the exhibit lay half out of the water, their eyes, glittering in the moonlight, fixed on him. As he approached the fence, two of them raised their heads, making tentative motions forward.
Michael shook his head. “Not tonight, guys. You’ve had plenty to eat. You don’t want to get fat, do you?”
The ’gators bobbed menacingly up and down, but as Michael turned away, they settled back down into the mud. A moment later one of them slithered into the pond, cruising silently just below the surface, only its nostrils and eyes disturbing the stillness of the water.
Michael came to the nutria cages, flicking on his flashlight to check the water and food containers. One of the females, the mother of the pups, whom Michael had named Martha, came over to sniff at him through the wire mesh. Switching the light off and sliding it into his hip pocket, Michael unlocked the cage door and picked the little creature up. She nestled into his hands, and he raised her up to rub her soft fur against his cheek.
“Not so bad, is it, Martha?” he whispered. “Plenty of food and water, and nobody to hurt you. A lot better than being turned into a coat, huh?”
Then, as he held the little rodent close, a new sound drifted out of the night.
A siren, rising in the distance, abruptly silenced the droning of the insects.
Michael froze, listening.
The scream of the siren rose, dropped, then rose again. His pulse quickening, Michael moved away from the nutria cages, closer to the road.
As the wailing grew, he could see the flashing red and blue lights of a police car coming toward him.
His body went rigid, an icy chill passing through him as the car approached.
He realized he was holding his breath, every muscle in his body growing more tense by the second.
The car passed.
The sirens began to fade away.
Slowly, the tension drained from Michael’s body. For the first time he became aware of the pounding in his chest.
Inexplicably, the approach of the police car had terrified him.
Why? He’d done nothing wrong—he’d never been in any trouble with the police in his life.
Yet just now, as the car drew closer, he’d had an unnerving feeling that it was coming for him.
He closed his eyes for a moment, willing the panic away. Slowly, his heartbeat returned to normal and the icy fingers that were clutching his chest retreated.
“Dumb,” he murmured, partly to himself and partly to the little animal he still held in his hands. “Who’d care about a bunch of dead frogs? It’s not like you need a license to hunt them.”
When his voice brought no responding movement from Martha, he looked down at her.
His hands were tight around her throat, and her body hung limp and still.
He stared at the dead animal, a lump rising in his throat. As the panic he’d just quelled rose back up, threatening to overwhelm him, he hurried back to the cage, deposited the nutria inside, and relocked the hasp of the enclosure.
A minute later he was on his motorcycle, racing homeward through the night.
Marty Templar brought the police car to a halt in front of the tiny house Judd Duval occupied on the fringes of the swamp. It was a couple of miles out of Villejeune, set back from the road, approachable from the land side only by a rotting wooden causeway whose planks threatened to collapse under Templar’s ample weight. Templar hated Duval’s house; hated it almost as much as the bogs that surrounded it. Every time he came out here, which was as rarely as possible, he felt as if he was strangling, as if the vines and trees that surrounded the shack were creeping up on him, reaching out to him. But tonight he’d had no choice.
“Dunno what’s goin’ on,” Judd had told him over the radio. “All’s I know is Amelie Coulton is here, and says there’s a body in the swamp.”
“Well how the hell are we supposed to find it tonight?” Marty had complained. He’d been sitting at the counter in Arlette’s, mopping up the last of some biscuits and gravy, when the radio on his hip had come to life. “Jeez, Judd—you can barely find anything out there in the daylight. At night …” He’d let the words trail off, knowing there was no use arguing with Judd Duval. He’d go into the swamp anytime, day or night. To him, as to the other swamp rats, it didn’t seem to make a difference. So when Judd