Lethal (Lee Coburn)

“Are you shore?” Mrs. Arleeta Thibadoux squinted doubtfully. “ ’Cause they’re crazy, mean kids, always into trouble of one kind or another. I ’spect they do drugs.”

Tom VanAllen had yielded the floor to Fred Hawkins, letting the police officer interview the owner of the small boat that had gone missing in the approximate area where Lee Coburn had last been seen. Or was thought to have last been seen. That he was the man the motorist with the flat tire had spotted as he ran into the woods couldn’t be confirmed either, but it was all they had, so they were following it up as though it was a strong lead.

The trio of boys of questionable repute, who lived a quarter mile from Mrs. Thibadoux, had been interrogated and dismissed as the suspected boat thieves. Last night, they’d been in New Orleans with several friends prowling the French Quarter. They’d slept over—passed out, more accurately—in the van belonging to one of those friends and had just straggled home, hungover and bleary-eyed, just as Tambour police had arrived to question them.

This had been explained to Mrs. Thibadoux, who wasn’t quite ready to rule them out as the culprits. “I had to holler at them just a few days ago. Saw them down there at the dock messing around with my boat.”

“Their friends can vouch for their whereabouts since eight o’clock last night,” Fred told her.

“Hm. Well.” She sniffed. “That boat weren’t worth much, anyhow. I hadn’t took it out since my husband died. Thought many times about selling it but never got around to it.” She grinned, revealing a space where a critical tooth should have been. “It’ll be worth more money now if that killer got away in it. If you find it, don’t let nobody do nothing to it.”

“No, ma’am, we won’t.”

Fred tipped his hat to her and made his way past the bird dogs sprawled on her porch. As he came down the steps, he opened a stick of gum, offering the pack to Tom.

“No thanks.” Tom swiped a trickle of sweat off his forehead and waved at the swarm of gnats that had taken a liking to him. “You think Coburn took her boat?”

“Could’ve just got loose from her dock and drifted with the current,” Fred said. “But she swears it was secure. In any case, we gotta assume it was Coburn and try to locate it.”

Frustration made Fred’s reply sound terse, even obligatory. Tom could tell that the police officer’s patience was wearing thin. The longer Coburn was at large, the better his odds for escaping. Fred was beginning to feel the pressure. He was giving the chewing gum a workout.

“My office called while you were talking to Mrs. Thibadoux,” Tom said. “The search of the trucks hasn’t yielded anything.”

The first thing he’d done last night, after being alerted to the multiple murder, was to order that all the trucks in the Royale fleet be stopped along their routes and thoroughly searched.

“I didn’t expect it to,” Fred said. “If Coburn had an accomplice who whisked him away in a company truck, or a buddy who provided him a getaway, he could have been dropped anywhere.”

“I’m aware of that,” Tom said testily. “But the drivers are being held and questioned all the same. And using the company manifests, we’re checking out anyone who was in that warehouse within the past month. Coburn could have forged an alliance with someone who worked for any of the companies Royale does business with. Maybe more than one.”

“Nothing’s missing from the warehouse.”

“That we know of,” Tom stressed. “Coburn could have been stealing for a while, a little at a time, and it just hadn’t caught up with him yet. Maybe his embezzlement wasn’t exposed until yesterday, and when Sam challenged him, he went haywire. Anyhow, I’ve got agents working that angle.”

Fred shrugged as though to say it was the federal government’s time and manpower that were being wasted. Sardonically he said, “You can question Coburn about that when we catch him.”

“If it’s us.”

“It’ll be us,” Fred growled with resolve. “He’s still in the area or I’m not three-quarters Coonass.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“I can feel him like hairs on the back of my neck standing on end.”

Tom didn’t argue. Some law enforcement officers had innate crime-solving skills that had inspired their career choice. Tom wasn’t one of them. He’d always wanted to be an FBI agent, to work in that environment, but he’d never deluded himself into believing that he possessed extraordinary powers of detection or deduction. He relied strictly on training and procedure.

He knew he didn’t call to mind the sexy, glamorous image of an FBI agent that Hollywood portrayed—steely-eyed, iron-jawed men defying machine-gun bullets as they chased gangsters in fast cars.

The perils Tom faced were of another kind altogether.

He cleared his throat to shake off that disturbing thought. “So you think Coburn is out there somewhere.” He shaded his eyes against the sun, which hadn’t yet slipped below the tree line. He could hear the search helicopter hovering not too far away but couldn’t see it in the glare. “Chopper might spot the boat.”

“Might. But probably won’t.”

“No?”

Fred relocated his gum to the other side of his mouth. “It’s been up there going on two hours. I’m thinking Coburn’s too smart to let himself be sighted that easily. It’s not like that chopper can sneak up on him. Meanwhile we’ve got police boats trolling miles—”

A sharp whistle drew their attention to the ramshackle boat dock fifty yards from Mrs. Thibadoux’s dwelling. Doral Hawkins was waving his arms high above his head. VanAllen and Fred jogged down the grassy slope that was littered with junk, relics from salvage yards and garage sales that had been purchased, then left to the mercy of salt air.