Isolation

by Mary Anna Evans

  Faye was surprised that they found so few brambles growing across the path. She figured Joe must be keeping the weeds down with the soles of his moccasins. How often did he walk this trail to nowhere? Her husband was never going to spend a lot of time with a roof over his head.

  They rounded the end of the island and walked back west toward the dock, where this path met the westbound one that led to the contamination site. As they traveled further and further west, Faye saw the trees thinning around her. Every step showed brighter sunlight ahead and, with every step, Oscar sped. He walked with a silent intensity that was unnerving. It was as if Faye and Delia weren’t there.

  The trail ended at the familiar clearing, with its big live oak and shabby beach. A collection of drummed soils, ready to be shipped to an incinerator, sat beside their ongoing excavation. The air still smelled like kerosene.

  It was a depressing spot and there was an opening where a cabin could have stood, so Oscar claimed it. “This is where she kept him prisoner. It’s close enough to bring him food, far enough away to hide him from the others. I can feel it.”

  Faye stifled the urge to say, “Give the man an honorary doctorate. He’s such a good archaeologist that he doesn’t need to go to school or even pick up a trowel.” She also didn’t say, “My grandmother told me there used to be a cabin here. Cally told her daughter a Monster Man lived here and threatened to take a switch to her legs if she came near,” because Oscar would have taken her words as proof that he was right. She didn’t say anything at all.

  Neither did Delia.

  ***

  The walk back to the dock was disturbing. There was no other word for it. Oscar wouldn’t stop spinning fantasies about how Elias Croft might have been tortured.

  “Do you think she fed him?”

  Delia was moving like a woman who’d been assaulted about fifteen hours before. Her shoulders sagged and she kept adjusting the cuffs of her sweater so that they wouldn’t rub against the wounds on her arms, but she never stopped answering Oscar.

  “Of course she fed him. You said she kept him alive for years.”

  “Sure, but do you think she fed him every day? And what about water? Did she bring him enough water to bathe?”

  “I guess. As often as anybody bathed in the nineteenth century.”

  Delia was starting to limp. She should have been home resting. Faye regretted bringing her.

  Oscar stopped walking, stretched out both arms and spun around once. It was a move better suited to a fairy princess than to a seventy-year-old man. “This is perfect. It’s the perfect place to hold a prisoner.”

  “Of course it is,” Delia snapped. “It’s an island and they owned slaves. You just saw the foundations of cabins where a whole bunch of people were held prisoner for years and years.”

  This time it was Oscar who reached out a hand and said something wordless by patting her on the shoulder.

  Faye wanted to say, “Cally was one of those slaves. What would she have had against a Union soldier who fought against the people who had owned her? If you’re so sure she hurt Elias Croft, say something to make me understand why.” She thought it better to hold her tongue, so she walked in silence.

  Faye had walked this path so many times. She knew that the dock was almost in view. She was glad. Faye was ready to load Oscar and Delia into her boat and take them home before either of them noticed that Sly Mantooth had been behind them ever since they walked out of the basement of her house. She might not have Joe’s skills in woodcraft, but she knew when she was being followed.

  He was still back there.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  An ax rang, then Faye heard a tearing sound as its blade bit into wood. She had half-expected Sly to meet her at the dock when she got back from taking Oscar and Delia home, but this was the same thing. He knew she would be looking for him, so he was telling her how to find him.

  There was another percussive noise as the blade hit the tree trunk again. Faye followed the sound and found Sly chopping a downed tree into manageable pieces for splitting.

  Her foot broke a twig and he looked up. “Looking for me, Daughter?”

  “You know I am. Why were you following my friends and me?”

  “You’re calling them your friends now? I don’t think so.”

  Faye was silent for a moment and he let the silence be. Finally, she said, “I don’t think so, either. So why were you following us?”

  “Because I knew they wasn’t your friends and I didn’t like their looks.”

  “Thank you.”

  The ax swung again. Sly left its head buried in a stump. “I found something when I was following you around. Let’s go take a look at it.”

  It was a short walk to a spot less than a quarter-mile east of the contamination site and a few feet above the high tide line. There, Faye saw a hole like a buffalo wallow in the sandy ground, hip-deep and too broad for her to jump. It was littered with two empty cans that had held housepaint and a lidless container labeled “mineral spirits.” The discarded lid of a fifty-five-gallon drum, circular and red, lay atop the churned dirt like a giant penny.

  The overturned soil looked pretty fresh. “When did it last rain?” she asked.

  “Thursday.”

  “So somebody’s been here since then. And it looks like they came here to dig up the kind of stuff that Tommy Barnett is accused of dumping.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket and looked at it for a while without dialing. She spoke to Sly without taking her eyes off its screen. “I have to call Gerry Steinberg about this, don’t I?”

  “Looks that way to me.”

  “Damn.”

  She placed the call.

  Gerry’s hello sounded relaxed, which was the way a man should sound late on a Friday afternoon. Faye quickly described to him what Sly had found, and she heard a sigh that said she might have just ruined the man’s weekend.

  “Is there any water nearby?”

