Chapter 8
B eth’s heart was in her throat.
Mutt had practically gone airborne and was now standing rigid, staring at the front door as though he could see through it, his growl low but menacing.
Apparently John had excellent night vision. Without a misstep, he went to the window nearest to him and peered out. He stood unmoving. Mutt remained in his sentinel stance.
Not knowing the source of the threat, Beth was afraid even to breathe.
John came over to her chair and reached for her hand. “Hurry. Not a word,” he whispered as he pulled her up. “Mutt.”
Instantly obeying, the dog trailed them into the kitchen. John looked out the window above the sink, then went to the back door, and, as soundlessly as possible, unlocked it.
He waited, straining to listen for any sound coming from the other side of the door. Hearing nothing, he gradually opened it several inches. He looked through the narrow crack, turning his head from side to side in order to have a view from different angles.
From Beth’s vantage point behind him, all she could see through the opening was darkness. No light, no motion, nothing to indicate a lurking danger. John turned to her, leaned in close, and whispered, “Try not to make a sound.”
Before she could question him or protest, he opened the door wider and guided her outside, waited for Mutt to clear the door, then closed it. The air was chilly but heavy with moisture. There was no wind. Thick cloud cover blocked out any light the waxing moon would have provided.
Both man and dog seemed not to need light as they made their way down a path invisible to her, but obviously well known to them. They walked quickly but quietly until they reached an outbuilding that appeared to Beth to be listing. The door was held shut by an old-fashioned padlock, but it hung from the latch unfastened.
John opened the door. Mutt went inside. Since the structure appeared to be on the verge of collapse, Beth hesitated. John put his hand on the small of her back and urged her forward. The enclosure smelled of damp earth and, faintly, of onions. After John pulled the door closed, the darkness inside was impenetrable. He said, “Mutt, be still.”
He’d spoken in a whisper, but it had sounded like a command given to a well-trained dog. Beth couldn’t see Mutt, but she sensed that he’d laid down and then remained motionless. He wasn’t even panting.
In the darkness, John somehow found her, specifically her ear. He placed his lips against it. “If a shot is fired, drop to the ground. Don’t think about it, just do it.”
The instruction stunned her. But why should it when he still gripped a pistol in his right hand? He gave her no time to ask who might be shooting at them before slipping away from her. She curbed a cowardly impulse to reach out for him and then to cling.
She approximated the shed to be only a few yards square, like a tool or gardening shed. It had a dirt floor that absorbed any sounds John would have made as he moved from one side of it to another, pausing periodically. She could tell where he was in juxtaposition to her only by the subtle shifts in the air as he patrolled.
Then he stopped and became perfectly still. She sensed that there wasn’t much distance between them, but she couldn’t even hear his breathing, only her own heartbeat pulsing against her eardrums.
It seemed they remained like that for an eternity. Then, a car engine grumbled to life. The distinctive sound came from quite a distance, and it was further muffled by the dense atmosphere, but she sensed an immediate lessening of John’s tension. Mutt must have, too. He stood and brushed against her hand. She patted him on the head as he went past her.
John came up from behind her and placed his hand on her shoulder. “You good?”
She nodded, then, realizing that he might be unable to see that, she said, “Fine. Scared out of my wits and wondering what the hell is going on. But fine.”
Maybe she imagined the light squeeze he gave her shoulder before he took his hand away. “Let’s go.”
Compared to the mustiness inside the shed, the humid outside air seemed almost brisk. She breathed deeply of it as she turned to John, who was shoving the pistol into his waistband. “What in heaven’s name was that all about?”
“Nothing good.”
“I would appreciate an explanation.” She started walking in the direction of the house.
But behind her, he said, “This way.”
She turned and looked past him in the direction he indicated and saw only a meshwork of trees and unrelieved darkness.
“This way,” he said again, tipping his head with impatience. Mutt had already disappeared into the woods, obviously expecting them to come along after him.
“We’re not going back to your house?”
“Not tonight. Come on. He may come back.”
“Who?”
“Come on.” He covered the distance between them, clasped her hand, and tugged.
She pulled her hand free and stayed where she was. “Where are we going?”
“I’ll tell you when we get there.”
“I’m not going anywhere except back to your house. I need my purse, my phone, my suitcase. If you don’t want to drive me to a hotel, I’ll call Uber.”
He muttered something unintelligible but undoubtedly profane. “Okay. Go back. Get your purse. Your suitcase is in the car. Call Uber. Have a nice return flight to New York.”
“I—”
“One more thing. If you don’t come with me now, don’t ever contact me again.”
“Wait. If—”
“No, not waiting.”
