Landfall (19 page)

Every now and then, she looked down into the water, and saw thin tendrils of blood swirling toward her, then separating and passing her on either side. She was wading in his bloody wake, and even though it wasn’t a lot of blood compared to earlier, she didn’t know how he still had some left.

They finally got past the dense clump of trees that marked her property line, and Maggie let out a deep breath as she realized that she was back on her own land. It didn’t look like home, but it was. The vegetation was much thicker here and she couldn’t see the house yet, but she knew it was there.

She looked over at Boudreaux. He was a good five inches or so taller than she was, and the water didn’t come quite up to his waist, and she was glad that she was slightly behind him. She’d stolen one glance at his midsection earlier, had glimpsed a ragged tear and very pale, puffy flesh within it that should not have been visible to her. It had scared the crap out of her.

She looked at him now, saw the flash of his gold watch as he swung his arms over the water, and thought how odd it was to see him looking anything less than immaculate. He’d always exuded such a relaxed elegance. She thought, too, about the way he’d looked at the Cajun festival, just a couple of months ago, handsome and fit and full of energy, like a man twenty years his junior. It made her sad, somehow, to wonder if she’d see him dancing there next summer.

Wyatt gaped as Axel slid open the huge doors, letting more water spill into a building at Scipio Creek Marina that was normally used to house boats.

The pickup truck itself looked like a neon blue cake topper, perched on tires that probably came up to Wyatt’s chest.

He looked over at Axel, who was grinning around the hind end of yet another cigarette.

“What the hell do you have this for?” Wyatt asked him.

“Mud racing, man.” Axel pulled a set of keys out of his back pocket. “I got a vehicle for every situation.”

“I don’t doubt that,” Wyatt said, as he hobbled toward the thing.

“Lemme grab you a step stool, man.”

“I haven’t needed a step stool since I was seven,” Wyatt snapped.

“You do today, peg leg.”

William the florist stood on the balcony of his and Robert’s apartment, on the second floor of one of Apalach’s many Victorians. He lit his cigarette and took a grateful drag of both it and the fresh air.

He loved Robert dearly, but after twenty-six years, he really could only handle so much togetherness in a space with boarded-up windows. The only light they’d had was from the French door to the balcony, which only remained uncovered because Robert didn’t allow smoking in the house, and William wouldn’t make it twenty-four hours without throwing Robert down the stairs if he was forced to go without. He’d rather replace a door than a lifelong partner, so there it was.

The rain had all but quit and, although there was still no sun, the sky had lightened to a sickly gray rather than a threatening one. This thing was almost over, and all they would have to contend with was a foot or two of water in the flower shop and a bunch of slippery insurance agents.

He heard a rumbling noise, an engine, and expected to see one of those hideously outdated Army trucks when he leaned over the rail to look down the street. Instead, he saw an apparition.

“Robert!” he called through the open door. “Come look at this nonsense.”

Robert stepped out from the living room. “What?”

“That,” William said, pointing with his cigarette.

Robert stepped over to the rail and looked at the bright blue truck headed their way, leaving a wake behind it that sent waves to either side of the street. “Oh, for Pete’s sake.”

“Look at these idiots,” William said. “Just hanging out like the place isn’t flooded. Like we’re not having a hurricane, thank you.”

“We’re still here.”

“We’re still here because we’re not going to some Hampton Inn in Tallahassee where they only pretend to change the sheets,” William said. “We’re inside playing Uno by candlelight like normal people, not out carousing the streets in our ogre truck.”

“Monster truck.”

“Whatever.” The truck lumbered past as William shook his head. “They’re probably looters.”

“Please. We don’t have looters.”

“Really? We don’t have ogres, either, but there they go down Sixth Street,” William said, and blew out of mouthful of smoke.

“
S
o what’s the deal with Maggie?” Axel asked around a new cigarette.

Wyatt brought his head in from the passenger side window, where he’d been checking to see if they were as high as he felt.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“You think she just missed the window for getting out of town, or what?”

“I don’t know. That doesn’t sit right,” Wyatt answered. “She was ready to hit the road at like six yesterday.”

“Trouble with the Jeep, maybe?”

“Maybe.”

It could be trouble with the Jeep, combined with a hurricane, and added to a lack of cell service. That was all just a little too coincidental for Wyatt, though he really didn’t have any concrete ideas otherwise.

He looked out the windshield and got the sensation that he was coming in for a landing. It made him a little queasy, so he looked back out the window.

