“Yes,” he said.
“She’s not answering her phone. Police are headed to Josie’s.”
“I’m on my way.” He hesitated, then said, “Enza, we should talk later. When this is settled.”
“I know.” I felt a flutter behind my heart, like the flapping of a bird. I opened my mouth to say more, but no words would come out.
He hung up.
I punched the gas as we made the last turn to Josie’s house. Kate held on to the doorframe, but she didn’t ask about Jack.
When we pulled into the yard, I saw the front door was open. I ran for the house, and Kate yelled for me to stop, but I didn’t even slow down. I wasn’t thinking of danger, of Toph. Only of finding Lucille safe.
I burst into the house and called for Josie.
“In here,” she said from the back. Her voice sounded tiny and distant, like it came from the bottom of a well.
In the living room, she was kneeling on the floor next to Buck, holding a wet cloth over his forehead. He was stretched out on the carpet by the fireplace.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Toph already came here,” she said. “Must have come here before your house.”
“That little asshat got the drop on me,” Buck grumbled. He snatched the cloth from his face, and I saw the bruise forming on his forehead. There was a lot of blood, or so it seemed, like it always is with head wounds.
“Oh my God,” I said. “Did you call an ambulance?”
“The stubborn old goat wouldn’t let me,” she said. “But now that you’re here, you can hold him down while I call from the kitchen.”
“I don’t need an ambulance!” Buck said. “That’ll cost a damned fortune.”
I handed Josie my cell phone. She huffed as she dialed, then started giving her address to the operator and walked into the kitchen.
“What happened?” I asked him. “Do you remember?”
“Of course I do,” he said. “That little prick came in here looking for Lucille, raving like a bull hit with half a load of buckshot. I told him to get the hell out, and he shoved me against the mantle. Must have hit my head. I woke up on the damned floor. That little bastard took my cell phone too. I was trying to find my car keys so I could drive over to get Josie.”
He grunted as he tried to sit up.
“Don’t move,” I said. “Just rest until the medics get here.”
“I don’t need a medic, darlin’. I need my shotgun and my car keys.”
I sighed, knowing that was no exaggeration.
I heard Kate’s voice in the hallway and then Andre’s. He walked into the living room, and I turned in time to see his face fall. When he was in uniform, he generally refrained from showing emotion. But not this time.
When he saw Buck on the floor, a tiny crack in his façade revealed just how angry he was. He quickly composed himself and said, “Tell me everything, Mr. Gareau.” He pulled a small writing pad from his pocket and knelt down next to where Buck now lay half-reclined against the fireplace.
“First, help me into that chair,” Buck said. “I feel like a damned corpse lying on the floor.”
Josie stood in the doorway, still clutching the phone.
“Was Lucille here?” I asked her.
She shook her head, her eyes welling with tears. “She went out to get groceries, Buck said. But that was over an hour ago. She should have been back by now.” Her voice broke as she said, “What if he’s found her?”
“How long ago was he here?” Andre asked Buck.
Buck squinted as he looked at the clock over the sofa. “Over an hour. I was watching my five o’clock news.”
If that was true, he’d come here first. Then he’d tried my house, and the whole while Buck was here, alone and hurt, trying to find a way to get help.
Josie covered her face as she cried.
Andre marched past us, back to his car. I squeezed Kate’s shoulder as I walked out to the porch. I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and dialed Lucille’s number. Again it went to voicemail. I left her another message to call us, then sent her a text message. I stared at the screen, willing her to reply, to tell us where she was.
There was nothing.
From the porch, I heard Andre call dispatch, giving a description of Toph and Lucille, and again of Toph’s car. He called him dangerous, possibly armed, and I felt a chill ripple over my skin. An image replayed in my head: Lucille in our backyard, Toph locking his hand around her arm, twisting until she grimaced in pain. If he’d found her, she would be terrified, unable to call for the help she needed. Based on Andre’s actions, he thought Toph had already found her.
