I asked again for the time, then looked for myself. It was a little after seven.
“Hannah . . . don’t tell me you’re feeling remorse. What happens to the guy is all on me. Your only mistake was asking questions I shouldn’t have answered. I know better. Not that the cops will find anything. I’m good at what I do.”
Harney Chatham’s “Lysol man” took out his phone and formulated a test of his own. “Tell you what, I still have one bar showing. I can call. Tell him to shut down his engines; that I think someone’s trying to kill him. Or make up some cockamamie story that’s convincing. You know . . . a warning shot. We talked about warning shots. Say the word, I’ll do it.” He gave me time to think before asking, “How many women did Caldwell assault before he disappeared? I bet you have the number in a file somewhere.”
I turned away from the man’s hard stare. “Sun’s up,” I said. “Get your gloves on. I don’t see the point in waiting around here until it’s warmer.”
Martinez said what sounded like I thought as much as I jammed the throttle forward.
Off Camp Key, we flew across a tendril of sand. The bottom fell away, and I turned my skiff in the direction of Choking Creek.
• • •
In a labyrinth of oyster bars and islands, a GPS is no more useful than a compass. My eyes, my hands, did the steering while my mind reviewed something else I’d learned in the warmth of my SUV.
What happened that New Year’s Eve, more than twenty years ago, was a sordid story that diminished my respect for the late Harney Chatham. As Martinez had reminded me, however, most of the “facts” had been provided by a drunken (or drugged) college cheerleader.
Long before midnight, Lonnie, in hysterics, had taken Chatham aside, desperately in need of help. She’d been assaulted by a drifter, she said, who followed the college holiday crowd, selling drugs. His specialty was a date rape powder known as Devil’s Breath. Lonnie claimed she would’ve been raped if her boyfriend—who was already in trouble with the law—hadn’t come along and beaten the man to death.
The drifter’s body went into the gator pool where Reggie and I had seen crocs. A confession, written by Lonnie, went into a cement capstone atop the concrete weir. The next day, her boyfriend, Raymond Caldwell, fled the country. This required the assistance of a powerful man who could pull strings and owned a boat that could make the crossing to Mexico.
When I asked, “Why would Mr. Chatham willingly participate in such a crime?” I received the answer I expected. He didn’t. Not willingly.
Martinez offered two explanations, the first provided by Lonnie.
While a junior in high school, she had volunteered to spend the summer working for Chatham’s election campaign. He’d tried to seduce her. After weeks of being charmed and pressured, Lonnie finally gave in. By the time their affair ended, she had photographs to prove that the soon-to-be lieutenant governor was guilty of statutory rape.
Martinez didn’t believe it. He knew that photographs of some type were involved but had a different theory. Lonnie had done the seducing. Either that or, during the campaign, she had photographed Chatham with another eager volunteer who, as some suspected, often slept in the great man’s bed.
Chatham had never confided the truth about which version to believe. Not even to Martinez, a man who claimed to be Chatham’s only confidant.
This oddity troubled me, but I let it go. Nor did I ask for names or dates. There was no need. That summer, I’d spent my tenth birthday helping my uncle hack a tunnel to a secret spot—the very place to which I was returning on this dismal winter morning.
Loretta, the eager volunteer, had been generous about granting me free time during my childhood years. Now I understood why.
Martinez, of course, knew all about my mother. He’d asked, point-blank, if Chatham had died in her arms. This gave me an opportunity, once again, to invest my trust in a man I barely knew.
I answered him honestly. Yes, Chatham had died in Loretta’s bed. Lonnie wasn’t the only one who had breached the fidelity clause in their marriage contract.
How smoothly I shared a truth that was not mine to share. Sometimes, trust must be awarded before it can be granted. Angst and self-recriminations regarding Kermit had also played a role.
You are a beautiful woman.
As I was speeding inland toward the sun, the married man’s words chided me from a world I had seldom dared stray. Only once, in fact. Yet, over and over, they hammered at a wounded reality within.
