The flames moved slowly until they located traces of spilled kerosene on her person. As her hair caught fire, instinct commanded her body to stop, drop, and roll. She writhed around on the ground until the flames were extinguished. Then she crawled back toward her burning home with one thought on her mind.
I have to save Karen.
* * * * *
Randy’s elation became consternation as he watched Lincoln fall to his death.
Something was wrong. Things were different.
He looked around wildly.
Melinda isn’t dead, he thought.
Through the window, Randy saw Melinda Weeps burst into reddish-orange flames. But that wasn’t all that had gone wrong. Lincoln’s rope had burned through.
I will finish him myself.
The explosion shook Randy to his knees. What the fuck had exploded? From this vantage, he watched the roof of his beautiful home start to cave in, chased to the ground by the relentless rain. He crawled to the banister and watched Lincoln’s long fall to the first floor as his noose snapped. Randy got to his feet and hurried down the quivering spiral staircase to where Lincoln lay defenseless.
* * * * *
Brandon got Karen just outside the front door before the first explosion. But he’d lost his balance and dropped her as the force from the blast sent them flying.
Karen felt Melinda’s presence dissipate as soon as she hit the ground. She felt lighter and freer until Kristopher invaded her mental space.
“I’m back,” Kristopher spoke inside her mind.
“What’s happening, Kristopher?” Karen yelled as the roof in the great room crumbled.
“You did it. Isaac and Melinda are gone. It’s almost over.”
It didn’t feel anywhere close to being over. As the shockwave of the first explosion dispersed, three more ripped through the house. At least the bombs Brandon had placed were working.
“It’s time to finish this,” Kristopher said, taking control of her mind.
Chapter Eighty-Three
Lincoln awoke to large chunks of plaster falling from the ceiling in a torrent. He was lying in several inches of water that was rising steadily. His handcuffs had broken in the fall and he was able to rub his sore wrists. Remembering the noose, he reached for his throat. Then he thought of Isaac.
We broke the cycle. Somehow, we did it.
A blast of heat brought him back to reality. The mansion was on fire. He had to get out before it was too late.
What about Brandon? Coral? Karen?
Lincoln struggled to sit up and was greeted by a searing ache in his lower back. He didn’t know if he could walk, but he had to get up or die trying.
Sharp metal sliced into his shoulder. Lincoln screamed.
“Thought you were rid of me, Boy?” Randy Lafitte said from behind him.
Randy swung the blade again, just narrowly missing Lincoln’s torso. Another chunk of ceiling crashed down next to Randy, knocking him off balance.
As adrenaline coursed through his veins, Lincoln lunged at Randy, slamming him into the staircase. Randy lost his grip on the knife and Lincoln could tell his adversary was weakening.
A giant funnel of wind was headed directly toward the house. Another explosion divided the men and threw Lincoln onto his back. The floor rumbled beneath them as the tornado rushed onshore and tore through the house. The bay windows buckled and then imploded, sending thousands of glass shards leaping at him. The roof flexed downward as if something heavy had landed on it, and then rippled upward. Lincoln stared into the center of hell as rain and glass whipped him.
As the roof went, the chandelier broke free and nearly crushed him. Randy was not so lucky. He’d recovered the knife, only to be stopped in his tracks by the falling fixture. Randy grunted and went silent.
Thankfully, the knife was just out of Randy’s reach. The collapse had also knocked off his mask. Amazingly, not only was Randy still alive, his hand was floundering for his weapon.
Lincoln made his way back to Randy, and the knife. He was about to pick it up and finish him off when a thought gave him pause.
“Who would want to kill their own father?”
“Aren’t you trying to do the same thing?”
Was he? Lincoln had never hesitated to kill in the past. In the hood and in prison, that type of hesitation got you killed. He wasn’t in prison anymore though.
The patio door blew open and the lake poured in, interrupting these thoughts. Before he could reconsider, Lincoln cleared the chandelier off Randy, pulled him to his feet and carried him to the front door before the water dragged them both to their deaths. He got Randy outside and closed the door on the chaos, only to see the tree where Isaac had died completely engulfed in flames.
He dropped Randy in a heap on the front steps. He couldn’t believe what was happening right before his eyes.
The tree was burning and surrounded by an ominous red glow. There was a square opening in the trunk. It appeared to be a doorway. As he watched, Karen Lafitte ran across the yard and into the mysterious portal while Brandon held her hysterical mother back.
“Karen!” Coral screamed. “What are you doing? You’ll die in there!”
A moment later, Karen was swallowed whole by the void. It might have only been his imagination, but as she entered, Lincoln swore he heard the tree howl in agony. Then the rain, raging wind, and fire shut off like someone threw a switch. Seconds later, Kris Lafitte stepped out of the hole and walked toward Lincoln.
Holy shit!
Lincoln’s mouth gaped as his best friend and brother approached. He didn’t know how to react. Coral had the right idea. She fainted away in Brandon’s arms.
“Kris?” he stammered. “Is that really you?”
“Sure is,” Kris replied, smiling. “As real as I get these days anyway.”