“They could be anywhere,” Josie said. Her eyes were red from the tears. She was trying hard not to cry, but her hands were shaking from the effort of holding the rest of herself together. I wanted to hug her and tell her to let it all go, but I knew she wouldn’t. Not with all of us there.
A siren howled in the distance. Within seconds, the ambulance was turning into the drive, gravel crunching beneath the tires.
“Oh hell,” Buck said.
“Shush now,” Josie said. “You have to get checked out. You have a knot on your head.”
He sighed, still grumbling, and winced when he touched his forehead.
I walked out onto the porch and saw that Andre was still talking into his radio. The medics climbed out of the ambulance, and I directed them inside. They jogged up the porch steps and into the house, the screen door banging behind them.
When Andre finished with the radio, I joined him by his car. He seemed bigger somehow, harder. “Kate told me what happened at your house.”
“I know where they might be,” I said.
“Where?” He pulled out his notepad, his eyes still studying mine.
“He wants to get back at me. Jack, too,” I said. A lump formed in my throat as I pictured Toph, desperate to get back at all of us he thought had wronged him. “He’s at the river house.”
Chapter 20
Several times now, I’d pictured Toph sulking in his jail cell the night he was arrested. It was easy to imagine him slouching on a cot, staring at a gray cement wall, bored now that he was separated from all of his electronic devices. It had not occurred to me, however, that he might take that time to devise a way to hurt Jack. And me.
There are a lot of ways I could get him back for that, he’d said.
Andre nodded as I told him everything, but he took his time mulling it over. I expected him to leap into commando mode, driving over to the house with blue lights flashing, but he wrote some notes on his pad and leaned against the door of his car.
“I know that’s where he went,” I insisted. I wanted to shake Andre, to scream at him to hurry up and get his ass over there, but I stomped those feelings down and pretended to be as calm as he was. Nobody listens to a woman they see as hysterical.
He opened the car door and slid into the seat, calling dispatch again on the radio. A shiver rolled over my skin as he asked to have a couple of uniforms go by our house on the canal. He gave the address and said they should proceed with caution.
I expected him to slam the door and speed down the drive, but he climbed out and said, “Thanks, Enza. We’ll know something soon.”
“Aren’t you going over there?” I asked.
“There’s a unit out already that’s closer,” he said, closing the door. “I need to ask Buck a couple more questions.”
I opened my mouth to say more, and he dropped his big hand on my shoulder. It felt like it weighed ten pounds.
“Hey,” he said. “Try to relax. The unit will call in as soon as they get there. Wherever he is, we’ll get him.”
“Let’s just go over now,” I said.
“Whoa,” he said. “Not ‘let’s.’ Not ‘us.’ You’re staying here.” He raised an eyebrow and fixed his eyes on me.
I crossed my arms over my chest.
“Enza,” he said, his voice lower. “You cannot interfere with an investigation. D
o not put yourself in the middle of this.”
“I’m already in the middle of this!”
He reached for my elbow, steering me toward the porch. “You know what I mean. Come inside.”
Jack would be there any minute. I wanted to run to my car and drive away as fast as I could, but Andre would no doubt lock his arms around me and drag me into the house.
I gritted my teeth as I followed him. His grip was gentle, but he squeezed with enough pressure to let me know he was serious. I checked my phone for a message from Lucille, but there was nothing. He let me go as we walked through the back door and into the kitchen. The steady voices of the paramedics mingled with Josie’s deep voice and Kate’s high-pitched one. There was the staccato of Buck’s protests and the smooth monotone Andre saved for official questions. I listened from inside the doorway, thinking again of Lucille, how she’d stood in this very kitchen and told me the truth about Toph. I remembered her fright, and her shame, the way it had made her voice seem heavy. I thought of her in tears on Christmas Day, stripped bare. I shuddered, thinking of the look on Toph’s face as he stood in my hallway and sneered as he asked about Jack.
