“The girl who took the picture?”
“This other gal took the picture and the other ’un give it to me. I never had nobody take my picture before except the cops, but they don’t let you have none. You won’t steal it from me, will you?”
Alexa looked out at the smoldering hull of Leland’s boat, and suddenly felt as empty as a shattered pitcher.
94
The activity of the gathering of cops had drawn a crowd of civilians. NOPD Superintendent Jackson Evans waited, standing before two television crews, making a statement. Several members of his staff watched from the sidelines. The police had arrived in two helicopters, visible in the gravel lot beside Moody’s store. Alexa had intended to take Manseur’s car back to New Orleans, but she saw two men she was certain were FBI agents, walking toward her from a parked Ford sedan.
Bond had called Manseur’s wife to tell her about Michael’s condition before she saw or heard it on the news. He had told her they were going to the trauma center in Baton Rouge, where Manseur would receive the best of care. She said she’d leave her daughters at her sister’s and make her way there.
As the boats approached the dock, the news crews abandoned the superintendent. They scrambled to get footage of the wounded detectives as well as the covered bodies of Deputy Boudreaux and Andy Tinsdale. Leland smiled at the attention. Jackson Evans hurried to the dock, perhaps out of genuine concern as well as the fact that it would enable him to get in the frame. As the crews recorded, Jackson Evans shook the sheriff’s hand briskly. Several still photographers painted the scene with their flashes. Alexa could see Leland talking to the cameras as he was being perp-walked to a waiting ambulance. She was pretty sure he was telling the world about how that black woman FBI cop had burned up his wonderful new boat-earned by the honest sweat of his brow.
Alexa used her anonymity and the general confusion to escape the media. Luckily, Jackson Evans was too busy basking in the spotlight to think to share it.
The agents approached as Alexa was striding from the dock. “Agent Keen,” the older one said. “I’m Special Agent Moore and this is Special Agent Montgomery. We’re here to assist you as necessary.”
“I’m all done here,” she told them. “I could sure use a ride back to my hotel.”
“There’s a Lojac in it to direct us. By the way, the director asked me to tell you that he would appreciate a call at your earliest convenience,” Agent Moore told her. “He said to tell you, ‘Job well done.’ He will send in a plane if you’d like to fly out of here. You sure don’t want to try to drive. The field office is closed down. We’ve evacuated personnel, computers, and files. We’ll be relocating to Baton Rouge until all’s clear.”
“Sounds like an intelligent course,” Alexa said.
“Did you recover the ransom?” he asked.
Alexa held up the briefcase. “The majority of the bearer bonds are in here. Make sure Dr. LePointe gets them back, will you. I need to get the briefcase processed.”
“How much is there?”
“Two million, three hundred thousand. Twenty of the bonds are missing. Maybe NOPD will turn up the rest in their investigation.”
“Two hundred thousand in bearer bonds turn up in an NOPD investigation?” Montgomery smiled. “Like that’ll happen in our lifetimes.”
Alexa studied him. “What is that supposed to mean? The detectives I worked with are one hundred percent professionals. Don’t you dare question their integrity in front of me. If you knew them, you wouldn’t say such a thing.”
The agent’s face reddened. “Sorry. I didn’t mean anything about them. There are a few good eggs in the carton.”
She watched as the wounded detectives were being fed into the life-flight helicopter. She waved at Manseur, who was walking with the help of a pair of deputies. He saw her and weakly waved back.
“This is New Orleans, Agent Keen,” Moore reminded her.
“So they tell me,” she said.
95
Grub watched the excitement on the dock through the store’s window because he didn’t want Leland to see him and think he was gloating. He was sure that Leland would be back, because he was too mean not to. Grub liked pissing him off, because it was such good sport that he couldn’t help it, but there wasn’t any future in pressing your luck too far when it came to old Leland.
Grub heard one of the deputies saying that a boat had gotten burned up and they could use the smoke to get a fix on the location. He heard one of them telling the fat deputy that Leland had killed the deputy that had gone out with the other cops and that he’d shot up two of the cops that came from New Orleans to arrest him. They also said Leland had killed two missing game and fish officers. Like that was a surprise. They were lucky they’d shot Leland before he’d killed all of them.
Grub waited until the TV people and the cops were about done loading up and the deputies had pulled the first of the boat trailers down to get their boats. They’d driven the amphibian up onto a flatbed eighteen-wheeler, so in a while they’d be gone and the dock would be back to normal. One good thing was that the cops had filled up all their boats with gas, and Moody was happy about that, plus on account of all the chips, sandwiches, and cold drinks he’d sold them. None of them had tipped Grub, because cops and TV people were all a bunch of stuck-up idiots. He decided that he wouldn’t ever again watch their TV shows or talk to cops if he could help it. They were all dick-brain shit-heels anyway.
Grub walked slowly to his bus and climbed inside, slamming the door behind him.
It was funny how that shot-up man in Leland’s boat had hung on to his briefcase when there weren’t nothing in it but a bunch of ruined paper. Grub had taken some of it, and now he opened his footlocker and took out the stack to look at it. With the bullet holes in them, he couldn’t even use them to draw on, but the paper felt nice to his fingers and the writing on it stuck out so you could sort of feel the words.
Grub took one of the big papers and held it up to the window and looked at the way the light went through it and showed a design that appeared to be stuck inside the piece of paper. He studied the edges for a seam, but there weren’t any, so he couldn’t figure out how they got the picture and words inside a skinny piece of paper. He didn’t know what the words said or what they could be for.
Grub knew what they’d be good for after he got tired of looking at them. Rolled up and set afire with a match, they’d reach deep enough in the heater to light it.
96
Back in her hotel room, Alexa ran herself a hot bath. She soaked for almost an hour, running more hot water into the tub as it cooled. After draining the water and drying off, she lay across the bed and closed her eyes. The events of the afternoon in the swamp played in her mind like a slow-motion nightmare. At least, she decided, there was only room behind her eyes for one nightmare at a time.
In her short life there had been many terrors emblazoned in her brain. A thousand insecurities, pains, and insults had occurred, and each was cataloged in her mind’s files. She wished that she could, as the local field office had, remove the files to a faraway place and leave them stored where she would never have to recover them should she choose not to do so. If only life were so simple to deal with.
She took the bundle of postcards out of her suitcase and, one by one, tore them into confetti. That done, she flushed them down the toilet, watching the shards of evil spiral down into sewer oblivion. Alexa smiled. Maybe her
