One Blood (2 page)

Randy sat behind his desk, hunched over two satellite images depicting the path of what he hoped was the last hurricane of the season. According to these snapshots, the storm would make landfall somewhere between Mississippi and Texas in the next three days. Having survived innumerable hurricanes during the past eight years in office, he knew the playbook well. Randy made a mental note to set up a meeting with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and then buzzed his secretary.

“
Robin, get me fifteen minutes with the President. If his people give you any flack, remind them that he still owes me dinner for losing that bet.”

“
Yes sir.”

While hanging up, he caught his reflection in the window. Sometimes Randy didn’t even recognize the elder statesman staring back at him. He smiled at the slightly distorted image. His hazel eyes brimmed with intellect and empathy. His laser-whitened teeth were attractive and reassuring. His square jaw and deep dimples, which his first campaign manager had often referred to as “
the lady-vote getters
,” were working their collective mojo.

And underneath the polish remained a hint of the young rabble-rouser he’d begrudgingly outgrown.

Underestimated from day one.

Randy was counting on that underestimation as his second and final term as governor drew to a close. He didn’t possess his late father’s intimidating persona, booming voice, or piercing blue eyes, but that didn’t stop him from becoming the youngest man in the history of the state to hold a mayorship, and at fifty-seven he believed he had a strong chance of succeeding George W. Bush when he bowed out in 2008. The tragic events of September 11th would guarantee the need for strong, yet charismatic leadership in this country and Randy was just the man for the job.

But that was still six years away.

He checked the time. 4:20 p.m. His daughter, Karen, should be finishing up her birthday spa appointment and heading home, where a gleaming white Mercedes SLK roadster wrapped in a bright red bow sat in the driveway waiting. He wanted to make sure her eighteenth birthday was the best one yet—after all, you only turn eighteen once.

Randy did not have good luck when it came to eighteenth birthdays. Randy’s father, Joseph, died just three days after Randy turned eighteen and then ten years ago, his son Kristopher was killed three days after his eighteenth birthday by a thug gangbanger named Lincoln Baker.

The papers sure had a field day with that one.

They called Randy the ultimate survivor, captioned under horrible headshots of his deceased mother, father, and son. They rehashed all the terrible memories Randy had tried so desperately to banish into the darkness. It was no wonder he became so sick.

Brain cancer was the diagnosis. It was 1994. His first term as governor was barely a month old when a team of neurological oncologists informed him that his odds of making it through the tumor-removal procedure were both “one in ten million” and his “only hope”. Without surgery, he’d be dead in six months. Randy replied, “hope is not a strategy,” and opted instead for an experimental radiation therapy. A year later, he was declared cancer free. But his hair never grew back; a small price to pay.

The Ultimate Survivor
became his mantra and he rode it all the way to a landslide second gubernatorial term in 1998, only to nearly lose it all when a radical militant organization called the Black Mob placed bombs in the bowels of the Isle of Capri Riverboat where Randy was scheduled to deliver his acceptance speech. Ironically, he owed his life to his daughter. Karen had overdosed earlier that day on Coral’s painkillers in a near-successful suicide attempt, so when the bombs went off, killing thirty-two people and injuring countless others, Randy was standing vigil at his daughter’s bedside with his hysterical wife.

But the papers had it all wrong. Randy was no survivor. He was cursed. Cursed to watch his loved ones die. Cursed with tremendous success in his professional life and extreme incompetence in his personal life. And though they’d called his mother’s death a tragic accident, his father’s death a suicide, and his son’s death a murder—Randy knew better.

The ringing of his cell phone rescued him from these thoughts. He brightened at seeing Lake City PD on the caller ID. There was only one man it could be, the Chief of Police himself.

“
Billy Boy!” he greeted Bill Edwards. “What’s up? How goes life in Pirate City?”

“
Hey ya’ Ran, you sitting down?”

