City of the Dead

by Eileen Dreyer

  “Somebody had to hear that shot back at the house, Max. Why don’t you just leave before they figure it out and come after you?”

  Crouched down on his haunches, Max actually stroked Chastity’s hair, as if he were comforting a pet. “The only person who could have heard that shot was Barbara Rendler, and she’s not going to say anything. Barbara thinks I’m a badly misunderstood man whose wife isn’t good enough for him.”

  “You’re screwing her, huh?”

  “You don’t need to sound so petulant.”

  “Tough to sound equable when I’m on the schedule for demolition.”

  Was there enough air in this room? She couldn’t seem to manage a decent breath. She couldn’t hear anything but water.

  “I have to leave now,” Max said, patting her again. “I have an appointment with my wife.”

  “You don’t know where she is,” Chastity objected. “Hell, I don’t know where she is.”

  “I know where she will be. I called her, right after you went to sleep. Her number was still on your phone, you know. Isn’t technology wonderful? She knows that if she doesn’t meet me at the house at six o’clock, you’ll be dead. She thinks you’re there.”

  “She won’t come.”

  “Oh, I think she will.”

  Breathe, Chastity. Breathe.

  “Why six?”

  Max laughed. “Have you seen the traffic out there? I have to go against the grain. It’s not going to be easy.”

  “And you think she’s not just going to call the police?”

  Max gave her his best smile yet. “Oh, I know she won’t.”

  Chastity saw the triumph in his eyes and fought new shakes. “You could have saved yourself some time and left me where I was.”

  “I could have just shot you, too,” he said. “Like the others. But it’s important that you know exactly what it costs to defy me, Chastity. I made it a point to ask you here for your help.”

  “For your alibi.”

  “I told you, don’t be petulant. Now I’m sorry I can’t stay to savor your panic, but I have a schedule to keep. But before I go, I thought I’d tell you exactly what to expect. You’re now on a very narrow strip of land that keeps the Gulf of Mexico away from Lake Pontchartrain. The hurricane is due in, oh, about six hours. About ten o’clock, they think, when it’s nice and dark. And when it comes, you’ll die—very badly, I think. In the meantime, I’m going to my house, where I will punish my wife for trying to leave me.”

  He straightened, brushing off his slacks. “Now, as I said, I’ve left you here with your friend’s cab. You can always try and follow me, but I don’t think you will. Because even if you managed to start the car without the keys, the only route left back into the city is over the Lake Pontchartrain bridge.” His laugh was positively delighted. “And we know the chance of your actually doing that.”

  He waited, as if expecting her to congratulate him.

  “Don’t you want to know how I got the cab out here?” he asked.

  “Not really.”

  He shook his head. “You haven’t even asked about your father yet. Well, here it is. He helped me, of course. He didn’t want to. In fact, after he drove Max’s cab out here for me, he slipped the cab keys into your pocket, as if that would absolve him. He’s standing outside right now waiting for me. So he doesn’t know that I’ve taken them back.” He lifted his hand then, to show Chastity that James’s keys dangled from his fingers.

  “He didn’t want to help?”

  “Even he, it seems, likes to think he’d draw the line somewhere. But then, I didn’t give him much choice. You see, when he got out of prison, he asked me to help him set up the computer I got him. E-mail, Internet, that kind of thing. Here’s a bit of advice, Chastity. Never let anybody you don’t completely trust do that for you, especially if you have secrets to hide. Since I knew that your father wasn’t about to stop his…predilection, I helped myself to proof that he’s been trafficking in kiddie porn. He goes back to prison, he goes back for good. So? He’s very compliant.”

  “And you don’t feel the need to stop him?”

  “No. In fact, just to put the icing on this cake—and I will be telling Faith as well—after the two of you have been punished, I’m letting him loose. Well, on a leash, of course. I’ll always have the proof. But I really like the idea that you’re going to be lying here while the water rises knowing that your sister is about to die and your father is going to be free again to terrorize more young girls.”

