Gone South (28 page)

“One thing I’d like to do for myself,” Dan said while she was pondering the situation. He stood up, causing Arden’s heart to start thumping again, and he went to the telephone on the table beside his bed. He dialed the operator and asked for directory assistance in Alexandria.

“Who’re you callin’?” Arden’s knuckles were aching, she was gripping the tire iron so hard.

“I’d like the police department,” he said to the Alexandria operator when the call clicked through. “The main office at City Hall.”

“What’re you
doin’?”
Arden asked, incredulous. “Givin’ yourself up?”

“Quiet,” he told her. He waited until a voice answered. “Alexandria police, Sergeant Gil Parradine speakin’.”

“Sergeant, my name is Dan Lambert. I think you people are lookin’ for me.”

There was no reply, just stunned — or suspicious — silence. Then: “Is this a joke?”

“No joke. Just listen. I didn’t kill Harmon DeCayne. I saw his wife shoot him with that shotgun, but when I left there, he was still alive. She must’ve decided to beat him to death and blame it on me. See what I’m sayin?”

“Uh … I’m … hold on just a minute, I’ll connect you to —”

“No!”
Dan snapped. “You pass the phone, I’m gone! I’m tellin’ you, that woman killed her husband. You check the shotgun for fingerprints, you won’t find one of mine on it. Will you do that for me?”

“I — I’ll have to let you talk to Captain —”

“I’m through talkin’.” Dan hung up.

“I can’t believe you just did that! Don’t you know they’ll trace the call?”

“I just wanted to start ’em thinkin’. Maybe they’ll check for prints and ask that damn woman some more questions. Anyway, they don’t know it wasn’t a local call. There’s enough time for you to turn me in.”

“Do you
want
to go to prison? Is that it?”

“No, I don’t want to go to prison,” Dan said. “But I don’t have a whole hell of a lot of choice, do I?”

Arden had to do the next thing; she had to test both herself and him. She took a deep breath, crossed the threshold into his room, and closed the door behind her. She stood with her back against it, the tire iron ready if he jumped at her.

He raised his eyebrows. “Takin’ a risk bein’ in a room alone with me, aren’t you?”

“I’m not sure yet. Am I?”

He showed her his palms and eased down on the edge of the bed. “Whatever’s on your mind,” he told her, “now’s the time to tell me about it.”

“All right.” She took two steps toward him and stopped again, still testing both her own nerves and his intentions. “I don’t want to turn you in. That’s not gonna help me.”

“Fifteen thousand dollars is a lot of money,” he said. “You could buy yourself —”

“I want to find the Bright Girl,” Arden went on. “That’s why I’m here. Findin’ the Bright Girl and gettin’ this thing off my face is all I’m interested in. Not the money, not why you killed some man in Shreveport.” Her intense blue gaze didn’t waver. “I’ve seen her in my dreams, only I never could tell what she looked like. But I think I’m close to her now, closer than I’ve ever been. I can’t give it up. Not even for fifteen thousand dollars.”

“It would pay for an operation, wouldn’t it?”

“The doctors can’t say for sure they can get it off. They say tryin’ to remove it could leave a scar just as bad as the birthmark. Then where would I be? Maybe worse off, if that’s even possible. No, I’m not doin’ it that way, not when I’m so close.”

“You’re not thinkin’ straight,” Dan said. “The doctors are your best chance. The Bright Girl … well, you know what I think about that story.”

“I do. It doesn’t matter. I want you to drive me to LaPierre.”

He grunted. “Now I
know
you’re out of your mind! Look who you’re talkin’ to. I killed a man yesterday. I’ve got a stolen car sittin’ out in the parkin’ lot. You don’t know I wouldn’t try to kill you if I could, and you’re wantin’ to travel with me another ninety miles down into the swamp. Wouldn’t you say that might be pushin’ your luck?”

“If you were gonna hurt me, you would’ve done it between here and the truck stop. I believe you about what happened at the motel. There’s not a gun in the car, and you’re not carryin’ one. I’ve got a tire iron, and I still think I could outrun you.”

“Maybe, but you can’t outrun the police. Ever heard of aidin’ and abettin’ a fugitive?”

“If the police stop us,” Arden said, “I’ll say I didn’t know who you were. No skin off your teeth to tell ’em the same thing.”