Finally, I conceded, I’m a fool. Yes, a goddamn fool . . . but I am my own goddamn fool!
After that, I refocused on the task, which was avoiding oyster bars, and shielding my eyes from the glare. Martinez hunkered down beside me, a man who was as wide as a bulldozer yet nimble for his age and size. Articulate, too. He was using a pencil to mark our course on a chart he’d brought along. Occasionally, he made remarks or asked questions that confirmed his experience as a navigator. Watermen don’t travel as passengers. They pay attention, aware they might have to find their own way home.
Smart. Few would have bothered to obtain the correct chart on such short notice. I would’ve done the same. To believe otherwise would have redoubled my doubts about the man beside me.
My hand moved to the small of my back. The Devel pistol was there beneath a jacket and layers of clothing. Not easy to get to, but still a comforting weight.
South of Tripod Key, an unmarked channel appeared as a swath of green. It traversed a sandy shoal. Never had I seen the water in this area so clear. The cold snap had killed all murky microscopic plants and sent them to the bottom. A few fish lay stunned there, too: ingots of silver that might revive as the day warmed.
The air was warming now. The numbness of my nose and cheeks suggested otherwise, but the change was palpable. The channel narrowed. Islands crowded in; long bars of mangroves, trimmed like Japanese hedges. The insulation they provided seemed to generate heat.
Far to my right was Faka Union Bay, where we’d stopped to visit the Daniels cemetery. Ahead was an opening that might have been a gate. I used the trim tabs, tilted the engine, and threaded my skiff through. Air temperature climbed. It was if we had breached the mouth of an animal and were being shunted toward its radiant heart.
“Shouldn’t we turn southeast fairly soon?” The pencil in Martinez’s hand tapped the chart, our exact location.
“We could,” I said, “it’s doable, but we’d have to climb through a quarter mile of mangroves to reach the mound. There used to be a shorter route.”
He consulted the chart, then considered the wall of islands that blocked our way. “There’s no opening . . . none that I see here . . . and this chart’s up to date. God knows how long that river’s been landlocked. That’s what I think it is, an archaic river. If there are Indian mounds, it would make sense. They had to have access.”
“More sense than hiking through mangroves,” I agreed.
The man squinted at the chart. “Wouldn’t this be simpler?” He pointed to a river half a mile east that ran parallel to Choking Creek. “The entrance is tricky, but it deepens once you’re in. We tie the boat and blaze a trail, so getting back will be easy. Give it some thought. By this afternoon, it’ll be in the mid-sixties. You know what that means.”
There was no need to confirm I did.
“Are you sure you’re willing to waste time just on the chance of saving time? Personally, I don’t mind a tough hike.”
I motioned to the front storage hatch. “There’s a saw and hedge clippers, a machete, and some other stuff in a bag. If you don’t mind, go ahead and get ready.”
The man’s bushy beard parted to show a friendly, bearish smile. “You plan to cut our way in?”
I replied, “It’s been done before.”
The confidence I wanted to communicate did not reflect my doubts as we drew closer to that wall of green. I
dropped off plane and idled along a shoreline where there was no shore, only the tangled claws of prop roots beneath a curtain of waxen leaves.
“Impossible,” Martinez said.
A few minutes later, I lifted an awning of branches, switched off the engine, and nudged my skiff ahead. There it was: an opening, where blunt stubs of tree limbs walled a channel. Over the years, new mangroves had bridged the space, but it hadn’t changed much. Watery daylight was visible on the other side.
“I’ll be darned,” the man said. There was admiration in his tone.
I found that reassuring. I’d begun to fear there was a reason Martinez favored hiking in from the next river.
“We’ll have to do some cutting,” I said. “Keep low; watch your eyes.”
I pulled the skiff into the cut. Tree limbs sprung back into position and hid our presence. Overhead, waxen leaves interlaced to form a shaded cavern. Spiderwebs glistened like ice crystals in the fresh sunlight.
“Listen.” Martinez held up a hand, his head cocked. “A boat. Hear it?”
