Altar of Eden (6 page)

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.”

“Who? Where?”

“A kid in a boat. He took potshots at one of our search helicopters to get its attention.”

“Are you sure it’s our target?”

“Oh yeah. Described a big white cat with big teeth. Says the cat killed his father. We’ve got a search team looking for the body.”

Jack’s fingers tightened on the phone. “Did the boy see where the target was headed?”

“North, he thinks. Toward the Mississippi.”

“Where exactly was the boy found?”

“You got a map?”

“I can get one.”

Scott passed him the coordinates. After a few more instructions, Jack hung up and hurried over to where his brother stored a set of nautical charts in a cupboard near the back door. It was crammed full of fishing gear, tackle boxes, and all manner of hand-tied lures. He stabbed his thumb on a stray hook as he dug out a map of the delta.

With chart in hand, he pinched away the stubborn lure and wiped the blood on his shirt. He crossed to a table, unfolded the map, and used a pencil to mark the location where the boy in the boat was rescued—or as best he could with the old chart. A couple years of shifting sands and repeated flooding blurred the details of even the region’s best maps. Still he was also able to pick out the island where the trawler had gone aground. He drew a straight line between the shipwreck and where the boy was found.

The path aimed due north. The same direction the cat had been headed. Jack extended a dashed line north from the boy’s location. He ran it all the way until he reached the Mississippi. The line ended at the small river town named Port Sulphur. He marked an
X
on the map. He knew the town. It’d been almost entirely wiped out by Katrina. Some homes had been washed a hundred feet off their foundations.

Leaning back, Jack studied the map.

Randy pushed through the back door and joined him. “T-Bob and Peeyot just got here in their canoe.” He pointed to the X drawn on the map. “That where we’re going?”

“That’s where we’re starting. We’ll gather everyone in Port Sulphur and head south into the bayou.” He stared at the dotted line. The saber-toothed cat had to be hiding somewhere along that path.

“So what’s holding us up?” his brother asked and clapped him on the shoulder. “
Laissez les bons temps router!”

Jack folded the map. Before he could follow his brother’s advice and “let the good times roll,” he had one more thing to do, to honor a grudging promise.

“I have someone to pick up first.”

Lorna never got back to raking her yard after the storm.

By the time she climbed the stone steps to her home in the Garden District, it was late. The sun hovered near the horizon, casting heavy shadows off the magnolias and towering oaks. Storm-swept leaves and crinkled blossoms formed a Jackson Pollock painting across her overgrown lawn, along with a few broken tiles blown from the roof. A dry stone fountain topped by a moss-frosted angel stood in the center of the yard.

She sighed at the sorry state of the family mansion.

Paint bubbled and peeled across the porch. Its Italianate columns were chipped. Even the carved mahogany front door took an extra hard tug to pull it open, its frame warped from a century of passing seasons.

She struggled with the door now and fought it open. The house was dark. Her brother was troubleshooting a problem at an offshore oil platform in the Gulf. He wouldn’t be back until tomorrow.

Just as well.

She flipped on the entryway light. A wooden staircase rose on the right side and climbed to a second-story landing and from there up to the third-story level. Overhead, a massive chandelier imported from an eighteenth-century French chateau hung down through the stairwell. Half the bulbs were dark. It took a feat of engineering to change the bulbs and polish the crystals.

She dropped the heavy case she was carrying by the door, wondering if she had time to draw a hot bath. Back at ACRES, she had changed out of her scrubs and back into her worn jeans and shirt. She longed to shed the soiled clothes and run the hottest bath the old water heater could manage. Maybe with bubbles and a single glass of Chardonnay. A girl could dream.

It would be a long night, and tomorrow would be a busy day at ACRES. She had done all she could there for now. Critical tests were still processing and wouldn’t be finished until the morning. She was especially interested in the DNA analysis of the extra pair of chromosomes shared by all the recovered animals. Who had been performing these experiments and why? Answers could lie in the genetic codes of those strange chromosomes.

Before she could reach the stairs a phone jangled from deeper in the house. She hurried across the entryway to a hall table. It must be Jack, though she was surprised he wasn’t calling her cell phone. Her heart beat faster, anxious to hear about the plans for tonight’s hunt. But as she lifted the phone her heart sank—more than it should have—when she heard her younger brother’s voice. It was Kyle, calling from the oil platform.

