by Rick Reed
Jack saw the resemblance. “Evie?”
The defiant look on her face faded.
“Your father is here,” Jack said. “We’ve been looking for you. My name is Jack Murphy, I’m your uncle’s partner.” But he didn’t know if she’d heard all of that because she had flung herself across the room and wrapped her arms around him, head buried in his chest.
The woman asked, “You’re a policeman?”
“Yeah. Who are you?”
“My name is Ubaid. I’m a prisoner as well. Please help us.”
Jack gently lifted Evie’s face up to his and cocked his head at the woman named Ubaid. “Is she telling the truth?”
“She’s protecting me,” Evie said and reburied her face in Jack’s chest.
“Liddell is at the end of the hall. We’ll find your father and get you out of here,” Jack said. “Do either of you know how many men are in the house?”
Ubaid said without hesitation, “About twenty men. And Papa and Marie. I think there are some policemen here as well. Not good policemen like you.”
Dusty, Troup, and Guidry. That made at least twenty-three armed, minus the two they had laid out. Twenty-one was still a formidable number to take on with two shotguns and a pistol.
Jack moved to the door with Evie glued to him and checked the narrow hallway. He spoke to Ubaid. “We need to get you out of here. My car is near the road over by where the creek comes in. Do you know where that is?”
“I will show you,” Ubaid said.
Evie detached herself and said, “I can’t leave. There are a bunch of little kids here. We can’t leave them.”
Chapter Thirty-three
Liddell came into the room, and Evie rushed to him, almost bowling the yeti over.
“Uncle It!” she said between sobs, and clung to him for dear life.
Liddell kissed the top of her head and wrapped one bearlike arm around her.
“Your father’s been looking for you,” Liddell said and brought on a fresh spate of tears. Liddell’s eyes had dampened as well.
“Uncle It?” Jack said.
Liddell turned his head toward Jack and mouthed, “Bite me.”
“Let’s get them and Landry out of here,” Jack said.
Jack turned to Liddell. “Evie said there are other children. We need to find them. And Landry. He can get them out of here, but we have unfinished business.”
Ubaid said, “I know where the other children are. It’s on the other side of the bunker.” She described the route they needed to take, and it sounded to Jack like it was the direction Landry had gone.
“Well, let’s go,” Jack said.
“I’ll go first,” Liddell said. “Evie, you stay right behind me. You hear me?”
Jack took the rear-guard position, and with the women between them they moved off down the hall toward the bunker.
Liddell stopped before they crossed the hallway that led to the exit. He peeked around the side and saw there were no ceiling lights on. The hall was empty in that direction. Landry had gone down the hall that was straight ahead of them now. That hall turned left at the end. There were lights on at the end.
Jack moved up beside Liddell. “I’ll go find Landry and send him after you. You should take Evie and her friend and get out of here.”
Liddell looked at Evie and Ubaid. “They’ll be safer with us. And I’m not leaving without my brother.”
Jack thought he’d say that. He said, “Well, let me go first.” Jack was nearing the end of the hall when Landry came around the corner in a rush and they almost collided.
“I found some kids,” Landry said, and four young children came from around the corner holding hands.
“Daddy!” Evie said and ran past Liddell and Jack.
“I’m right here, baby,” Landry said. He grabbed his daughter, wrapping his arms around her, kissing the top of her head and her cheek, and patting her back, all while muttering how he’d never let her get away from him, and at the same time scolding her for scaring him to death.
Jack counted heads. There were two boys and three girls, all preteens.
“Landry, we need to get out of here. Liddell and me will cover you at the entrance. You get these kids out of here. Can you do that?”
“Where you going to be?” Landry asked.
“We’ll be right behind you,” Jack lied.
“Right behind you,” Liddell said. “Don’t wait for us. Go. Get to the house. Better yet, go to the first state police barracks you find. Don’t trust any local cops. The Sheriff is in on this. Maybe some police too.”
