by Tom Lowe
“Grandpa, you know a lot about the mystery of orchids, a flower that I’m convinced has its own cool love thing going, certainly with the bees. Not so much the birds. When Sean glanced at Wynona, he had the look.”
“What do you mean by the look?”
“Like the way he smiled at her. The way he listened to her when she spoke. You can tell she’s very special to him, and I could tell that she feels special being around him.”
“Are you telling me you could tell how they felt about each other in the half-hour they spent here?”
“Of course. The first five minutes, really.” She grinned. “I could see a strong affection in those blue-gray eyes of his. And I could see she cares as much, if not even more about him too.”
“Really?”
“Yep. He’s way too old for me, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think he’s cute.”
“And so are you my dear granddaughter.”
She smiled and looked at the thermos he carried. “Are you going somewhere?”
“Yes, I wanted to make a run up into Big Cypress to plant three species of Everglades orchids that are almost as rare as the ghost orchid. These include the butterfly orchid, the longclaw and the grass pink orchids. I loaded them into the bed of my truck yesterday. There are only thirty-eight varieties of orchids left in the glades and Big Cypress. At one time, fifty-one species lived here. No more.”
“You most definitely are the orchid keeper, Grandpa. And the world thanks you for your dedication.”
“It’s always about the flowers and the role they play. You want to come with me? We’ll pack a lunch.”
“I’ve got errands to run. First, I really need to finish these while the light under this tree is good for pictures. After I’m done, I want to drive into Naples. We need some more bottled water and a few groceries.”
He reached into his wallet and pulled out some money. “Here, take this. Do you think that’ll cover it?
“It’s more than enough.”
He smiled. “Keep the change.”
She stepped over to her grandfather and kissed him on the cheek. “Don’t forget to take your phone, okay? And don’t tell me you don’t want to take it because you can’t get a cell signal out in the Everglades. Sometimes you can.”
“Maybe it has something to do with the weather.” He grinned, his bushy, white eyebrows arching. “You be careful on your drive into Naples. There are lots of tourists coming down the pike called the Tamiami Trail. Most of them have their necks craned, looking at the roadside canals, trying to get a glimpse of a gator in the wild. These folks have a tendency to cross the centerline while driving and rubber-necking.”
• • •
Chester sipped a cup of coffee driving west on the Tamiami Trail, listening to an NPR story on the radio about the art of handmade cowboy boots and an eighty-five-year-old man who still makes one pair a week for customers from his small shop in San Angelo, Texas. He glanced up in his rearview mirror, put his turn-signal on and made a slow left-hand turn from the highway onto 15 Mile Road or as he called it, Gator Gully.
• • •
Michael Fazio thought about the drone he’d seen. He knew the man he’d shot had been flying the drone, but he had no idea where it had landed. Couldn’t find it on first pass. Was my face on some aerial camera? He thought. Gotta go back out there. Gotta find it. He called Simon Santiago and said, “Job’s done. They’ll probably find the body in a couple days. It’s deep in the Everglades.”
“Good. Maybe they’ll never find it.”
“I gotta take a run back out there.”
“Why?”
“There was a drone the dude was flying. I tried shooting it down. It was movin’ like a bat outta hell. I don’t know if there was a camera on it, but I’m not willing to chance it.”
“What if you can’t find it?”
“Then we better hope nobody else can either.”
FORTY-FIVE
I made the call from Jupiter’s fly bridge, hoping my old friend was still working at the Collier County Sheriff’s office. I hadn’t spoked with Cory Gilson in a few years. I’d worked the homicide division with Cory at Miami-Dade PD. He was one of the best when it came to tenacity and perseverance in tracking down killers. After a decade with the force, two attempts on his life, and one justified shooting—leaving the perp in a wheelchair, Cory packed it in and moved across the state to Naples. He’d been with the sheriff’s office for about eight years.
“Collier County Sheriff’s Department,” said the female receptionist.
“Cory Gilson, please.”
“He’s in investigations. I’ll transfer you.”
