Blood Game: A Jock Boucher Thriller (31 page)

Boucher thought he’d been brought to a warehouse in Dumont’s compound in Houma. His calculation of the
distance while blindfolded in the limo seemed to indicate so, but the compound would have had security lighting, and outside, it was pitch black. There were no other buildings near. It didn’t matter. What was important was that there was an escape, through the awning window. Boucher tried to lean out but couldn’t. The open windowpane was in his way. He got off the desk and began feeling around the room in the dark but soon gave up the foolish task of looking for tools conveniently left behind. He climbed back up, took the window in both hands, and pushed it up till its hinges broke. There was a loud crack. If they had left a guard, he would come running now. Boucher didn’t wait. He climbed through the window. It was too small to bring his legs through and slide out sideways. There was no choice but to climb through and drop headfirst. It didn’t matter what was below; hard ground or soft, he’d break his neck. But there was no choice. He went through, head, shoulders, chest, waist. Halfway out. The exterior was corrugated metal, and the ribs fit into his hands. He spidered down the wall as his thighs, then shins, slipped through the window. He was hanging by his insteps, the muscles in his legs and feet straining. He kicked away from the window ledge. He gripped the ribs of corrugated metal for a fraction of a second, then pushed away, attempting a reverse somersault upside down from the side of the building.

It was a three-point landing; right heel, leg fully extended;
left foot with knee flexed; and rump. Both cheeks. Make that a four-point landing. It knocked the wind out of him, and pain shot through his body, but he did not fracture his skull or break his neck. Breathing heavily, he felt around. He’d landed on grass, wet grass, maybe moss. He blessed his home state of Louisiana, where hard, dry earth was so rare.

The blessing was brief. Dumont could return any minute. Boucher stood up, leaning against the building for support. He tried to walk. His left ankle hurt, but the pain would have to be endured. He crept around to the front of the building. There was a blacktop surface in front of the warehouse and a two-lane road. There were lights to his left. To his right, the road led into darkness. It led, Boucher knew, deeper into the bayou. He turned toward the lights and began to walk. After a minute, the pain in his left ankle subsided, and he began to jog. He was properly attired for it.

B
OUCHER RAN ALONG THE
two-lane blacktop. There was bayou on both sides of the road, built on a levee. He could smell the bayou, could see the reflection of the moon on the water and hear frogs croaking all around him. A moonbeam penetrated the branches of mangroves hung with drooping Spanish moss that glowed white in the night’s light. Another beam pierced through the canopy and illuminated several turtles resting on a half-submerged branch. They looked like huge brown cabochon star sapphires with the glint of moon on their moist shells. Several hundred yards later, he could see the lights of an oncoming car. It was approaching fast. Boucher jumped from the road, sliding down the embankment. Hunched over, he continued running at the water’s edge. He was running blind—if you could call it running. No illumination from any source filtered down
to the muddy waterline, and he sank in sludge above his ankles with each step, laboriously lifting his feet. Then something grabbed his left ankle. It tightened its grip and pulled him down. Boucher lay for a second in the muck, then whatever had a hold on his leg began pulling him into the water. He fought, grabbing whatever he could, but his fingers only clawed at mud. Boucher flailed his arms, splashing as he was tugged away from the bank into deeper water. He gasped as he was pulled under the surface, but in his panic he had failed to draw a complete breath. Submerged and being pulled deeper, he reached down for his left ankle. Already there was no sensation in his foot. He felt along his leg, expecting his hands to be severed by whatever had him in its death grip. The ringing in his ears seemed linked to the searing pain in his lungs. Deprived of air, the sacs in his chest seemed to be unnaturally expanding, as if ready to explode. In contrast, his head seemed light, his cognitive organs shrinking in his skull as he surrendered to the void. His extremities went limp as he lost consciousness.

•  •  •

A viselike grip held the top of his head and turned it roughly to the side.

“You prob’ly gonna puke now. Keep your head turned so’s you don’t swallow ’n’ choke.”

The prediction proved accurate. Boucher tried to take
a deep breath and vomited. Dry heaves. There was nothing in his stomach to throw up. He heaved again, gasped for air, and knew from the musk he sucked into his mouth that he was still on the bayou. The hand that had held his head helped him to sit. He sat up and began a paroxysm of dry heaves, coughing and gasping for air, interspersed with none too gentle slaps on the back.

