Depth Perception (16 page)

"Yeah, well, here's a news flash for you: sometimes that doesn't matter." The bitterness in his voice surprised him. God, he sounded just like Dutch. Bitter and old and full of regrets. Sighing unhappily at the thought of ending up like his father, Nick turned his attention to the call and asked to be connected to the police department.

As he waited for the chief to come on the line, he watched Nat wander toward the blind a few yards away. Twenty years ago, hunters had used it to hunt wood duck and mallard. The wooden structure was mounted onto four cypress trees with nails. Over the years the floor of the structure had become tilted at a precarious angle. At some point, someone had added a primitive ladder by nailing strips of wood to one of the trunks, but most of the makeshift rungs had begun to rot.

When Chief Martin came on the line, Nick identified himself and asked, "Any luck finding the Arnaud boy?"

"We ain't found so much as a footprint." The chief sighed tiredly, and Nick got the impression he hadn't yet been to bed. “We got more volunteers and a fresh dog coming in from Covington. Hopefully, we'll get lucky today." The other man paused. "Any particular reason you're asking?"

"I'm out near Gautier Mud Flats south of town. I just came across a red sneaker. A child's sneaker. I thought you'd want to know."

Alcee Martin made a very cop-like sound, then asked a very cop-like question. "What are you doing out at Gautier Mud Flats at the crack of dawn?"

The drawl was designed to make the question seem casual. Nick knew it was anything but. Cops always had questions, and those questions were never causal when it came to ex-cons. "I was picking oyster mushrooms for Dutch," he said. "He's going to boil up some crawfish tonight."

"Dutch has always had a knack with them crawfish."

''That he does." Nick watched Nat climb onto the blind.

''I'll send a deputy out there to meet you. Shouldn't take but half an hour or so if he takes his boat. You mind waiting around?"

''Not at all. I'll keep an eye out-"

A bloodcurdling scream cut off his words. Nick swung around to see Nat perched on the top rung of the makeshift ladder, staring into the duck blind.

A second scream split the air. "Nick!"

He hit End without explanation. Shoving the phone into his pocket, he sprinted toward the blind, praying to God their worst fears hadn't just become a reality.

Chapter 13

Nick had heard people scream before. During his stint in Angola he'd heard grown men scream more times than he wanted to recall. He'd heard screams of agony. Of rage. Of terror. There had been times when he'd felt those same screams echoing inside his own head. But the scream that poured from Nat's throat was so filled with horror it was as if it had been ripped straight from her soul.

He ran toward her at a dangerous speed, hurtling over cypress knobs and submerged roots. "What is it?"

One instant she was clinging to the ladder staring into the blind. The next she was falling backward into space. Her back hit the water hard. He reached her an instant later, but she'd already lurched to her feet, dripping wet. choking out sobs, her face the color of dough. “He's there! Oh God. Oh God! The little boy."

"Easy." He grasped her upper arms, forced her gaze to his. '''The Arnaud boy?"

She turned ravaged eyes on him. "He's dead. That sweet little boy." She was crying, choking out sobs, fat tears mixing with the water running down her face. She was soaking wet and cold to the touch. He could feel her trembling violently, but he knew the tremors racking her body were as much from shock as cold.

She made a halfhearted attempt to twist away, but he held onto her, gave her a small shake. "I need for you to calm down," he said. "I'm going to take a look."

She looked at him as if he'd spoken in a foreign language.

Shock, he thought, and lifted his hand to cup the side of her face. She was as pale and cold as death. The circles beneath her eyes were dark and made her look as fragile as blown glass. But the eyes within those circles were haunted with knowledge. With grief. With the horror of what she'd seen in that blind.

"Stay put." he said. "Okay?"

Blinking back tears, she jerked her head. But he could tell she was holding it together by little more than a thread. Giving her arm a final squeeze, Nick turned to the blind. Dread pounded through him when he started up the ladder. Two steps and his eyes were at floor level. He saw sandy hair against pasty skin. Staring blue eyes and a small mouth that was open as if in a scream.

An electric shock of horror rippled through him. "Aw, God."

Anguish and outrage mixed with a deep well of grief. Vaguely, he was aware of the buzz of flies. For a moment he considered using his shirt to cover the body, to protect it. Then he remembered that this could be a crime scene.