  Why? she wanted to ask.

  She refused to, though. No matter what happened, she was not about to allow this man any bigger a sense of triumph. It was enough that he could see the uncontrollable trembling that had set in, the pasty sheen she knew was on her face.

  “The police know it’s you, Max,” she said. “I found the car. I found the evidence. I found the name of the detective agency.”

  “And didn’t have time to share it.” He shrugged. “But that’s neither here nor there. By the time anybody can do anything, I’ll be sitting on a beach in a country that forbids extradition, with all the money you seem to think I’ve gambled away, and my wife will be in an unmarked grave someplace where the alligators won’t find her like they did her friend Willow.”

  “Learn from your mistakes, did you?”

  His laugh was triumphant. “Mistakes? Are you kidding? I dragged that girl around that swamp for a solid week trying to get her found. Of course, that was when I still thought it was Faith and I needed an alibi. No, this time I’ll tidy up after myself. In fact, I already have the body bag and the shovel in my trunk. I’ve had them in there for days, just waiting till you finally sent me in the right direction. It was a treat telling Faith that it was your fault I’d found her.”

  This time Chastity didn’t rise to the bait. She just lay there staring at Max as if what he said didn’t matter.

  It turned out she didn’t need to participate at all. He had a script worked out in his head, and he was just about finished with it. He bent again, so close Chastity could smell the mints on his breath. She could see flecks of yellow in his brown eyes. “Who the hell do you think you are?” he hissed. “That is my house. My wife. My marriage. You have no right to interfere.”

  The song of the abuser. And Max sang it like Pavarotti.

  “You forget,” Chastity couldn’t help but say, one final spit in the eye of the monster, “you were the one who asked me to come.”

  And for a brief, terrifying moment, Chastity saw Max lose control. His eyes, she thought. Finally she saw what he was in those eyes that grew cold and mad and vicious. “Well,” he said, “a good surgeon takes care of his mistakes.” Then, even more terrifying, he just smiled.

  That seemed to be all he needed, because he finally straightened, the keys still dangling from his fingers. Giving her one last smile, he took a moment to assess the perfection of the scene, and then he walked out and locked the door behind him.

  Even above the rain and wind and thunder, Chastity could hear him start the BMW. She heard the engine rev a couple of times, and then she heard the wet spray of gravel and water as he headed away.

  And left her alone with an injured man.

  In water.

  She dragged in a couple more breaths and fought to stay calm. She wasn’t going to make it. Hell, she wasn’t going to last long enough to drown. If she could get her hands free, she’d just rip out her own throat before she let herself die in water.

  It was still lapping, still peppering the side of this tar paper shack. It was rising; she knew it. Soon it would be seeping in under the door and over the windowsills.

  Max was right. He’d found the perfect revenge.

  “Windy bastard, isn’t he?” she heard behind her.

  Quickly she rolled. “James?”

  His smile was a bit wan, but it was there. “I thought he’d never leave. Want some ya-ya now?”

  Chastity laughed. She was damn near sobbing, but he made her laugh. “You’r
e not supposed to be awake yet. I’m not even sure you’re supposed to be awake at all.”

  He huffed with impatience. “That guy obviously never treated burn patients. I throw that crap off like water.”

  Chastity could hear that he was still slurring a bit. She could see that his eyes weren’t focusing quite right. But he was awake. And he was suffering for the chance he’d taken for her.

  “God,” she said, “I’m so sorry. I got you kidnapped, I got you shot. I got you drowned in a hurricane.”

  “Not yet, you didn’t. And just so you know? He’s full of shit. That shot didn’t hit me. He did it himself. Stood over me and shot me point-blank right before dumping me in my own cab.” He shook his head a bit. “Talk about being full of yourself.”

  He seemed so calm. Chastity sucked it in like fresh air. She focused on it like a mantra. He was calm. She could be calm, too.

  Well, no, she couldn’t. But maybe she could manage.