  “Well, Joe could throw a rock and hit the Gulf from here, but I couldn’t.”

  “Gee, that was helpful. Is there anything seeping into the Gulf? Can you see a sheen?”

  “No.”

  “What about the excavation itself? Is there any standing water in there? Any visible chemicals? Stained soils?”

  “Not really. I mostly just see trash. Do you want me to take some pictures and send them to you?”

  Sly was squatting next to her, staring down into the hole.

  “Yeah,” Gerry said, “that would really be helpful. Can you take a quick video, scanning the bottom and sides of the hole? Then take some close-ups of anything that looks iffy?”

  “No problem.”

  Still silent, Sly pointed at a few pieces of trash Faye should document, but he mostly stayed out of her way and let her work.

  After she sent Gerry the video and photos, she called him and listened as he thought out loud.

  “I don’t see anything here that constitutes an emergency and it’s nearly dark. We’re already working out there, so we won’t need to tool up if this turns out to be a big problem.” He added quickly, “And I think it won’t,” and Faye was grateful for the reassurance.

  “Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll come out there and look at it by myself tomorrow morning, but I don’t see any reason to mobilize a crew, not based on the photos you just sent. I’ll try not to take up too much of your time. We’ll just walk out there, I’ll look at it, then I’ll leave you to your weekend.”

  Faye should have been as gracious as Gerry and left him to his Friday night, but she had a question that wouldn’t wait till morning. “Do you think Tommy Barnett did this?”

  He surprised her by giving a straight answer. “I do. My divers have been bringing up chemical waste containers and trash all day, after some of my people saw an oil slick floating on the water not too far from where
you live. Remember that we’ve already arrested him for openly doing the same thing. My guess is that he went out to Joyeuse Island, dug up some incriminating evidence, and took it out into deeper water for dumping. Maybe he’s not done. Who knows how many unpermitted waste dumps Tommy has?”

  “If he’d buried it out here, why did he dig it up and haul it away?”

  “Probably because he knew we were working out there on your island. He was afraid we’d find his dump site, so he dug up the stuff and dumped it into the Gulf. If he’d left it where it was, we might never have known it existed. In the water, the oil slick gave him away.”

  “No genius, is he?”

  “Nope. And I’m going to make him pay. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

  ***

  Stormy weather blew in that night. It was all wind and no rain, but it was as fierce as a summer squall. Faye slept beside Joe in fits and starts, like a woman who was worried that the wind would harm her boats or that its sound would mask the movements of someone who shouldn’t be on her island.

  Michael wandered into their room twice before midnight, crying in his sleep. Joe dragged him under the covers to sleep between them. Faye draped an arm over them both. If she slept, she wanted to still be able to know they were there.

  ***

  Sly wandered the dark house barefoot, having shed his boots to keep from disturbing his sleeping family. His mind was set on protecting them from whatever was out there.

  Storm.

  Polluter.

  Burglar.

  Rapist.

  Murderer.

  There was stale coffee in the coffeemaker, room temperature. He poured it in a tall mug, doctored it well with sugar and cream, then he set it on the floor next to a front porch rocker. Feeling his way in the opaque night, he found the ax he’d hidden under the staircase and brought it upstairs to keep with him while he sat awake.

  His son was a man and he could take care of his family, but a man has to sleep. Sly figured it was his job to watch over them until Joe woke up and went back to doing it for himself.

  The caffeine did its job and the sugar didn’t hurt. Sly was awake at midnight and past, but he was nearly sixty years old. The years when he could carouse at night and drive a truck all day were behind him. Eventually, he slept.

  ***

  Faye woke up hungry for breakfast, only to find out that Joe wasn’t making any. He handed around bowls, then put a box of cereal and a jug of milk on the table.

  “I’m going ashore this morning. I don’t care how stubborn Emma is. She doesn’t belong by herself while all this crazy stuff is going on. I’m going to get her. I should have done it days ago.”

  Shaking some corn flakes in her bowl, Faye said, “I’ll come help you talk to her.”

  “No, you won’t. You’re so tired the wind would blow you over.”

  The storm was still blowing. She had been too tired to notice it. “Maybe you’re right.”

  “I am right. Besides, you need to be here when Gerry comes out to look at that hole Dad found. Dad can watch Michael while you take Gerry out there. I don’t want him making plans for another big cleanup without one of us there to calm him down.”

  Sly nodded as he slipped a parent-authorized spoonful of sugar into Michael’s cereal. And another unauthorized one. Faye pretended not to notice.

  Faye yawned. Joe’s emptied cereal bowl was in the sink and he was out the door before she closed her mouth. She listened to his john boat’s motor as he pulled away from shore. Playing in counterpoint to it was the familiar sound of a big boat that sucked in a lot of taxpayer-funded fuel. Gerry was on his way.

  ***

  “So what’s the verdict? Am I in twice as much trouble?”

  Gerry shook his head at Faye. “You’re not in trouble. Nobody’s going to think you did this.” He stood around the wide shallow pit where he stood. “I’m going to do my damndest to pin it on Tommy.”

