Haunted (20 page)

He made a mewling sound so childlike, it was heartbreaking—frustration, indignity. But there was nothing he could do to change what had happened. Although he tried, saying, “I really wish you’d give me that damn pistol.”

Behind us, the Land Rover was accelerating, not slowing: four bright fog lights mounted on the roof.

“You’re going to get me killed, too, Belton. Please don’t argue.”

The man sputtered, “I give up!” He stumbled to his feet and went toward the river, crashing through bushes with his weight. A moment later, he called, “I found the path.”

I stayed where I was and faced the Land Rover, the pistol level in both hands. I had never used the gun at night before and was surprised that its sights glowed like numerals on a watch: three intersecting green dots. The sights made it easier to draw a bead on the Land Rover’s windshield. As an afterthought, I thumbed
the hammer back, then touched my finger to the trigger and waited. Stood there in full view and didn’t flinch even when a spotlight snapped on and found me.

Shoot Theo first through the driver’s-side window.
That’s what I decided to do.
Shoot Carmelo next. And shoot him again if he exits carrying that shotgun.

I wasn’t afraid. Belton’s childlike mewling had changed me in some cold and empty way. There was no indecision. No quibbling with my conscience. No labored breathing or panicky voice that urged me to flee. It was as if a darkness had been set loose inside me. I felt free and focused and sure, as the Land Rover bore closer, speeding as if to crush me, bouncing tail-high over ruts.

Let them see you,
I thought.
Make sure they know who is behind these bullets.

I did . . . Then, when the vehicle suddenly braked to a halt, I felt a trickling disappointment—not relief. Fifty yards was a risky shot for a pistol that contained only seven bullets. I didn’t shoot.

A shotgun appeared from the passenger’s window. I ducked when Carmelo fired one blind shot but stood taller after pellets had rained down through the foliage. Fifty yards was also too far for a double-barreled shotgun.

Theo ground the gears. The vehicle crept closer. Once again, I took aim and placed my finger on the trigger while the spotlight illuminated what I was doing . . . possibly, even what I was thinking:

Shoot Theo first. One round. Then one for Carmelo. Maybe the bullets will pierce the windshield, maybe they won’t—let God decide.

My thinking was so clear and sure.

The Land Rover stopped again. More grinding of gears, then Theo found reverse and backed away fast while the transmission whined. Carmelo yelled a profanity out the window just before the vehicle lurched forward, then kicked dirt toward the moon and sped away.

“Did you fire that shot?” Belton had returned to check on me.

“Cowards,” I said, watching the Land Rover. “Both them just cowards. They ran away.”

“You hit their car?”

I used the de-cocking lever so the pistol could ride safely in my backpack. It made a satisfying steel-on-steel click. “They didn’t give me a chance.” I walked past Belton toward the river. “You know where it is, so show me the path.”

•   •   •

T
HE ALUMINUM BOAT
that awaited was flat-bottomed, painted green, with a small outboard motor that coughed and sputtered but didn’t fire the first few times I pulled the starter rope.

“Use those oars,” I told Belton. “You row while I work on this. It’s probably a bad fuel connection.” I pushed the boat away from the bank and felt a weightless sense of freedom. The moon filled a crevice between the trees where wind gusted from the northwest, but the water was calm.

“Oarlocks,” he said as if reminding himself what to do. “North, the guy told us, right? Is that north?” Belton pointed upriver with an oar.

I said, “If I get this engine started, maybe we should risk being seen by the campground people. There’s nothing north of here but
wild country and cattle. If we go south, the Caloosahatchee is only fifteen miles or so, then another few miles east to Labelle. We can call police from there.” I looked up from the fuel tank. “You explored this river with Carmelo, what do you think?”

“That’s the problem. Carmelo lives in a houseboat about three miles south of the RV park, and there are more houseboats where the river widens. I don’t know if they’re all buddy-buddy, but I doubt if we could get past without being seen. One phone call and he’d run us down with that Bass Cat of his.” Belton fitted the second oar into the lock, then spun us around with an expertise that was encouraging. “We’ll start north and see how it goes, okay?”

