“I’m Allen Moody, the owner. Can I help you folks?” he asked, lighting a cigar that had probably been lit on several previous occasions.
Manseur flashed his badge. “You know this man?” he asked, showing a mug shot picture of Leland Ticholet.
Moody leaned forward to get a better look, taking a pair of reading glasses from the counter and putting them on. The fishermen strained to look, without moving in closer.
“’At’s Lelun,” Moody said. “He’s crazy as a rat in a milk pail.”
“Tickerlay’s his name,” a young fisherman said, nodding. “Some call him Tickle.”
“You wouldn’t want him to catch you calling him Tickle,” another fisherman added. “He ain’t got a sense of humor. He’s a lot like his daddy was in that respect. A sorrier sample of a man than that Jacklon never drew breath.”
“He sure shit never drew a sober one,” Moody said, chuckling.
The older fisherman nodded in agreement.
“’At’s a pure-dee fact,” Moody agreed. “His redbone second wife, Alice Fay, killed him.”
“Red Bone?” Alexa asked.
“That’s an Indian and nigger mix,” the younger fisherman translated.
The older fisherman elbowed his younger buddy, who frowned, realizing he’d made a social faux pas. “I certainly didn’t mean to insult you by that, miss,” he mumbled.
“You get on Lelun’s bad side and you can go missing. Like some done recently,” the older fisherman said.
“What do you mean?” Alexa asked.
“Game warden name of Parnell was asking about Lelun a few days back, ’cause he was thinking Lelun bought that new boat he’s been riding around in with alligator hide profits. Wanted to know where he stayed at,” Moody said. “Now they’re looking for Parnell and a lady warden that was with him yesterday. I wouldn’t be surprised if they never found a trace of them.”
“That Parnell’s a pure-dee bastard,” the older fisherman declared. “He probably checks his own licenses hoping he can write his own self a citation ticket.”
The fishermen and Moody laughed. The sound was that of a donkey fighting with seals.
Manseur showed them the picture of the young man standing with Dorothy Fugate. “What about this one?”
“The woman, or him?” Moody asked.
“Him. Have you seen him before? Maybe with Ticholet?”
“Never seen anybody with Lelun. Well, this one time a few days back a man was with him, but I didn’t get close enough for a look. Figured he was taking him fishing or something. You could ask Grub. He’s right nosy.”
“Grub?” Alexa asked.
“What’d Lee do this time?” one of the fishermen asked.
“He stole that boat,” the store owner announced. “I knew he don’t have that kind of money sitting around. That boat cost thirty thousand if it cost a nickel. He was driving a beat-to-shit aluminum fourteen flat-bottom with an old smoke-belching Johnson on it one day, the next he’s in that new one, riding around like the king of the bayous.”
“What did he say about the new boat?” Manseur asked.
“I asked him about it and he said it was payment for some jobs he was doing for a somebody, who he didn’t name. I figured he was fulla shit and stole it somewhere. Maybe knocked some poor bastard in the head for it. I wouldn’t want him taking a fancy to anything I had.”
“When did you last see him?”
“Late last night he come by and fueled up.”
“You think he done in them wardens?” the older fisherman asked.
“Was he alone?” Alexa asked.
“Have to ask Grub. He was around. He always is.”
“Where is this Grub?” Alexa asked.
“He’s the retard works outside,” the younger fisherman said. “Wormy-lookin’ kid.”
Alexa decided she could talk to this Grub later.
“Any of y’all know where Leland’s camp is?” Manseur asked.
The men fell silent, blinking at him like owls.
“Okay. We’ll find it.”
“You do and you might wish you hadn’t,” Allen Moody said, with certainty.
79
In the morning breeze, naked but for a pair of tattered cotton shorts, Leland Ticholet flipped the last of the nutria onto its back on the dock, lodged its spine between two thick planks. Opening its belly with his skinning knife, he scooped out the entrails with his gore-caked hand and tossed them off into the water for the crabs. He began to skin the four-pound animal expertly, using the wide blade with the precision of a scalpel. Few things felt as right to Leland as skinning swamp rats.
