Salt River

by Randy Wayne White

  After a gulp from a bottle of vodka, he coughed and took another long drink. “Oh, puke city,” he moaned, then clutched his stomach, turned, and dry-heaved. Several seconds later, he looked at me with watery eyes. “See? It’s working. Smoke purifies . . . Dude, what’s your name?”

  “Ford,” I said. “Get your clothes on, please.”

  “Ford.” He thought that was hilarious. “Sure, Mr. Ford and Mr. Cadillac. You could at least thank me for saving your life. Tell the police that. Tell them I saved your ass and tried to burn the world clean, okay? I’m done with this crazy shit. I just wanna go home.”

  Another absurdity—until I followed his gaze to an old clapboard building next to the pool. A window there bounced with a smoldering orange flame.

  Christ, he’d set the place on fire.

  “Let them burn,” he yelled as I sprinted away. “They’re my clothes, don’t touch them. The bugs will spread and everyone on the planet will die.”

  Inside, among fishing rods, swim fins, and patio furniture, he had piled his clothes on a can of Sterno and lit it. Fortunately, he had all but smothered the flame. I stomped the fire out, and was gathering the mess, when I saw the man, still naked, cross the window in moonlight, a towel hanging from his right hand.

  I turned toward the open door, saying, “Thanks, Jayden, I can use that,” meaning the towel.

  Jayden, eyes wild, dropped the towel and his childlike act. In his hand was a pneumatic speargun he’d probably found in the same room. “You’re even dumber than him.” He grinned, and aimed the gun at my face. Shrewd, the distance he maintained—close enough to shoot me, but not so close I could lunge and strip the weapon away.

  My right hand found the Galco holster belted to the small of my back. “Aren’t you in enough trouble?” I started to say, and that’s when he fired—a metallic ping.

  I ducked. If I hadn’t, I might have died. Instead, the stainless shaft, double-barbed, pierced the soft area beneath my left trapezoid muscle, close to my jugular. The shock more than the impact knocked me to the floor.

  “Told you what would happen,” he yelled. Then came at me, speargun raised like an axe in his good hand, while the arm I had dislocated dangled at his side.

  A dazed sense of unreality spun the ceiling. I watched from above, every next move in slow motion. He feinted left and right, trying to get a clean shot at my head with the butt of the gun. I kicked at his shins. Twice, he hammered the floor near my ear. It was a sickening exchange because the spearhead had gone through me and I was tethered to the shaft by a nylon line. Each time he swung, the double barbs deployed and buried themselves deeper in the back of my neck.

  He knew it. When I tried to stand or reach for my pistol, he pulled the line taut and dragged me into submission. The pain was searing if I resisted. On my knees, I crabbed after him out the door, where he began to enjoy this little game. If I attempted to move, he’d get a two-step running start and tow me a few feet farther across the patio.

  “Hurts, doesn’t it?” he taunted. “That’s what you get for breaking my arm, you sonuvabitch.” WHACK! He swung at my head again. “Goddamn it, lay still. Let me put you out of your misery.”

  He was out of breath.

  I was going into shock, which I realized in some faraway place in my head. This couldn’t be happening—me, killed by an inept freak like this? I threw up both hands as if surrendering. “Okay,” I said. “Let me sit up.”

  It surprised him. He stepped closer. The nylon line went slack just long enough for me to grab it, wrap it around my left hand, and give it a tremendous yank. The speargun rocketed free and damn near hit me in the face. Jayden started to charge, then reconsidered when he saw me reach and pull the small black 9mm pistol. One-handed, I took aim.

  Instantly, his child persona returned.

  “I didn’t do anything wrong,” he yelled, a pouting voice. “You can’t prove it. Besides”—he spun around—“it’s murder to shoot a man in the back. Everyone knows that. You’ll go to jail. Are you insane?”

  No, but I am methodical. “I won’t be arrested if they don’t find your body,” I said. And I meant it.

  The truth was in my voice and it scared him. To me, the next step—if required—was a question of methodology, not a moral dilemma. And I was very good at this unusual protocol.

