5. The Narrow Cut

The tunnel breathed with the damp exhale of decades. Ida Mae dropped to her knees at the mouth of the old ice house, pushing aside a rusted grate that groaned like a wounded animal. The passage beyond was narrow, barely shoulder-width, lined with brick that wept moisture. She clicked on the flashlight, its beam cutting a weak yellow cone through the darkness. The water at her feet was cold and murky, rising to her ankles within the first twenty feet.

She moved forward, one hand on the slimy wall, the other clutching the revolver. Every sound—a drip, a scurry, the distant groan of settling earth—seemed magnified, as if the tunnel were amplifying her fear and feeding it back to her. She thought of her father, a man who had worked twelve-hour shifts in the cotton exchange's boiler room, who had told her stories of the underground passages used by bootleggers during Prohibition. He had shown her the entrance when she was nine, on a Sunday afternoon when her mother was at church. He had said, "This is our secret, chérie. If the world ever gets too loud, you can always go down here and disappear."

She had not understood then. She understood now.

The tunnel branched twice. She took the left fork, then the right, following the mental map Beauvoir had sketched. The water rose to her knees, then her thighs. The flashlight flickered, its batteries protesting the humidity. She paused, shook it, and the beam steadied. Ahead, she saw a metal ladder bolted to the wall, leading up to a manhole cover. She climbed, her wet shoes slipping on the rungs, and pushed the cover aside with a grunt.

She emerged in the courthouse basement—the same basement where the Xerox machine sat, where she had made her copies three days ago. The air was still and stale, heavy with the smell of mildew and old paper. The disposal cart stood exactly where she had left it, against the far wall, stacked with boxes marked for incineration. The yellow envelope was still there, tucked inside the Tate file, near the bottom of the pile.

Her hands shook as she pulled the file out, opened it, and found the envelope intact. She slid the affidavit free—the original, with its full text, its signature, its notary seal, and the watermark she had not noticed before. She held it up to the dim emergency light and saw it: a faint embossed pattern of the parish seal, pressed into the paper's fibers. It was genuine. It was irrefutable.

She folded the affidavit, slipped it into her inside pocket, and was about to replace the empty envelope when she heard footsteps above—heavy, deliberate, two boots on the linoleum floor of the main hallway. She froze, her breath catching. The footsteps stopped directly above her, at the top of the basement stairs.

She clicked off the flashlight and pressed herself against the wall, her heart hammering so loudly she was certain it would give her away. The basement door creaked open, and a shaft of light spilled down the stairs. A figure descended, slow and unhurried. She recognized the silhouette—the broad shoulders, the brimmed hat, the way the man carried his weight like a predator sizing up prey.

T-Boy Thorne.

He reached the bottom of the stairs and stood there, his eyes adjusting to the dimness. She heard him draw a cigarette from a pack, strike a match, and light it. The flare illuminated his scarred face for a single, terrible second.

"I know you're down here, Miss Thibodeaux," he said, his voice conversational, almost friendly. "I've been watching the tunnel since sunset. I figured you'd come for the evidence. You're a predictable girl—brave, but predictable."

She pressed herself tighter against the wall, her fingers curling around the revolver. She had three rounds left. She had fired two at his tires; the cylinder held five, so three remained. She had never shot a man, and she did not want to start now. But she would if she had to.

T-Boy took a slow drag of his cigarette, exhaling a plume of smoke that curled in the still air. "Here's the thing, girl. I don't want to hurt you. I never did. You're just a secretary who found something she shouldn't have. That's not a crime. But what you did with it—that's a problem. You called a reporter. You fed information to the feds. You made this personal."

He took a step forward, and she felt the wall press into her spine. There was nowhere to run. The only exit was the stairs behind him, or the tunnel she had crawled through—but he would cut her off before she reached either.

"Give me the affidavit," he said. "Give it to me, and I'll let you walk out of here. I'll even drive you to your mother's house myself. You can go back to your life, as if none of this happened. But if you don't—" He shrugged, a gesture of infinite weariness. "I've got a shovel in the truck. The swamp's deep, and the gators are always hungry."

She thought of her mother, asleep in Aunt Clothilde's house, unaware that her daughter was facing a man who had murdered at least three people that she knew of. She thought of Lonnie, bruised and waiting, and Beauvoir, with his tired eyes and his quiet determination. She thought of Elroy Tate, who had died in a cell for telling the truth.

