by DJ Donaldson
Teddy waved his knife at his helper. “Buddy, there’s a piece of Visquine in the shed over there. Get it for me, will you?”
When Buddy returned with the clear plastic, Teddy folded it double and draped it across the animal’s exposed organs, letting it lap onto the road on each side. He instructed Buddy to stand on one of the flaps and stationed Bubba on the other. Then he plunged his knife through the plastic and into the stomach.
There was a muffled explosion that lifted the plastic cover so violently it almost jerked Bubba off his feet. The force of it splattered the underside of the plastic with a foamy green scum. When Teddy pulled the cover aside, the air was filled with a stench worse than the smell of any floater that Broussard had ever encountered. The sudden release of pressure had ripped the stomach in both directions from Teddy’s initial incision and a putrescent green ooze now issued slowly from the gash. Eyes watering, Teddy put his knife in the split and raked it toward the tail. His eyes were tearing so badly that the others saw the partially digested hand before he did.
Mouth full of brass, Buddy turned away, his own stomach churning at the sight. Now Teddy saw it. He wiped his eyes and looked closer. The hand was wearing a ring he recognized. “It’s Carl,” Teddy croaked.
CHAPTER 19
“This is all my fault,” Teddy moaned. “I should have fired him months ago. Then this would have—”
“I have a hunch this might have happened whether you had fired him or not,” Broussard said. “May I?” He held his hand out for the knife and Teddy gave it to him. With it, Broussard opened a long flap in the stomach and used its tip to prowl through the contents while the others hung back. Finally, he stood up and returned the knife. “Unless Carl Fitch had two right hands,” he said, “we’ve also found Homer Benoit. And I’d guess the rest of him and some more of Fitch, too, is in those other two dead gators. Likely, it was the embalmin’ fluid that killed ’em.”
“Carl must have been teasing them with pieces of—” Teddy stopped, apparently unable to finish his gruesome thought. “But why? What did he have to gain by getting rid of Benoit’s body?”
Broussard looked at Teddy through eyes that burned with the thrill of the chase. “All depends.”
“On what?”
“On a phone call I need to make. Is there…”
“Up in the office.”
While Teddy watched from the doorway with more than casual interest, Broussard jabbed at the telephone buttons and gave the operator his calling card number. A short wait, then he said, “Lieutenant Gatlin, please.” He looked at the identification sticker on the phone, recited the number of the alligator farm, and hung up.
“He’ll call back. Usually only takes a few minutes.”
Teddy nodded, needing a whole lot more than that for an explanation.
*
Not wanting the Duhons to see her so filthy, Kit parked behind the house and looked for the entrance to the rear stairwell that opened onto the second floor near her bedroom. She found it off a dark passage in a primitive attached structure that probably served as a kitchen back when the cooking had been done by slaves. Here, the stairwell was crudely constructed and merely painted. A dozen or so steps up, there was a heavy door that led to the main house. The door opened onto a finished landing with one set of steps leading up and another down.
To keep from getting the stairwell carpeting dirty, Kit removed her muddy shoes and started up the stairs that almost certainly led to the second-floor gallery. Then she paused, her attention taken by a small rectangular window that looked down on the kitchen, where she saw Olivia stacking finger sandwiches on a plate. Nearby, the butler, Martin, was puttering around a wicker picnic basket. The purpose for such an oddly placed window wasn’t apparent. But since it could be opened like a transom, Kit supposed it had been put in long ago so that the lady of the house could communicate with the help without going all the way downstairs. Realizing that this was not furthering her wish to rejoin Broussard and Bubba, Kit pulled herself away from the window and continued up the stairs.
Even if time hadn’t been a factor, she would have chosen the shower rather than the elegant ivory claw-foot tub with gold faucets that sat regally in the center of her bathroom. After all, weren’t tub rings proof that you can’t get really clean from a bath?
