Hope to Die (33 page)

All alive
.

All safe
.

Never abandoned
.

“Help me up,” I said to Aaliyah in a harsh whisper.

“Let’s get you—”

“Help me up,” I demanded. “I want to hold them.”

The detective hesitated, but then she got me under my good arm and lifted me to my feet. The container car swam, and then steadied.

I went to Bree first, put my hand on her bare shoulder and my forehead against hers, and the dam burst, and I broke down weeping.

“There were times when I thought I might never …” I choked.

“Shhh, now, sugar,” my wife said with a slight slur, stroking my cheek. “We’re good now. It’s all good and good.”

Through my tears, I could see her pupils were constricted and her gaze was drifting. I drew my head back, saw a tiny trickle of blood in her ear, and panicked. “She’s got a closed-head injury,” I shouted.

Another Coast Guard medic who’d just come into the container rushed to her side, did a quick exam, and said, “Okay, her vitals are good, but she’s on the first flight out.”

“And great-grandma,” said the other medic. “She’s having trouble breathing and I don’t like the sound of her heart.”

I turned from Bree and crouched by Nana Mama, whose breathing was labored. She looked at me sideways, and then her hand shot out and grabbed mine tight.

“I did the right thing, didn’t I?” She gasped. “You have to put mad dogs down, don’t you?”

I started to break down again as I nodded. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For all of this. Because of me you had to—”

“Sir,” the medic said. “We really need to get her to a hospital.”

“I’m going with them,” I said.

The two medics exchanged glances, and then the one working on Nana Mama said, “We’ll make room.”

Louisiana state troopers and coastguardsmen brought stretchers. I went to my children, and as I held each of them, I broke down, thanking God they were alive.

“Do people at school think I’m dead?” Damon asked.

“They held a memorial service for you. I was there.”

He frowned at that. “What’d they say?”

“That you were the very best kind of person. You have made a big impression on the Kraft School. You have many friends and admirers. And I am very proud of you.”

“I screwed up,” he said, blinking back tears. “That woman. Karla Mepps.”

“It doesn’t matter now,” I said. “We caught her.”

After a pause, he said, “It was Bree’s idea for some of us to act like we were still out and then follow her lead.”

“You did good, son,” I said, stroking his hair. “Real good.”

He whispered, “She almost bit his fingers off, Dad!”

“I saw that. Well, almost.”

“I would never, ever mess with her,” he said. “Or Nana Mama either.”

I smiled and laughed softly. “I learned a long, long time ago never to mess with the women in this family.”

JANNIE AND ALI WERE
sitting up on their bunks as medics removed their IV lines.

“I knew you were looking for us,” Jannie said, breaking into tears that wrecked me all over again. “That was the first thing I thought when I woke up.
Dad’s looking
.”

“From the moment you were taken,” I said. “And I never gave up hope that I’d find you and that one day you’d run again.”

“Will I?”

“Of course,” I said firmly. “You will not let this stop you in any way.”

Jannie nodded and kissed me. “I love you, Daddy.”

“I love you too,” I choked.

“What about me?” Ali asked.

“You!” I said, kneeling to hug him with my good arm. “You are my best little boy. My …” I stopped and couldn’t say anything while they were moving Bree onto the stretcher.

Ali said, “He was that guy who wore the red beard and came to school, wasn’t he, Dad? The one who smelled like a zombie?”

“He was,” I said. “And I should have listened to you about that, because you, Ali Cross, are an expert in all things zombie.”

He beamed and said, “My friends say that too.”

“Smart kids, your friends.”

They took Nana Mama out first. “I’m fine,” she said weakly as she went past me. “I’ll see you all soon.”

“Nana Mama, zombie killer,” Ali said in awe as she was carried through the hatch door.

Troopers picked up the stretcher my wife was on and took her out next.

“I’m going with Bree and Nana,” I said to the others. “But you’ll be right behind us.”

“In a helicopter?” Ali asked.

