The North Face of the Heart - Dolores Redondo Page 0,176
had come from. He raised his gun again just as the shrimper outside put a slug into his belly. The man clutched his gut and fell forward.
Impelled by inertia, the Zodiac drifted forward and bumped against the lodge. Johnson and Amaia threw themselves over the starboard side as Bull and Charbou climbed aboard on the port side, shouting at the man to put his hands up.
He didn’t, and they saw why. He was too intent on trying to keep his guts from spilling over his jeans.
“Take him inside,” Dupree ordered. Turning in the direction of the shrimper in the bushes, he shouted, “And you—get out of there and put your gun down! You must have scared off every boar in the swamp!”
They worked the boat along the side of the lodge to the main entrance.
They put what was left of the man onto the second table, next to the one where Médora’s body lay. Charbou had improvised a pressure bandage from oily rags in the bottom of the boat. He’d done a fairly good job of stemming the blood flow and containing the victim’s intestines. The man was unconscious. He looked about forty years old.
The traiteur examined him quickly and shook his head. “I can pray for his soul, but there’s nothing to be done for his body. He’s bleeding out. He’ll die in an hour, maybe less. And it’s going to hurt.” He turned and went back to Médora.
“Traiteur!” Dupree took his arm and waded with him to the foot of Médora’s improvised bier. He pointed to the gunshot victim. “He may be the only one who can tell us where the girls are. They were taken from their homes just like Médora, and they’ll wind up like her if I can’t get to them. I’ve been trying all my life to track them down. We got really close when Médora was taken, so close that they murdered her brother and my partner. Dozens of teenage girls have disappeared from their homes since then. Nobody gave a damn about them, nobody cared where they were going to wind up. We’re as close as we can be to cracking this case. They had six young girls upstairs. I don’t know how many more they have stashed away, but I do know that we’re the only ones who’re going to do anything about it.”
“How is that possible?” the traiteur asked.
Dupree looked confused. Amaia was the one who answered. “Come with me.”
“What?”
“Come upstairs with me.” She pointed toward the attic.
Dupree stopped her. “Salazar, I don’t know if that’s a good idea—”
“I will,” the traiteur told Dupree. “I believe your colleague wants to show me something more than just bodies.” He followed her upstairs. Dupree went with them.
The lantern was still lit, for in the rush and confusion of the boat’s arrival, no one had thought to extinguish it. Its dim reddish light glowed in the asphyxiating space and gave the place the bizarre appearance of a bedchamber for slumbering dolls. All the drowned girls lay on their sides, except for the one Dupree had turned on her back. Their arms were stretched out, and their hair obscured their faces. Each looked as lifeless as the ancient hunting trophies downstairs.
Amaia shined her flashlight across those small corpses one by one. “We are looking for a demon, and his greatest achievement is making us think that he doesn’t exist. This kind of predator can stay active for years. He hides his tracks or the bodies of his victims, making them look like disappearances, runaways, accidents, or suicides. He chooses vulnerable girls, black teenagers who are socially marginalized, girls whose disappearances won’t be noticed or will seem unimportant. His victims are poor but attractive. The sort of girl who’s lucky if her family pays any attention to her; a girl likely to run away because she doesn’t like school, her parents are strict, or they don’t let her date. Everyone in the town, in the neighborhood, knows about them. Maybe they’re outcasts or they shun company because they prefer to be alone.
“That’s the kind of girl who disappears during a hurricane, gets swept away by the floodwaters, or goes missing in a forest during a storm. The sort whose name gets added to the list of disaster victims, and no one’s surprised. And nobody takes a closer look. Why bother? After all, those girls would have wound up running away from their hard lives and disappearing anyhow.