It wasn’t until she emerged from the shower that she realized there were no towels, none on the towel rack and none in any of the drawers in the built-in vanity. Now what?
Maybe in the bedroom.
She tiptoed across the plush carpet to the chest of drawers beside the door to the hall and checked there. No luck. Turning, she saw her unclothed reflection in the huge mirror over the marble fireplace mantel and modestly covered as much of herself as she could with her hands. She considered using her blouse as a towel, but rejected that idea when she remembered that it was pure acrylic, a fact that would make it about as useful as waxed paper.
The trunk at the foot of the bed, perhaps there were towels there. She went to the trunk and lifted the lid. Inside, she found a crocheted bedspread, under that, a sweater, a tablecloth, a couple of thin blankets, and that was all… except for… On the bottom of the trunk was a photograph… a picture of…
She picked up the snapshot and studied the face of the subject, a face that she had seen before, the same yet not the same. She turned the picture over and saw something that stirred the thick gumbo of facts simmering in her head.
She put the picture back where she’d found it and patted herself as dry as she could with the bedspread from the trunk. Though still annoyingly moist, she dressed quickly and went to the window so she could see to hook the tiny clasp on the band of her wristwatch. As she finished, she saw Martin heading for the boat dock, the wicker picnic basket in one hand, a rifle in the other. While she watched, he placed the rifle and the basket in one of the pirogues tied up to the dock and got in. He began to paddle toward a gap in the trees on the opposite side of the bayou.
The simmering gumbo began to boil.
She rushed down the front stairs and ran to the boat dock, but Martin had already disappeared. Having no thought beyond the moment, she stepped into the remaining pirogue and nearly pitched into the water as it tilted crazily under her weight. With the boat jiggling ominously from side to side, she somehow managed to sit down without creating a disaster. When she reached for the rope that tied the boat to the dock, her heart flew into her throat for the second time as the boat tipped wildly, nearly sinking it. This wasn’t transportation. It was a damn carnival ride.
Careful to keep her center of gravity inside the boat, she pulled the pirogue tight against the dock and slipped the mooring rope off its cleat. Now, how do you make this thing go?
She picked up the worn gray paddle in the bottom of the boat and fiddled with it until the grip felt right. Then she took a swipe at the water with it. This also nearly sank the boat. Don’t lean out! she reminded herself sternly. It quickly became obvious that you had to alternate strokes from side to side if you wanted to do anything but go in a circle. Soon she was heading across the bayou, not in a direct course, but tacking, like a sailboat going against the wind.
When she entered the cut, she saw two channels on the other side, one to her right and one to her left. Both channels curved sharply forty or fifty yards into them, so she couldn’t see what lay ahead. Both were also choked with water hyacinths except for a narrow trail of recently disturbed plants running down the middle of the one on her left, the one that led into Leper’s Woods.
She hesitated, picturing sackcloth-draped figures moving silently through the woods, their crutches guided by fingerless hands, spreading the leprosy bacillus on the trees, on the leaves. She saw them getting bitten by mosquitoes that would suck up the bacillus along with the lepers’ blood and pass it to anything they bit, as well as giving it to the next generation of mosquitoes, which would give it to the next and the next, so that years after the lepers moved on, the place would still be dangerous.
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Ouch. Heart leaping, Kit slapped at a biting sensation on the nape of her neck. Her fingers pulled back at what they felt; not a mosquito, something smooth and repulsive, like a beetle, but not a beetle… flatter… something feeding.
Lips curled with loathing, she sent her nails after it, picked at the object until it came free. She brought it around to see what it was and sighed with relief. Nothing but a harmless fish scale—from the house where they’d spoken to the boy. She told herself to calm down. There was no danger of leprosy. Hadn’t Broussard himself said so? And wasn’t he always right? As an answer, she sent the pirogue toward the faint path through the hyacinths.
