Neither of them said anything.
“We should ask around town,” I said.
“Or we could just ask Orca,” Ernie said.
He turned in the seat to face the seething behemoth. “Where is she?” he said. “What’d you do to her?”
“Ernie—”
“Did you catch up to her and think she was cheating on me? Did you lose it? Have one of your blackouts and beat her to death like you did the two prostitutes?”
“Stop it.”
“What’re you doin’?” I said.
“Your grandmother told me she lied to the police,” Ernie said. “Said you weren’t with her, that you really don’t have an alibi after all. You killed them.”
“No. Stop. Stop saying those things.”
“Notice how no more hookers have been killed since we’ve been watching you?” Ernie said.
“No, that’s not—”
“That plate in your head has infected your brain, pal. You’re a stone cold killer. You’re a killer of women, a—”
“NO. TAKE IT BACK. NOW.”
“Or what? You’ll beat on me? Well, let me tell you somethin’, pal. I ain’t no woman. Just try something. Try that shit on a man.”
Orson was losing it and it was obvious Ernie wanted him to.
“Finding Joan is what we should be working on,” I said.
“Whatta you think I’m doing?” Ernie said. “Where’d you put her body? Where is my girl? Where’d you do it, you big, dumb bastard.”
Reaching back over the seat, Ernie began slapping Orson in the face.
With only one arm, I couldn’t do anything to stop him and keep a hand on the wheel. I decided to find a place to pull off the road and try to get things back under—
But I was too late.
When Orca struck, it was fierce and furious and ferocious.
He pounced with far more speed and agility than I would have thought he was capable of.
Grabbing Ernie’s head with both his big mitts, he began to squeeze and pull, as if he were simultaneously trying to crush Ernie’s skull and rip his head off.
Flailing desperately, realizing he only had moments to live, Ernie did the worst thing he could do. He reached over, grabbed the wheel, which was completely exposed on the side closest to him because of my missing right, and pulled.
He was trying to do anything to pull himself free of the bear trap his head was stuck in. He was desperate. Not thinking. Only reacting.
He jerked the wheel out of my hand and the car off the road.
Flipping end over end, we careened into a guardrail, then over it, down into the swamp, end over end another time or two before coming to rest upside down against a stand of ancient hardwoods.
Chapter Forty-five
Ernie’s lifeless eyes looked up at me from the unnaturally wrenched neck of his body crumpled like laundry on the passenger-side floorboard. It was strange. They were Ernie’s eyes but they weren’t. They had no light in them, no presence behind them, and they looked as eerie as those of a lifelike doll’s.
The car was at a steep angle in a swamp hole, its nose pointing down, its back end up in the air a few feet off the ground.
I looked in the backseat. It was empty. In fact, it was missing. It appeared as though Orca had ripped it out and crawled out through the trunk.
I decided to go out that same way when I realized my door was wedged against an oak tree.
Slowly, carefully, crawling over the front seat, across the bottom seat of the back, and up out of the trunk.
The forest floor of the hardwood hammock was damp dirt, slick leaves, and pine straw, and I had a hard time getting any traction.
I found Orca passed out, facedown on the ground about twenty yards from the car.
“Hey,” I said, shaking him. “Orson.”
“Jimmy? Where are we? What—”
“Come on, big fella, let’s get out of here. We had a wreck and we need to go get help. We’re gonna have to walk along the road until we come to a house or a vehicle comes by.”
“Where’s Ahab?”
“He’ll have to wait here for us,” I said. “Come on, let’s go get help. Can you walk?”
We climbed up to the road using part of the bent guardrail.
I looked both ways and saw nothing coming.
Back toward the landing to Sid and Len’s or in the opposite direction toward town?
I thought I remembered a small cabin in the direction of town not from here. Of course, we could come to Ray’s first, but I wasn’t stopping there.
We headed in the direction of the other cabin and beyond it town.
On either side of the road, the dense river swamp grew with such verdant variety it seemed prehistoric.
The late afternoon sun was low in the sky, the lengthening shadows of pine, cypress, and oak trees growing all around us.
Ernie is dead. Is that really possible?
We walked a mile or more in silence along the winding road without seeing anyone.
Orson didn’t seem out of sorts in any way, just out with his old friend on an evening constitutional.
As the day grew dimmer, the noises from the river swamp grew louder.
When we reached the last and most severe curve before Ray’s old fish camp, I could see a small glint of metal some fifty yards or more out in the woods. There didn’t appear to be an opening in the seemingly impenetrable tree line, but the trajectory was such that it could easily be that of a car that missed the curve and careened straight out into the swamp.
“Look at that,” I said.
“What? I don’t— Is it a car?”
“Could be.”
“Want me to take a closer look?” he said. “You could stay here and flag down help if somebody comes by.”
“Just go a little closer to see what it is.”
“Sure thing, Jimmy.”
If it was a vehicle, it had left no sign in the edge of the swamp that it had entered here. There wasn’t even an opening big enough for Orca to pass through.
