Bad Karma In the Big Easy Read online

  Suddenly, Bubba got down on his knees, crawled close to the gator’s head, and smacked it on the side of the snout with his fist. Its cold reptilian eyes glaring, the gator yanked its head around. It dug into the turf and lunged at Bubba, dragging Broussard along. The gator’s snout hit Bubba in the side. With a quick jerk of its head, it threw him into the weeds.

  The great reptile then tried to go after Bubba, but Broussard shifted his weight to the right, using his bulk as leverage to slow the animal down. Bubba scrambled to his feet and came back to the creature, staying just out of range of another snout swing, but standing where the animal could see him.

  “Okay, he wants me now,” Bubba said. “Dr. B, you let him go an’ roll hard to your right. Teddy, when he comes after me, let him have it.”

  “What if goes for me instead?” Broussard said, breathlessly.

  “Den I’ll owe you an apology.”

  Chapter 33

  Broussard released his hold on the gator and rolled away from it. On cue, the animal swung its head toward Bubba and came after him in an explosion of claws and teeth. But Teddy was waiting.

  He squeezed the trigger on the Ruger.

  There was a sickening sound of the projectile striking the animal. The huge body gave a great shudder and all the energy that suffused it a moment earlier was gone. Though he had no doubt it was dead, Teddy approached the animal carefully and pushed on it with the barrel of the rifle.

  There was no response.

  Though they had prevailed, not one of the four men standing over the great animal felt good about it.

  “What a magnificent creature,” Teddy said.

  “He certainly gave us all we could handle,” Gatlin added reverently.

  “I got a lotta gator stories I like to tell people,” Bubba said. “But right now, I don’t think dis is gonna be one of ‘em.”

  “We had to do it,” Broussard said. “But we don’t have to like it.”

  WHEN THEO LANCON SAW that the gator was dead, he returned to his post, glad no one had been hurt. If they had, questions might have been raised about why he hadn’t come to help. As he looked out between the trees at the still empty backyard of the Marshall house, he realized that even though everyone across the bayou was safe, they still might wonder why he hadn’t been there, too. Well, it was because I’ve been trained never to leave my post when I’m doing surveillance. And...

  A blur suddenly passed in front of Lancon’s eyes. Before he could process what that might have been, he felt a sharp pain encircling his neck. His hands went to the spot, and his fingers felt a hard ring sinking into his skin. At the same time he realized he couldn’t breathe.

  The ligature tightened, cutting thorough his skin and dividing his thyroid. His hands clawed at the constricting band, but there was no way he could get his fingers under it. With the incessant pressure, the band cut deeper, slicing and parting tissue until it went entirely through the wall of his trachea. Blood and air rushed into his respiratory passage and down into his lungs through the opening in his neck. For an instant, Lancon’s oxygen-starved brain received what it needed, delaying his slide into unconsciousness. He exhaled, sending bloody froth bubbling from around the ligature where it had cut into his trachea. The ever-increasing pressure then compressed the large vessels in Lancon’s neck, so that blood could neither enter nor leave his brain. The deputy’s sun, already dim, disappeared behind a permanent cloud. He went limp and Marion Marshall let him fall.

  Marion pulled off Lancon’s ear bud and mike and put it over his own left ear. He relieved Lancon of his Walkie Talkie and ran off into the woods to end the threat facing his family.

  DURING THE GATOR ATTACK, Kit had heard a few electronically unaided shouts and grunts from the combatants but had no real ear onto the events because the communication gear they’d been wearing was variously damaged by water and/or lost during the action. Though Theo Lancon’s equipment had been fully functional during the attack, Marion had put him down so efficiently Lancon had not been able to utter a single word. Thus, Kit didn’t realize Lancon was no longer in play.

  THE WEIGHT OF THE big gator was a staggering burden, but Teddy and the others managed to load it into the boat Teddy had used to get on that side of the bayou. With Teddy poling the craft forward from the back and the others sitting where they could find room beside and on the gator, Teddy maneuvered the boat around the turn and headed back up the bayou.

