by Tom Poland
“I told him Keith and his parents knew and were going to the sheriff that afternoon, that they had her confession on tape. Of course that was a lie.”
“He begged me. ‘You’ve got to stop them. Think of my career. I’ll be ruined.’
“Career?” I said. “What about Lorie? Then I told him he’d be giving blowjobs in prison soon, and the big boys would bend him over. Oh, he was scared to death. I told him I’d call Keith’s parents and stop them on one condition. Just tell me how many times he’d abused her.
“He swore it had been no more than twenty times. ‘Did you screw her?’ I asked.
“He said he tried once, but she cried much so he couldn’t stay hard. Then he started crying. The Big Enforcer was crying.
“All this time, I was recording every word. I had tested it the day before and the quality was good.
“I shot into the mattress between his legs. A puff of smoke came up.
‘Tell me why you did it.’
He said he didn’t know why.’
“That’s not good enough. Tell me why you did it,” and I shot into the mattress again. Another puff of smoke came up.
He said ‘she wasn’t his daughter just a beautiful, sexy woman who turned him on.’
“Well, she won’t turn you on anymore,” I said, “because I’m turning your sorry ass off for good.
“He begged me to think about what I was doing. I told him I’d thought about it a long time, and that I had been looking forward to it.’
“ ‘This is for Lorie,’ I said, “and shot him in the cock. The shot forced him back against the headboard. Blood gushed from him. ‘And this is for Lucky,’ “and shot him square in the neck. Blood spurted like it was coming from a fountain. And that was it. He died with one hand on his neck, just like Lucky had died. It was the best feeling I ever had. Killing him felt better than sex.”
“Good lord,” I said.
“I went downstairs, made a cup of tea, sat down, and played back the tape. Everything was clear. Even now I can smell the gun smoke. It was a sweet smell. I called the police, told them what I’d done, and sipped my tea.
“I was charged with murder, but in time the charges were downgraded to voluntary manslaughter. I was sentenced to six years in prison but released after three years, provided I didn’t leave Wake County for another year.”
“That’s why you couldn’t look for your daughter for four years.”
“Right, and except for that one letter, I haven’t heard from her. That’s why I took off like I did this morning. I’m determined to find her. Lorie doesn’t know Hines is dead. She’ll come home once she knows. And getting her back means everything to me. All I have to do is prove he’s dead.”
“You’re fortunate to get off so lightly. The judicial system doesn’t smile on killing an officer of the law.”
“People knew Hines was violent. He’d pistol-whipped several men. The trial was a joke. His family talked about him being a Christian. His cousin, a deacon, said Hines was a God-fearing man. His sister pointed out he had gone to college but I hadn’t and made a big deal out of the fact Lorie wasn’t there to testify. Then the prosecutor trotted out some of Hines’ fellow officers in uniform who talked about how he cared for people, what a good sportsman he was, and how everyone loved him. It was all bullshit.”
“Birds of a feather stick together,” I said.
“The tape. That helped. Of course, the DA used that as evidence of premeditated murder. He said Hines had no choice but to confess because I had a gun on him. Thank God for Keith and his parents. Still, I went to prison. My sentence came down to the difference between murder and manslaughter. The essential element in proving murder is ‘malice aforethought,’ as the lawyers say, or premeditation.”
“He deserved to die.”
“Yes, he did. I got manslaughter. The essential element for manslaughter is ‘heat of passion with sufficient legal provocation.’ You know the right lawyer can get you out of just about anything. My attorney told the jury that learning my daughter had been molested repeatedly unleashed a long, simmering heat of passion within me. Add her running away and the nightmare with Lucky and you get a passion for revenge.”
“I’m guessing there were moms on the jury.”
“Absolutely, several had daughters Lorie’s age. We put up a manslaughter defense combined with a temporary insanity defense, or diminished capacity defense, as the lawyers call it. I was so devastated by the fact my husband was molesting my daughter, I was blind to reason and logic. That got me a heat of passion verdict rather than premeditation. When Hines admitted it was true, I snapped, snapped the trigger,” she said, laughing. “And I’d do it again.”