“You’re being unreasonable. If you would just tell me why we’re… fleeing .”
“I will, but not now. If you’re coming with me, it’s gotta be right now.” He placed his hands on his hips.
She wanted to stand her ground, but one glance back toward his house changed her mind. Everything was cloaked in a darkness that was more than simply an absence of light. It was ominous in character.
Coming back around, she said, “When we get wherever we’re going, I demand a full explanation.”
He dropped his hands from his hips, reached for her hand, and struck off in the direction Mutt had taken. She either had to fall into step behind his long strides or be dragged.
They walked on for another five minutes before he stopped. “Wait here.” Mutt started after him. In a soft but imperative voice, John told him to stay. Mutt sat and looked back at Beth as though to say, That means you, too . She watched John’s retreating figure for as long as she could see it.
Since moving to Manhattan, she had walked the sidewalks of the city alone and after dark, always cautious but without fear. Now she looked back in the direction from which they’d come with uneasiness.
She couldn’t see John’s house, the shed, or any other structure. Interspersed with tall pines, the live oak trees appeared as solid as monoliths, ancient and mystical. Their drapery of Spanish moss looked like shredding winding cloths. She strained to see or hear any indication that they were being pursued, but nothing moved until John reappeared from out of the deep shadows. “Over here,” he said.
She followed him and Mutt through tall weeds and over ground that became increasingly spongy, but she didn’t see the channel of water until they were steps away from it. The bayou was wide. In the darkness, she could barely make out the opposite shore. She didn’t detect a current. The water seemed not to be moving at all.
Mutt was already standing in a boat, tongue out, panting happily, as though declaring that this was the most fun he’d ever had. The craft was small—very small—and looked as though it would tip over if someone nudged the shallow hull with a feather.
John stepped into it, and, as she’d predicted, it rocked violently. He balanced with seemingly no effort, and extended her his hand. “Easy does it.” She just looked at him. “Beth.”
“Why are we leaving, John? What are we running from? We are running, aren’t we? Give me an inkling, at least.”
He hesitated, cut a glance past her in the direction of his house, then looked at her directly. “I don’t want anything bad to happen to you because of me.”
“Bad like what?”
“Like the Mellin girl.”
Surprised by that, she expelled a short breath. “What are you talking about? You didn’t cause that.”
“I didn’t prevent it, either. She was disposed of God knows where. Now get in the damn boat.” As an afterthought, he said, “Please.”
It was a nameless bayou, but to Beth it felt like the Rubicon as she reached out and took his hand.
She’d grown up near swamps, had gone into them on school field trips, had even ventured into them on a date or two. But those excursions had always been in the daytime. With sunlight filtering through the cypresses, the swamps were beautiful and, so long as one was careful, benign.
It was a different story at night when the swamp was wrapped in darkness.
Of the three in the boat, she appeared to be the only one bothered by the skeletal silhouettes of the trees, the sudden screech of a small animal captured by a nocturnal predator, the startling flap of great wings when an owl took flight.
Curled up in the bow of the boat, Mutt had gone to sleep. After his oblique statements in reference to Crissy Mellin’s sad end, John had said nothing more. Sensing that he wouldn’t welcome her asking what more he could have done to prevent Crissy’s fate, she hadn’t engaged him in further conversation—which was awkward since they sat facing each other in a vessel smaller than an average size sofa.
He’d helped her into the boat and made sure she was seated as securely as possible on the wood bench that spanned the hull. He’d then moved to the stern and used one of the oars to shove them off into the channel. He rowed without vigor, but with sure and steady hands.
If he had a destination, Beth couldn’t fathom how he would be able to locate it. The bayou was one of a countless number of identical waterways that formed an aquatic labyrinth studded with islands of various sizes. Some could be crossed with one giant step. Others were much more sizable.
John navigated around all of them smoothly, somehow avoiding collisions with the knotty knees of cypress trees that jutted out of the water. It was obviously an acquired skill that he’d practiced often.
After being on the water for half an hour, she broke the silence. “How can you tell where you’re going? It all looks the same.”
“Not if you know where you’re going.”
“And you do?”
“Um-huh.”
She tried to read her wristwatch, but it was too dark to see the hands. “What time is it?”
“Does it matter?”
“If I’d been on that flight this afternoon, I’d have been home long before now. If Max doesn’t hear from me, he’ll be worried sick.”
“You can call him when we get there.”
“When will we get there, and where is there ?” Her patience at an end, she said forcefully, “John, I’m entitled to know what happened back there and why we left the way we did. It felt like an escape.”
“It was.”
“From what? Something Mutt heard outside? That’s what dogs do. They react to noises.”