Ubaid put a hand on Jack’s arm and said, “I know a better way. If you trust me, I know where a van is behind the mansion. Luke always leaves the keys in it. I’ve heard him tell other men that the keys are over the visor.”
Jack asked Landry, “Are you up for that?”
“Anybody get in our way is going to find out what this feels like,” Landry said, holding the Desert Eagle up. “Come on,” he said to Ubaid and the kids.
Jack turned Ubaid to face him. “Do you know Bobby Troup?”
Ubaid said without hesitation, “I don’t know who that is. But if he’s one of them, I would guess they are in the library. That’s where Papa will be. And Marie is here too. I saw her before I went to get Evie.”
She gave Jack directions, then, along with Landry, she led the group of kids back down the hallway Landry had come from.
After Landry’s troop of kids were out of sight, Jack and Liddell followed the directions Ubaid had given them. They passed the room where they had locked up the unconscious guards, and it was quiet and still locked. They made their way back to the wooden door with the electronic keypad lock. Ubaid had given them the code.
Jack punched in the code, and the lock made a whirring noise. Liddell covered the door with a shotgun while Jack pulled it open to reveal a lighted hallway. They entered and moved side by side with the shotguns at the ready until they reached the far end and a stairway. Ubaid told them the stairway would lead up to another door and then into the mansion. The door had the same lock with the same combination.
Jack went up first and punched in the code. The lock whirred. He pushed the door partway open and put his back to the wall to let Liddell cover the opening with a shotgun.
“Looks clear,” Liddell said, and Jack pushed the door completely open. Nothing. Not even a sound.
The concrete floors gave way to thick Oriental rugs as they entered the mansion. Along the walls were narrow tables and lamps and vases of flowers and other decorative frippery. Oil paintings depicting fox hunts hung in gilded frames on the walls. A stairway was just ahead.
Ubaid had told them to go up this stairway and at the top there would be two doors on the right that were restrooms, and a set of double doors straight ahead that entered the library. She’d said if anyone was still in the mansion this is the room where they would be.
They made their way to the stairs and up without being challenged. Jack could smell smoke from the fire. He wondered if the mansion was caught in the blaze and found himself hoping it was. These assholes needed burning down.
“I’ll take the left side,” Jack whispered.
Together they kicked where the doors came together. The wood splintered and the doors flew inward against the walls. Jack and Liddell rushed in the room, shotguns sweeping ahead of them. The walls were indeed lined with rows of books, and in the middle of the room was a large occupied conference table. Sitting on the left side was Sheriff Guidry, Dusty Parnell, and another woman. She looked familiar. On the other side sat the giant black man and a white male with a ruddy complexion in his late fifties.
Jack remembered where he had seen the woman. Hers was the face peering out of the doorway of the church earlier. She was Marie Laveau. Had to be.
The giant appeared calm, unconcerned, as did the man seated next to him. But Guidry and Dusty both exchanged a look and reached for their duty weapons.
Jack fired the shotgun blowing a hol
e in the middle of the conference table, and worked the slide to eject and chamber another round. “I wouldn’t if I were you.”
Liddell swept his shotgun from one to the next and said, “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said.
“What?” Jack asked without taking his eyes off Guidry or Dusty.
Liddell raised the shotgun and pointed the barrel at the woman sitting beside Dusty. He said, “That’s my ex-sister-in-law.”
“What?”
“That’s Sally. Evie’s mother.”
“Oh, this just keeps getting better,” Jack said and took a step toward Guidry “You two bozos,” Jack said to Guidry and Dusty. “It doesn’t feel so good being on this end of the barrel, does it? Undo your gun belts and drop them on the floor.”
No one moved and Jack leaned forward. “I will shoot you. Ask anyone.”
“I don’t think so,” Dusty said, and smiled at him. Neither she nor Guidry made a move.
“She’s as crazy as a shithouse rat,” Jack said and moved closer. “Dusty, at this distance your head will explode like a melon and get all over everyone.”
“Jack,” Liddell said.
“Cover me, Bigfoot. I’m going to do some cosmetic surgery on this bitch.”