  “So he can pay to clean it up? With what?”

  “His charm and good looks?”

  “It’s not funny, Gerry. I don’t know what your work is costing me.”

  “Maybe nothing. Faye, you’ve just got to let this play out. Liability will be assigned when it gets assigned. The government moves slow.”

  “I’m afraid it’s going to roll all over me.”

  Instead of answering, Gerry leaned down and studied the soil around the empty container of mineral spirits.

  “If we’re lucky, we’ll find something with an unusual chemical signature, and we’ll find it in one of the places where I know Tommy’s been operating—at his shop or at the spot where I watched him throw a bunch of garbage overboard. If the stars align, maybe I’ll also find it at the spot where my divers found an oil slick and some more sunken debris. If I can tie all that together, it’s Tommy that the government will be rolling all over.”

  “So what about all this? Are my problems twice as bad now?”

  “It’s not an emergency. I’ll have Nadia run some samples on Monday and we’ll know how bad it is—I mean, if it’s bad at all. Seriously, Faye. Try not to worry.”

  That was easy for him to say.

  ***

  Joe sat on Emma’s back deck, waiting for her to come home. Emma was a predictable woman. It was Saturday so she had gotten her nails done, had lunch, and she was now at the grocery store. She would be home shortly before two. He wasn’t happy about his friend’s predictability, not when the sheriff was still coming up dry in his search for the person who had broken Emma’s window and scared her to death. And now the sheriff’s attention was distracted by the even scarier attack on Delia. Were he and his officers doing a good enough job of looking after Emma?

  But was Delia’s attack really scarier? Maybe the only difference between the two crimes was timing. Emma’s alarm system had called for help. Maybe that alarm system was the only difference in the crimes. Maybe it was the one thing that had kept Emma from being blindfolded and tied up to her own bed. It only made things worse to realize that Emma lived alone, without someone like Oscar to hear her if she called for help.

  Liz had lived alone. It would not help Joe’s mental state to let his thoughts stray far down that path, so he didn’t. Instead, he focused on what he had just seen while walking along the sandy bluff overlooking Emma’s house.

  A trail, covered in pine needles, ran along that bluff, and it gave the perfect hidden vantage point for watching Emma’s every move. When Joe considered that vantage point with Emma’s predictability in mind, he got the shivers.

  As he’d walked that trail, he’d looked for tracks and signs just like he did when he went deer hunting. On the downhill side of the trail, he’d found three grooves in the sandy dirt. They were shaped like two heels and a butt. Somebody had been walking through these woods, leaving no trail on the thick bed of pine needles. When that somebody stepped off the path and onto bare soil, invisibility vanished. Three grooves showed where someone had awkwardly slid a few feet down the hill, then sat.

  It had rained since Emma’s break-in, so this butt mark had appeared since the sheriff’s people did their investigation. They might have missed it anyway, since there was no guarantee that they’d have thought to look up here on this bluff. Even if they had, only the most savvy tracker would have understood the scene the way that Joe did, and Joe wasn’t sure the sheriff employed anyone with enough skill.

  Very few people would have known that the spreading width at the base of the middle depression showed that someone had sat in the sand and lingered. Even fewer would have seen the cupped dent left by an elbow used to support someone leaning to the right and peering through a gap in the underbrush. An inexpert tracker would not have known to look three feet above the ground for the branch that had been broken by someone wishing to widen that gap.

  A person whose butt was sitting in that sandy spo
t could sight Emma’s house through the opening in the underbrush. Joe was pretty sure someone had been sitting up there on that bluff watching Emma, and he was pretty sure it had been since her break-in. Specifically, it had been since the last time it rained, which had been Thursday morning.

  He was absolutely going to let the sheriff know what he had found, and he was also absolutely not going to let Emma spend another night in that house. While he waited to explain these things to Emma, he sat in a deck chair behind her house, relaxed and alert and fully engaged in seeking a solution to the problem of his friend’s vulnerability.

  There was only one solution that suited Joe. Emma needed to come spend a few days with her good friend Faye. It would be easier, much easier, for Joe to keep an eye on the women who were worrying him—Emma and Faye—if he could get them under one roof. Magda had the sheriff to watch out for her (and the sheriff had Magda to watch out for him), but Emma and Faye needed Joe, whether they would admit it to his face or not.

  For once, he was glad that Amande was far away. It gave him a pang to know that, until this thing was over, he wished he had someplace safe to send Michael.

  There was a tiny flaw in his plan to gather Faye and Emma under his roof, in that he was not wholly convinced that his father was fit to be around them. Joe figured that he could think his way through this logical flaw before Emma got home, but thinking would have been easier if Faye hadn’t made him give up tobacco. He usually concentrated with a wad of tobacco in his mouth or a cigarette he’d rolled himself resting in his hand.

  After about twenty minutes of wishing for a cigarette, Joe remembered who had taught him to track and he knew it wasn’t his dad who had been sitting on that bluff spying on Joe’s friend. If Sly Mantooth had been the person watching Emma’s house, he would have left no signs for Joe to find.