Too Far Gone

93

Alexa and Bond handcuffed Leland’s good wrist to a galvanized pipe that fed water from the cistern to an outside faucet, then went to bring Kennedy back on a stretcher they crafted from a wool blanket and two saplings. Kennedy was still unconscious two hours after he’d been attacked. Leland Ticholet had fallen asleep and was snoring. Alexa couldn’t believe his threshold for pain.

While they waited, Alexa and Bond searched the cabin. She looked around in the cluttered kitchen, if it could be called a kitchen, since all there was in the way of appliances was a Coleman portable stove, an ice chest containing water left from melted ice, and a half-gone package of sandwich ham with embedded olive slices that stared out through the plastic like dead eyes. There was a chest of drawers. She opened the first one and picked up a folded four-by-five photograph, a black-and-white Polaroid. It was the kind of print photographers used to check lighting and composition. She looked at it and folded it again. Alexa placed the picture in the briefcase and carried them outside. There was no sign of the diary’s missing pages.

The wind had picked up noticeably when the armada carrying Sheriff Toliver, a dozen of his deputies-only three in uniform, the rest looking for the world like armed vigilantes-and a three-person EMS team thundered into Leland’s inlet. The sheriff’s first words were spoken to Leland Ticholet as he officially arrested him for murdering Deputy Boudreaux, and suspicion of murdering game wardens Elliot Parnell and Betty Crocker.

Leland yawned.

Alexa was relieved to turn the prisoner over to the men, who manhandled him into a diesel-powered amphibious monster made of steel, possibly a surplus relic from World War II.

The EMS trio worked on Manseur and Kennedy to prepare them for the trip out, ignoring Leland, whose only reaction to their presence was to yawn every now and again.

Leland didn’t speak until one of the EMS medics was bandaging his arm, which the medic told him he was going to lose.

“It’s good it’s not the one I favor. Who’s going to pay for what she done to my boat?” Leland looked angrily at the boat, which was still smoking.

Tolliver told Alexa the fastest boat would rush Manseur and Kennedy back to Moody’s landing. There, a life-flight helicopter would take them to Baton Rouge, since New Orleans was no longer accepting patients. Leland was going to be taken to the local parish hospital for medical attention. The sheriff wasn’t about to let Ticholet leave his jurisdiction until he had him convicted and sentenced to lethal injection for murdering his deputy, his cousin by marriage. He told Alexa and Bond they could speed back with Manseur and Kennedy. Alexa said she would rather ride back with the prisoner, because she had seen the same look in the eyes of the deputies, she’d seen in Bond’s. She didn’t want Leland shot for attempting to escape.

“Who’s going to pay me for my boat?” Leland asked her. “I have to have a boat to make a living, you know.”

“The federal government,” Alexa lied. “They have a fund for equipment we destroy. They’ll replace it for you as soon as all of this is straightened out. I’m sure you’ll be right back out here skinning those beavers in a few days.”

Leland frowned. “Nutrias, you dumb ass. Beavers has flat tails. Nutrias has round ones. Nutrias is weed cutters. Beavers cut little trees to make dams with.”

“Nutrias,” Alexa said, meekly.

“None of this would have happened if y’all hadn’t come busting into my camp without permission. Trespassing is against the damned law.”

“You were defending your home against an invasion,” Alexa agreed sympathetically. “Man’s got a right to defend his home. You tell them that in court, and I bet they’ll send you right back here.”

“How long will it take?”

“This afternoon. Tomorrow at the latest. Maybe a little longer, due to the hurricane.”

“That hurricane Doc talked about? I can feel some pressures changing.”

“There’s a huge hurricane coming this way.”

“I got traps to run. How soon I get another boat like the one you burned up?”

“No time at all. It was a nice boat. Where did you get it?”

For the first time, Leland looked directly at her. “At the gettin’ place.”

“It was an expensive boat. Where’d you get the money?”

Leland narrowed his eyes. He didn’t say anything.

“Did the guy inside get it for you?”

“I done jobs for it. A lot of hard work too.”

“What sort of jobs?”

“It ain’t none of your business what work I done.”

“Like killing two wardens?”

“Naw, I did that on account they was trespassers.”

“Where are their bodies?”

“Me to know and you to find out. You can’t put them back together.”

“How about that nurse? Did you kill her too?”

“What nurse?”

“Dorothy Fugate from River Run. You remember her?”

Leland nodded. “I know her. Damned bitch, if you ask me. She say I hit her?”

“Did you?”

“Hell naw. I ain’t laid eyes on her since I was in that place. And she say I did, she’s a lying sow. I don’t like her, but I ain’t never hit her.”

“Did you help take Sibby Danielson to that motel?”

“Simpy who?”

“The woman who was living with Nurse Fugate. Long gray hair. Doc took her in your truck.”

“Doc drove my truck some, but I never heard of no gray-haired woman.”

“Did you hit Gary West with a piece of pipe?”

“You mean that guy in the fancy car?”

Alexa nodded.

“Doc said I had to do that job for the boat. I didn’t do it on my own account. I never saw the man before in my life.”

“Just be sure and tell the judge that Doc told you to do it. I’m sure the judge will understand. Just tell him you did it for the boat.”

“Until y’all shot the motor and you burned it up.”

“Where did you meet Doc?”

“Where do you think? He was a Doc,” Leland said, exasperated.

“A doctor?”

“Sure was.”

“He was an orderly,” Alexa said. “He wasn’t a doctor. You knew him from River Run?”

“Lying bastard told me he was a doctor. Why do people tell lies like that? I did wonder why he didn’t doctor his own self after he got shot.” Leland nodded. “He was nice and give me gum for free. He helped me get out, you know. He said I could have the boat if I would do a few jobs. Turned out, it was a lot of jobs.”

“What about the picture?” Alexa asked.

“What picture?”

“Of you.”

“What one?”

“This one.” Alexa reached into the briefcase and unfolded the print.

Leland smiled as he looked at it. “The picture gal give that to me. Only time I saw my own handsomeness on film paper.”

“What does this picture gal look like?”

Leland looked at her in the sort of stunned disbelief a man shows when he’s speaking to an idiot. “Like a man, but with teats.”

“Tall, short? White? Black?”

“She wasn’t any too skinny or a fat gal neither. Sort of pretty, I guess you could say.”

“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.