“Yes, HLB,” Kermit said. “It won’t be long before we’re all out of business if we don’t find a fix. That tour I gave you this afternoon barely scratched the surface of techniques I’m experimenting with. The reason I’m interested—” He stopped, interrupted by voices in the background; a woman’s muffled words, then a child saying, “Daddy . . . you promised.”
“Gotta run,” Kermit said after a short exchange with his daughter. “Just one more thing. Those old trees, are they still producing? I don’t doubt the disease has damaged the leaves, but how’s it affected the fruit?”
I said, “I’ve got a friend, a marine biologist, who asked me something similar this morning. I didn’t have an answer for him, either.”
“A special friend?”
The grove manager had his family nearby, so I didn’t mind the playful insinuation.
“No one would call a man like him romantic, but he is smart. His idea was to single out trees that aren’t diseased and backtrack to the reason. A different soil type, or elevation, or a different variety—anything. That’s assuming we still have trees that’re healthy. Saltwater’s his specialty, not citrus farming, so maybe he’s way off.”
“Thinking out of the box,” Kermit mused. “That’s what I’m trying to do, too, but your friend doesn’t understand how complex the disease is. I’m afraid there aren’t any simple solutions. On the other hand . . . yeah, I’ve got to ask myself why hundred-year-old trees are still alive?”
“If they aren’t,” I said, “I can point you to some backcountry islands where key limes and other citrus grows wild. You’d need a boat and a machete.”
“You’re not talking about original Spanish seed stock?”
I replied, “I have no idea,” and left it there because Reggie was pointing again, urging me, “Slow down . . . hit them brights. We gotta take a right up ahead.”
“How about I check the grove tomorrow?” I said to Kermit. “I’ll call you after my charter.”
“I’d appreciate that. Better yet, if you’re free in the afternoon, I wouldn’t mind seeing those trees for myself. It sounds nice, the little fishing village where you live. Sulfur Wells—is that the name?”
We had talked about that earlier, the man interested because he was new to the area via a job south of Anaheim, then a research position at the Lake Alfred Station in central Florida.
Even so, I was reluctant to agree until he said, “I’ll bring Sarah along, if it’ll help change your mind.”
I liked the idea of leading his little tomboy daughter around our property; I told him so, and hung up.
“You forgot to ask about the man Lonnie was with,” Reggie scolded as I turned west onto a narrow road, with potholes, where weeds had sprouted knee-high, no houses around in all this darkness and open sky.
“Tomorrow,” I told him.
Something else was on my mind. There is no explaining why an empty road and weeds in the headlights suddenly changed my mood and my reasoning, but it did. It caused me to rethink my quick decision to meet with Kermit, a married man, albeit a devoted father. We wouldn’t be alone if he brought Sarah along—yet, I didn’t want to give him the wrong impression.
I pulled over and sent a text that read:
Bring your wife, too. I’ll invite my biologist friend.
Seconds later, his response pinged my phone:
Great. Just googled Sulfur Wells.
“Do you trust the new grove manager?” I asked Reggie, pulling back onto the road.
He was still hanging over the seat, searching for the next turn. “Why would I? Only knowed the man a few months. The governor thought highly of him, though. He’s supposedly an expert in his field, but that’s no reason to trust a person. I couldn’t count the number of experts I’ve met through the years. Why you ask?”
In the middle of my answer, Reggie lunged again. “Look’a them eyes glowing—you see that? Up ahead, something scrambled across the road. Had some size to it.”
I didn’t see anything, just potholes and weeds, so returned to the subject. “Kermit seems like a nice enough man. It sounds like Lonnie is going to fire him. That’d be a shame. He’s got a family to take care of, and his daughter’s a doll.”
“A dog, maybe, or coyotes,” Reggie said. “Coyotes are thick, these days. Wished I’d’ve brought a gun. You bring a gun?”
