“Well, that’s not a good place to take an unwelcome nap,” I said. “There were a lot of smaller trails out of the water and onto the bank and they all looked fairly recent. This place must be popular with the gators.”
Ida Belle gave me a grim nod, then pointed. “There’s Carter.”
I sighed. “And me dripping wet and Gertie still damp.”
“Wet T-shirt contest, remember?” Gertie said.
“You’re not even wearing a shirt,” I said. “I’m never going to hear the end of this.”
“Sure you will,” Ida Belle said. “You’ll do something worse and this will all be forgotten.”
“Always the optimist,” I grumbled.
“More of a realist,” she said.
Carter approached in his boat and gave us all the once-over. I’m sure he’d only needed a couple seconds to take in the condition of Gertie and my clothes and the fact that Ida Belle was holding a rifle to know we’d ignored his directive.
“I thought I told you to stay put,” he said.
“Gertie fell in before we got here,” I said. “There was a situation with a snake, and clothes had to be sacrificed.”
“I fully expect an overboard incident with Gertie in the boat, and I’m not touching the whole clothes-snake thing,” he said. “I was referring specifically to you.”
“We were afraid Molly had fallen overboard, cracked her head, and might have crawled up a bank,” I said. “The sooner you get to a head injury the better.”
“I take it you didn’t find anything?” he asked.
“A sunbathing alligator,” I said. “He was not happy to be interrupted.”
Carter sighed. “These banks are dangerous. This whole area is dangerous.”
“I heard it was good fishing here,” I said.
“Of course it’s good fishing here,” Carter said. “Which is why the alligators love it.”
“Oh yeah,” I said. “Didn’t quite put that one into perspective.”
He looked up at Ida Belle. “Did you tag him?”
“No line of sight,” she said.
“Well, at least that’s one set of paperwork I don’t have to worry about,” he said. “Did anyone step onto Molly’s boat besides Fortune?”
“Just me,” I said. “But as soon as I spotted the blood on the side, I called you.”
“Really?” he asked. “The very second you spotted it?”
“Well, I might have checked the blood to see how old I thought it was,” I said. “It’s not overly fresh but with this heat…”
Carter stepped from his boat to Molly’s and went to inspect the blood. He squatted down and looked closely at the side, then touched a bit with his finger.
“It’s bad, isn’t it?” Gertie asked.
“It’s not good,” Carter said.
He pulled out his phone and made a call requesting a forensic unit, two boats to make drags on the bayou, and as many people as could volunteer to do a search. He slipped his phone back into his jeans pocket, then scanned the bottom of the boat. I had no idea what he was looking for, but he must not have found it because his frown got bigger and he opened the bench chest to look inside.
A couple seconds later, he pulled out an anchor and I saw his jaw flex.
“Is there blood on it?” I asked.
“Can’t say,” he said. “And even if there was, we wouldn’t know that it’s Molly’s. For that matter, we don’t know that the blood on the side of the boat is Molly’s. It could be from fish.”
“Then where is Molly?” Gertie asked.
He didn’t answer. He couldn’t.
It was 8:00 the next morning before I crawled out of bed. Even Merlin’s complaining about his late breakfast hadn’t fazed me. After ten minutes of opera yowling and one run across my forehead, he’d probably decided I was dead. I suppose I was lucky he didn’t start eating me. I had read up on house cats. You didn’t want to die alone with one. Not if you weren’t going to be missed for a while.
I trudged into the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee, then flopped into a chair. Carter had finally called off the search at 3:00 a.m. and was planning to regroup this morning. But we all knew the score. It was no longer a search-and-rescue mission. It was a recovery and in one of the worst environments possible.
The two boats had dredged the channels in the area surrounding where we found Molly’s boat and at the opening of the lake for hours without success. But it wasn’t an easy job. So many things were submerged in the water that they had to constantly stop and untangle nets before starting again. It seemed a tedious and never-ending process.
After Gertie was properly dressed and could take in a full breath again, we were assigned bank lookout but under no circumstances were any of the volunteers to leave their boats. It was pitch-dark with no moon and the area was full of hungry gators. We used spotlights and poled our way slowly along the bank. If we spotted an area that looked as if a person could have passed that way, then we were to alert Carter and he would access the ground with Deputy Breaux. Ida Belle and Gertie showed me the gator claw marks to look for, and all of the breaches of the bank from the water that we found contained them. That would probably have been good information to have had earlier that evening before I ran the thirty-yard dash while chased by a man-eater.
By the time we got back to my house, we were all exhausted and sad. I had just met Molly but I had liked her. And I hated that right now, everything was a big unknown. Had someone been chasing her? Had he caught up with her and hit her over the head with the anchor before dumping her into the bayou? Or had she been talking in generalizations to her friend and then had a tragic accident? While I didn’t envy Carter the job he had in front of him, my curiosity wanted those answers as badly as he did.
I grabbed two coffee mugs and poured them both almost to the rim. No creamer, milk, or sugar for me. Today was straight-up caffeine day if I planned to move beyond the kitchen. I had just sat down when I heard my front door open and Carter called out.
“In the kitchen,” I said and he appeared several second later.
“Did you know I was coming?” he asked, pointing to the two cups.
I shook my head. “Despite all the conspiracy theories, the CIA didn’t teach psychic perception. I poured two for myself, figuring it was going to take at least that to get me back out of this chair.”
“Good idea,” he said and grabbed two cups for himself.
He filled them up, then sat across from me. “I hate this,” he said.
“Me too. I hated it in the sandbox and I hate it here. People need a body. They need a coffin or an urn. Something.”
Carter nodded and gave me a sympathetic look. “You thinking about your father?”
“Not really. Well, maybe he’s crossed my mind. The first time, I buried teeth. It’s hard for a teenager to wrap their mind around a death when all you have to go on is a couple of molars.”
“But you did it.”
“And then he came back. And look how fabulous that was.”
“The two of you saved this country and others from a serious breach of national security and God knows how many people from being assassinated—important people.”