Sting

Chapter 38

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W ith only a few miles remaining until they reached Bayou Gauche, Shaw, Wiley, and Jordie discussed terms.

The two men agreed to hold off notifying the law enforcement teams already conducting a search for Josh for the reason specified—that Jordie held more sway over her brother than anyone.

“The less pressure he feels, the better our chances that he’ll see reason and surrender,” she told them.

Addressing Wiley, Shaw backed her. “Besides, if we get a bunch of eager beaver lawmen hopped up before we even know that there is a house and that Josh is there , then my cover’s blown for no good reason, and you look like an idiot for believing in a tale about twinkling lights spun by the fugitive’s sister.”

“I’ll go along,” Wiley said, speaking over his shoulder to Jordie. “And you’ll get your chance to talk sense to him. But if he doesn’t surrender within a few minutes, or does something the least bit nutso, I’m calling for backup. And I mean it. And I don’t care if you do shoot me. Got that?”

“Goes double for me,” Shaw said.

“Give me five minutes with him.”

“Three,” Shaw said.

She could tell by his stubborn tone that he wasn’t giving on that.

“All right, three. And promise me that Josh won’t be harmed.”

“Can’t promise that, Jordie,” Shaw said with all sincerity, “because we can’t predict what he will do.”

He was right, of course. She wished for a peaceful, casualty-free outcome, but neither Shaw, nor anyone, could guarantee it. The denouement depended largely upon her brother’s emotional stability, and that wasn’t a reassuring prospect.

“Something else to consider,” Wiley said. “We might run into Panella.”

“Nothing to consider,” Shaw said. “We run into Panella, he gets no more time to surrender than instantly before I blow him to kingdom come.”

After that, the three of them lapsed into a somber silence like soldiers mentally gearing up for a dangerous mission.

Another grim possibility had occurred to Jordie: Before they reached Josh, he might be located by another law officer. If he tried to get away, he could be wounded or killed in the attempt. She felt that time was running out for her brother and willed Shaw to drive as fast as he could.

But as they entered the town of Bayou Gauche, she was seized by dread and uncertainty as to how the day would play out.

“Okay, which way?” Shaw asked from the driver’s seat.

“If I’m remembering correctly, the house was on this side of town and off in that direction.” She pointed. “Take a left at the first stoplight.”

Just as they made the turn, Wiley’s cell phone beeped. He checked the readout. “Hickam’s mom.”

“Take it.” Shaw pulled into a filling station parking lot. “I have some rules of engagement to talk over with Jordie.”

Wiley got out and answered his phone as he stepped away from the car.

Jordie, unhappy over the delay, said, “Rules of engagement?”

“Nonnegotiable rules. First.” Shaw extended his hand through the space between the front seats.

She hesitated, then laid the pistol in his open palm. “It was a rash move, I’ll admit. But would you have brought me along otherwise?”

“No way in hell. Would you have shot me?”

“I seriously considered it when you called last night only a time-out.”

“I said that to test you, see what you’d do.”

“I realize that now.”

They shared a meaningful look, then he gave his head a small shake as though to pull him back into the here and now. “The threat of being shot didn’t convert me to your way of thinking. You made sense. If we find Josh, you could be a valuable asset.”

“Thank you.”

“Hold off on that thanks, because there’s something else.” His serious tone arrested her attention. “I told Wiley about Costa Rica.”

She had expected him to, of course, but the implications were daunting. “Does he see me as an accomplice?”

“He’s thinking it over. Reason I’m telling you now is in case you’re planning to bamboozle us, help Josh get away, something like that. It would make you look really bad in the eyes of the law.”

“I won’t.”

“Okay.”

“I swear to you.”

“Okay.” He held her gaze for several seconds, then said, “Now…the other rules.”

A few minutes later, Wiley opened the passenger door and got in. “Sorry that took a while longer than it should have. The lady is so relieved she couldn’t stop talking. Hick’s regained consciousness. He’s alert. Responds correctly to the questions put to him.”

Jordie exclaimed her relief.

“That’s good news,” Shaw said.

“Not for you,” Wiley said. “He woke up mad as hell. Remembered the hoodie, thought it was you who’d shot him.”

“I hope somebody told him different.”

“He still doesn’t like you. But nobody does, right?”

Shaw looked in the rearview mirror and shot Jordie a look. She smiled back, but then her features returned to being taut with anxiety.

Following the directions she gave him, Shaw angled off the main road onto one whose bends were dictated by the winding bayou which it ran alongside. The swampy landscape on either side was a panoply of sameness, one perspective exactly like every other. With no signposts, either natural or man-made, one could get easily lost. He began to doubt Jordie’s recollection.

But then she said, “There. On the right.”

The turnoff was marked only by a rusty and dented metal mailbox. It sat atop a steeply leaning wooden post that seemed to be relying on the surrounding weeds to keep it from toppling. A quarter of a mile farther along the narrow gravel road, a house came into view.

“That it?” Shaw asked.

“Yes. I’m positive.”

It didn’t look at all hospitable or even habitable. There wasn’t a sign of life about the place, not a blade of living grass or green shrubbery. Even the surrounding trees had been suffocated by the Spanish moss that hung from their bare branches.