I felt my jaw muscles tighten. “Silly me,” I said. “I’ve been so busy moving dead bodies around, firearms totally slipped my mind. Reggie—why not just tell me what happened instead of dragging me all the way out here?”
“There’ll be a gate on your left,” he said. “When I open it, pull through. Make it fast, then wait until it’s closed. We don’t want any company.”
• • •
We were on foot, hiking across a section of raw land Mr. Chatham had bought years ago on spec, back when the city of Cape Coral was still a hundred square miles of swamp and mosquitoes. To create buildable ground, developers had dug four hundred miles of canals, and piled the fill higher than the hopes of fast-talking salesmen who pitched the lots as “Waterfront Homesites.” They did it mostly by phone, when the weather up north had turned frosty. Many of the canals dead-ended far from navigable water, but that detail wasn’t mentioned in the low-down-payment contracts. Other details were omitted, too, as was the truth about a serious miscalculation, or the developer’s lack of scruples. Dredging more canal frontage than any city in the world had damaged the region’s aquifers and forever changed Florida’s water table.
A flurry of legal suits had ensued.
This all happened twenty years before I was born, but there are still so many empty lots and dead-end streets that, seen from the air, Cape Coral’s outskirts resemble a jigsaw puzzle that was abandoned due to lack of interest. What the city doesn’t lack is friendliness, and an interesting mix of people, which is why the community has grown and thrived despite its shaky beginnings.
Not out here, though, north of the city limits. It was just Reggie, with me following along, beneath stars on acreage as flat as Kansas wheat. When we came to a line of cattails, he stopped. Ahead, I could hear water spilling over what appeared to be a cement weir.
Flowing water was a rarity in a canal this far inland.
“This is one investment the governor didn’t get his money back,” Reggie said. “But that’s okay, considering what I’m about to show you.” He patted his pants, then the pockets of his jacket. “You happen to bring a flashlight?”
“I left it with my gun,” I replied. “Next time you ask for my help, I’ll pack for an expedition. If there’s something you want me to see, maybe you should come back alone when the sun’s up and take pictures. I’ve got a charter in the morning.”
“You’re getting irritable, Miz Hannah.”
“Nope, I’m getting mad. Instead of walking a hundred yards, why didn’t we park the car here? For all we know, we could be standing in fire ants.”
“A Lincoln Town Car ain’t an off-road vehicle, ma’am. The governor was fussy about them tires and so am I. Hang on . . . Could be I got some matches from the Over Easy. They got good pie there.”
“Don’t bother,” I told him, and jogged back to the limo. When I started the engine, the poor little man looked frazzled and wobbly in the headlights, so I babied the vehicle across a field of wire grass—until I noticed several pairs of glowing red eyes in the cattails along the canal where Reggie stood. When I sped up, the animals—whatever they were—crashed into the water. They had some weight to them. I could tell because the windows were down and I heard the splash.
“My lord, my lord, they’s giant lizards,” said Reggie. He was still backing away as I pulled up. “Never in my life has there been a day like this day here. Ten, twelve feet long, one of those bastards. I might be drunk, but I ain’t imagining things. My lord . . . they could’a grabbed either one of us.”
“Get in the car, let’s see.”
I assumed he was right but had exaggerated the size. The canals of Cape Coral were prime habitat for Nile monitor lizards that had escaped or been released as pets. The population in the area had flourished, thanks to an abundance of house cats and family dogs.
“They have no predators and plenty of food,” I explained as we crept along in the limo. When there was a break in the foliage, I angled the headlights onto a long stretch of water.
“We’re both wrong,” I said.
“Don’t think so. Those ain’t gators, with those pointy heads and red eyes. Giant lizards, I’d swear.”
“Nope,” I said. “Lizards wouldn’t last long here. They’re saltwater crocs. I’ve seen them in Florida Bay, and Turkey Point—there’s warm water there because of the nuclear power plant. Every now and again, one will show up on Sanibel, but what in the world are they doing this far inland?”
“Water in this here canal is warm as the dickens, if that makes a difference. Does it?”
