Hope to Die Read online

  It seemed logical to us that if Sunday and Le Duc were coming together at a remote cabin out on the Bayou des Cannes, there was a good chance that was where Bree, Damon, Jannie, Ali, and Nana Mama were being held.

  “You okay, Alex?” Aaliyah asked.

  I shook my head, said, “If I’d known he was here before I called, I never would have mentioned Acadia. I may have played my hand too hard.”

  “You needed to keep him on as long as possible,” she said. “It was the right thing to do. We know he’s there.”

  “But what’s he doing?” I asked. “What are he and Acadia doing?”

  Before Aaliyah could answer, Sheriff Gauvin shut down his lights and tapped his brakes and then turned onto a slick clay road that led off into forest. Two miles on, he pulled in behind a late-model Ford pickup and unfolded himself from the driver’s seat. A long, ropy man in his midfifties with jug ears and a straw cowboy hat, the sheriff looked like a Hollywood version of a cracker cop.

  But Gauvin had exhibited no prejudice toward me, and from our short, succinct conversations, I could tell he was certainly nobody’s fool. He was smart, well trained, and uninterested in turf wars. If he could help save my family and take down Acadia Le Duc in the process, he and his department were more than happy to oblige.

  Aaliyah and I climbed out and went to the sheriff, who was talking with the undercover deputy in the pickup.

  “Tony says no one’s been in or out since he got here,” Gauvin said.

  “Real quiet,” the deputy agreed. “Except for the wind and all.”

  “So they came in expecting that the road might be watched,” Aaliyah said.

  “Looks that way,” the sheriff said. “From where Acadia left her rental to here is all wild swamp. No easy thing to get in that way.”

  “But we have no idea how Sunday got in here,” I said.

  “Could have done it by shallow-draft boat,” Gauvin said. “There’s an arm of the bayou comes right past the cabin, but you’d have to know what you were doing to get there in the dark on a night like this.”

  Five other deputies, all young, fresh-faced kids, came up wearing body armor and carrying shotguns. I wondered how much training they’d had and said, “No one gets trigger-happy unless it’s warranted. My family could be in there, and I don’t want any of them shot by accident.”

  Several of the deputies looked insulted, but I didn’t care. I needed to make the point in spite of bruising their egos. The sixth deputy walked up, a woman named Shields, and she had a muscular German shepherd named Maxwell on a tight leash. I liked police dogs. They’d saved me on more than one occasion.

  “The two-track that leads into Le Duc’s is about a hundred yards up the road,” Gauvin said. “I figure it’s better we walk in a piece, spread out, and surround the place.”

  It seemed smart, so I nodded and accepted a radio from the sheriff. We moved silently up the road, Deputy Shields and Maxwell leading the way to a narrow, muddy two-track. The trees and vines rustled in the stiff breeze and spit rainwater at us as we trudged single file and without lights toward Le Duc’s cabin. At the first sight of lights ahead through the forest, we stopped, and Gauvin instructed four of his men to stay at this distance from the house and loop around it to the north. Then one pair would peel off and approach from directly behind the cabin, and the other would go to the opposite side of the yard.

  “You’re just looking, for now,” the sheriff said quietly. “That’s it. Looking, and then calling in what you see to me. We clear?”

  The four deputies nodded as if this were the most exciting thing they’d ever done on their job. As they set off, Maxwell perked up and whined softly.

  “What is it, boy?” Deputy Shields said.

  Maxwell panted and then whined again.

  “He doesn’t like something,” the handler said.

  “Then I don’t like it either,” Gauvin said, and he turned and headed straight for the lights with Maxwell and Shields right on his heels.

  He slowed to a stop when the cabin and the yard were visible. Nothing moved in the soaked yard, which smelled of mud and decay. From inside the cabin, maybe on the radio, came the voice of a preacher of some sort ranting about salvation and damnation. The door to the house was ajar. There were several outbuildings, sheds mostly, that looked about as sturdy as toddlers. But they could hold kidnap victims, couldn’t they? I supposed, but I figured the cabin to be the most likely place.