His heart was heavy in his chest when he climbed down the ladder. Nat was standing where he'd left her, her arms wrapped around her body as if she were trying to hold herself together. "Please tell me that little boy is not dead," she whispered.

Nick couldn't speak. He could feel his entire body trembling as he crossed to her. He wasn't sure who reached for whom, but in the next instant she was in his arms. A keening sound tore from her throat when she fell against him. It was a sound so filled with anguish that he felt it echoing within the hollowed shell that was his own heart. She felt small and fragile in his arms, and he suddenly wanted to protect her from this. From the ugliness. From the pain.

Closing his eyes, he wrapped his arms more tightly around her. "It's going to be all right," he said in a rough voice.

"How could someone do that to a child?" she asked.

"Nat." He shoved her to arm's length. "Listen to me. We don't know what happened to him. As far as we know, it could have been some sort of accident."

"It wasn't an accident," she said fiercely.

Looking into her eyes, he reminded himself that she was the one who'd led them here. A fact that left only one of two possibilities: Either Nat had harmed the boy herself, which Nick knew was an absolute impossibility. Or she was psychic.

He wasn't sure which scenario troubled him the most.

#   #   #

The interview room at the Bellerose Police Department was as cold as a meat locker and smelled just as rank. Chief Martin had given Nat a blanket from the jail, but her clothes were still wet and she was cold to her bones. Every time she closed her eyes she saw Ricky Arnaud's body lying in that duck blind, as still and pale as a mannequin. It was a sight that would haunt her for the rest of her days.

Sitting across from her, Nick looked as if the world had just come down on top of him, and he was bearing every pound of it on those broad shoulders. He was leaning back in the chair with his arms crossed at his chest, staring at the table in front of him. While he looked calm on the outside, Nat had spent enough time with him in the last day to see the tension that was running through his body like a piano wire.

She wasn't sure what she would have done if he hadn't been there when she'd found that child's body. As much as she disliked the thought of needing anyone, his embrace had come at a moment when she'd desperately needed that small human contact. His arms had comforted her in a way nothing else could have. His touch had warmed her in a place she'd thought was frozen forever.

The interview room door swung open. A ripple of unease moved through her when Alcee Martin and Deputy Matt Duncan walked in. Alcee looked as if he'd spent the night in hell. His eyes were bloodshot. His shirt was wrinkled, with rings of sweat at his armpits. She figured he'd been the one to break the terrible news to Becky and Jim Arnaud. She knew first-hand what that first brutal punch of grief did to a person. She wouldn't wish it on her worst enemy. She sure as hell didn't envy Alcee his job.

Matt Duncan, on the other hand, looked as if he were enjoying the excitement. Setting his Coke on the table, he pulled out a chair and looked at her and Nick as if they'd just committed mass murder. Nat had known Matt since high school. Even back when he'd been star quarterback for the Fighting Trojans, she'd known he had a dark side. She'd found that out the hard way when she'd said no in the backseat of his jacked-up GTO. Matt had never let her forget it.

"Did you talk to Becky and Jim?" Nat asked.

Alcee seemed to age ten years right before her eyes. "God almighty, they took it hand."

Nick spoke to Chief Martin. "Any idea what happened to the boy?"

"Doc Ratcliffe did a cursory exam at the scene. He'll know more once he performs an autopsy, but he didn't find any signs of foul play. He thinks maybe hypothermia got him."

Nat set her hands on the table hard enough to draw the attention of all three men. "Hypothermia?"

Chief Martin gave her a curious look. "That boy had been lost in those woods for almost twelve hours. Even though it's been mild, the water is cold. Plus, he had some kind of childhood arthritis that made his joints hurt. Doc thinks he got wet and cold, started getting stiff, so he climbed into the blind to get out of the water. Hypothermia took him during the night. Course, an official autopsy will be performed, but Doc Ratcliffe doesn't think we're dealing with anything sinister." He sighed tiredly. "Just a terrible tragedy."

"Are you sure?" Ignoring the warning look from Nick, she looked from Duncan to Martin. "I mean, Gautier Mud Flats is an awful long way from his usual route, isn't it?"