“Reggie,” I said, “you didn’t bring me here to talk about crocodiles.”
“That there’s your answer,” he replied as if he hadn’t heard me. “They hit a hot-water spring when they dug this canal and it flooded the place. So the governor bought the land cheap and put in that little dam. You think those crocs will bother us if we climb up there and take a quick look? That’s what I want you to see.”
“A weir with a spillway?”
No, the aging chauffeur wanted me to see something else.
I left the limo running and followed him to a welded barrier that was easy enough to slip around. The retaining wall between the flowing spring and the canal was a slab of concrete capped with cement. It was a cool night. As I neared the spillway, the water’s heat radiated a sulfuric warmth.
“Have a look,” Reggie said, and stepped away from the slab.
“Graffiti. So what?”
“Look closer.”
I did. Twenty years ago, Lonnie Dupree had written her name on the capstone in wet cement. She had added a date and her palm print.
“January first.” I was shielding my eyes from the limo’s headlights. “Why is this important?”
“She didn’t sign her name ’cause she wanted to, believe you me. It was after the governor threw a big New Year’s Eve party—then he did that young woman one hell of a bigger favor. Her name and handprint, he made her do it as insurance—a sort of confession if she ever talked about what happened that night.”
I couldn’t see Reggie’s face, just his cloaked silhouette, because he stood between me and the car. “She must’ve killed someone,” I said. “Or hid something she wasn’t supposed to have. Why else would they come the next day and pour cement?”
“Mixed it the same night,” he corrected, “but the work stretched into the small hours. That’s all I’m at liberty to say as of now. I wanted someone else to know, Miz Hannah. Oh”—he indicated a nearby corner—“you’ll see a spot there I sanded away twenty years ago, but not fast enough.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Evidence,” he said. “Evidence the governor left behind out of sloppiness. I thought it was taken care of, but, nope, I was a day or two late with that sander. Can you imagine? After doing what she did, Lonnie snuck back the next morning with a camera and brought along two witnesses willing to party their way to a notary and get papers signed. A cheerleader bein’ that smart, it was unexpected.”
“Pictures of what? Mr. Chatham’s fingerprints? I doubt if a court would accept that as evidence. Or was it something else?”
Reggie watched me inspect the area he had sanded but didn’t respond.
I asked, “While she was at it, why didn’t she get rid of her name and palm print? I don’t expect she told you, but you’ve got to wonder.”
“And risk making a powerful man angry? I dunno . . . she was just a girl, at the time, who done what she did, then came to him begging for help. Those was the drug days. No telling what she was on. L-S-D, I forget most the names. Cocaine? There was one come up from South America, it was the worst. Devil’s Breath, they called it. Kids walked around like dead folk.”
I said, “If she was on drugs, why would she care what anyone thought? She would have destroyed all this.”
“A dumb girl her age might’ve risked it. But not that Lonnie. She waited until Miz Lilly was dead, and the governor was old and weak, to play her trump card. She’d been holding that card back for twenty years. By then, her own life had ’bout run out of blue chips.”
“I was right, she must have murdered someone,” I said.
The chauffeur shrugged.
“If there weren’t crocs here back then, there had to be gators. Why bury a body, if that’s what it was, under concrete? Gators would’ve taken care of any evidence. You told me this much; tell me the rest.”
Reggie, turning toward the car, said, “I like riding in back. You mind driving while I enjoy myself another scotch?”
SEVEN
That night, after I’d gotten Loretta to bed and walked the nurse safely to her car, I researched Florida’s unsolved murders for the time period I’d seen etched in cement. I discovered nothing of interest until I narrowed the search to include people who’d gone missing in January of that year.
What I found reminded me not to judge others in haste, including Lonnie Dupree.
