James Rollins - Altar Of Eden

Only something had drawn the beast off.

Something more troubling than a boy in a boat.

Jack crossed over the swinging bridge. He didn’t bother with the moldy rope rails that lined both sides. He didn’t look down-though several wooden slats of the bridge had long rotted and fallen away. He carried his weight with the easy balance of the familiar.

Ahead, his family home rested on one of the small islands in Bayou Touberline. The land was really no more than a hillock pushing out of the black water, fringed by mats of algae and edged by saw grass. The house sat on the crown of the island, a ramshackle construction of rooms assembled more like a jumbled pile of toy blocks. Each marked additions and extensions built as the Menard clan had grown over the past century and a half. Most rooms were now empty as modern life lured the younger generations away, but the core of the ramshackle structure remained, a sturdy old stacked-stone home. It was there his parents still lived, well into their seventies, along with a smattering of cousins and nieces and nephews.

An old fishing boat listed by a dock near the side of the house. It still floated-more by the sheer will of his older brother than any real soundness of keel. Randy sat on a lawn chair at the foot of the dock, beer can in one hand, staring at the boat. Bare-chested, he wore knee-length shorts and flip-flops. His only acknowledgment of Jack’s arrival was the lifting of his beer can into the air.

“So we’re going hunting,” Randy said as Jack reached him.

“Did you call T-Bob and Peeyot?”

“They got word. They’ll be here”-Randy stared to the lowering sun, then belched with a shrug- “when they get here.”

Jack nodded. T-Bob and Peeyot Thibodeaux were brothers, half black Cajun, half Indian. They were also the best swamp trackers he knew. Last spring, they had helped find a pair of drug smugglers who had abandoned ship in the Mississippi and tried to escape through the delta. After a day on their own, the escapees were more than happy to be found by the Thibodeaux brothers.

“What are we hunting?” Randy asked. “You never did say.”

“A big cat.”

“Bobcat?”

“Bigger.”

Randy shrugged. “So that’s why you came here to fetch Burt.”

“Is he with Daddy?”

“Where else would he be?”

Jack headed toward the house. His brother was in an especially sour mood. He didn’t know why, but he could guess the source. “You shouldn’t be drinking if you’re coming with us.”

“I shoot better with a few beers in me.”

Jack rolled his eyes. Unfortunately his brother was probably right.

Reaching the house, he swung open the door. He hadn’t lived here in over a decade. He had his own place near Lake Pontchartrain, a fixer-upper he bought after Katrina. He entered the front parlor. This was home-more home than anywhere else. The smell of frying oil competed with a black melange of spices. Over the ages, the odor had seeped into the very mortar of the stones, along with wood smoke and tobacco.

He flashed back to his mostly happy childhood spent in this bustling, chaotic, loud mess of a family. It was much quieter now, like the house was half slumbering, waiting to wake again.

A call reached him. “Qui c’est q’ça?”

“It’s me, Dad!” he called back.

To find his father only required turning his nose toward the heaviest pall of pipe smoke and following the soft, scratchy sound of zydeco music. His father was in his study down the hall. A stone fireplace filled one wall; the rest held shelves stacked with books.

“There you are, Jack.” His father made a half gesture toward rising out of his recliner.

Jack waved him back down.

He settled back with a sigh. His father was nearly crippled with arthritis. His once robust frame had withered to bone, knotted at the joints. He probably should be in a nursing home, but here was where he was the most content, with his books, his music, and his old hunting dog, Burt, the last of a long line of bloodhounds. The dogs were as much a part of the Menard family as any brother or sister.

The black-and-tan bloodhound lay by the cold hearth, sprawled across the cool stone, all legs and ears. At thirteen years, he had gone gray in the muzzle, but he remained strong and healthy and had a nose like no other.

A nose Jack wanted to borrow for the night.

His father tamped some more tobacco into his pipe. “Heard you’re taking the boys out to do a little hunting.”

Burt lifted his head, ear cocked, responding to a welcome word. His tail thumped once, almost a question, asking if he’d heard right. His nose might be sharp, but his hearing was fading.

“That we are,” Jack answered them both.

“Good, good. Your mother cleaned and oiled your rifle. She’s out back with your cousin, hanging the laundry.”

Jack smiled, picturing the old woman taking apart his rifle and delicately cleaning each part. As a Cajun woman, she could probably still do that with her eyes closed. In her prime, his mother had been the best shot in their family. She had once pegged a bull gator from the kitchen window when it shambled out of the water and stalked straight for his kid brother. Tom had been playing too close to the water’s edge, left unattended by Jack when he was supposed to be watching. She had placed one shot straight through the gator’s eye, dropping it dead in its tracks. After scolding his younger brother and tanning Jack’s backside for his dereliction of duty, she had simply returned to the dishes.

The memory dimmed Jack’s smile. She had done her best to protect all of them, as fierce as any loving mother, but in the end she couldn’t protect them from themselves. On the way down the hall, he had passed the bedroom shared by him and his brother. No one used it now. It had become little more than a shrine. Tom’s awards and trophies still adorned the shelves, along with his collection of shells, books, and old vinyl records. There was little left of Jack in that room. He’d been shouldered out by grief and memory.

His father must have noted something in Jack’s face. “I heard you saw that girl today. The one who… who dated Tommy.”

He started to ask how his father knew that; then he remembered this was bayou country. Word, especially gossip, swept faster through the swamps than any storm. He now understood the rather cold reception and surly attitude from Randy.

“She’s helping with a case. An animal smuggling ring. Nothing important.”

Jack felt his face heat up, embarrassed not only by the half-truth now, but by a larger untruth buried in his past. His brother’s death had been attributed to a drunken accident. Lorna had been driving. That much of the story was true. Few people knew the rest. Lorna was blamed, given a slap on the hand, mostly because of Jack’s testimony in private with the judge. His family, though, had never forgiven her.

“She seemed like such a nice girl,” his father mumbled around his pipe.

“They were just kids,” Jack offered lamely. He had promised never to tell anyone other than the judge the truth.

For both their sakes.

His father stared at Jack. The shine in those eyes suggested his father suspected there was more to the story.

A call from the other end of the house shattered the awkward moment. “Jack!” his mother shouted. “Where are you? I packed a cooler for you and the boys. Got a basket full of cracklin’s and boudin, too!”

“Be right there!”

His father’s heavy gaze tracked him as he left the study. He let out a sigh as he reached the hall. As he stepped out his cell phone vibrated in his pocket. Glad for the distraction, he brought the phone to his ear.

It was Scott Nester, his second-in-command with the CBP. “We found someone who saw that damned cat.”