After almost half a minute, he answered. “Homicide, Gilson speaking.”
“Cory, it’s Sean O’Brien. How are you?”
“Sean O’Brien … how the hell are you? Where are you? Heard you told ‘em to basically take the job and shove it not long after Sherri passed. What’s going on?”
“That’s not exactly what happened, but I like your version even better.”
“I heard through the grapevine that you’re doing PI work. Is it true?”
“I’ve done a few jobs, here and there.” Cory and I caught up briefly, and then I asked, “How much of Collier County incudes Big Cypress Preserve and a slice of the Everglades.”
“A big chunk. Yeah, you’re talking about God’s country out there. Some parts of those wetlands are nearly inaccessible, I don’t care what kind of swamp buggy you drive.”
“Yesterday, a guy who’s running for a seat in the state house went into the glades or Big Cypress to do water and soil tests. Apparently, he never came out, or if he did, he’s off the radar.”
“What’s his name?
“Joe Thaxton. He’s running for office out of Stuart. He’s a former fishing guide with a degree in marine biology, and he’s taking on big agricultural interests in a fight over water pollution south of Lake Okeechobee.”
“I’ve heard of him. Good luck with that fight.”
“Thaxton’s received a few threatening phone calls. He’s every bit the personification of David verses Goliath. His wife just called me. She’s very worried that something happened to her husband somewhere in the glades. She called your office and got the standard definition of the wait time in filing a missing person’s report. You know the glades … you wait too long, and the swamps have a way of hiding things.”
“Yeah, and it happens fast in terms of decomposition of physical evidence, too. You really think one of those corporate giants put a hit out on this guy?”
“In most circumstances, I’d say no. But this is different because Thaxton is a rare breed. He’s definitely not your average Joe, as his campaign suggests when it comes to his gift for relating to people. And I think this might cause a lot of paranoia within large agricultural companies that may have a lot to lose when it comes to changing their farming practices to be more in compliance … not only with the anti-pollution laws already on the books, but the ones that Thaxton will write and propose if he gets elected.”
“Sean, happy to speed things up for you. But, before we do a search in the glades, it would be good to know in which general area we might start. Collier County is more than 2300 square miles, and a large piece of that land mass is under water in Big Cypress and the glades.”
“His wife isn’t sure exactly where he was doing his surveys. But I can text you Thaxton’s phone number and that of his wife, Jessica. She spoke with him around one in the afternoon yesterday. You can pull phone records and see where the calls might triangulate.”
“We’ve never done that on something that really doesn’t qualify as a missing person’s report in the parameters set up for that. But, since I know you, and I know your bird dog sense for crime, I’ll do it. That doesn’t mean we’ll find this guy out there in a million acres of swamps, but we’ll start the search.”
“Thanks, Cory. I owe you one.”
“And I’ll collect. But I’m a cheap date
… a Sam Adams, a dozen oysters on the half shell and I’m good. Send me the numbers, Sean, and we’ll get stuff going. See you.” He disconnected, and I called Jessica Thaxton.
FORTY-SIX
Chester began the slow ramble north up a road he had traveled many times during the last forty years in the Everglades. Although he’d secured the two-dozen young orchid plants in the bed of his truck, he still drove carefully. The least amount of abrupt movement that the plants experienced, the better. Plants, especially the orchids, he believed, did have a sensory capacity that could detect movement not unlike the buds that could sense sunlight. However, that was more visible in a few other plants.
He remembered the first time he watched a Venus flytrap catch a small moth in the wild. He was in the swamps of South Carolina, studying the native flora. He had watched the plant for three hours, sitting in a portable canvas chair he had carried through the bog. When a small moth alighted in the seductive red mouth of the flytrap, the pair of green leaves snapped shut like a clam shell, faster than the human eye could register. The plants have no nervous system. No muscle. No brain, yet they are triggered at the right second to move … to clamp down on prey. Something about carnivorous plants, ones eating meat or protein, appeared to be paradoxical, yet somehow offering poetic justice.
