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Jacob Wentzel closed the panel of the secret compartment, believing it’d be better to stay put.
He’d heard all the commotion earlier, when he was busy dumping the crazy lady and a concrete block into the pond. He never did find out who she was.
She wasn’t Mama. That’s what mattered the most to him.
He wanted to get to the hidey-hole in the attic, but cops were everywhere. He was closer to the bridge, so he ran there. Scurried underneath, and hung onto the crossbars to keep away from the water where snakes, mudbugs, and Hell knows what else crawled freely.
It became abundantly clear they were searching for him. Why? He did not know. He was sure he’d covered his tracks every step of the way. One thing he did know was that they’d have his apartment in the city under surveillance.
What they didn’t know was that he had a new place in the French Quarter. Fate surely played a role that day. He’d hole up there. When the time was right, he’d skip town. Maybe hop a train like a hobo. Go out west. Maybe California. Maybe pay his new landlady a visit if her hubby was still out of the country.
When he was at the bridge, he saw them coming for him. Mainly, he saw the beams of many flashlights bobbing this way and that. He felt the way Frankenstein must’ve felt when the village people came for him.
Jacob giggled, girlishly, the stress getting to him.
“Ah well, that’s the way the cookie crumbles. I’ll be long gone after tonight.”
Before going into hiding, leaving Louisiana for good, he had one last thing to do. He wanted to say goodbye to Mama the only way he knew how. He folded her nightgown and lay it on the floor. He believed she would’ve hidden in there if she’d known about it.
BJ was the only writer he personally knew. He told her about the woman in the well hoping she’d write Marie’s story to give her closure. He also wanted it known Virgil was a murderer.
Jacob closed the panel, then the closet door.
Afraid to reveal his hideout, he stood to the side of the octagonal window, and studied the yard with a limited view of it. No flashlight beams. No indistinct radio chatter. No guns and shiny handcuffs. No people. And thank God, no bloodhounds from Hell.
His stomach growled. Hunger overrode his curiosity over why dogs hadn’t been brought in.
Too much rain?
A horrible image struck him.
I’ll bet they’re en route.
“Hey, there’s that pan wrapped in tinfoil on the kitchen table.”
He practically hopped down the stairs. Made it to the second floor without encountering anyone. He patted his pocket, made sure he hadn’t left his flashlight upstairs. There was another flashlight on the floor of the compartment, if he needed it. Before he reached the foyer he knew the front door was closed.
He leaned on the newel post wondering how it had come loose? Held his breath and listened.
Not one single solitary sound.
Just eat and run.
Pointing the flashlight at the floor, he walked fast to the kitchen. Removed the foil. Gagged. The fruit pie (apple?) had spoiled. Lack of refrigeration? A splotch of greenish mold bigger than a silver dollar topped the dried-up crust.
“Bleh!”
He doubted there was anything else to eat. Knew a half empty bottle of whiskey was in the cabinet. Another look at the pie, he was pretty sure the liquor was gone.
“The crazy lady?”
Let’s get this show on the road, Officer O’Rourke always said.
He ran into the barn.
“A flashlight?” Jacob didn’t know how he felt about that.
Wait a second. If this one belongs to BJ, who owns the one in the secret compartment?
“Or vice versa?”
He remained by the entrance, ready to haul ass. Calculated the situation. Eyeballed the area for any other messages. Rubbed the side of his neck. Grew uneasy.
Did they find out Mama had been thrown down the well?
Jacob sighed, wearily. He envisioned the bottom of the black hole, and thought about his mama. Pictured his papa doing the same thing, only he would’ve been sneering, probably guzzling liquor, too.
He was deeply saddened by the memory of her lying down there for many years until three boys happened to stumble upon her. Although he knew where his papa had buried her, it had taken a long time for Jacob to find the courage to go anywhere near the well. When he finally did, he didn’t want to get her out of there because he was terrified of breaking her bones while hauling her up.
For many years. Jacob Wentzel had spent the same amount of time planning his revenge against the person he knew was most responsible for the death of his beloved mama.
“Bérénice Jacquette.”
If she hadn’t been born, his papa wouldn’t have had a reason to kill his wife. Virgil Wentzel killed her as surely as if he had put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger. Leaving her in the loft to bleed to death had been premeditated murder, in Jacob’s eyes.
Virgil could’ve just dumped his Marie in the pond. Jacob suspected the reason he didn’t was because he couldn’t have used her as a prop to keep her son and daughter in line. He needed to physically show them her body. Show them what awaited them if they didn’t act right.
He blamed Mama for many things, but mainly for having the affair, and then for giving birth to an evil child. He’d hidden in the secret place the entire time she was in labor, and prayed for her to die before she gave birth to someone who’d take away any and all affection that rightfully belonged to him.
He recalled his papa’s drunken rampage and how it had frightened him enough to run to the attic in the first place. Recalled seeing Papa drive off with the tiny bundle in the front seat of his pickup truck. Then come back with the spawn of Satan in his arms. Recalled, when Bérénice got a little older, the many times she did black magic shit to cause him real physical pain.
Jacob was relieved beyond belief when she was sent to Chalmette to live with Uncle Jessup and the missus. But for the next eight years, Jacob’s backside suffered the hate and misery of a father’s guilty conscience.
He and his papa lived in wretched silence. Except for when his papa ordered him to do most of the chores his Marie used to do. And that was only when his papa was sober. Back then, Virgil spent a lot of time drinking, down by the old stone well.
More than anything, Jacob remembered how hard he prayed for his sister to die when she was in a coma at the hospital.
Then there’s BJ Donovan. He was lonesome when he met her. They had fun. For a while.
He reckoned he annoyed her with his incessant desire to meet her, to the point where he’d either scared her off or he’d just lost her interest. Whichever the reason, it was damn near impossible for him to leave her alone. Perhaps because he had unburdened his soul to her online, and he, stupidly, thought it might mean something to her.
He still had strong feelings for BJ, but they were of a different nature. All along there’d been a sense of familiarity.
Jacob wiped the tears off his cheeks.
Ready to go, he spotted a black car almost hidden in darkness.
“Sweet Jeebus. Transportation.”
Apprehension seized him by the throat.
He’d done nothing wrong. But seeing Gary Northcutt’s sedan—and he was fairly certain it was Northcutt’s—made him realize his law enforcement career was truly over.
The things a couple of the cops in the search party said about him had frightened him. Somebody must know about the secret of the pond, because it was obvious he’d been set up to take the fall for murders he had not committed.
Killing Eli and Vanessa had been an unfortunate accident. He truly believed that.