Cold Vengeance - Lincoln Child [75]
“Don’t know,” Hiram replied. “He didn’t say.”
Betterton had spent a most entertaining couple of days looking into Pendergast’s background. It hadn’t been easy, and he could just as well have spent a whole week at it. Maybe even a month. The man was in fact one of the New Orleans Pendergasts, a strange old family of French and English ancestry. The word eccentric didn’t even begin to describe them—they were scientists, explorers, medical quacks, hucksters, magicians, con men… and killers. Yes, killers. A great-aunt had poisoned her entire family and been shut up in an insane asylum. An uncle several times great had been a famous magician and Houdini’s teacher. Pendergast himself had a brother, who had apparently vanished in Italy, about whom there were many strange rumors but few answers.
But it was the fire that intrigued Betterton most of all. When Pendergast was a child, a mob in New Orleans had burned down the family mansion on Dauphine Street. The ensuing investigation had not been able to clarify exactly why. Although nobody admitted to being part of the mob, various people questioned by police gave different and conflicting reasons as to why the mansion was torched: that the family was practicing voodoo; that the son had been killing local pets; that the family was plotting to poison the water supply. But when Betterton had sorted through all the conflicting information, he sensed something else behind the mob action: a carefully crafted and highly subtle disinformation campaign by a person or persons unknown, aimed at destroying the Pendergast family.
It appeared the family had a powerful, hidden enemy…
The airboat bumped over a particularly shallow mud bank, and Hiram gunned the engine. Ahead, the vegetation-choked channel forked. Hiram slowed to a virtual standstill. To Betterton, the two channels looked identical: dark and gloomy, with vines and cypress branches hanging down like smokehouse sausages. Hiram rubbed his chin quizzically, then glanced upward as if to get a celestial fix from the braided ceiling overhead.
“We’re not lost, are we?” Betterton asked. He realized that trusting himself to this aged rummy might not have been a prudent move. If anything happened way out here, he’d be dead meat. There was not a chance in hell of his finding his way out of this swampy labyrinth.
“Naw,” Hiram said. He took another pull at the bottle and abruptly gunned the airboat into the left-hand passage.
The channel narrowed still further, choked with duckweed and water hyacinth. The hooting and chattering of invisible creatures grew louder. They maneuvered around an ancient cypress stump, sticking up out of the muck like a broken statue. Hiram slowed again to negotiate a sharp bend in the channel, peering through a thick curtain of hanging moss that blocked the view ahead.
“Should be right up yonder,” he said.
Goosing the engine gently, he carefully nosed the airboat through the dark, slime-choked passage. Betterton ducked as they pushed through the curtain of moss, then rose again, peering intently ahead. The ferns and tall grasses appeared to be giving way to a gloomy clearing. Betterton stared—then abruptly drew in his breath.
The swamp opened into a small, roughly circular stand of muddy ground, ringed by ancient cypresses. The entire open region was scorched, as if it had been bombed with napalm. The remains of dozens of fat creosote pilings rose, burnt and blackened, thrusting toward the sky like teeth. Charred pieces of wood lay strewn everywhere, along with twisted bits of metal and debris. A damp, acrid, burnt odor hung over the place like a fog.
“This is Spanish Island?” Betterton asked in disbelief.
“What’s left of it, I reckon,” Hiram replied.
The airboat moved forward into a slackwater bayou, sliding up onto a muddy shore, and Betterton stepped out. He walked forward gingerly over the rise of land, pushing debris around with his foot. The rubble was spread out over at least an acre, and it contained a riot of things: metal desktops, bedsprings, cutlery, the burned-out remains of sofas, antlers,