  “I don’t suppose you could figure out a way to untie me,” she said, trying to keep her voice from wobbling like a bad soprano’s.

  He seemed to think about it, as if he were assessing his available resources. “I can try.”

  “We have to get to the police, James. He’s going to kill Faith.”

  “Well, of course he’s going to kill Faith. Isn’t that what this has been about all along?”

  Another gust of wind rattled the windows, and Chastity came within an inch of shrieking. Her heart was thundering and her breath rasped through constricted airways. She could feel her bowels turning to water. Oh, yeah. That was good.

  “Please, James.”

  James was already doing his best to lever himself up on his stiff left arm. “Nag, nag, nag. I’m coming.”

  Chastity turned so he could get at her hands.

  “Well,” he said from behind her, “the good news is that our friend the surgeon was never a Boy Scout. The bad news is he’s a hell of a shot. I have absolutely no strength in this arm.”

  “He just knew where to place it. All that anatomy he took.”

  “Yeah. He must have had the reception for those cameras in his frickin’ car to get there so fast.”

  “Could he do that?”

  “How the hell do I know? I don’t know anything about technology.”

  “Oh, yeah. I forgot.”

  More wind. More rain. Chastity was sure the hurricane was there. She could almost hear that damn storm surge headed their way, just like that big-ass wave in The Poseidon Adventure. This cabin was going to turtle and she was going to be dumped headfirst into the water and tumbled around like laundry in the spin cycle and…

  “Yo, Chastity. Focus.”

  “I am.”

  “Yeah, but not on the water.”

  His one hand was scrabbling at the rope, and Chastity could feel something wet drip over her wrists. More viscous than water. Warmer.

  “How much are you bleeding?” she asked.

  “Enough to ruin my good T-shirt. Hold still.”

  “I am holding still.”

  “You’re shaking like a can in a paint mixer.”

  “Think about how you’d feel if it were fire out there, James.”

  For a moment, there was just silence. “Yeah. Okay.”

  It seemed to take him an eternity. Chastity tried hard to hold still, but every time the cabin moved, she flinched and James lost hold.

  “I’m sorry,” she kept saying, fighting tears, fighting panic, fighting the swell of inevitability.

  She should never have called Max back all that time ago. She should have respected her omens. Once she’d started down this path, there could be no end but this. She’d heard those footsteps approaching down the hallway. She should damn well have known the door was going to open.

  “We only have so much time,” she said. “It’s already after four, I think. Are we going to be able to drive out of here?”

  “We don’t need to drive out. We can get my dispatcher on the radio and have them send some help.”

  Chastity’s arms were aching hard and her shoulders cramping. Better to think about that than what her intestines threatened to do.

  “By which time we’ll be fish bait. I’m driving out of here.”

  “I thought we didn’t have a key.”

  Chastity actually laughed again. “Key? We don’ need no stinkin’ key. That taxi’s a GM. I can steal it in my sleep.”

  James huffed a bit. “You need a higher class of hobbies.”

  “Those were my higher class hobbies. I’m not even going to tell you what I can do with a pair of panty hose and a lightbulb.”

  “If it doesn’t involve untying wet ropes, don’t.”

  Five more minutes.

  Ten.

  And then, suddenly, Chastity was free. Her arms shrieked as she pulled them around to get the rest of the ropes off.

  Then she saw the blood.

  “Oh, shit, fireman. We got to get that hole plugged before you just pass out on me.”

  “Yeah,” he said, his voice a bit weaker. “I think we do.”

  Chastity managed to get around to see him lying back on the floor, his face so pale that his scars looked as if they were painted on. He was sweaty and open-mouthed, a fish out of water. A man short on blood and flush with sedatives.

  “Any hospitals close to wherever the hell we are?” she asked, instinctively checking his pulse to find it fast but fairly strong.

  James didn’t bother to open his eyes. “Not that we can get to today. Traffic’s all going the other way.”

  “Yeah, but there have to be police somewhere. We’ll get help.”