“Not Mutt. He’s never growled. Not once. Not since I’ve had him. Just last night, a friend dropped by. He walked in unannounced. I wasn’t even in the room. Mutt never made a sound.”
“Well, he wouldn’t have growled at a friend.”
“He’d never met that friend. But Mutt sensed that he wasn’t a threat. I don’t know any of my neighbors. They’re strangers. They come and go without ever rousing him. Up till tonight, I thought he was useless as a watchdog. I’m glad I was wrong.” Appearing lost in thought, he pulled on the oars a few times before adding, “Mutt sensed a threat, and his instinct was right.”
“You saw someone?”
“From the shed. I have peepholes in all four walls, and I have the shed for just the purpose it served tonight. To watch someone who came there to watch me.”
“Is that what he was doing?”
“He walked around the house, looked through the windows.”
“Did he go inside?”
“No.”
“Any idea who it might have been?”
“I don’t have to speculate. I know.” He stopped rowing and rested the oars against his thighs. “When Mutt alerted us, you were in the middle of saying something. Was it important?”
She heard a rustle of motion on a nearby island and looked toward the sound. Whatever was there remained camouflaged, but she continued looking that way as she murmured, “You tell me whether or not you think it’s important.”
Turning back to him, she said, “The blood moons prior to the two in 2022 were in 2018. January thirty-first and July twenty-seventh. On each of those dates, young women were reported missing. One in Jackson, Mississippi, the other in Shreveport, Louisiana. As of yet, their fates remain unknown, the cases unsolved.”
He stared at her as though willing her to revise what she’d said; then his head dropped forward until his chin was almost touching his chest. Before either of them spoke again, Mutt woke up, stood, and shook himself energetically.
John picked up the oars, murmuring, “That means we’re here.”
Deftly he maneuvered the boat to the tip of a peninsula and pushed them through the shallows using one of the oars against the muddy bottom. When the hull scraped against the shore, Mutt jumped out onto the marshy ground.
Beth got out unassisted. When John joined her, he surprised her by dragging the boat out of the water and into a grove of trees. He covered it with brambles that had obviously been cut for that purpose.
By the time John had concealed the boat, Mutt had watered several trees and seemed to be waiting for them to follow him. “Go on,” John said, and the dog took off. “I’ll take the lead,” he said to Beth. “Stay close and watch your step. It’s an uneven trail.”
“To where?”
“Have you ever been to a Cajun fishing camp?”
“No.”
“Well then, you’re in for a real treat.”
His ironic tone suggested the opposite of what he’d said, but she had no choice except to fall into step behind him. They wound their way through the trees, ducking beneath low limbs and sidestepping depressions where scummy water had collected. Carefully placing her feet in John’s footprints, watching for obstacles like ropy tree roots and anything that slithered, Beth kept her head down, eyes on the ground.
She didn’t see the clump of Spanish moss dangling from a branch until its tendrils creepily grazed her cheek. Her breath caught as she drew up short and reflexively made a swatting motion.
John turned quickly. Seeing what had startled her, he brushed the strands of moss off her face. His touch was lighter than a waft of breath, and even after breaking contact, he didn’t withdraw his hand, but left it raised, close to but not quite touching her cheek.
Then he folded his fingers to form a loose fist and lowered it. “I know you’re not used to shit like this. You’re sure not used to me. I’ve put you through a lot today.” One corner of his mouth tilted up in a quasi-smile. “Just want you to know, you’ve done okay.”
He didn’t turn away immediately. In fact, he didn’t turn away for seconds that numbered in double digits. When he finally did, Beth realized that she’d been holding her breath in achy anticipation.
John removed the pistol from the waistband of his pants and set it on the middle shelf of an open cupboard that held a collection of mismatched dishes and serving bowls. Glancing at Beth, he said, “There’s a bullet in the chamber, so be careful if you pick it up.”
As if , she thought.
He took a bag of dog food from an upper cabinet and filled a bowl for Mutt. As he knelt to set it on the floor, he cupped his hands around Mutt’s head and scratched him behind the ears. “I’m on to you now. Playing dumb and useless is an act you perform to get me to feel sorry for you. When, in fact, you’re a genius.” Mutt tilted his head back, leaning into the massaging fingers, then nudged aside John’s hands in order to get to his dinner.
John patted him on the rump and stood up to find Beth watching him from where she seemed to have taken root in the center of the large but overcrowded and cluttered room. Again, she looked lost. A lot lost.
Extending her hands at her sides, she said, “This is quite a place. It’s got…” She took a look around, stopping on the stuffed head of a snarling razorback that hung on the wall above the sideboard. Coming back to him she said, “Character.”
He gave a humorless chuckle. “Very diplomatic.”