That morning before sunrise he had gone out to check his catfish lines. The gator hooks he’d baited the day before hadn’t attracted anything, but he knew they would when the meat turned. He’d checked his nutria traps and found four of them caught up. He’d popped the nutria between the eyes with his .22 before removing their limp bodies from the traps. Once upon a time he had just clubbed them to death, but he’d been bitten by one and almost lost a finger to the snapping rascal. Bullets were cheap when you measured them against fingers.
He was glad his business with Doc was all over. His only problem now was getting up enough gator skins for Moody to keep gas in his boat and buy the supplies he needed to get by. He looked into the boat and frowned at the thick brown bloodstain on the rear seat and on the floor just in front of the seat, where Doc had leaked out. He’d clean it up later.
He was enjoying the steady breeze and the overcast when he heard the unmistakable sound of a boat, a good distance off yet, but definitely coming in his direction. It wouldn’t be a fisherman or trapper passing by, because the only channel into the area ended not far from Leland’s cut-through, and most everybody knew to stay out of his territory.
As the boat drew closer, the sound of the motors grew louder. A flock of disturbed blackbirds rose into the sky approximately where the channel formed a Y, the left fork heading for the mouth of his inlet. Any boat coming in would effectively block him in. Leland went into his cabin in order to prepare a proper welcome if that boat happened to contain trespassers.
80
Alexa thought the swamp both surreal and eerily beautiful. Above them, pelicans, egrets, cranes, and other birds of unknown denominations flew north below the clouds. Deputy Kip Boudreaux explained that the birds felt the drop in pressure and knew that their normal habitat was going to be inhospitable in a few hours, and they were leaving. He commented that it was too bad the people living around here weren’t a tenth as smart as birds.
Alexa sat beside Manseur on the bench in front of the console where Boudreaux, a pleasant young man wearing aviator sunglasses and a baseball cap, stood piloting the boat. Manseur had his windbreaker positioned like a photographer’s hood, shielding the laptop’s screen from the daylight so he could see it. As he pointed to the position of the blinking dot, Boudreaux translated the direction into turns.
It seemed to Alexa they had traveled miles into the maze of narrow waterways. Tall reeds, bushes, small trees, weeds, and grasses lined the banks. Often the channel they were using would open into a large body of water, usually with several possible channel exits to choose from. She saw cranes with their skinny legs in the water, turtles sliding off logs, and alligators slipping from the banks into the water, spooked by the intruding vessel.
Before they’d left the launch, Boudreaux told her that he had heard stories about Leland Ticholet and his moonshiner daddy for years, but he wasn’t sure exactly where the Ticholet fishing camp was located, or even if it was still standing. The swamp, he explained, tended to lay claim to any building left uninhabited for long.
They passed by several small cabins built on poles, on floats, or constructed on barges. The deeper into the swamp they went, the fewer they saw, but more of the ones they did see were abandoned and in some progressive state of ruin.
Alexa wasn’t accustomed to speedboats. The fast turns and tight banks made her feel like t
he boat would keep sliding sideways and end up on dry land, but she did her best to lean against the turns and tried not to close her eyes when she became alarmed. She had no choice but to trust that Deputy Boudreaux knew the limits of his craft, and would not lose control of it or slam it into a submerged log. Although the confident deputy seemed to know the lanes, Alexa couldn’t imagine how anyone could differentiate one of the waterways from another.
“The Ticholets are barn-burners from way back,” the deputy told them. Alexa knew the expression meant that they got even with people for slights. “Leland’s grandfather was executed for murdering another fisherman in a bar, then Leland’s daddy was killed in a shootout with his common-law wife about ten, twelve years ago. Hell, they shot at each other all the time. That particular fight lasted all morning, and she got hit several times before she put a fatal round into his heart. She lost her left hand and a leg below the knee. I see her some, riding around town in her scooter chair. Her place got burned to the waterline, and she claimed Leland did that. He was fifteen or sixteen at the time.
“I was in on arresting Leland a couple years back. He thinks and acts like a wild animal, in most respects. You sure can’t reason with him. He isn’t exactly stupid, just primitive.”
