thighs.
"He's the one you caught doing what?" Pinkie asked, enunciating each
word.
"I, uh, was on my way to the bathroom. The one there by the front door?
And I ... I caught Father Kevin on the stairs. He was coming down."
"He'd been upstairs? He was upstairs at my house and you didn't mention
it to me?"
Bardo whistled softly through his teeth.
"He said he used the bathroom up there cause the other one was out of
toilet paper. I checked. The thingamajig was empty."
"You're a regular detective," Bardo remarked with a snort."You and Nancy
Drew."
"Shut up," Duvall snapped."What does this son of a bitch look like?
Physically."
Errol described a man who was taller than average height, slim but
strong, regular features, no visible scars or distinguishing marks, no
facial hair.
"Eyes?"
"Hard to tell. He wears glasses."
"Hair?"
"Dark. Combed straight back."
The description fit a hundred men in Pinkie's wide circle of
acquaintances, friends, and enemies."Whoever he is, he's not going to
live long."
Nobody took something belonging to Pinkie Duvall and got away with it.
And this bastard had taken his most prized possession. If he touched her
... If he laid so much as a finger on her ... He relished the thought of
killing this unnamed man with his bare hands.
Bardo interrupted Pinkie's murderous fantasy."Doesn't make sense, two
priests, one of them a fag, kidnapping a woman. What do they want with
her?"
"It's not Remy they want. It's me."
Pinkie had no proof of that, nor any viable reason on which to base that
conclusion. But he knew it with certainty.
"Push, damn it."
"I am pushing."
Gregory was as useless at ditching a van in a bayou as he was at
everything else. Burke admonished him to try harder. The two men
attacked it again, putting all their strength into pushing the vehicle
across the spongy ground. Finally, it rolled forward several yards.
Burke thought they had it licked. But then it became stuck in the silt
on the bottom of the muddy creek and rested there only half submerged.
"Now what?"
"We leave it," Burke said curtly."They'll find it
eventually. But by that time, Duvall will know who has his wife."
Burke ignored Gregory's whining as they tramped through the swampy
terrain back to Dredd's pickup. He'd driven it to this remote spot,
Gregory following in the van. During the drive, Burke had kept a
watchful eye on the rearview mirror. Every time he went around a bend in
the road, he slowed down until the van's headlights were once again in
sight. He expected Gregory to crack at any moment. There was no way to
predict what the young man might do when he did.
Docilely enough, he climbed into the pickup for the drive back.
Burke followed a winding road, flanked on both sides by swamp. The knees
of cypress trees protruded above the surface of the water within a few
feet of the road. Overhead was a canopy of low-hanging tree branches
hosting Spanish moss. By day they resembled the lacedraped arms of a
belle caught in a curtsy. At night they took on the eerie appearance of
a zombie's skeletal arms trailing his torn shroud.
Occasionally his headlights picked up the glowing eyes of a nocturnal
creature that scurried out of their path or slithered back into the
swamp.
Burke drove safely but fast. He was worried about the patient.
Dredd had anesthetized her with one of his home-brewed potions concocted
of God only knew what. But whatever the ingredients, it had worked.
She'd slept through Dredd's careful removal of the shotgun pellets,
which had sprayed her back and shoulder on the left side.
He'd also removed a few splinters of glass.
The small wounds had bled profusely, but Dredd had cleansed them
thoroughly, then treated them with a salve that he claimed would heal
them and help considerably with her pain. Burke had hovered close
throughout the entire procedure, making Dredd even more irascible than
usual.
He had practically pushed Burke from t
he room, reminding him that if he
didn't ditch that van, all of southern Louisiana could be swarming
Dredd's Mercantile in the morning."Nothing hurts a business worse than
cop cars parked out front."
So Burke had left, grudgingly, but knowing that his friend was right
about the timely disposal of the van. Now that it had been taken care
of, he was eager to get back and check on Mrs. Duvall.
"You used me."
"What?" Gregory repeated his petulant statement. Burke replied, "You
accepted the terms of the deal, Gregory."
"When you were making that deal, you didn't tell me that the terms
involved guns and kidnapping."
"When we picked up Remy Duvall today, what did you think was going to
happen?"
"I thought you would get her to contribute a lot of money to this phony
charity. I thought that you would swindle Pinkie Duvall, pull a con,
like in The Sting. I never counted on you doing something like
kidnapping his wife."
"It's your fault that you're involved in a kidnapping. If you hadn't
flirted with that redneck, you'd have been dumped at the Crossroads.
That was my plan, to shake you and Errol there. But no, you went and got
romantic. So pout all you want, but don't expect any sympathy from me.
It's on account of your perversion that Mrs. Duvall got shot and that
all of us barely escaped with our lives."
"I got hurt, too," he sobbed.
"Too bad. If I hadn't been otherwise occupied, for what you did, I would
have throttled you myself. Now shut up, or I still might."
"You're mean, Basile. Mean."
Burke uttered a harsh laugh."Gregory, you haven't seen my mean side
yet."
The younger man hiccupped another sob, and Burke felt a twinge of pity.
