“The Ticholets are barn-burners from way back,” the deputy told them. Alexa knew the expression meant that they got even with people for slights. “Leland’s grandfather was executed for murdering another fisherman in a bar, then Leland’s daddy was killed in a shootout with his common-law wife about ten, twelve years ago. Hell, they shot at each other all the time. That particular fight lasted all morning, and she got hit several times before she put a fatal round into his heart. She lost her left hand and a leg below the knee. I see her some, riding around town in her scooter chair. Her place got burned to the waterline, and she claimed Leland did that. He was fifteen or sixteen at the time.
“I was in on arresting Leland a couple years back. He thinks and acts like a wild animal, in most respects. You sure can’t reason with him. He isn’t exactly stupid, just primitive.”
Alexa, sitting with the Mossberg in her lap, found herself wishing they had brought along more manpower. She looked down, taking in the absurdity of Manseur’s rolled-up suit pants, his exposed ankles sheathed in thin nylon dress socks, and the wingtips on his small feet. This Ticholet was a wanted fugitive fleeing from an assault and abduction, kidnapping, and if Tinsdale had died from Casey’s bullets, a murder. And it sounded like he was a volatile and dangerous man under normal circumstances. She knew Manseur was a good detective, but she wasn’t all that confident that the group in the boat constituted a SWAT team.
Alexa was an adequate handgun shot, but her shooting experience was on a range, punching holes in paper. She didn’t know, but she hoped Kennedy and Bond were more experienced than she was. Sure, they were hunters, but deer didn’t return fire. Boudreaux was an unknown element, because a sheriff’s deputy might not have adequate training, or even could be with the department simply because a cousin was the sheriff. In Alexa’s mind, they were all just investigators.
Leland Ticholet was completely at home in this inhospitable world, and she and the others were just passing through it.
Well, hopefully just passing through.
81
Deputy Boudreaux cut back his boat’s motors as soon as Manseur’s receiver registered that the tracker’s location was within a few hundred yards, and they started looking for the channel that they thought would lead them to the briefcase’s present location. Bond had dropped one of the floating markers at the last turn. Although nobody said so, it would allow any one of them to pilot the boat back out if Boudreaux wasn’t able to navigate. It was always good to be practical.
A waving wall of cattails extended between two fingers of ground, breaking the water like quills. There was a wide-enough gap in the reeds to allow a boat to pass through. The deputy pulled to the bank and Bond and Kennedy climbed from the boat, their boots disappearing in the muck. They made their way slowly in the direction of the tracker, rifles slung on their backs.
As Boudreaux began to move the vessel, Alexa caught sight of a tin roof visible above a line of reeds. He cut the wheel hard to the left and gunned it, plunging into an inlet protected by a V of land covered with bushes, trees, and waist-high foliage. The listing cabin was hemmed into the back corner by a floating wood dock that was grounded on either side. A boat was tied to the dock, just to the left of the cabin.
Manseur had put on his windbreaker and stood at the bow, with the shotgun at port arms. Alexa scanned the area, watching for movement.
The small structure, with corrugated metal walls, was listing about ten degrees. The steel pontoons beneath it-which may have once been LP gas tanks-were rusting, and the one on the low side was three-quarters submerged. The edge of the roof was peeled up like some giant had lifted the corner to peer inside. It rose and fell with the breeze.
A large fish broke the choppy surface beside the boat, startling Alexa. She racked a shell into the chamber of her shotgun and fed another double-ought round into the gate at the bottom of the receiver. Alexa had never killed anyone, but if Leland Ticholet or Andy Tinsdale made it necessary, she would kill either of them, and she would do so without hesitation.
The deputy pulled back the power lever and allowed his boat to drift toward the cabin. When it was almost to the pier, Alexa and Manseur jumped onto it. With shotguns aimed at the building, they moved toward the door. As she passed Leland’s boat, Alexa saw dried blood in the stern. She stepped over the carcasses of four skinless animals. Flies swarmed above their wet skins lying side by side on the weathered wood planks.
“Leland Ticholet! Police!” Manseur yelled out. “Come out with your hands up!” His command was answered only with the sounds of insects in the trees, a fish breaking the surface of the water.
Under the porch roof, chicken-wire crab traps served as tables for jugs with thick monofilament line wrapped around them, tiny spring-loaded jaw traps, and a jar filled with rusted fishhooks. Manseur nodded at her and, using his left hand, turned the knob. He pushed the door open and swept the dim interior with his shotgun.
The cabin’s interior, illuminated by sunlight pouring in through the windows and open door, smelled of mildew and rot. A still form lay on an Army cot. With Alexa aiming her shotgun at the figure, Manseur moved to the cot and gazed down at the man lying there.
Andy Tinsdale-still dressed in the black running suit he’d been wearing the night before-stared back, his partly open eyes clouded and dry. From the underside of the cot, accumulated blood had dripped through the canvas, forming a dark puddle. Alexa spotted the briefcase on the table, decorated with five bullet holes that could have all been covered with a five-by-seven index card.
“What’s up, Doc?” Manseur said.
“There’s the briefcase,” Alexa said, pointing the barrel of her borrowed Mossberg.
“It would be nice to find somebody still alive just once, so we could interrogate them. We seem to be spending all our effort collecting evidence and stacking corpses.”
Alexa crossed to the table.
There was a great deal of dried blood smeared on the case’s leather exterior. Carefully, she opened the briefcase and looked at the stack of bearer bonds, most having been penetrated through-and-through by Casey’s. 380 rounds. Alexa wasn’t going to count the papers. Two of the holes in the front side of the case were duplicated on the back panel, but larger and not perfectly round, due to the expansion of the hollow points as they violated the stack of bonds. “Ransom’s here.”
Manseur lifted Doc’s sweatshirt to examine the deceased man’s entrance wounds. He was a homicide detective, and naturally he wanted to see exactly what had transferred Doc from life to death. Alexa wasn’t nearly as curious about what exactly had killed Tinsdale as she was about where Leland Ticholet was. “Chest wounds have irregular margins,” Manseur told her. “Bullets lost enough energy to prevent them from penetrating his lungs or heart,” he said.
She watched Manseur roll Andy up by lifting his arm, so he could get a better look at his backside.
“The one in his liver did the trick,” Manseur reported. “Another in his leg. He suffered before he died.”
Alexa saw something shiny on the floor, and reached down to lift it by its edges.
“Michael,” she said, holding the object out so he could see it. “Game and fish badge.”
“Man alive,” he said. “I guess we solved that mystery.”
Alexa looked up to see Boudreaux, shotgun at the ready, peering inside.
“Tinsdale’s dead in here,” Manseur said. “No Ticholet.”
“He heard us coming,” Boudreaux said. “Probably a long time before we got here. Leland could be a quarter-mile away by now.” He turned on the shotgun’s attached flashlight to peer down through the jagged hole in the boards. “Jesus,” he said.