“How’s she been doing? You know, since David.”

“She’s doing okay,” Wyatt said after a moment. “They’re doing okay.”

“I haven’t seen her since the funeral, but I really don’t know what to say, man,” Axel said. “I’m not that great at meaningful conversation.”

Wyatt turned and looked at Axel. “You guys were really close, right?”

Axel glanced over at him. “Me and David? Yeah, best friends since junior high.”

“Is that why you and Maggie never dated?”

“Me? And Maggie? No, man,” Axel said. “She was beautiful—still is, but I try to go for the least compatible match I can find. Besides, she and David were together forever.”

“Since her christening. Yeah, I know.”

Axel looked over at him and grinned. “Kind of intimidating, isn’t it?”

Wyatt frowned at him. “How do you mean?”

“Geez, Wyatt. You guys don’t really think it’s
that
much of a secret, do you?” He smiled as Wyatt tried to look confused. “I mean, it’s not in your face obvious, but it’s not all that hard to see, either.”

“We’re not dating, if that’s what you’re implying.”

“I’m not implying crap, I’m saying you guys have something going on.”

“We work together,” Wyatt said, and looked back out the window. “I’m her boss.”

“I’m Petey’s boss, too, but we don’t actually try real hard to look like we’re not seeing each other, you know what I mean?” Axel tossed his cigarette out the window. “Besides, David told me.”

Wyatt sighed and looked over at Axel.

“Hey, he was okay with it,” Axel said. “As okay as you could expect, anyway. He liked you.”

“I liked him, too. I really did,” Wyatt said. “But, it’s against Sheriff’s Office policy.”

Axel shrugged. “Well, I’m against policies.”

“Then you’ll understand if I ask you not to tell anybody about it, right?”

“Don’t sweat it,” Axel answered, lighting another cigarette. “I don’t actually like to talk to people.”

Boudreaux sort of crouched in the water, leaning his head against the trunk of a very young oak. He’d told Maggie he needed to stop and rest a moment, but he suspected that she did, as well.

He turned his head and looked at her. She had an arm wrapped around the tree, and had laid her forehead against the trunk and closed her eyes.

He was struck, as he often had been over the years, by how much she favored her mother. He couldn’t see anything physical of himself in her, but over the last couple of months, he had come to see that, as far as her personality, she did resemble him somewhat.

She was strong and she was direct, she had a very dry sense of humor, and she was fiercely protective of those she loved. He knew that she could push herself past the point at which she became afraid, and that she didn’t become close to people easily.

He supposed that some of these things could be attributed to some of her experiences, as both a teenager and a cop. But he liked to think that at least some of it was genetic.

She opened her eyes and looked right at him, not even a foot away, and he almost felt as though she’d heard him thinking.

“How old is Miss Evangeline?” she asked him.

It took him a moment to understand what she’d asked him. “I have no idea,” he said. “Almost a hundred. Why?”

“She’s really important to you, isn’t she?”

Boudreaux stared at her a moment. He felt a shaking in his chest, a fluttering like a small bird in a very large, otherwise empty space, and he noticed that the tingling sensation that had been in his feet had also now started in his hands. It felt a lot like fainting without falling down.

“It occurred to me not too long ago that she’s the only woman I’ve ever loved,” he said finally.

Maggie blinked at him a few times. “You’ve never been in love?”

“No.”
No, I apologize. Not even with your mother. I didn’t even know your mother.

“That’s sad.”

“I suppose it is,” he admitted. “But it’s also probably just as well.”

He turned around, put his forehead against the tree and grabbed it with both hands.

“Miss Evangeline is going to be quite put out with me,” he said, though he wanted to say something important, something he would want her to remember.

“Why? Because you ruined your shirt?”

He tried to smile at her, but he was losing his peripheral vision. “Something of that nature.”

“Come on, we need to get moving again,” she said.

He turned back around to face the direction they’d been heading, but he found it too tiresome to actually push away from the tree. “How much further to your house?” he asked her.

“Not far, maybe a hundred yards or so, to those evergreens, then once we get around those, we’ll be behind my chicken house.”

“Okay. Lead the way,” he said in a near whisper, though he couldn’t see the evergreens, or her for that matter.

Maggie turned and waded a few steps, then looked over her shoulder as Boudreaux slipped sideways into the water.

She turned around and sloshed her way back to him, reached down and grabbed his shirt collar with both hands and pulled his head back out of the water.