The Devil's Punchbowl (78 page)

 

I help Caitlin down the ladder, then follow her into the boat. After giving Kelly a long hug, she sits in the padded passenger seat behind the windshield. I sit behind her. Kelly gives me a little salute, then pushes the throttle forward. The boat glides away from the pier with a softly churning wake behind it.

 

St. John is much larger than Lake Concordia, where Chris Shepard has his summer house. When we’re fifty yards from the pier, Kelly pushes the throttle again, and the big Volvo engine propels the bow up out of the water. In seconds we’re racing over the glassy surface, headed to the western end of the oxbow lake. Kelly looks pretty good, considering what he’s been through. His blond hair flying in the wind gives him a deceptively youthful cast.

 

“Where are we going?” Caitlin asks, leaning back to me. “Seriously.”

 

“I don’t know. With Kelly, you just have to be patient.”

 

Thirty seconds of silence is all she can manage. “Danny McDavitt’s going to drop out of the sky and pick him up, isn’t he? We’re here to take the boat back.”

 

“I truly have no idea.” Reaching out with my foot, I touch Kelly’s hip. “What are we doing?” I call over the whipping wind.

 

“Getting closure,” he replies.

 

Caitlin looks curiously at me, but Kelly offers nothing further.

 

He’s steering toward the far end of the lake—the shallow end, as Tim referred to it on the night we first met in the cemetery. The boat is really moving now, hydroplaning with perfect trim, the sensation as close to flight as you can get without lifting completely off the water. We’re making more noise than I’d like, and Kelly is running without navigation lights, but he seems unconcerned. The houses thin out on this end of the lake, and there’s zero chance of a patrol boat this late.

 

Caitlin turns her captain’s chair sideways and takes my hand in hers. Normally, I’d expect her to be chattering about what happened to the
Magnolia Queen,
or badgering Kelly about our destination, but she seems withdrawn, even depressed. For the first time it strikes me that she might not be thinking about the recent past, but the future. About leaving Natchez again.

 

Leaving me.

 

As I ponder this reality, Kelly pulls back on the throttle, and the bow settles into the water. Except for our collapsing wake, the lake is perfectly still, with thin fog hovering low over the surface. As we glide forward at a fraction of our former speed, thick cypress trunks close around us. The bellow of bullfrogs is startlingly loud, and a chorus of chirping insects joins in. The smell of decay is claustrophobic, like the floor of a swamp, thick with rotting vegetation and dead fish, burping methane. As the trunks come within a few feet of the boat on both sides, the cypress limbs arch into a ceiling above us, blocking out the moon in some places.

 

“You’re going too fast,” I say. “There are fallen trees under the water here. You don’t want to hole out down on this end.”

 

“No?” he says, staring into the darkness ahead of him.

 

“Take my word for it.”

 

Now and then there’s a wet sound as of something heavy sliding into the water. Caitlin squeezes my hand tighter. I wouldn’t want to be driving this boat with only moonlight to steer by, and I don’t feel particularly safe even with Kelly at the wheel.

 

“Dude,” I say, “there’s nothing down here but an old fishing camp. What’s the mission?”

 

He pulls back on the throttle until we’re barely moving, but he’s too late. A second later the boat shudders as though we’ve struck a granite boulder. I feel nausea as it rebounds and floats backward.

 

“What are we
doing
?” Caitlin asks, looking up at the overhanging limbs. “Didn’t you tell me water moccasins hang off of those limbs and drop into fishing boats?”

 

“Sometimes,” I admit. “If it happens, don’t jump out of the boat. We’ll be all right.”

 

Kelly carefully reverses direction, eases forward, then puts the engine in neutral. The cypresses surround us like ranks of giant soldiers in the night, stretching back to muddy banks thick with undergrowth. Switching on his flashlight, Kelly shines it onto the deck, reflecting enough light upward to see our faces.

 

“Everybody good?”

 

“No,” says Caitlin. “Enough with the mystery. Let’s do whatever we came to do.”

 

“We’re about to. But before we do, I want to show you something.”

 

Kelly sweeps the yellow beam along the waterline at the base of the cypress trunks. There, among the smooth wooden knees, dozens of red eyes reflect the light back to us with chilling effect.

 

Caitlin leaps from her seat and seizes my arm. “What the hell is
that
? Penn? What are they?”

