by Tom Lowe
The drone was so far away, it wasn’t visible, but the images it recorded and sent back were. In the distance, Joe heard a gunshot. He had forgotten that hunting season started in some areas of Big Cypress. He was glad his backpack was bright red, making him stand out and not be mistaken for a deer.
He used the toggle controls to fly the drone back his way. After lunch he’d wanted to send it farther south, toward some sloughs and lakes to check their condition from the air. He landed the drone on a dry spot about ten feet from where he stood. After the props stopped turning, Joe looked at his phone, spotted the single bar, and redialed his wife.
Jessica answered on the second ring. “I was hoping you’d call near the lunch hour. How’s it going in the glades?”
“Good. A lot of the terrain is as I had suspected. Some areas with severe drought. Other areas with a lot of water. I’ve been taking samples, collecting vials and data. I forgot today is the first or second day of hunting season. So, I’m not seeing the game and birds I’d like to see from the drone or by simply standing still out here. It almost feels like nature is afraid to come out and play.”
Jessica held her phone to her ear as she locked her car and walked toward the campaign headquarters. “You be careful out there in the boonies. You certainly don’t look like a deer, although you’re dear to me.”
They chatted a couple of minutes, Joe giving her the specifics of what he’d done thus far before ending the call. He ate his sandwich, sipped water from a bottle and cranked his drone again, unaware that he was about to see his second monster through the lens of the camera. But this one wasn’t a green slime over the river. It stood on two legs and was even more deadly as it stalked through the river of grass.
• • •
Michael Fazio carried his Remington 700 rifle on a sling around one shoulder, staying a quarter mile behind his quarry. He moved stealth-like through the palmettos and cabbage palms. He stopped in his tracks as a water moccasin slithered across the muddy path in front of him and entered a small lake a few feet away, the water darker than the snake’s skin. He watched the cottonmouth swim through the water using S movements with its body. Fazio resisted the urge to shoot the snake in the center of his thick midsection.
He loved the hunt. The tracking. The moment he sighted the prey through the scope. He had paid big money to hunt mule deer and elk in Montana. He splurged after one lucrative job and booked a safari in Africa, killing a cape buffalo with one shot. He took the pictures but left the dead animal’s carcass on the African soil to rot. The hunt, stalking and killing big game was in his blood.
But nothing beat hunting a man, he thought.
It was a thrill like none other. With more than seven billion people on the planet, the vast majority are leeches to others in society. Sometimes culling and killing off part of the diseased herd was needed. That was one of the great things about war—a cleansing. Cut the population down to better preserve the earth’s resources for those who could best use and appreciate them.
Fazio had tracked his prey for more than four miles, amazed at the man’s stamina and steady progress though water and mud that felt like quicksand in some areas. But now it was time to earn the other half of his money from an employer he’d never seen and would never see. That’s often the way it goes in his line of work. You are a mercenary soldier, hired to fight wars you never started and didn’t really care about the results. It was a job—a job he did well.
He stepped out from a grove of Everglades palms and stood behind a cypress tree that had toppled from a hurricane years ago. He used his bi-pod to prop and steady his rifle. Through the scope it was easy to see the bright red backpack next to the man. He watched the man holding something in his hands. It looked like a control to a video game. Maybe the guy’s taking some air or soil samples, thought Fazio. He’s not a scientist. He’s a bullshit politician.
• • •
Joe flew his drone at a height of about four hundred feet in a southeast direction. He watched the monitor, looking at water levels and the color of the water in the lakes and sloughs. He flew over acres of red mangroves, the sun sparkling off the dark surface of a large lake like a million gold coins. He watched dozens of great white herons feeding in the shallows. Across from them, more than a dozen roseate spoonbills stalked the water. Joe liked the fact that the drone was so quiet that its aerial presence wouldn’t disturb wildlife. He moved the toggle switch and flew directly south.
Something odd appeared on his video monitor.
A man.