From somewhere in the distance, miles away, the whine of an outboard motor vacillated like gusting wind. A bumblebee sound that came and went . . . then grew steadily louder.
“You’re the expert. Think it could be him?”
“Shush,” I said.
A minute or more passed. In my mind, a black catamaran hull was attempting to cross a flat too shallow for twin, oversized engines. Then, as if influenced by my anxiety, what I hoped would happen happened.
The sound of a fast boat plowing itself high onto a sandbar is distinctive. Familiar braying notes reached my ears, a series of staccato thuds that ascended into the howl of engines starved for water. The driver refused to concede. After several pointless attempts, the howling became a sustained scream that, abruptly, went silent.
Wrong. The engines were silenced by what we heard next: a gasoline whoosh, then the faraway thump of an explosion. The soundless void that followed suggested images of smoke and flames.
Martinez was forward, hedge clippers in hand. I was on the stern casting deck, holding the skiff steady. We looked at each other. I felt dazed. Not him. “That stupid damn hick,” he said, pleased with himself. “I told you there was no need to worry. Well . . . at least he’s not freezing his ass off anymore.”
Hick? Luckheim had only posed as a redneck, if what Martinez had told me was true.
Humor, in this remote place, and under the circumstances, strained my patience. The laughter that came next struck me as bizarre. It was a while before I could speak. When I did, what the man heard me say was, “Raymond . . . ? Hand me those clippers.”
“Of course it was his boat,” was the response to a question I had not asked.
What I’d said was, “Raymond . . . hand me those clippers.”
Although still uncertain, I felt a chill when the big man did.
TWENTY-THREE
Martinez—if that was his name—didn’t say much until we exited the tunnel into the bay where Birdy had nearly died.
“Beautiful,” he said. “What’d it take, about forty minutes? Worth it, to see something like this. That Harney, he was right about you knowing your way around a boat.” His eyes settled on me. “About some other things, too. Don’t get mad. That’s a compliment.”
He had read my reaction accurately.
I said, “Closer to an hour . . . but it is pretty, I suppose—if you’ve never been here before.”
The Garden of Eden might have been as deceptively idyllic: a crystal basin rimmed by palms that shaded clear water, and rivulets that dropped off, black and deep, near the bank. Gumbo-limbo trees sparkled with amber sunlight. They were elevated by mounds creating a sawtooth ridge.
“How’d you ever find this? Even with GPS numbers, it would be darn near impossible.”
I lowered the engine, saying, “It’s already almost nine. The tide’s falling and I don’t want to get trapped in here. Take a seat.”
My terseness was intentional. If the man wasn’t who he claimed to be—Caldwell, perhaps, a rapist and killer—now was the time to find out. There are many ways a good boat handler can rid themselves of a passenger. I started the engine and throttled toward the first bend.
Martinez, with his beard and gray ponytail, remained standing. When he turned to face me, his weight caused the skiff to list. “Was it something I said?”
I feigned ignorance. “If we hit a snag, you could fall overboard. That’s all I meant.”
“Come on, now. Suddenly, you don’t trust me. Which test did I fail? There’ve been so many.” Amused, he took off his parka, a red turtleneck sweater beneath. I got a glimpse of a holster when he knelt to stuff the parka under the seat. When he straightened, the pistol was in his hand; not pointed at me, but there. Like a magic trick, that’s how fast it happened. He continued talking, unaware that, reflexively, I reached for a holster not easily accessed.
“Maybe this will convince you.” He released the magazine and locked the slide back. A chambered round was ejected, which he caught before it hit the deck. It was something I’d seen experts do. With the same professional ease (after I’d confirmed the chamber was empty), he presented the weapon to me. A heavy-caliber Beretta; a .45, possibly, that was not smooth to the touch, unlike my Devel Smith & Wesson, but held far more cartridges.
“Stick it in that bag or carry it, I don’t care. When we get onshore, you take the shotgun. Check my billfold, too, but we both know how easy it is to fake IDs. Here, if you want—” He reached for his back pocket.
“You don’t need to do that,” I said. “I’m nervous, I admit it. I should’ve come out and said what’s on my mind.”
