James Burke - Light of the World

We reached the bottom of the stairs without a shot being fired. Clete and I were crouched low, shell casings and powdered brick and concrete and broken glass from the lightbulbs crunching under our shoes. I could make out a stooped figure to our right, close to the wall. “Albert, is that you?” I whispered.

He didn’t answer. He was working the wire loose from Molly’s wrists. He waved one hand at me, gesturing for me to approach. I worked my way across the basement and propped the M-1 against the wall, then got down on my knees and unwrapped the rest of the wire from Molly’s wrists. I hugged her head against my chest and pressed my face against her hair. Both of her hands were squeezed tight on my forearm. I could feel the heat in her body and the hardness in her back and the hum of her blood when I touched the nape of her neck.

“At least one of them went up a ladder,” Albert whispered. “Maybe two of them did.”

“How many were down here?” I asked.

“Surrette, Boyd, and a guy named Terry,” he said. “Boyd is the weak sister. Terry is the guy who opened up on y’all.”

“You saw no one else?”

“We heard Surrette talking to somebody upstairs, somebody whose voice was impaired,” Albert said. “Surrette was yelling at him.”

“What about Caspian?” I said.

“He’s not here,” Albert said.

“The girls are in a cage, Dave,” Molly said. “The ladder is on the other side of the cage.”

“Where’s Felicity Louviere?”

“On a bed against the far wall,” Albert said.

“Is she alive?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “She was in a lot of pain.”

“He did terrible things to her, Dave,” Molly said. “This man isn’t human.”

I got to my feet and picked up the M-1. I tried to think what Surrette would do under the present circumstances. He was a survivor of the most cynical kind. If a plane were going down and there was only one parachute on board, Surrette would have it strapped on his back. I suspected that Boyd and Terry and the impaired man Clete killed had never guessed that Surrette probably used countless people just like them, flicking them away as he would a hangnail once they served their purpose.

From what Albert had said, at least one man was still in the basement. Who would it be? Certainly not Surrette and probably not Jack Boyd.

I moved away from the wall and tapped Clete on the shoulder, then pointed toward the concrete pillar. He began inching toward the far side of the basement and the bed where Felicity Louviere was tied.

“Hey, Terry,” I said. “This is Dave Robicheaux. I’m a sheriff’s detective in Louisiana. Let’s talk about your prospects.”

There was a pause. Then he surprised me. “Go ahead,” he said.

“You can give it up and cooperate with us or become potted meat here and now. What did you do to my wife’s face?”

“That was an accident,” he replied.

“Beating up women is an accident?”

“She fell. What the fuck, man? Am I my sister’s keeper or what?”

“Slide your piece out here and live to fight another day.”

“I sprung a leak. I don’t think I’ve got another day.”

“You’re hit?”

I could make out his shadow and hear him moving, his shoes scraping on the concrete, as though he were pushing himself into a more comfortable position against the wall.

“An ambulance will be out here soon,” I said.

“Spare me the crap, slick. There’s no cell service, and you cut the telephone line. Nobody’s coming. In case you haven’t been listening, somebody has been setting off fireworks on the lake for the last half hour. We’re just part of the fun.”

“You sound like a smart guy,” I said. “Why not do the smart thing now? The sunrise can be pretty nice. Why throw it away?”

“I was a jigger on the biggest armored-car score in the history of Boston. I didn’t do scut work for people like Surrette. I’m not going down on a kidnapping and sexual assault beef.” The finality in his tone was unmistakable.

I tried again. “It’s always the first inning,” I said. “Ask yourself what’s the better choice, a hospital bed at St. Pat’s or the DOA club.”

“My full name is Terry McCarthy. Thanks for the dance, slick,” he said. “My family lives in Haverhill, Mass. I’d like to get shipped back there.”

He worked his back up the wall until he was standing, a Bushmaster semi-auto propped on his hip. His thigh and one arm were wet with blood, his teeth white in the glow through the broken window. He started toward me, dragging one foot, hefting up the Bushmaster so he could level it at me and Molly and Albert. I aimed the M-1 at the middle of his face so the round would destroy his motor control and send him straight to the floor before he could squeeze off a round. Terry McCarthy was grinning, as though he had demonstrated a victory of will over the powers of his executioner. I did not want to shoot him. Like many of his kind, he showed a degree of dignity at the end of the line that made you wonder if things could have been different for him. I squinted through the M-1’s peep sight and tightened my finger inside the trigger guard.

That was when Gretchen Horowitz snapped off three rounds through the window, just like that, and blew his skullcap all over the floor.

Clete used his pocketknife to cut the ropes binding Felicity’s hands and feet. Then he wrapped her in the sheet on her body and picked her up and carried her up the stairs and through the smashed French doors into the night. Her left arm was around his neck, her head on his shoulder. He could feel her breathing on his chest. “We’re getting you out of here, kid,” he said. “But I got to know who else is on the grounds.”

“I don’t know,” she whispered.

“Dave thinks Caspian is a player.”

“No, he’s afraid of his father. Caspian deserted me, but he won’t do anything to me.”

“Caspian’s father is dead,” Clete said.

“Love is dead?” she said.

“That’s safe to say. Wyatt Dixon or his girlfriend or both of them cut off his head.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“You think a guy like that can’t die? He was a bum, just like his son.” Clete set her down inside Gretchen’s pickup truck and brushed her hair away from her eyes. “You know the difference between rich guys and people like us? They get to make the rules, and we don’t. They screw down and marry up, and the rest of us just get fucked.”

Even in her pain, he saw her smile. He reclined the seat slightly so she could be more comfortable. There were smudges of blood and grease on the sheet wherever it made contact with her skin. “What did Surrette do to you, Felicity?” he asked.

“Everything,” she said.

“Do you know where he might have gone?”

“He’s here,” she replied. “He won’t leave. He thinks he’ll prevail over all of you. That’s what he calls it, ‘prevailing.’ He thinks that’s his destiny.”

Alafair and Gretchen had walked up behind Clete. “Why are we his enemies?” Gretchen asked.

“He’s psychotic. He says the earth must be conquered by prevailing over its ordinary people. He says the leaders aren’t important. They can always be bought.”

“Watch Felicity for me,” Clete said.

“Where are you going?” Gretchen said.

“To break every bone in this guy’s body,” he replied.

I found a piece of pipe on the floor behind the boiler and pried the lock off the cage where the girls were held. Both of them had the haunted expression that I have seen only twice in my life, once in army footage taken of the Dachau inmates on the day of their liberation, and a second time in Vietnam, when I looked into the faces of people who had survived the snake-and-nape bombing of their village.