He fought his way through and after twenty yards or so yelled back, “It’s a car. And Jimmy, it looks like it could be Joan’s.”
“Wait for me,” I said. “I want to—”
“I better come back and help you,” he said. “It’s rough going.”
He came back and helped, and in fifteen minutes or so we were approaching the car that matched the description of Joan’s.
“You think Sid and Len did something with her and hid her car in here?” Orson asked.
I shook my head.
“I think the road was wet, it was hard to see in the rain, and she missed the curve, just kept driving straight when the road turned,” I said. “We’ll know in a minute.”
The car was caked with dust and dirt and tree branches, but I could make out a figure inside.
I tried the handle but was unable to open it.
“Here,” Orson said. “Let me try.”
He tried it, but it wouldn’t give. Then he jerked on it so hard I thought he was going to rip the entire door off. It gave then and swung open to reveal the decaying body of Joan Wynn inside.
The victim of a truly tragic accident, a tragic accident that led to more tragedy.
“I didn’t kill her,” Orca said in an exclamation that could only be described as childlike.
“No, you didn’t,” I said. “A rainy road and the swamp did.”
“I didn’t kill those other girls either,” he said. “I’m sure of it now. Ernie’s gonna be so happy when he—”
I could see the terrible truth come into his eyes. “Ernie . . .” he said. “I . . . oh God, I . . . I . . .”
He couldn’t bring himself to say it and I couldn’t blame him.
Life is random and capricious, I thought. Death merciless and meaningless.
We had done what we had set out to do. We had found Joan and reunited her with her Ernie. Their lifeless bodies were lying less than two miles apart inside vehicles in an
unforgiving river swamp that would quickly consume them if we didn’t reclaim them soon. The would-be movie star and the war hero who loved, her tragically dying in an eerie mire haunted by Ray Parker. And who knows, maybe Lauren and I are still here too.
Chapter Forty-six
Orson had only two requests.
I intended to honor them both.
He wanted to turn himself in and he wanted to do it to the reserved, gentle David Howell.
There was nothing I could do for Ernie or Joan now, so I was going to do all I could for one of the few friends I had left.
We climbed back up to the road and continued toward town.
Eventually, a truck came by and gave us a ride to a phone at the general store in town.
The general store was a two-story tin building, with offices and living quarters for the Listers, who owned and operated it, upstairs.
I called Lauren first.
“Where are you?” she asked. “Have you spoken to Miki or David Howell?”
“No. Why?”
“Another woman was murdered last night and they got the guy who did it. He confessed to the other two also. Orson’s innocent.”
I turned and looked at my big, bumbling friend, who was seated in the corner staring off at something no one but him would ever be able to see.
“Did you hear me? Are you there?”
“Who was it?”
“Guy named Charles Simmons. Howell said you referred to him as Sweaty Neck. Says Orson embarrassed him and he targeted the other two girls to try to frame him.”
I thought about it. Had I been able to feel anything at all, I’d want to cry.
“Jimmy? What is it? What’s wrong?”
I told her.
“Oh my God, Jimmy, I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”
“There’s a guy here who’s going to give us a ride back over,” I said. “We’ll let Orca turn himself in, tell Howell everything and let him coordinate with the cops here to recover the bodies and process the crime scenes.”
“Just get back to me as soon as you can,” she said. “I keep trying to sleep, but nightmares get the better of me. Need you beside me.”
“I will be as soon as I can,” I said. “Demetri is no longer a threat—thanks to you. He can’t hurt you or anyone else.”
“I keep thinking about what I did,” she said. “How I . . . shot him in the . . .”
“You did what you had to to save my life—and yours. Think about what he would have done to you after he shot me. Killing someone is . . . There’s nothing quite like it in the world—even when he was a monster and left you no choice. We’ll get through it together. I’ll be there for you. Thanks to you, I’ll be there. We’ll be together.”
“Miki told me about Clip. You’ve been through so much. Come let me take care of you.”
“I’ll be there,” I said. “Soon as I can.”
Next I called Howell, but I got Folsom.
“He’s not here right now,” he said. “He’s checkin’ out a tip we got on a possible hideout of the other saboteurs. It came from your friend. What’s her name?”
“Mama Cora?”
“Yeah. Called David when she couldn’t find you.”
“Will you tell him I need to see him tonight, to wait for me at headquarters or come to my office. I’m in Wewa and will be back in town in about an hour.”
“Anything I can do?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Make sure he gets the message.”
Chapter Forty-seven
When we finally found David Howell it wasn’t at my office or police headquarters, but in an airplane hangar at Tyndall Field.
He and another officer I didn’t recognize were standing on an anti-tank land mine surrounded by enough explosives to blow up a city block.
Orson and I had arrived at the police station to find Henry Folsom leaving. He had explained the situation to us and we had asked to accompany him.
“Not much we can do but tell him goodbye,” he said. “And we may all get killed trying to do that, but you’re welcome to join me.”
