What happened next will forever be burned in my mind.
Sheriff Gauvin,
his deputies, Shields, and Aaliyah all showed up at the same time. There were gasps and frozen expressions of horror on everyone.
“Max!” Shields said, and she made to go forward.
But Sheriff Gauvin was quicker. He ripped a pump-action shotgun from one of his deputy’s hands and charged the alligators, shouting, “Stay back, and no one shoots unless I say so.”
The sheriff of Jefferson Davis Parish slowed to a march, shotgun up, its butt welded to his cheek. Without pause, he advanced on the second alligator; it had been scuttling around Acadia, but now it was bearing down on Maxwell. Angling, cutting the beast off, Gauvin let go of the twelve-gauge with his left hand. With his right, he reached out and stuck the barrel in the gator’s eye before pulling the trigger and blowing a fist-size hole in its head with double-aught buckshot.
Driven by some primitive nervous system, the creature’s entire body whipped side to side, and I thought for certain the sheriff was going to get his legs broken or worse.
But for a man in his midfifties, Gauvin moved with quickness and agility, leaping high over the dead gator, pumping a new shell into the chamber, and landing in a crouch two feet from the first one, now straddling Acadia Le Duc.
As it had with the police dog, the bigger, feeding alligator reacted with blinding speed, twisting its head toward the threat to its meal and making a loud, serpentine cough and hiss before lashing back at Gauvin with its tail.
The sheriff jumped again and landed right next to the six-hundred-pound reptile, which threw open its mouth and struck sideways with his upper body and head. The violent move knocked Gauvin over on his back, but not before he shoved the shotgun barrel deep into the creature’s throat.
The alligator’s jaws clamped down on the gun’s steel receiver, leaving the trigger guard right up against its bloody teeth. The beast shook its head, yanking the pistol grip out of the sheriff’s hand.
The butt of the shotgun waved in the air as the alligator scrambled forward, front claws tearing at Gauvin’s legs once and then twice, leaving deep gashes, before both of the sheriff’s hands shot up and grabbed the exposed part of the gun. He got his thumb on the trigger and slammed it backward.
The buckshot blew out the reptile’s spine. It collapsed on top of Gauvin and made a sound like a tire losing air.
CHAPTER
78
IN ALL MY YEARS of policing, I have seen few wounds as gruesome as that one. The alligator’s serrated teeth had torn into Acadia Le Duc’s thigh, ripped out several chunks, and snapped her femur. The splintered bone was visible, and blood fountained with every heartbeat.
“That’s arterial blood!” I shouted, going to Sunday’s woman. I grabbed a piece of rag lying near her and pressed it hard against the wound as she wailed, shook, and shivered and her eyes bugged out from her head.
“An ambulance is on its way, Acadia,” I said. “You’ll live.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the third gator slip back into the water and disappear.
Acadia looked at me like I was the man on the moon, choked out, “After everything, you’re trying to save me?”
“Where’s Sunday?” I asked. “Where’s my family?”
Her eyes started to glaze over, and I shook her. “Stay with me, Acadia. Where’s my family?”
She had managed to free one of her wrists, and she must have been racked with unspeakable pain, because she grabbed my forearm with surprising strength, which made the panther tattoo on her arm coil up. I looked at her and said gently, “Tell me where Sunday has my family. Are they here?”
She said nothing.
“Tell me where they are,” I insisted.
She remained mute but now locked on my gaze.
“Acadia,” I said, unable to control the tremor in my voice. “You can redeem yourself here. You can show some goodness.”
Acadia blinked slowly, and then her eyes softened, and for a moment I thought she was going to tell me.
Then she whispered, “Marcus says there is no redemption, Cross. No God. No absolute morality. Marcus is a universe unto himself. Am I a universe unto my—”
She tried to stay focused on me; her chin moved in small, ragged circles. “Kill me,” she whispered. “I can’t live in a prison, Cross. Kill me. Get your revenge. Be a universe unto yourself.”
I stared in disbelief and horror at what Sunday had done to his accomplice in this whole mad scheme. He’d fed her to the alligators, and yet she defended his philosophy. And now she was asking me to end her life.