 

Another thud comes from below, but this time the boat doesn’t shudder.

 

“Did we hit something else?” Caitlin asks anxiously.

 

In answer, Kelly sweeps the light along the waterline on both sides of the boat, then aims it into the cypresses again. The red eyes glow in pairs, some only a couple of inches apart, others more widely spaced.

 

“What
are
those things?”

 

“Alligators,” I say. “Locals call this place Alligator Alley.”

 

As she shakes her head in disbelief, a loud slapping sound reverberates over the lake.

 

“They’re headslapping,” Kelly says. “Warning us to get out.”

 

“I want to go back,” Caitlin says anxiously. “This is crazy.”

 

“This is karma,” Kelly says enigmatically. “We’ve all been through a lot this past week, but nobody more than you. Nobody who lived, anyway.”

 

She looks back at him in confusion. “And?”

 

“You remember that talk we had at that other lake house? About Sands being a one-bullet problem?”

 

Now he has her attention. “Yes.”

 

“Tom told you it wasn’t up to you, only to him and Penn.”

 

“I remember.”

 

“Well, this time you get a vote.”

 

“A vote?” She glances at me, then looks back at Kelly. “On what?”

 

He passes the flashlight to me, then steps down and opens the door to the forward cabin.

 

“What’s he doing?” Caitlin asks.

 

Kelly disappears into the cabin and pulls the door shut behind him.

 

“I’m not sure.” Even as I say this, I know it’s a lie. I’ve known Kelly too long to be surprised. Now I know what he means by
closure.

 

I hear muted ripping sounds, some scuffling, and then the cabin door opens and Kelly drags a human form up onto the deck. When I shine the light down onto it, Caitlin gasps.

 

Seamus Quinn lies on the deck carpet, bound and gagged with duct tape, both eyes blackened and burning with virulent hatred. He’s wearing dark pants, a bloodstained white T-shirt, and one shoe. His other ankle and foot are too grossly swollen to fit inside the other.

 

Why has he done this?
I wonder. Kelly and I have come to this fork in the road before, and I chose the rule of law. Why would he think I’d decide any different now? My decision to assassinate Sands was defensive; killing Quinn would be revenge. Also, stupid. We need Quinn as a witness against Sands.
Although,
I reflect,
if Jiao continues to cooperate with Shad, Quinn’s testimony would be superfluous.

 

There’s something going on here that I don’t understand. Could Kelly simply be flirting with an idea that he knows I’ll never agree to, but one I might push far enough to teach a murderer a lesson he’ll never forget?
No.
He wouldn’t waste his time hazing somebody. He’s hard-core, all the way. But whatever he’s up to, one thing is sure: He won’t kill Quinn unless Caitlin and I tell him to do it.

 

“I thought this guy was dead,” I say.

 

Kelly shrugs. “As far as anybody knows, he is.”

 

After a few seconds of dazed comprehension, Caitlin breaks away from me and kicks the Irishman savagely in the ribs. He grunts but doesn’t attempt to defend himself. Caitlin draws back her foot and kicks him again, harder this time. When Quinn shows no sign of terror, she throws the flashlight at his head, then hammers her foot into his arm, his neck, and his head. Quinn rolls away from the blows, but the bulkhead stops him. After that, he absorbs the kicks with resignation, like a man accustomed to beatings. Caitlin, by contrast, is crying and whining as she struggles to make Quinn feel some fraction of the pain he inflicted on Linda Church.

 

Caitlin stops after half a minute, probably because she’s winded. I too am breathing hard, as though I participated in the assault. But my distress is emotional. Never have I seen Caitlin lose complete control, much less become violent. Even now she seems poised to begin kicking Quinn again. Her chin is quivering, and her eyes are wild. What I thought might be a reflexive discharge of pent-up fury seems to be only the first flicker of an unquenchable anger. What, I wonder, would it take to drive her into such a state?

 

And that’s when I realize that Kelly’s decision to bring us here has nothing to do with me. He’s done this for Caitlin’s sake.
Because he knows something you don’t,
says a childlike voice within me.
Something awful.
My throat tightens as I perceive something huge and dark beyond the surface of things, like a misshapen form behind a curtain I’ve been unwilling to pull back. Did Quinn’s bruises and blackened eyes result from his fight on the
Magnolia Queen
? Or when Kelly uprooted every detail of his crimes from the toxic soil of his memory?
Kelly knows what happened in the dog kennel,
says the voice.
And whatever it was, he thinks she needs to witness this kind of punishment to exorcise it.