Dan looked at her long and hard. He figured she’d had a tough life, and this obsession with the Bright Girl had grown stronger as things had started falling apart. He saw only disappointment ahead for her, but he was in no position to argue. She was right; it was no skin off his teeth. “You sure about this?”

“Yes, I am.” The truth was that she hadn’t decided he was worth trusting until he’d made the call to Alexandria. Still, she was going to hang on to the tire iron awhile longer.

He stood up and walked toward her. It flashed through her mind to retreat to the door, but she stayed where she was. She knew from experience that once you showed fear to a horse, the animal would never respect you again; she knew it was true with people, too. He reached out for her, and she lifted the tire iron to ward him off.

He stopped. “My cap,” he said. “It’s on the chair behind you.”

“Oh.” She stepped aside to let him get it.

Dan put his cap on and checked his wristwatch. Five thirty-four. Outside the window the shadows were lengthening, but it wouldn’t be full dark until after seven. “I’ll want to travel the back roads,” he told her. “A little safer that way, but slower. Less likely to run across a state trooper. I hope. And I’m not gonna jump you, so you can put that thing down.” He nodded toward the tool in her hand. When she didn’t lower it, he narrowed his eyes and said, “If you don’t trust me now, just think how you’re gonna feel in a couple of hours when we’re out in the dark and there’s nobody around for miles.”

Arden slowly let her arm fall.

“Okay, good. I’d hate to sneeze and get my brains knocked out. You got any deodorant?”

“Huh?”

“Deodorant,” he repeated. “I need some. And toothpaste or mouthwash, if you’ve got either of those. Aspirin would help, too.”

“In my suitcase. I’ll bring it over.”

“That’s all right, I’ll go with you,” Dan said, and he saw her stiffen up again. “My room, your room, or the car, what does it matter?” he asked. “Better be certain you want to do this before we get started.”

She realized she was going to have to turn her back on him sooner or later. She said, “Come on, then,” and she went out the door first, her stomach doing slow flip-flops.

In Arden’s bathroom Dan applied roll-on deodorant — and he’d never thought the day would come when he’d be using Secret — and then he wet a washcloth, put a glob of Crest on it, and scrubbed his teeth. Arden brought him a small first aid kit that contained a bottle of Tylenol, a tube of skin ointment, some adhesive bandages, and a bottle of eyedrops. “You must’ve been a Girl Scout,” Dan said as she shook two aspirin onto his palm.

“Joey always said I missed my callin’, that I should’ve been a nurse. That’s because I took care of the band when they had hangovers or were too strung out to play. Somebody had to be responsible.”

Dan swallowed the Tylenol tablets with a glass of water and gave her back the first aid kit. “I’ll need to get some food and coffee somewhere. We’d better not stick around here too much longer.”

“I’m ready.”

It was six o’clock by the time the bill was paid and they were pulling away from the motel. Arden kept the tire iron on the seat near her right hand, and Dan decided not to make an issue of it. Not far from the motel Dan turned into a McDonald’s and in the drive-through bought three hamburgers, a large order of fries, and a cup of coffee. They sat in the parking lot while he ate, and Dan unfolded the roadmap and saw that Highway 182 was the route to follow through the towns of New Iberia, Jeanerette, Baldwin, and on to Morgan City, where Highway 90 would take them deeper into the bayou country to Houma.

“Where’re you gonna go?” Arden asked when he’d finished the second burger. “After you take me to LaPierre, I mean. You still gonna try to get out of the country?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Don’t you have any relatives you could go to? Are your parents still alive?”

“Father’s dead. My mother’s alive, but she’s old and I don’t want to get her messed up in this. It’ll be hard enough on her as it is.”

“Does she know about the leukemia?”

“No. It’s my problem.” He speared her with a glance. “What do you care, anyway? You hardly know me.”

She shrugged. “Just interested, I guess. You’re the first killer I ever met.”

Dan couldn’t suppress a grim smile. “Well, I hope I’m the last one you meet.” He offered her his french fries. “Take some.”

She accepted a few and crunched them down. “You don’t really have anywhere to go, do you?”

“I’ll find a place.”

Arden nodded vacantly and watched the sun sinking. The Bright Girl — a dream without a face — was on her mind, and if she had to travel with a wanted fugitive to reach that dream, then so be it. She wasn’t afraid. Well, maybe a little afraid. But her life had never been easy, and no one had ever given her a free ticket. She had nowhere to go now but toward the Bright Girl, toward what she felt was the hope of healing and a new start.