  Jayden, with a bawling cry of terror, ran for his life. I let him go. This was Florida, my home, not some foreign jungle three passports away. Pull the trigger, my life and the lives of everyone I knew might be forever changed.

  So the situation became a training exercise. I’d had the Sig pistol refitted with Truglo tritium sights. From a sitting position, three green beads tracked the naked man to the stairs that led downhill to the dock. My mind squeezed off an imaginary crippling shot to the spine. I added a kill shot beneath the left shoulder blade before he was gone.

  The speargun became a cane that helped me to my feet. My shirt showed only a splotch of blood. This was good. It suggested that the shaft had missed the brachial artery. The numbness in my left hand, however, signaled damage to a bundled nerve center located nearby.

  Shoulder wounds are serious, the complications many. I needed a knife to cut myself free of the nylon line. I needed access to my VHF radio and a QuikClot combat gauze to stem the bleeding. All three were aboard my boat.

  Halfway down the steps, I paused for a cognitive update. I was dizzy. I feared I might pass out and bleed to death if I didn’t get help. I fumbled for my phone and dropped it. It came to rest several steps below. On my butt, I scooted in pursuit while a more troubling scenario urged me onward. What if Jayden came back and found me unconscious?

  Me, killed by a blathering adolescent?

  My ego found the prospect insulting. Intellectually, though, I knew the truth. It could happen. This realization was more shocking than the reality of a stainless steel spear dangling from my shoulder. It was an awkward, nagging weight that, if the nylon line snagged, caused a whistling pain.

  I regrouped. From where I sat, lights of the village where Hannah lived formed a halo above the mangroves.

  Irony fueled a sudden sadness in me. We are all infinitely expendable. The world would not pause no matter the circumstances of my death, but, damn it, I cared. So why concede by giving in?

  On my iPhone, I redialed Chris Bannister and got voicemail again. A list of previous calls offered options that might be speedier than a 911 request to scramble a medevac.

  Hannah and her boat were only a few miles away, but I couldn’t call her. The temptation reeked of emotional sabotage. Much closer were the flashing blue police lights.

  I managed to get to my feet, hit REDIAL. It surprised the hell out of me when Tomlinson picked up. “Hey, amigo, we’ve been trying to raise you on the radio,” he said. Then stopped. “Doc, you don’t sound good. What’s wrong?”

  I didn’t answer immediately. Jayden had reappeared. He was in water up to his knees, next to the dinghy. I watched him give the little boat a push, then climb in. Dumbass. Never cast off before starting the motor. In this case, the motor cranked on the first pull. But it wouldn’t run for long—unless he figured out how to reattach the fuel hose.

  To Tomlinson, I said, “I could probably use a doctor. Is Chris or one of the other cops handy?”

  “How? What happened?”

  I said, “Just put on one of the cops.”

  He did.

  After we signed off, I sat and waited. I butt-scooted down a few steps and waited some more. I was aboard my boat when Deputy Bannister arrived. With him were Tomlinson and Delia. Had I known, I might not have followed first-aid procedure and spared them the shock of seeing me. No longer was I tethered to the speargun, but I hadn’t pulled out the shaft.

  Overhead, the police chopper prepped the area with a dazzling ray of light. They had already spotted Jayden and the dinghy adrift, not far
from shore. Perhaps he thought it was an alien starship. He had waved with his one good arm and blown welcoming kisses.

  More likely, it was an act.

  “He’s a con man and he’s dangerous,” I told Chris and another deputy, then referenced the fertility clinic attacks. “Find his car. He claimed to have a couple of pipe bombs in the trunk.”

  To Delia, who held my hand when they strapped me onto a gurney, I asked, “Why are you crying?” I’d just given her good news. In my opinion, Jayden, the lunatic, wasn’t Tomlinson’s biological son, nor her half brother.

  “It’s not obvious?” she sniffed. “I feel like an idiot because I was so wrong about you.”

  This made no sense. But it gave me something to ponder while I was prepped for surgery.

  Then the lights went out.

  TEN

  In late July, Jayden F. Griffin and two unnamed accomplices were indicted by a federal grand jury. The U.S. Department of Justice formally charged Jayden, and the others in absentia, with terrorism under the Homeland Security Act of 2004, and added five counts of first-degree murder.