  “I’m not being critical,” Broussard said to Teddy from his seat on the gator’s chest, “But how’d this thing get the drop on you?”

  “I was checking behind me every once in awhile... often enough to have spotted an ordinary gator leaving the water. Then I turn and there’s this one high-running right for me full blast. I’ve seen them do that lots of times trying to get away from danger. But I never saw one high-run toward it.”

  “Guess he thought he could take you.”

  “I won’t make that mistake again.”

  “Any day we learn somethin’ new is a success.”

  “Or any day we don’t get eaten and digested,” Bubba added.

  “That’d be right up there, too,” Broussard said.

  “The way you been flying through the air today, we need to get you a cape,” Gatlin said to Broussard.

  “I already have three on order. I’d get you one, but you were disqualified when you fell in the mud.”

  “Careful, or I may charge you for all the communication equipment we ruined.”

  “By the way,” Broussard said. “Where’s your Ruger?”

  Gatlin looked toward shore and pretended he hadn’t heard the question.

  Kit was waiting for them when the nose of the boat touched shore.

  “Things didn’t go quite as planned,” Teddy said to Kit. “But we got it.”

  “Everyone okay?”

  “We’ll all probably be sore tomorrow, but we’ve still got our finger and toes,” Teddy replied.

  “And no tooth marks on us,” Bubba added.

  Seeing how disheveled and dirty they all were, Kit became acutely aware of how clean her clothes were... clear testimony to her cowardice. How could she have done that? Teddy’s life had been at risk and she’d done nothing. She had put her own welfare above his.

  “Our communication gear is all messed up,” Broussard said to Kit. “Anything from Lancon?”

  “No.”

  “Check with him, will you?”

  “Number two, please respond. Everything okay?”

  Through her earpiece, Kit heard: “No problem.” Until now, she hadn’t heard Lancon say more than a few words over the system, so she didn’t notice the voice she’d just heard was different than before. She gave Broussard a thumbs up.

  “Did you bring the gloves and a knife?” Teddy asked Bubba.

  “In my truck.”

  “I’ll get them,” Kit said, wanting to do something to help.

  Bubba said, “Under the passenger seat.”

  The four men wrestled the gator out of the boat and laid it on the shore with its belly facing the water. By the time that was done, Kit was back with the gloves and a big serrated hunting knife. “Who gets these?”

  Bubba pointed at Teddy.

  Teddy took the gloves first and pulled them on. Kit than handed him the knife. Following old habits that wouldn’t let him damage a perfectly good skin, Teddy didn’t open the belly along the midline, but rather cut along the junction with the useless back armor, carrying the cut up along the jaw and down the other side, stopping where the ground prevented him from going further. He returned to the vent end of the animal and made a cross cut. This allowed him to lay the abdomen open.

  “That’s what were after,” he said, using the tip of the knife to point out a large, elongated white object streaked with red.

  Everyone jockeyed for the best view.

  “Here goes.” He sliced the stomach open and a putrid pearly green fluid spilled out. The stench was indescribable. It was all Kit could do
to keep from gagging.

  Teddy plunged his fingers into the cut and began exploring. He came out with something hard and shiny. He cleaned it off and examined it, then looked up at the group. “Somebody around here is missing a cat or a dog.” He tossed the tag onto the ground and plunged his hand back into the stomach. This time, he scoped out a baseball. Returning for a third time, he came out grasping a pulpy white mass with tentacles. “Catfish head,” he said, tossing it onto the sand.

  He went in again and groped around for a few seconds. “Oh-oh. This may be what we’re looking for.” He pulled a small white leg with a perfect little foot out of the stomach. Afraid to exert any more tension on the tiny appendage, he reached back inside for a more substantial grip. Using his other hand to widen the opening, he delivered the mucousy, partially digested remains of an infant.

  Unable to hold it in any longer, Kit turned to the side and dry heaved. She turned back to see Teddy lay the baby’s body on its back. He cleaned it with his hand, and everyone was shocked to see a line of sutures running down the middle of its abdomen.

  “What the hell is this?” Gatlin muttered.