The gas tank was plastic with a heavy plastic screw top. I burped the tank, checked the fittings, and tried again. The little 15 horsepower engine was too simple to need computer chips yet still wouldn’t start. “Why in the world would he loan us a bad engine?”

The aluminum boat surged forward, oars dripping. Belton replied, “He knew your name. Who is he?”

“We’ve never met, but . . . Well, I’m not sure. Tyrone, probably. I didn’t get a close look at him.”

“I wonder how he got your backpack.”

“He must have beaten Theo to my SUV. I don’t know why he’d want to help us—I just wish he had better judgment when it came to boats.”

“Maybe it’s because of what happened to Lucia.”

I unclipped the fuel line from the engine and squeezed the rubber bulb until pressure built. “It was an ugly thing to see, Belton. Let’s not talk about it.”

“I met her and her friends my first night here. There was
something nasty about those three. Or sinister. I’m not sure how to describe it.
Mean
, I guess.” The boat skated ahead, the oarlocks creaked, while frogs and night birds trilled. “Hannah . . . if you killed Lucia, I’m sure you had no choice. We were kidnapped. The police will understand that.”

“The chimp got his hands on her,” I said. “It was . . . awful. He’ll kill us, too, if we don’t get away from here.”

“You don’t think that . . .
thing
is smart enough to come after us? He picked me up like I was nothing, could’ve ripped my arms off. I don’t know why he didn’t. Theo and Carmelo are bad enough.”

“The chimp knows what I look like, knows my scent, too. I cut him pretty badly with a razor—”

“Good!”

“And I tricked him into grabbing a coral snake.”

“A snake? Outstanding. Then he’s dead by now.”

“I’m not sure he was bitten. Even if he was, it’s a slow poison. What I’m telling you is, Oliver the chimp has got his reasons to attack me. You should know that in advance.”

“As if I’d leave you. He’s just a damn animal. Short attention span and all that. No . . . Carmelo’s the one we need to worry about.”

“The girl Oliver killed, Krissie, she wouldn’t agree.”

Belton murmured, “Ah yes . . . poor little thing,” then went silent and concentrated on the oars while I knelt in the boat’s stern. It was possible the carburetor was flooded. I pulled the rope starter several times, then reconnected the fuel hose. In the microsilence that followed came the baffled roar from far downriver of an outboard motor starting.

Belton continued to row but now harder. “That’s Carmelo’s Bass Cat. He’ll come here first, thinking we’re on foot.” He started to say something else but then jerked around in his seat. “What the hell was that?” Oars out of the water, the man stared at the nearby shore.

“Did you see something?”

“You didn’t hear it? Branches breaking, something high up in the trees, I could’ve sworn.”

I crouched to get the pistol while my eyes searched, seeing stars above the river’s gloom. The tree canopy was a ridge of gray that pulsated in the wind. “How far?”

“Just over there. But now . . . I don’t know. Maybe I imagined it.”

I said, “Cross your fingers and pray this works.” I leaned over the motor and yanked the rope. After two failures, I opened the choke and tried again. Finally the engine caught, belched smoke, and fired to life. I slammed the choke closed and sat with the tiller in my left hand. “Get those oars in and move forward. Let’s see if I can get this thing on plane.”

Belton did it, but his eyes remained focused on trees that lined the shore, a silver tunnel of oak and moss that followed us as we snaked upriver in a boat that wasn’t fast and plowed a wake.

Carmelo was following us. I could feel the rumble of his engine through our hull despite the smoke and clatter of the little outboard. Nothing to see behind us, though, because we had rounded several bends, and another sharp turn lay ahead. I said, “He’s following our motor slick.”

“Our what?”

I motioned toward a trail of froth left by the outboard’s exhaust. “He knows there’s a boat ahead of him.”

“But he can’t be sure it’s us. It could be anybody—unless Tyrone set us up.”