  Guns drawn, the sheriff and I stood just outside the screened-in porch. Several reports came in over his radio. From what the deputies could see through the windows that weren’t curtained, there was no movement inside.

  “Marcus Sunday and Acadia Le Duc!” I roared. “You are surrounded! Lay down whatever weapon you have and surrender!”

  We heard nothing but the radio.

  Gauvin and I watched Deputy Shields open the porch’s screen door and send Maxwell inside. He hesitated on the porch, and then bounded into the house. Ten seconds later, he barked furiously.

  “He’s got someone at bay in there,” Shields said.

  Gauvin, Aaliyah, and I went in first, the deputy trailing.

  There was a comatose pit bull in the corner of the porch. We walked through the cabin’s open door and entered a pack rat’s den where the halls were built of stacks of People magazines and piles of Diet Coke cans.

  We followed the sounds of barking to a lit doorway and found Maxwell sitting at the foot of a blood-soaked bed. Acadia Le Duc’s mother’s throat had been slashed ear to ear, the same way Mulch had killed his own mother.

  Shields quieted the dog with a sharp command.

  Then, over the radio’s din, came a woman’s ungodly screaming.

  CHAPTER

  77

  IN SITUATIONS WHERE THE sane flee from danger, law enforcement officers sprint to engage it. That night was no different.

  But I had more skin in the game than anyone else there, and I almost ran over Aaliyah and Shields trying to get outside, every cell in my body bellowing, Bree, Jannie, Nana, Damon, Ali! I rocketed off the porch and into the clearing and sprinted toward the bayou. The screams stopped sharply and then rose again in a wail of agony.

  Pounding past the deputies, who were advancing more cautiously, I rounded a clump of trees and found a hidden part of the yard that slanted to an old wooden dock. Two cones of light came into view off to my right toward a backwater slough.

  As if running into an invisible brick wall, I slammed to a staggering halt when I saw unfolding in those cones of light the most disturbing scene I’d ever witnessed, so shocking that for a beat, I was frozen in place, slack-jawed, unable to process or act.

  In the soft light thrown by gas lanterns, an alligator crouched over Acadia Le Duc, who writhed, screamed, and shuddered as if she’d been plugged into something electric. The beast had bitten out a significant chunk of her right thigh.

  A second creature circled the one feeding, looking for its own angle of attack. A third was scrambling up the bank toward her feet.

  Maxwell came flying down the hill, barking, and went straight at the alligator closest to Le Duc. The reptile had been about to take another bite, but instead it turned its head to the dog, opened its bloody mouth, and let go with a hiss that sounded like a dozen alarmed snakes.

  Maxwell did not hesitate but continued his charge, snapping his teeth and letting loose with savage growls and barking. For a second there, I thought the alligator would abandon its position.

  Instead, when the police dog got within range and darted in from the flank, the alligator snapped its long armored tail like a two-hundred-pound whip and lashed Maxwell across his right shoulder and the side of his head.

  It was like seeing a boxer knocked out. One second the dog was distracting the alligator, looking sure to drive it off, and the next he had been pummeled into the mud, where he lay twitching and senseless.

  What happened next will forever be burned in my mind.

  Sheriff Gauvin,
his deputies, Shields, and Aaliyah all showed up at the same time. There were gasps and frozen expressions of horror on everyone.

  “Max!” Shields said, and she made to go forward.

  But Sheriff Gauvin was quicker. He ripped a pump-action shotgun from one of his deputy’s hands and charged the alligators, shouting, “Stay back, and no one shoots unless I say so.”

  The sheriff of Jefferson Davis Parish slowed to a march, shotgun up, its butt welded to his cheek. Without pause, he advanced on the second alligator; it had been scuttling around Acadia, but now it was bearing down on Maxwell. Angling, cutting the beast off, Gauvin let go of the twelve-gauge with his left hand. With his right, he reached out and stuck the barrel in the gator’s eye before pulling the trigger and blowing a fist-size hole in its head with double-aught buckshot.

