The Storm Murders (20 page)

É
mile let all that settle. Nothing stood out for him to weigh, nothing to evaluate or compare, no terms of reference that were meant to include him. “I don’t know what this has to do with me. Or with Sandra.”

“Probably nothing,” Sivak noted. Cinq-Mars shot a glance at her. “I mean,” she backtracked, “I can’t think of any connection myself.”

“But it has something to do with you,” he pointed out, for he needed something to go on here. He finally had a glimmer. “And with Dupree.”

“We’re the good guys,” she declared. “The bad cops are in jail.”

They raced on through the night, the lights of the squad cars flashing and the sirens wailing in and out. Cinq-Mars went quiet awhile. His mind raced. He recalled Dupree mentioning that not enough officers had been put away to satisfy him. And he wished he’d brought that brown paper bag, then just by thinking about it located the bag in his jacket pocket. He was unsure if he should take it out, but a moment later he had no choice and breathed into it. Then he sat back in the seat, his arms splayed out beside him, his eyes closed, being jostled and bumped about, his seatbelt banging undone at his shoulder.

“You all right?”

“Right as rain. How far is it?” he asked. Time seemed to float by before she answered, her eyes and hands intent on the high-speed drive.

“It’s a hike,” Agent Vira Sivak told him, then ordered, “Hang on!”

They cut a corner that made the tires squeal and threw Cinq-Mars against his door.

Prior to that infamous night, Danziger Bridge was known principally as the widest lift bridge in the world, although in the down position it accommodates most marine traffic on the Industrial Canal. An expressway leads onto and off the bridge and also sharply veers away from it, spawning circular ramps so that drivers may negotiate their choice of direction. Like other waterways in and around New Orleans, the canal overflowed its banks at the time of the hurricane that lay siege to the city. Cinq-Mars thought that he saw his wife on the hump of the bridge, but he was wrong, an optical illusion of the night or a nasty trick of the mind. Moments later he verified that she was indeed near the crest, but on the opposite side from where he’d been looking. Squad cars were with her now, having been dispatched from nearby through Dupree’s initiative. When he spotted Sandra, still at a distance, and knew for sure that it was her, he felt the whole of his body slump and gyrate. He might nearly have lost control of his bodily functions, when a glee for which he was totally unprepared overtook him and virtually snatched him out of his skin.

He felt staggered by joy. She was standing! She was upright!

Sandra was alive. Blood spun loose in his head.

Sivak’s car rocked with her sharp braking, and Cinq-Mars protected himself against the dash then bounded out before the vehicle came to a screeching halt. He banged his hip hard against the door and was off, running across the road with a pronounced limp. Not all the traffic had been stopped and on one side it was being funneled into a single lane. A delivery trucker gave him an annoyed honk and tapped the brakes as he dashed in front of his headlights. Sandra caught sight of him then. She was partially supported on her feet by a uniformed officer and twisted now in his careful grip and turned to lift herself into her husband’s embrace. The two wound together, holding fast, as if instantaneously melding into one being.
É
mile couldn’t breathe and Sandra hadn’t taken a free breath in hours, and didn’t think she could. When finally they separated a touch, so that they could look at each other, his tears instigated her own. Their joy mingled with a shock of nerves they had both suppressed, but which now boomeranged through their bones like a sonic thump.

Sandra’s first words were, “I need to sit,” and with that they both nearly collapsed. Dupree, with help from Flores, broke Cinq-Mars’s fall. Sivak grabbed Sandra at the last instant. They let them sag down awkwardly onto the pavement of the bridge where they held each other’s hands and kissed and cried and laughed and wiped away each other’s tears. Those who milled around, including Sivak, Dupree, and Flores, turned their backs on them and gave them have a private moment encircled by a forest of officers’ legs.

An ambulance was pulling up to take Sandra away.

“Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

She nodded. She was all right. She couldn’t say those words though. As though she could not believe in their veracity.