“Looks like a haunted house,” Wiley said.

“That would appeal to Josh,” she said. “He likes video games with supernatural and horror themes.”

Shaw stopped the car about fifty yards away from the house, but he kept the engine running as they assessed it. It was built in a typical Acadian style, supported on stout cypress beams, with a deep porch on three sides, shaded by the overhang. The exterior might once have been white, but the elements had stripped so much of the paint that the structure had been left a mournful gray that matched the monochromatic setting. Rust had taken over most of the tin roof. Snaggletoothed hurricane shutters hung crookedly from the windows.

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” Shaw said. “Which is why I hate that there are so many windows. We’re sitting ducks for anybody who might be inside looking out.”

“Josh wouldn’t shoot anybody,” Jordie said.

“Wasn’t referring to Josh.”

“Panella?” Without waiting for an answer, Wiley drew his weapon just as Shaw did. “No car here.”

“I noticed that,” Shaw said. “Not sure what it means.”

“Maybe it means that I was wrong,” Jordie said. “That no one’s been here in ages.”

“I don’t think so.” Shaw couldn’t explain why he felt that. It was a gut thing.

“I should call for backup,” Wiley said.

“No!” Jordie said. “Let’s at least determine that Josh isn’t here.”

“Or that he is,” Shaw said. “Sink down.” He took his foot off the brake and drove slowly toward the house, then stopped about ten yards short of the steps leading up to the porch. He opened the driver’s door and got out but remained crouched behind the door. Wiley did the same on the passenger side. Shaw looked across the car’s interior and said, “This is your show.”

Wiley called out Josh’s name and identified himself. “I brought your sister with me. She wants to talk to you.”

They waited in breathless anticipation, but there was nothing forthcoming from the house. Wiley tried again, putting more force behind his voice. “Josh? It’s time to surrender. You keep up this nonsense, you lose your bargaining position for leniency.”

The clock in the dashboard was a retro analog model. Shaw listened to it tick off another sixty seconds, and when still nothing happened, he opened the backseat door and motioned Jordie out.

“Take my place behind the wheel.”

One of his rules of engagement had been that if she came along, she was to do what he said, when he said it. She slid out of the back and into the front without question or argument.

He placed his hand on the top of her head and pushed her down. “Stay low. I’d leave Wiley here with you, but we need to go in from two different directions. Any sign of Josh, the rustle of one leaf, a bug fart, you lay down on the horn.”

“If Josh is in there, I’m praying he’ll come out with his hands up.”

“Me too. But in case another scenario plays out—”

“Like Panella?”

“Like anything. Hit the horn, and then floorboard the gas pedal.”

“What about you?”

“Don’t wait on us. You get clear. Understood?”

With obvious reluctance, she nodded.

Then he took the palm pistol from his boot and passed it to her. “If it really goes south, this is ready to fire. You’ve got seven shots. Don’t hesitate. Point and pull the trigger. You understand?”

“Yes.”

“Will you do it?”

She swallowed. “I don’t know.”

“Great. You choose now to turn perfectly honest. I’m used to you mouthing back.”

She gave him a tremulous smile. “Be careful.”

He kissed her hard and quick. “Count on it.”

Hunkered behind the driver’s door, he looked across at Wiley, who signaled that he would take the front. Shaw nodded and indicated that he’d cover the back. Each took a deep breath, then came out from behind his cover and ran toward the house.

Wiley clumped up the steps onto the porch. Before Shaw lost sight of him, he flattened himself against the exterior wall between two tall windows. Nothing happened. So far, so good.

Shaw dodged windows as he ran along the side of the house, staying close to the wall. He knelt once to look beneath the house, but the crawl space was clear.

When he reached the far corner at the back, he paused and looked behind him toward the car. Because of the glare on the windshield, he could barely make out the top of Jordie’s head. It passed through his mind that he would kill anybody who harmed a hair on it. No matter who it was.

He slipped around the corner of the house.

The backyard was a patchwork of bare ground and weeds. A set of tire tracks led back toward the front of the house and presumably the driveway. There was a shed, a detached garage, both derelict, nearly falling down. A rickety wooden pier standing on rotten pilings extended over the bayou, two rusty light poles flanking the end of it.

He registered all this in the seconds it took him to reach the back door. It was unlocked and opened directly into the kitchen. He swept it with his pistol. It was a pig sty. Garbage and empty food containers were everywhere. The sink was filled with grease-filmed, opaque water. On the dining table, in addition to several empty TV dinner trays on which a cockroach was feeding, were a box of wooden toothpicks, a pair of eyeglasses, and a wadded-up lottery ticket.

Wiley came in through the door that connected to the front of the house and shook his head. “Clear.” But Shaw pointed out the items on the table. The lottery ticket was a giveaway. Josh had bought one in the convenience store.

Shaw motioned for Wiley to stay where he was to cover both the front and back doors and tipped his head toward a hallway leading off the kitchen, pointing to himself. Wiley nodded. Shaw crept along the hall till he came to a doorway standing ajar. He nudged it open with the barrel of his pistol then rushed in swiftly but silently.

