PART III RETURN TO VICTORVILLE #3
I also noticed that he wore a sturdy law enforcement–style gun belt, complete with a holster, keys, a flashlight and handcuffs.
Seeing him up close now, I noticed that he was not just fit, he was fit in the extreme, the way ex–special forces guys are.
‘Deek,’ Tad Kingman said, ‘would you mind taking these fine young investigators down to Dead Man’s Creek so they can carry out their inquiries?’
‘Of course, Mr Kingman,’ the Hammer said, his eyes locked on mine.
The Hammer took us in an airboat down the Acheron River, along with three other private security guards wearing Southern Security Systems uniforms.
There was no wind.
The water was still.
I kept a cautious eye on Deek Hammonds as he calmly guided our boat downriver. If there was ever someone who could make a person disappear—and not even blink while doing it—it was him. I noticed Audrey keeping an eye on him, too.
After a while, I saw the beached house, still lying on its side in the water, across from the mouth of Dead Man’s Creek.
The Hammer slowed the airboat and gently ran it aground on the muddy shore where Dead Man’s Creek joined the Acheron River.
I peered up the creek: gnarled black trees leaned over it from either side, forming an eerie natural roof that cloaked the narrow stream in shadow.
‘Is Eli Gage still around?’ I asked.
The Hammer shrugged. ‘The sheriff didn’t hold him. Could be thirty miles down the swamp for all I know.’
Audrey said, ‘Can you drive us up into the creek?’
With the extra water flowing out of it, the creek certainly looked wide enough for the airboat to fit.
‘Fuck no,’ the Hammer said. ‘That creek’s more crooked than a politician’s spine. Got all kinds of rocks and shit under the surface. I’m not beaching my boat in there for you two. You go in there, you go on foot.’
‘All right,’ Audrey said.
We stepped out of the airboat and stood in the mud, staring into the dark creek.
‘Enjoy yourselves in there,’ the Hammer snorted.
We hiked up Dead Man’s Creek, squelching through mud and sludge.
Under the canopy of twisted branches, it was dark and murky, which made it very hard to see the tree roots in the mud. We tripped often.
It was slow going.
The creek snaked in bending curves that made it difficult to see more than twenty yards ahead.
At one point, a belching grunt from beneath us made us both spin.
A twelve-foot alligator was watching us from the water.
It began following us, its tail slinking.
Audrey drew her pistol.
I extracted my Sig Sauer from my backpack, too.
Then we rounded a bend and saw a barge lying on the left-hand shore of the creek, just above the muddy waterline.
It was a derelict spud barge, filthy beyond belief, and presumably Eli Gage’s.
Spud barge
In the marshes and estuaries of Louisiana, shallow-water spud barges have long been used as support vessels for construction operations.
They come in all shapes and sizes. They usually have a very basic glassed-in wheelhouse and steel-shafted pylons, or ‘spuds’, that are driven down into the riverbed as anchors.
Cheap and -easily discarded, they’re very versatile and on their broad flat decks you can mount pretty much anything: cranes, winches, cable spools.
This spud barge was a small one—maybe sixty feet long—and it was fitted with two dome-shaped fuel tanks.
At its stern was a small wheelhouse—basically, a shack—which had been converted into someone’s home. A ragged Confederate flag was slung across its doorway and beyond the flag I glimpsed a stained mattress inside.
Eli Gage was nowhere to be seen.
‘Mr Gage!’ Audrey called. ‘Mr Gage! Are you here? We don’t want to startle you!’
No reply.
The gator that had been following us was hanging back.
That wasn’t a good sign. It meant that there must be another gator nearby, a bigger one whose territory the twelve-footer didn’t want to encroach upon and twelve-foot gators usually aren’t afraid of anything.
Audrey stepped onto the barge’s deck, gun up.
She pulled aside the Confederate flag and edged inside the wheelhouse.
I stepped onto the barge after her, looking further up the creek.
It twisted out of view, heading up toward the hills, covered by its natural awning.
Gun in hand, I walked over to one of the two domed fuel tanks.
Its rusty hatch was closed.
I yanked it open, flicked on my flashlight and aimed it into the darkness of the empty fuel tank . . .
. . . and saw her.
Adrenaline shot through me.
It was a woman.
A Black woman lying in a bed of rags, thin and emaciated, her hands tied to a hook above her head.
Whether she was asleep or dead, I couldn’t tell, but I was sure of one thing.
It was LaToya Martyn.
I bounded into the fuel tank, my footsteps echoing off its tin walls, and fell to my knees beside LaToya Martyn.
I touched her neck, checking for a pulse and to my surprise she groaned.
She was alive.
‘Audrey! Call the cops, I found—’
‘I cleansed her,’ a voice said from my left.
The dark figure of Eli Gage emerged from behind a curtain, gripping his shotgun.
‘Cleansed the harlot with my pure seed. Like Thomas Jefferson did with his negro girls.’
Still on my knees, I began to raise my pistol but his gun was already up.
He squeezed the trigger and in the confines of the metal fuel tank, a gunshot boomed.
Eli Gage flew sideways, struck by Audrey’s bullet.
He slammed against the curved wall of the fuel tank, tried to raise his gun again.
That’s when I shot him twice in the chest and Eli collapsed, falling face-down onto the floor, gasping briefly until he went completely still and breathed no more.
Within an hour, the whole area was a circus.
An EMT chopper hovered overhead as LaToya Martyn—lying on a stretcher, wrapped in blankets and with an oxygen mask on her face—was hauled up to it on a hoist.
She would be airlifted to Houston Methodist, the closest hospital with a fully equipped ICU.
Audrey and I stood on the deck of the barge, battered by the rotor wash of the chopper, watching the stretcher rise.
We were now surrounded by the deputies from Victorville and Sheriff Thompson himself. They all wore rubber boots, having traipsed up the creek from the Acheron River.
The Hammer watched from a distance, flanked by Tad Kingman Jr and his brother, Beau.
News of our grim discovery had travelled fast.
Sheriff Thompson was furious. Given that this had all been found a few hundred yards from the discovery of the baby in the doll, he would have a lot of explaining to do.
He swore. ‘What an absolute goddamn mess.’
‘Let’s go,’ I said to Audrey. ‘We’re done here.’
Houston Methodist Hospital
Houston, Texas
The only sound in the hospital room was LaToya Martyn’s heart-rate monitor beeping rhythmically.
I sat beside LaToya’s bed, watching her. Audrey was outside, talking on her phone.
Two Texas Rangers stood guard at the door.
LaToya Martyn hadn’t regained consciousness yet.
She’d been heavily drugged by Eli. She was also seriously malnourished, to the point of starvation. She was so thin I could see her bones under her skin.
The doctors at Houston Methodist had placed her into an induced coma.
Then LaToya’s parents, Darnell and Kecia Martyn, arrived.
They raced into the room and fell to their knees beside her bed, clutched her hands.
Her eyes didn’t open.
The heart-rate monitor kept beeping.
‘My baby, my baby,’ Mrs Kecia Martyn kept saying.
Darnell turned to me. ‘Thank you, Mr Speedman. After all these years. Thank you.’
After a time, I left.
My job had been to find LaToya Martyn and even if it’d taken seven years, I’d found her.