“Tyrone wouldn’t do that,” I said, which came out sharper than intended. “We can’t outrun him, we have to find a place to hide. Do you recognize this part of the river? We need a spot too shallow or too narrow for him to follow.”

Belton sat facing me, looking aft, still fixated on the branches
he’d heard breaking ten minutes before. “A spotlight. Carmelo just turned on a spotlight.”

I glanced back to see a smoky beam ricochet off the clouds. “That’s good. The moon’s bright enough, he’d only use a light to search for us onshore. That means he’s not sure we’re in a boat. If he was sure, he’d be on us by now. Top end, that Bass Cat probably does sixty.”

Belton said, “Then I was right,” and allowed his eyes to explore ahead. “We never got more than a few miles north of the RV park. It gets narrow fast and Carmelo was worried about damaging his propeller. There was a little spot I wanted to see. I suggested we use his trolling motors, but he wouldn’t give in. This was two days ago.” He swung his legs around to face forward. “I remember a place where the river forks. Oh, and a couple of feeder creeks where Carmelo said the bass fishing was particularly good.” His head swiveled like slow radar. “I don’t know . . . it all looks so different at night.”

I pivoted the tiller without slowing for the next turn and followed the concave bank. The current wasn’t strong enough to abrade snags that lay beneath the surface, but shoals and sunken limbs were easy to spot because the moon was bright behind low sailing clouds. Around the next bend, trees funneled closer, a section of river so narrow it would be difficult for Carmelo to spin his twenty-foot Bass Cat around without coming to a stop. I asked, “Does this look familiar?”

“It’s hard to see anything until we’re past it. I wish we had a light.”

“In my bag there’s a flashlight, but I don’t want to use it unless we have to.” I craned my head forward. “There . . . to your left . . . does that look like an opening to a creek?”

It was, but I plowed past because there was another opening ahead and to our right—a pool of shadows like the mouth of a cave where low trees sealed the entrance. I slowed the boat and idled into the bushes after telling Belton, “Duck your head, then get the oars ready. Unless you want me to row.”

“You’re kidding. We’d need a machete to cut our way in here.” He was fighting off leaves and spiderwebs.

I killed the engine, stood, and snapped a few limbs, letting them hang. As I did, the rumble of Carmelo’s boat moved closer, no spotlight showing now. “Okay . . . help me push us back into the river. Once we’re clear, I’ll row. “

“Row where?”

I waited until I had the boat moving, skating across the surface like a water spider. “He’ll follow our motor slick and think we somehow disappeared into that cut. Or even get out to explore on foot. That’ll give us time to find a hiding spot in the creek we just passed.”

“Smart girl.” Belton nodded, but then reconsidered. “I don’t know . . . We’ll be on the same side of the river as the serpentarium. Maybe we should keep going.”

“There’s no time,” I said. “Open my bag. There’s mosquito netting in there and spray. We’ll need it.”

Belton replied, “I still think the other side of the river is safer.”

It wasn’t snakes he was worried about.

•   •   •

C
ARMELO AND
T
HEO
were in the Bass Cat, close enough to hear their voices but impossible to see because we were twenty yards up a feeder creek, hidden under moss and limbs, when they stopped and used the spotlight.

Theo’s voice: “Boats don’t just disappear. See the broken branches?”

Carmelo: “Get that damn light out of my eyes. More likely, they went to the road and hitchhiked. Probably already talked to the cops. Fat old man, should’a broke his neck and taken all them maps and files. How you think he knows so much?”

“You’re saying a boat can
disappear
? I don’t see any slick upriver. Their trail ends here.”

“That don’t mean nothing if they run close to the bushes.”

“Tree branches don’t break themselves. Take the shotgun and get in the water. “

“Huh?”

“Hike in there and have a look.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Because you still owe me five grand for this goddamn boat, that’s why. No . . . I’ll hand you the gun
after
you’re over the side. They can’t be far.”

Garbled complaints from Carmelo preceded the splash of a man lowering himself into the water.