“
No, I’m ice skating. Of course I’m sitting down!” Randy could tell his oldest friend, the classic worrier, was perturbed. Randy furrowed his brow. The last time Bill called him out of the blue, it was with bad news.

“
Ran, I really messed up this time. Paula’s dead. Please help me.”

“
You’re not in trouble again, are you? You know what? I don’t even want to know. I’ve got enough drama to deal with ‘round here. You seen the Weather Channel lately?”

“
This is serious,” Bill replied in a professional, measured tone with no trace of humor. “I just got a call from the Racquet Club. They say someone signed in trying to impersonate Karen. Did you or Coral order a massage for her today?”

Randy’s good spirits vanished. “Coral did,” he answered. “It’s Karen’s birthday. Who took her spa appointment?”

“
Jessica Breaux,” Bill replied. “They caught her going at it with one of the massage therapists.” He paused. “I’ve got another call coming through, hold on.”

Bill clicked over, leaving Randy to contemplate his daughter’s disappearance as classical music played in the background. The first time Karen brought Jessica home from school, Coral warned him that the girl was nothing but trouble. Randy observed the teenager’s coal black hair, dark eyeliner, nose and tongue rings, dragon tattoos snaking around her biceps, fishnet stockings, peeling black fingernail polish, and agreed. He recalled thinking that something was seriously wrong with his kids—they just insisted on associating themselves with the lowest common denominators, first Kristopher and now Karen.

Randy’s calm was wavering. He was used to getting calls about his wild daughter’s erratic behavior; it was something he had almost come to expect, much like high taxes or criticism from the press. But what Bill was alluding to was impossible. Coral and Karen had been assigned twenty-four hour security ever since Kristopher’s death. How could she have shaken her guards?

Randy swallowed, tasting metal in the back of his throat.

Where are my Rolaids?

He jerked open the top left desk drawer, revealing his private pharmacy. Pulling too hard, the drawer flew out of its slot and clattered to the ground, scattering orange canisters, pill packs, and bottles filled with colorful elixirs around his feet. Before he could set things right, Bill clicked back over.

“
Ran, you still there?” he asked.

“
I’m right here, Bill. So what’s this Jessica business again?” He scanned the floor frantically and finally located the acid reducers buried beneath a pill pack of antibiotics. As he popped one, his heart-rate reducing beta-blockers called up to him, so he swallowed two of them as well.

“
One of my guys just found a wrecked motor bike out on Freeman Road by Barton Coliseum. Somebody tried to hide it in the weeds off the side of the road, but they must have been in a rush because it wasn’t hidden so good. He ran the plates and guess whose bike it is?”

“
Jessica’s, right?” Randy’s palms had turned to blocks of ice, a telltale sign he was about to experience a panic attack. He regulated his breathing, sucking in air for a count of four and pushing it out for a count of eight until he felt his heart-rate begin to slow.

“
My guy found two pairs of skid marks not far off,” Bill continued, “one most likely made by the bike, and another from a much larger vehicle—one with four-wheel drive. There was a bloody trail leading from where the bike was ditched to the start of the skid marks. It looks like whoever was bleeding was dragged to the vehicle from the ditch.”

“
Thanks for the details, Bill, but Karen doesn’t ride motorcycles,” Randy replied, squelching the evil vision of his daughter crushed beneath a Harley.

“
Ran, Jessica admitted to loaning her bike to Karen. Said it was a birthday gift. Do you get where I’m going with this? It looks like somebody knocked Karen off the motorcycle and into the ditch on purpose and then dragged her into the back of some sort of truck or S.U.V.”

Clarity broke through Randy’s natural coping mechanisms of denial and rationalization. His eyes narrowed as he mentally recited his personal mantra:
confront the brutal facts, focus on what you can control, be proactive.
He sucked in as much oxygen as his lungs could handle. “Okay,” he said, after exhaling. “So you think someone took my Karen. But that can’t be right, because if she was…kidnapped, there would be a ransom note, right? Where’s the note, Bill?”

