Mermaid

by Tom Lowe

  Dora Sweeny stood to one far side of the darkened theater with the general manager, a forty-something balding man. Dora glanced at him and said, “She’s got it. Whatever the it factor is, the new girl has it in spades. It’s as if she was born in the water.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Savannah Nelson. Her breath control, along with her swimming, is the best I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot here.”

  Savannah and the other performers moved to the music, preparing for the closing moments of the show. She came close to the glass window, smiling underwater, her eyes now accustomed to the clear, fresh water. She could see some of the families in the first two rows, easily spotting little girls in complete rapture.

  And Savannah saw someone she thought she recognized.

  By himself. In the third row.

  He made eye contact with her. Staring. Unblinking. She smiled. He slowly lifted one hand in a slow motion-like wave. And even through the water and glass, she could see his hand.

  The hand with the missing finger.

  SEVENTY-TWO

  Two days later, Dragonfly was ready to sail. Wynona and I needed to drive to a grocery store for some final provisions. We locked the sailboat and started down L dock. I wasn’t sure if it was safe for Wynona or Max to walk by my side. Max led us, prancing. Wynona carried her purse over her left shoulder. It was daylight, after 1:00, as the three of us walked along the dock toward the marina parking lot and my Jeep. I looked at the rooftops of nearby buildings, the two-story marina, and the high-rise condos not far from Ponce Lighthouse. If I could see the buildings, I knew a sniper, looking through a high-powered rifle scope, could see us.

  The hypervigilance I felt is a first cousin to paranoia. It’s not a suspicion or fear of all people. But it is an anxiety sensed in combat zones when mistrust is the only real conviction. I experienced it during my time as a Delta Force specialist in the Middle East. Whether the potential threat came from a sniper hiding behind a boulder on the crest of an Afghan mountain, or a rifleman perched atop a building in Mosul, it was as present as dust in the hot wind.

  The fight or flight syndrome takes on a different mental dimension when you can’t see your enemy, but you can feel his looming presence, like a shadow you won’t outrun in the daylight. The cover of night became the equalizer. During the day, all you can do is try to keep an object—a bombed and crumbling building, a burned-out shell of car, as a makeshift barrier between you and a trained killer with a rifle a quarter of a mile away.

  I had no idea whether Timothy Spencer had managed to hire a hitman. But I was going to minimize my visible exposure to that possibility. I knew that most hired hits didn’t come from an assassin’s rifle. They came from a .22 with a silencer fired at the back of the head, point-blank range. Usually two to three shots. The killer sometimes uses his phone to take a picture of the body, often contingent to receiving the final payment.

  I thought about that as I watched boat owners and their guests visiting the marina, locking eyes with a man I didn’t recognize coming toward us. Tall and muscular. Unshaven. He was less than fifty feet away. His eyes shifted from me to the boats toward his right. I looked at his hands, long shirt untucked, hanging over his jeans. Twenty feet away. If he made any abrupt move, I would charge him. He stopped and waved to an older man coming out of a 40-foot Carver. “It’s about time you got here,” the boat owner said as the man walked over to him.

  After living through four years of hunting and being hunted in the forgotten Middle East wars, the last thing I wanted was those nightmares resurrected and to see them shared in the eyes of the woman I loved. We followed Max, romping past dozens of boats, the dock now her personal catwalk, wet nose in the east wind.

  I watched a brown-skinned fisherman enter the marina waters in an older, 16-foot Boston Whaler, the black canopy ripped, the edges flapping like a flag. At a no-wake speed, blueish smoke drifted up from his outboard motor, the fisherman’s mouth like a frown carved into aged stone. Instantly, I keep my eyes on his hands, looking for any unnatural movement.

  Wynona reached for my hand, as if she was pulling me back from stepping toward an illusion in a tranquil marina where boats rocked like cradles, gently on the rolling shoulders of a rising tide. I watched the fisherman putter his small boat toward a fish house near B dock, smoke trailing the stern. I glanced at the wooden pilings displaying their barnacle encrusted legs, the warm air salty. A gull flew from the surface of the harbor, landing on the dock in front of us. The gull, leaving its wet footprints on the dock, waddling toward a sliver of fish left near a palm frond-thatched fish-cleaning station, the stainless-steel sink tarnished dark gray in the elements.