And he was holding a rifle.
Must be a deer or boar hunter, Joe thought. The drone was about fifty yards north of the hunter. Three hundred feet in the air. Silent. Observing. Joe watched for a moment, unaware that he was about to witness his own murder. The man crouched behind a large fallen tree, propped his rifle on the tree and seemed to be sighting in on wildlife.
• • •
Fazio moved the crosshairs from the top on the man’s head to his chest. At this distance, he could easily put a round into Thaxton’s midsection, blowing out his heart and half his lungs. Or the bullet would hit dead center, exiting through the spine. The man would be dead before he knew he’d be crippled from the neck down, should he somehow manage to survive.
Fazio heard something far in the distance. The sound of an ATV or airboat, maybe. Got to get it done. Concentrate. He centered the crosshairs just as a shadow moved across the mire, stopping in front of him. He thought it was a large bird.
But birds don’t stop in flight unless it was a hummingbird. This shadow was too large. He looked up from his scope. A hundred feet above him a drone was hovering. “What the shit … ” he mumbled. He squatted, aiming for the drone. He tried to find it in the crosshairs, the drone now moving like a bat. He fired. Missed. Fired a second time. Missed. The drone zipped toward the north. Fazio cursed under his breath, squatting back down and quickly sighting the crosshairs on the back of the man who was now running.
He fired, hitting the man in the back. The man fell flat to the ground. Now it was time to walk the 150 yards and put one in the guy’s head.
The noise returned.
He looked through his scope. In the distance, he spotted a man on an ATV, the man wearing hunter’s camouflage and a bright orange vest. Fazio thought about killing the hunter if he came closer. He looked through the scope and could see the hunter sitting on the ATV, smoking a cigar, apparently unaware that a murder has just occurred. He sighted the dead man back in through the scope. There was no movement. No sign of life. He swung the scope back in the direction of the hunter at the edge of a distant tree line. He watched the man sitting on the ATV. The hunter stood, ground the cigar ash on one of the ATV tires, dropping the cigar. After a moment, he got back on the ATV and vanished deep into the swampy woods.
Fazio picked up his spent shell casing and started walking toward the spot where the man had tossed the cigar.
• • •
Joe fought the urge to vomit. His heart raced. Breathing labored. His right lung gone. The bullet hit him in the left part of his upper back near the spine, exiting through his chest. “Have to call Jessica …” he whispered. He lay there, the hot sun on the back of his neck, blood pumping from two holes in his body, the caw of a crow in the cypress trees, the odor of his urine. He struggled to pull the phone from his pocket. Tried to hit the one button to call Jessica, his hand trembling, bile flowing into his throat.
No cell signal.
Joe fought the pain. The acute nausea. He started crawling. He could hear the faraway sound of an engine. Was it the shooter or someone else? Maybe I can make it to a road … to find a cell signal. He managed to slowly crawl more than one hundred feet, his energy fading. He crept under the shadow of three large bald cypress trees. Joe tried to sit, falling over on his back. He looked up to the canopies of the old trees, Spanish moss hanging from the limbs and barely moving in the breeze. The sky was the bluest he’d ever seen. He thought of Jessica, what she s
aid before he’d left. I’ve packed your lunch. Don’t forget to eat it out there today? He could feel her warm kiss on his cheek. He could see Kristy’s face as he bent down to kiss her before she left for school. Love you, Daddy.
Love you, too. His eyes teared.
Joe remembered the time he stood in the old fire tower and looked far out and above the Everglades. It was the first time he saw the wind in all its splendor as it danced with the sawgrass, moving in swells like a golden ocean, as far as the eye could see. He was back there now with a drone’s eye-view of the River of Grass. The sawgrass pirouetting. White clouds tumbling in the sky. He watched a flock of roseate spoonbills rise from a lake reflecting the sun, the light the whitest he’d ever seen. The spoonbills beat their wings and then soared over the cypress trees grounded in water, the birds ascending toward the bright light, like pink and white ghosts catching the wind across the Everglades.
