Carnahan sighed, not really on the same page re: his own fate. “Yeah, I guess. Gotta chase that tail, right, Constable?”
“That’s right, son,” said Hooke, and took his hand out of his windbreaker pocket, two of the knuckles sheathed in the grip of a gut hook. He flicked the blade out with his thumb and sawed it across Carnahan’s midsection below the rib cage. The skinning blade opened the flesh in a W flap.
Willard jerked a little. “That’s chilly, Constable. Did you just murder me?”
Hooke wiped the blade on Carnahan’s shirt. “Yep, son. I did. My sincere regrets.”
And he pitched Carnahan into the Pearl like he was ejecting him from a club.
Willard Carnahan toppled onto the bayou, and the scrim of its spongy surface supported his 150 pounds with barely a splash. The wound was so devastating that Carnahan’s insides rushed out of him, and almost immediately the bottom-feeders lurking below took hold of this unexpected bounty of tendons and gore, reeling the man in. Willard had barely any strength in him, and all he could accomplish was a sideways leer into the reeds, drawing equal measures of sludge and air through his yawning mouth. For Carnahan, life had slowed to one-third, and nothing he wanted to do was feasible. Watching the world telescope away from him was about all he could manage.
“Hey, son,” Regence Hooke called after him, “the swamp is taking you to its bosom. That’s fitting, ain’t it?”
If Regence had only turned away before casting his final barb, then he might not have cottoned on to the movement in the rushes. Even then, no big deal. Lotta things moving in the rushes this deep in the bayou. However, usually none of those lotta things blurted out exclamations along the lines of Jesus goddamn Christ, which Hooke was pretty certain he heard coming out of the flora. And even if he hadn’t just murdered a person, an inquisitive man such as Constable Regence Hooke would be obliged to ascertain who exactly was playing fast and loose with the second commandment.
What had happened was this: Carnahan had bobbed on past the sagging jetty till he arrived level with young Squib, who’d long since abandoned any notion of blackmail and was wishing he had himself a pair of ruby slippers to click together. Poor Willard had that expression on that was halfway between fucked and dead, and with a pale slickness to the complexion which made it clear he was on the brief trip from one to the other.
Squib found his eyes glued to the dying man, wondering which embodiment of death would win the race to claim Carnahan, blood loss or drowning? Or perhaps a gator? As it turned out, there was another contender. A monster snapping turtle breached like a mottled, domed submarine, coming a full foot out of the water, its predator’s beak all hysterical, and tore Carnahan’s living face right off his skull, to which Squib exclaimed, “Jesus goddamn Christ!”
He had never seen a turtle of this girth: shell the size of a small car, and that long neck corded and erect like the dick his good friend Charles Jr. liked to wave about so much, proud as he was.
Swamp folk often spoke of the bloodthirsty nature of these generally docile creatures, but not many had seen it firsthand.
That was more than likely all she wrote for Willard Carnahan and his modern-day piratical escapades, but the boy did not see him and his flayed skull go under, for Squib’s own blasphemous mouth had named him a witness and therefore a target, so he upped off his belly and jinked like a jackrabbit into the island proper.
HOOKE SAW A figure hightail it into the island with the green glow of a phone in his hand and scowled in petulant frustration. “Mary, Mother of Jesus, I cannot believe this day.”
In Regence Hooke’s mind he had been much put-upon in the past twelve hours.
First the Elodie Moreau thing was souring his mood, then Ivory forced him to gut his pilot, and now some shadowy figure shoots a movie of the proceedings?
Leverage, thought Hooke. That goddamn Ivory was reckoning to tighten the leash. It seemed like he was misinterpreting their relationship, forgetting who had the badge here. Who else could be responsible? Ivory insisted on the hit, then planted some city kid up here to play Candid Camera. The drug lord would get even more information than he’d hoped for if he watched that video.
“Not tonight, Ivory,” said Regence Hooke, patting the service Glock in his holster. Gunfire traveled crystal clear over flat water, but there was no helping that. Shots in a swamp could always be explained. Video could not.
Regence did not waste bullets firing into the Spanish moss but instead picked his way carefully across the half-rotten jetty to his own swamp cruiser and cast off. He had two reasons for taking the boat: One, the idiot spy had marooned himself on an island, and two, he had a couple of toys in the strongbox.
I’m gonna bleed you with my pump-action, son, thought Regence, then put you down close quarters with the Glock.
It occurred to Constable Hooke, as he pushed the flat-bottomed craft back from the jetty, that this would only be the second time in his life he had killed two men in one night.
Oh, no, hold up, Regence. You’re selling yourself short. You did that Witness Security guy and his handler last year in Florida.
The WITSEC guy—not an easy hit.
So three times.
Definitely three.
In peacetime.
SQUIB’S FIRST EXPERIENCE of shotgun pellet sting came upon crashing through the mangroves on the western shore of Honey Island. He’d not been intending to crash through anything, but it came upon him all of a sudden, like the cliff in a Road Runner cartoon: One second he was stumbling along what could at a squint be called a trail, and the next his nose was out in the open and there was Hooke out on the water all pumped and ready to unload. Squib saw Regence Hooke’s jaw in the red glow of cigar ember, and then the cop’s barrel jerked upwards and Squib had himself a gunshot wound on the forearm. It wasn’t anything near fatal, not from a distance of sixty yards plus, mostly didn’t even break the skin, but he’d be feeling it for weeks to come.
That weren’t no shot to kill, thought Squib. Bastard’s herding me.
The shot’s recoil scooted the boat backwards across the bayou, forcing Regence Hooke to tend to his throttle, which gave Squib a second to duck out of sight, shuffle into the interior, and catch his breath.
He lay flat on his back, feeling the buckshot scalding in his arm and the cold swamp mud shrinking his ball sack.
How the hell do I get off this island? he thought. If Hooke don’t get me, the gators sure as hell will.
The smell of the oil-slick water gave him his answer.
As far as he could figure, Squib’s only option was to wait it out. Tours would start motoring through here from Crawford Landing at first light, dozens of out-of-towners eager to catch sight of the legendary swamp bigfoot. Wasn’t no way Regence Hooke could take a shot at him then, not with a multitude of cameras pointed his way, because social media sure did love itself a cop-discharging-his-weapon video.
I gotta keep my head down and my mouth shut, Squib realized. Simple as that.
But he knew in his heart that this assessment was pure optimism. Regence Hooke was no rookie to the blood-sport game, and he was hardly about to dissolve into a puddle of sniffles because Squib was taking shelter on an island.
This was confirmed seconds later when all hell broke loose.
Squib’s first thought was Volcano, which might seem like the thinking of an idiot, but in fairness to the boy, although he might have considered himself tough as nails, he had never been within a thousand miles of a war zone and had no frame of reference for the explosive chaos erupting all around. Thousands of man-hours on the PlayStation could not begin to do the experience justice.