happen. You might come out of this just fine.”
Bledsoe took the yellow legal pad from Alafair’s hand and examined the top page, all the while holding the.25 against Alafair’s head. “Miss Alafair, you just made a bunch of people very happy. Isn’t that something, Tom? It was sitting in your backyard all the time, under that big generator, I bet. It took an educated young woman to figure this out for us. She’s special is what she is. Hear that, darlin’? You special and that’s how I’m gonna treat you. You’ll like it when we get there.”
He picked a piece of glass out of her hair and flicked it out the window. He did not say where “there” was.
They pulled out on the boulevard and drove past a women’s dormitory to a stop sign on the edge of the campus. Then they turned onto University Avenue and headed toward the edge of town.
MOMENTS LATER, a few blocks up the avenue, between a Jewish cemetery that was covered with the deep shadows of cedar and oak trees, and an old icehouse that had been converted into a topless club, a jogger had to dodge a car that had plunged out of the traffic, across the median, and possibly had been hit by another car. The jogger could not see clearly inside the car because of the mist, but when he called 911, he told the dispatcher he had heard a sound like muffled firecrackers and he thought he had seen a series of flashes inside the windows.
I CLAMPED THE portable emergency flasher on the roof of my truck and let Clete drive. By the time Clete had driven us through the little town of Broussard, the highway was slick, the sky black, and traffic was backing up because of construction outside Lafayette. We went through a long section of urban sprawl that in my college days had been sugarcane fields and pecan orchards, threaded by a two-lane highway that had been lined on each side with live oaks. But that was all gone.
It was almost 10:00 p.m. I had called Molly’s cell phone three times en route, getting her voice mail each time.
“You’re worrying too much. They’re probably headed home by now,” Clete said.
“She always checks her voice mail. It’s an obsession with her,” I said.
“Think about it a minute, Dave. Nothing has changed since this afternoon, except for the fact we found out Claggart is Asswipe’s half brother. That doesn’t mean Molly and Alafair are in greater danger. You know what I think is bothering you?”
“I have a feeling you’re going to tell me.”
“You smoked Rydel and now you want to drink.”
When I didn’t speak, he said, “Remember when we did that bunch of Colombians? I’ve never been so scared in my life. I drank a dozen double Scotches that night and it didn’t make a dent.”
“Clete?”
“Yeah?”
“Will you shut up?”
He looked at me in the glow of the dash, then mashed on the accelerator, swerving across a double stripe to pass a tractor-trailer rig, rocking both of us against the doors.
I punched in 911 and got a Lafayette Parish dispatcher. “What’s the nature of your emergency?” a black woman’s voice said.
“This is Detective Dave Robicheaux, Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Department,” I said. “I’m on my way to the UL campus to find my wife and daughter. They usually park by Cypress Lake, next to Burke Hall. They’re not responding to my calls. I think they may be in jeopardy. Will you send a cruiser to the campus and check out their vehicle, please?”
I gave her the make and model of Molly’s car.
“We have a five-car accident on University, but we’ll get someone over to the campus as soon as possible,” she said. “Do you want me to call Campus Security?”
“Yes, please.”
“You didn’t tell me the nature of the emergency.”
“Some guys tried to kill my family on Sunday. They’re still out there.”
“Give me your number and I’ll call you every ten minutes until we know they’re safe.”
“Thank you,” I said.
As I said, it’s the most humble members of the human family who remind us of the Orwellian admonition that people are always better than we think they are.
Clete hit a clear stretch of four-lane road and floored my truck. We went through a brightly lit shopping district, then entered the old part of Lafayette, where live oak trees hung with moss still form canopies over the streets. We turned left on University Avenue and passed the five-car pileup the 911 dispatcher had mentioned. The mist was gray, floating across the trees and shrubbery and hedges in the university district. A church bus passed us in the opposite direction, then a tanker truck and a stretch limo and a small car barely visible on the other side of the limo.
The roof of the car had the same rusty tint as Molly’s. I turned around in the seat and looked through the back window, but I had lost sight of the car.
“Was that Molly and Alafair?” Clete said.
“I’m not sure.”
“Want me to turn around?”
I thought about it. “No, check Burke Hall first,” I said.
“You got it, noble mon,” Clete said.
AS THEY DROVE DOWN University Avenue past a five-car pileup, Ronald Bledsoe propped both his arms on the back of Alafair’s seat to conceal the.25 automatic he had wedged against her spine. He smelled her hair again and ticked the back of her neck with his fingernail. When she tried to lean forward, he hooked his finger in her collar.
“Why’d you kick me in the park?” he asked.
“Where are we going?” Molly said.
“Straight ahead. I’ll tell you what to do. You don’t talk anymore until I tell you to,” he replied. He nudged Alafair with the automatic. “You didn’t answer my question, darlin’.”
“I kicked you in the mouth because you asked for it,” she said.
“I did no such thing. You shouldn’t lie.”
Alafair’s face was growing more intense, her features sharpening. He put his lips on the nape of her neck, then mussed her hair with his free hand.
“Do you believe we let this sick fuck take over our car?” she said to Molly.
“Miss, don’t talk like that to Ronald,” Tom Claggart said. “You don’t want to do that.”
“What else can you do to us? You’re going to kill us. Look at you, you’re pathetic. You both have heads that look like foreskin. Who was your mother? She must have been inseminated by a yeast infection.”
The effect of her words on the two men was different from what she had expected. Bledsoe cupped his hand under her chin and drew her head close to his mouth. Then he bit her hair. But it was Claggart who seemed to be losing control, as though he were witnessing a prelude to events he had seen before and did not want to see again. He became agitated, his eyes twitching. He rubbed his hands up and down on his thighs. Then he realized his raincoat was caught in the door. He began jerking at it, as though he were happy to have something to distract him.
“Pull over. My coat is caught,” he said.
“There’s a semi going fifty miles an hour on my bumper,” Molly said.
“I don’t care. Pull over right now. Make her pull over, Ronald,” Claggart said.
Then Claggart opened the door while the car was still moving. Molly swerved the wheel and he lurched sideways. Bledsoe wasn’t sure what was happening. In seconds, the environment he had imposed total control on was coming apart. He spit Alafair’s hair out of his mouth and grabbed Claggart’s arm, just as the open door was hit by a car traveling in the opposite direction.
Alafair reached down on the floor. All in one motion, she pulled Molly’s.22 Ruger from her purse, worked the
