Black Widow (30 page)

Nick considered it for half a second before he made his decision. “You head over there,” he told Earl. “Cover that area. We’ll go in from this side.”

“You got it, Chief.” Earl fired up the cruiser and sped off down the road.

“It’s about a half-mile,” Bucky said. “The car’ll never make it in, Chief. We’ll prob’ly have to go in on foot. There! Right up ahead, where that openin’ is.”

Nick parked the cruiser on the shoulder, put on his four-ways, and they got out, Elvis bounding around their feet. They took the rifles from the trunk and pocketed the spare ammo. As he slammed the trunk lid, Nick said quietly, “I don’t know how this will turn out. I just want you to know, Officer, that it’s been a pleasure and an honor working with you.”

Solemnly, Bucky said, “Likewise, sir.”

“And my name,” he said, “is Nick.”

“Yes, sir. I mean, Nick.”

He clapped Bucky on the shoulder. “Come on,” he said grimly. “Let’s go do what the town hired us to do.”

The going was rough, hindered by overhanging branches and kudzu vines. An owl hooted as they passed, an eerie sound in the night. They followed the fresh tire tracks, took a sharp left turn, and there, in the beam of their flashlights, sat the abandoned Blazer. His heart stuttered and he let out a breath as Bucky shone his light in each of the windows. “It’s empty,” Bucky said, and he was able to breathe again. “But she left her sweatshirt,” Bucky added. “It’s on the seat.”

“Let me have it. I want Elvis to smell it.”

He let the dog take his time smelling the shirt. “It’s Kathryn’s,” he said. “We have to find Kathryn.”

Elvis looked at him with those mournful eyes. “Do you think he understands?” Bucky said.

“Damned if I know.”

He tied the shirtsleeves around the dog’s neck, and together they followed the beam of Bucky’s flashlight. “How the hell could anybody drive through here?” Nick said.

“That truck of Shep’s,” Bucky said, “it’ll go anywheres.”

They broke through the heavy undergrowth and there, in a clearing, sat Shep Henley’s pickup truck. The dog cages in the back were open and empty, a grim reminder of why they were here.

“Remember,” Bucky warned him, “you gotta watch for the snakes. They’re deadly. Sometimes they hide in the trees. You gotta watch every minute.”

“I’m watching,” he said. “Believe me, I’m watching.”

And then they heard it, a sudden frenzied burst, coming from somewhere in the darkness ahead of them. Elvis pricked up his ears and whined, and Nick rested a hand on his head. He exchanged a look with Bucky, and grimly, they surged forward, listening to that wild, inhuman keening.

The baying of the dogs. Shep Henley had let his hounds loose.

Chapter Eighteen

“Go!” she told Janine, shoving her from behind. “Through the water. It’s harder for them to track us that way.”

Around them, a million live creatures sang and twittered in a nocturnal chorus that would have been beautiful under different circumstances. But barefoot, in the dark, with Shep Henley’s flashlight still shining behind them, it was eerie. With each footstep she took, her bare toes sank into the slimy bottom. Something brushed past her submerged leg, and a shudder ran through her body. Ahead of her, Janine was panting, splashing through the water with a deliberately elongated stride as they tried desperately to put ground behind them in the ten minutes that were all that stood between them and death.

Vines tangled in her face, her hair. She tore them away, stubbed her toe on a submerged root and cussed violently. Her head was still pounding, her balance still off-kilter. She had one hell of an egg on her head where Henley had hit her with the rifle, and her hair was encrusted with dried blood.

They found semi-solid ground again, climbed up onto a mossy hummock. “Run!” she told Janine, and gave her a hard shove. The girl stumbled, caught herself, and together they ran through brambles and tangled vines, over sticks and stones and giant cypress roots, and she tried not to think about the pain, tried to distance herself from the feet that were bruised and cut and throbbing in agony with each step she took. “We can do this,” she gasped. “We can do this!”

“I have to stop,” Janine said. “Just for a minute.”

“We can’t, baby. We don’t have enough time. It’s already been eight or nine minutes. We have to keep moving!”

“Where’s Daddy? I thought he’d come. Why isn’t he coming?”

She caught Janine by the chin. “Your father is coming after us!” she said harshly. “He would never leave us out here to die! You’re the most important thing in his life!”

“It’s you that he loves,” Janine said. “Not me.”

Furious, she said, “You listen to me, young lady, and you listen good. You come first with him. Before his job, before me, before everything. And he’ll come to get you. Or he’ll die trying.”

Janine began to cry softly. “I’m scared,” she said.

“So am I. But we don’t have time to be scared. Come on, sweetheart, let’s go.”

Janine took her hand, and they began moving forward again, shoving aside moss-draped branches. Without warning, the land mass came to an end. Kathryn lost her footing on the muddy verge and plunged headlong into the water.