“Jack!” Liddell said, his voice urging Jack to look at him.
“Hello, Detective Murphy,” a familiar voice said from behind him and to his right.
Without turning, Jack looked back and saw Kurtis Dempsey standing in the corner, pointing a shotgun at Liddell. He looked the other way, and Jon Dempsey was in that corner, with a shotgun trained on Jack.
“Surprised to see us?” Jon asked.
Kurtis was holding the pump shotgun loosely, as if surrender was the only choice on the table. Jack turned his head and winked at Liddell, and they swung around, Jack to his right, Liddell to the left, pulling the triggers almost simultaneously.
Jack saw Kurtis’s face disappear in a mist of blood, fragments of skull, and bits of tissue that peppered the wall behind his head. Kurtis was dead before his body knew it. He was still holding the shotgun when he crumpled to the ground. He didn’t have time to see if Jon was still a threat. Jack pumped the slide, chambering another round, and hoping to reacquire Dusty and Guidry—but he was too late.
He and Liddell would have been dead if not for the chaos at the table as five people jockeyed to stand. Guidry was fumbling for his gun and fell against Dusty, causing her shot to go wild. The giant and the unknown man had flipped the table up and over, striking Guidry and Dusty, who were trapped beneath it. Jack blew a hole in the conference table where he thought Guidry or Dusty might be and was rewarded with a pained grunt. He jacked another round into the chamber and yelled, “Throw your guns out.”
A gun came out from under the table, but it was pointing in Jack’s direction. He quickly took aim and blew the arm off at the elbow.
The giant and Sally had taken advantage of the firefight to flee out of a door hidden behind a bookcase. The unidentified man had fallen backward out of his chair and was pulling himself backward. His hand went under his jacket and Jack pumped the shotgun and pulled the trigger. Click.
The man smiled, and pulled a large semiautomatic from under his jacket. He got to his feet and aimed at Liddell. The man said, “Hello, Liddell.”
“Doyle?” Liddell said.
“You always were a pain in the ass. Good-bye, Blanchard.”
Liddell jerked when he heard the blast, thinking he’d been shot, but an amazing thing happened. A hole appeared in the middle of the man’s throat. Another blast and a perfectly round hole appeared in the man’s forehead. The man’s eyes were fixed on Liddell with a surprised look while he fell sideways, the gun falling from his hand.
Jack turned and saw a black suit, black wing tips, and a dark silk shirt. Bobby Troup held a .45 in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other. Liddell lowered the shotgun he was holding. He’d gotten one shot off when he killed Jon Dempsey and the shotgun jammed. The slide locked up, rendering it useless for anything other than a club.
He thought he was surprised when he saw Sally, but he was wrong. The man that had almost killed him was Doyle Doohan, ex-partner of Bobby Troup.
Chief Whiteside came up behind Troup, her pistol held in a low-ready position. She called back over her shoulder, “We need medics!” She looked around at the carnage and muttered, “And some body bags.”
Troup looked at the two detectives and said, “Happy to see me?”
Chapter Thirty-four
Jack and Liddell sat on the back bumper of a Fire Rescue truck while paramedics checked them out at Chief Whiteside’s insistence. Dusty and Guidry wouldn’t need medical attention. Dusty bled out from her wounds, and Guidry’s heart looked like a sieve. A sheriff’s deputy was near the entrance to the underground complex, identifying and supervising the removal of live prisoners and dead bodies. Troup was nowhere to be seen. Probably off nursing a fat lip after Liddell had coldcocked him.
Whiteside sat in her police car, door open, alternately talking on her radio and her cell phone. The mansion had sustained some fire damage, but not as much as the fire hoses had inflicted on the interior. The cane fields were another matter. The plantation looked like a five-hundred-pound MOAB—Mother of All Bombs—had flattened everything for a thousand feet. Some charred cane stalks stuck up here and there like a bad haircut in Hell.
Whiteside hooked the radio on the dash of her car and walked to the Fire Rescue truck. “I guess you guys have some questions. Good job, by the way,” she said.
