“I’m not staying without you.”
“Ben. Focus.”
“I’m not, Marissa. It’ll just be a matter of time before I mouth off to that bitch too. Especially if she fires you—”
“We got houses up ahead, Ben.”
She was right. A few yards down the suddenly manicured riverbank, a giant boat dock, big enough to house a spiral water slide, jutted out into the water, and beyond it, sunlight filtered through oak branches onto green lawns and redbrick McMansions. Ben saw no sign of the St. Tammany Sheriff’s Department. Or of any of the residents, for that matter. Maybe the prospect of a wife-killing banker on the loose had them inside behind locked doors.
“Okay. There’s one bend,” he said.
“I think we got two more.”
Ben throttled the motor and the tiny boat picked up speed. “How far from shore is the house?” he asked.
“Not sure. He’s not listed.”
“You didn’t ask your source?”
“I was kinda drunk.”
“Anastasis.”
“What?”
“That’ll be the name of our new website. It’s Greek for resurrection. What do you think?”
“I hope you got a long list of those.”
“You don’t like it?”
“You’re not going down with me, Ben. You’re too damn talented, and you don’t owe me that.”
“I
“You
The force of her anger startled both of them silent, and for a minute or two, there was just the whine of the boat’s engine and the river’s water whooshing past the fiberglass hull.
“No matter what happens with me and Hilda, I’m not leaving your life. Not now, not ever. And you won’t have to chase me from bar to bar to keep me in it, either. I owe you that much ’cause you’re my friend, and you’re a good one. And I promise you, the only time you’ll have to say good-bye to me is when one of us is leaving this great earth. Got it?”
He was grateful for his sunglasses because they hid tears so sudden and forceful, a few quick blinks were enough to keep them at bay.
“And Ben?”
“Yes.”
“Looks like it was one bend, not two. Sorry.”
The cops were suddenly everywhere along the bank up ahead, uniformed deputies, walking the perimeter, and as soon as one of them saw the boat approaching, he held up one palm in the universal signal of “Don’t move another damn inch, son.” Ben cursed up a storm under his breath while he yanked back on the throttle until they were almost drifting. The engine sputtered as it the propeller slowed, the deputies clotting together on the bank to meet their approach.
“Goddammit,” Marissa whispered. “I fucked up. Sorry.”
“So I guess we have to keep going or else we’ll—”
Just then the boat’s propeller made a sound like a motorcycle slamming into a brick wall. The jolt was so strong it knocked Marissa forward into the back of the captain’s chair. Ben’s chest hit the wheel as the entire boat rose and fell beneath them; it felt like a whale had passed underneath the thing. But the terrible scream was coming from the propeller blades in back.
“Kill it! Kill it!”
Ben followed Marissa’s instructions and in the silence that fell, he heard one of the deputies cry out, “You folks just stay right where you are!”
“Well, that should be easy,” Marissa called back. “Looks like something just ate our propeller.”
Ben scooted past her toward the back of the boat. He saw it right away, the bright loops of steel wrapped around the blades like the tentacles of an octopus, and as Ben used both hands to free it, Marissa started backing up, probably because she was stricken by the same thought as Ben. The chain wasn’t some rusted, filthy river- bottom relic they had stirred to the surface by mistake. It looked brand new. And if it was new, that meant—
The corpse exploded to the surface a few yards away.
“Ho, mother,” Marissa groaned.
Ben did his best not to look away. The body bobbed in the green water like a cork: greasy blue lips, brown hair plastered to one side in a style that would have been adorable on a little kid bursting from a swimming pool; but on this bloated, grown man it looked obscene. Two loops of chain crossed the man’s naked, bruised shoulders, and a shiny padlock secured the four loops of chain at the center of his chest.
“Daniel Stevens?” The question was intended for his boss, but he’d directed it at the corpse floating a few feet away from him. When Marissa didn’t answer him, he turned and saw that all the life seemed to have drained from her eyes, and from her body itself; her arms hung limply at her sides and he couldn’t tell if she was pouting or if she’d lost all feeling in her lower jaw. Shock. It had to be shock.
“Marissa?”
She lunged at him, and before he could cry out, she’d shoved him headfirst into the water. He was choking, arms flailing, bumping up against the corpse, pawing at its slick chest as he tried to get his bearings, kicking to get his head above water. Then he felt the chain he’d loosened from the propeller tighten suddenly around his waist. She was dragging him toward the boat, and for a second, he thought she was helping him, that she was about to pull him out of the water. Then the chain tightened suddenly and viciously around his neck. His head slammed into something hard. The chain tightened again. His head was wedged between two of the propeller’s scored, mangled blades. And when he tried to scream Marissa’s name, what came out instead was a frenzied chorus of high- pitched keening sounds that sounded more animal than human.
And over them, he could hear the sound of Marissa’s footsteps padding across the floor of the boat, heading in the direction of the captain’s chair, the throttle and the ignition.
• • •
Lloyd Duchamp came to on the floor of his kitchen. He figured it was the high-pitched screams coming from the river that had roused him. But what had they roused him from? Yes, he’d allowed himself a beer after the police had finished questioning him a few hours before. But that was all. Just one beer. Surely not enough to trigger a full-on-blackout, and that’s exactly what this felt like.
And it wasn’t like anyone would blame him for knocking back a single Heineken either. It had been a helluva day, what with Danny Stevens going full psycho on everyone. Lloyd was basically a prisoner in his own home until the cops were finished securing the scene, as they’d put it. And in this case, the scene was the bloody murder house next door.
His house sat right on the bank of the Tchefuncte, and from his kitchen window, he could see a tiny motorboat floating in the river. That’s where the screams were coming from. A couple cops were running along the bank, shouting things across the water to the black woman in the boat. But it looked like she was ignoring them. She certainly wasn’t the one screaming, he could tell that much. And she didn’t look like she cared much who was. Actually, it looked she was getting ready to start up the motor and get the hell out of there, which to be frank, is just what he wanted to do.
In a single instant, he smelled the gas and heard the sharp crack outside. He turned in time to see the black woman go down, saw the deputy on the bank who’d fired the shot still frozen, gun raised. A sudden, stunned silence washed over the entire scene; all heads had turned toward the river now and its lone floating boat.
Lloyd Duchamp would have stood at his kitchen window forever watching the scene unfold if it hadn’t been for the gas. The smell was overpowering him now.
He threw open the cabinet doors under the sink. When the wave of gas hit him, his eyes started to water and he had to blink madly before he saw that the gas line snaking out from behind the oven had been completely
