Hell's Bay (27 page)

Which put me a lot damn closer to the shooter than I wanted to be. Even if I got a signal, I'd have to whisper.

I guided the kayak down the last few yards of the creek. All around me the water was moving, part tidal, part river flow.

In the Everglades it was easy to forget you were navigating a river, a great wide swath of water seeping steadily down the hundred miles from Lake Okeechobee toward the open Gulf. Intersected by highways and drainage canals, it found its way south nonetheless, in some places no more than a thin sheet of water, in others deepening to sloughs and marshes, bays and lakes, but always moving. Not the mournful stagnant swamp that outsiders imagined, but an ever-freshening flood.

I backwatered on the port side, careful to keep the aluminum paddle from knocking against the edge, as I made the sharp-angled swing into the narrow gap that led south and east.

Two yards to my right a six-foot gator slid from the bank and slipped below the surface, and ahead of me in the lower branches of a mangrove a little green heron marveled at my intrusion into its sanctuary. With the canopy so dense overhead, the light had dimmed to a vague olive, and the surface of the water was a shifting mosaic of midafternoon sunlight. In a few sunny spots bromeliads had taken hold. Insects whirred past my face, and in the branches dozens of spiderwebs quivered in the breeze. Orb weavers mostly, with their thoughtful little white tags placed prominently in each web to steer birds and mammals clear, like a warning decal affixed to a sliding glass door.

I made two hard strokes, then let the kayak coast the final few yards toward the terminus of the canal. I was floating within an oblong swimming hole, banked on all four sides by dense growth.

I opened the phone and saw with some surprise that two bars had appeared in the lower corner.

As I was punching in Sugar's cell number, the bow bumped hard and the kayak jolted to a halt.

I leaned to the right as far as I dared to see what I'd rammed. It was a tippy vessel, and this was not water I wanted to be swimming in.

Up ahead there was no sign of a submerged log, but the kayak seemed to be lodged firmly. Either it was a mud bank I hadn't seen, or the gator and I had crossed paths and he was stubbornly refusing to move.

I punched in the last few numbers and a second later heard the faint ringing. To the east through the warren of branches I caught a glimpse of color. The object was low and sleek. Its pale icy blue was an alien hue in the drab color scheme of the Everglades.

I bent forward, twisting for a better angle, and saw it, bobbing high on the choppy water—Rusty's skiff. Empty, it was drifting not more than twenty feet away on the other side of the stand of mangroves.

I took a closer survey of my surroundings and saw a few yards ahead a wide break in the growth that hadn't shown up on the aerial photograph. The gap was about the size and shape of the doorway to a hobbit's house, but from at least a couple of angles, it would make my green kayak visible from the inlet where Rusty's skiff was floating and where I suspected the shooter was harbored.

“Thorn?”

Sugar's voice was faint. He spoke my name again, but I could not answer. The air was clenched tight in my lungs.

“Thorn?”

Just ahead of the kayak's bow, near the hobbit door, I'd caught a silver flicker of metal and felt a stab of recognition.

“Hold on.”

Sugarman said, “Thorn? What's going on, man?”

I set the open phone on my lap, picked up the paddle, and sculled a figure-eight pattern over the starboard side. I could hear Sugarman speaking, repeating my name as the kayak swung a foot to the right, then another foot, the bow tip still locked in place.

I leaned as far as I could.

The shiny object hovered a few inches below the surface and came into view as the kayak reached the end of its arc. It was a watch. A flashy Rolex.

The man whose wrist it was fastened to was floating facedown. He'd sunk a few inches beneath the waterline, but as the kayak swung closer, I could see his outstretched arm was hairy and muscled. Then I made out Milligan's white polo shirt waffling with the tidal flow. I stared at the body for several moments, my ears humming with a crazy throb. My eyes stung and the breath in my throat had turned scratchy and hot.

The tide must've carried the body from the inlet on the other side of the mangroves through that hobbit door and stranded it in this small pool.

What I did then was reflex, some ancient wink of synapse, a self-protective impulse sent down the chain of blood from Quentin Thorn. That man, my father, had lost two fingers somehow, though maybe he would have lost the whole hand, or even his arm, if he'd not been so split-second quick.