Jack couldn’t believe the change that had come over her. She wasn’t the Jekyll and Hyde that she’d seemed before. This Anna Whiteside was professional, friendly, and complimentary. In the spirit of professionalism, Jack said, “First question. What the . . .” and this was more of a swearing session than a question.
Whiteside gave him a half serious look and said, “That would be my first question too. First, let me introduce myself.” She reached a hand out and shook with Jack and Liddell. “U.S. Immigration and Customs Special Agent Anna Whiteside.”
Jack gave her an incredulous look. “ICE?” Jack said. “I guess the Pope is around here somewhere, too. Maybe Troup is the President.”
Liddell chimed in, “The Pope is in the woods, pod’na. The Pope always shits in the woods.”
Whiteside laughed. “I guess I should tell you about the operation first, and then I’ll answer your questions.”
Operation? More like a circus. Even the clowns were here. “We’re all ears,” Jack said.
Jack listened to Whiteside’s explanation as he watched a seemingly endless parade of State Police officers bringing handcuffed men to waiting cargo vans and ambulances. He and Liddell had just been through a small war and somehow came out without a scratch. It was a first.
Whiteside’s phone rang, and she held a finger up and answered. She listened and said, “Okay. Hold them. I’ll be right there.”
“I know you hate him, but that was Detective Troup. He’s picked up Sally Blanchard, aka Marie Laveau, and her partner, Lincoln Sutter, otherwise known as Papa Legba. When they escaped, a couple of my agents followed them to a resort on Grand Isle and Troup picked them up. We’re in the process of rolling one of the human trafficking rings.”
“One?” Jack asked.
“This is only part of an international operation, Detective Murphy. By morning you two will be heroes.”
Liddell said, “We just want to get back to our lives. No offense.”
“None taken,” she said. “Troup has been working undercover for the FBI and ICE for almost five years now,” she said. “You should know that he was erroneously accused of the murder of a bookie a few years back. The one you and Elizabeth LeBoeuf worked on. When the grand jury didn’t charge him, he came to us. His ex-partner, Doyle Doohan, was the real killer. He was already in the white slavery market before he was fired by the Sheriff’s Department. He moved to New Orleans and hooked up with Lincoln and Sally. They did business
in New Orleans, and with Doohan’s connections, they came here. He and Sally were old friends. ICE got wind of it and contacted the Louisiana governor, who pulled some strings and got me appointed Chief. I hired Troup, and you know the rest.”
“Just so I’m clear, the plantation and the Voodoo was just a front for human trafficking?”
She answered with a smile.
“Who killed Bitty? Did Guidry?” Jack asked.
“I’ll answer that, but first let me tell you we have arrested Papa’s sidekick. A guy named Luke Perry. He is singing like a bird. He told us that two of Papa’s men caught Detective LeBoeuf, or Bitty as you call her, snooping around the bunker. They tortured and questioned her, but she escaped. She killed three of her captors before they caught her again. This time they shot her. Lincoln/Papa was angry that they’d killed her, and he killed two of his own guys. Perry says there are a dozen or more unmarked graves in the cemetery behind this place. Some of them for kids that were kidnapped and were killed for one reason or another.”
“And Barbie?” Jack asked.
“Barbie was working for Guidry and Dusty. She was behind him stealing your backup gun from your car and shooting Cotton. She drugged him and then hanged him. I had to pretend I thought it was a suicide. And I had to let you believe Troup was crooked. He tried his best to get you to leave, but lucky for us, you two are hardheaded.”
“So Barbie really did kill Cotton,” Liddell said.
A State Trooper interrupted to whisper something in Whiteside’s ear. She returned to Liddell’s question. “Yes. Barbie killed Cotton. He left your backup gun at the scene to frame you. His prints were not on it. Just yours. I lied and said we found Barbie’s fingerprints on the gun. You’ll get it back, don’t worry.”
Jack said, “Who are you really? I had you checked out, and my resource couldn’t find you under the name Anna Whiteside.”