Black River (46 page)

Kim Davis looked at the moon over the tree line deep in the Ocala National Forest, where Silas Jackson’s hunter camp bathed in the moonlight. As he stopped the truck she said, “You don’t have to do this…to risk your life. You can let me go, I’ll walk back.”

He shut off the truck’s ignition switch, the motor ticking in the dark. He turned to her and said, “Walk back? You’d never make it out of here alive. There’s panthers. Lots of mean damn bears. More poisonous snakes per square foot than any national forest in the country. And then there’s the crazies. The forest folk who live out here. Most ought to be locked up. They drift in with the seasons. Word gets around, they know not to come to my camp. All it took was putting a shrunken head on a bamboo pole next to my flagpole for a couple of weeks. That got their attention.”

Kim pressed against the truck door. “You’re insane.”

He stared at her, the moonlight pouring through the truck’s front windshield. He rolled down his window, a singsong chorus of cicadas reverberated through the woods. “I might be insane, but honey I’m not dumb. Your boyfriend O’Brien is dumb. He came onto my turf and challenged me. He, Miss Kim, drew first blood. It’s in your honor that I protect you. I’d duel to the death if I thought O’Brien would do it honorable and pace twenty-five steps before turning and firing.”

She said nothing, slapping at a mosquito on her arm. “Can you put your window up? Mosquitoes are biting me.”

“That’s because you have a fine bloodline. You’re a reflection of the Old South, you just don’t know it.”

“You know nothing about me.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. I know a lot about you, woman. I know the foods you like to eat. The wine you like to drink. Mostly Cabernet. The kind of coffee you like, Folgers. You still make it the right way, one pot at a time. Not using those little pods. I even know the time of your last menstrual cycle.”

Kim’s eyes opened wider. Her pulse pounded. “It was you! Your freak! Going through my garbage. You’re sick.”

“I’m a trash archeologist. Much of a person’s life, their past, present, and some of their future, can be told in a bag of their trash. Their diets. The meds they’re taking. The money they owe. The cycles of life are in the trash. Week after week. I know what kind of condom your boyfriend O’Brien uses, and I know your cycle is right about now. Your eggs are dropping and you’re ripe for conception.” He reached for her. She raked her fingernails down his arm, opening the truck door and running hard into the forest.

F
rank Sheldon spared no expense. The entire open deck of
America II
was a floating party, a display of luxurious carousing flavored by the best decadence money could buy. White-jacketed waiters carried silver trays overflowing with finger-food cuts of beef wellington, chilled king crab claws, Beluga caviar and dozens of other gourmet foods. They strolled around the invited guests, stopping to serve the food and answer questions.

The rich and famous sipped Dom Perignon champagne, premium vodkas, gins and whiskeys. Wine, from the finest vineyards in the world, flowed from crystal glasses. Some of the guests danced to a Caribbean band performing near the stern. Others ambled along the deck, the long schooner quietly slipping out of Jacksonville for a short excursion down river.

Sean O’Brien lifted a glass of champagne from a waiter’s tray and wandered the length of the vast sailboat, his eyes shifting from face to face, hearing snippets of conversation, and listening for prompts of things to come. He watched two bearded Civil War re-enactors posing for pictures with the actors and spouses of actors, studio executives and movie investors. The night breeze smelled of expensive perfumes, grilled beef, exotic truffles, sushi and spilled champagne.

Near the bow, O’Brien overheard a shapely blonde actress giggle and smile at her date in a tux, his brown hair neatly parted on the left, gelled and sculpted from a page of the Great Gatsby playbook. She said, “I want to take my heels off and go stand on that long board on the front of the boat like Kate Winslett did in
Titanic
.”

He grinned. “In the olden days of sailing that’s the place where the statue of the naked chick was placed. Mariners believed it kept the sea serpents away.”

“Maybe I’ll stand out there naked before the night is over.” She downed a glass of champagne, pointing to a half dozen people shaking hands with a silver-haired executive producer, the nightlights of the city growing distant in the background. “That’s Lou Kaufman. His movies never lose money. I
have
to be introduced to him. You must introduce me, Darrin.” She trotted off, her date trailing behind her.

Then O’Brien heard another voice. Frank Sheldon. He worked the crowd, making toasts, telling jokes, patting backs, kissing beautiful starlets on their powdered cheeks, his eyes lingering on one statuesque brunette, breasts spilling out of a low-cut, short black dress. Sheldon whispered something into her ear. She smiled, raised a flawless eyebrow above one blue eye and nodded. Sheldon moved on, continuing to be the perfect host.

O’Brien trailed him. Staying out of the direct current of people surrounding Sheldon, but close enough to watch for someone he knew was watching Sheldon. Somewhere on the one-hundred-foot schooner was James Fairmont. O’Brien stopped at a serving table, white linen, black caviar and oysters on the half-shell on a bed of ice. He thought about Nick for a second as he picked up a small cocktail fork and slipped it inside his sports coat pocket.

O’Brien glanced at the moon through the ship’s masts. He saw a bat circling above the tallest mast. Then he heard a British accent, like a murmur in the crowd. A man’s voice. He said, “I’d really enjoy seeing the rest of the vessel.”

O’Brien looked around, watched through the throngs of people, the flashes of jewelry under the moonlight, the power brokering, the actors still acting—forever testing for the next part. The agents, managers, studios heads, the assistants—all moving to the synthetic rhythm of a bad life script. On the stern, the band played on as
America II
sailed deeper south on a real black river.