  She untied her feet and wiggled them a bit until the pins and needles announced the return of circulation before she attempted to stand. Then she stood for a minute to shove back the leftover ether nausea. James stayed where he was.

  Chastity searched the cabin until she found a couple of clean white T-shirts and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Oh well, beggars couldn’t be choosers. She ripped the shirts into bandages and then applied the Jack, half to the wound and half to the patient. James hissed with pain as she wound the best pressure dressing she could.

  The wound was through-and-through, just below his shoulder, where movement of any kind would hurt like hell and set it to bleeding again. It didn’t involve a major vessel, but Chastity imagined that had been Max’s intent. Max had wanted James to be just weak enough to watch helplessly as he drowned.

  Which was when Chastity realized she couldn’t put off checking weather conditions any longer. Leaving James the bourbon, she struggled to her feet and forced herself to approach the window.

  She moaned like a castle ghost. Her gut threatened to humiliate her. Her heart just stopped in place.

  Water.

  It was all she could see, rippling through the tall grasses that stretched out about fifty feet from the back of the cabin before there was nothing but water, all the way to the horizon. Water, rising, swirling, stalking her like a vandal.

  “We’re trapped,” she rasped.

  James managed to climb to his feet, although he was holding on to furniture. “Other side,” he said. “The cab’s still there.”

  Chastity ran to his window and looked out to see the cab.

  Surrounded by water.

  It looked like a houseboat sitting there, with water up to its hubcaps and a few weeds sticking up higher. Some ground was visible just past it, and then a bare shoulder of gravel about a hundred yards on. Beyond that, she could see a line of trees about half a mile off. Other than that, it was nothing but swamp.

  Swamp and water.

  “The cab’s not a boat,” Chastity said, shaking.

  James settled his left arm around her shoulder. “Hell, nurse. This isn’t water. You’ll see water when that hurricane hits. That cab ran through higher puddles than this yesterday. You say you can get it started? Okay, prove it.”

  Chastity couldn’t stop shaking. “I have to go out there?”

>   “Unless you can figure a way to get that car in here.”

  She couldn’t take her eyes off the water. But his arm was oddly warm where it lay, and it gave her a bit of courage.

  “We only have so much time,” he nudged gently.

  Chastity nodded, feeling that clock ticking away in her head. They had less than two hours until Max expected Faith, and Chastity had a feeling that she had to be there to stop it herself. And she had no idea where the hell she was or how she was supposed to get back. She just knew that Max had been wrong. Pontchartrain bridge would not be involved.

  “Okay.” She looked around again, distracted by all that water. “I wish Max had left my purse. I have everything I need in it to heist a car. Not to mention a phone.”

  James patted himself down with his semi-working hand and shook his head. “No phone here, either. Plan B?”

  “If it includes burglary and grand theft auto, yeah. Plan B.”

  “It’s not grand theft. I’ll be in the car. Which also has a radio.”

  “Then that’s where we’re going.”

  After settling James into one of the chairs, Chastity went back through the cabin. It took her another ten minutes, but she unearthed not only a coat hanger, but a screwdriver. No phone, though. No computer. On the other hand, if she’d wanted to fish, she would have been set.

  But she didn’t want to fish. She wanted to get out. And Max had locked the door. So Chastity left her cache with James and walked over to the window he’d been leaning against. Then, knowing that they didn’t have time, she just lifted one of the chairs and hurled it straight through.

  Listing badly where he lay, Gumby-like, in the other chair, James lifted an eyebrow. “Feel better now?”

  “The door’s locked and I don’t have time to pick it,” she said, shoving out the remaining shards of glass. “I’d kick it, but it opens in.”

  “You could have just opened the window and climbed out.”

  “Not in the mood I’m in.”

  James struggled to get to his feet, but Chastity just shoved him back. “Stay there. I’ll be back.”

  She refused to look past the narrow porch as she swung her leg over the windowsill. Instead, she focused on the weathered, warped boards beneath her feet.