I know who you are,
she recalled Jupiter saying to the killer beside her.

You the man God sent Miz Arden.

She hoped that was true. She wanted to believe with all her heart it was.

Because if Jupiter could be so wrong about Dan Lambert, he could be wrong about the Bright Girl, too.

Dan finished his food and they started off again. Four miles south of Lafayette, they passed a state trooper who’d pulled a kid on a motorcycle over to the roadside. The trooper was occupied writing a ticket and they slid by unnoticed, but it was a few minutes before Arden stopped looking nervously back.

The light was fading. Purple shadows streamed across the road, and on either side there were woods broken by ponds of brackish water from which tree stumps protruded like shattered teeth. The road narrowed. Traffic thinned to an occasional car or pickup truck. A sign on stilts said
KEEP YOUR HEART IN ACADIANA OR GET YOUR
— there was the crude drawing of a mule’s hind end here —
OUT.
Spanish moss festooned the trees like antebellum lace, and the mingled odors of wild honeysuckle and Gulf salt drifted on the humid air. As the first stars emerged from the darkening sky, heat lightning began to ripple across the southern horizon.

Dan switched on the headlights and kept an eye on the rearview mirror. The heat lightning’s flashes reminded him of the battle zone, with artillery shells landing in the distance. He had the eerie sensation of traveling on a road that led back into time, back into the wet wilderness of a foreign country where the reptiles thrived and death was a silent shadow. He was afraid of what he might find — or what might find him — there, but it was the only road left for him to go. And like it or not, he had to follow it to its end.

I
T WAS JUST AFTER
nine o’clock when the station wagon’s headlight beams grazed a rust-streaked sign that said
VERMILION
5
MI., CHANDELAC
12
MI., LAPIERRE
15
MI.
“Almost there,” Dan said, relief blooming in him like a sweet flower. Arden didn’t answer. She’d opened her purse two miles back and taken from it the pink drawstring bag, which she now held in her lap. Her fingers kneaded the bag’s contents, but Arden stared straight ahead along the cone of the lights.

“What’s in that thing?” Dan asked.

“Huh?”

“That bag. What’s in it?”

“Nothin’ special,” she said.

“You’re sure rubbin’ it like it’s somethin’ special.”

“It’s … just what I carry for good luck.”

“Oh, I should’ve figured.” He nodded. “Anybody who believes in faith healers has to have a good-luck charm or two lyin’ around.”

“If I were you, I wouldn’t be laughin’. I’d think you’d want to find the Bright Girl as much as I do.”

“There’s an idea. After she heals me, she can go back to Shreveport with me and raise Emory Blanchard from the dead. Then I can get right back to where I was, beggin’ for work.”

“Laugh if you want to. All I’m sayin’ is, what would it hurt for you to go with me?”

“It would hurt,” he said. “I told you what I think about false hope. If there really was a Bright Girl — which there’s not — the only way she could help me is to crank back time and bring the man I killed back to life. Anyway, I said I’d take you to LaPierre, and that’s what I’ll do, but that’s
all.”

“What’re you gonna do, dump me out on the street once we get there?”

“No, I’ll help you find someplace to spend the night.” He hoped. The last motel they’d passed was ten miles behind them in the small town of Houma. Since the woods had closed in on either side of the road, they’d seen the scattered lights of only a few houses. They had left civilization behind, it seemed, and the bittersweet smell of the swamp thickened the air. If worse came to worst and a motel or boardinghouse couldn’t be found anywhere near LaPierre, Dan had decided to offer Arden lodging at the cabin and then he’d take her on into town in the morning. But
only
if nothing else could be found; he didn’t like having somebody depending on him, and the sooner she went on her way the better he’d feel about things.

They crossed a long, concrete bridge and suddenly they were passing through the hamlet of Vermilion. It wasn’t much, just a few clapboard houses and closed-up stores. The only place that was lit up with activity was a little dump called Cootie’s Bar, and Dan noted that the four pickup trucks parked around the place all had shotguns or rifles racked in the rear windows. This did not help Dan’s hopes of finding a decent motel room for Arden. He had the feeling that a woman alone in this territory could find herself pinned to a pool table, and a man with a fifteen-thousand-dollar reward on his head would be torn clean apart. He drove on through Vermilion, luckily attracting the attention of only a couple of dogs who stopped scrapping over a bone to get out of the road.