  Driven by some primitive nervous system, the creature’s entire body whipped side to side, and I thought for certain the sheriff was going to get his legs broken or worse.

  But for a man in his midfifties, Gauvin moved with quickness and agility, leaping high over the dead gator, pumping a new shell into the chamber, and landing in a crouch two feet from the first one, now straddling Acadia Le Duc.

  As it had with the police dog, the bigger, feeding alligator reacted with blinding speed, twisting its head toward the threat to its meal and making a loud, serpentine cough and hiss before lashing back at Gauvin with its tail.

  The sheriff jumped again and landed right next to the six-hundred-pound reptile, which threw open its mouth and struck sideways with his upper body and head. The violent move knocked Gauvin over on his back, but not before he shoved the shotgun barrel deep into the creature’s throat.

  The alligator’s jaws clamped down on the gun’s steel receiver, leaving the trigger guard right up against its bloody teeth. The beast shook its head, yanking the pistol grip out of the sheriff’s hand.

  The butt of the shotgun waved in the air as the alligator scrambled forward, front claws tearing at Gauvin’s legs once and then twice, leaving deep gashes, before both of the sheriff’s hands shot up and grabbed the exposed part of the gun. He got his thumb on the trigger and slammed it backward.

  The buckshot blew out the reptile’s spine. It collapsed on top of Gauvin and made a sound like a tire losing air.

  CHAPTER

  78

  IN ALL MY YEARS of policing, I have seen few wounds as gruesome as that one. The alligator’s serrated teeth had torn into Acadia Le Duc’s thigh, ripped out several chunks, and snapped her femur. The splintered bone was visible, and blood fountained with every heartbeat.

  “That’s arterial blood!” I shouted, going to Sunday’s woman. I grabbed a piece of rag lying near her and pressed it hard against the wound as she wailed, shook, and shivered and her eyes bugged out from her head.

  “An ambulance is on its way, Acadia,” I said. “You’ll live.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the third gator slip back into the water and disappear.

  Acadia looked at me like I was the man on the moon, choked out, “After everything, you’re trying to save me?”

  “Where’s Sunday?” I asked. “Where’s my family?”

  Her eyes started to glaze over, and I shook her. “Stay with me, Acadia. Where’s my family?”

  She had managed to free one of her wrists, and she must have been racked with unspeakable pain, because she grabbed my forearm with surprising strength, which made the panther tattoo on her arm coil up. I looked at her and said gently, “Tell me where Sunday has my family. Are they here?”

  She said nothing.

  “Tell me where they are,” I insisted.

  She remained mute but now locked on my gaze.

  “Acadia,” I said, unable to control the tremor in my voice. “You can redeem yourself here. You can show some goodness.”

  Acadia blinked slowly, and then her eyes softened, and for a moment I thought she was going to tell me.

  Then she whispered, “Marcus says there is no redemption, Cross. No God. No absolute morality. Marcus is a universe unto himself. Am I a universe unto my—”

  She tried to stay focused on me; her chin moved in small, ragged circles. “Kill me,” she whispered. “I can’t live in a prison, Cross. Kill me. Get your revenge. Be a universe unto yourself.”

  I stared in disbelief and horror at what Sunday had done to his accomplice in this whole mad scheme. He’d fed her to the alligators, and yet she defended his philosophy. And now she was asking me to end her life.

  “Not a chance,” I said. “You’re paying for your crimes. But if you tell me where my—”

  She gritted her teeth, closed her eyes, and the wounded leg began to spasm electrically. She screamed and screamed until the pain knocked her into unconsciousness. Her head lolled to the side.

  I shook her again.

  “Where’s my family?” I yelled. “Tell me where he’s got my family!”

  I wanted to release the pressure on her wound and let her bleed out, make the world a better place by her absence. Instead, I slapped her, and slapped her again, trying to get her to wake up.

  I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up in confusion to find Aaliyah standing there. “That won’t help us when she gets to court,” she said.