“A motor slick don’t mean nothing if she run close. The girl’s a fishing guide. That’s something a fishing guide would do. And not bad-lookin’ neither, if you know what I mean.” Laughter.

“Just do what I tell you.”

“The boy genius, I keep forgetting. You don’t think she’s got a nice rack? Well, she does—I found out for sure when I patted her down. And them legs—long legs can be fun on a woman.”

Theo replied with something too rude to repeat, then added, “Like a stork—she’s all yours.”

“I take you up on that one. Man . . . this muck . . . it like walking in shit.” More splashing, then silence. “They’d’ve needed a chain saw to go any farther.”

“Keep looking. They might have found a canoe. Maybe the one with the electric motor—that thing’s fast. I told you to find out which boat’s missing.”

“Trolling motors don’t leave a slick, man. Hell . . . there ain’t nothing in here to see. Call the midget twins. You should have heard from them by now. We’re wasting time.”

“Only if someone tries to slip past the docks. That’s what I told them. You’re saying it’s too narrow even for a Gheenoe? They could have taken the one with the kicker.”

“Look for yourself.”

“Well, someone broke these branches. Why would they bother?”

“While we’re standing here jawing, that girl and old man could be getting away. Another mile or so north, it’s too narrow for us. Depends on what they stole—
if
they’re in a boat, which I doubt they are. You know what tickles me? Both them marks actually believed I was simpleminded.”

“Yeah, well, you haven’t convinced me. Come on. We’ll take a look upriver.”

Carmelo said to Theo, “How can I when you’re blinding me with that damn light?”

The Bass Cat’s engine slipped into reverse. The noise of cavitation cloaked the conversation that followed, Theo speaking in a low voice, Carmelo replying, “Well . . . if you say so.”

Belton’s hand found my shoulder and gave me a pat. “Good job.”

I whispered, “They’re not gone yet.” We were scrunched low, both of us clinging to foliage to hold the boat steady. Seconds later I said, “Quiet. They’re coming this way.”

The bass boat was idling downriver, not upriver. That’s what alerted me. Willow boughs formed an awning, a curtain I could part. Through a veil of leaves I saw the spotlight probe the entrance of the feeder creek . . . then the boat appeared, two cookie-cutter men standing behind the console in silhouette. The spotlight panned toward me. I ducked and leaned my shoulder against Belton as a warning. He understood. He got a better grip on the branch above, which allowed me a free hand to find the pistol. As the men idled closer, I raised the weapon and aimed it at the spotlight.

Carmelo’s voice: “We’re kicking mud. I don’t want to fry another water pump. You know . . . I think that girl would’a pulled the trigger. I truly do. Back there in the Land Rover.”

Theo’s response was muffled.

“She could shoot us from the bushes, hide anywhere and wait for us to go by.
Bang-bang-bang
—just like that. That’s why I don’t like this poking-around crap.”

Another muffled response but lengthier.

Carmelo disagreed. “That’s one way. But it ain’t the best way.”

Theo spoke louder. “You leave the thinking to me, Einstein,” then rambled on for a while before allowing Carmelo an opening.

“All I’m saying is, you take the shock collars off them monkeys, there’s no telling who they attack. It’s not like they fussy—I’ll shoot that damn female, she charges me again. Don’t think I won’t. Liked to bit my arm off, that time.”

“After what you did—
good.
And don’t call them monkeys.”

“You weren’t even around. All I did was compliment her on her pretty pink—”

Theo hissed, “Shut up,” then his voice softened. “Hey . . . what’s that over there?”

I felt Belton squeeze my knee when the light found the overhang where we were hidden. A bright wafer of white that probed and expanded, steam rising off the water where moths collected, then the light swung away.

Carmelo continued talking. “As if that damn animal understood what I said. Shit, just crazy to let them two loose. You can hide a dead body every few years or so and get away with it. Fine. But more than two in one night, man, it’s us they’ll send to prison. You keep them damn monkeys on a leash or I’m done with this business. I mean it this time.” He hacked, hacked again and spit. “That’s not to say I won’t find that gold and silver on my own.”