 

Kelly has laid his hands on Caitlin’s shoulders, as though to hold her back. Without knowing why, I kneel and rip the tape from Quinn’s mouth.

 

“You going to drown me, Your Honor?” the Irishman asks, working his lower jaw up and down as though to relieve a cramp. “That the plan?”

 

“That’s up to the lady,” Kelly says softly. “What do you figure your odds are?”

 

“Drownin’s not so bad,” Quinn says philosophically. “I’ve drowned many a runt for the good of the litter. There’s worse ways to go.”

 

Kelly smiles appreciatively. “You’re right about that, ace.”

 

Caitlin looks warily from me to Kelly, then back to me again. “Is he serious?”

 

“Oh, he’s serious, all right.”

 

The Caitlin I thought I knew would be yelling for us to take Quinn back to Natchez and hand him over to the police. But the woman before me is not doing that. Instead, she takes the flashlight from me and shines it around the boat in a slow circle, watching the reptilian eyes watch her.

 

I try to catch Kelly’s eye, but he’s gazing at Caitlin like a knight awaiting a decision from his queen. Christ. When I first saw Quinn lying on the deck, I thought Kelly had chosen a cruel path by exposing Caitlin to such a situation. But now I understand that she’s already far down a road I wouldn’t have expected her to set foot on before tonight. She’s no longer the woman I knew before she was taken prisoner. She is sister to a thousand women I knew and tried to serve as an assistant DA in Houston. She’s a victim: violated, bereft, forever changed. A rush of emotions too powerful to understand swells in my chest, making it difficult to breathe.

 

Kelly was clever to choose this place. It’s difficult to step outside the law when you’re surrounded by all its tangible expressions. But here, in this prehistoric darkness under the cypress trees, it’s easy to ask why we should bother taking Seamus Quinn back to the world of cops and lawyers and plea bargains. Intellectually, I know the answer to that, of course. But the shape behind the curtain is becoming clearer to me, even as I try to hold the curtain shut.

 

“What the fuck’s she gawkin’ at?” Quinn asks.

 

Caitlin swings the beam away from the red eyes and aims it down at Quinn. Then she switches off the flashlight and covers her face with a shaking hand. Five minutes ago I thought of Caitlin’s period of captivity as a transient nightmare she had miraculously managed to escape. Now I know she might never escape it. Thinking this is like cracking the gate to hell.

 

“Stand him up,” she says. “Let him see.”

 

Kelly grabs Quinn under the arms and heaves him up onto one of the seats. The Irishman looks out, but all is darkness around the boat. Then Caitlin shines the light toward the cypress knees, and the red eyes gleam like rubies in its beam.

 

“Bloody hell,” says Quinn, his voice in a higher register. “What’s that?”

 

The satisfaction I feel at the sound of fear in his voice cannot be denied. “American alligator,” I inform him. “
Alligator mississippiensis.
I’m sure you’ve seen them on TV.”

 

As Quinn slowly draws back his head, a throaty bellow blasts out of the dark at unbelievable volume. His bound feet scrape against the deck, but he has nowhere to run.

 

“You’re a big fan of people fighting animals,” Caitlin says. “You told me all about the Romans and their games, how they made animals rape girls.”

 

Reaching out my right hand, I touch her shoulder softly. “Caitlin…? What did he do?”

 

She looks back at me, her eyes wet with tears. “It’s what he didn’t do.”

 

“What didn’t he do?”

 

“He didn’t
stop.
It was…unforgivable.”

 

Anger like corrosive acid burns the lining of my heart.

 

“Where’s your Christian mercy, darlin’?” Quinn asks mockingly, but his eyes are those of a cornered animal—desperate and calculating. He looks at Kelly. “It’s always the women. The most bloody-minded creatures ever the Lord made.”

 

“That’s why you treat them with respect, Seamus.”

 

Another hard slap rebounds over the water, and Caitlin whips the beam over to the cypress trees. Quinn can’t tear his gaze away from the glowing eyes. When Kelly claps him on the back, the Irishman jumps in terror.

 

“Ready, tough guy? Here’s your chance to prove what a badass you are. Ultimate Fighting Challenge times fifty.”