And she made a choice.

She stepped out from the wall, raising the revolver in both hands, aiming it directly at T-Boy's chest. "I'm not giving you anything," she said, her voice steady despite the tremor in her arms. "You're going to let me walk up those stairs, and you're going to stay down here until I'm gone. If you follow me, I'll shoot. I've already shot at you once—I won't miss this time."

T-Boy laughed—a low, rumbling sound that echoed off the bricks. "You think that little popgun scares me? I've been shot before, girl. Twice. Both times by men who were better marksmen than you. You're shaking like a leaf in a hurricane. Put the gun down before you hurt yourself."

He took another step forward, and she fired—not at his chest, but at the floor between his feet. The bullet ricocheted off the concrete, singing past his left leg. He stopped, his smile fading into something harder.

"That was a warning," she said. "The next one goes through your knee. You won't walk again. And then I'll take my time crawling out of here while you bleed on the floor."

He assessed her for a long moment—her eyes, her grip, the steadiness of her aim. He was a man who read people for a living, and he saw something in her that gave him pause. Not courage, exactly. Something more dangerous. Desperation.

"Fine," he said, stepping aside, gesturing toward the stairs with a mock gallantry. "Go ahead. But I'll find you again. I always do."

She walked past him, her eyes never leaving his face, the revolver trained on his torso. She climbed the stairs backward, her wet shoes leaving prints on each step. At the top, she pushed the door open with her shoulder and slipped into the empty hallway. She did not run. She walked, fast and purposeful, toward the back exit that led to the alley.

She burst out into the night air, gasping as if she had been underwater. The alley was dark and deserted. She ran toward the old ice house, her legs burning, her lungs screaming. She reached the grate, dropped to her knees, and was about to descend back into the tunnel when a hand grabbed her shoulder.

She spun, the revolver raised, and found herself staring into the face of Lonnie Comeaux. His eyes were wild, his face still bruised, but he was alive.

"Come on," he said, pulling her toward a waiting pickup truck. "Beauvoir's got a secure line. Delphine is waiting for the affidavit. We need to get it to her before Verret's press conference."

She climbed into the passenger seat, her body shaking with adrenaline. Lonnie drove like a man possessed, taking back roads and gravel paths, the headlights cutting through the darkness. They reached a small cabin on the edge of a bayou—a hunting shack, isolated and unremarkable. Inside, Beauvoir was hunched over a radio, a telephone receiver pressed to his ear.

He looked up as they entered, his face breaking into a rare smile. "You got it?"

She pulled the affidavit from her pocket, unfolding it with trembling hands. Beauvoir took it, examined the watermark, and nodded. "This is it. This is the real thing." He handed it to a waiting courier—a young woman in a leather jacket—who folded it into a briefcase and disappeared into the night.

"Where's she taking it?" Ida Mae asked.

"To Delphine. She's got a photographer and a lawyer waiting at the Times-Picayune press room. The story goes to print in four hours. By sunrise, every newsstand in the state will have Verret's face on the front page—with the affidavit printed in full."

She sank into a chair, her legs finally giving out. Lonnie knelt beside her, his hand on her arm. "You did it, Ida Mae. You actually did it."

She wanted to feel triumph, but all she felt was exhaustion—and a lingering dread that refused to fade. T-Boy was still out there. Verret still had money, power, and allies. A newspaper story was not a conviction. It was a beginning, not an end.

The hours crawled by. They drank bad coffee and stared at the radio, waiting for news. At 5:47 AM, the first reports came in—a wire service bulletin that Senator Hollis Verret had canceled his press conference. An hour later, a second bulletin: Verret was issuing a statement denying all allegations, calling them "baseless lies cooked up by political enemies." By seven o'clock, the morning edition hit the streets, and the story was everywhere.

Beauvoir received a phone call from his superior in the Justice Department. The conversation was brief and terse. When he hung up, his face was unreadable.

"Verret's lawyers are filing for a restraining order against the newspaper," he said. "They're claiming the affidavit is a forgery. They've already got an expert witness who's prepared to testify that the watermark doesn't match the parish's official seal. It's a stall tactic, but it might work—at least for a few weeks."

