John Connolly - Every Dead Thing

We sipped the coffee some more, until I heard the sound of a boat coming our way through the rice and grass.

“Shit,” said a familiar Brooklyn drawl as the prow of the boat broke the grass, “it’s the Donner Party.”

Angel emerged first, then Louis behind him, controlling the rudder. They moved steadily toward us and tied up at the maple. Angel splashed into the water, then followed our gaze out to the ’gator. He caught one sight of the partially submerged reptile and ran awkwardly onto the bank, his knees high and his elbows pumping.

“Man, what is this, Jurassic Park?” he said. He turned to Louis, who jumped from his boat to ours and then onto the bank. “Hey, didn’t you tell your sister not to be swimmin’ in no strange ponds?”

Angel was dressed in his usual jeans and battered sneakers, with a denim jacket over a Doonesbury T-shirt that depicted Duke and the motto Death Before Unconsciousness. Louis was wearing crocodile-skin boots, black Levi’s, and a white collarless Liz Claiborne shirt.

“We dropped by to see how you were,” said Angel, casting anxious glances out at the ’gator after I had introduced him to Morphy. He held a bag of donuts in his hand.

“Our friend’s gonna be real upset if he sees you wearing one of his relatives, Louis,” I said.

Louis sniffed and approached the water’s edge. “Is there a problem?” he asked at last.

“We were diving and then Wally Gator appeared and we weren’t diving anymore,” I explained.

Louis sniffed again. “Hmm,” he said. Then he drew his SIG and blew the tip of the ’gator’s tail off. The reptile thrashed in pain and the water around it turned bright red. Then it turned and headed off into the bayou, trailing blood behind it. “You should have shot it,” he said.

“Let’s not get into it,” I responded. “Roll up your sleeves, gentlemen, we’re going to need some help.”

I still had the dry suit on so I offered to keep diving.

“Trying to prove to me that you ain’t chicken?” grinned Morphy.

“Nope,” I said, as we untied the boat. “Trying to prove it to myself.”

We rowed out to the marker rope and then I dived down with the hook and chains, leaving Angel topside with Morphy and his gun in case the ’gator showed up again. Louis joined us in the second boat. A thick black film of oil had formed on the surface of the water and hung in the depths below. The barrels had scattered when the topmost drum fell. I checked the ruptured barrel with the flashlight but it appeared to contain nothing except the oil that remained.

It was laborious work, tying the barrel and hauling it up each time, but with two boats it meant that we could transport two barrels at a time to the bank. There was probably an easier way to do it, but we hadn’t figured it out.

The sun was growing low and the waters were bathed in gold when we found her.

IT SEEMS TO ME now that when I touched the barrel for the first time to attach the chains, something coursed through my system and tightened in my stomach like a fist. I felt a jolt. A blade flashed before my eyes and the depths were colored by a fountain of blood, or perhaps it was simply the dying sun on the water above reflected on my mask. I closed my eyes for a moment and felt movement around me, not just the water of the bayou or the fish in its depths but another swimmer who twisted around my body and legs. I thought I felt her hair brush my cheek but when I reached out I caught only swamp weed in my hand.

This barrel was heavier than the others, weighed down, as we would discover, with masonry bricks that had been split neatly in half. It would need the combined efforts of Morphy and Angel to pull it up.

“It’s her,” I said to Morphy. “We’ve found her.” And then I swam down to the barrel and maneuvered it slowly over the rocks and tree trunks at the bottom as we brought it up. We all seemed to handle this barrel more gently than the rest, as if the girl inside was merely sleeping and we didn’t want to disturb her, as if she was not long decayed but had been laid within it only yesterday. On the bank, Angel took the crowbar and carefully applied it to the rim of the lid, but it refused to move. He examined it more closely.

“It’s been sealed,” he said. He scraped the crowbar over the surface of the barrel and checked the mark left. “The barrel’s been treated with something as well. That’s why it’s in better condition than the others.”

It was true. The barrel had hardly rusted and the fleur-delys on its side was as clear and bright as if it had been painted only days before.

I thought for a moment. We could use the chain saw to cut it, but if I was right and the girl was inside, I didn’t want to damage the remains. We could also have called for assistance from the local cops, or even the feds. I suggested it, more out of duty than desire, but even Morphy declined. He might have been concerned at the embarrassment that would be caused if the barrel was empty, but when I looked in his eyes I could see that wasn’t the case. He wanted us to take it as far as we could.

In the end, we tested the barrel by gently tapping along its length with the axe. From the difference in sound, we judged as best we could where we could safely cut. Morphy carefully made an incision near the sealed end of the barrel, and using a combination of chain saw and crowbar, we cut an area that was roughly half the circumference, then pushed it up with the crowbar and shined a flashlight inside.

The body was little more than bones and shreds of material, the skin and flesh entirely rotted away. She had been dumped in headfirst and her legs had been broken to fit her into the space. When I shined the beam to the far end of the barrel, I glimpsed bared teeth and strands of hair. We stood silently beside her, surrounded by the lapping water and the sounds of the swamp.

It was late that night when I got back to the Flaisance. While we waited for the Slidell police and the rangers, Angel and Louis departed, with Morphy’s agreement. I stayed on to give my statement and back up Morphy’s version of what had taken place. On Morphy’s advice, the locals called the FBI. I didn’t wait around. If Woolrich wanted to talk, he knew where to find me.

The light was still on in Rachel’s room as I passed, so I stopped and knocked. She opened the door wearing a pink Calvin Klein nightshirt, which stopped at mid-thigh level.

“Angel told me what happened,” she said, opening the door wider to let me enter. “That poor girl.” She hugged me and then ran the shower in the bathroom. I stayed in there for a long time, my hands against the tiles, letting the water roll over my head and back.

After I had dried myself, I wrapped the towel around my waist and found Rachel sitting on the bed, leafing through her papers. She cocked an eyebrow at me.

“Such modesty,” she said, with a little smile.

I sat on the edge of the bed and she wrapped her arms around me from behind. I felt her cheek and her warm breath against my back. “How are you feeling?” I asked.

Her grip tightened a little. “Okay, I think.”

She turned me around so that I was facing her. She knelt on the bed before me, her hands clasped between her legs, and bit her lip. Then she reached out and gently, almost tentatively, ran her hand through my hair.

“I thought you psychology types were supposed to be good at all this,” I said.

She shrugged. “I get just as confused as everybody else, except I know all the terminology for my confusion.” She sighed. “Listen, what happened yesterday…I don’t want to put pressure on you. I know how hard all this is for you, because of Susan and-”

I held my hand against her cheek and rubbed her lips gently with my thumb. Then I kissed her and felt her mouth open beneath mine. I wanted to hold her, to love her, to drive away the vision of the dead girl.