  Wynona said, “We’ll be fine. Okay? Let’s get some coffee in the Tiki Bar before we go to the store, okay?”

  “Sounds good.”

  Max stopped in her tracks, watching the gull pick at the piece of discarded fish. I said, “Max, let the bird grab a snack. I know you think L dock is yours, but we always share, especially with the locals.” Max looked at me, not quite buying my statement. When she turned back around, the gull flew away, flapping its wings and sailing above the Tiki Bar. I followed it until the large bird was a dot in the blue sky somewhere over the Atlantic.

  At the screen door, the side entrance to the Tiki Bar, Wynona stopped and said, “I can so feel your tension, not that it isn’t justified, we’ll be okay.” She smiled and put her hand on my shoulder.

  • • •

  Savannah was alone in her apartment unpacking a cardboard box when a knock came at the door. She looked at the screen on her phone: 1:17 p.m. She stood from sitting on the floor and walked to her front door, peering through the peephole. Outside, stood a pizza delivery man. College aged. A tattoo of the Joker from Batman on his left forearm. Through the closed door, Savannah said, “I didn’t order pizza.”

  The man looked down, unzipping the pizza carrying case, reading the receipt on the box. He raised his eyes up to stare squarely at the glass lens of the peephole. “Order came from Eric Young. This is the address he gave the store.”

  At that instant, her phone pinged with a text message from Eric Young. It read: Congrats on your new job. Sent a pizza to your place. Enjoy!

  Savannah read the text, smiled, and opened the door. “Thank you,” she said as the delivery man handed her the box. In the sunlight, she could see his lips looked cherry red, eyes slightly bloodshot, the smell of stale beer coming from his pores. He stood there after giving her the pizza. “Thanks again.” No movement. “Is there something else?”

  “A tip maybe?”

  Savannah didn’t want to close and lock the door to go back in her apartment for her purse. She managed a smile. “I’m so sorry. Since I didn’t order the pizza, I wasn’t prepared to pay. I don’t have any cash here for a tip. I use mostly debit cards. Thanks again.”

  The man shrugged, swatting a fly from his face. “That’s cool. You need something else like a soda or dessert, call the store. We have a great chocolate chip cookie about the size of a big pancake. Dessert’s on me.”

  “Thanks, I’m like not doing sugar anymore. Have a good rest of your day.” She took two steps backwards, closing and locking her door. She set the pizza box down on her kitchen table and called Eric. When he answered, she said, “Thank you so much for the pizza. That was a total surprise.”

  “I know with classes, your new job schedule, and moving into the new apartment, the last thing you probably needed to deal with is food. So, I thought I’d help you out.” Eric was behind a desk, computer screen on and filled with graphics.

  “You’re right. I so appreciate it. That’s very thoughtful. I told my dad I wanted him to meet you. I think you two would hit it off.”

  “Sounds good. If you don’t eat all your pizza, want me to come by after I get off work to help you finish it. I can even bring dessert.”

  “That’s what the last guy said.”

  “What guy?”

  “The dude
who delivered the pizza. I got a funny vibe from him, and I don’t mean funny in a humorous way.”

  “I can be there in a couple of hours. I was kidding about saving some pizza for me. I’d just like to see you. After I watched your performance at Weeki Wachee, I was blown away. I feel like I should ask you for your autograph or something.”

  “You’re sweet, Eric. Thanks.”

  “Wanna watch a movie on Netflix later?”

  “I can’t. I have a very cool invitation from a special person to tour the Canaveral Marine Lab. I’m so excited. Doctor Howard Ward invited me. Before I left the set of Atlantis, he said not only can I use his name for a reference, he will be happy to call some of his contacts on my behalf. This will be so awesome. It’s like a dream come true.”

  SEVENTY-THREE

  I opened the screen door, the side entrance to the Tiki Bar, for Wynona and Max. I followed them inside, quickly scanning the restaurant and bar. Just over a dozen people. Most appeared to be tourists. I recognized a few men who worked the fishing fleets, the majority wearing T-shirts, shorts, and billed caps. All with beards or a week’s worth of whiskers on their windswept faces. Willie Nelson’s Blue Eyes Cryin’ in the Rain coming from the jukebox.