Without knowing why, I jerked backward a microsecond before the shark exploded in a wave of water and chomped at the blade of the paddle. He missed, but his snout slammed broadside against the kayak, and I managed only one sharp jab with the paddle between his eyes.

It didn't register.

Bull shark,
Carcharhinus leucas
. Chunky body, small eyes, blunt round snout, dark gray, around seven feet long, which meant more than likely it was a female. Very aggressive, they'd eat anything, anywhere. They were ever-present in the Keys and the Everglades, flourishing in brackish water or saltwater. Far as I was concerned, bulls were as menacing as great whites, especially when disturbed while feeding.

I craned forward to track the bull's path, and a wasp chose that instant to dive-bomb my ear. While I swatted it away, the shark heaved again.

It tore into the kayak's stern, jarred the phone from my lap, and sent it skittering overboard. Then a third angry crash tipped the kayak and spilled me against a cage of mangrove roots.

I scrabbled for a hold, gashed my palm on a row of barnacles as nasty as broken glass. I managed to get a lucky lock on a main limb and boosted myself from the water. The bull shark circled halfway between me and Milligan, pausing for several seconds as if deciding with slow prehistoric logic which of the delicious items on her buffet table would be her starter.

I watched as she made her choice, turning away from me and gliding across the pool toward my uncle.

But it wasn't over. The limb I was clinging to was coated with algae slime as oily and slick as lard, and inch by inevitable inch I slid back toward the capsized kayak. I tried to keep my feet still as my boat shoes eased into the water, then my ankles disappeared and my knees. The kayak was a foot away.

Before the bull shark's attack churned the water to an opaque brown, I'd noted the bottom was only few feet down. But it was not solid earth I could trust. Like all the Ever-glades it was a false bottom, an airy froth of mud and silt, as yielding as warm pudding, probably several feet of it, neither earth nor water but a blind mix of both where the shark was perfectly at home.

I stretched out my right leg, curled my toe, hooked it into the seat compartment. The shark hovered just a foot from MiUigan's extended arm, as if transfixed by the abundance that had dropped into her watery domain.

I lifted the edge of the kayak and drew it to me and slowly righted it. The sunken seat compartment was full of leaves and twigs and brown slush, but the craft was designed to float despite being waterlogged.

Then I lost my grip entirely and splashed. I kicked back to the surface, wiped my eyes and saw the boil of water as the bull shark swerved from MiUigan's arm and flashed across the twenty-foot span, homing in on the stink of fear.

I lunged upward, swiped at a branch directly overhead, missed by an inch, then heaved again and got both hands around it and chinned myself out of the water, swung my ankles up to meet the branch, until there I was, hanging upside down. My lowest point, closest to the water, was my head.

As I listened to the splash behind me, I shot a look aloft to judge my prospects for climbing higher into that maze of limbs. More bad news. The plant I was holding had been battered by wind or disease and was scabby and withered. It wouldn't have supported a child for long. Already I could hear the faint crackling of its fibers straining under my weight.

I looked backward at the bull shark's approach.

She slowed. She came to a stop. Her small eyes were as inert as shards of moon rock. Maybe her vision could penetrate beyond the waterline, maybe not. I know I felt the touch of her stare. If it was true and she could see me, surely she was mystified. What I was, and what I was doing hanging from a tree upside down like some giant bat, must have baffled her radish brain.

For she floated there a few seconds longer, then abandoned me and swung once again to John Milligan.

While the shark closed in on my uncle's body, I eased into the kayak, plucked my paddle from the water, and pushed off. Backpaddling down the narrow corridor from which I'd come, backing and backing, while in that shadowy bower, the bull shark writhed and thrashed and the water foamed red.

I had not cared for the man. In less than a day I'd made a long list of grievances against him. Moral failings, sins against my mother, an arrogant disregard for honesty. I'd pegged him as a greedy bastard with little respect for the natural world. I'd found little to like and nothing to admire in this, my last blood relative. But no man deserved such an end, such a feral dismantling of his remains.

Five minutes later, I was in the main channel, paddling smoothly with deep rhythmic strokes, when I heard the warble of a two-way radio.

I drew the paddle from the water, held still.