This would be his seventh trip to the area this year. He wanted to make sure the orchids were planted before the cool nights of the winter season, which was not that far away. He glanced into the rearview mirror and could see the orchids in their clay pots braced by a half-dozen sandbags, propped up in the truck bed. “Taking you guys home,” he said with a grin. “It’s where you belong.” He started whistling a tune, dodging a large, water-filled pothole in the dirt road. The wind through his open windows carried the scent of mud, moss, and lichen baking in the sun on dwarf cypress trees that stood in water hunched over like gangly scarecrows in vast fields of sawgrass.
Chester came to one of the remote ancillary trails that snaked off Gator Gully. He eased his truck onto the muddy path, surprised to see what appeared to be fresh tire tracks in the muck. He drove another one hundred yards, around a cluster of tall Everglades palms and saw palmettos. He glanced in his rearview mirror and saw that one of the sandbags had slid to the side panel and one of the orchids had come loose, falling on its side. “Oh dear … hold on, I’m coming, little fella,” he mumbled.
He got out of his truck, walked to the back and opened the tailgate. He stood the orchid up, using both hands to scrape the spilled dirt into the pot. Then he moved the sandbag back in position. As he walked back to the driver’s side of his truck, he was almost caught off guard when he spotted another vehicle coming fast around a muddy bend in the road. Rarely, if ever, did he see cars this far out into spur trails that fanned into the glades.
Chester knew there was no way the black car could go around him safely. He stood there, waved to the driver, smiled. “I’ll pull over, so you can get by me. There’s a spot about twenty yards back that’s got enough ground for me to get my truck out of the way.”
The driver said nothing, mud-splatter all along the sides of the car.
Chester nodded. “I’m amazed you got your car this far back in here. That’s a fancy looking machine. I wouldn’t have thought that it could take this country. Mud will come off. Scratches in the paint are a bigger challenge. That’s one of the reasons my old truck is the way it is, scars and all. I got stuck out here one summer during the rainy season on 1999. I had to walk out, more than forty miles, some through waist-deep water. And—”
“Move!”
“Sure thing. Out here, patience pays off.” Chester climbed back in his truck closed the door, put the truck in reverse and started backing up.
• • •
Michael Fazio opened his glove box, removing a 9mm Sig Sauer. He set the pistol in the console between the seats, watching the old man in the truck. He put the car in gear and slowly followed him. A deerfly came through the open window, alighting on Fazio’s cheek, quickly biting him. He slapped the fly, the dead insect falling between his legs in the seat. “Come on, pops. Move that piece of shit,” he muttered. “Gotta get out of this swamp.”
• • •
Chester looked in his rearview mirror, carefully backing up. He could see the area he had in mind, a spit of land with a slightly higher elevation than the surrounding area, a strand with buttonwood trees and saw palmettos growing near it. He backed his truck onto the spongy soil and waved for the driver to come forward. The man behind the wheel showed no acknowledgement. He drove slowly, one hand on the wheel the other on the grip of his pistol. Even with the truck partially off the trail, there was less than a foot of room for the car to pass. As it came closer, Chester nodding, offering a smile.
The man ignored him. Chester could see the man’s profile well, and a red welt on is left cheek.
• • •
Michael Fazio moved past the vintage truck. And then he looked up in his mirror, watching the old man. He whispered, “If you look up … if you look in your rearview mirror and see my license plate, I’m going to park, walk back and shoot you in your ugly head.”
• • •
Chester put the truck in gear, pulled back onto the trail and followed the tracks in the path, wondering where the man had been and why he was out there. “Guess I’ll be able to see in a little while,” he mumbled. “There’s only so far a fella can go in a vehicle. After that it’s on foot with waders or snake-proof boots. And he didn’t impress me as the kind who’d be out here taking pictures in the glades.”
