The beam swept over water as smooth as black glass. Fog rose like ghostly fingers, forming a mist that turned the swamp into a primordial world as silent and still as death. Spanish moss hung in tangled locks from ancient cypress. Knobby roots protruded from a watery carpet of duckweed like the arthritic knees of some long-dead explorer.
"What makes you think I can help you find this killer?" he asked after a moment. "What makes you think I want to?"
"You're the only person in Bellerose who has something at stake."
He thought about that a moment and wondered if she knew he was a convicted felon. "If it's credibility you're looking for, chere, you're looking in the wrong place. There are people in this town who will tell you I'm no better than the man you're looking for."
"I know you were in prison," she said. "I read the newspaper accounts of your trial."
Nick turned and gave her a hard look.
"You don't seem like the kind of man who would ... "
"Kill someone?" He sneered.
Her eyes were wide and cautious and he thought if he made a sudden move she would turn and run. He knew it was stupid, but that pissed him off. "Or maybe now that we're out here in the swamp you're afraid I'll turn my criminal tendencies on you."
"I'm not afraid of you."
"Maybe you should be.”
When she only continued to stare at him, he cursed. "In case you're wondering, I didn't kill anyone," he growled.
An uncomfortable silence descended. The volume of the swamp rose to a fever pitch. Her face was a pale oval in the darkness. He could make out the dark slash of her eyes. A smudge of dirt on her cheek. The pout of her full mouth. The swell of her breasts beneath her T-shirt ...
As if realizing the direction his thoughts had taken, she turned away and stepped into the knee-deep water. Nick set the beam on her ass and admired the view for a moment, all too aware that she was built just the way he liked, trim but with plenty of interesting curves.
"What the hell are you doing?" he muttered under his breath.
She stopped and looked at him over her shoulder. "What did you say?"
Cold sank into his feet and cal yes when he stepped into the water and started toward her. "I said we're damn fools for being out here in the swamp without proper gear."
"How much farther to the Gautier Mud Flats?" she asked.
"Not far. There used to be a duck blind just ahead," he said.
"It’ll be dry. We can rest there."
"You know this area?"
"I used to come here as a kid."
They slogged through the water for several minutes in silence. Around them, the bayou was transforming with dawn. Birdsong and the kok-kok-kok of the least bittern echoed through the forest. The reds and oranges of sunrise blazed like a distant fire on the eastern horizon. Ahead, Nick spotted the duck blind. Set four feet above the water's surface, it was constructed of weathered cypress planks. Directly below, an abandoned pirogue sat rotting in a foot of water, its flat bottom filled with duckweed and lily pads.
Stopping next to the blind, Nick cupped his mouth with his hands and shouted. "Ricky Arnaud' Ricky! Can you hear us, son?"
A great blue heron took flight at the sudden noise. For a full minute, they stood in the water and listened for an answer that didn't come.
"We should have brought a whistle," Nick said.
Nat brought her hands to her mouth. "Ricky!"
The hoarseness of her voice drew his gaze. She was soaked from the hips down. The smear of mud on her face was dark against her pale complexion. She looked cold and exhausted
and an inch away from dropping where she stood.
"He's not here," he said after a moment,
Ignoring him, she walked a few feet away and called out again. "Ricky! Are you there? Ricky!"
"Nat, there's nobody here. We're wasting our time."
She shot him an incredulous look. "I didn't hike all the way out here just to turn around and leave."
"If he was here, he would have answered."
"Unless he's hurt or ... " Letting her words trail, she started toward the blind. "I'm going to look around."
Nick put his hands on his hips and sighed. "Nat, we don't have gear. We don't have a map. We don't have a whistle or GPS for coordinates. We don't even know if he's in the area."
"He's here. damn it." She waded through knee-deep water, looking around as if she might spot the little boy at any moment. “I know you don't believe me, but I feel it, Nick. He's here."
Even from twenty feet away, Nick could see that she was trembling with cold. Watching her, he wondered if she was about to slide down some slippery slope. If maybe he was making things worse by encouraging her. Seeing the hope and determination in her eyes, he felt a sudden wave of sympathy for her. Was she out in this godforsaken swamp looking for Ricky Arnaud? Or was she really looking for her own little boy, who would never be coming back?
"Nat, we've been out in the swamp for two hours. We've given it our best shot. It's time to go."
She spun and started toward him, her eyes furious. "You agreed to do this, damn it. The least you could do is keep your word."
"You're wet and cold and exhausted." He gestured toward her clothes. "Look at you. You're shivering. This is crazy."
She stopped less than a foot away and got in his face. "I don't need you to finish this. My sense of direction is good. I can find my way back."
"I'm sure that's what Gautier was thinking back in 1918."
Wishing he was anywhere but here, Nick stepped back and looked away. He did a quick double take upon spotting the patch of red.
Nat's gaze followed his. "What is it?"
But Nick had already started toward the speck of color. His heart rolled and began to drum when he realized it was a child's shoe. He heard her moving through the water behind him, but he didn't stop until he reached it.
The little high-top sneaker was lying on its side in the mud and duckweed near the pirogue, its sole facing him, the shoestrings still tied. He stared at it, not wanting to believe the shoe belonged to Ricky Arnaud, knowing in his heart it did.
"Le Bon Dieu mait la main.” God help.
She came up beside him. "It's his."
"It doesn't look like it's been here long," he said.
She leaned down as if to touch it, but he put his hand on her shoulder. "Don't touch it." He didn't voice what he was thinking, but he knew this could be a crime scene.
Around them, the swamp had gone silent. Nick stood still, listening, his eyes scanning the area, trying in vain to penetrate the shadows playing hide-and-seek within the maze of trees and fog. After a moment, seeing nothing out of the ordinary, he raised his hands to cup his mouth. "Ricky! Ricky Arnaud!"
Next to him. Nat turned in a slow circle. "Ricky!"
They called out to the boy for five minutes. But Nick's mind had already jumped ahead to all the terrible things that could befall a little boy in the swamp. When he'd been a kid, Dutch had forbidden him to come here under the threat of his belt. Dutch had told him tales of alligators swallowing children whole and of mud pits sucking grown men to their deaths. But not even fear of his father's wrath had been enough to keep Nick away.
Wishing for a whistle, he waded through the water, skirting the outer perimeter of the clearing. "Ricky! Answer us, son!"
He circled around to where Nat stood and glanced down at the sneaker. It looked incredibly out of place lying in the duckweed and covered with mud. The image made him think of the terrible fate his own son had met just a few miles away.
Banking the brutal slash of pain, he glanced at Nat. She was staring at the sneaker as if trying to wrest the mystery from it by the sheer force of her will. "What was he doing out here all by himself?" she whispered.
''This isn't the kind of place an eight-year-old boy would go alone," Nick agreed.
"Unless he wasn't alone."
"You don't know that." But the hairs at his nape prickled nonetheless.
"W
hat if someone lured him out here?"
A dozen arguments entered his mind. But Nick didn't voice them. He may not believe in psychic phenomena in general terms, but he didn't believe in coincidences, either. That put him squarely in a place he didn't want to be.
"I don't want to get into this with you right now," he said. "We need to call the police and let them handle this. Maybe they'll want to move their search to this area. Get a few guys out here in boats." He held out his hand. "Give me your phone."
She unclipped her cell from her belt and handed it to him.
He punched in numbers. "You know the cops are going to have some questions for us."
"We didn't do anything wrong."
"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?"