Lincoln moved to hug him and hesitated.
“Go ahead, Link. I’m real enough for that.”
They embraced. Lincoln kept repeating, “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay, Link. I’m sorry, too. Sorry you got dragged into the craziness of this family.”
“I was a little more involved than that,” Lincoln admitted.
“Not really,” Kris replied. “Kidnapping Karen wasn’t your idea. You weren’t even looking to get out of prison until you met Amir and Panama X.”
“You know about them?”
“Of course. How do you think I got here? It was their belief that brought me back.”
Lincoln hadn’t been clued in on that part of the plan. Had he known, he never would have agreed.
“So, you’re here to kill me, right?” he asked.
Kris looked disappointed. “Not even close. I’m here to finish what I started ten years ago. But this time I don’t have to worry about getting sidetracked having to save your black ass.” He smirked.
“So what happened that day at Simmons Park had nothing to do with the curse?”
Kris frowned. “After all you’ve seen, do you still believe in coincidences, Link?”
Lincoln looked back at his friend and replied, “No. I guess not. So Randy set you up then?”
“I set myself up,” Kris said. “I believed in the curse from the moment I learned of it. I couldn’t bear the idea of someone in my family suffering just because I had another birthday, so I figured I’d end it early. But you put a monkey wrench in that plan, didn’t you?”
“If you would have died that day you tried to hang yourself…”
“It wouldn’t have changed a thing for Karen when she turned eighteen. But because of you I got the chance to come back and finally set things right. Speaking of which, where’s that devilish Dad of ours?”
Lincoln looked around to see that Randy wasn’t where he’d left him. He heard a grunt and saw Brandon topple over in the yard. Randy stood with his arm around Coral’s throat, pressing that strange revolver to her head.
“If you move,” he growled, “I’m gonna blow your mother’s head off.”
“No,” Kris whispered.
The gun flipped out of Randy’s hand. One second, Kris was standing next to Lincoln; the next, he stood behind Randy.
“Let her go,” Kris commanded.
Randy’s arms flew up and Coral dropped to the ground. His body did a 180-degree turn until he faced his son. Lincoln saw how much he was straining to regain control over his body.
“Wow, Dad,” Kris greeted his father. “Hate sure has made you ugly.”
“You don’t scare me,” Randy said.
“You don’t have enough sense to be scared, Dad. But don’t worry, where you’re going, they will put that fear back in you.”
“Not. Going. Anywhere.”
Kris looked at Lincoln and shrugged as if to say, “See what I have to deal with?”
“When you started this all those years ago, you had to know it would end this way, right, Dad? I mean, you have been a one-man wrecking ball for over forty years. Doesn’t it get old? The lies? The money? The power?”
Randy glared back at Kris. “Never,” he spat.
“Oh well, you clearly can’t be helped,” Kris said. “So I’m going to take you back to a time before all this. Back when you should have taken your own miserable life.”
Confusion wrapped Randy’s face and was abruptly replaced by horror. Lincoln saw stripes of blood begin to soak through Randy’s shirt. They resembled knife slashes and Randy screamed with each new slash. His features began to change.
Lincoln watched the man regress backward through the years. His hair returned, his face lost its lines, and his frame diminished until he looked like the boy Kris had once been. The younger he became, the more bloody slashes appeared on his clothes until his shirt and pants were blood-soaked messes. In moments, Randy was a teenager again.
He fell to his knees in so much pain he couldn’t even scream.
“And to think, this is just a small portion of the pain you’ve caused others,” Kris remarked. “Imagine if I turned up the volume.”
“No-no-no please don’t…please,” Randy blabbered.
“You have to choose, Dad,” Kris said. The revolver appeared in his hand. “You can come with me.” He looked at the portal in the tree’s center. “Or you can end your own life.”
“You know my choice,” Randy answered.
“Yes,” Kristopher replied, putting the gun to Randy’s temple. “I knew you’d take the easy way out. Lucky for me you already tried and failed to kill yourself today, so come on, let’s see what we’ve got behind door number two.”
Randy howled as Kris lifted him over his head and threw him into the portal. Once it absorbed him, the doorway contracted, sucking the tree away with it.
“See you on the other side, Link,” Kris said, fading away as well. “Make the most of the time you’ve got left.”
Then he was gone.
* * * * *
EPILOGUE
One Year Later
Angola, LA
Lincoln Baker’s life story lay between the pages of a scrapbook, thrown carelessly under the cot of his windowless Death Row cell. He hadn’t looked at it since Moses brought it to him after the trial. He’d been too busy preparing to die. Lincoln had thought he was running out of firsts; however, the past twelve months had proven him wrong.
* * * * *
Lincoln made his way to where the tree had stood and found Karen Lafitte lying on the ground, with her eyes open and unseeing. He thought her dead until she blinked for the first time in minutes. Lincoln helped her over to where Brandon was just waking up. Coral remained unconscious.