“Now I understand why you listen to Dr. Laura. To hear a story like yours.”
“No,” she said with emphasis. “No story is like mine. I get a kick hearing people call in who think their life is rough. They don’t have a clue and neither does Dr. Laura.”
I liked Tyler even more. She was an emasculator and man-killer in the truest sense. It pleased me to know I had an accomplice on this wild island who had killed a man and, no doubt, would kill again, if necessary.
“Did you ask law enforcement agencies to search for your daughter?”
“Yes, but they don’t want to help me. They told me thousands of children turn up missing each year. I don’t have to work, at least not full time. I work part time for a florist. My first husband had a good business and life insurance. While I was serving time, my attorney sold my husband’s business for me. I live off the proceeds and use the life insurance money to search for Lorie.”
“Any insurance from the bastard?”
“No. Because I was convicted of killing Hines, the insurer wouldn’t pay. It was blood money anyway. The only thing I wanted was his death. I got that.”
“You’ve had a sad life, Tyler Hill. I hope you find Lorie and things work out,” I said. “I see why you’re so determined. I really do.”
I poured us another cup of Southern Comfort. I needed a drink and felt she did too. Voodoo was lying quietly, glad to have us both. He had had a rough life too. Tyler took the cup from me.
“Thanks, this stuff isn’t that bad. This morning you said that to work together we needed to understand each other. I agree. I hope you understand me better now that I’ve come clean with you. Why don’t you? Start with your wife. I see you’re married. Not too many women would put up with their husband being on an island with another woman.”
“You mean this? I asked, holding up my ring finger. “My wife is dead. I wear this ring because I can’t forget her.”
“Dead. How long?”
“Five years.”
“Do you have children?”
“A daughter, but she may not live too much longer. My wife and daughter were in a car accident. My wife died at the scene and my daughter has been in a coma for five years now.”
Tyler moved over by my side and placed her hand on my knee.
“So, you have your own sadness. What happened.”
“Five years ago this month, I got a promotion. I left work early that day and on the way home I called my wife to tell her we’d go out and celebrate. She wasn’t home, so I tried her cell. While talking to me, she drove into the back of a flatbed truck carrying steel rods. Ann died at the scene and Brit was unconscious and still is. She was ten at the time. For a long time I did whatever I thought might bring her out. Nothing so far has worked.”
“How long can she last?”
“The doctors say six months at the most.”
“People come out of comas, you know,” she said, gently touching my arm.
Something in her voice lifted me. For five years, I had read medical journals—one case after another—and she was right.
“Yes they do. One woman lay in a coma from childbirth complications for sixteen years. The she snapped out of it and was fine, but I’m afraid it’s a losing battle. One man disconnected his son from life support. He just couldn’
t take it anymore.”
“Don’t give up,” she said. “Hope for the best. I do. Well,” she said, getting up, “what a day. I’d say we understand each other better now.”
“Yes. Now, there’s just one more thing I need to tell you.”
I told Tyler of my mission to find Mallory. I had the rest of the summer to fulfill my missions, but she only had three weeks to find her daughter. I’d do what I could to help her find Lorie while she was here, and I told her we’d get the canoe in the morning and explore the area near the village.
We had started the day going in two directions but had ended on a good note. Fate seemed to have thrown us together for a reason.
The fire was dying. The surf rose and fell, a hypnotic relaxing sound. We called it a night and retired to our tents. Just as I was settling into my sleeping bag, Tyler came over.
“Slater?”
“Yes.”
“I have a feeling we’re going to know each other a long time. Before I leave, I want your phone number. I want to know what happens to you. Maybe you can come to Apex. It isn’t Atlanta, but it’s nice. Raleigh is close.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’m glad you want to stay in touch.”
“I will. I promise,” she said and returned to her tent.
I hoped she meant it. We had shared much in life without knowing it. To not know how the rest would turn out didn’t seem right. We each stood a good chance of never seeing our daughters alive again. And then when we left the island, each of us had a life to rebuild, with or without our daughters.
