by Lowe, Tom
At the top of the cycle, the Big Wheel came to a sudden stop. Courtney looked down and blew a kiss to Lonnie, who removed his baseball cap and grinned. The night was suddenly very quiet. She raised her eyes up and felt as if she could see for a hundred miles in any direction. There was the nightglow of Gainesville, Florida, at the edge of the horizon. She saw the headlights of cars creeping down dark back roads in the distance. A flicker of heat lighting hung in the outlying clouds for a beat no longer than the blush of a firefly's belly.
The seat, attached by two metal pins as wide as her little finger, rocked back and forth at the top of the Ferris wheel. Courtney couldn't help but smile. She closed her eyes for a moment and felt the breeze on her skin, her mind in sharp focus, the world now smaller, her troubles and past seemed far beyond the horizon. She watched a plane flying low in the distance, climbing higher as it gained altitude after leaving an airport. One day I'll catch a jet plane to fly to some far away, romantic place. But right now this is the best seat in the whole world. My rockin' chair with a view that goes forever.
She glanced down. Lonnie was smoking a cigarette, looking across the darkened midway. A movement caught her eye. Someone in the shadows. A man wearing a hooded sweatshirt. He was standing between the RV's, campers and trailers, someone staring up at her. Even from the distance, she felt there was something wrong with the way the man was looking at her. The fairgrounds suddenly darkened. Courtney looked to the sky as a cloud shadow-danced over the face of the moon, and she thought of her grandmother. Her Irish grandma, someone who spoke Gaelic and Irish cant, was believed by many to be a psychic. She used to say that Courtney’s ability to see things, to get a feeling that something or someone was not right -- that something was about to happen, was a gift from a higher power. “It skips a generation, baby girl,” Grandma told her one spring night on the steps of her grandmother's small home in South Boston. “Your mother never got it. Neither did your sister, but you sure did.”
She remembered looking into her grandmother’s sea-green eyes, eyes that smiled with insight and absolute love. “Use your gift wisely, Courtney.” People, mostly from the clan, the Irish travelers—the gypsies, called the old woman a mystic, and they'd consult her for all kinds of things. Some wanted to know about the future. Others wanted to know how to hide their past to protect their future. A few wanted to reach out to dead relatives. Most things, Courtney figured, based on the conversations she overheard between Grandma and her clients, had to do with sex. The lack of it. Too much of it. Men chasin’ it, and women fakin’ it. It’s all crap, really.
Courtney looked down at Lonnie, her seat rocking slightly as she leaned over the safety bar. He waved and started the wheel again. Courtney closed her eyes as she descended, the wind in her face, her thoughts over the horizon. As she rotated closer to the ground, she looked toward the operator’s stand.
The horror hit her in the gut.
Please, God, no. She held her hand to her mouth and screamed, her lower lip trembling. She felt sick. She looked down a second time. Maybe Lonnie would stand up and say he was joking. But she knew the way he was lying in the sawdust he was hurt, maybe killed, his left leg twisted behind him.
Courtney knew that Lonnie Ebert wasn’t going to stand up. And she knew the man in the hooded sweatshirt was the killer.
But she didn’t know why.
2
The image could have been a hallucination. I was that tired, physically and mentally exhausted. I flashed on my high beams. A ground fog was building in the night, and the high beams did nothing to help me see what I believed was a girl walking on the shoulder of the road. Nothing there. Maybe a deer. I stuck my head out the open window of my Jeep driving down County Road 314 through the heart of the Ocala National Forest. Max, my ten-pound dachshund, was curled on the passenger seat, fast asleep. It was near midnight, and I was glad there was no other traffic on what was undoubtedly one of the darkest highways in the nation.
The road twisted through canopies of ancient live oaks, thick branches stretching high over the highway and blocking out what little light was coming from the moon. I'd spent all day sanding and repainting the bottom of Jupiter, my vintage 38-foot Bayliner at Ponce Marina near Daytona Beach. I would have stayed overnight on the boat if it weren't hauled into the yard, propped up with jack-stands and blocks. Tomorrow, Jupiter would take her place back at slip L-17. Now I was heading home to my old house on the St. Johns River.
