Prey (25 page)

There were at least seven or eight pickups with full-sized camper rigs in the parking lot, and as it turned out, four of them were Chevys. So it took Larry Paxton almost five more minutes to discover that one of the keys Sonny Chareaux had lost in the Cat's Paw bar fit perfectly into the back-door lock of the third camper.

Barely conscious now, but still on his feet, Paxton was just about to open the camper door—to see for himself whether or not he had guessed right—when he felt the cold, hard muzzle of a 9mm Glock pistol press hard against the back of his neck.

"Sir, without turning around, and without moving a single muscle in your entire body," the young patrol officer said as he stepped in with his left foot and wrist-locked the agent's left arm behind his back, "I want you to explain to me
exactly
why you and I might be on the same side."

Chapter Twenty-Two

"Are you certain?"

"Whoever it was, he just hung up," Roberto Jacall said as he replaced the handset into its receiver. He brought his hands up in an open-palmed shrug and then looked at Alex Chareaux with an expression that clearly said "Who knows?"

"Do you get many calls like that here? People who don't identify themselves, then just hang up?"

"No, not so many like that," Jacall shrugged again.

"And you are
certain
it wasn't Sonny?" Chareaux repeated, wanting to be sure.

"Alex, there was no voice. Nobody spoke. They just hung up."

Alex Chareaux stared at his taxidermist friend for a long moment before turning away and staring out the window at the open and illuminated door of the warehouse, where his other brother was parking their truck.

"I don't like this. I think I have made a mistake," he finally said, still staring out the window at the warehouse door as Butch Chareaux got out of the truck, shut off the warehouse lights, and started walking back toward the house. "I took on a man as a partner. A man I believed I could trust."

"Yes, so?"

"I think now that the man is an undercover agent for the government."

Roberto Jacall froze, stunned, as if he had never imagined that something might go wrong. "Are you sure?" he whispered.

"No." Chareaux shook his head slowly. "If I knew that for certain, I would have killed him long before now."

"But how—"

"Sonny was told to take this man's pilot aside, ask him questions, and then call me, tell me everything he found out. We arranged two times and places. Eight o'clock at a phone booth in Fishtail, or if he was delayed for some reason, ten o'clock here."

"Then something is terribly wrong," Roberto Jacall said.

"I know."

"This agent man, can you find him?"

Alex Chareaux almost smiled. "Yes, my friend, we can find him very easily. He is in the back of the truck right now. Unconscious certainly, and perhaps already dead."

"No, my brother, he is not dead," Butch Chareaux laughed as he came into the living room, "but I think he will be soon."

Unable to speak, Roberto Jacall simply shook his head.

"We have always trusted each other to do what is necessary," Alex Chareaux said. "We will continue to solve our problems together." He turned to his brother.

"Lightner," he whispered. "Kill him now."

Henry Lightstone was lying in the pitch-dark truck bed, fighting a sudden surge of nausea, when he heard the sound of footsteps coming back to the warehouse. Footsteps and then a cheerful whistling as the single individual continued on past the truck and into the warehouse.

Butch Chareaux,
Lightstone thought, recognizing the tune that the younger Chareaux brother had frequently whistled during the hunt.

Usually after he had killed something.

Moments later, a light in the far corner of the warehouse came on, sending a faint beam through a tear in the canvas tarp.

Then, as Lightstone continued to listen, feeling weak and nauseous, and knowing that he was almost completely defenseless against a killer like Butch Chareaux, the footsteps returned to the truck.

Continuing to whistle cheerfully, Butch Chareaux drew a long-bladed hunting knife from his belt and quickly cut through the ropes that held the tightly stretched canvas over the truck bed. He pulled the tarp aside and climbed up into the bed. Then he plunged the knife into the rigored haunch of the larger bear—where it would be accessible when he needed it—and worked his way across the carcass until he was kneeling over the sprawled and bloody form of Henry Allen Lightner.

"Henry, can you hear me?"

Lightstone blinked his eyes slowly and tried to whisper something. He could see the knife sticking out of the bear's haunch, but it was down near the tailgate of the truck. Too far away.

"What did you say?" Butch Chareaux asked, the amusement evident in his voice.

"Yeah, hear you," Lightstone rasped weakly.

"Ah, that is good. Here, I will get you out," Chareaux said as he started to pull up on Lightstone's right arm, and then heard him gasp in pain as something seemed to hold him back.

"No, wait. Elk horn, caught on my shirt," Lightstone mumbled, and then his eyes widened in agony and he grabbed the right side of Chareaux's shirt collar in a reflex action as the muscular Cajun reached around his extended arm and tried to work him loose from the horn.

"That's right, Henry, grab my shirt. Help me pull you out." Chareaux smiled as he pulled some more.

But then his eyes widened in shock as Lightstone suddenly thrust his left hand across and underneath his right arm, grabbed the opposite side of Chareaux's shirt collar and pulled him down in a cross-armed choke hold that jammed the edges of his hands into Chareaux's carotid arteries.

"You bastard!" Butch Chareaux snarled as he tried to strike at Lightstone with his strong, callused hands. But the bear carcasses protected Lightstone's head, making the otherwise lethal blows ineffective; Chareaux tried to push himself up and away instead. But he couldn't do that either, because Lightstone had his elbows jammed under the bears' rib cages, and the elk horn still held him in place. His wrists were twisting tighter and tighter . . .

It was at that moment that Chareaux felt himself start to black out, and he reached desperately behind him for the knife, but it was too late.

Lightstone waited until Butch Chareaux's body went completely limp, then held his wrists locked in position for another ten seconds—just to be absolutely sure—before he finally released the hold and started to use his hands and feet to shove and push himself clear.