Keeping the boat on a straight course required such concentration that she ceased to notice the pregnant silence in the air, which, if anything, had deepened in the hours since she and Broussard had first discussed it. The gray sky seemed to hang just above the treetops, capping the swamp like the lid on a pressure cooker, holding the heat from its decaying vegetation close to the earth.
The hyacinths made it hard to find the water with her paddle and they pressed against the side of the boat, slowing her progress, sapping her strength. Sweat bled through the knees of her slacks, making Rorschach patterns that reminded her she had only one more change of clothes. Her blouse clung to her back and she could feel the wet grip of her panties on her thighs.
Still she kept on, unaware of the cold eyes that followed her progress, oblivious to the seven-millibar drop in barometric pressure that had occurred between 2:00 and 3:00 A.M. that morning.
After fighting the hyacinths for another thirty yards, she rounded the bend that had obscured her view. Her spirits rose. For up ahead, pulled onto the bank, was the other pirogue.
Another five minutes of hard work and she was there, her hands throbbing from the pressure of the paddle. She gave a final stroke and put the paddle in her lap while the bow of the pirogue nosed toward shore. Her fingers had become so accustomed to the paddle they were reluctant to give it up.
The pirogue landed with a soft thud and Kit carefully worked her way to the bow and stepped onto spongy moss-covered earth. She hadn’t known what to expect back here, but what she saw was a distinct surprise. Ten yards away, set into the dense foliage that ran beside the bayou, was an old cemetery surrounded by a crumbling iron fence. The only path led directly into it. So where was Martin?
Reluctant to move, she paused and listened. But there was nothing to hear. Suddenly, she felt eyes on her back. She turned quickly and scanned the marshy woods on both sides of the channel that intersected the bayou on the opposite bank. Nothing there. Your imagination, she thought, turning back to the path. Across the bayou, cold, unblinking eyes patiently watched her… waiting.
She did not want to go into the cemetery, but what was she to do, go back having learned nothing—after all that work? Cautiously, she moved toward the path, her ears straining for sounds that would help her judge the situation.
The hinges on the cemetery gate had rusted through and someone had lifted the gate out of the way and leaned it against the section of fence to the right of the entrance, a long time ago, judging from the thick woody vine that had wrapped around its bars. There were about a dozen crypts in the small plot, all of them covered with vines and moss. The inscriptions were largely illegible, either blanketed by moss or dissolved away by many decades of rain. Even so, as Kit followed the well-worn path that wound between the crypts, she could make out an occasional name. And it was always the same: Villery.
Villery.
The name was like a small hand tugging at her clothing, but she was too preoccupied with finding the butler to pay attention.
The path led to a crypt that resembled a Greek temple, with stone columns down each side and sitting up on a four-tiered platform, so that the first three layers formed steps that surrounded the crypt on all sides. And that’s where the path ended.
Puzzled, Kit waded through the tall grass and went around to the right side of the crypt, thinking she might pick up the path there. But all she saw was more grass. At the rear of the cemetery, the back fence was attached directly to the side of the crypt. On the other side of the fence, running parallel to it for as far as she could see, was a dense stand of bamboo that was taller even than the crypt roof. The butler had clearly not gone this way.
She retraced her steps and looked on the other side of the crypt: same scene. So where the devil was he? As she pondered the question, she became aware of a low humming sound… mechanical, like… an air conditioner. It seemed to be coming from behind the crypt.
She went up the crypt steps and studied the huge block of stone that sealed the entrance. Halfway down the left edge of the block was a stone lion’s head with its mouth open. And in its mouth she saw… a keyhole. Hoping that those lepers Broussard had mentioned hadn’t had their rotten fingers on it, Kit wrapped her hands around the lion’s head and threw her weight onto her heels. The stone swung open as easily as her own front door. Now she knew where Martin had gone, for the crypt, which was empty and had no back wall, led to a path through the bamboo.
With absolutely no idea of what she would say if she should suddenly meet Martin coming the other way, she moved into the crypt, leaving the door standing open in case she might want to make a quick exit.
