Nathan Fisher lived upstairs and operated the business beneath. He lived alone since his son died and his wife left him, and was a source of small-town talk—how could a normal person live with all those bodies? What exactly was his relationship with them? He had never been accused of anything or even received a single complaint over the years, but that didn’t prevent people from some highly imaginative speculation.
Since Potter County wasn’t large enough to have a morgue, bodies were housed by Fisher, and occasionally autopsies were performed in his prep room. This didn’t happen often, but the county contract helped Fisher survive as more and more people used the services of large homes in Tallahassee and Panama City.
When I arrived at Fisher’s I found Nathan in the parlor playing a video game on a small handheld device. As he stood, he quickly slipped the player into the inside coat pocket of his ill-fitting, inexpensive, carbon-dated black suit.
“Sorry about that. You’re a little early.”
Nathan Fisher was a tall, gaunt, nervous man with pale skin and dark features. His long fingers were narrow, his hands cold and clammy, his handshake limp. As usual, his breath smelled of equal parts cigarettes and mouthwash.
I had dropped Anna off after leaving Air Ads Inc. and had come straight here. Fearing I was running late, I had driven far faster than I normally did—actually the borrowed car enabled me to drive far faster than my truck had been capable of doing.
“The others are on the way,” I said.
He nodded. “Would you like anything?” he asked. “Coffee or something?”
“No thank you,” I said.
“How’re things at the prison?” he asked.
I never quite knew what to say to that. “About the same I guess.”
“A lot of people don’t understand why you do it,” he said. “The whole chaplain thing. But I do.”
I smiled politely and nodded.
“Whatever’s left after we die is not us,” he said. “It’s not. And if we’re spirits, then we had to be created by a spirit, and that means there’s got to be a God.”
Before he could say anything else, Dad and the others arrived.
Dad looked weary and stressed, the tension visible in the lines of his narrow-eyed scowl and the deep crevice just above the bridge of his nose. I could tell by the way he walked he wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible.
The man with him, Chuck, the SEAL commander I had met the day before, looked very different cleaned up and in his civilian clothes.
Once everyone had been introduced and Nathan made his final preparations, we all stepped into the viewing room for Chuck to see if he could identify the lynching victim.
When Nathan pulled back the sheet to reveal the face of the man who had been beaten to death and then hanged, Chuck shook his head.
“That’s not him,” he said.
“You’re sure?” Dad asked.
He narrowed his eyes and gave Dad a look of incredulity. “Positive.”
“Okay,” Dad said. “I guess we’re done here. Thank you, Nathan.”
As we walked back through the parlor toward our vehicles, Chuck said, “I don’t know whether to be relieved or more worried.”
“You do what you like,” Dad said, “but I’m gonna go with more worried.”
As we stepped out onto the veranda Chuck’s phone rang, and he stopped to answer it. I could tell by his reaction that it was bad news. When he finished the call, he slowly closed his phone and slipped it back into his pocket.
“They’ve found him,” he said.
47
In what must have appeared to observers to be a strange alternate reality, it looked like I, in my pimped-out ride, was chasing Dad, in his siren-screeching, emergency light-flashing sheriff’s truck, but no one pulled me over and we made good time.
As we neared the landing my phone rang. It was Carla.
“How fast can you get to the landing?” she asked.
“Very,” I said. “Why?”
“Cody’s real upset,” she said. “He needs to talk to you.”
“I’ll be right there,” I said. “Are you with him?”
She hesitated and I knew she was.
“I thought it was over and you were going to stay away from him?”
“I know,” she said, sighing heavily. “But you know how these things are.”
“Yes, I do,” I said. “Which is why I wanted you to stay away from him.”
“Just get here as fast as you can,” she said.
Before she had finished saying it I was pulling into the landing, and could see her sitting next to Cody under one of the pavilions near the playground.
The landing was empty except for a few trucks and boat trailers scattered throughout. Besides Carla and Cody, the only other people visible were an elderly couple on the dock.
It had rained earlier and the pavement and ground still held puddles, the overcast day impotent to dry them up.
When I reached them, Cody looked at Carla, who looked up at me and said, “I’ll let you two talk. If you need me, I’ll be over there.” She nodded toward the swings.
I sat down beside Cody and waited. In a few moments I realized that the seat was wet and now so were my pants.
Dad and Chuck were standing over near the boat launch, waiting, as Jake backed the search and rescue boat toward the ramp.
“You okay?” I asked.
He nodded, though it was obvious he was not.
His skin was colorless and clammy, his left eye twitching.
“What happened?”
“Carla and me came here after school,” he said. “Just to talk. I just needed to see her. I wasn’t tryin’ to get back with her or nothin’, and I swear I wouldn’t hurt her for anything.”
I nodded, glancing over at Carla sitting in one of the swings, her feet dragging along in the dirt as she slowly moved back and forth.