He looked around as she had at all the memorabilia affixed to the walls, which included rusty license plates from decades past, yellowed posters announcing boxing matches and parish Easter egg hunts, school pennants, words of wisdom embroidered on framed squares of muslin, shellacked prize-winning fish mounted on wood plaques, a stuffed baby alligator, and numerous hunting trophies whose antlers were cobwebbed. One of them had a glass eye missing.
“This place has belonged to my maternal grandpa’s family for generations,” he said. “He and my great-uncles would come out here at least once a month to escape their wives, kids, responsibilities. Fish all day, get drunk at night, repeat stories they’d repeated a thousand times, cuss freely, and tell dirty jokes without censure.”
He smiled wryly. “They used any excuse to throw a party, so a few times each year the whole clan would gather. Some of the happiest times of my life were spent out here, making mischief with my boy cousins, spooking the girls just to hear them scream, drinking beers we’d swiped from the coolers when the grown-ups weren’t looking.”
As he’d been talking, she’d sat down on the arm of an upholstered chair that had been in that spot for as far back as John could remember. She asked, “Does the clan still gather?”
“No, my grandparents, aunts, and uncles are all gone.”
“Your parents?”
“Alive and well. After Dad retired, they moved to Natchitoches and opened a gift shop.”
“Really?”
“It was a dream of my mom’s. They’ve made a slew of friends. Dad has fishing buddies. They’re happy. They worry about me,” he added wryly.
“You’re lucky to have someone who does.”
Her tone was telling, but her bearing and facial expression advised him not to go down that path. “Anyhow,” he said, “the cousins scattered. You know how it goes. I regret the years that I skipped those family gatherings.”
“Why did you skip them?”
“Roslyn, my ex, had ruined it for me. She didn’t take to the culture the way my dad did when he met and married my mom. Dad fit right in. Roslyn didn’t, and didn’t want to. Said it was all too rowdy, too redneck, too Cajun.” He took another look around and reached up to jangle the multiple strands of Mardi Gras beads hanging from a wall sconce. “It was that. I wouldn’t trade for the memories.”
Having cleaned his bowl, Mutt wandered over to John. “Need out?” John opened the door for him. “Don’t go far.” When he turned back into the room, he asked Beth if she was hungry.
“Considering the scare I’ve had, I can’t believe it, but I’m actually starving.”
“Do you like gumbo?”
“I love it.”
“I made some the last time I was here.”
“You?”
“Using Grandma’s recipe.” He took a container of gumbo from the freezer section of the refrigerator and set it on the drainboard. “Let’s give it a little time to thaw before heating it up. We need to talk.”
He got two beers from the fridge and, without even asking her, uncapped both. He passed one to her and motioned her into a chair at the dining table. He sat down across from her.
Then, her eyes on the bottle label, she scraped it with her thumbnail. “Are you ready to tell me who you saw at your house and why he was there?”
“His name’s Frank Gray, but everybody calls him the ogre. Big, lumbering guy. Shoulders like an ox. Large round head. Ugly as sin, knows it, and uses it to frighten people.”
“How do you know him?”
He took a sip of beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “He’s a detective. But he’s one of Tom Barker’s henchmen.”
She gave a start. “Surely you don’t mean that literally.”
He steadied a look on her. “Listen carefully, Beth. I wasn’t kidding when I told you that nobody knows where I live except for the one friend I mentioned earlier. He’s my former partner, and he wouldn’t betray me under pain of death.”
“How is it possible that no one knows where you live?”
“I’ve never given out my address or even an indication of the general area. As far as the department knows, I live in a PO box.”
“Driver’s license?”
“The pre-divorce address. I never had it changed. What this means is, the ogre went to a hell of a lot of trouble to find me tonight.”
“Why was he looking for you?”
“Us. He was looking for us . Under orders from Barker, I’m certain.”
“How did the ogre know where to look?”
“Best I can figure, he tracked your cell phone.”
“ My phone? No one had the number.”
“It would have been easy enough to get. I did.”
“True,” she said thoughtfully. “But why track mine? It would have been easier to track yours.”
“Oh, I’m sure they tried that first. They would have found it in the bottom drawer of my desk where it’s kept on perpetual charge. That’s the number they have. But that phone routes my calls to this one,” he said, fishing one from his pants pocket. “It’s a burner, they don’t have this number, and I get a replacement for it every few weeks.”
“You go to a lot of trouble not to be located.”
“I do, yeah.”
“Any particular reason why?”
He rested his forearms on the edge of the table and leaned toward her. “This is going to sound paranoid, but it’s the part you must understand. The ogre wasn’t paying us a social call.”