The image returned, ghostlike through the fog. A young woman, maybe a teenager, definitely walking on the side of the road. She wore jeans and a blue T-shirt, walking slowly, too near the pavement to be safe. Not that it was safe walking down a rural stretch of highway late at night through the heart of a national forest known as much for its body count as its beauty. It was the same forest where convicted serial killer Aileen Wuornos had left some of her victims. And it had a history of murder and bloodshed dating back to the Spaniards slaughter of the native people.
The girl didn’t stop walking when I slowed down and pulled up beside her. Max awoke and stood on her hind legs, bracing to peer out the open window. I asked, “Can I give you a ride to wherever you're going? This is not the safest place in the nation to be taking an evening stroll.”
No response. The girl kept walking, hugging her arms in the humid night air, the chant of cicadas echoing through the dark forest. She swatted a mosquito. I drove slowly, keeping pace with her. “The mosquitoes will eat you alive out here. Look, I'm not trying to do anything but help you.”
Max barked. The girl stopped and turned toward us. She said, “I don't need your help. Please, just go away. Leave me alone, okay?”
She looked at Max and the girl's agitated face softened for a second, a tiny smile at one side of her mouth. She bit her top lip and started walking. I could tell she'd been crying for a while. Eyes swollen, red blotches on her face, hair tangled like she'd been running before walking, running away from something or running to something. Even through the mosquito welts, through the confused and hurt face, she was a pretty young woman. And she was someone who might be zipped into a body bag if she walked this road all night.
The T-shirt had two dark stains across her waist, like she'd wiped blood on her shirt. Something had caused her world to come crashing down, at least from her perspective something bad had happened. Right now the only thing that mattered was her safety. She was somebody's daughter, and she was all alone in a dark and dangerous place where no one should be alone.
I said, “You're hurting Max's feelings.”
She stopped again, looked at us, leaned closer to the window and said, “Excuse me?”
I smiled and Max cocked her head. Then Max did her little half bark. Sort of her way of asking, “What's up?” The girl smiled. It was a natural, beautiful smile. Her eyes, even from the spill light of my dashboard, were mesmerizing. They were wide, the striking look of the irises was even more pronounced because of the dark circles wrapped around the color. They were the shade of golden light through emeralds, and they were very frightened eyes.
She inhaled deeply through her nose, and looked back down the long, dark highway. An owl called out from one of the live oaks, the grunt of bullfrogs coming from the swamp. I could smell smoke from a hunter's camp somewhere in the deep woods. I said, “Please, get in the Jeep. I'll take you into DeLand. It's about twenty miles away. Are you a student at Stetson?”
“I've never been to college. Look, I appreciate your generosity. I can tell you’re a nice guy. But I'm gonna be okay. I just need some space away from people. Your dog's cute.”
“I can understand how you need space, but there are better places to find quiet time. I’m Sean O'Brien. What's your name?”
“Courtney Burke.”
“Nice to meet you Courtney. I live near here in an old house by the river. I've been sanding, painting, and working in a boatyard at Ponce Marina all day. Let me take you into town. There's a Waffle House open all night. Do you need money to catch a bus?
”
She rolled her eyes, crossed her arms, and said, “No thanks.” She coughed, reached into her pocket and removed an asthma inhaler—taking a long hit from it.
“Are you okay?”
She nodded, breathing deeply now through her nose, her eyes moist. “Yes.”
“Look, Courtney, I'm too tired to hang out here on a dark road about five miles from where police found a body last month, less than fifty feet off the highway. A runaway teenage girl. She'd been dumped like trash. Now, please, get in the Jeep.”
She leaned closer to the open window and looked at me, studying my face for a long moment, a small gold Celtic cross hanging from her long neck. “You said your name's Sean O'Brien, right?”
“Yes, why?”
“No reason. You lived here all your life?”
“Part of my life. The important part. Why?”
“It's nothing. Look, I …”
Light raked across the left side of her face. I glanced into my rearview mirror and saw headlights approaching. I said, “Car's coming. Step back, I'm pulling off the road.” I turned the Jeep's emergency flashers on and eased off the road directly behind the girl. Within seconds we were passed by a pickup truck. And three seconds later I saw the brake lights pop on.
