Judas Burning (24 page)

“What on God’s green earth do you think you’re doing?” Welford spat. “This is a school.”

“I’m questioning a witness in a murder investigation.” J.D. was tired, and he had a long day in front of him. He wasn’t in the mood for Welford’s blustering or Holbert’s threats.

“If this is an example of how you do your job, it’s no wonder Angie Salter hasn’t been found.” Holbert’s face was red. “The man who took those girls is right down there at Fitler. Eustace Mills. He’s probably got that poor girl somewhere in the swamp, using her for his sick desires. And you won’t do a thing about it.”

J.D. stopped himself from swinging, from smashing his fist into Calvin’s smug face. “What makes you so certain Eustace is involved?” he managed to ask calmly.

“Vivian says he’s all the time running up and down the river in his boat ogling the young girls. She says he’s a pervert. She says he watches her when she’s water skiing. He comes all the way down the river to Plum Bluff so he can do his nasty things without my daughter knowing.” His face had gone even redder. “He’s a vile man, a deviant. I know what he’s doing to her and someone should stop him!” he shouted.

J.D.’s mouth was dry. “Calvin, I’ve known Eustace for most of my life. He isn’t a pervert, and he isn’t interested in young girls. He loves Camille. That’s something you can’t understand.”

“Calvin! This isn’t the place for this scene.” Welford was looking up and down the hall. “What kind of example are you setting for the students?”

Hayes had stepped back against the wall. He looked pleadingly at J.D., who nodded, releasing him.

“I’m done here,” J.D. said. “Calvin, if I hear one more word about Eustace …”

The bay of a hunting dog wafted through the swamp like the sounds of a far-distant party. Or better yet, a wake. Eustace knew that J.D. would not give up, but this wasn’t the lawman with tracking hounds. More likely it was Boday McKay illegally hunting a young deer.

He knew that J.D. had called off the dog searches, opening a window of opportunity for Eustace to move after Chavez. The problem was that Chavez had become damn good at hiding. He knew Eustace was stalking him, and he’d become doubly cautious. He’d stopped coming to the camp to steal things, but Eustace felt certain Camille was still meeting him in the woods, giving him food and supplies.

Camille. She had no idea of the repercussions. She’d hidden the dead girl’s bracelet where he couldn’t find it, and a shard of her pottery told him she’d been at the scene where the body had been discovered.

He put the ammunition in the bottom of the boat along with the high-powered rifle and covered them with an old tarp. His plan was to wrap the Mexican’s body with weights. That would hold Chavez underwater for so long that even if he did eventually float, there wouldn’t be much of him left. First, though, he had to get Chavez.

He’d just finished stowing the gear when he heard Camille calling him. She was wearing the fedora she’d taken a shine to. Her hair was tucked up inside it, and her knees showed through her old jeans. He smiled. Not even those clothes could detract from her loveliness.

“I’m going into town for a while,” she said. “I need some more glaze for the clay.”

“Be careful.”

“I’ll probably eat lunch at the Hickory Pit. Do you want me to bring something back?”

“Fried chicken, fried okra, English pea salad, yams, and cornbread.” He didn’t really want the food, but it was one more assurance that Camille intended to come back to him. He sometimes wondered if, one day, she simply wouldn’t return. She was a talented artist, and Vivian and Calvin were always holding that out to her, offering her opportunities he could never give her. He accepted that one day she might choose the world her parents offered. And then they would destroy her.

“You look sad,” she said, walking up to him and touching his lips with her finger. “You don’t sleep well anymore, Eustace. What’s wrong?”

He felt the weight of his worries crushing him. “I’m fine. My leg hurts sometimes.”

“That doctor did a piss-poor job of fixing you. If you would go to Mobile, one of the orthopedists there might be able to make it better. At least fix it where it didn’t hurt all the time.”

“I’ll think about it.” She was so tender. When she’d first come to the camp, she cried when he killed the fish. She still ate little meat, and she avoided the skinning shed when he was working there.

