“Put your hands behind your back,” he repeated, softly but with emphasis on each word.
“Please.” The word was spoken on a sob. “My little girl—”
“I’m not going to ask you again.” He took another step closer.
She backed away and came up against the wall behind her.
One last step brought him to within inches of her. “Do it.”
Her instinct was to fight him, to scratch and claw and kick in an effort to prevent, or at least to delay, what seemed to be the inevitable. But because she feared Emily’s fate if she didn’t comply with him, she did as ordered and clasped her hands together at the small of her back, sandwiching them between her and the wall.
He leaned in close. She turned her head aside, but he placed his hand beneath her chin and brought it back around.
Speaking in a whisper, he said, “You see how easy it would be for me to hurt you?”
She looked into his eyes and nodded numbly.
“Well, I won’t hurt you. I promise not to hurt you or your kid. But you gotta do everything I say. Okay? Have we got a deal?”
She might have derived some level of comfort from the promise, even if she didn’t believe it. But she suddenly realized who he was, and that sent a bolt of terror through her.
Breathlessly, she rasped, ?
??You’re… You’re the man who shot all those people last night.”
Chapter 2
Coburn. C-o-b-u-r-n. First name Lee, no known middle initial.”
Sergeant Fred Hawkins of the Tambour Police Department removed his hat and wiped sweat off his forehead. It had already gone greasy in the heat, and it wasn’t even nine o’clock yet. Mentally he cursed the heat index of coastal Louisiana. He’d lived here all his life, but one never got used to the sultry heat, and the older he got the more he minded it.
He was in a cell phone conversation with the sheriff of neighboring Terrebonne Parish, giving him the lowdown of last night’s mass murder. “Chances are that’s an alias, but it’s the name on his employee records and all that we have to go on at present. We lifted prints off his car… Yeah, that’s the damnedest thing. You’d think he would’ve sped away from the scene, but his car is still parked in the employee lot. Maybe he thought it would be spotted too easily. Or, I guess if you go and kill seven people in cold blood, you’re not thinking logically. Best we can tell, he fled the scene on foot.”
Fred paused to take a breath. “I’ve already put his prints into the national pipeline. I’m betting something will turn up. A guy like this has gotta have priors. Whatever we get on him will be passed along, but I’m not waiting on further info, so you shouldn’t either. Start looking for him A.S.A.P. You got my fax?… Good. Make copies and pass them out to your deputies for distribution.”
While the sheriff was assuring Fred of his department’s capacity for finding men at large, Fred nodded a greeting to his twin brother, Doral, who joined him where he was standing outside his patrol car.
It was parked on the shoulder of the two-lane state highway in a sliver of shade cast by a billboard sign advertising a gentleman’s club that was located near the New Orleans airport. Sixty-five miles to the exit. The coldest drinks. The hottest women. Totally nude.
All sounded good to Fred, but he forecast that it would be a while before he could seek entertainment. Not until Lee Coburn was accounted for.
“You heard right, Sheriff. Bloodiest crime scene I’ve ever had the misfortune of investigating. Full-scale execution. Sam Marset was shot in the back of the head at close range.”
The sheriff expressed his disgust over the viciousness of the crime, then signed off with his pledge to be in touch if the murderous psycho was spotted in his parish.
“Windbag could talk the horns off a billy goat,” Fred complained to his brother as he disconnected.
Doral extended him a Styrofoam cup. “You look like you could use a coffee.”
“No time.”
“Take time.”
Impatiently Fred removed the lid from the cup and took a sip. His head jerked back in surprise.
Doral laughed. “Thought you could use a little pick-me-up, too.”
“We ain’t twins for nothing. Thanks.”