T
im Kitteridge was beginning to wonder if he’d made a mistake. He’d been in the swamp for two hours now, and though he’d followed the map Phil Stubbs had given him, he knew he was lost.
The trouble was, it all looked the same. There were tiny islands everywhere, poking up from the shallow water of the bayous, each one of them identical to all the others. He glanced up at the sun, but even that was no longer of much use. It was noon, and the sun was so high it seemed to be almost overhead. He could be going in any direction at all and would never know the difference.
He was moving slowly, the small outboard motor at the stern of the boat puttering quietly. Suddenly he felt the underside of the boat touch bottom, and quickly cut the engine entirety. But when he tried to tilt the motor up, lifting the propeller above the surface, he realized it was too late. The prop was already stuck in the mire that lay, completely invisible, only a few inches
beneath the dark brown water. Using the oars, he tried to push the boat back, but the stern only dug deeper into the mud. At last he laid the oars aside, knowing what he had to do. Taking off his shoes and pants, but leaving his socks on, he slipped his legs into the water. Even through his socks he could feel the slime of the bottom. As he shifted his weight out of the boat, his feet sank into the ooze. For a moment he panicked, afraid he’d stepped into quicksand. But when the muck was halfway up his calves, his feet touched more solid ground. He stood still for a few seconds, hating the feel of the mud sucking at his feet, hating the thoughts of what might be lying unseen in the water.
Still, he had no choice.
He grasped the transom of the boat, heaving it upward, and felt the prop come loose from the quagmire. Twisting sideways, he dropped the boat back into the water and tested it. The tip of the outboard still touched the bottom, and it would rebury itself if he climbed back into the little skiff. He moved the boat a few more feet until he was certain it would float free even with his weight added to it.
He climbed back into the boat, but left his bare legs, covered with mud, hanging over the side. As he began rinsing them off, his hand touched something firm and slimy and he reflexively jerked it away. Swinging his legs into the boat, he stared at the leech that clung to his left calf.
Three inches long, it looked like a slug, except that its head, instead of being raised up, was pressed tightly against his leg. He stared at the hideous creature for a second, then, with a shudder of revulsion, snatched it from his leg, hurling it overboard in the same movement.
There was an angry red welt on his leg, where the leech had been in the process of attaching itself to him.
Still queasy, Kitteridge examined his other leg, then quickly pulled his pants back on. He stripped off his socks, dropped them into the bottom of the boat, and rowed away from the shallows into deeper water. He
shipped the oars once more, deciding to let the small boat drift, for even out here where the water seemed to be totally stagnant, there were still gentle currents wafting through the shallow channels.
Once again he remembered Judd Duval’s words just before he’d taken off into the swamp: “If you get lost, just let the boat drift. It don’t look like it, but that water’s movin’, and if you let the current take you, you’ll get out.” The swamp rat had grinned sardonically. “ ’Course it’ll take a few hours, and you’ll wind up maybe fifteen, twenty miles from Villejeune, but it’s better’n spendin’ the night out there, right?”
Well, at least he’d listened, and remembered. He watched the maze of islets drift by. Here there was less cypress, and the landscape was far more open than it was closer to Villejeune. Marsh grasses grew in profusion; flamingos and herons stood in the shallow water, their beaks searching the bottom for food. As he drifted around a bend, he heard a low snorting sound, and looked around just in time to see a wild boar disappear into the reeds.
Then the landscape began to change again, and he was back under the canopy of moss-laden cypress trees. The current picked up slightly, for here the islands were larger, the channels narrower and deeper.
A house hove into view—if you could call it a house. Actually, it was nothing more than a shack, propped up at the water’s edge on rotting stilts. Its floor sagged badly at one corner, and its walls were pierced with glassless window frames.
At first Kitteridge thought it was nothing more than a fishing shelter, and a long-abandoned one at that. But as he drew abreast of the structure, a slight movement caught his eye, and he dipped the oars into the water, stroking lightly against the gentle current. His eyes fixed on the sagging structure, and he studied it carefully. For a few moments he thought he must have been wrong, that he had only imagined that someone was inside the building. Then, in a sudden flurry, a form darted through
the shadows of the building’s interior and out through a back door. Kitteridge pulled hard on the oars, and the skiff shot forward, but by the time he had gained a view of the thicket behind the house, the figure was already disappearing.