It was dark and cold and rancid, and she retched, sucking water into her mouth, her lungs. Somewhere above her, Janine was shouting her name. She scrambled for a hold on the mucky bottom, but everything was in motion, the underwater plants slimy with algae, and she knew she was going to die.

And then a hand on the back of her shirt lifted her up and out of the water. Dizzy, she fell back against a cypress stump, gagging and retching, her head bursting with each spasmodic motion. “Kathryn!” Janine said. “Kat! Are you okay?”

She spat into the dark, murky water. Her head felt as though she’d been kicked hard by a mule. She tried to regain her balance, but the world was tilting at a crazy angle. “Kat?” Janine said. “We have to hurry!”

She leaned her head back, gasped air, her chest heaving with exertion. Nearby, something plopped into the water and began moving toward them.
“Come on!”
Janine roared.
“You can’t quit on me now!”

And the words got through to her. Somehow, they got through to her. She squeezed Janine’s hand and nodded her head. And then she heard the siren. Distant at first, it drew nearer, louder. “Daddy,” Janine said. “It’s Daddy.”

Her heart began to hammer so hard she thought it would burst from her chest. “Yes,” she said. “It is.”

She prayed he wasn’t walking into a trap, and she tried not to think about him, a city boy lost in the bowels of the swamp. She couldn’t think about him. She had to take care of Janine. If she let anything happen to Janine, it would kill him, as surely as if he’d taken a bullet from Shep Henley’s rifle.

The siren stopped. “Come on,” she told Janine. “Let’s go.”

And then she heard the dogs. Like banshees, they yelped and howled, snarling and baying in excitement as they followed the scent of coon. Hand in hand, she and Janine ran, splashing through the water, tripping and stumbling, catching each other, shoving aside vines and hanging moss. Something flew past them, darting and diving, and she knew it was a bat. “Move!” she said. “Faster!”

In the darkness, Janine scrambled up onto another mossy hummock. Kathryn followed her, the dogs yipping and snarling in the distance, and then Janine stopped so abruptly that Kathryn slammed into her. “Kat,” she whispered. “Oh, Kat.”

The cottonmouth was coiled a foot from Janine’s ankle, a faint shape in the darkness, its head drawn back in fighting position. Kathryn slung an arm around the terrified girl’s waist, and then the snake struck. Janine screamed as its fangs sank into her ankle once, then a second time. Engulfed in rage, Kathryn shoved the girl aside so hard she went tumbling. Picking up a huge stick, she slammed it as hard as she could against the snake. The animal hissed and tried to strike, but she’d stunned it, and it fell short of its target. Head spinning, she swung the stick with another huge thwack. The snake began to twitch and jerk. Kathryn slammed it a final time, and its death throes gradually halted.

Dizzy, with the sound of the dogs in her ears, she crawled on her hands and knees until she found Janine. “Christ,” she said. “Oh, Christ, baby, I’m so sorry.”

“It hurts,” the girl said. “It hurts bad.”

“I know, baby. We have to get you out of here. Can you walk?”

“I think so.”

“Come on.” She hoisted Janine’s arm over her shoulder and pulled her to her feet. The girl was weak, trembling violently. They took a couple of steps and faltered. “I can’t do it,” Janine said. “I think I’m going to throw up.”

“You’re going to be fine!” Kathryn snapped. “Hang onto my neck.”

Janine clung to her, the only solid thing left in the young girl’s world. With a strength she’d forgotten she possessed, she hoisted the girl up into her arms.

And with grim determination, she continued walking.

The swamp was murky and black around him. He’d long since ruined his shoes, and his arms were exhausted from holding the hunting rifle out of the water. “Henley!” he shouted. “Show your damn ugly face. Come out and be a man!”

His voice echoed around him, amid the buzzing and the chirping and the slithering. In the distance, the dogs were still baying. He and Bucky carefully picked their way through the water as Elvis sloshed ahead of them, pausing every so often to sniff as they passed something solid. “How far are we from the other side?” he asked Bucky.

“Hard to say. But from the sound of the dogs, I’d say Kathryn’s gone in deep. Unless she’s circling around. That’d be the smart thing to do.”

He cupped a hand to his mouth. “Kathryn!” he shouted.

Around him, the swamp was alive with sound, but there was no answer except for the echo of his own voice. He slogged through the water, grabbed hold of a slimy cypress knee and hauled himself up onto spongy ground. Elvis was already there, shaking water from his fur. “Turn off the light,” Bucky said sharply.

The darkness was eerie, the twinkling stars above their heads providing minimal light. In the distance, he saw the wispy glow of a flashlight. “Henley,” he said.

“Henley,” Bucky agreed.

With renewed vigor, they continued, lights off this time as they sloshed through water up to their waists, slapping at insects, jumping each time a frog plopped into the water behind them. He’d thought he was in good shape, but he felt twenty years past his age, huffing like an old man. If it was this difficult for him, how must it be for Henley? The man was in his sixties. He couldn’t keep this up forever.