FORTY-THREE
Jessica Thaxton was more than worried. She was fearful. It was almost 7:30 p.m., and she hadn’t heard from Joe since their conversation in the early afternoon. He always called her when he was heading home to see if she needed anything from the grocery store. She’d called him once, left a message, then made a dinner of baked chicken, green beans and potato salad.
And she waited.
Her daughter, Kristy, entered the kitchen. “Is dinner ready. I’m starving.”
“It’s ready. We’re just waiting for your dad to walk through the door or call.”
“Where is Daddy?”
“He should be home. He went into the Everglades to test the water there.”
“Did you call him?”
“Yes. But I’m not sure the call is connecting way out there. I’ll fix you a plate. Did you practice your letters in the new workbook I bought you?”
“Like an hour ago.”
• • •
Three hours later, Jessica washed all the dishes, put her husband’s food in a plastic container and set it in the refrigerator. After she went into Kristy’s room to kiss her goodnight, she walked into the living room, sat in the dark and watched the moon through the bay windows. She tried Joe’s phone one more time, and then she called the police.
She opened the front door to her home, stepping outside on the porch. She looked toward the driveway where Joe always parked his truck. Crickets chirped in the wooded lot bordering their property, the concrete steps chilly under her socked feet, night air cool and scented with a trace of wisteria blossoms. She glanced up at the security camera mounted near the top of the door. But, at that moment in time, Jessica Thaxton didn’t feel secure. She felt exposed and so very alone.
Two hours later, she fell asleep in a living room chair, phone in her lap, her left hand clutched around it, her wedding band reflecting a glimmer of moonlight through arched windows.
• • •
The next morning at 6:00, Larry Garner unlocked the Thaxton campaign headquarters and put on a pot of coffee. Joe was supposed to meet him at 6:30 a.m. to ride together to a Rotary Club breakfast meeting where Joe was the guest speaker. Ten minutes later, Jessica called Larry’s cell phone. “I’ve been up most of the night. It’s Joe … he didn’t come home last night from his water survey trip into the Everglades.”
“Is his phone going to voicemail?”
“I think so. I’ve left five messages. The last time I called, at somewhere near four in the morning, the call rang through one time and then went to silence. Larry, I’m frightened. I called the sheriff’s office to report him missing and to see if they’d heard anything. Nothing was reported. I called area hospitals from Naples to Miami. No one with his name has been admitted. What if something horrible happened out there?”
“I’ll work the phones. Maybe he got lost somewhere in the Everglades. Joe’s a survivor. I just hope to God he didn’t get snake bit. We’ll find him. Two days ago, I’d suggested that we send an intern and photographer with Joe, but he wanted to go it alone. That’s how he likes to work in the field—him and nature. I’ll call you.”
• • •
I climbed the steps to Jupiter’s fly bridge, carrying Max in one hand, the morning sunrise budding in slivers of coral pink and tangerine orange over the Atlantic. At the top, I set her down on the passenger bench and walked over to an area where I was repairing a small tear in the Bimini canvas. I discovered the rip in the fabric after a thunderstorm tore through Ponce Inlet last month, winds gusting at more the fifty-miles-per-hour. From the bridge, I could see Nick’s boat, St. Michael, returning from a fishing trip, three sea gulls following him, squawking.
I used what was essentially a handheld sewing machine that resembled a screwdriver with a wooden handle. A large needle embedded in the handle looped the stitches as I moved along the canvas. Within three minutes the job was done without removing the Bimini top. I put the tool up and watched Nick back St. Michael into her slip, a puff of blueish smoke coming from the transom exhaust pipes as he shut off the big diesels.