“You back from the dead, you know that?” the voice said. “I’d be int’rested to know if you saw a white light or that tunnel leading to the beyond, ’cause you surely had crossed over.”

Boucher stared at white eyes and teeth, the only features visible in a face as black as the swamp night. He was breathing now, short convulsive breaths. “Where am I?”

“Oh, you ain’t too far from where you started out. You stepped on my line and disturbed the gator what had my hook in its gut. He was jest tryin’ to get away; you was caught in the loop. Gator dragged you down. I’d a never knowed, but he came up to the surface, and I had to dispatch him then and there. Normally, I’d a waited till mornin’ when I check my trap.”

“Dispatched?” Boucher wheezed.

“Yeah. That’s him next to you.”

Boucher looked down at the nine-foot beast next to him. It had three eyes.

“Weren’t no easy shot,” the hunter said.

“It’s . . . not . . . season.”

“Well, I was hopin’ I might count on your discretion on that point, seein’ as how I saved your life an’ all. I was also thinkin’ that with you runnin’ around these parts at this time of night in your skivvies, maybe you jest might appreciate a little discretion on my part as well.”

Clouds cleared, and a ray of moonlight shone on a wizened black face framed by short white hair that almost glowed in the dark. There was enough light from the moon to recognize a smile.

“Name’s Crabb. That’s with two
B
’s; not that I expect you gonna be writin’ it down.”

A gnarled hand was offered. Boucher took it, feeling the poacher’s callused palm. “You saved my life,” he said.

“Seems I did that,” Crabb said, “but I been sittin’ here askin’ myself—for how long? What kind of fix you get yourself in, son?”

“I’m a federal district judge and—”

“You a
what
?”

“I’m U.S. District Judge Jock Boucher. I was assaulted and kidnapped earlier this evening . . .” He couldn’t finish the sentence. In the inky, desolate darkness of the bayou, the old poacher was laughing hysterically.

“I caught me a judge!”

“Quiet! They’ll hear you.”

“Yes, sir. Your Honor, sir.”

•  •  •

Edgar Crabb was a smudge on the notable record of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, its alligator conservation program a model for similar crocodilian-species management programs all over the world. Unregulated hunting since the 1800s had, by the early 1960s, threatened the species, which had thrived for over two hundred million years. After hunting was banned for a decade, in 1972 a sustained-use management program was introduced, which promoted survival of the species, economic benefits, and maintenance of the natural habitat. But Crabb was bayou-born and had hunted gators long before the respected program was implemented, and he was too ingrained with a manner of life handed down father-to-son for generations to care much about government regulations he couldn’t read anyway. He was as antediluvian in this respect as the reptile he hunted. “License?” If asked, he might have retorted by paraphrasing the banditos in the John Huston movie: “Ah don’t need no stinkin’ license.” Fortunately for the gators, he was among the last of a vanishing breed.

“You can help me get this critter into my boat, then I guess you can go wherever you want,” Crabb said.

“Where are you going?” Boucher asked.

“Gotta get it back to my place and harvest it.” The use of the words
dispatch
and
harvest
were clues that he wasn’t entirely ignorant of the existence of the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.

Boucher grabbed the tail to help him move the dead creature. “You sell the hide?” he asked.

“Mebbe. Mostly, I eat him. Gator makes a good gumbo. You ever eat gator meat?”

“I grew up on it,” Boucher said, one bayou man to another. “It’s good for you. Less cholesterol than chicken.”

Crabb chuckled. “Don’t tell the gators ’bout no cholesterol. I use chickens to catch ’em.”

They loaded the gator into Crabb’s pirogue. He grabbed his pole and made ready to shove off, Boucher standing in knee-deep water.

“Aw hell,” Crabb said, “get in. Guess I gotta feed you now that I saved you, right?”

“I won’t get far tonight,” Boucher said.

He got in the bow of the boat, straddling the deceased beast’s snout. Crabb poled the craft away from the shore. In the middle of the bayou, water came almost to the gunwales.

“We be okay,” he said, “if you stay still. Otherwise we be some gator’s meal ’stead of t’other way round.”