“As we sat here talking, with our backs to the river, I heard something that brought it all back—it was as if I was there again, chained up in the dark about to be made to do things to myself.”
“What did you hear?”
“A boat passing by on the river,” he said. “That’s all. I guess I had forgotten. Hell, I’ve been tryin’ to block the whole thing out.”
“So wherever you were it was close to the river,” I said.
He nodded.
With the search and rescue boat in the water, Jake pulled the truck and boat trailer up off the ramp and parked in a nearby space. He rejoined the others and I could tell they were waiting for me, could feel their impatience.
“Can you remember anything else about it?” I asked.
“It was damp and smelled bad. Water was dripping somewhere nearby, and I got the feeling that it was down underground or something.”
“Do you remember how you got away?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I just remember waking up at the dump.”
“Okay,” I said. “This really helps. We’re going to catch him. You’re helping us keep him from doing this to anybody else. Are you still talking to the counselor?”
He nodded.
“Is it helping?”
He shrugged.
“It will,” I said. “Keep it up.”
“Yes sir.”
“Can you think of anything else?” I asked. “I know it’s painful and you don’t want to, but it helps. It really does—and not just me.”
He shook his head then hesitated. “Why does he . . . make you do that stuff?” he asked. “Is it because he can’t . . .”
“He didn’t . . . do anything to you?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Just made me do sick shit to myself.”
“Well he never will again,” I said. “You don’t have to worry about that. We’re going to catch him soon.”
“JOHN,” Dad yelled from the ramp. “WE’VE GOT TO GO.”
I nodded and waved but didn’t stand up.
“Do I have to stay away from Car
la?” he asked.
“That’s up to Carla,” I said, then looked over at her. “But she doesn’t seem to want you to.”
He exhaled, his face registering relief, his body relaxing a bit, and his lips twitched briefly with the faintest hint of a smile.
48
The gray day made the river look darker and dirty, its banks dull.
The breeze had picked up and the boat bounced and bumped along the wide, windswept waters. Though we were driving against the wind, Jake drove as fast as the small boat would go, and it stung our faces and watered our eyes.
Thankfully, we didn’t have to go far.
The area where all the attention was focused was in the river in front of the large sand dune created by the dredging the Corps of Engineers did. It was over seventy-five feet high and three hundred feet wide—a cascading mountain of golden riverbed sand that would soon wash back into the water.
Three boats formed a triangle around what I gathered was the watery crime scene—Robert Pridgeon’s game warden boat on the side closest to us, Todd and Shane in the other search and rescue boat, and half a dozen of the SEALs in a boat opposite them.
We pulled up next to Robert.
“Whatta we got?” Dad asked.
“Submerged boat,” Robert said, nodding toward a place in the river between their three boats. One corner of one side stuck out just above the surface at the spot he had indicated. “There’s a body in it.”
“Is it my missing man?” Chuck asked.
“According to them,” he said, jerking his head toward the SEAL team.
“FDLE is on the way,” Dad said.
“You wanna wait for them or go ahead and get it up?”
“How the hell we gonna do that?” Jake asked.
“Do it all the time,” Robert said. “Take out the plug, hook a line to the bow and pull it with my boat. It will slowly rise up, water draining out the sides and through the hole. Once it’s up pop the plug back in.”
“Is the body secure enough for us to do that?” Dad asked.
“I think so,” he said.
“Can you see it from the surface?”
He nodded.
“Okay,” Dad said, “let’s take a look, then we’ll pull it up.”
Jake switched from the powerful outboard motor to the small trolling motor, and slowly eased us up next to the submerged vessel. It was a small aluminum boat with built-in bench seats and no motor.
Visibility was low but we could see through the surface of the windy water to the horror below.
A naked black man in his late twenties was lying in the boat on his back in a spread eagle position, his wrists and ankles strapped to the seats with nylon rope.
As we looked at him no one said anything, but I could tell by Chuck’s reaction he knew the man.
“That him?” Dad asked.
He nodded.
“What’s his name?” I asked.
“Scott,” he said, his voice tight and hoarse. “Scott Colvin. He was a good man.”
I nodded.
“Okay,” Dad said. “Let’s get him up.”
Jake started the trolling motor and swung us back around beside Robert’s game warden boat.
“IS IT HIM?” one of the SEALs yelled from their boat.
Chuck nodded.
Looking over at the SEALs I noticed how different their boat was from the one Colvin was in.
“Whose boat is that?” I asked.
Chuck shrugged. “Don’t know.”
Robert and Dad both looked at him, eyebrows raised.
“You don’t know who it belongs to?” Dad asked.
“No idea,” Chuck said.
“Think it belongs to the killer?” Jake asked.
“You mean the dead man walking?” Chuck said.
“We’ll know soon enough,” Robert said.
“How?” Jake asked.
“Let’s get it up and I’ll show you.”