Ida Mae felt the hope drain from her chest. "A forgery? But it's real. I saw it. I held it."

"Real doesn't matter in court. What matters is what the jury believes. And Verret has enough money to buy a dozen experts to say whatever he wants." Beauvoir looked at her with a grim sympathy. "I'm not telling you this to discourage you. I'm telling you because you need to know that the fight isn't over. It's barely begun."

Lonnie stood up, his fists clenched. "So what do we do? We just wait?"

"We wait for Delphine's follow-up. She's got an interview with Yvonne Cormier scheduled for tomorrow. That woman's testimony is our ace. She saw T-Boy Thorne at the levee the night her husband died. She's been afraid to come forward for ten years, but now that the story's breaking, she's ready to talk. If she testifies, Verret's expert witness becomes irrelevant."

The cabin fell silent. Ida Mae looked out the window at the bayou, the morning mist rising like steam from a cauldron. She thought of her mother, safe for now, and of her father, who had shown her the tunnel that had saved her life. She thought of Elroy Tate, whose ghost had guided her hand. And she thought of T-Boy Thorne, who was still out there, waiting for his chance.

She made a decision. She would not wait. She would not hide. She would not let fear dictate her next move.

"I'm going with Yvonne," she said. "To the interview. If she sees me there, if she knows that a secretary from Palmetto Parish stood up to T-Boy and lived, she'll be less afraid. I can give her the courage she needs."

Beauvoir started to object, but Lonnie cut him off. "I'll go with her. We'll protect Yvonne. And if T-Boy shows up, we'll be ready."

Beauvoir looked at them both, his eyes scanning their faces. Then he nodded slowly. "Alright. But you don't move until I give the green light. T-Boy's known to place listening devices. I need to sweep the cabin and the truck before you leave."

He stood and walked outside, leaving Ida Mae and Lonnie alone. They sat in the silence, the weight of everything pressing down on them. Lonnie reached for her hand, and she let him hold it.

"You were brave tonight," he said. "Braver than I've ever been."

"That's not true," she said. "You came back for me. You stood by me when you could have walked away."

"I couldn't walk away. Not from you." He squeezed her hand. "I've known you since we were kids, Ida Mae. You've always been the one who saw the right thing and went after it, no matter the cost. I should have been more like you."

She leaned her head on his shoulder, the exhaustion finally claiming her. They sat like that until Beauvoir returned, his face somber.

"We have a problem," he said. "Delphine just called. Yvonne Cormier is gone. The safe house in Texas—she left voluntarily this morning. She left a note saying she couldn't go through with it. She's too scared."

Ida Mae's heart plummeted. The testimony was gone. The ace was gone.

But as Beauvoir handed her the note, she read it twice, and a slow, cold realization crept over her. The handwriting on the note—it was not Yvonne's. It was the same neat, precise script she had seen on the retraction of Elroy Tate's affidavit. The same hand that had signed off on his death.

T-Boy had gotten to her first.

The room swam. She looked at Lonnie, then at Beauvoir, and she knew that the game had just changed. The affidavit was printed, the story was out, but the witness was lost—and without Yvonne, Verret's lawyers would pick the case apart piece by piece.

But then she remembered something. The yellow envelope. Inside it, beside the affidavit, there had been a second piece of paper—a prison grievance form filed by Elroy Tate, listing the names of the guards who had coerced his retraction. She had not taken it. She had left it in the file, thinking it was irrelevant.

Now she realized: those guards were still alive. They could testify. They could confirm that the retraction was forced, that the original affidavit was true. She had all the pieces—she just needed to get them.

She stood up, her fatigue burning away in a sudden, sharp clarity.

"I know where we need to go next," she said. "The prison. Angola. There's a grievance file with names. We can use it to prove coercion. We don't need Yvonne—we need the prison records."

Beauvoir stared at her. "Angola is a three-hour drive. And it's a state facility—Verret has influence there."

"Then we go anyway," she said. "We go now. And we don't stop until we have those names."

She looked at Lonnie, and he nodded. He was with her.

She walked to the door, the morning sun breaking over the bayou, casting long shadows across the water. She did not know what they would find at Angola, or if the records were still intact. She did not know if T-Boy was already waiting for them. But she knew one thing for certain: she had come too far to turn back now.

She stepped into the light, and the swamp swallowed her again.