I did; hit him beneath the eye with my broken right hand, and I didn’t feel it, so I hit him again.
He bowed his face into his hands once more, then shoved me away and sprinted down the stairs. For a man his size, he was an astonishing athlete. He’d apparently inherited the genes of his wrestler mother, the woman who could beat up men.
Even so, on the main deck I caught him from behind. I dragged him to a stop, then spun him against the ship’s railing, yelling, “Tell me, damn it! What have you done to my boy?”
“Fuck you! Stop following me, asswipe! You’re aboard my ship!”
This time, when I hit him, Lourdes went down in a heap, mouth wide, head bouncing on the deck, his lidless blue eye fluttering.
Unconscious.
We were near the fantail, where I’d boarded. I left him lying, hurried across the deck, and grabbed one of the empty 50-gallon drums. Hurried because I could see a helicopter working far inland. It was umbilicaled to the night sea by the beam of a searchlight.
The Coast Guard would be here soon.
I laid the drum on its side at Lourdes’ feet, using the guard rail as a stopper. Then I pushed and pulled until I had enough of his body inside the barrel to tip it upright again.
Breathing heavily, but not feeling the least bit spent, I hurried across the deck once more and returned with the drum’s steel lid. Oddly, there were holes punched into the lid.
Breathing holes?
Perhaps.
It didn’t matter. He wouldn’t be able to benefit from the holes for long.
I shoved Lourdes fully into the barrel and started to seal the lid, but then stopped for a moment.
Because I had the drum braced beneath the outboard lights, I could see his face clearly for the first time. It was a mess. It was worse than I’d thought.
Along with the remaining burn scars, his face was a patchwork of skin colors and stitch scars. A patchwork doll-that’s what he reminded me of. The man’s cheeks, jaw, and lips were made up of strips of skin-rectangles and squares-all seemingly sewn together, but probably on different occasions, one small piece at a time. The skin color varied from place to place. There was brown skin, white skin, black skin, and a piece or two that had a jaundiced shade.
Did each piece represent a person that he’d murdered?
His nose had been hideous even before I smashed it. It was a discolored black flap, as if his body had rejected the thing. Now the cartilage that supported the dark skin was slowly peeling off his face.
I didn’t feel sorry for him. Not a bit. He’d done damage to someone I loved. How much damage, I didn’t yet know. I was still furious, and panicked, and it horrified me to think what I might find in that Igloo cooler.
I shoved his head down and banged the lid on tight. Then I dumped it on its side again, and was rolling it toward the ship’s accommodation ladder, where I planned to depth-charge the monster known throughout Masagua as the Man-Burner into the open Gulf of Mexico.
He’d have been headed for the bottom within less than a minute, if I hadn’t heard a voice behind me say, “Doc? Hey, Doc! What do you think you’re doing?”
I stopped and looked around slowly, terrified that I was imagining the voice, and his words.
But no, there he was, dressed in shorts and a blue chambray shirt very similar to the one I was wearing-both of us stained with blood, it appeared.
It was Lake. It was my son.
THIRTY-EIGHT
I ran to him, tried to scoop him up in my arms, but realized he had grown too big for that: a lanky, rangy kid with a big jaw, big hands. So I hugged him to me instead, so weak in the knees that I felt my legs might buckle.
He stood very stiff, as if embarrassed, kept saying patiently, “O.K., Doc. That’s enough, Doc. It’s good to see you, too.”
Then: “What in the hell took you so long? I sent you every damn hint I could think up, and you still took forever. You should have asked Tomlinson if you needed help figuring it out.”
He wasn’t smiling, but I found that funny and began to laugh, and he chuckled for a moment, too.
But then, looking at the 50-gallon drum, he grew serious. “Praxcedes is in there, isn’t he?”
“That’s right.”
“What’re you going to do with him?”
I could see now that there was a large, skin-colored bandage on my son’s neck and another on his arm where Dr. Santos said he’d been burned.
I said, “I’m not sure,” which was a lie.
I knew precisely what I was going to do-but I had to act quickly. A couple of miles away, I could see the helicopter’s running lights now, broad white beam still scanning. It was getting closer.
I said, “It might depend on what the guy did to you. You can tell me. It’s O.K. There’s nothing you can’t tell me.”
My son shrugged, started to speak, but paused to listen to a banging that was now coming from inside the drum. Then a muffled howling, too.
As the pounding continued, he said, “The night he snatched me, he did this.” Lake lifted his arm briefly, as if it were an exhibit. “But it’s not bad. That’s the only time he hurt me. Until tonight. Tonight, he knocked me out with ether. It made me puke. I guess he planned to kill me, but… I don’t know what happened. I woke up, and had this-” He touched his neck. “It’s a little cut about an inch long. I guess he started, but then stopped. There was blood on me, but he’d already stuck on the bandage. Or someone did.”
He added, “I met a doctor he snatched, too. She’s a nice lady, but really scared. So maybe she’s the one who took care of me.”
No-it couldn’t have been Dr. Santos. She didn’t know that Lake was still alive.
For some reason, the monster had spared my son.
It didn’t matter. Not to me, it didn’t. I was still going to take my revenge. The Gulf of Mexico awaited. But I had to get it done very soon. The Coast Guard helicopter had banked sharply, was now beginning to vector toward the lights of the freighter.
I said, “In that case, unless he gives me some trouble, I’ll wait here with him until law enforcement shows up. You and I can talk later. But remember the lady doctor you mentioned? I’m worried about her. Would you mind running up to the fourth deck and checking on her? Maybe bring her down here to the main deck. So we’re all together. With some luck, you’ll be flying back to the mainland soon.”
The boy didn’t budge. He stood there staring at me, then began to shake his head. “You’re lying, Doc. I know exactly what you’re going to do the minute I’m gone. I’ve done a ton of research on you. It took me more than a year, but I found out who you are. What you did… and what you do. You’re not going to do it again. Not with me here. I’m not going to let you kill him.”
I was stunned. Was it possible? I said, “ You’re the one who found my files?”
“Yeah, me. And it wasn’t easy. It took me fourteen or fifteen solid months to dig up the photos and piece it all together.”
“Then showed it to your mother.” I said this with unintended bitterness.
“No. I would never have done that. Not to either one of you. She. .. snoops through my things. It’s the sort of thing she does. She has
… some chemical problems. But I’m the one who found out that you assassinated my great-uncle, Don Blas Diego. You murdered him. Him and at least two other men who were fighting for my country. Our revolution.”
Lake was walking toward me now as he talked. I realized, for the first time, that he’d found Harris Lilly’s Glock 9 mm; that he was holding it near his leg so it wasn’t easily seen. That’s why he’d seemed so stiff when I hugged him.
Why would he feel it was necessary to hide a gun from me?
I said, “It’s not murder if it’s sanctioned. It’s a process. You’re studying biology, so you should understand the difference. Diego was a ruthless little psycho. That’s the truth. We can talk about it. But later, not now.”