  A minute or so later, from the direction of the cabin, firemen and paramedics rushed onto the scene and started working on Acadia and Sheriff Gauvin. The second I saw the needle and the morphine go into her arm, I knew it would be hours if not days before we could question Sunday’s woman.

  I felt dazed and looked around as if none of it were real.

  Deputy Shields knelt by Maxwell, stroking the dog’s head; he had regained consciousness but looked incapable of getting to his feet.

  “You’re such a brave boy,” Shields said in a baby-talk voice. “Such a brave, brave boy.”

  The dog slapped its tail as EMTs rolled the alligator off Sheriff Gauvin, who was conscious but in considerable pain. I wanted to go to him, lend him my support, but I simply couldn’t because a thought had penetrated my brain and paralyzed me.

  “Sunday was here to tie up loose ends,” I said. “He may have already done the same to my family. He may have already fed them to alligators or pigs somewhere else.”

  I saw my despair mirrored in Aaliyah’s face when she said, “We don’t know that, Alex. We don’t even know if they’re here or not.”

  We checked all the outbuildings then and found a lifetime of hoarded worthless junk but no evidence my family had ever been there.

  The EMTs rushed a gurney bearing Acadia Le Duc up the hill, and I did hate her purely then, wished nothing but ill on her soul. I went to the second stretcher, to Sheriff Gauvin.

  “Bunch of ribs broken,” he said to me hoarsely. “I felt them go when he came down on me.”

  “That may have been the bravest thing I’ve ever seen,” I said. And everyone else there, Aaliyah included, muttered or nodded agreement.

  “I’m just a stupid old boy got lucky,” Gauvin said. “Plus we used to hunt gators when I was a kid. You get to know their weak spots.”

  I checked my watch as they hurried him toward an ambulance. It was past midnight, and I’d been up since Aaliyah woke me too early the previous morning. I wanted to be angry and use that anger to push on, but I couldn’t. Emotional and physical exhaustion crept up and strangled me.

  “I’m no good right now,” I told Aaliyah. “I need to sleep.”

  “I’m sure we can get a deputy to take you to a motel,” she said, looking concerned. “But someone should stay to make sure the crime scene work will be admissible in DC.”

  “You’re up,” I said.

  “Dr. Cross, we’re not done with this case,” the detective said, trying to sound encouraging. “Not by a long shot. One call, and the FBI puts out all points bulletins on Sunday. He’ll be seen eventually.”

  “Eventually might not be soon enough,” I said, feeling leaden. “Like I said, Mulch is cleaning up. If he hasn’t already killed the
m, he’s probably on his way to do it.”

  “Don’t give up hope,” Aaliyah said. “And text me where we’re staying.”

  I promised to get her a room and then trudged back toward the rental car, not caring that it was raining again. Mulch had been here, done his dirty business, and fled, probably by skiff, and probably heading to wherever he was keeping Bree, Damon, Jannie, Ali, and Nana Mama.

  For the first time since I’d left Damon’s room at Kraft, fear got hold of me, captured me, entombed me, and I felt like dying would be better than once again facing the dark depths of Sunday’s imagination.

  CHAPTER

  79

  MARCUS SUNDAY WATCHED MUCH of it through high-power binoculars from across the bayou. He’d relished that swirl in the chocolate water, and he’d held his breath when the first alligator prowled up the bank toward Acadia.

  The expression on Acadia’s face before the attack was worth the price of admission. He didn’t think it could ever get better than that. But then she’d gotten her gag spit out a few seconds before the alligator tore into her thigh.

  As Sunday heard her shrieks, saw her writhe, his fascination had soared exponentially. In an instant, he understood why ancient Romans had flocked to the Circus Maximus when the gladiators were fighting animals.

  Keeping the binoculars glued to the bloody drama, Sunday thought that he’d been born in the wrong time, that being here, watching this, was, well, exceptional, a peak experience if there ever was one.

  Then Cross, the police dog, and a small army of cops had appeared out of nowhere, which shocked Sunday, made him realize just how close he’d come to being surrounded and caught before he could bring his entertaining little experiment to an end.