  “Y’all here for lunch?” asked Flo, walking toward us, menus in her damp, reddened hands.

  I said, “Just coffee for now, Flo. Thanks.”

  “Where’d you like to sit? Maybe I should ask Miss Max. I know she prefers the table closest to the kitchen. She likes to smell the garlic shrimp on the grill.”

  Wynona smiled. “How about the corner table, away from the jukebox and by the window?”

  “You got it.”

  We followed Flo, Max sashaying in step with her, like she was on parade, frolicking across the beer-stained, wood floor. Flo set the menus down on the table. “I’ll leave these here in case you change your minds, you know … if Max makes a fuss and needs to be fed. I’ll put on a fresh pot of coffee, too.”

  Wynona said, “Thanks, Flo.”

  We took seats around the table, Max at Wynona’s feet, next to her purse. The music on the jukebox changed to a Jack Johnson song, Better Together. I looked to the right, through the open isinglass window, at the parking lot where my Jeep sat near the base of two royal palm trees, a black BMW to the right of it, and a faded blue pickup truck to its left. No movement. No people.

  I looked to my far left through the rolled-up windows facing the marina, a sailboat pushing back from its slip. I watched a 60-foot fishing boat chugging by, tourists grinning, one near the bow holding up two red snappers, displaying his prize catch to people walking the docks and on boats.

  Wynona reached across the table for my hand again, her eyes lovely in the warm light coming through the open windows, the breeze soft. “Sean, your radar is on high alert. If it’ll make you less guarded, I want you to know that I packed my .38 Sig Sauer in my purse.”

  “I didn’t see you take it from Dragonfly.”

  “You were in the shower. You, my love, somehow managed to work up a slight sweat at dawn.” Wynona laughed, eyes playful.

  I smiled and released a deep breath. “I’m glad you’re carrying. But I had hoped you wouldn’t feel it necessary since your decision to take an extended leave of absence from law enforcement. It’s nice to leave the trappings of the job aside.”

  “You haven’t done traditional police work in a few years. Yet, you have at least eight or ten weapons, including two rifles and a sawed-off, twelve-gauge shotgun at the river cabin. And those are the ones I know about … you probably have others stashed someplace there. You have a rifle on Jupiter and at least three handguns. Two more are on Dragonfly. I know you have one in your pocket where you’ll transfer it to the console in the Jeep. Why do you need all of that firepower?”

  “You mentioned traditional police work. It’s because I’ve been doing the non-traditional police work that I need to be armed, whether it’s my cabin, the boats, my Jeep, or my person. Between the gun hardware and Max’s teeth, I think we’re covered.”

  Wynona smiled. She looked out at the boats in the marina, the tall lighthouse just visible, standing like a sentinel on watch, its old brick rough and pitted. Yet the tower stood steadfast, a lookout on guard, its exterior pockmarked by time, wind and surf, but always shinning its light across the dark face of the sea.

  Wynona shifted her eyes from the lighthouse to me. “I don’t have a lot of fears anymore in life. Now that I’ve found you, the fear I do have is waking up some morning and finding everything blurred and smeared with the dark color of loneliness, the result of a lost love. The fact that Timothy Spencer could do that incenses every cell in my body because, in effect, he has already done that with our unborn child. Do we stay here, Sean, and try and fight every shadowy figure we dread will do us harm or do we just board Dragonfly in the morning and sail away? And, if we do that, will we eventually sail toward the evil we are trying to escape? In other words, is there no escaping it?”

  “I can only plan for the unplanned. If that means being suspect of every shadowy figure … well, that’s a handed-down gene that’s in the whole human race. We just have to gauge the best we can, when to wipe the spit off our faces and walk away, and when it’s time to hit hard. Very hard. To strike first. Our instincts will be to know our options at any given time and how fast to choose them. Right now, my plan is to take you on a sailing journey in the morning. If evil chooses to tag along, I’ll deal with that, too.”

  Wynona smiled and reached across the table, taking my hand in hers. “I like that plan, and I love you.”