“I think so.”

“Oh, this is so cool.”

“I know,” Jannie said. “No one at school’s going to believe it.”

“No one,” Damon agreed.

Aaliyah helped me to the hatch. I refused to look back at the sheet that covered the doomed, soulless creature that had been Thierry Mulch and Marcus Sunday.

Instead, I stepped out into the heat and the humidity of a late Louisiana morning and squinted at the sun, feeling like I’d been in that claustrophobic box for days, not less than an hour.

The sky was this incredible blue, and the vegetation the deepest of greens. There were birds diving and arcing, hunting an insect hatch. I took deep breaths through my nose and smelled the salt marsh and the river and thought there had never been a better smell or a better day, ever.

Two helicopters had landed on the stacks of container cars. One bore the logo of the Louisiana State Police, and the other, larger, one, that of the U.S. Coast Guard.

Airmen in the federal chopper were working a winch to lower a rescue basket to the deck for Bree and Nana Mama. Behind them, a Coast Guard officer stood next to Captain Creel, who was in plastic cuffs, despondent.

I looked at Detective Aaliyah as if she were some kind of miracle worker and asked, “How in God’s name did you ever find us?”

AS THE COAST GUARD
rescue specialists winched up the baskets containing Bree and Nana Mama, Aaliyah explained how she’d discovered lading documents inside Acadia Le Duc’s rental car and how she’d come to realize that my family was probably being held in a container on a Mississippi River barge called the
Pandora
.

Paul Gauvin, the Jefferson County sheriff, was in the hospital on heavy doses of painkillers, and his deputies were highly skeptical of her theory. The Louisiana police investigators had been too until she’d finally reached a woman who worked at the shipping and barge service listed on the documents.

Her name was Shirley Creel.

Aaliyah learned that the container car was supposed to be offloaded at a multimodal transfer station in New Orleans. The barge captain’s wife tried to call her husband on his cell phone and via shortwave radio and got no answer.

“She promised to keep calling, but I badgered the state police guys into getting me a helicopter,” she said. “First, we flew to the pier in New Orleans where the barge was supposed to have offloaded the container. It had never docked. That’s when we started downriver and called the Coast Guard. Luckily, they had a search-and-rescue helicopter doing training about twenty-five miles from here, at their Venice station. It started upriver soon afterward. We both found you at almost the same time.”

I threw my good arm around her shoulder and kissed the top of her head. She drew back, surprised.

“Thank you, Detective,” I said. “You’ve been like my guardian angel in this whole sordid mess.”

Aaliyah didn’t seem to know what to say at first, but then she smiled and said, “Glad to help.”

“You’ve done your dad prouder than proud.”

Blushing, she looked down and said, “Well, thank you, Alex. That means a whole lot.”

A Coast Guard airman signaled me to the basket. I told Aaliyah about the Whaler. She promised to have it returned and to bring my kids to me. When I got in the helicopter, a medic was working on Bree’s scalp wound. My wife was conscious, but confused.

My grandmother’s eyes were closed. They had hooked her up to a new set of IV lines and monitors, and the ninety-something-year-old David who’d slain Goliath looked as tiny and fragile as a newborn bird.

I wanted to sit between the two of them, but an airman told me I had to harness myself into one of the jump seats. I took one where I could see out a window in the side door.

The chopper began to vibrate, and we got airborne, leaving several state police officers and coastguardsmen to control the crime scene and keep the barge from floating out to sea.

As we rose, the chopper slowly rotated, revealing the mighty Mississippi and the vast deltas that surrounded it. We cleared a low line of trees to the west, and I was surprised to see how close State Route 23 was to the riverbanks and positively amazed to see Lester Frost’s GTO parked on the narrow shoulder.

I saw Madame Minerva standing next to the open passenger door of the muscle car and gesturing frantically with her white cane before we turned and flew upriver.

“Did you see that crazy old lady down there?” one of the airmen said.

Before I could nod, an alarm sounded inside the hold.