“
That’s what that call was about,” Bill replied. “My guy found it in the bike’s glove compartment. It’s being delivered as we speak.”

“
Did he read it?”

Bill’s hesitation told Randy all he needed to know.

“
Who else knows about this?” Randy asked, praying that Bill had contained this thing.

“
Come on, Ran. Let me do my job. If I don’t follow procedure, the Feds will be living in my colon.”

“
So you turned it over to the FBI?”

“
Not yet,” Bill replied, sighing. “Only Officer Abshire, myself, and the Racquet Club manager know anything.”

“
And we’re going to keep it that way, right?”

“
Haven’t I always been there for you? But please don’t ask me to risk my job. These first few hours are crucial; especially first contact, and frankly I could use the extra resources the Feds bring to the table.”

“
Don’t ask you to risk your job?” Randy repeated, seeing white spots before his eyes. “I believe smashing in your cheating wife’s head with a brick did a pretty good job of that. You wouldn’t have a job to lose if I hadn’t gotten you off, remember that.”

“
That’s not fair, Ran…”

“
It’s not about fairness,” Randy replied. “One hand washes the other. Always has, always will.”

He could almost hear Bill’s brain working trying to come up with a suitable response. “But…but going public could help flush the kidnappers out—”

Randy cut him off. “Save it. There’s more to this than you know. Meet me at the house in an hour and I’ll fill you in. In the meantime, I need you to keep things quiet for me. I can trust you to do that, right?

“
Of…of course. I—”

“
Good.” Randy hung up. He suppressed his urge to drown four Xanax in alcohol. He needed a clear mind to think. Panic was paralysis. Not an option. He closed his eyes; his mind flooded with scenario after scenario.

Where are you, Karen?

An angry tear snaked down Randy’s clenched face as he managed to slide the drug drawer into its slot.

“
Everything alright in here, sir?”

Randy sat up quickly and saw his secretary standing in the doorway. “Yes, yes. Everything’s fine.” He turned and wiped away the moisture on his face. “I need you to cancel the rest of my appointments today. I have to get back home. Please call the chopper for me.”

“
Will do, sir.”

* * * * *

Later, as he entered the helicopter cabin, Randy couldn’t get the image of that old newspaper headline out of his head. The Ultimate Survivor. He closed his eyes and saw his son’s lifeless blue irises staring back at him. The bloody handprints on his cheeks. Randy shut his eyes as tightly as he could until a single ominous thought remained.

Maybe I really am cursed.

* * * * *

Chapter Two

Friday

Lake City, LA

Randy struggled to compose himself prior to arriving at the Lafitte plantation—his weekend refuge from the Governor’s mansion in Baton Rouge. His ancestor, Luc Lafitte, built the formidable waterfront estate in the early 1800’s. After World War II, his father reclaimed the family’s land and rebuilt the plantation. Upon inheriting the land, Randy erected what he thought of as his “American Chateau.” The only trace of what stood before was the weathered live oak tree just off the driveway that Randy believed would outlive them all.

Randy stared at the tree, oddly named Melinda Weeps, still mulling over the best way to explain Karen’s disappearance to Coral. He decided to cross that chasm when he came to it.

Bill pulled into the circular driveway in an unmarked car.

Randy felt a migraine brewing. He greeted Bill and invited him inside. He sounded calm enough, even though the compulsion to rip Bill’s gun from his belt, shoot him, and then himself nearly overtook him. Instead, Randy opened the sealed envelope Bill handed him, unfolded the paper inside and read:

THE ONLY WAY THREE PEOPLE CAN KEEP A SECRET IS IF TWO OF THEM ARE DEAD BUT SOME SECRETS ARE JUST TOO BIG TO BE CONTAINED IF YOU WANT TO KEEP YOURS SAFE GO TO THE PAY PHONE ON AUGUST STREET BEHIND THE 7 ELEVEN AT EXACTLY 11 PM TONIGHT DO NOT BE LATE OR WE WILL KILL HER