After helping Robert secure his towing chain to the submerged boat and removing its plug, we pulled over close to the other two boats and watched as he slowly brought up the submerged craft. The process looked like a novice water skier trying shakily to break the surface of the water and remain on his feet—Robert gunning his engine to get the small aluminum boat up, the water resisting, as if the river was reluctant to release it for some reason.
Once he got it to the surface, we raced over behind it and put the plug back in. There was still some water in the boat but not enough to sink it or hinder the investigation.
“Why don’t we pull it on in to the landing and examine it there?” Robert asked. “Be a hell of a lot easier than trying to do it out here on the water.”
“We’ll have to deal with gawkers,” Dad said, “but the convenience’ll make it worth it.”
“We can handle ’em,” Jake said.
Before we left, Chuck ordered his men back to base and told them he’d return as soon as he could.
Robert towed the aluminum boat with the body still inside it carefully and slowly to the landing.
We followed closely behind. As we did, I found myself praying that Cody and Carla would be gone by the time we got there. This was the last thing Cody needed to see right now.
Thankfully, when we arrived at the landing it was empty.
Securing our boats to the dock, we used Jake’s truck and trailer to pull the other boat ashore so we could begin to examine it. Jake drove over to the back side of the parking lot and Robert and Dad parked their vehicles a few feet in front of the boat with their emergency lights flashing.
The body had been in the water a while, and would have floated to the surface if it hadn’t been tied down. It was bloated and disfigured and had a grayish, almost colorless tint to it. There were no obvious signs of trauma on the body and nothing on it or in the boat that could tell us how he died or who might have done it.
We turned our attention back to the boat as Robert began to examine it.
Walking along the exterior, looking closely at it, he said, “There are over a million boats registered in Florida this year. And every one has a registration sticker with a FL number on it.”
We all searched the exterior of the boat for the registration sticker. It didn’t have one.
“There’s something sticky right here,” Jake said, pointing to a small square of rosin-like residue.
Robert walked over, looked at it, and nodded. “That’s where it was.”
“Now what?” Jake asked.
“Every boat manufactured has a HIN.”
“A what?” Jake asked.
“A hull identification number. Like a car’s VIN. It’ll tell us who bought the boat. Homemade boats don’t have them—and we have a lot of those around here––but it’s obvious this isn’t one of them.”
“Was this it?” Shane asked.
We joined him at the back of the boat and looked at scratch marks in the aluminum hull.
“Somebody’s filed it off,” Todd said.
“So now what?” Jake asked.
“Now,” Robert said, “we call the manufacturer and ask them where the other HIN is.”
“Whatta you mean?” Shane said.
“Every manufactured boat has a hidden HIN,” Robert said. “All we have to do is find out where this manufacturer hides theirs.”
49
When I got home late that night, the first indication that something was wrong reminded me of the most famous of the Sherlock Holmes stories. I found it more than a little curious that my newly acquired hound didn’t bark.
Normally he ran up to greet me regardless of the time, barking loudly and wetting himself.
Tonight I was greeted only by the normal nocturnal noises of rural North Florida.
I stood for a moment and listened, then began to call for him. “Walker,” I said, then whistled. “Walker. Here Walker.”
He didn’t come, and when I walked around to the back of my trailer I knew why.
The faint light from the sec
urity lamp hanging from the top of my meter pole and the way the dark night soaked it up only added to the shock and horror of the scene.
Written in blood on the aluminum of the back wall of my trailer were the words Stay Off The River.
The blood had come from Walker, who was hanging by his blood-soaked neck from the limb of a nearby oak tree.
After carefully looking around to make sure whoever had left me the message was gone, I walked inside and called the sheriff’s office, then walked back outside and waited for them to arrive.
I had enjoyed having Walker around and had felt good about the way he had been recovering, but as bad as I felt for how he had suffered and the way he had died, that was all I felt. I didn’t feel any real sense of loss—and hadn’t at the death of a pet since childhood. I’m not exactly sure of the reason, though I suspect it’s an unconscious reflex at how short their lives can be—especially outside pets, which is all my family has ever had.
Merrill arrived ahead of Dad and the deputies. He had heard the response to my call on his scanner.
“Got damn, John,” he said, “somebody done lynched your damn dog.”
I smiled.
“Sorry,” he said. “I know it all sad and shit, but damn, man.”
“I know.”
“How you respond to somethin’ like this? Find the dude and fuck up his dog?”
Dad, Jake, Fred Goodwin, and a few other deputies arrived and began to process the scene.
As Dad looked at the writing on the trailer he said, “You think this is from our guy?”
I shrugged.
“Who else?” Jake asked.
“Just doesn’t seem like his style,” I said. “Killing me, yes, but killing my dog and leaving me a message . . .”
“Most serial killers stick within one species group,” Merrill said with only the briefest flash of a smile.
“If it’s him we must be getting close,” Fred said.
“If that’s true,” I said, “why just threaten me? I don’t think we’re close, but if we are, I’m certainly no closer than any one of you.”
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