***
The next morning I awakened to smells of coffee. Tyler was cooking breakfast, after which we went straight to the marsh, stopping only for two wide boards at the old home site. The tide was out but several deep creeks still held water. The muck glistened, and a banquet was underway as plovers, sandpipers, curlews, ruddy turnstones, and oystercatchers probed the silt. The wind was nowhere as bad as the afternoon before, and I felt I could paddle the canoe with no problem, if it was seaworthy.
I was ready to walk the plank, so to speak. I would walk across one board at a time in a leapfrog game that should get me to the canoe. With the paddles tied over my shoulders I set out.
“Here goes,” I said. “Wish me luck.”
“Don’t look back,” Tyler said.
“At my age, you can’t help but look back,” I said, giving her a wink.
I placed the first board onto the muck and walked out on it carrying the other like a tightroper. The plank sank into the muck but held me. I walked to its end and dropped the next board into place. A natural suction formed, and pulling the first board from the muck took some effort, but my system was working. I got about halfway to the canoe, my shoulders growing mucky from the boards. Now the muck was very soggy and an intense suction clung to the boards, making them harder and harder to pull up. I developed a technique that involved dropping to one knee and prying the board up by a corner until the suction lost its hold with a wet sucking sound.
Now the going was slow. What should have taken fifteen minutes took half an hour. Snails in the muck crawled faster than I did. Once I almost fell when the board tilted. I looked back at Tyler, more distant now, and gave her the thumbs up. She returned the salute.
Fifteen feet from the canoe, a terrible thought seized me. As a boy, I had fished farm ponds where a farmer often had an old boat pushed into the grass, and I never moved a boat where a water moccasin didn’t lurk beneath. I didn’t think moccasins were around but perhaps an alligator lay in wait in nearby grasses.
I dropped a board and got within five feet of the craft, a Grumman double-ender. Stagnant water filled the stern. No holes apparently. I didn’t see any paddles. I peeled the other board from the muck and dropped it hard against the gunwale. Nothing happened. I rocked the canoe with it. Nothing.
I walked the final plank and peered over into the canoe. It held rainwater, nothing else. I threw the paddles into the grass. Everything looked good. I stepped through the rainwater into the grass to overturn the canoe. Tilting it to one side, black water flecked white with mosquito larvae spilled into the grass, leaving the canoe light and maneuverable. I turned it upside down to find a coppery algae slime coating the aluminum, but no snakes.
Here in the heart of marsh, the Cordgrass rattled and clattered with surprising noise. The least of winds set it to rustling. From a distance, the marsh had always seemed a quiet peaceful place, but it was filled with struggles. Dead crabs, fish skeletons, and strange unidentifiable dead things were mute evidence that not all things prospered in the marsh. It was a beautiful but deadly battlefield.
A small creek ran close by with nothing but a neck of muck separating it from the canoe. The next move had to be calculated just right. Pull the canoe onto the grass and scoot it fast enough to clear the mud, then leap into it as it hit the creek. From there, I could paddle to Tyler.
I threw in the paddles, pulled the canoe into the grass and rocked it back and forth, like an Olympian set to propel a toboggan over ice and ran with it. The coating of algae greased its path through the grass and it shot away instantly, hurtling across the muck. I leaped a second late, my right foot slipping off the barest edge of stern. My legs went into the muck and I sank to my waist as the canoe drifted into the creek. In seconds, I’d sunk to my hips. Whenever I tried to work my legs, to pull up, I sank deeper. Several times I tried to wriggle free but only sunk deeper. Then I remembered the advice of lying on your back and swimming in quicksand. I leaned back as far as I could and stopped sinking but I was stuck. What seemed like an hour passed but it couldn’t have been ten minutes. Never had I felt so stupidly helpless.
Tyler couldn’t see me because of the high grass but she had spotted the canoe drifting down creek. She and Voodoo walked to where she could see me mired in the muck, and she crossed her arms repeatedly to let me know she understood my plight, not that she could do anything about it.