Not a good sign.
3
I thought about my Glock. Thought about how I’d left it in the house after cleaning and oiling the pistol when I took it out of the Jeep two days ago. I glanced down at Max. Since she couldn’t see over the dashboard, she followed the movement of the truck with her head and ears.
And then she growled. Another bad sign.
The truck slowly backed up, coming parallel to my Jeep. Two men inside. There was enough light from their dashboard and the ambient glow from my Jeep to see their faces. Both wore cut-off black T-shirts. Tats on beefy forearms. Hard faces with a week’s growth of whiskers. The man on the passenger side had hooded, red-rimmed eyes that didn't blink, like a drunk at a bar staring at condensation rolling down his beer bottle. He wore a baseball hat turned backwards. The driver locked his thin lips on a bottle of Crown Royal in a wrinkled paper bag, turned it up, and took one long gulp, his face shining from sweat, cheeks blooming a shade of crimson. He stared at me through moist eyes and said, “Ya'll look like you need some help.”
I could smell diesel fumes mixed with burning weed. I said, “Thanks for stopping. Everything's okay. She just got a carsick. She wanted to get some fresh air.”
The man closest to me said, “Ya'll got all your windows down. Plenty of air in a Jeep. Maybe you and your girlfriend got into a ruckus. Maybe she don't want you no more and she's lookin' to hitch a ride.”
I said nothing. Max growled again.
The man looked at Max, grinned, and turned to the driver. “He's got a fuckin' muskrat on the seat next to him. One of 'em wiener dogs.”
“No wonder the bitch walked.” They laughed and then the guy on the passenger side gazed at the girl, like he was seeing her for the first time. He said, “Hey, sweet thing. That right? This dude botherin' you? We can make him go away. You just say the word. C'mon darlin,' get in the truck and we'll take you home.”
The girl said, “No thanks.”
The man sneered and touched the tip of his nose with a thick finger. The driver gunned the truck and quickly pulled off the road in front of my Jeep. “Get in!” I yelled to the girl. She hesitated a moment and then reached for the door handle.
Too late. The man on the passenger side moved fast, not even waiting for the truck to stop before flinging open the door and running toward the girl. He grabbed her by the forearm.
“Don't touch me!” she shouted. The man laughed and wrapped his arms, fur, ink, and muscle around her.
“She's a fighter!” he shouted, dragging her toward the truck. “This bitch got some spunk. She's gonna be real good.”
The driver, carrying a Billy club, approached me. I got out of the Jeep. He grinned, slapped the wood in the palm of his big bear paw hand and said, “Weiner dog dude, you ready for the whoppin' your daddy shoulda done years ago?” His belly hung over a belt that I couldn't see because of the girth. I guessed he was more than 290 pounds of muscles and fat, mostly fat. Plus he was stoned, very stoned. Each body movement was telegraphed before it happened.
I waited for him, never taking my eyes off of his. He raised his huge right arm and swung at my head. I easily dodged it, the Billy club missing my forehead by a few inches. The kinetic energy, the torque of the swing, threw him off balance for a half second. That's all the time I needed. I grabbed his right wrist, pulling his arm behind his back and forcing his hand up to his neck. The pop of tendons and bones separating was like the sound of eggs cracking. He screamed and went down on his knees the same time I brought up my knee hard into his nose. He fell backwards, out cold.
The other man had abandoned the girl and was reaching for a shotgun cradled in the window behind the truck seats. His hand was touching the stock when I slammed the truck's door into his legs. He yelled louder than his sleeping partner had screamed, and he tried to turn around—again an opponent losing equilibrium. It gave me a moment to draw far back and deliver a hard hit with my fist into the center of his mouth. I felt my knuckles plow through lips, front teeth and nose. I knew his jaw had dislocated. He stared at me through incredulous dull eyes, now glazed and rolling upward in his small skull. His lips were macerated, blood pouring from what was left of his mouth and nose. He smelled of weed, sour beer, and bacon fat. He tumbled forward, falling into the undergrowth, less than five feet from a canal.