  Lesser charges of assault and grand theft became trifles. Tomlinson considered this a reprieve of sorts.

  “I won’t have to testify,” he said. “But you might.”

  No, I would not. The last thing my contacts at a certain federal agency wanted was to see my name and photo plastered across the international news.

  “Could be,” I replied. “But if they’re going to serve papers, they’d better hurry up. I’m taking off in a day or two for a conference thing. I’m giving a talk.”

  My friend’s expression read Bullshit. “Where? The Bahamas, I suppose.”

  He knew someone had been trying to leverage information from me about Jimmy Jones’s missing gold. I hadn’t provided specifics, just enough to put him and Mack and a few others on the alert for nosy strangers.

  “Cuba is nice this time of year,” I countered.

  It was a Friday afternoon, the second day of August—three weeks since I’d been choppered to a hospital. We were near the boat ramp. Figgy, shirtless and proud of his muscles, was eyeballing Delia, who sat in the shade, leafing through my folder on red tide. Her linen straw-colored blouse was loose-fitting in the breeze. It was a promising drama that I had taken pains to ignore. The girl had visited the marina a couple of times, yet we’d spoken only once since my shoulder surgery. She’d driven down from St. Pete, and was overnighting at one of Mack’s cottages now that he was open for business.

  Tomlinson glared at Figgy. “Don’t you have better things to do?” he demanded in Spanish. “And put a damn shirt on. This is a family marina.”

  The little Cuban wasn’t bright, but he recognized hypocrisy when he heard it. “Man, you ain’t wearing no shirt and your pinga hangin’ out ’bout half the time. When you ever get a chance to look at nice chichis, you didn’t sit back and say, ‘Gracias, Dios mio’?”

  They squabbled for a while before Tomlinson got back to me. “If the feds want you on the witness stand, they’ll find you. Hell, amigo, let’s be honest . . .” He lowered his voice. “We both know you’ve got some kind of CIA spook gig with those power-drunk devils. If they need the extra juice, though, they’ll haul your ass in in a heartbeat.”

  “No doubt about that,” I said. Which was true for most—but not in my case.

  The Clandestine Services is a global consortium with power beyond my need to know. It was a subject I could not discuss. Nor could I explain that if the State of Florida had indicted Jayden, it might have been a different story. But the feds were in charge. So I was free—free within the constraints of a recent deal my contacts had offered. They wanted me out of the country—or at least out of contact—for a couple of weeks.

  I didn’t ask why. Never, ever ask why.

  The timing was not good. Hannah didn’t need another reason to dump me in favor of her new churchgoing friend. A more bankable excuse might have been my bum shoulder. Damage to a delicate nerve center—the brachial plexus—had caused my left arm to go dead for a while. Surgery had relieved a serious hematoma, yet recovery had been slow. I’d been out of the sling for a week. The feeling in my fingers was starting to return. But in the Clandestine Services an excuse is as untenable as asking why. So I had agreed to leave Florida in exchange for information on the extortionist, who, during his visit back in July, had claimed to work for the IRS.

  Leo Alomar wasn’t bright either. The guy had used his real name. That detail along with other information had been provided me in the form of a dossier.

  Out of respect for Tomlinson, I confided, “By the way, you might be right about the Bahamas. Hurricane season’s nice down there. You want to come along?”

  Delia got up and walked toward us. “What about the Bahamas?” she asked.

  “She reads lips,” Tomlinson said, beaming. “Tell Doc about high school, the work you did with special needs kids. She’s also an expert on hand signing.”

  The girl remained intent on me. She inquired about my arm. She made small niceties before asking, “Any chance I can borrow you for a few minutes? I think I mentioned those internships I applied for, and one of the interviews is tomorrow. Belle Glade, the Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative. Their aquatic biologist needs an assistant. Know anything about the organization?”

  Delia had been reading my folder on red tide. She knew damn well I was familiar with the oldest collective of small farmers in the state. I consulted Tomlinson with a look. “Want me to come along?” he said—a suggestion, not a question.

