PART V THE CATHOLIC ESTATE #3
I zoomed through a flooded vestibule and then a flooded ballroom until I saw some French doors leading out the back of the mansion and I blasted right through them, too.
They shattered as I rushed back out into the night, into the tree-lined swamp behind the mansion.
To find the fourth and last enemy airboat waiting for me.
It was, of course, the boat that I’d tossed the flash-bang grenade into at the start of all this. It must have gone round the mansion while I’d been in the graveyard.
Its surviving two crew members were sopping wet, visibly angry and they had me dead to rights.
One of them had his shotgun aimed right at my head.
But then with an almighty roar another boat exploded out of the darkness, appearing from between two trees and it bowled the fourth enemy airboat clean over, knocking it sideways, sending its crew splashing into the water again.
Heidi and Brenda’s airboat landed in its place.
‘Heidi!’ I yelled. ‘You came back!’
‘Couldn’t leave you to handle these assholes by yourself, little man.’
‘I’m gonna give you an extra recommendation to the private investigators’ licensing board,’ I shouted.
‘Let’s get the fuck out of here first,’ she called back.
I couldn’t disagree and with all our enemies out of commission, at least for the moment, we sped off into the night, the waves of our wakes sloshing against the flooded trees.
I didn’t go back to Houston that night.
I told Heidi not to go home, either. In fact, I suggested she disappear for a while, maybe go interstate with Brenda in her Freightliner semitrailer rig for a few weeks.
We were officially on the run.
What I did was check in to a Motel 6 outside New Orleans under a false name for the night.
It was a very specific motel that I’d used before and for a very specific reason.
It was located next to an electrical transformer substation with high-voltage transmission lines.
The substation’s complex web of transformers, capacitors and high-voltage wires interfered with cell phone signals.
If someone was tracking my phone—the easiest way to digitally follow someone—this would essentially mask it.
It slowed my own online phone activity to almost dial-up speed, but it was worth it to be invisible.
Once I was safely in a room, I called Audrey on the old--fashioned landline.
‘Can you come back to Louisiana?’ I said.
‘Why?’
‘Let’s say I’ve been busy. Had a run-in with the Kingmans and I just saw Cyrus Barbin’s baker’s dozen: it was thirteen dead -people. We’re gonna have to question Cyrus again. I also found one of the missing investigators, Art Hillerman, minus his eyes.’
There was a brief silence on the other end of the line.
‘Gosh, okay,’ Audrey said softly. ‘Let me sort some things out here and I’ll fly out first thing tomorrow.’
As I hung up, my cell phone—labouring under the electromagnetic waves of the substation—buzzed with a notification: a Share-My-Location pin from Linc Lewis.
He’d arrived at Gulf Key—formerly Slavers’ Key—in Florida.
The location pin was accompanied by a brief message:
I’m here, buddy. Gonna snoop around a little.
The next morning, Audrey, fresh off an early flight from D.C., arrived at my motel in a cab which, at my suggestion, she paid for in cash.
Once she was in my room, I updated her on the details of what had happened.
My encounter with the Kingmans at the polo day and all that I’d seen at the old Catholic property in the swamp.
The LaSalle tomb with its secret entry to an underground cistern.
The thirteen dead African-Americans manacled to the walls and dressed in rags: the bishop’s baker’s dozen.
And the fourteenth body, that of Arthur Hillerman, with his eyes missing.
‘Cyrus Barbin knew about those thirteen dead people,’ I said. ‘I doubt Cyrus knew about Art Hillerman; he was killed and deposited there more recently.’
I also mentioned the Southern Security Systems guards and how the Hammer, Tad Kingman’s head of security, had been on the phone with them.
Audrey shook her head. ‘What the hell is going on? How is an abandoned Catholic mansion outside New Orleans connected to a baby found near Dead Man’s Creek on the other side of Louisiana?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘At least not yet. Let’s see how Linc’s fared over in Florida at Slavers’ Key.’
I called Linc on one of the disposable phones I kept in my backpack, a cheap pre-owned iPhone 12 Mini.
He didn’t answer.
No real surprise there—
The disposable phone rang.
Loud and sudden.
It wasn’t a voice call, though.
It was a video call, FaceTime.
The caller ID was the number I’d just called: Linc’s.
I answered it, peering at the screen. ‘Linc, thanks for calling me b—’
‘Hello, Dr Speedman.’
It wasn’t Linc.
The face of Deek ‘the Hammer’ Hammonds stared back at me.
I swallowed.
‘Where’s Linc?’ I said with as much confidence as I could muster.
The Hammer’s voice was calm.
‘I’m afraid your friend Mr Lewis can’t come to the phone right now, Dr Speedman. As I said before, you were warned.’
With startling suddenness, an inhuman scream pierced the air from somewhere behind the Hammer.
A scream of such pain as I had never heard.
The Hammer looked over his shoulder at the source of the wail.
I couldn’t tell where he was: only that the place had dirty walls covered in peeling pale blue paint.
He turned back to face the camera. ‘He was such a happy-go-lucky fellow, Linc. Shame, really. He’s kind of occupied at the moment.’
The Hammer re-aimed the phone he was holding to reveal the scene behind him.
‘Oh, Christ in Heaven . . .’ Audrey breathed.
I couldn’t even say that much.
I recoiled in horror.
The scene behind the Hammer was beyond grotesque.