There are a lot of ways I could get him back for that.
I slid my hand along my hip and felt the outline of car keys in my pocket. As the voices in the living room overlapped once more, I walked quickly through the kitchen on the balls of my feet, opening the screen door as quietly as I could. I left the door cracked open so there would be no click of the lock and padded down the steps. Once in the grass, I ran until I reached the Jeep, flinging myself inside, fumbling to turn the key in the ignition. I glanced in the rearview as I tore down the driveway, expecting to see Andre running after me, but there was no one. It wouldn’t take them long to realize I was gone, and Andre would be furious.
But at least that meant he’d get over there faster.
~~~~
I drove way too fast, but I didn’t care. The Jeep screeched each time I took a turn, hugging the double yellow line to minimize the effect of the curves. It was nearing dusk now, and I hated the idea of being out at that house in the dark, but I couldn’t wait any longer. I knew Toph had Lucille out there, but I hadn’t the slightest idea what I would do when I got there. My head rattled with a barrage of worst-case scenarios that involved at least one of us unconscious, beaten and bruised, or worse.
Maybe the other officers would beat me there, and all of this would be moot.
I only hoped I’d get there as Toph was being shoved into a police cruiser, and that I’d just be the first family member on the scene. If, that is, Jack might still consider me family.
I turned onto the last road toward the house and slowed as I neared the driveway. Our closest neighbor was a couple hundred yards away, on the other side of a grove. If there had been any noise in the house, it was likely no one would have heard it. People kept to themselves out here, and most lots had at least a couple of acres of land. In the beginning that had endeared me to this area, but now I wished at least one house was closer.
When I came around the last curve, I saw the police car parked in the drive, its lights still flashing. I let out a deep breath and pulled over to the edge of the lawn. I walked past the cruiser and glanced in the back windows. There was no one inside.
The front door was open. I paused for a moment, thinking of calling out or ringing the bell—should I walk in like this, unannounced?—but the thought disappeared when I stepped inside and felt my chest clench. On the far side of the living room a pair of boots extended from the doorway to the kitchen. Someone was lying on the floor.
I rushed over and saw it was not Lucille. It was a police officer—no doubt from the unit Andre called. He was young with dark hair, no one I recognized. I leaned closer, extending two fingers to check his pulse, but a scream from outside stopped me. When it came again, I ran toward the back door.
It was open too.
I slipped outside and heard another scream, almost certainly Lucille. The sun had dipped below the tree line, casting the yard in eerie dim light. I could see the outline of two people at the edge of the yard, near the canal.
Toph and Lucille. It had to be.
One thought entered my mind: The officer in the hallway would have had a gun. I moved to go back and check, but then saw Toph lunge at Lucille.
He was grappling with her, trying to wrestle her to the ground. As I approached, I saw his hands were locked around her throat.
“Hey!” I yelled. “Let her go!”
He paid me no attention. Their silhouettes moved closer to the water.
As I ran toward them, I thought of hammers, knives, all the objects I might have snatched from the house to defend myself. I cursed, thinking I had nothing but a few seconds to take him by surprise. His back was to me now, and he stayed that way until I was just a few yards from him. He turned at the sound of my running, and his mouth opened as he realized I wasn’t slowing down. I crashed against him with enough force to pop something in my shoulder where it struck him. He grunted in surprise as he rolled to the ground, taking Lucille with him.
She gasped as he let her go and scrambled to get away from him. Toph stumbled to his feet and whirled around to face me. His eyes were nearly black in the dim light. “You!” he growled, wiping his hand over his lips. “You don’t know when to stay the hell away, do you?”
“Get away from her,” I said. I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and dialed 911. He lunged then, closing the space between us and knocking me to the ground. The phone landed in the grass with a thud. Lucille shrieked, but I could barely hear her over the roar that came out of Toph as his hands squeezed my throat. I punched at his face and tried to kick, but what little contact I made wasn’t enough to even slow him down.