I looked in the truck and lifted a cell phone from the seat and punched three digits.
The dispatcher said, “Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”
“Looks like two men got in a fight. Severe injuries. County road 314. About halfway into the Ocala National Forest. Their Ford pickup is pulled over on the side of the road. Send an ambulance.”
“Are the men breathing?”
“Yes.”
“What is your name, sir?”
I disconnected and threw the phone into the center of the canal.
Then I looked for the girl, the fog growing thicker, rising through the light from the Jeep's headlights, the bellow of bullfrogs coming from the canal. “Are you okay?” I called out to the girl, hoping she would be standing in the shadows. “Courtney!” I felt fatigue growing behind my eyes as I walked back to my Jeep. Little Max stuck her head out the side window and made a slight whimpering sound. “She ran away, Max. The girl's gone.”
4
The next morning I awoke at sunrise, poured a cup of coffee, and walked onto my screened porch to feed Max. The porch overlooked the St. Johns River, a 310-mile river of history that meandered north from Vero Beach, spilling its heart into the Atlantic Ocean east of Jacksonville. My old cabin, built in the 1930's from cypress, pine, and red oak, sat at the mid-way point of the river. My nearest neighbor was a mile away. The Ocala National Forest, with its primordial beauty, bordered the far side of the St. Johns.
I sipped coffee and watched the match-flare of dawn smolder in the horizon behind live oaks and cabbage palms. The sunrise cast the trees in silhouette, their leafy heads and shoulders stitched in the golden threads of morning light. At the base of the old oaks, and deep in the ancient forest, secrets lie buried in folklore and fauna like the watery graves of mastodon skeletons discovered at the bottom of the forest's gin-clear springs.
I thought of the girl I'd found last night, Courtney Burke. I hoped she was on a bus heading to someplace safer than where she came. My thoughts were interrupted by a cardinal, tossing back his head and singing to the new day.
A breeze danced across the river and brought the scent of wood smoke and honeysuckles. A fisherman puttered down the center of the river in a dark green Boston Whaler, a V formation from the boat's wake pitching the surface into a sea of copper pennies winking in the sunlight.
Max barked once. “Patience, little lady,” I said, pouring s
ome food into her bowl. I watched her eat for a few seconds and then looked at the framed picture of my wife, Sherri, which I kept on a small end table next to a rocking chair on the porch. Sherri died a few years ago from ovarian cancer, but her spirit still lived with us, Max and me. When I worked as a homicide detective with Miami-Dade PD, Sherri bought Max when I was on an extended criminal surveillance. She'd named her Maxine, but with the little dachshund's feisty brown eyes and fearless heart of a lion in a ten-pound body, she took on the swagger of a Max.
She swallowed her last bite and stepped to the screened door, glancing over her shoulder at me with the look that asked, what are you waiting for? We walked toward the dock, under the limbs of live oaks. Spanish moss, streaked and damp with dew, hung from the limbs like gray lamb's wool left in the rain. From the top of a huge cypress tree near the shore, a curlew called out to the rising sun. The bird's river song echoed across the St. Johns in a haunting tune of rhythmic chants. Its symphony skipped over the water with the beat of smooth stones cast in the alluring harmony of sad and sweet notes long ago sung by the Sirens of Homer's Greece.
As we walked toward my dock on the river, my thoughts again drifted to the brave but frightened face of Courtney Burke. Even though I was exhausted when I first saw her, I remembered seeing a cue in her eyes that alluded to something long ago lost, maybe partially buried. What was it?
“You lived here all your life?”
“Part of my life. The important part. Why?”
“It's nothing. Look, I …”
I sat on one of two Adirondack chairs at the end of my dock, the girl's face, the blood on her T-shirt, her compelling and scared eyes swirling in my mind like moths circling a light source. Her eyes, with their sea green-golden irises enclosed in dark circles around the mesmerizing color, reminded me of the iconic picture of a young Afghan girl captured years ago by a National Geographic photographer. It was the eyes, the haunting image of the girl seen and felt around the world. I hoped Courtney Burke didn't make the morning news. I reached for my cell to check local news sources, but paused, not wanting to confirm that she'd become a runaway statistic.