“Eustace, you don’t like me to say this, but I have money. I could pay for the doctor. You don’t have insurance, but we could cover it.”

He hated it when he felt less than able to provide in her eyes. He turned away abruptly. “I said I’ll think about it.”

Her hand grazed along his shoulder and down his arm. “Okay. I’ll be going then.”

He turned back to watch her walk away, and cold fear gripped him. He’d spoken harshly to her, something she couldn’t take. She hadn’t reacted, though. She’d simply walked off. Did it mean she wasn’t coming back? He stopped himself from going after her. He had to hold on to the fact that he loved Camille. Whatever was best for her was what he wanted. If she chose to leave, he would not lift a finger to stop her. That was the one thing he could offer her that no one else ever had—a choice.

As soon as her car had disappeared from sight he got in the boat. He’d been searching for Chavez for the past three days and had seen no sign of him. Eustace expected the woods to erupt any day with national guard, state troopers, and volunteers. He had to find Chavez, and he had to find him fast. He headed upriver, away from the mournful baying of the hound.

J.D. hadn’t stopped by lately, either. That wasn’t a good sign. J.D. was smart, and he would eventually put it all together. It was Eustace’s job to see that whatever facts J.D. had gathered, none of them pointed to Camille.

Eustace had tracked Chavez to Dupree’s Hideout, where the outlaw Pascal Dupree was supposed to have buried a treasure. The land was more marsh than solid ground, and a careless man could find himself sinking beneath the fetid muck. Eustace hoped to help Chavez become fatally careless.

He opened the throttle of the boat, kicking up a large wake, and let the boat fly. An hour later, he turned into the right bank of the Leaf River. A small creek emptied into the river, and he navigated beneath the high banks and into the interior. When he’d traveled as far as he could, he cut the motor. Drifting to a tree, he tied off the boat and got out, his rifle in his hand, listening to the chatter of blue jays.

The ground felt firm, but he knew to use caution. Little sunlight penetrated the thick canopy, and the ground was damp with rotting leaves and humidity. Mosquitoes droned around his head, but he ignored them. More dangerous were the snakes. A thick brown body eased off the bank and into the water, spiraling away. Moccasins gave no warning, unlike rattlesnakes, and their bite was just as deadly.

Pushing tree limbs out of his way, Eustace began the trek into the swamps. Half a mile in, he came upon a maze of fresh springs, hillocks, and cypress trees. The Mexican had hidden the boat, and Eustace hadn’t tracked it down yet. He’d hoped to find it in the small canal, but it wasn’t there.

A limb snapped. Eustace swung toward the sound, aiming the rifle as he turned. Chavez was a dim shape among the trees. Eustace didn’t bother to sight. He didn’t have time. He pulled the trigger and saw the man flinch and go down to one knee when the deer slug hit him. Then he was up and running, too fast for Eustace to give chase.

Eustace sat down on a cypress knee. He was trembling, and he had to catch his breath. He’d hit the man; he knew that much. He’d wounded him. Now Chavez was running through the woods, bleeding. Eustace heard the splash of water, the crackle of dead limbs underfoot. The man was moving fast. He was getting away.

A good hunter would follow the blood trail and bring an end to his quarry’s misery. In his younger days, Eustace would have done exactly that. He’d followed his share of deer and cut their throats to end their suffering.

He closed his eyes. The deer slug should have brought the man down. Even a hit in the shoulder ought to have felled him. But it hadn’t. Chavez had been little more than a shadow, half real and half imagined. Ghostly. Eustace’s trembling increased. He was starting to see the man as not real, not human. As something more.

It was his responsibility to go after him. He couldn’t have gotten far. Using his rifle as a crutch for his bad leg, he stood and listened. The swamp was silent. Not even a bird fluttered through the trees. He moved to where Chavez had been when he was shot. He found no trace of the man. In the trunk of an old sweet gum he found his bullet. If he’d hit him, the bullet had gone clean through. If he’d hit him. The man had fallen to his knees. Eustace searched the ground and found no evidence either way.