He hesitated, considering the possibility of following whoever had faded away into the undergrowth, but quickly abandoned the idea. In the boat, at least the current would eventually carry him out. On foot, he was certain he would be hopelessly lost within a matter of minutes.
He moved on, rowing now, following the current as it drifted through the islands. The islands were still larger here, and he began to see more and more of the dilapidated shacks, spaced well apart, as if whoever lived in them valued their privacy.
Occasionally he saw people—thin, narrow-faced women, their faces sullen and weathered, clad in faded cotton dresses, some of them with children clinging to their legs. They watched him suspiciously as he drifted by, and he could feel their hostility. A few times he tried calling out a greeting, but no one answered him. At the sound of his voice, they simply disappeared into the gloom of their shanties, herding their children before them.
As he rounded yet another of the endless bends in the slow-moving stream, he saw still another of the wooden shanties. On the porch of this one, though, a lone woman stood, her torso distended in the last stages of pregnancy, and even as he spotted her, Kitteridge knew who she was.
Amelie Coulton, who had led Judd and Marty to the body last night.
And today, from the way she looked, Kitteridge was almost certain she was expecting him. His feeling was confirmed as he drew closer to the house and Amelie gazed down at him, her eyes filled with suspicion.
“It warn’t me that killed that man last night,” she
said. “Onliest reason I went out there at all was I thought it might be George. But it warn’t.”
“You said George went off last night. With someone called the Dark Man.”
Amelie’s sallow complexion turned ashen, and a veil dropped behind her eyes. When she spoke, her voice was flat. “I don’t know nothin’ about that.”
“But that’s what you told Judd Duval and Marty Templar,” Kitteridge pressed.
Amelie shrugged. “I warn’t feelin’ too good last night. I don’t remember what I said.”
Kitteridge sensed that he was on the verge of losing the woman entirely, and decided to change tactics. “But George was out last night?”
He could see Amelie relax a tiny bit. “He’s always out. Out fishin’, out drinkin’—don’t make no difference, long’s he ain’t here.”
There was a silence as the man in the boat and the woman on the porch eyed each other suspiciously. “Where is he now?” Kitteridge finally asked. “Did he come home last night?”
Amelie shook her head, and Kitteridge had the distinct impression that she would be just as happy if George Coulton never came home at all.
“You don’t believe me, do you?” Amelie asked as if she’d read his mind. “You think I be lyin’, and it were George I found out there last night.”
Kitteridge said nothing, but met her gaze steadily.
“Okay,” she said. “Come on inside. I got a picture of George. You tell me if’n it’s the same man.”
Kitteridge climbed up onto the porch and followed Amelie into the shanty. Inside, though it barely seemed possible, the house was even more decrepit than outside. There was a tattered sofa covered with a worn blanket, and broken recliner. In one corner stood a splintering pine table and two more chairs. A wood stove filled another corner, and a makeshift counter had been built along the wall next to it. Through a door, he could see a second room, containing a bed frame on
which lay a sagging mattress. There was no sign of a bathroom, and the police chief knew better than to ask about it. Here in the swamp there simply was no plumbing. Through an empty window frame he could see a lopsided outhouse, against which leaned a pile of traps. Well, at least he knew how George Coulton earned whatever money he made. Shaking his head at the poverty of the place, he turned around to find Amelie holding a picture. He studied it carefully, taking it out onto the porch to hold it in the sunlight.
It was a photograph of a couple, and the woman was clearly Amelie Coulton. The man next to her, a lean, gangling figure almost a foot taller than she, had the narrow face typical of the swamp, and empty eyes. His chin was covered with a stubble of beard, and a shotgun was cradled in the crook of his arm. His other arm was draped possessively over Amelie’s shoulder. Kitteridge flipped the picture over and read the scrawl on the other side: “Wedding day—me and George.” It was dated seven months earlier.
Kitteridge studied the picture again. Even allowing for the premature aging of the swamp rats, George Coulton couldn’t have been more than twenty-five when the photograph had been taken.