Ahead of them, the light bobbed and then stopped. “He’s resting,” Bucky whispered. “Can’t take the pace.”

They continued their silent progress. The light ahead of them didn’t move. “Take the dog,” Nick said, “and circle around. I’ll keep going this way.”

Like a wraith, Bucky disappeared into the night, and he was alone. He moved silently toward the lantern in the darkness, through the water and up onto dry land. Creeping on his knees, he approached the light. Thirty more feet. Twenty. Ten.

The light sat in a clearing, by itself, beam pointed upward into the treetops. Disgusted, Nick stood up and raised his face to the sky. “Come on out, Henley!” he shouted. “Or are you afraid of me?”

Fifty feet away, Shep Henley came walking out of the shadows, his rifle cocked and pointed directly at Nick’s heart. “So,” he said, “you made it. Not bad for a city boy.”

He didn’t dare look for Bucky. He kept his face carefully noncommittal. “That’s right, Henley. You invited me to your little tea party, and here I am.”

“Well, then, maybe we should be havin’ us some tea.”

“Let ‘em go, Henley.”

“It’s too late for that,” Henley said. “Any minute now, the dogs’ll catch up to ‘em. And when they do, they’ll rip them girls to shreds. There won’t be enough left for you to tell which pieces belonged to which one. Damn shame. They were both real pretty.”

He forced himself to remain calm. He was a police officer. He’d been trained to stay calm. It wasn’t supposed to matter that one of the intended victims was his lover, the other his daughter. “I know why you killed Michael McAllister,” he said casually. “It was because of Ruby. But why’d you kill Wanita?”

“She turned on me,” Henley said. “The mother of my own kid. I didn’t have a choice. I had to kill her.”

“Wait a minute. Back up. What do you mean, the mother of your own kid? Which one?”

“Timmy,” Henley said. “He’s my boy.”

“But I thought Timmy was Michael’s. The birth certificate said—”

“That was my idea,” Henley said. “Just in case anybody started sniffin’ around later on, doubtin’ the story she told the court. The whole thing was my idea. She went along with it because I’d helped her out when she was in trouble.”

“You mean, she never had an affair with McAllister?”

“She didn’t even know McAllister. They didn’t exactly run in the same crowds. You know,” he said, “Wanita was a right pretty little thing, back before she put on all that weight. A man gets to be my age, his wife loses interest in that kind of thing. So he gets it wherever he can.”

“And you got it from your wife’s niece.”

“Everything was workin’ fine, until the little bitch decided to squeeze me. Told me if I didn’t pay up, she’d tell your girlfriend who really killed her husband.”

“So you killed her.”

“Damn right, I did. Rid the town of one more piece of vermin.”

“Just like you tried to do with Kathryn,” he said, “the night you burned down her house.”

“Hell, boy, I shoulda figured she was off shacked up somewhere with you, the way the two of you been carryin’ on, right in front of the whole town. Thought I could take advantage of you sleepin’ in her bed. Use it to scare her off. The little message I painted on your truck. And the brick through the window. I thought that was a real nice touch. But she’s tough, your little girlfriend. She don’t scare easy.”

“Neither do I,” he said. “I’m going after ‘em, Henley. I’m walking out of here, and I’m finding Kathryn and Janine. And if your dogs have touched a single hair on their heads, I’ll come back and cut off your balls and stuff ‘em down your throat.”

“I was gonna wait,” Henley said with great good nature. “Make you watch me kill the women first, before I killed you. But you’re getting to be too much trouble, DiSalvo. I guess I’m gonna have to get rid of you first.”

Nick stood his ground. “Go ahead, you son of a bitch. Try me.”

“Goodbye, DiSalvo. Have a nice time in hell.”

And Henley squeezed the trigger.

The dogs were almost upon her when she heard the shots, three of them, one right after the other. “Nick,” she whispered. “Oh, Jesus, Nick.”

Janine raised her head. “Daddy?” she said groggily.

“He’s coming, baby. Hold on a little longer.”

The girl was feverish, close to delirious, and the dogs were closing in. She’d been carrying Janine for what seemed like years. Her knees buckled, and she nearly fell. Raising her head, she scanned the treetops. If she could just get off the ground, out of reach of the dogs, they might still have a chance.

“Janine,” she said.

“Mmn.”

“Janine!” She slapped the girl’s face, hard, and Janine’s head rolled.

“Stop,” the girl said.

“You have to help me. Do you understand? If you don’t help me, we’ll both die.”

Janine opened her eyes, and Kathryn saw in them the same stoic determination that was in her father. “Okay,” the girl whispered.

Kathryn had never experienced mother love, but in that instant, she knew what it was. “We have to climb this tree,” she said. “We’re going to do it together. I’ll help you.”

Janine nodded, and she put the girl down on wobbly legs. “You first, chickie,” she said. “Grab this branch.”