The North Face of the Heart - Dolores Redondo Page 0,122

heard that. It hardly hurts at all, he thought as he fought to catch his breath, but he wasn’t reassured, not at all, far from it. He’d give it time and calm down, because, after all, his wife and the girl’s aunt kept insisting he’d saved her. Maybe he’d have accepted that if he hadn’t glimpsed that fury’s eyes, if only for an instant. They were completely empty. No hatred, resentment, or madness; as he defied her, determined not to release the child, she was amused. She showed him her row of sharp tiny yellow baby teeth. Like rat’s teeth. He held her gaze until the car door broke their contact. What mesmerized him was the fact that she’d showed not the slightest trace of annoyance.

That she-wolf wasn’t defeated. She was sure to try again.

42

BAZAGRÁ

New Orleans, Louisiana

5:00 a.m., Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Johnson tapped her gently on the shoulder. “Salazar, wake up. We have a report of gunshots. Close by.”

“The sun’s not up,” she said, trying to clear her groggy mind as she peered through the window. “What time is it?”

“Just past five.”

She shrugged into her ballistic vest and quickly checked the room to make sure they were leaving nothing behind. “Several shots?”

“The report was very specific. Gunshots in a family residence close to Saint Louis Cemetery,” Bull said. “They think it was Bienville Street, but they’re not sure.”

“That’s no help at all!” Charbou complained. “Bienville runs from Saint Louis Cemetery No. 1 to No. 2. They have the same name.”

Amaia dropped into the Zodiac and took a seat in the stern next to Bull, who’d already started the motor and was ready to steer them into the street.

“He’s still with them? Do we know that?” she asked. “Is he holding hostages?”

“No idea,” Bull admitted. “The report wasn’t from the ops center. It came from a Red Cross launch passing through the area. That’s why they couldn’t give a precise location. Lots of their volunteers aren’t from the city, and most of the street signs are gone.”

They elected to head toward Saint Louis Cemetery No. 1. If the person who’d radioed it in wasn’t familiar with the city, he wouldn’t know there was another Saint Louis Cemetery; otherwise he’d have given a more specific address.

They reached Bienville and throttled back the motor. Terrified screams from a single-story house told them where to go.

The water was halfway up the house. Faint, flickering yellow light, probably from candles, shone through an open dormer window in the gabled roof. The screams came from there. Bull took the Zodiac to the wall. Bill and Bull leaped out of the boat as Johnson tied up, and scrambled across the tar-paper roof. At Bull’s signal, the policemen erupted into the little room. An instant later, they called the others.

The attic, even though it had a window, was actually only a low space between the roof and the downstairs ceiling. Unpainted rafters sloped down to meet rough flooring. Yellowing lumps of spun fiber, now useless as insulation, were stuffed into the corners of the space. An ancient African American man, tiny, wrinkled, and covered with sweat, lay on the plank flooring by the window, gasping and groaning, his right hand clutched to his chest. Amaia assumed he’d been shot, especially because an old woman was aiming a rifle down the steep stairwell, cursing furiously at someone invisible in the darkness downstairs. A little boy, maybe four or five years old, had crawled back under the lowest part of the roof and was huddled against the mass of yellowing insulation, sobbing.

Amaia felt a film of sweat break out over her skin as soon as she got inside. The temperature in the attic must have been well over one hundred degrees. The place stank of piss, sweat, and mold. The only light came from the stub of a candle inside an ancient hurricane lamp at the woman’s feet. Her enormous shadow moved across the attic space every time she shifted her position, making it hard for them to see what was going on.

Charbou seized the woman from behind, immobilized her, and disarmed her. His firm movements were assured and unprovocative. She gave up her weapon but doubled her ranting against the unknown intruder downstairs. Alarmed, Charbou pointed his pistol in that direction.

Johnson crouched next to the moaning victim. The old man’s clothes were soaked with sweat. Without hesitating, Johnson ripped off the old man’s shirt to check for a wound. There was no blood, but it was obvious he’d received