  Broussard said, “Cut the sutures.”

  Scissors would have been more useful now and it took Teddy an interminable amount of time to sever all the sutures with the knife. But finally the job was done. He spread the edges of the incision apart as much as he could. Even though Gatlin and Bubba didn’t know their way around the inside of a human body, they leaned in to look with as much interest as Kit and Broussard.

  It took Kit a moment to get oriented then... Oh my God... Everything that had been happening fell into place. She looked toward the Marshall’s mansion. Oh my God.

  “We have to get to the house,” she said. “...The Marshall’s house, now...”

  A blast of gunfire suddenly erupted from the tree line. Broussard groaned in pain and grabbed at his left bicep, blood welling through his fingers. Gatlin was hit too, his left arm bloodied at the elbow. Swearing, Gatlin seized Broussard by the belt with his right hand and pulled him away from the gator. Together, they ran and stumbled toward a big cypress stump a few yards away. There was another blast, and dirt kicked up all around them. A third shot shredded the stump as they dove behind it. While this was happening, Bubba ran for the boat and threw himself headlong into it. Teddy dropped to the ground behind the gator carcass, pulling Kit down with him.

  The sound of gunfire was now nonstop. Bubba had brought a wooden boat to minimize any sound they might make by things striking against the hull. One shot chewed a hole in its gunnel. The next hit the raised front leg of the gator, nearly severing it.

  Through the mayhem, Kit realized that the amount of havoc each round was creating could only have been made by a shotgun. She flashed on the shootout in NIGHT DEMON and realized it was surely Marion Marshall firing on them with the gun he’d depicted in that game.

  There was another blast, but this time the sound was different. It was Bubba returning fire with the Ruger left in the boat. The next three shotgun blasts from the woods worked their way down the boat’s gunnel, gouging out great chunks of wood.

  Teddy got his little chrome .22 pistol from his belt holster. He raised his arm and blindly got off two rounds in the general direction of the threat before the shotgun found him, hitting him in the wrist. His hand flew open and backward, flipping the gun into the air. The pistol fell onto the gator’s side and slid down its back out where there was no chance to retrieve it.

  Teddy looked at his wrist.

  “Are you hurt?” Kit asked.

  “Not bad. He’s using buckshot. Only one of the balls hit me. But I lost my gun. Even if I had it, I don’t think I could hold it.”

  A round from the shotgun splattered at Kit’s feet and she pulled them closer to her body.

  “We need help, fast,” Kit said. “You got your phone? I left mine in the car.”

  “So did I.”

  A piece of the cypress stump where Gatlin and Broussard were hiding flew into the air. Behind the stump, Gatlin was staring at the screen on his phone. Apparently angry that it wasn’t working, he threw it into the bayou.

  The fusillade continued, alternately chopping holes in the boat, tearing chunks out of the stump, and slamming into the gator, raining reptilian blood and tissue onto Kit and Teddy.

  Kit could see little hope in their dire circumstances. Gatlin had lost his Ruger into the bayou when he’d fallen in the mud. He wasn’t even trying to return fire with the pistol he carried, so the mud must have fouled it. Bubba had abandoned the other Ruger when he’d been driven out of the boat and into the water behind it.

  A round of shot peppered the ground in front of the gator’s snout.

  Kit reached down and got her .38 from under her pant leg. Another round of buckshot smashed into the carcass, splattering blood into Kit’s hair and onto her face.

  She was the only one with a weapon. But what the hell could she do with it? Firing blind like Teddy had done wouldn’t accomplish anything. And if she showed any part of herself, she’d be shot. There was no way around the truth. They were all going to die.

  Chapter 34

  The shotgun knocked another chunk out of the boat. The gator carcass jumped as it absorbed another round. A piece of the cypress stump exploded.

  Kit felt that any minute, Marion would move in for the kill. He would be exposed then, but with the speed he could fire, she wouldn’t even be able to get off a shot.