  “No thanks, Tomlinson,” she replied. That was the end of it.

  * * *

  —

  The craft of reading lips is so notoriously inaccurate—in the real world anyway—that law enforcement views it as a tool best kept on the shelf with psychics. Baseball players and other pro jocks might believe that people can read lips, but I didn’t—until Delia waited until we were alone to say, “What did Tomlinson mean about you being a spook? Something to do with the CIA. I didn’t catch it all, but the C-I-A part—individual letters, they’re easiest—so I’m fairly sure. That would be so weird, but kinda cool, too. It might explain why I was so wrong about you.”

  We were in my galley, across from the lab. I waved the question away as if absurd. “I thought you wanted to talk about your interview tomorrow.”

  She was disappointed. “I do. But I was hoping . . . And it kinda fit, the way you handled that . . . the situation. You know what I’m talking about. You don’t seem like the violent type.”

  “I’m not,” I said. “It just sort of happened.”

  “Really? I don’t know, Doc. Most people, me included, no way I could’ve done what you did. We still haven’t talked about it, and I think we should. You mind?”

  “I don’t see the point, but . . . yeah, if you want.”

  Delia slipped into the chair next to my telescope. “I get queasy when I think about what could’ve happened. That—whatever he is—that man would’ve killed us. Set us on fire. I mean, I’m sure you read about him in the news.”

  I had. There are a growing number of Jayden Griffins in this country. They are addicted to opioids, video blood sport, and immune to human carnage. Griffin had been violent enough to be expelled from middle school and remanded to a psychiatric facility in Pennsylvania. Twice he escaped. So he’d been moved to Shuman Juvenile Detention Center, a maximum security facility, and had stayed out of trouble until the recent bombings.

  The feds had linked Jayden to a group of gamers he’d met on the internet. A couple of them discovered they’d been sired with the help of Mensal Cryonics, and the rage they shared had forged a violent obsession. After hacking the facility’s data, they had created a hit list of the most prolific donors. The clinics they’d targeted were the same facilities where members of the group had been conceived.

  Jayden, accordin
g to news reports, had been one of the ringleaders. The feds—or so the stories speculated—hoped his accomplices would testify against him. If not, the reports reasoned, they were fugitives and their names would have been made public.

  I wasn’t as certain. Another name the feds hadn’t released was Tomlinson’s. It was more than a lucky break. One of my sources had confided that Mensal Cryonics credited one of their donors with one hundred and seven successful inseminations. Maybe my pal, but my source wasn’t certain.

  I had not shared the information with Tomlinson or Delia.

  There was something else on Delia’s mind. First, though, she felt the need to rehash what had happened the night she’d been kidnapped. Trauma creates an intimacy, members only. We had yet to share the experience.

  Mostly, I listened.

  Tomlinson had told me the truth. They had been topside, under sail since sunset, when Delia had smelled smoke. “Weed,” she said. “I smoke occasionally. Vape, usually. It’s more private, but who doesn’t know the smell?” She’d gone below to investigate, and there was Jayden in the forward berth, using a bong. He also had a hammer.

  “We would’ve never picked him up,” she said when I mentioned the abandoned kayak. “He’d been aboard the boat the whole time. When I first saw him, I froze for a moment, in total shock. And I said something stupid like ‘May I help you?’ It was dark, he had that hoodie thing on. I couldn’t make out his face, but his voice, when I heard it, I knew we were in trouble. Deep, sharp, him totally out of his damn mind. And seriously pissed off in a cool, I’m in control sort of way. ‘Wanna toke?’ he said—like, laughing at me because I was so freakin’ scared. Then said he was gonna rape me after he killed Tomlinson. Only that’s not the word he used, rape. What he said was so disgusting, I’m not going to repeat it.”

  Other details were easier for the girl to share. Jayden, when he’d spotted the empty fish houses, had used the hammer to force them both into the dinghy. He’d claimed the sound of water slapping the hull were voices and the voices were ordering him to kill. He’d claimed he needed a wooden floor under his feet, not fiberglass. It was the only thing that could save them.