O’Brien caught a glimpse of James Fairmont straggling behind Sheldon as he headed toward the aft section of the schooner. Fairmont made no eye contact with any of the guests, keeping one hand on the leather satchel
he carried over his left shoulder. Sheldon approached one of the men that O’Brien knew was hired protection, a man with a military haircut, wide chest stretching the black tux. The sentry nodded and whispered something into a small microphone taped to the inside of his thick left wrist.

Sheldon vanished inside a wooden portal door leading from the wheelhouse to somewhere inside
America II
. Less than thirty seconds later, Fairmont did the same. The mercenary spoke again into his sleeve. O’Brien stepped to the railing, the river more than twenty-five below. He typed a text to Dave: Cue Hornsby – the show’s about to start –

Kim Davis’s lungs burned. She ran fast through the forest, the moonlight her guide. She stopped near a large bald cypress tree, out of breath, Spanish moss thick and hanging straight down in the motionless night air. She listened for the sounds of pursuit. She knew Silas Jackson was somewhere out there in dark. Coming closer. She heard the whine of mosquitoes looping around her head, the cry of a nighthawk in the air above the forest. If she could only make one call.
Phone’s in my purse
.

A branch broke. Kim strained her eyes to look through the limbs and undergrowth. Trying to see movement. A wind gust through the trees stirred the boughs, moon lit shadows tiptoed over large ferns and across the forest floor.

She bit her bottom lip and ran. Ran hard. She prayed that she was running toward a road. Maybe an old hunter’s shack someplace in the forest. Anywhere to hide. She could smell campfire smoke in the forest, pinesap and rotting leaves. Kim’s heart pounded so hard it felt as if her breastbone might split.

A beam of light came through the openings in the trees. Kim looked behind her. He was less than one hundred yards away.
Run. Just run
. The light abruptly vanished. Gone. But he wasn’t. She could hear limbs cracking, the dogged pursuit of a predator smelling blood. Within seconds, she splashed through water covering her ankles. She ran through a dark swamp. She heard his voice echoing through her skull, his ominous warning. ‘
More poisonous snakes per square foot than any national forest in the nation.’

Then the water was above her knees. Almost to her hips. Swirling around her, the moon shimmering in the dark broth. She could see her own frightened face reflecting from the surface.
Run
. She turned, tripping over a cypress knee hidden just below the shadowy surface. She fell. Facedown in water the color of black ink. She held her breath, the dreamlike cushion of swamp water in her ear canals. She heard nothing but her own heart thrashing.

She slowly rose to the surface. Only her head emerging, swamp water rolling down her face. Eyes searching between the massive cypress trees standing like gothic custodians of the bog.

She smelled him first.

The stench of a cheap cigar. Then she spotted the tiny orange glow from the tip of the cigar in the night. It smoldered like a one-eyed beast in the forest. The ash inflamed to a laser-like red color during inhalation, diming to orange when he exhaled.

Kim didn’t move, hiding behind cypress stumps, staring at the single red Cyclops’s eye in the distance. He was brazen. Smoking a cigar while hunting. No hurry.
Maybe he won’t look in the water
, she thought.
Maybe he’ll turn to the right or left and search some other areas. Then I double back, take his truck and leave
.

She felt something on the back of her neck. Something digging into her skin. Felt the same tiny teeth chewing between her breasts and then on the inside of her upper arm. She reached behind her neck with one hand, pulling the thing from her skin. Looked at it between her thumb and finger. A black leech, twisting in her fingers. She screamed. Trying to plug the sound of her terror back into her larynx before it escaped. Too late.

Within seconds, Silas Jackson stood at the water’s edge, the flashlight in Kim’s face. He laughed. “I ‘spect you got one of ‘em buggers up your ass. This spot is full of leeches. One of my men nets ‘em out to use them for fishin.’ Let’s go. Get outta there.”

“Go straight to hell.” Kim used her thumb to crush the leech between her breasts, pulling one from her upper arm.

The water exploded a few inches from Kim’s left thigh. A flash of gunfire and the echo of the noise reverberating through the forest. “I said get outta there. Next shot’s in your leg.”

Kim climbed out of the swamp, slipping in the slick mud at the water’s edge. Jackson used his left hand and arm to lift her up. He pushed her against a cypress tree like he was propping up a disjointed doll. He held the cigar between clenched yellow teeth. Eyes wide in the moonlight, nostrils working with a doglike rhythm, testing the molecules in the air.

Kim went rigid. “Don’t touch me!” She raked her fingernails across his scruffy cheek.

“Shut up!” He backhanded her with his right hand, knocking her head against the tree. Then he used his fist, striking her hard in the jaw. Kim went down, knees buckling. She looked at his Civil War boots, the mud on the ridges. She lay there with her face against the cool pine straw and decaying cypress leaves. She spit blood, felt a back tooth knocked out, bits of her flesh torn like tiny pieces of chewed meat in her mouth. She was nauseous, woozy. She leaned over and vomited in the ferns and pine straw.

Silas Jackson squatted, grabbed her chin with a strong, heavy hand and turned her head left and right, his eyes drinking her in, examining, as if he was inspecting a fish in the market. “You made me do this.” His voice was just above a whisper. “This won’t be good, not while you’re ripe, in the cycle. You need to be calmed down and cleaned up. Then we will commence.” He placed an open palm against her stomach. “You’re handpicked by God to birth a new leader. You’re the hope for the rise of the South.”