“Lorna, just checkin’ in. Making sure the house is still standing.”

“At the moment it is. Can’t promise anything beyond that.”

Her brother chuckled. He must be bored. As usual, they spoke more on the phone than at the house. When together, they tried to maintain a measure of privacy for each other, which wasn’t hard in a home with seven bedrooms and five baths.

“I left a message earlier,” Kyle said. “Figured you must’ve been called into work. Didn’t want to bother you there.”

“You could’ve called. Though it’s been a crazy day.” She gave him a thumbnail version of what had happened.

“Christ, that’s really odd.”

“I know. We’re still doing some lab tests—”

“No, I meant that Jack Menard called you into the investigation. That must have been uncomfortable.”

She took a moment to respond.
Uncomfortable
was a pale description of the storm of emotions that had run through her: guilt, sorrow, shame, anger, and something deeper, something hidden but shared between them. She pictured Jack’s storm-gray eyes, the way his stare seemed to strip her to the bone. Not even her little brother knew the truth about that bloody night.

“At least you’re done with him now,” Kyle said.

She found her voice again, but only a shadow of it. “That’s not exactly true. I’m going to help him search for the escaped jaguar.”

“What do you mean by
help?
To offer professional advice?”

“That, and I’m going with him on the hunt tonight.”

Stunned silence followed, then a hard outburst. “Are you plumb nuts? Why?”

She glanced back at the black case by the door. It held a disassembled tranquilizer rifle. “I want to make sure we capture the cat alive.”

“Screw the cat. You’re going into the swamp with a member of a family that would just as soon feed you to a gator.”

She couldn’t explain why she had nothing to fear from Jack. “I’ll be fine. It won’t be just the two of us. There’ll be a whole search team. There’s nothing to worry about.”

“Don’t go, Lorna. Or at least wait until I’m back tomorrow. I can come with you then.”

“No. Jaguars are nocturnal. She’ll be hunting tonight. It’s our best chance to catch her before anyone else is killed.”

“Lorna—”

Her phone chimed in her pocket. “I’ve got another call.”

“Wait until I’m back,” he said in a rush before she could hang up.

“I’ll talk to you in the morning.” She clicked the receiver down and fished out her cell phone. “Dr. Polk here.”

“Are you ready?” It was Jack. His brusque manner instantly set her on edge. She heard the familiar whine of a helicopter in the background.

“Of course I am.”

“Can you meet us at the dock behind the Audubon Zoo?”

“I can be there in fifteen minutes. What’s the plan?”

“We’ll pick you up by chopper. I have everyone gathering at Port Sulphur.”

She heard the tension in his voice, sensing something left unsaid. “What’s wrong?”

“We’ve had a sighting. Your cat attacked someone earlier. Out in the middle of the bayou. We found the body a few minutes ago, up in a tree, wrapped in Spanish moss. Skull was crushed, an arm ripped off.”

Lorna felt the breath knocked out of her. They were already too late.

Jack pressed. “One last time. My team can handle this on our own. There’s no reason for you to go.”

She stared again at the gun case in the hall. Jack was wrong. She now had
two
reasons. She still wanted to capture the cat alive, but its behavior now worried her, made her even more anxious to track it. The jaguar hadn’t holed up as she’d hoped. It was on the move—but to where?

“Jack, I’m going. Arguing will only cost us time. The faster we track this cat the fewer lives will be in danger.”

He sighed heavily over the line. “Be at the dock in fifteen. Not a minute later. Like you said, we’ve no time to waste.”

He hung up.

Lorna hurried to the front door. There would be no hot bath. She snatched her case and tugged open the front door. Already the sun had sunk to the horizon. It would be dark soon.

As she rushed down the front steps a trickle of doubt ran through her.

What am I doing?

Her brother’s concern, Jack’s warning . . . she had pushed them both aside, but their worries had taken root in her, found fertile ground. She was a veterinarian, not a big-game hunter.

Still, she didn’t stop moving. She headed for her brother’s Bronco parked at the curb. She had hesitated once before, let fear intimidate her, and it had cost a boy his life.

Not this time . . . and not ever again.