Halfway through the process, Lightstone had to turn his head quickly to vomit between the two bear carcasses. But less than a minute later, he was using what little strength he had left to drag the unconscious body of Butch Chareaux off the opened bed of the truck.

Then, after resecuring the gate and bringing Chareaux up to a kneeling position in front of the truck bumper—where Lightstone assumed he'd be hidden from view—he started working to restore the muscular Cajun's breathing.

Lightstone knew he'd held the choke hold longer than necessary, and he thought he'd lost him, but then Chareaux started to twitch and gasp and move his hands in trembling, spasmodic motions, which made Henry Lightstone smile.

"Thata boy, Butch," Lightstone whispered weakly, wobbling on trembling legs as he held the Cajun's head up for a couple more seconds. "I knew you were too goddamn tough to die yet."

Then, with every ounce of energy he had left, Lightstone slammed Butch Chareaux's face square into the back bumper of the truck.

A few moments later, Lightstone was able to bring his own head up off the truck bumper long enough to confirm that Chareaux was still breathing through his bloodied lips and nose.

After looking around at the stacks of hides and rows of tanning vats that covered a good half of the huge semidarkened warehouse floor, Lightstone staggered over to the near-corner area that seemed to serve as an open office, pulled the wall phone off the hook, and quickly began dialing a long-memorized number.

Three rings later, a deep, unfamiliar voice answered Mike Takahara's carefully routed but temporarily disabled lifeline, and Lightstone immediately hung up the phone before barbecue restaurant-owner Terry Grosz had a chance to say anything.

"Shit," he muttered to himself, still holding the phone and wondering how the hell he could use it to stay alive and alert McNulty without blowing his cover.

Then he looked out the open roll-up door of the warehouse and saw the side door of the house burst open as Alex Chareaux lunged out onto the porch.

Roberto Jacall was in shock.

All his life, from the day he had skinned his first squirrel and then tried to stuff it with grass and leaves, he had dreamed of having his own taxidermy shop, where he could create beautiful mounts of rare and wonderful animals that had been hunted and killed all over the world.

Thanks to Alex Chareaux and his incredibly wealthy clients, Roberto Jacall had realized his dream. Each year, he and his most trusted assistants labored long hours in his hidden tannery to prepare hundreds of meticulously crafted mounts of rare, endangered and threatened species. Other, less-trusted workers tanned and prepared the hundreds of legal skins that provided him with a legitimate source of declarable income.

And accordingly, each year, he and his assistants buried hundreds of thousands of dollars deep in the forest—in tightly sealed and carefully documented canisters—where no IRS agent or bank auditor would ever be able to find them.

But now, because of that very same man, Roberto Jacall was facing the ruin of his cherished business . . . and possibly worse, he realized as he stared out into the darkness.

Jacall knew that at any moment now, Butch Chareaux would return to the house and tell his brother that the suspected government agent was dead. And Roberto Jacall also knew that when that moment came, he would be a hunted man.

"Alex," he said softly, terrified of enraging his volatile partner, "are you absolutely certain that there is no way for you to contact Sonny?"

"If there were any way I could, I would have already."

"But to kill a government agent," Jacall whispered. "They will never stop looking for us."

"That is not such a bad thing." Chareaux shrugged. "There are game wardens in Terrebonne who will never stop looking for us either. But they haven't found us yet. We will bury this man deep in the woods, so they will never know for sure."

"But just one phone call could make all of that unnecessary," Jacall pleaded. "One simple phone call."

"Jacall, listen to me," Alex Chareaux said with barely controlled patience. "We have been standing here by this phone for
..."

Then he looked more closely at the living-room phone and blinked in confusion.

"What is this?" he demanded, pointing at the flashing light on one of the phone buttons.

"Oh, that is the warehouse extension." Jacall shrugged. "Your brother must be making a call."

"What?"

As Alex Chareaux lunged toward the side door, the phone in the living room suddenly began ringing, but he paid no attention to it.

Chareaux was on the porch, a long folding knife in his hand, when Jacall yelled out: "Alex, it is all right. He must be calling us here. Or maybe it's Sonny."

As Alex Chareaux hesitated, Jacall reached for the phone.

"Hello?" he said hesitantly.

"This Alex?"

"What?"

"Ah said, is this Alex?"

For a long moment, Roberto Jacall hesitated, uncertain of what he should say or do, because he knew immediately that this was not the voice of Sonny Chareaux either.

"There is no one here by that name," he finally said.

"Well, shit. Ah
know
this is the number Sonny told me to call, and Ah—"

Like a drowning man suddenly thrown a life ring, Jacall lunged at the mention of Sonny Chareaux's name.

"You said Sonny?" he whispered, his voice almost cracking in disbelief. "Wait just a minute—"

"Hey, man,
you
wait just a minute!" the voice snarled. "Who the hell is this?"

"This is Jacall," the taxidermist stammered, struggling desperately to find some way to keep this man on the line. "Please wait just one minute."

Jacall placed his hand over the phone and yelled out in the direction of the side door: "Alex, come back. Quick! It's about Sonny!"

"Listen, man, Ah ain't waiting for
nobody,
and Ah ain't in the
mood
to play no fucking games," the voice at the other end of the line snarled. "All Ah'm doing is what Sonny asked me to do. You just tell this Alex, whoever and wherever the fuck he is, that Sonny says everything's cool with the pilot, whatever the hell
that
means."

"No, wait! Don't hang up!" Jacall said frantically. "What about Sonny? Where is he?"

"Probably in some
po-lice
car, heading to jail, seeing as how he just got himself in one hellacious bar fight. And
Ah'm
getting the hell out of here before
Ah
end up in the same place."