Alexa, sitting with the Mossberg in her lap, found herself wishing they had brought along more manpower. She looked down, taking in the absurdity of Manseur’s rolled-up suit pants, his exposed ankles sheathed in thin nylon dress socks, and the wingtips on his small feet. This Ticholet was a wanted fugitive fleeing from an assault and abduction, kidnapping, and if Tinsdale had died from Casey’s bullets, a murder. And it sounded like he was a volatile and dangerous man under normal circumstances. She knew Manseur was a good detective, but she wasn’t all that confident that the group in the boat constituted a SWAT team.
Alexa was an adequate handgun shot, but her shooting experience was on a range, punching holes in paper. She didn’t know, but she hoped Kennedy and Bond were more experienced than she was. Sure, they were hunters, but deer didn’t return fire. Boudreaux was an unknown element, because a sheriff’s deputy might not have adequate training, or even could be with the department simply because a cousin was the sheriff. In Alexa’s mind, they were all just investigators.
Leland Ticholet was completely at home in this inhospitable world, and she and the others were just passing through it.
Well, hopefully just passing through.
81
Deputy Boudreaux cut back his boat’s motors as soon as Manseur’s receiver registered that the tracker’s location was within a few hundred yards, and they started looking for the channel that they thought would lead them to the briefcase’s present location. Bond had dropped one of the floating markers at the last turn. Although nobody said so, it would allow any one of them to pilot the boat back out if Boudreaux wasn’t able to navigate. It was always good to be practical.
A waving wall of cattails extended between two fingers of ground, breaking the water like quills. There was a wide-enough gap in the reeds to allow a boat to pass through. The deputy pulled to the bank and Bond and Kennedy climbed from the boat, their boots disappearing in the muck. They made their way slowly in the direction of the tracker, rifles slung on their backs.
As Boudreaux began to move the vessel, Alexa caught sight of a tin roof visible above a line of reeds. He cut the wheel hard to the left and gunned it, plunging into an inlet protected by a V of land covered with bushes, trees, and waist-high foliage. The listing cabin was hemmed into the back corner by a floating wood dock that was grounded on either side. A boat was tied to the dock, just to the left of the cabin.
Manseur had put on his windbreaker and stood at the bow, with the shotgun at port arms. Alexa scanned the area, watching for movement.
The small structure, with corrugated metal walls, was listing about ten degrees. The steel pontoons beneath it—which may have once been LP gas tanks—were rusting, and the one on the low side was three-quarters submerged. The edge of the roof was peeled up like some giant had lifted the corner to peer inside. It rose and fell with the breeze.
A large fish broke the choppy surface beside the boat, startling Alexa. She racked a shell into the chamber of her shotgun and fed another double-ought round into the gate at the bottom of the receiver. Alexa had never killed anyone, but if Leland Ticholet or Andy Tinsdale made it necessary, she would kill either of them, and she would do so without hesitation.
The deputy pulled back the power lever and allowed his boat to drift toward the cabin. When it was almost to the pier, Alexa and Manseur jumped onto it. With shotguns aimed at the building, they moved toward the door. As she passed Leland’s boat, Alexa saw dried blood in the stern. She stepped over the carcasses of four skinless animals. Flies swarmed above their wet skins lying side by side on the weathered wood planks.
“Leland Ticholet! Police!” Manseur yelled out. “Come out with your hands up!” His command was answered only with the sounds of insects in the trees, a fish breaking the surface of the water.
Under the porch roof, chicken-wire crab traps served as tables for jugs with thick monofilament line wrapped around them, tiny spring-loaded jaw traps, and a jar filled with rusted fishhooks. Manseur nodded at her and, using his left hand, turned the knob. He pushed the door open and swept the dim interior with his shotgun.
The cabin’s interior, illuminated by sunlight pouring in through the windows and open door, smelled of mildew and rot. A still form lay on an Army cot. With Alexa aiming her shotgun at the figure, Manseur moved to the cot and gazed down at the man lying there.
Andy Tinsdale—still dressed in the black running suit he’d been wearing the night before—stared back, his partly open eyes clouded and dry. From the underside of the cot, accumulated blood had dripped through the canvas, forming a dark puddle. Alexa spotted the briefcase on the table, decorated with five bullet holes that could have all been covered with a five-by-seven index card.
