Gone, Baby, Gone (Kenzie & Gennaro #4)(39)

I nodded.

Poole smiled.

“Oh,” I said. “Right.”

I went back through the house and got the spade. As I came back through the living room, Helene said, “We outa here soon?”

“Pretty soon.”

She looked at the spade and the plastic gloves on my hands. “You find the money?”

I shrugged. “Maybe.”

She nodded, looked back at the TV.

I started walking again, and her voice stopped me at the doorway to the kitchen.

“Mr. Kenzie?”

“Yeah.”

Her eyes sparkled in the glow from the TV screen in such a way they reminded me of the cats’. “They wouldn’t hurt her. Would they?”

“You mean Chris Mullen and the rest of Cheese Olamon’s crew?”

She nodded.

On the TV a woman told another woman to stay away from my daughter, you dyke. The audience hooted.

“Would they?” Helene’s eyes remained fixed on the TV.

“Yes,” I said.

She turned her head sharply in my direction. “No.” She shook her head, as if doing so would make her wish come true.

I should have told her I was kidding. That Amanda would be fine. That she’d be returned and things would go back to normal and Helene could drug herself with TV and booze and heroin and whatever else she used to cocoon herself from just how nasty the world could be.

But her daughter was out there, alone and terrified, handcuffed to a radiator or a bedpost, electrical tape tied around the lower half of her face so she couldn’t make any noise. Or she was dead. And part of the reason for that was Helene’s self-indulgence, her determination to act as if she could do whatever she chose and there’d be no consequence, no opposite and equal reaction.

“Helene,” I said.

She lit a cigarette, and the match head jumped around the target several times before the tobacco ignited. “What?”

“Are you getting all this finally?”

She looked to the TV, then back at me, and her eyes were moist and pink. “What?”

“Your daughter was abducted. Because of what you stole. The men who have her don’t give a shit about her. And they might not give her back.”

Two tears rolled down Helene’s cheeks, and she wiped at them with the back of her wrist.

“I know that,” she said, her attention back on the TV. “I’m not stupid.”

“Yes you are,” I said, and walked out to the backyard.



Standing in a circle around the mound, we blocked it from the view of any neighboring row houses. Broussard pushed the spade into the dirt and overturned it several times before we saw the wrinkled top of a green plastic bag appear.

Broussard dug a little more, and then Poole looked around and bent over, pulled at the bag, and wrenched it free from the hole.

They hadn’t even tied the top of the bag, just twisted it several times, and Poole allowed it to revolve in his hand, the green plastic crinkling as the tight lines spread apart at the neck and the bag grew wider. Poole dropped it to the ground and the top of the bag opened up.

A pile of loose bills greeted us, mostly hundreds and fifties, old and soft.

“That’s a lot of money,” Angie said.

Poole shook his head. “That, Miss Gennaro, is Amanda McCready.”



Before Poole and Broussard called in the forensics team and medical examiner, we shut off the TV in the living room and ran it down for Helene.

“You’ll trade the money for Amanda,” she said.

Poole nodded.

“And she’ll be alive.”

“That’s the hope.”

“And I have to do what again?”

Broussard lowered himself to his haunches in front of her. “You don’t have to do anything, Miss McCready. You just have to make a choice right now. Us four here”—he waved his hand at the rest of us—“happen to think this might be the right approach. But if my bosses find out I plan to do it this way, I’ll get suspended or fired. You understand?”

She half nodded. “If you tell people, they’ll want to arrest Chris Mullen.”

Broussard nodded. “Possibly. Or, we think, the FBI might put the capture of the kidnapper before your daughter’s safety.”

Another half nod, as if her chin kept meeting an invisible barrier on its way down.

Poole said, “Miss McCready, the bottom line is, it’s your decision. If you want us to, we’ll call this in right now, hand over the money, and let the pros handle it.”

“Other people?” She looked at Broussard.

He touched her hand. “Yes.”

“I don’t want other people. I don’t…” She stood up a bit unsteadily. “What do I have to do if we do it your way?”

“Keep quiet.” Broussard came off his haunches. “Don’t talk to the press or the police. Don’t even tell Lionel and Beatrice what’s going on.”

“Are you going to talk to Cheese?”

I said, “That’s probably our next move, yeah.”

“Mr. Olamon seems to be holding the cards at the moment,” Broussard said.

“What if you just, like, followed Chris Mullen? Maybe he’d take you to Amanda without knowing it?”