Gregory was in over his head. What at first had seemed like a movie
script to him had quickly turned into a living nightmare. Burke planned
to have him safely transported back into the city tomorrow. If he kept a
low profile for a while, long enough for his face to heal, he would be
fine. No one knew his true identity. He would never assume the Father
Gregory role again. No one would suspect the third son of a prominent
family of taking part in a daring kidnap. Besidess Duvall would be after
him, not Gregory. Gregory would be fine.
He continued to sulk and mumble miserably until he fell asleep.
Burke shook him awake when they reached Dredd's place."Want Dredd to do
something for your face?"
"Are you serious? I wouldn't let that troll touch me." He glanced toward
the structure at the end of the pier and shuddered delicately "Suit
yourself," Burke said, getting out."There's a recliner in the front
room. I suggest you get some rest."
Gregory was slow getting down from the cab, Burke noticed. Despite his
refusal of help, he would ask Dredd to give Gregory something to relieve
his discomfort. He found their host still at Mrs. Duvall's bedside.
"How is she?"
"Sleeping like a baby."
Burke winced, the word reminding him of her confession and the baby she
lost. Dredd had turned off the electric light, but a single candle
flickered on the unpainted bureau. She was lying on her stomach, one
cheek turned up, the other buried in the pillow. Her hair had been
smoothed away from her face, positioned on the pillow just so. Dredd was
good at what he did.
The wounds had stopped bleeding. For all the pain they'd given her, they
were superficial. Burke wondered, though, if they would leave scars.
That would be a pity, because her skin was unblemished and looked almost
translucent. He thought back to the first night he'd seen her in the
gazebo. She didn't look any more real to him now than she had then.
"C'est une belle femme."
"Yes, she is."
"Does this vision have a name?"
Burke turned and looked into Dredd's wizened face."Mrs. Pinkie Duvall."
There was no outcry regarding Burke's sanity, no exclamation of
disbelief, no barrage of questions or demands for an explanation.
He merely stared long and hard at Burke, then nodded."There's a bottle
of whiskey in that cabinet. Help yourself." He headed for the door.
"The man out there is in pain."
Dredd waved, indicating he'd heard, but he didn't turn around.
Burke availed himself of Dredd's whiskey, grateful to see that it was a
brand name and not rotgut out of a jug. The only chair in the room had
rickety wooden legs and a rush seat, which had been snacked on by
rodents, but Burke pulled it near the bed and gingerly lowered himself
into it.
He hadn't eaten since breakfast almost twenty-four hours earlier.
He should forage in Dredd's kitchen for something, but he was so tired
he talked himself out of it. For a time, he just sat there, watching the
woman sleep, watching the gentle rise and fall of her back with each
breath and feeling like a creep because he was thinking about her
breasts mashed flat beneath her.
He'd undressed her with chivalry and reasonable detachment.
Reasonable detachment. That didn't mean he didn't notice. God, how could
he not? A guy has an opportunity to see the object of his fantasies
naked, he's gonna look. He's gonna check out her breasts and note that
the nipples are firm but very pale. Who could expect him not to notice
thigh-high stockings? Get real. And panties so sheer she might just as
well not have bothered?
He drank two shots of whiskey in quick succession. They hit his empty
stomach like fireballs.
Her right arm was lying along her side, her hand palm up. He saw the red
impressions the key ring had made in her skin when he squeezed her hand
around it. He couldn't resist reaching out and tracing the cruel marks
with his fingertip. Her fingers responded reflexively and curled in
toward her palm. Guiltily, he snatched his hand back.
The third shot went down without burning so badly.
His gaze moved back up to her face. Her eyelids were perfectly still.
Her lips were relaxed and slightly parted. Saliva had trickled from one
corner of her mouth, and it was tinged pink with blood from the cut on
her lip. He touched it as he had before with his little finger, then
left the moisture there on the tip of his finger to dry naturally.
He took another swig from the whiskey bottle.
Well, he'd done it. He had committed a felony, a federal offense.
He witfe was irrevocably changed. If he were to return Mrs. Duvall to
her husband tomorrow, Burke Basile couldn't resume he witfe where it had
left off. There was no turning back now. All escape hatches were nailed
shut.
He supposed he should feel more guilty, ashamed, and scared than he did
Maybe the whiskey was making him drunk. Maybe he was just too plain
stupid to fear the consequences that lay in store for him. But as he
fell asleep listening to Remy Duvall's soft breathing, he felt pretty
damn good.
What do you mean he's gone?"
After only a few hours of sleep sitting up in Dredd's uncomfortable
chair, Burke's neck was stiff, his back felt like an army had
marched
across it, the whiskey had left him with a dull headache, and daylight
had focused the cold light of reality on the fact that he had crossed
the line between enforcing the law and breaking it.
"Don't yell at me," Dredd snapped. He used a long fork to turn a piece
of meat frying in an iron skillet."He's your priest, not mine."
"He's not a priest."
"You don't say?"
Burke, massaging his temple, frowned at the other man's sarcasm.
"He wname is Gregory James and he's an unemployed actor. Among other
things."
"Whatever else he is," Dredd grumbled, "he's a goddamn thief. He snuck
off in my best pirogue."
Burke lowered his hand."Are you saying he left by way of the swamp?"
The idea of Gregory James poling through the hostile environment of the
swamp was unthinkable."The closest he'd ever come to the swamp.was last
night when we tried to sink the van. He'll never survive out there
alone."