He made his way back to the river. For the first time in his life he didn’t notice anything on the river as he sped toward home.

J.D. watched the sweat darken the back of Dixon’s shirt as she moved through the thick underbrush, retracing her steps in an effort to find the spot where she’d picked up the sales slip.

“Damn it all to hell. Everywhere looks like everywhere else,” she said.

The day was murderously hot, the humidity as high as it could get without liquefying the air. They’d been at it for two hours, and Dixon was determined to find the place. He had to give her that; she was tenacious.

“Right in here,” she said, sweeping her hand around an area. “It had to be right in here.”

J.D. looked at the ground. He’d had to look, just on the off chance there was a print or some other physical evidence. In all likelihood, the wind had carried the sales slip into the woods until it had hung on the underbrush.

“Thanks, Dixon,” he said.

“It didn’t help, did it?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know what will help now.” He felt as if Angie Salter stood just out of sight, waiting for him to find her, to save her. It was an oppressive feeling.

“Chavez has to be here, in these swamps,” Dixon said. She pushed her hair off her hot forehead. “He has to be here.”

J.D. agreed. Francisco Chavez could not have left the area. He’d had men checking every vehicle that came and went from Fitler. Every boat. Chavez had to be there, but no one had seen him. The man had to eat, and without a gun or fishing gear, he couldn’t sustain himself.

Unless someone was helping him.

The thought came unbidden and fully developed. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed the sheriff’s office. When Waymon answered, he asked, “Camille Holbert. Have the roadblocks been checking her car?”

The pause told him. He wanted to curse but didn’t.

“Waymon, find out when she’s come and gone. Don’t upset the volunteers, but get the times and get them exact. I’ll find out where she went.”

“They were afraid of Calvin,” Waymon admitted. “They were afraid if they stopped her and she complained, Mr. Holbert would call up the loans they owe.”

J.D. leaned against a tree and closed his eyes. He felt sick. Angie Salter was probably dead and buried in the woods and would never be found. The man responsible had very likely hitched a ride in the roomy trunk of a Mercedes with a crazy woman who didn’t realize what she was doing.

“Just find out what you can.” He hung up and began his descent down the river bank.

“What’s wrong?” Dixon asked.

“There’s a chance he caught a ride out of here.” Eustace’s camp was blocked from view by the trees, but J.D. knew exactly where it was.

For most of J.D.’s life, he had turned to Eustace in times of need. But not now. If Camille had helped Chavez escape, she was an accessory to kidnapping and murder. It would prove what Calvin and Vivian had been saying—that Camille was incapable of making sane decisions. He didn’t have to look far down that road to see what would happen. Vivian would have her institutionalized. Anything to get her away from Eustace.

“Who would give him a ride?” Dixon asked, sliding down the steep bank beside him.

He didn’t answer.

She stopped. “Camille Holbert?”

The way she said it, he could tell she didn’t want to believe it.

“It’s a possibility. Just that, a possibility,” he said.

He started down the river to the west toward a trail that would take them back up the bank and to his SUV. He’d wanted Dixon’s company. He’d wanted her not to be with Medino. Now, he needed to get rid of her before he confronted Camille and Eustace.

“Why would Camille do such a thing?” Dixon asked.

He thought about his answer. “She’s tender-hearted. She might have thought Chavez was in a bad way and had no one else to turn to.”

Dixon kept pace with him. “I don’t think she did it.”

He turned to look at her. “You don’t?”

She shook her head. “Your friend watches her like a hawk. I doubt he leaves the camp if she’s there alone. He would have known, wouldn’t he?”

“I hope you’re right.”

They made their way to the Explorer. J.D. turned the air conditioner on high. The SUV lumbered across the bridge, dodging potholes. J.D. stopped and looked out the window at the river. It was only against the bridge abutments that he could tell how swift the current really was. Was Angie Salter beneath the water? He didn’t believe so. She hadn’t drowned. Dead or alive, someone had her.