We saw Linc seated against the blue wall with his hands manacled to it behind his back—just like the victims in the cistern.
The wall, I saw now, curved where it joined the floor, which was also painted blue. It looked like Linc was sitting in an old empty swimming pool.
He shrieked in both terror and agony.
‘Oh, Jesus, man! Fuck, fucking let me go, all right! Or please kill me! Fuuuuuck—!’
His left leg was missing.
It ended at a ragged stump at the knee.
Worse was what was happening to his right leg as we watched.
A gigantic alligator was ripping at it, tearing at it. The animal was twisting its powerful neck in an effort to wrench Linc’s right leg from his body.
The Hammer said brightly, ‘Mr Lewis, say hello to your friend, Dr Speedman.’
For a split second, Linc’s petrified eyes glanced directly at the phone and I saw the horror in them.
‘Sammy . . . oh, fucking fuck, man . . .’
Suddenly, with a gruesome bloody spurt, his right leg came free from his body and Linc screamed like a banshee and he slumped, either dead or in shock, I couldn’t tell.
Then I heard him whimpering, gasping.
‘He’s not dead,’ the Hammer said, reappearing on the screen. ‘Not yet. When death comes for young Lincoln here—as it will for you, Dr Speedman—it will be a sweet mercy.’
I gathered my nerve.
‘I know who you are, Warrant Officer Hammonds. Or the Hammer.’
‘See I like that. I know you and you know me.’
He sighed. ‘Like Mrs Kingman told you, you shoulda just left this all alone. You and your pretty FBI girlfriend were heroes. You’d solved the case, found Eli, rescued the missing girl. Fuck, we even got you both the jobs you wanted at the Bureau. But you couldn’t leave it alone, could you?’
He clucked his tongue sadly.
‘Dr Speedman, I mean this when I say it: I don’t want to get nasty. And when I say nasty, I don’t mean what I’m doing here with your friend, Linc. This ain’t nasty. This is amusing.
‘Nasty is what I’m gonna do to you and Miss Mills when I find you. Nasty is what I’ll do—after you’re dead—to your pink-haired dyke Jew intern. Nasty is what I’m gonna do to Andrej and Melita Bartkowiak, your old foster parents.’
The hair on the back of my neck stood up at what he knew about me.
Then there came another voice.
Weak, rasping, breathless.
It was Linc, still alive, if only barely. His voice came from offscreen.
‘Sam . . . Sammy . . . goddamn it, I’m really fucked here, man . . .’
The Hammer smirked, amused at Linc’s incoherent rambling.
‘Lost my legs . . . wait, where are my keys, I lost my keys . . . I’m losing my mind . . . dude, I’m gonna die and I don’t wanna die . . .’
The Hammer shrugged.
Drew a pistol.
‘I like you, Dr Speedman. You’re actually quite impressive. No-one’s ever gotten this far before, not Arthur Hillerman, not even that asshole Brewster. But you were warned, so sadly now I gotta come kill you.’
He turned the camera back on Linc, slumped against the pale blue wall, sweating and babbling as the alligator ate his own leg in front of him.
The Hammer shot Linc in the forehead.
Linc’s brains splattered all over the wall and he slumped, dead.
The Hammer’s face returned to the screen.
‘I’m coming for you.’
He ended the video call and I just stared at the blank screen.
Audrey and I sat in silence in my cheap motel room.
I didn’t know what to do.
This had never happened to me before and I didn’t know how to react or even feel.
My mind was churning, trying to find the correct answer.
Because that’s what I’d always done: found the correct answer.
I found cheating spouses.
I found missing people.
I found corporate thieves.
My job suited me perfectly. I was given puzzles to solve and I solved them.
Yes, sometimes that involved a risk to my own safety, but I was okay with that. I’d even admit that, in my heart of hearts, I kind of liked that part of the job.
But until that moment, the lives of anyone I cared about hadn’t been threatened because of a case.
I didn’t know how to make this calculation: solve the puzzle but open up my innocent loved ones to horrific deaths?
And all while a former special forces killer hunted me.
It literally didn’t compute.
I stared into space.
‘Sam? Sam Speedman, are you in there?’ Audrey said.
I blinked out of it.
‘You kinda froze up,’ she said. ‘Just went still. What were you thinking about?’
‘I was trying to figure out what to do.’
‘And?’
I frowned—thinking, computing—formulating a plan of action in my mind.
‘We definitely still need to see Cyrus again,’ I said. ‘And I also want to check out an address in Morgan City . . .’
‘What’s in Morgan City?’
‘A man going by the name “William Winston” who I hope is the missing investigator named Bill Brewster. But before any of that—’
‘Yeah?’
‘We’ve gotta see what Linc found that got him killed. We’ve gotta go to Slavers’ Key.’
‘You want us to go to the place where they fed your friend alive to an alligator?’ Audrey said in disbelief.
I was already pulling out another burner phone.
‘We’re so deep in this now, the only way out is through,’ I said. ‘Either they win or we win. And as you just said, they just killed my friend, so I’m pretty motivated to beat ’em now. But before we do any of that, I need to make some calls. And some preparations.’
I made two calls.
First, to warn Heidi.
Second, to warn my foster parents.
Then I hung up and stomped on the burner phone.
‘All right,’ I said, ‘we’re now investigating these assholes while they’re hunting us. Let’s go to Florida.’