Theo snapped, “Shut up. Just shut up,” then got control of himself and spoke in a more careful way. “I think you’re right. They’re not in a boat. Let’s head back.”

“Say what?”

“You heard me.”

“What’s got into you? I thought you wanted to head upriver. Might as well since we’re here.”

“I’m worried about Oliver. He wasn’t in his room and goddamn snakes everywhere. There’s no telling what else that bitch did to him.”

“Lucia—yeah, good riddance. Total bitch.”

Theo said, “No, you idiot, that hick with the smart mouth. I’d like to see what Savvy does to her if Oliver’s hurt. In fact, that’s what I’ll do—let Savvy handle it.”

“I ain’t got nothing to do with that, I just told you.” The engine clanked into reverse. “Shit . . . Hang on . . . Sit yourself so I can see.”

The creek was so narrow, the boat had to back all the way to the river. Several minutes later the engine revved and powered southward. It left a wake of squawking birds, a wash of waves that dissipated as the engine faded, then suddenly went silent. Belton waited to speak. “Theo wanted us to hear that.”

“I know. I lost track of their engine. Did they stop?”

“He wasn’t convinced we’re here, though. More of a just-in-case thing. He’s afraid you’ll shoot. Me, I wouldn’t hesitate. Are you sure you don’t want me to take the gun?”

I said, “I’m wondering if he dropped Carmelo at the point, then stopped downriver to see what happens. What else explains why it took them so long to leave?”

Belton slapped a mosquito on his cheek and stretched his legs. “Stay here for a while and listen, I guess. What do you think? It’s not quite ten-thirty.”

I returned the pistol to the backpack and left the bag open. “I
want to disinfect those cuts on your arms. We’ll give it half an hour. If it was Theo who stayed behind, he can’t keep quiet that long. Roll your sleeves up.” I used the flashlight for a moment—several deep gouges beneath dried blood—then switched it off and went to work from memory.

He said, “Don’t worry about me, how are you feeling?”

“The Benadryl pills made me a little sleepy. Otherwise, fine . . . Belton?”

“Yes, dear.”

“I want to ask you something.”

“Ask away.”

“Now would be a good time to tell me that secret you’ve been holding back.”

•   •   •

A
FEW MINUTES
after eleven I drifted the boat clear and paddled toward the river, the water shallow enough that I used an oar as a pole. For the first time in my life, I despaired of moonlight, because the moon flung my shadow ahead like a warning to anyone who might await. Belton and I had agreed no talking, so we traveled in a hush of insects with a northwest breeze that tasted of smoke. He sat with his back to me, hollow-eyed, heavier for the history he had shared, me standing in the stern so I could use the tiller to rudder.

How do you comfort a man who, after four years’ searching, is finally convinced his missing son was murdered? Worse, two men who at the very least had played a role in that murder were now chasing us.

“I was a poor excuse for a father and a worse husband. Kenneth was only twelve when we divorced, so he naturally sided with his mother. She remarried, so did I. That began a twenty-year estrangement.” Belton, sitting in darkness, had kept his voice low, spoke matter-of-factly as if time had distanced him from events.

“After police notified me of Ken’s disappearance—this was four years ago—I sat down and counted the times I’d made a serious effort to reconcile. There was once when he graduated from high school, then another after he got his master’s. That’s it. Both times, he refused. And, know what? Secretly, I was relieved.
Relieved.
Can you imagine? All the awkwardness, I guess, that comes with patching up a relationship, he spared me that. I was fixated on building my business, living the new life I’d planned. Selfish, an overachiever. It’s strange how people like me rationalize the damage we do. We’re convinced there’s plenty of time to make amends, but that’s a lie. It’s a lie that postpones guilt and buys us freedom. You won’t be able to understand, Hannah. I’ve met damn few who are genuinely good and decent. People like you stand out.”