The final part of the Nazi’s plot was to blow up as many aircraft at Tyndall Field as possible.
Entering by boat through the bay and pulling wagons piled with explosives through the woods, the three remaining saboteurs had been sneaking into a seldom-used hangar at night and stockpiling their weapons.
Though the hangar was rarely used, it was close to several that were and routinely had planes all around it—particularly at night.
Tonight, Howell and two other officers had followed the Nazis across the bay, through the woods, and into the hangar.
Two of the three saboteurs had been shot and killed, but not before Howell and one of the other officers had stepped onto and engaged an anti-tank mine positioned to detonate the entire hangar full of explosives and the many planes surrounding it.
Not wanting to be killed in the explosion, the surviving saboteur had drawn the two men’s attention to where they were standing and warned them not to move, before fleeing only to be captured a little later.
The other officer had called Folsom who had in turn talked to Tyndall Field, who had been evacuating aircraft ever since.
Orson and I had entered the hangar with Folsom to find Howell and the other officer standing on the pressure plate of a large anti-tank land mine.
“It was an anti-personnel one of these that cost me my right foot,” Howell said. “Never told y’all that, did I?”
“No,” I said. “You never did.”
“Can’t believe I survive the nightmare I did over there to come home to still get killed by the goddamn Nazis.”
No one said anything.
Unlike the anti-personnel land mines that detonated as soon as they were stepped on, some of the anti-tank devices, like the one they were standing on, were triggered when driven over or in this case stepped on, but wouldn’t explode until the weight was lifted. The delay allowed for the explosion to occur under the center of the tank where the armor wasn’t as thick as it was in the front in order to do the most damage.
“They moved the planes to a safe distance yet?” Howell asked.
“Most of them,” Folsom said. He then moved to the other side to talk to the other officer.
“I guess you guys heard we got the guy who killed the prostitutes?” he said. “No hard feelings I hope. Just doing my job. Had to investigate it all the way. Had to be sure.”
“You’re a standup guy,” Orson said. “So am I. That’s why I’m here.”
“Whatta you mean?”
Orson told him—with me filling in details here and there.
“Sounds to me like the Nazi’s got your friend too,” he said. “Got you both.”
“They did,” he said, “but they ain’t gonna get you.”
He then put a foot on the pressure plate with them.
Folsom said, “What the hell’re you—”
“I weigh about what you guys weigh together,” he said. “Step off on three as I put my other foot down.”
“One.”
“Wait,” Howell said. “You don’t need to—”
“Two.”
“But what if it—”
“Three.”
The two men carefully stepped off as Orson brought his other foot down.
“Now get the hell outta here,” he said. “Give me a minute alone to prepare to meet my maker.”
“Everyone out,” Folsom yelled. “Now.”
The air force personnel at the edges began to file out of the building.
Everyone around us began to move but me and Howell.
“I don’t know what to say,” he said.
“Nothing to say,” Orson said. “Enjoy your life. Keep up the good work.” He then saluted him.
Howell saluted back and walked away.
“You’re a true hero, Orson,” I said. “You’ve proved it time and again.”
“I’m a coward,” he said. “Can’t live with what I did.”
&nb
sp; A line from The Keys of the Kingdom that Ernie had underlined came to mind. Some temptations cannot be fought. One must close one’s mind and fly from them.
“That wasn’t you,” I said. “Don’t take that with you. An explosive device was planted inside you during the war. That’s all. It just went off today. The truth is Ernie set it off. Intentionally.”
“You’re a good friend Jimmy.”
“Ernie and Joan are together already,” I said. “Tell them hello for me. They’re happy. You’ll see. Ernie won’t blame you for what happened.”
“Soon find out,” he said. “You’ll be joining us too if you don’t get of out here. Time to clear out, pal.”
“Goodbye, my good friend,” I said.
“Goodbye, soldier,” he said, and though I had never served, he saluted me too.
Chapter Forty-eight
The blast was enormous.
As befitting a heroic behemoth like Orca.
A thunderous boom, concussive and jarring—even at the one-mile marker designated as the minimum safe distance.
A rolling, roiling ball of black and gray smoke, red and orange fire blasting up into the darkness, temporarily turning the night sky to day.
“He died a hero,” Howell said.
“He lived one too,” I said.
He nodded. “Yes he did. I owe my life to him.”
“A lot of people can say that.”
“But,” he said, “not a lot of people can have that said about them.”
I was so tired, so sad, so unbelievably drained, but there was one final thing I had to do before I would be able to join Lauren in our room at the Cove.
Leaving Tyndall Field, I drove straight down 11th Street to Clip’s little wooden house.
Miki answered the door.
“Jimmy boss-san. What doing here?”
“He here?” I asked.
She nodded. “Come in.”
“Could you get him for me?” I said. “I’ll wait out here.”
Eventually, Clip joined me on the leaning front porch.
We stood in silence for a while. Eventually I told him what all had happened.
The Big Blast Page 14