Once the four of them were huddled together, the sun rose, casting a kaleidoscope of color across the hurricane-ravaged landscape formerly known as Lake City. Lincoln had seen plenty of sunrises in his life, but none even came close to rivaling the breathtaking beauty he witnessed the morning after Isaac’s landing.
* * * * *
Lincoln spent a few days in a Baton Rouge hospital to heal his many wounds, once they were able to get out of the city.
The police escort helped.
Despite Brandon’s protests, Lincoln had gone to the Lake City PD and unspooled a stunning confession of his kidnapping of Karen Lafitte and his direct role in the murders that ravaged the city. But no matter how much they bullied and badgered him, Lincoln wouldn’t cop to the disappearance of Governor Lafitte, the destruction of the Lafitte estate, or offer an explanation for Coral Lafitte’s vegetative state. The poor woman never recovered from the events of that night and had to be placed in assisted living.
All charges against Brandon were dropped.
* * * * *
The media was out of control.
Headlines like, “The Monster Within the Monster,” shocked the nation’s collective consciousness. Countless stories were written about the flawed justice system. New legislation was proposed that would allow violent criminals seventeen and younger to be executed. The president expressed his sorrow for the victims of Hurricane Isaac in one breath, and condemned Lincoln Baker in the next. Karen was poked and prodded like a lab rat as her parents were upheld as tragic victims of a madman. Reporters embarrassed themselves trying to get the exclusive. Psychiatrists begged Lincoln to donate his brain to science so they could isolate the black insanity gene.
Through it all, Lincoln declined to comment and stoically awaited trial.
* * * * *
Another circus pitched its big top outside of the institution formerly known as the Louisiana State Penitentiary. Ninety-five percent of the prison population died during the storm. The warden disappeared, and with him went any explanation of this utter disregard for human life. For weeks afterwards, little to no news was reported regarding the mass deaths at Angola. Not until Jhonnette Deveaux and Moses Mouton emerged from the wreckage as two innocents, amazingly spared. It wasn’t long before the powers that be tried to shut Jhonnette and Moses up. But the damage was already done.
* * * * *
Louisiana was in shambles.
With Randy Lafitte missing, opportunistic scavengers such as Bill Edwards vied for his post. The media cast Edwards as a hero, despite his shady past.
They were that desperate for leadership.
Polls taken a month after Hurricane Isaac indicated Edwards would be the frontrunner in the upcoming emergency gubernatorial election. But that all changed after Lincoln’s trial.
* * * * *
Lincoln fasted and prayed from sun up, until sundown in preparation for the trial.
He marched calmly into the courtroom as uneasy murmurs rose from the peanut gallery. He didn’t look like a crazed, murderous, criminal mastermind. The prosecution, armed with Lincoln’s confession, assumed this would be an open and shut trial.
That all changed the moment Lincoln was asked to enter his plea. The headlines that evening said it all, “Lincoln Baker: Not Guilty By Reason of Insanity?”
Politicians blustered, pundits raged, and late night TV personalities joked.
Then the defense began its case.
There had been more public memorials, eulogies, and declarations of Randy Lafitte’s greatness and contributions than Lady Diana had after her untimely death. But there had been little to no examination of the facts. Lincoln’s defense doled those facts out in deliberate and excruciating detail during the trial.
They told of a ruthless killer who’d eliminated everyone that ever got in his way, including his father Joseph, Walter Simmons, and far worse, his own son Kristopher. Even the atrocities at Angola were linked to him. Lafitte went from Gandhi to Hitler in the course of a few days testimony. Bill Edwards’ tight association to Lafitte was the flame that exploded his political aspirations.
* * * * *
Before the defense rested, Lincoln asked to address the court.
“Your Honor,” Lincoln began. “I would like to change my plea.”
The judge frowned. “Mr. Baker, do not toy with my court. This is highly irregular. On what grounds are you changing your pl
ea?”
“Well, Your Honor, it’s true that I was on the insane side when I did all those terrible things. But the truth is…I’ve been insane a lot longer than that. I’ve been insane ever since I was separated from my birth mother. I was insane when I started banging when I was nine years old. I was insane when I killed all those people that day at Simmons Park. I was insane sitting on twenty-three hour lockdown with nothing to keep me company but my own insane life story—”
“Mr. Baker, if you have a point, please get to it. My patience is wearing thin.”
Lincoln found Moses’ eyes in the courtroom and gave him a subtle nod. “Yes sir, Your Honor. My point is…someone as crazy as me doesn’t deserve to live. Even if I was pushed into this by Randy Lafitte. It doesn’t excuse the life I’ve lived, and the lives I’ve taken. So, I’m changing my plea to guilty. Guilty of letting my past corrupt my future. Guilty of playing the victim while I victimized others—mostly my own people. Guilty of not forgiving anyone who ever hurt me. I stand here before you, guilty of all this and more. It’s time for me to be the example I always should have been.”
And that’s all he would say until the day of his execution arrived.
After that speech, Lincoln thought they would have drug him into the street for an old-fashioned Louisiana lynching. But that didn’t happen. It seemed it was nearly impossible to kill someone who wanted to die in this country.
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