“What’s up, Doc?” Manseur said.
“There’s the briefcase,” Alexa said, pointing the barrel of her borrowed Mossberg.
“It would be nice to find somebody still alive just once, so we could interrogate them. We seem to be spending all our effort collecting evidence and stacking corpses.”
Alexa crossed to the table.
There was a great deal of dried blood smeared on the case’s leather exterior. Carefully, she opened the briefcase and looked at the stack of bearer bonds, most having been penetrated through-and-through by Casey’s .380 rounds. Alexa wasn’t going to count the papers. Two of the holes in the front side of the case were duplicated on the back panel, but larger and not perfectly round, due to the expansion of the hollow points as they violated the stack of bonds. “Ransom’s here.”
Manseur lifted Doc’s sweatshirt to examine the deceased man’s entrance wounds. He was a homicide detective, and naturally he wanted to see exactly what had transferred Doc from life to death. Alexa wasn’t nearly as curious about what exactly had killed Tinsdale as she was about where Leland Ticholet was. “Chest wounds have irregular margins,” Manseur told her. “Bullets lost enough energy to prevent them from penetrating his lungs or heart,” he said.
She watched Manseur roll Andy up by lifting his arm, so he could get a better look at his backside.
“The one in his liver did the trick,” Manseur reported. “Another in his leg. He suffered before he died.”
Alexa saw something shiny on the floor, and reached down to lift it by its edges.
“Michael,” she said, holding the object out so he could see it. “Game and fish badge.”
“Man alive,” he said. “I guess we solved that mystery.”
Alexa looked up to see Boudreaux, shotgun at the ready, peering inside.
“Tinsdale’s dead in here,” Manseur said. “No Ticholet.”
“He heard us coming,” Boudreaux said. “Probably a long time before we got here. Leland could be a quarter-mile away by now.” He turned on the
shotgun’s attached flashlight to peer down through the jagged hole in the boards. “Jesus,” he said.
“What?” Alexa asked.
“He’s got some cottonmouths in a box under the floor. Looks like at some point some uninvited company got a big surprise.” He reached down and flipped over a hinged sheet of plywood to cover the snake hole.
“Might have been one of those missing game wardens,” Alexa said, showing him the badge she’d found.
“I’ll radio it in,” Boudreaux offered. “If Leland’s on the run, we’re done here. With luck, we’ll find his bloated corpse after the hurricane’s done with it. Unless the crabs beat us to him.”
Manseur lifted his walkie-talkie and pressed the TALK button. “Bond, Kennedy, Tinsdale’s DOA. Ticholet is out there somewhere. Based on the boat and some fresh nutria skins, he’s close by. Use extreme caution.”
“I can see the cabin’s roof,” Bond said. “We’ll be in position to cover you in a minute.”
Three sharp cracks, followed by something heavy falling on the deck, ended the transmission. Alexa moved to the door and looked out, to see Boudreaux sprawled on the dock.
“Boudreaux’s down,” Alexa said.
“That’s a .22,” Manseur said.
“We have to get him inside,” she said.
“Damn it,” Manseur said. He keyed his radio. “Boudreaux’s down. You see Ticholet?”
There were two sharp cracks as rounds smacked into the outer wall of the cabin.
“Negative!” Bond yelled, excitedly. “We’re in position. He’s in his boat!”
Then a boat motor sprang to thundering life.
“Damn it, Bond, stop him!”
Stepping out, Alexa aimed her shotgun at the moving boat, whose bow was raised out of the water. She fired just as Manseur opened up beside her.
There was a swift succession of thunderous explosions as Kennedy and Bond fired high-powered rifles from the shore. The powerful outboard motor sputtered, but the boat was still gathering speed. Alexa looked out, aiming the shotgun at the boat. She couldn’t see the person piloting it because he was crouched behind the pilot’s backrest. She fired at the outboard. The motor seized, silenced by the shotgun and rifle rounds that had hit it. The boat turned sharply. As its bow ran onto the bank, Alexa had a bead on Ticholet, but when she squeezed the trigger, there was a dry snap. She had run the Mossberg dry.
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