The warble came again. I U-turned and tracked the sound, angling across the channel, peering ahead to catch any movement through the barrier of limbs and leaves. Then she spoke. My grandmother's killer, Teeter's killer, John Milligan's killer.

“I'm here. What do you want?” It was the same detached tone I'd heard from her earlier.

She was only a few yards south of me, screened by a hammock of white mangroves and buttonwoods. I drew out the photographic image and found my location. If I kept paddling west for a few more minutes, I'd be in the open bay well to the south of her and out of her sight line. I lifted up the paddle and slid it into the water, dipping to the right side, then the left side, smooth stroke, smooth stroke.

I was ten feet farther west when I heard the voice reply to the killer.

“This is Mona. Listen to me, Sasha. The job's done. It's over. You can go home now.”

I exhaled long and slow, which seemed to ease the stabbing ache behind my eyes. I must have been holding my breath for several minutes.

 

 

 

 

Sheriff Timmy Whalen led Sugarman into the school, down a long stuffy corridor, to a room in the rear wing. The sign above the door said media center. The room was full of chrome-and-pressed-wood school desks. A television set was perched atop a rolling stand, and a padded chair was positioned a yard in front of the screen. One large window looked out at the steep grassy slope.

“Those plaques out front, along the entrance drive,” Sugar said. “What's that about? Somebody a Thoreau fan?”

“A former teacher here, C.C. Olsen, was an admirer of Thoreau. They're a memorial to Olsen.”

“Memorial.”

“You'll be seeing Olsen in the videos. He passed away a year ago. Not quite fifty. Had lots of admirers in this community.”

“How'd he die?”

“Small-cell broncogenic malignancy.”

“That's lung cancer?”

“As aggressive as it gets.”

Sheriff Whalen cleared her throat. She walked to the TV cart and switched on the DVD player on the shelf below the television. All brisk and bustle, keeping her distance.

“The video is a collection of the four public meetings. They began two years ago after much urging from Mr. Olsen, and took place in the gymnasium, which seats about two hundred. It was over capacity every time. Bates International was kind enough to send reps to try to assuage the community's concerns. Lots of charts and smooth talk. Not much assuaging.”

“Concerns about what?”

Timmy switched on the TV, then turned to face him.

“Oh, come on, don't be coy. You know what.”

“Concerns about what?” Sugarman said again.

“About that.” Whalen stepped from the TV stand and pointed toward the window, at the steep green hillside beyond. “It's a gypsum stack, where they dump the leftovers of phosphate mining. About seventy million tons of acidic, radioactive sludge. The one you're looking at happens to be twelve times the mass of the Great Pyramid at Giza.”

“Whoa.”

“You're telling me you didn't know about this?”

“I still don't know.”

She looked at him suspiciously.

“I heard about the Peace River and Horse Creek, the flap about the watershed. A lot of people are pissed off about Bates strip-mining sensitive land, the impact it's going to have downstream. I know a little about gypsum stacks, but nothing about that one in particular.”

Timmy Whalen walked over to the window, stared out at the grassy mountain. It wasn't exactly an invitation, but Sugarman walked over and stood beside her, within the aura of her perfume. Something flowery. Jasmine maybe. Not strong, but noticeable enough to suggest she'd spritzed herself in the last hour or so. More mixed signals.

She turned her head and burned him with a reproachful look as if she'd read his thoughts. Sugarman took a step back.

“Okay,” she said. “Here's the deal. Bates wants to increase the size of that gypsum stack by a third so they can dump more tailings. It's a cost-cutting measure. They own the land that borders school property, and evidently it's a lot cheaper to increase the size of one stack than start fresh with another.

“After a lot of back and forth, Mona Milligan worked out a compromise, a list of concessions: restore native habitat on some acreage they own near here, do odor testing and try to find a solution to what's causing the bad smell, all kinds of sleight-of-hand mitigation bullshit. Finally Bates wore everyone down, or paid them off, and county, state, even the Environmental Protection Agency signed off. Everybody but the folks with kids in Pine Tree School. There was a great hue and cry. C.C. was the point man. He claimed the stack was already a serious health hazard. Increasing its size would only make matters worse.”