  A form of premature death settled over her. She grew calm and began to accept what was to come. At least she hadn’t yet bought the new dog she’d spoken to Bunny about. So she didn’t have to worry about leaving a pet behind with no one to care for it. In truth, there was no animal or person that was dependent on her. She could leave this earth and it just wouldn’t matter.

  A round of buckshot blasted off the gator’s hind leg.

  But then the old Kit began to surface, the one that existed before this case began. She grew angry at what Marion Marshall had done to her. He had made her someone she despised: a coward who wouldn’t even help when her boyfriend’s life had been threatened by this alligator.

  She saw too, that she was wrong about no one depending on her. There was someone... in the Marshall’s house. She was sure of it a moment ago when they had opened that child’s abdomen, but she’d let the thought get away from her when they’d come under fire... another self-serving, cowardly act. Someone did need her. And time could be running out.

  The gator carcass bucked as another round punched into it.

  Kit flashed again on the shotgun scene in Night Demon. Nathan’s onslaught had been relentless, cutting those cops down with sheer overwhelming firepower. But there had been a moment in the game when the firing stopped... when Nathan had to reload.

  Her eyes took on a steely glint. The muscles in her jaw flexed as she clamped down on her teeth.

  It grew quiet.

  Praying she was right about why that happened, Kit jumped to her feet, vaulted the gator, and ran toward the shotgun.

  Chapter 35

  Kit sprinted for the tree line, expecting at any moment to be blasted in the face with multiple rounds of buckshot. But if that happened, at least she wouldn’t have died shaking in fear.

  She was now halfway there... and still alive.

  The weeds that started just in front of the tree line were coming up fast. Ten feet away... The anticipation of being shredded by dozens of steel balls made her light headed. What she was doing was nuts, but she had no choice. Now she saw the problem she hadn’t considered before she’d jumped the gator. From the moment the gunfire began, she’d been hiding, had never seen the exact location of the shooter. He could be behind a tree to her right or her left. If she chose wrong, she might not have time to correct her mistake.

  The weeds were now five feet away. Still no gunfire.

  She hit the weeds two seconds later and vaulted into the air, her face and gun hand turned to the left, because that was
a more natural direction for her. But even before she hit the ground, she saw there was no one there.

  Hairs on her neck prickling, she let her legs crumple under her when she landed. She rolled to the right, onto her back and there he was, trying to reload one of the two shotguns he’d brought. His hand went for a holster strapped to his leg, where Kit could see the handle of an automatic pistol.

  Kit began firing. She was a great marksman on the practice range, but now discovered she wasn’t nearly as good under duress, because her first three rounds left no visible evidence of their existence as they embarked on a field trip of the woods. This gave Marshall time to pull his sidearm.

  But Kit’s fourth round hit him in the right shoulder. He jerked backward at the impact and dropped his gun. A bloodstain blossomed into his khaki T-shirt. Swearing, he grabbed at the wound.

  As Kit scrambled to her feet, he dropped to his knees and reached for his pistol. Before he could grab it, Kit rushed him and kicked him in the side, knocking him over. With her free hand, she picked up his gun and shoved it in her back pocket.

  She was safe.

  She wasn’t going to die.

  Most importantly, she had saved herself. She wanted to howl like an animal. Instead, she shouted at the others. “I’ve got him. But I could use a hand.” Then to the man at her feet, “I know what your despicable brother is doing. Where is he?”

  “In the operating room he installed in our house,” Marion whined. “I’m hurt. I need help.”

  “He’s still going ahead with the operation, despite what just happened here?”

  “He probably doesn’t even know about this. The room is soundproof and I didn’t tell him anything before I left. I’m bleeding to death. Do something.”

  “Where in the house is this room?”

  “Ground floor, right wing as you face the place from the backyard. You’ll tell the DA I cooperated with you, right? They’ll cut me a break then, won’t they?”

  Bubba appeared at her side with the Ruger. “Keep an eye on him,” Kit said. “I’ve got more to do.” She only had a single round left in her .38 so she returned that gun to her calf holster, pulled the automatic from her back pocket, and showed it to Teddy, who had come up behind Bubba. “How do I use this thing?”