My phone buzzed on the console near the captain’s helm. Max lifted her floppy ears, tilting her head. I looked at the caller ID, recognizing the number. I was going to let the call go to voicemail. But then I thought about what Joe Thaxton had told the audience in the amphitheater and the people watching on televisions across the state. We’ll put ‘em in motion. And we’ll be relentless. That’s a campaign promise you can bet the ranch on!
I answered the phone, Jessica Thaxton greeting me. “I’m worried about Joe. He went somewhere in the heart of the Everglades yesterday to do water and soil samples. He hasn’t come home. That’s not like Joe. Never has he been away all night without letting me know where he was. He’d called around one o’clock yesterday afternoon and said he was taking a break to eat the lunch I’d fixed him. He said he had a few hours left, and he’d be coming home. I’m so scared. I don’t know what to do.”
“Was anyone with him?”
“No, he went alone.”
“Did you call the police?”
“Yes, I called the Collier County Sheriff’s Office. I’m assuming that’s the county Joe was in when he called. They told me that Joe couldn’t be considered a missing person until forty-eight hours after a disappearance. I don’t know where to turn, so I called you.”
I said nothing, looking over at Nick’s slip, watching him tie down St. Michael.
“Sean are you there?”
“Yes. When Joe called you … what exactly did he say?”
“He gave me an update on how his day was going, you know things about his observations of the glades, the water levels, arid places where there should have been water. He was excited to fly his drone for aerial inspections.”
“Did he seem worried or apprehensive in any way?”
“No, not really. He did say he may not have picked the best day to collect data.”
“Why?”
“Because it was the first day of hunting season, and he could hear shots fired near Big Cypress Preserve. That frightens me. What can I do? Not only am I worried, but his entire campaign staff is concerned. Joe missed an early morning speech to the Rotary Club. He never would have done that without letting me know.”
“I have a friend who works for the Collier County Sheriff’s Office. I’ll call him to see if he can speed things up. I’ll let you know what he says.”
“Thank you, Sean. Please hurry.”
FORTY-FOUR
Chester Miller filled a thermos with black coffee, stepped from his cabin and glanced up at the Persephone orchid in the tree. “Maybe today’s the day,” he mumbled. He walked toward a picnic table beneath the tall oak tree where his granddaughter was photographing orchids set on top of the table.
He quietly watched as Callie stood behind her camera secured to a tripod and focused on one of a dozen orchids she’d brought up from the greenhouse. She was methodical, moving each plant to a separate spot on the table she’d covered with a white sheet. She closed one eye, took a picture, zoomed in from the perspecti
ve of the entire plant to capture one of the blooms and took a second picture.
“Oh, good morning Grandpa. I didn’t hear you coming. You must have learned something from the ghost orchids. You walk like a ghost.”
He laughed. “Now, how does a ghost walk?”
“Silently, that’s for sure. I’m almost finished with this group of orchids. Your detailed notes really help give each type of orchid its own unique personality. I’m editing it down to about a paragraph, including the scientific names and a little about the history of the plant. This is going to make a fabulous online catalog for you. People all around the world will be able to see and read about what you’ve discovered.”
“That’s magnificent, Callie. I’ve always wanted my work to be shared beyond some of the information I’ve offered in scientific journals. I thought it was great when National Geographic sent a photographer out here a few years back. He and the writer did a superb job. The photographer took a few pictures of the Persephone plant and told me if it ever blooms into a ‘real orchid,’ to call him. His card is on the corkboard in the greenhouse.”
“I saw it right next to a dozen other cards, mostly from photographers and people with PhDs behind their names. The only card that doesn’t have anything, but a name and number, is the one from Sean O’Brien. It’s like a card you want to turn over to see if there’s something on the other side. When you do, it’s blank, adding to the intrigue and mystery. I hope his girlfriend liked the orchids.”
There was a twinkle in the old man’s eye under the spotted sunlight breaking through the cypress. “How do you know Wynona is his girlfriend?”
Callie smiled. “A girl can tell.”
“Well, enlighten your poor old grandfather. It’s furtive to me.”