Dupree turned back to them and knelt down. He wanted to get in a word before the paramedics took them away. “This is a precaution. We’ll get her checked out. We’ll ride with her,
É
mile.”

“My God. Oh my God,
É
mile,” Sandra repeated several times. Then she said, “I thought I’d never see you again. They told me I would and I wanted to believe them, but I didn’t think I could.”

He wanted to say that he knew that he would see her again, but before the words came out he recognized that the statement would be a lie and he swallowed it whole. He, too, had dealt with a nagging doubt that she’d survive this, and just that thought caused him to weep again. Happy now, but weeping again.

“Come on,” Dupree said, as the ambulance attendants rushed over with a gurney. He was guiding
É
mile to his feet so the men could do their job. They watched as Sandra was assisted into a proper sitting position on the gurney and then laid back. The gurney was cranked higher and as she rose from the pavement she managed a smile.

“We’re not riding with her,”
É
mile stated. He looked directly at Dupree by his side. “Only I am.” His voice cracked slightly.

“There’s such a thing as protocol, sir.” He stretched out his arm and eased Flores away from their conversation. The man took the hint.

Cinq-Mars looked away when Dupree turned to confront him.
É
mile wet his lips and swallowed. He needed water. But he had to win this argument first. “You don’t get to interrogate her before…” He stopped and looked down at the lovely face of his wife. “I’m talking to her first on my own.” He cupped her cheek in one hand.

“
É
mile,” Dupree objected.

“You’ll get plenty of time, Detective,” Cinq-Mars insisted. “But we’re taking this ride without you.”

Dupree never formally conceded, but said nothing further.

Having strapped her in, the paramedics lifted Sandra into the ambulance.
É
mile followed and found where he could sit. He did allow the paramedic to ask his questions and check her blood pressure, but as they moved off the bridge, picking their way through the gathering of cop cars, he hovered right over her and kissed her forehead. Sandra smiled, a timid, faint reflex, a ghost of a smile.

“I’m alive,” she attested, practically grinning now, briefly.

“You sure are,” he said.

“Are you okay?”

“Just between you and me,” he whispered, “I’m a wreck. I’ve probably had three heart attacks tonight and at least a pair of strokes. I should be lying where you are—you should be sitting vigil.” He roused a giggle out of her. “And I’m parched.” He suddenly barked out, “Don’t you guys have water?” All his pent-up rage came out in that surge. Sandra noticed. The man next to
É
mile passed him a bottle and
É
mile let Sandra sip before taking several gulps himself. Then he inhaled a few deep breaths. “But we can deal with my demise later. Tell me. Honestly. Were you harmed?”

She managed a light soft laugh. “Is this part of my interrogation, Officer?”

He brushed the hair from around her temples, not knowing what to say.

“Sandra, I—I have to speak to you before they do.”

“Oh you probably don’t,
É
mile. You just think that way. You can’t help it.” She was right all around.

“What did they want?”

Sandra nodded, as if this was the very question that she most wanted to ask and have answered.

“I think they wanted to convince me that they’re not the bad guys.”

He was looking into her eyes, and the surprise of her reply caused his brow to constrict, the furrows deepening. “So, the men who abducted my wife and killed the man hired to keep me safe are misunderstood innocent lads, is that it?”

“Don’t get sarcastic with me,
É
mile Cinq-Mars. I’m still in a shambles, you know. The point is, the men who nabbed me, stuffed me in the backseat of a van, blindfolded and gagged me—the gag came off when I promised to be still, and I kept my word—those men, they want you to know that they are not the bad guys. I know that it sounds crazy, but that’s my impression. I think that was the whole point of this.”

“They killed someone tonight.”

“Did they?”

Her pointed response indicated that she knew something. “What?” he asked.

Sandra took a breath, abruptly coughed and she accepted more water, then told him what she’d overheard. “I was in another room. They were trying to keep their voices down. I have to tell you,
É
mile, that gave me so much hope. If they were being quiet, careful not to let me overhear, that meant that they didn’t plan to kill me. Didn’t it? Otherwise, why would they care? I clung to that thought,
É
mile.”