Chester drove three-quarters of a mile more into the marsh, the water getting deeper, coming half-way up his tires. The key, he knew, was not to stop until he reached relatively dry land. If he stopped in the quagmire, without the on-going physics of movement, his truck could easily be swallowed to his bumpers in the muck. He steered for a grove of slash pines and oaks. No cypress trees meant less water above ground. He jostled in the truck, the springs creaking, the orchids in the back still upright.
And then something hit him like an off-key singer’s voice.
A bizarre illusion of sorts in front of him.
It was a new model pickup truck parked on the edge of the strand of trees. It almost appeared to have been abandoned. There was an eerie silence, a stance—a look and feel about the truck, as if the owner had dumped it and decided to go the rest of the journey on foot. Chester parked, got out and approached the truck. He felt as if he was walking up to a deserted dwelling, the only signs of life were black carrion birds riding the air currents in the distance over the Everglades.
FORTY-SEVEN
I was pouring food into Max’s bowl when Cory Gilson called. I picked my phone off the top of the bar in Jupiter’s salon and answered. He said, “We pulled phone records from Joe and Jessica Thaxton. It looks like the last answered call from Joe Thaxton was at 1:07 p.m. yesterday. He made no other calls. This one pinged from two cell towers. One was a tower northwest of Big Cypress Preserve, at the border of the Fakahatchee Strand. That’s panther country in there. Maybe during the call Thaxton was walking or his wife was driving, but the signal also pinged from a tower north of Alligator Alley near the Big Cypress Seminole Reservation.”
I said nothing, trying to picture that desolate terrain in my mind.
“You there, Sean?”
“Yeah, I’m here. Can you send a search team out in the general area?”
“That’s the problem … it’s a general area. Lots of square miles of sawgrass, swamps and some places that look like the Amazon jungles. You’re talking about thirty miles between those two cell towers. Thaxton could be anywhere in there. If he’s in there.”
“You think he’s not?”
“Who knows. He and the wife could have been in a helluva fight. Maybe he finished his work and went down to the Keys to put some distance behind things.”
“That’s a possibility, but I doubt it’s the case. I’ve met him, spent time talking. His
campaign has blown up larger than any of the pundits would have ever thought possible. Thaxton’s the junk yard dog that’s grabbed the legs of corrupt CEOs, politicians and lobbyists, and he won’t let go. He’s not in the Florida Keys. He’s most likely still somewhere in the glades. He told his wife he could hear shots fired from what he believed were hunters on the first day of the season.”
“You think someone may have mistaken him for game?”
“That’s possible. Or maybe somebody would like for investigators to think that.”
I could hear Cory release a long breath. “All right. Only because we have a history together in the trenches, I’ll get my guys to dispatch a helicopter to fly the area. That’s more effective than taking a dozen men on airboats or ATV’s, running through miles of swamps.”
“Thanks, Cory.” He’d already hung up.
I looked over at Max and said, “Let’ go for a walk.” She did her dachshund nod and headed out the open salon door to the cockpit, her little black nose capturing the fishy scent of a low tide, barnacles drying on the sides of the dock pilings, and smoldering charcoal from a grill on one of the boats.
• • •
More than three hours later, Max and I walked back from the beach across the Ponce Marina parking lot. We entered the Tiki Bar, Max scampering toward Flo who was using a damp cloth to wipe down a table. I counted seven customers in the restaurant, five at a table and two sitting at the cypress plank bar. Jimmy Buffet was crooning a song from the jukebox, Something About a Boat. Flo looked at Max. “Maxine, you wanna seat at the bar or will the table work?”
I said, “She prefers the bar when Nick’s with her. When she’s with me, it’s always the table.”
Flo laughed. “I think Nicky has other motives. Max always has the run of the place. She’s good for business.” Flo neatly folded the cloth in quarters, setting it on one end of the bar next to a spray bottle of glass cleaner. She looked up at me. “There was a couple in here yesterday, both in their late thirties, looking to buy a used sailboat. I don’t know if you have Dragonfly on the market. The fella wrote his name and number on a napkin. I have it if you’re interested.”