The tide would come in early in the afternoon and from the watermarks upon the Cordgrass, rise five feet over my head. Meanwhile, a strengthening sun blazed down.
I fought off thoughts that I would drown at high tide, decompose, and contribute to the marsh smells—decay, saltwater, and sulfuric gas—bubbling up through the muck. I shut my eyes to visualize a way to rescue myself but nothing came.
As time passed, the marsh animals came out around me. Worms emerged from burrows, and sandpipers walked past on stilt-like legs. The grasses rustled with unseen animals. Fiddler crabs advanced, an army of scavengers waiting for me to die, their feet crackling around me. A great blue heron landed in the silt twenty yards beyond me and then the tide started coming in. The water lapped against my waist and I could feel the muck’s heat dissipate. The canoe had long drifted out of sight. Slowly the tide rose above my navel, then after a while came up to my chest. Later, the water felt cool against my throat. Now the water was at my chin and I could taste the salt as it splashed against my face. Just before the tide surged over me for good, I’d have one last breath.
The next surge came close to covering my mouth and nose. The strange peace overtaking me vanished as egrets, sandpipers, and other shorebirds wildly flushed around me. Something crashed through the Cordgrass right behind me. A gator? It came closer and closer and was nearly on me, when I heard a whistling breath of air that fell around my shoulders—a rope.
And then the wonderful sounds of cursing filled the air.
“Looks like you screwed up good, now doesn’t it. Slip the rope down under your damn armpits, hang on, I’ll get you out of there. Goddamn, didn’t you know what you were getting into? This shit has been here forever. It’ll suck you into the earth if you step onto it. And it looks like you fucking jumped into it. God damn a mighty.”
I couldn’t see my rescuer but I could hear him cursing beautiful words. The voice came over the marsh, agitated, firm, and magnificent.
“Now hold on. The tide’s gonna cover you. Take a deep breath before you go under. I’m
gonna tie this rope to my boat and get you out of here real slow like. Don’t want to yank your legs off but you’ll lose your damn shoes.”
The grass rustled again, losing volume. Then nothing but marsh sounds. I inhaled a great gulp of air, sweet air, just before my head went under. The rope tightened until it could tighten no more. I held it to keep it from cutting into my chest, and the slime began to give just a little. It gave some more and a sucking noise grew beneath the water. Bubbles floated around me as my body pulled free. The rope yanked a bit more and I slid into the grass. I was free, covered in muck and missing a shoe.
My savior came back through the grass, cursing still. If he wasn’t Rikard, he’d do until Rikard came along. He had blue eyes and straight hair gathered into a ponytail. His face had sharp features and a blonde-gray beard that seemed white from the sun. A brilliant white sand dollar on a rawhide string dangled from his neck. He wore faded torn jeans, a white fisherman’s cap, and a T-shirt. He was weathered and tan and could have been thirty, forty, or fifty.
I walked over to him, brushing clay-like muck off my hands.
“My name is Slater Watts.”
“Rikard,” he said, “Rikard Blackshear.”
We shook hands, and I picked up the paddles I’d made.
“How in the hell did you know I was in trouble?”
“I was cutting through the marsh west of here,” he said, pointing, “and saw the old canoe floating off and knew somebody had messed with it. A canoe just don’t free itself, you know. It’s been stuck in this marsh for months. I was planning to get it myself and sell it. I don’t have much use for canoes otherwise or the people who use them—en-viron-ment-alists, as a rule,” he said, stretching out the syllables.
“Where in the hell did you come from? I didn’t see you out there,” I said pointing toward the sea, the only way in I knew of.
Rikard was coiling his rope in easy loops over his shoulder.
“I stay away from the big water. Don’t need the trouble big water brings. The creeks—they’re my highway. I knew a way in here from back there,” he said pointing back over the hummock of grass I had stood on. “I couldn’t get in here at low tide. We were in a death race. Lucky for you the rising tide let me in here just in time.”