And the medic tending to my grandmother shouted, “Code blue! She’s in cardiac arrest!”

WHEN THE FUNERAL ENDED,
pallbearers lifted the casket, which was draped in forest-green cloth and an American flag. They carried it solemnly down the church’s central aisle.

The pews were packed, and people were still dabbing at their eyes as the casket of Atticus Jones passed by. Standing there with Bree beside me, I dealt with the tremendous sense of loss by dwelling on the number of people who had cared enough about the old detective to attend the service. There were at least eighty of them in the church, maybe more.

There goes a life chock-full of meaning
, I thought, and I felt tears well up in my eyes.

I watched the casket leave; it was followed by the priest, the deacon, and the altar boys. Jones’s family came next, and I nodded to each of them as they passed. Gloria Jones and Ava exited last, both of them in black dresses.

We followed the procession out of the church and into a warm, dry June day almost six weeks after we’d flown off the
Pandora
.

Atticus Jones’s daughter came over to hug me.

“You gave my dad peace, Alex,” she said. “He was ready to let go after he knew Mulch was finished and your family was safe and sound.”

“We never would have found Sunday without your dad.”

“And you wouldn’t have lived without Nana Mama,” Ava said.

“Not a chance,” Bree agreed.

“How is she doing?” Gloria Jones asked.

I shook my head. “She’s one tough, tough old lady, and the meds they’ve got her on for her heart seem to be working.”

“I meant with the shooting and all,” Gloria said. “My dad was really worried how it would affect her.”

“Other than to say it was a terrible thing that had to be done, she doesn’t talk about it,” I replied. “But even though her dream kitchen is done and she loves it, there are times when we catch her staring off and worrying her apron strings or her rosary beads.”

Bree said, “And I’ve heard her crying more than a few times at night.”

“Oh, the poor old doll,” Gloria said. “You tell her from me that she should be up for sainthood for wiping that scumbag off the face of the earth.”

“I’ll do that,” I said, and fought a laugh.

“Well,” Jones’s daughter said, “I have one more service to attend, family only. I’ll see you at the reception?”

“We actually have to leave,” I said. “My daughter’s running in a big meet and we want to watch her.”

Gloria hugged Bree, said, “It was so nice of you to come too.”

“Alex adored your dad,” Bree said. “So of course I came.”

Then Gloria made me promise once more not to talk to the media until her full report on the case ran on
Dateline
later in the week. She nodded supportively to Ava and walked off toward the black limo that would carry her to Atticus Jones’s gravesite.

Ava looked nervous and asked Bree, “How’re you feeling?”

“I get agitated and irritable,” my wife said. “But it’s all part of the recovery.”

“Your shoulder?” she asked me.

“Held together with screws, pins, and Teflon wire,” I replied. “Next week I start physical therapy for it, which I am not looking forward to.”

She kept toeing the grass.

“You good?” Bree asked.

She looked up at my wife and nodded as she pushed back a lock of her hair. “I’m real good, actually.”

“That’s excellent to hear,” Bree said.

“It is,” Ava said. “And I don’t want to sound like I’m ungrateful or anything, because I’m more grateful to you two and to Nana Mama than you could ever understand.”

I got where she was heading and said, “But you want to stay with Gloria, live in Pittsburgh?”

She smiled and nodded. “A new start. Somewhere different. Finish high school, go to college, and learn more about the news business.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Bree said, though she had tears running down her cheeks. “But I am going to miss you, young lady, and you have to promise to come visit.”

“Got to see the new showplace, don’t I?” Ava asked as she went into Bree’s arms.

They held each other for several long moments, and I knew how hard it was going to be for my wife to let her go. Even when Ava was at her lowest, Bree had refused to give up on her. Bree had been the one who kept pushing to find her and get her off the streets again.

“I love you both,” Ava said when they separated.

“We love you too,” I said, and I held out my good arm to embrace her. “Without you, we might never have caught Mulch.”