The man in the morgue had to have been at least eighty.
Silently, Kitteridge handed the picture back to Amelie, who had followed him out onto the porch. But as she reached out to take the snapshot from him, her face paled, her eyes widened, and her hand went to the great bulge in her belly. Unsteadily, she sank down onto the rocking chair.
“Oh, my,” she gasped as the sudden spasm of pain drained out of her. “I think mebbe it’s time.”
Kitteridge knew immediately what was happening. “Was that the first contraction?”
Amelie nodded. “I told George it was gettin’ close,” she said, her voice bitter.
Nice son of bitch, Kitteridge observed silently, thinking
that if it had indeed been George Coulton whose body had been carried out of the swamp last night, at least he had found someone with a motive. But after talking to Amelie for a few minutes, he suspected killing Coulton would have been justified. When he spoke, though, he revealed none of his thoughts. “If you’re starting labor, we’d better get you into town. Do you have a suitcase packed?”
Amelie uttered a high-pitched, brittle laugh. “A suitcase? Ain’t nobody out here got one of them, an’ even if’n I did, ain’t nothin’ to put in it. All’s I got is—” Her words were choked off as another contraction seized her. When it had passed, she struggled to her feet.
Kitteridge helped her down the ladder to his boat and got her settled in the bow, then started the engine and cast off. But before he moved out into the channel, he glanced once more up at the house. “You sure you don’t need anything to take with you?” he asked.
Amelie laughed tightly again. “Like what? I ain’t even got a purse. Out here, nobody’s got nothin’. You’re born, you live awhile, and you die.” Her voice turned bitter. “Sometimes it seems like it’s the lucky ones that die young.”
As Kitteridge pulled away from the shanty, Amelie cocked her head and, for the first time, her eyes seemed to come alive. Kitteridge reflected that when George had married her—if, indeed, he really had—she must have been pretty.
Amelie laughed out loud, genuinely this time. “You’re lost, ain’t you?” she asked.
Kitteridge felt himself redden, but nodded. “How’d you know?”
“Easy,” she said. “You be goin’ the wrong way. Villejeune’s back there,” she went on, pointing past Kitteridge’s shoulder. “Not far, neither. Mebbe half a mile.” As he turned the boat around, she went on. “You take the main channel straight ahead, an’ cut through a little gap after the second island. Then bear left till you come to a big stump. After that, you can see the town.”
Ten minutes later they were there, and as they pulled up to the dock where Kitteridge had left his car, Amelie glanced nervously around, as if she expected someone to be waiting for her. Seeing him watching her, a veil dropped behind the young woman’s eyes and her lips twisted into a smile. “Thought he mighta been waitin’. He wanted me to birth the baby to home, but I won’t. Ain’t no way I’m lettin’ nothin’ happen to my baby.”
Kitteridge helped her out of the boat and led her up to the police car. Another contraction seized her just as she crept awkwardly into the passenger seat. “Take it easy,” he told her. “We’ll have you at the hospital in a couple of minutes.” Closing the door, he hurried around to the driver’s side, got in, and started the engine. As he pulled away from the dock, Amelie turned to him, her face almost pretty as she managed a small smile. “Leastwise, it warn’t a complete waste of time, you comin’ out to my house today.”
Kitteridge smiled wryly. “But I still don’t know who the body is.”
Amelie shrugged. “You know who it ain’t,” she said. Her lips compressed once more into the bitter smile that seemed almost second nature to her. “Frankly, I was kinda hopin’ mebbe it were George. Leastways, if he was dead, I guess it’d be my house, wouldn’t it?”
Kitteridge shrugged noncommittally, not wanting to get involved in whatever domestic arrangement George and Amelie had evolved. But after less than an hour with Amelie, he was all but certain that there were no documents anywhere registering a marriage between them. Which, he suspected, was just the way George Coulton wanted it. As long as Amelie pleased him, fine. But if she didn’t, he could simply throw her out.
He pulled into the clinic parking lot, helped Amelie inside, and got her admitted. Promising to look in on her later, he left her in Jolene Mayhew’s care and started back to his office.
Dead end, he thought, as he began filling out the forms necessary to dispose of the body in the morgue.