“Why did you come here?” he yelled at me. “I didn’t want any of this! Why couldn’t you just leave us alone?”
His weight shifted, and he howled as Lucille hit him with something from behind. He rushed her, and she swung it again—I could see now it was a brick—but he grabbed her arm and twisted it until the brick fell from her hand. Everything was dark now, the edges of my vision fuzzy. I shook my head, and my vision cleared enough to see Toph grappling with Lucille again, moving toward the water. He was yelling at her, pleading with her to stay with him as she struggled to get free from his grip. He leaned away from her for a split second, and I got back on my feet.
I knew what was coming but couldn’t get there fast enough. He slapped her, hard, and she went down, tumbling backwards in the grass. I reached in my pocket for my car keys, thinking I’d use them like claws, the way we were always taught to carry them through parking garages—but they weren’t there.
I’d left them in the Jeep so we could get away faster.
Before I realized what was happening, Lucille was screaming Toph’s name again, and he was tackling me, one hand pulling my hair as he dragged me down the bank. I fought to wriggle out of his grasp, punching him in the ribs, the kidneys, but my punches barely fazed him. There was the splashing of water, the stench of swamp mud, the pain at my scalp as he grabbed a handful of my hair and yanked. Then there was only cold and darkness.
I gasped when my head broke the surface. The water was colder than I’d ever felt. It smelled like fish and algae and decay. I fought to keep my head above the surface as Toph shoved his weight against me, trying to hold me under. He was on his knees, pinning me against the bottom. The water was almost up to his waist, not even two feet deep, but it was enough. I could barely make out his features in the fading light, but I could plainly see the way his lip curled with a hatred so sinister it made my stomach twist into a knot. All around me there was tightness, there was nowhere to move. I was sinking into the mud below, my feet already stuck. Toph’s legs were tight around my waist, holding me like a vise as his hands grappled with the collar of my jacket, dunking me in the water over and over as he yelled.
My body felt numb, stinging from the cold water. I grabbed at his shoulde
rs, my nails digging into whatever flesh they could find, but still he yelled, cursing me for sending him to jail, for getting in his way, for trying to turn Lucille against him. His words came like hailstones, hard and scattered, hardly making sense in my brain as my head was submerged again and I tried to hold my breath and determine when I was above the water and when I was not.
I miscalculated and choked on a mouthful of water. It stung my throat, and I coughed, feeling my whole chest clench. He was stronger than I’d assumed, and as I struggled to get control of my body again, I felt sick with the thought that this was how I was going to die.
It was stupid to come out here alone. Of course I knew that, but I thought it again as I heard the water splashing around us. But I’d failed Lucille once already, and I couldn’t do it again. I couldn’t do nothing, as I had before.
When Toph pulled me out of the water again, his face was inches from mine. He’d stopped yelling, and that was more frightening than anything else.
Now he was quiet, tightening his hands around my throat. From his cold stare, I knew that the next time he pushed my head beneath the surface, he wouldn’t pull it up again. My hands scratched at his face again, and he tried to dodge them like a boxer. When I caught one of his ears and squeezed, he yelped, and his grip loosened for a second, long enough for me to take a deeper breath. I clawed at his face and neck, trying to make him move backwards, even if it was inch by inch. His hands tightened again, and there was more yelling—from him? From Lucille? I choked again and felt my throat closing, and then there was a sound like a gunshot and my head fell back into the water.
The cold swallowed me then. In the darkness something moved, pale and shimmering like a fish. It was my mother’s face, her hair billowing out around her like a mermaid’s. Her eyes were sad, and her lips moved upwards in a melancholy smile as she shook her head slowly from left to right, as if to say, Not here, not this way.
~~~~
The pressure was gone. I came up gasping and flailing, struggling to get to my knees in the muddy bottom of the canal. A few feet away, Toph was hunched over on his knees, howling.
Bayou, Whispers from the Past: A Novel Page 22