The window shades were pulled, making the room dim. It was minimally furnished. A twin bed with dingy sheets had been left unmade. An oscillating fan sat still on the nightstand, although the room could have used an airing. Dirty clothing was piled on the floor in one corner. Army khakis were among the other articles.

Shaw backed out without disturbing anything. Farther along the hall was another bedroom. It was vacant. There were no footprints in the thick layer of dirt on the floor. The bathroom between the two bedrooms was tiny. The shower stall was black with mold. The stained toilet stank of backed-up sewage. But the sink had been recently used. The bottom of it still had drops of water in it, and a damp towel had been folded over the rim.

He returned to the kitchen and reported to Wiley what he’d noted in the bathroom. “We can’t be too far behind him. Or someone.”

Not that he thought Wiley had overlooked either of the fugitives, but he wanted to see the front rooms for himself, and going through them was also the shortest route back to check on Jordie.

The kitchen doorway led into a formal dining area, empty except for a light fixture that was dangling from the ceiling by a cord. The living room beyond was also unfurnished, in total disrepair, and provided no hiding place. Planks in the hardwood floor were missing, but none of the gaps was large enough for a man to fit through. Besides, he’d just checked beneath the house. No one was hiding there.

He went through the front door and stepped onto the porch. Looking anxious, Jordie scrambled out of the car. He motioned her back. “This is his lair, all right. He’s definitely been here, but there’s no sign of him now.” Living , he thought. He was afraid of what he and Wiley might find in one of the outbuildings. “Stay here.”

“I want to see.”

He shook his head. “It’s a mess. Nasty. Holes in the floor. Unsafe.”

“Where are you going?”

“To check the shed and garage around back. Same rules apply. Lay down on the horn.”

Jordie waited until they disappeared around the back corner of the house, then came out from behind the car door and started for the house. She told herself that they might have missed a clue as to where Josh could be now, but her real reason for wanting to inspect the place herself was Shaw’s evasiveness. What hadn’t he wanted her to see?

She pushed open the front door, then paused on the threshold and surveyed the front rooms with dismay. She walked through them quickly and went into the kitchen where she remembered her great-aunt serving her and Josh Christmas cookies and punch.

She was appalled by what she saw now. Had her brother’s mental state deteriorated to complete and total madness? How could he possibly live in this filth? Did he even recognize it as squalor?

Realizing that investigators would soon be summoned to collect evidence, she didn’t touch anything, not that she would have. The bathroom was more sickening than the kitchen.

The sight of the disordered bedroom filled her with despair. When Josh had finally been released from his year’s stay in the hospital, he was welcomed home with a newly decorated bedroom. Their mother had hoped that the surprise would boost his spirits. It hadn’t, of course.

The comparison between that bright, newly outfitted bedroom to this sad chamber was an allegory of Josh’s tragic and inexorable decline.

She returned to the kitchen. Through the window, she saw Wiley emerging from what appeared to be a work shed, while Shaw was bent down looking beneath a ramshackle pier. He would be upset with her for not obeying the rules.

She returned to the front porch and went down the steps. There she paused to look back at the house’s fa?ade and wondered why it had fascinated Josh. What about it had intrigued him enough to make him want to return? It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t that large. The design was—

Suddenly she was struck by an incongruity.

Two gabled windows, symmetrically placed, jutted from the sloped roofline above the porch, but the house didn’t have a second story. Or did it? Had she missed the stairs?

Puzzled, she went back inside, but it was as she’d thought. There wasn’t a staircase where normally one would ascend from the living area to the second floor. She knew there wasn’t one in the back of the house, or off the kitchen, because she would have seen it.

Standing in the center of the floor between the living room and dining area, she made a slow pivot. Taking in architectural details she hadn’t paid attention to before, she noticed a narrow doorway in the corner of the dining room, concealed by its fit into the paneling and wainscoting.

The hair on the back of her neck stood on end.

She should alert Shaw.

Instead, she went over to the door and pushed it inward.

The smell hit her. Hard.

She covered her nose and mouth, as much to stifle her sob as to keep her from breathing the odor. Swallowing fear and dread, she gave the door a firmer push. It opened wider to reveal a steep staircase. “Josh?” Breathing swiftly through her mouth, she called again, “Josh? If you’re up there, please come down.”

There wasn’t a sound except for the beating of her heart.

Above her, sunlight shone in through the two windows so she could see to climb the stairs. The higher she got, the brighter the light became. It filled the attic at the top of the stairs with inappropriately cheery light, because the only thing in the space was a black body bag, zipped closed, lying on the floor.

“Oh, Jesus. Oh no!” She slumped against the doorjamb, covered her mouth again to stifle her keening sounds, and stared at the bag. She squeezed her eyes shut, hoping against hope that when she opened them, it would be gone.

It wasn’t, of course.

She should alert Shaw.

But she owed Josh this one final penitence.

On rubbery legs she walked to the bag and knelt down beside it. Her hand shook as she took hold of the metal tab and unzipped the bag all the way down, then spread it open.

She screamed. Or would have.

Except that a hand was clamped hard over her mouth from behind and an eerie, overamplified, horribly distorted voice said, “Guess who?”