A Tallahassee Democrat story about Raymond Caldwell, age twenty-two, jumped out at me. He was the big-city son of a man who owned car dealerships in Jacksonville and Atlanta. Despite his advantages, Raymond had taken a dangerous turn. He’d been in trouble numerous times for DUI, and drug possession, including a pound of cocaine. It was a felony charge that ended his career as a college linebacker and, some believed, a shot at the NFL.
I’m not a football fan. To me, the stunner was that he had been charged with sexual assault three times while a student yet his football scholarship hadn’t been revoked until the cocaine incident. One of the assault cases was still pending when his family reported him missing on January fifth. The local sheriff’s department had issued a BOLO, a “be on the lookout,” but took a different view of the disappearance. They also issued an arrest warrant, citing parole violations and Raymond’s failure to appear at a preliminary hearing scheduled for January fourth. His family was forced to forfeit a $100,000 bond.
“We’re watching airports, and agencies in all border states have been alerted,” a spokesman was quoted as saying.
For a year, the media hyped the story, but interest faded. The last follow-up piece was ten years ago. In it, a former roommate remembered Raymond Caldwell talking about how much he loved South America. He had spent summers there as a teen, working on a cattle ranch owned by a friend of his father’s.
The implications were obvious, but Caldwell was never extradited because he was never found.
I had no proof that Lonnie Dupree had known Raymond Caldwell. I had no proof she was one of his assault victims, yet the timing was too eerily similar to believe otherwise. I was on overload when I pushed away from the computer and carried a mug of tea to the stern of my boat for some air.
If Lonnie, or Harney Chatham, had murdered the young man, they had chosen the perfect victim and the ideal time. Yet, I felt no remorse.
As I am aware, a presumption of innocence is a cornerstone of law. I am also aware I have a bias that borders on fury when it comes to sexual assault—particularly if the suspect has been charged multiple times. If people, not just men, would give the subject serious thought, they would understand why only a small percentage of women are willing to report such a crime. The courage it requires! Not only must the victims share the humiliating details, they must then endure the sneering insinuations of attorneys paid to paint the truth as a lie.
From what I have experienced, and from secrets shared by wome
n, the only difference between sexual assault and cold-blooded murder is this: rape victims are destined to relive their subjugation nightly, yet without the redeeming hope that the monster in their dreams will be banished by the electric chair.
I admit my bias, just as I admit I believe rape should be punished as a capital crime. It’s not a conviction I discuss in church, nor with anyone but my closest friends. I’m a hypocrite—another personal flaw of which I am aware.
Just researching the subject caused my stomach to knot, so I switched topics and looked up the drug Reggie had mentioned. Devil’s Breath. I’d never heard of it, didn’t expect to find much. But there it was, although better known as scopolamine, a pharmaceutical made from the seeds of a plant that grows in the Amazon Valley. Huge, drooping white blossoms; a striking perennial that, in the wrong hands, also produced what some articles called “the world’s most dangerous drug.” The seeds, ground into powder, can be slipped into a victim’s drink, or even blown into the face to inhale. The effects were horrific. Victims remained conscious, but lost all short-term memory, as well as their free will. They could be led around like zombies and submitted to whatever they were ordered to do. Surprisingly, it was prostitutes who most often employed the drug, to separate clients from their billfolds, their debit card numbers, sometimes even the title to their homes. Streetwalkers were known to make a paste, rub it on their breasts, then invite potential clients to kiss their nipples. That’s all it took.
Men used it, too, of course. Once again, I was back on the subject of date rape. This was enough for one night.
• • •
The dock my Uncle Jake built zigs and zags through the mangroves, then two hundred feet out into the bay. I walked to the end, where there is a cleaning table and a power switch for the gooseneck lamps spaced along the way. They were off. I flicked a separate switch, and the water beneath my feet was illuminated by a floodlight. Mullet exploded around me in a chain reaction while night herons squawked from the trees. A school of ladyfish, with golden tubes for eyes, scattered into darker water. I stood watching a slow flow of life—shrimp and dollar-sized crabs, and a couple of sea horses—riding toward whatever destination tonight’s mindless tide might determine.
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