  SEVENTY-FOUR

  Detective Dan Grant had a question for Jonathan Lloyd, the art director with Atlantis. Grant drove back to the movie set, the castle on the outskirts of St. Augustine. As soon as he pulled into the parking lot, he got an uneasy feeling in his gut. Except for one car, the lot was barren. All of the motorhomes and dozens of cars, vans and trucks were gone. The two semi-trucks carrying equipment and even props were nowhere to be seen.

  He parked near the lone car, a white Chevy SUV. A gray-haired man dressed in jeans and a khaki shirt was coming from the entrance of the castle, a clipboard in one hand and a bottle of water in the other. When he got closer to the parking lot, Grant motioned to him and asked, “Where’d everyone go?”

  “You mean the movie people? Are you supposed to be with them … sort of missed the bus, huh?”

  Grant pulled back his sports coat, his shield clipped on his belt and visible. “I’m Detective Grant with the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office.”

  The man nodded, his mouth turned down, brow creased. “This is St. Johns County.”

  “I’m aware of that. A murder investigation doesn’t have geographic boundaries. Who are you?”

  “Ed Summers. I manage and lease out the building and property. Mostly big weddings. Lots of corporate events. Team building and whatnot. It was great to have part of the movie filmed here. We’ll put that on our website and brochures.”

  “Mr. Summers, where did the production company go?”

  “I heard they were taking a few days off before relocating down to the Keys. The director supposedly had to fly back to Los Angeles to meet with the suits in the studio. Maybe they’re burning through their budget too fast. I heard they’re supposed to shoot a few scenes down there before going overseas.”

  “How long have they been gone?”

  “Couple of days.”

  Grant nodded, turning to leave.

  “Excuse me, Detective. You mentioned murder. Who the hell was killed?”

  “Thank you for your time, Mr. Summers.”

  • • •

  It was late in the afternoon, shade deep among the royal palm and ficus trees sprinkled throughout the two-acre parking lot of the Canaveral Marine Lab and Aquarium. Savannah pulled her car into the lot, a smile spreading across her face. The compound looked exactly like she’d seen in the pictures online. It was a sprawling campus of a half-dozen buildings, most
over four stories high, interconnected with sidewalks and bordered by lush landscaping, beds of lavender heather, red and white impatiens, sago palms, and philodendrons.

  Colorful directories, each with signage made in the shape of dolphins, jellyfish, and manta rays, pointed visitors to the various labs, aquariums, and university research centers. Doctor Ward had instructed Savannah to come to the employee parking lot, behind the Coral Reef building and to park in one of the reserved spots. “You’ll see my car,” he’d said. “It’s the only Range Rover in the lot. As a matter of fact, it’ll probably be the only vehicle in the lot since almost everyone leaves by 4:30.”

  She drove past a commercial delivery sign, spotting the Range Rover in a parking area very close to a back entrance, partially shaded from the canopy of a large banyan tree. Verdant carpets of pink and white bougainvillea grew along a coquina wall encompassing most of the parking lot in privacy.

  Savannah locked her car and walked down a stone path that lead to the back entrance. She tried the door handle. Locked. She took a deep breath and pressed a silver button, a doorbell, beneath the hard-plastic cover over a speaker mounted near the door. After less than thirty seconds, the voice of Doctor Howard Ward said, “Good afternoon. Delighted you could make it, Savannah.”

  She looked up near the eaves, looking for a security camera. There wasn’t one. She cleared her throat. “I’m really glad to be here, too.”

  “Good. I’ll buzz you inside. I think you are really going to enjoy your experience here.”

  • • •

  Rather than take I-10 back to Volusia County, Detective Grant elected to take Highway A1A. For much of the route, the road ran parallel—north and south, with the Atlantic Ocean. He drove the speed limit, the ocean to his left, approaching Crescent Beach, waves rolling over the reddish sand, very few people on the beach. He thought of the beach south of Daytona, the place Michelle Martin’s body was found. Grant remembered the morning speaking with her parents in the county coroner’s office complex. Chuck Martin holding his distraught wife, Monica. Martin looking through watery eyes at Grant and saying, “You have to find the monster who did this to Michelle. He can’t get away.”