The bamboo was very tall and the path through it looked gloomy and dark. Too stubborn to turn back, she went down the stone steps of the crypt and stepped onto the path. Entering the bamboo was like passing into another world, a dark place where the rules that governed events in the light might not apply. She proceeded cautiously, comforted on the one hand by the fact that the bamboo was so dense she was vulnerable from only two directions. But this also meant she could easily be trapped if someone closed and locked the crypt door. About ten feet in, the path curved to the right, then back to the left. Suddenly, she was in a clearing.
At first, she was confused by what she saw: something large and green with a dark cleft in it… a house, painted to blend with the foliage and covered with leafy vines. The cleft was a door and on the ground in front of the door…
She rushed to the butler’s body and recoiled in horror, because he had no head, at least nothing that resembled one. Where his head should have been, there was only hair and bloody pulp. And his throat—it was gaping open so that he looked like some gilled creature that had been pulled from the swamp and left to die.
Kit’s head spun, and she began to gasp for air, the sheer horror of the scene driving the breath from her body. She heard herself grunting like an animal but couldn’t stop. She forced her eyes from the carnage and her lungs pulled at the hot swamp air, which suddenly seemed devoid of oxygen.
Gradually, she got hold of herself. Her breathing slowed and her head began to clear. The pounding in her skull faded. But she was still grunting.
Grunting.
No, not her. Behind her.
She whirled around and the sweat running down her back turned to ice. Standing in the black doorway was a hulking figure wearing a tan jumpsuit splattered with blood. He was bent over in a simian stance, a heavy table leg clutched in one hand. The face was the same as in the photograph from the trunk in her room, but changed, distorted from human to inhuman, the brow beetled, the jaw jutting, eyes sunken and burning with purpose. Spittle dribbled from the corner of its mouth, mixing with the butler’s blood.
Kit ran, ran like she’d never run before. She plunged into the gloomy path through the bamboo. The boat… Must get to the boat…
She could hear him behind her, grunting. The fear inside her pressed against her chest, threatening to rip her apart. How close was he? She didn’t dare look. It sounded as though he could reach out and grab her.
Something pulled at the neck of her shirt, but she was too frightened to scream. Then she was free of it. The second turn in the path. Now she could see the crypt. Would the door be locked?
The grunting behind her was practically in her ear. She felt a breeze blow past the back o
f her head and heard the club crash into the bamboo beside the path as he swung wildly at her. Her toe missed the first step to the crypt and she nearly went to her knees, but she caught herself with her hands. As she barreled through the crypt, the stone walls threw her own ragged breathing back in her face.
Out in the open. Down the steps. Moving too slowly… Too slowly…. Onto the path.
Again she felt a breeze lift her hair, followed by the sound of wood striking stone. The gate… nearly there. The boat…
NO!
Her boat was floating several lengths from shore. Without hesitation, she ran to the butler’s boat and, in one motion, gripped the sides and pushed with all her remaining strength. The boat slid a short distance into the water and then stopped, having reached the end of its rope, which had been looped around a metal stake driven into the ground. Unable to check her momentum, Kit’s hands slid along the boat’s gunnels, picking up splinters that knifed into her skin. She lost her balance and slammed onto the seat midway between the bow and the stern, knocking all the air out of her. She slid across the seat and crashed into the bottom of the boat, hitting her head on the rear seat support.
A bright light mushroomed behind her eyes and broke into a multicolored shower of sparks that glowed brightly and then died, to be replaced by a shrill voice screaming for oxygen. She rolled onto her back and sucked air through her mouth. Coming off the peak of pain and need, she plunged again into the depths of stark horror. Standing to her left was the lycanthrope, the club poised over his head.
The club began its descent. She covered her face with her hands. The boat was rocked by the blow and she heard the sound of splintering wood as a fiery finger slashed across her forehead.
Blood.
She felt it run, wet and warm, into her ear.