Silently, they slid along the smooth surface of tranquil waters, disturbing only the mirrored image of distant stars and a half-moon. Crabb bent over to avoid low-hanging mangrove branches as they approached land.

“You can step out now. Water ain’t up to your knees. I don’t gotta warn you ’bout snakes ’n’ such, do I?”

“I’m mindful of them,” Boucher said. He stepped out and onto the soft bottom, trusting timing, location, and prayer to keep the water moccasins and coral snakes from
his path. Crabb got out, and they both grabbed the bow and pulled the boat onto the muddy bank.

“Stay right here. I gotta get somethin’ wet to cover this gator with. I’ll do the harvestin’ in the morning.” He was gone under a minute, then came back with a long piece of cloth that he dampened in the water, then spread over the carcass. “Okay, now follow me. Stay close. Trail’s a bit tricky.”

Boucher knew that a step off the beaten path might be an unpleasant one. Here in the bayou, man lived cheek by jowl with deadly predators, and any truce was temporary at best. He walked in lockstep, less than an arm’s length behind the old man, trying to place his feet in his footsteps as they walked under a canopy that blacked out the meager light from the sky. When Crabb stopped, Boucher froze.

“This is ma’ place,” Crabb said. “Stay here. I’ll go on in an’ turn on the lamp.”

He walked up three creaky stairs. A door squeaked open, then slammed shut. A flickering light from a match lit a lantern, and the flame was adjusted. Boucher could see Crabb’s outline through the screen door. He looked around. It could hardly be called a clearing; mangrove branches brushed the walls and ceiling and hung over the roof of the one-room hut. A front porch with a single-rail banister ran the entire width, which could not have been much over ten feet. Boucher walked up the steps. Crabb was lying on a sagging metal cot.

“I’m gonna sleep now,” he said. “This evening’s activities
done aged me somethin’ considerable. Make the best of whatever you find, then turn down the lamp. See you in . . . the . . . mornin’.”

And with those words, he was out, sleeping like a baby.

Boucher looked down on the old man, seeing him for the first time in the dim and flickering light. Crabb wore a tattered T-shirt and patched jeans that did not reach his ankles; his pink-soled black feet were bare. If there was a picture of serenity, this was it. In sleep, the wrinkled face smoothed out some, almost forming a smile. His breath was shallow but even. Though the eyelids twitched, it was obvious that his dreams were untroubled. Not just an observation, Boucher realized, this was recall. Before him lay his grandfather’s kindred spirit: a man of the bayou, disdainful of society and its interference with a lifestyle unchanged for centuries. Boucher foraged and found a couple blankets. One he spread on the floor, the other he bunched up as a pillow for his head. They smelled and were probably bug-ridden, but on this he did not dwell. He lowered the lamp, as instructed, reclined on the pallet on the floor, and was soon asleep.

He woke to the sound of humming and splashing of water, got up, and walked to the porch. The sun had not yet risen, the sky a predawn gray. Crabb had a length of garden hose that descended from the roof, and with the water spurting from it, he was taking a shower. The naked
brown body spraying water over itself looked like a leafless tree in a rainstorm.

“Got me a tub on the roof,” he said. “Collects rainwater for drinkin’ and washin’. I throw the ol’ hose in it, then suck the end, like siphonin’ from a gas tank. Come on, I’m done. Wash up, an’ I’ll throw some breakfast together.” He handed Boucher the hose.

The shower was heaven. The soap was lye, something Boucher hadn’t used since he was a boy. He washed his gym outfit and set it on the banister to dry, wrapped a towel around him, and entered the shack. Crabb was heating water for coffee over an old can of Sterno. Breakfast was on the table: beans. A fork stuck out of each can. Crabb poured boiling water from a pot into two cups, then served teaspoons of instant coffee. Crabb sat down and started to eat without a word. Suddenly, there was a roar over their heads. The old shack shook and felt for an instant like it would cave in on itself.

“Goddamn it!” Crabb grabbed the table to steady it. “Guv’ment comes after me ’cause I catch a gator to skin and eat it. Them bastards built ’em a runway right in the bayou, they killed more gators buildin’ the damn thing than I would in ten lifetimes, an’ they scare ’em away with those damn planes landin’ whenever they want. You’re a judge. Tell me, where’s justice in that!”

“That was an airplane?”