“Nervous is bad. Being careful, though, is smart. Hannah, every scenario you’ve considered; believe me, I would’ve done the same. Already did, in fact, back there while cutting our way through. Here’s the way it went—tell me if I’m close. Larry actually is Larry—or was.” His face tilted toward the skyline, where there might have been smoke if not for trees. “Lonnie and I could have cooked up the whole scheme, me in the role of Harney’s old pal Beano. After I’d killed him, of course, and fed his body to the alligators—that’s something Raymond Caldwell knows how to do. Lonnie gives me a list of three witnesses who saw us doing the dirty deed. Would a guy like Caldwell hesitate? Nope. Not if it involves money. Or keeping his kinky old girlfriend—”
“That’s close enough,” I said. “Isn’t it scary, how our minds sometimes work the same? There is one thing you left out—”
“No pictures on the Internet. Am I right? Not of Sabin Martinez. If there are, the ages didn’t mesh, or they didn’t look . . . well, sufficiently intimidating? But, then, you figured a man in my line of work would avoid broadcasting his—”
“Take your gun back,” I said. “This is just silly. You don’t need to convince me anymore.”
That wasn’t true. But we were here, now, in this remote place, and I had to cloak my doubts with confidence or risk a meltdown between us.
The man refused my offer in a convivial way yet was serious enough to say, “Keep the gun until we get back to Marco with oranges, or orange trees, or whatever it is you’re after. Under one condition. You test-fire that shotgun before stepping foot onshore, I don’t care how cold it is, I’m not kidding. Your story about giant snakes was convincing.”
When he again refused to take the Beretta, I placed it atop the console. The magazine went into my pocket, along with the bullet—after he’d turned around.
We had entered the serpentine bend. I motored along the concave edge, where water was deepest, then pointed. “See that spot just ahead? My last trip, we saw an orange floating, but it floated under the trees. We’ll pull in there. After I get an anchor set, and we’re tied up, I’d appreciate it if you tested the shotgun.”
“A show of trust,” Martinez said, not flattered but wi
lling to make peace.
I, too, wanted to smooth things over. “You’re welcome to think so, but it could be because the darn thing kicks like a mule. Go ahead, open the duffel bag. It looks like the shotguns they carried on stagecoaches.”
Finally, a real smile: broad, white Teddy Roosevelt teeth framed in a bushy, graying beard. “I’d be honored,” he said, then, with the gun in his hands, amended, “If it doesn’t blow up in my face. This thing’s ancient.”
“My uncle got it somewhere. Or maybe it was handed down through the family. I don’t know. The last time I shot it, I was”—ten years old, I realized, here, while camping, but only said—“too young to ever want to shoot it again. The shells worry me. Don’t they go bad after a while?”
He snapped the gun open, tilted the walnut stock, saw twin triggers and high-ridged hammers on a barrel set only twenty inches long. “An old side-by-side coach gun. The best home-defense weapon there is.” He inspected a couple of shells. “Buckshot. Exactly what we need if it warms up.”
Snakes, he was referring to. It was impossible to scan the water without imagining a monster lying on the bottom or a python tracking us from the trees. I tested the temperature by exhaling as if blowing a smoke ring. My breath did not condense. I’d already unzipped my windbreaker; removing it seemed infidelity to my fears, but I took it off anyway. “Get the bowline ready,” I said. “You’ll need gloves. And watch the trees—they might be up there, getting sun.”
“Snakes?”
“Lay the shotgun on the deck,” I replied, “until we’re tied up.”
As I throttled closer, I dropped an anchor off the stern, then fed line until Martinez got his hands on a stout limb. I snubbed the anchor; he tied a flurry of half hitches. Soon, the boat was secure, bow and stern, on lines as taut as springs. On a falling tide, I didn’t want the engine to drift under the trees.
“Give it a try,” I said.
Martinez loaded the shotgun and fired twice into the water, the rounds spaced like signal shots. The results were mood-lifting, but the shells didn’t eject properly.
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