"Kid that size can cover a lot of ground." Martin looked at Duncan. "How far is it, Matt? Two, three miles from where he was supposed to be?"

"But he would have had to travel through the swamp," she said. "That's rough terrain for a little boy."

Martin frowned at her. "What are you getting at, Nat?"

"Just that his death should be investigated thoroughly." She was certain Ricky Arnaud had met with foul play. Kyle's note had told her where to find the body. Had he been wrong? Or had she somehow misinterpreted and written the note incorrectly? Was she so desperate to find the person responsible for her own son's murder that she interjected something of her own mind into the writing?

"I just told you Travis is going to do an autopsy," Alcee said. "There's no use speculating on what happened before he finishes his report."

Leaning back in his chair, Duncan folded his arms across his chest and gave her a superior look. "We got an interesting call from Elaina Wilbur about you, Nat."

"I don't know Elaina Wilbur," she said.

"She's a pregnant lady," Duncan said. "Said she was out at Ray's Sunoco the other day when you were gassing up. She said you wigged out and wrote some kind of strange note, and that you used the name Ricky. You want to explain to us what that was all about?"

Both Duncan and Martin were staring at her intently, their cop's eyes hard and suspicious. Nat stared back. her heart pounding. "I-I have epilepsy," she stammered. "I experienced a mild seizure while I was writing the check."

"Elaina said you wrote the name Ricky," Duncan insisted. "She was sure of it. And she was concerned about it enough to call us once she found out the boy was missing."

"She's mistaken," Nat said.

"Do you have the check?"

"I threw it away."

"Of course you did." Duncan's eyes were lit with an almost predatory gleam. "How is it that a dozen volunteers and two police agencies can look for a little boy all night and not find a trace? Then you two go picking mushrooms at six o'clock in the morning and find him right off the bat. Some people in this town might find that a little suspicious."

Nick growled something nasty and French beneath his breath. "If you've got something on your mind, why don't you just say it?"

"I think it's suspicious as hell that a convicted felon and a woman once suspected of murdering her own kid find a missing child the way you two did."

''Fuck you," Nick said.

Duncan's lips didn't move, but Nat saw the smile in his eyes.

Martin slapped a hand down on the table. ''That's enough.  For chrissake, we're all tired. Let's let Travis do his job. If anything irregular comes of the autopsy, I'll deal with it then." His gaze moved from Nat to Nick. "In the interim, I don't want either of you leaving town."

Nick swore, but Alcee raised his hand. "And I suggest you two watch your backs. Matt's got a point in that there might be a few people in this town who think it's odd that you were the ones who found that boy."

"What's going to keep some yahoo from jumping to the wrong conclusion and trying to do something about it?" Nick punctuated the question with a pointed look at Nat.

"If anything comes up, call the police and let us handle it."

Nick and Nat rose simultaneously.

"Oh, one more thing before you go," Martin said.

Nat stopped midway to the door and turned.

Martin looked directly at Nat. "You know what a hothead Jim Arnaud is. When I told Jim and Becky about their son ... well, Jim lashed out, started making all kinds of wild accusations,"

"What kinds of accusations?" Nick asked, but Nat already knew.

Martin grimaced. "About Nat finding his boy. It was the pain talking. But Jim was looking for someone to hurt. I warned him not to do anything stupid, but he's half out of his mind with grief. If he lays into the booze, it's hard telling what he might do."

Nat felt Nick's stare, but she didn't look at him. She didn't expect him to understand that she wasn't afraid of Jim Arnaud. That in the last three years she'd faced down far worse than a drunken, grief-stricken father.

"If Jim shows up at your place," Martin said, "call us, and we'll send someone out to take him home."

"Sure." But as Nat turned and started toward the door, she wondered just how fast the Bellerose PD would show up if she needed them.

Chapter 14

It was nearly two p.m. when Nick parked the truck in Nat's driveway and shut down the engine. Beyond, the two-story Victorian sat on a manicured lot, looking as pretty as a chamber of commerce real estate ad. It was a beautiful piece of property, but he didn't think the woman sitting next to him even noticed. Since leaving the police station, she'd done nothing but stare blindly out the window.