Tears ensued, and they kissed again and
É
mile put his head on the pillow beside hers. He started to sense himself descend from a distance, as if this reality, her salvation, was now feeling entirely real to him.

Sandra wanted to keep going. “Anyway, I heard something. The word
dead
and the word
him
, so I assumed it was a man and I worried that it was you. That was my worst moment of all. But they said something, about the
dirty side of the street
in reference to him and something else,
ditched from the force
, so I no longer thought it was you. Before all that I heard someone say, ‘Oh shit.’ Like this was not something they wanted to have happen at all, but also, I don’t know, like it was a surprise to them. So no, I don’t think they killed anybody.”

“They kind of claimed they did.”

“I heard someone say, ‘Well, let’s use it then.’”

É
mile nodded. “Okay,” he said.

“
É
mile, listen, they tried to convince me that I was kidnapped because it was necessary, not because they wanted to. They tried to get me to believe that I wasn’t in any danger. They said that you cannot be here, that you threw in with the wrong people, so you have to go home. They wanted me to convince you to go home. I told them,
É
mile, if they released me, we were going home. I’d see to it. You’d have no say in the matter. I convinced them, I guess. Here I am.”

É
mile believed that he could look into those eyes until galaxies collided and the time would pass as if in a wink. Of course he was going home. Even if he didn’t believe in that course of action—and he did anyway—he certainly wasn’t going to contradict her. Her willfulness might have convinced her abductors, but only if they wanted to be convinced and only if they never intended her harm. She’d be set free only if that was part of their plan from the start. This was a messed-up world he’d entered, some kind of madness, where strangers abducted the wife of a visiting former police officer in order to demonstrate their inherent goodness in the overall picture. Going or staying was not up for discussion. He wanted out.

She squeezed his fingers. “
É
mile, I know you. You want to run after these guys. But you have to let this one go. Take me home.”

He kissed her lips and she kissed him back.

“First flight,” he promised. The easiest vow he’d ever made.

Sandra closed her eyes and the ambulance released itself from the knot of traffic their scene had created and speeded up. The siren wailed, forlorn in the warm night air. Cinq-Mars also shut his eyelids, to conclude a prayer he had begun some time awhile ago and to express his everlasting thanks in rhythm to the siren’s outcry.

One thought stuck to him, refusing to let go.
This is some kind of madness.

PART 3

EIGHTEEN

Sandra and
É
mile Cinq-Mars returned home to snows deeper than when they left. The farm appeared luminous under the fresh powder and a bright sun. With the shock of their misadventure lingering, they each stole private moments to appreciate the peacefulness of the countryside. Pristine in winter. Exquisitely unblemished.

The couple was invigorated by the landscape, yet that genuine connection could not realign their shaky sensibilities, which wavered and gyrated. Their inner lives felt storm-tossed. Latent grievances, nascent anger, perpetual confusion, and an inability to properly center themselves made the adjustment to being home again difficult, underscored by a compulsive need for privacy. Both
É
mile and Sandra wanted to be alone yet they frequently bumped together, to fix or share a meal, to cuddle, to accompany the other on a chore. As of ten, they flew apart, discovering themselves at opposite ends of the house, on different sides of the barn, indoors while the other was out, as if moments spent together satisfied them only temporarily before a centrifugal force pitched them away from whatever had compelled them to reconnect and flung them against some remote, invisible wall in both solitude and surprise, where they endured an abiding, restless disquiet.

Had they indulged an inclination to analyze their predicament, they might have detected the opposing forces at play.
É
mile was naturally inquisitive about what Sandra experienced, and he was boundlessly curious as to how the matter had played out. Yet his style of inquiry, and her expectations regarding the nature of his curiosity, bore sharp similarity to a police
interrogation,
and she could no more bear that nuance than he could modify his posture in a false, easygoing manner. He did not want to
interrogate
her, yet he needed and desired to ask questions. But attempt to do so provoked them to hurriedly forsake each other’s company.