Skink--No Surrender

by Skink- No Surrender (ARC) (epub)

  Malley and I weren’t the ones who spooked the ivorybill. It took off because a boat came around the bend of the river.

  The gar man’s barge, grinding and chugging. We smelled it almost as soon we saw it.

  At the helm was Nickel wearing his goofy NASCAR shades. Beside him stood Dime, a frowning, slightly shorter, less scruffy version of his brother.

  A third figure sat sideways on the gunwale. He wore a casual short-sleeve shirt, his thick arms folded across his chest. I could see the white cap of hair, and the gun in the holster on his belt.

  I waved my arms and shouted, “Mr. Tile! Over here!”

  The trooper nudged Nickel, who adjusted their course until the reeking vessel was headed straight for us.

  “Well,” said my cousin, “I guess we’re officially rescued.”

  Twenty-Four

  I didn’t want Nickel and Dime to hear me, so I whispered to Mr. Tile that Skink was in the woods.

  “Who?” he said.

  I guess that was their arrangement. Whenever the governor decided to disappear, Mr. Tile would let him go, no questions. He understood that the old man needed more personal space than the average human. About a thousand times more, I’d say.

  Skink left because he’d heard Nickel’s boat coming long before we did. He seemed to hear and see everything before we did.

  As the gar barge motored away from the creek, Malley and I scanned the shoreline hoping for one more glimpse—a wave, a wink, anything. I don’t know if the governor was watching us, but we wanted to believe he was.

  Mr. Tile handed me his phone so I could call Mom, who was super relieved to hear my voice. I mumbled something about the taxi breaking down again and Mr. Tile driving by just in time, a totally lame story that I’m sure didn’t fool her for a moment. She spared me the lawyer treatment, though—no cross-examination. She was too happy that I was coming home. Afterwards Malley spoke with Aunt Sandy and Uncle Dan, whom she described as “insanely overjoyed.”

  Mr. Tile got three rooms at a motel in Panama City, and the next morning we left for Loggerhead Beach. It turns out he and my mother had been talking, like, three times a day. The only reason she hadn’t freaked out and called for an Amber Alert was that he kept telling her I was all right, even when he wasn’t so sure.

  Mom didn’t know about the intense situation on the river, and neither did Mr. Tile. When he found the gray Malibu by the Road 20 bridge, he figured the governor and I had gone into the woods tracking the fake Talbo Chock and my cousin. Mr. Tile went to hire a helicopter, but then the weather turned lousy. When he returned alone to the bridge, the Malibu was gone.

  He caught up with it later that afternoon, Dime squirming in the driver’s seat. Afterwards they went straight to Nickel’s place and launched the gar boat. It had taken them less than half an hour to find us on the Choctawhatchee.

  The car ride back to Loggerhead Beach took all day. When I jokingly offered to split the driving time, Mr. Tile laughed and made me give back the counterfeit license. The Malibu was already on a flatbed heading for an auto auction in Atlanta. Mr. Tile explained that Skink never used the same vehicle twice, and he preferred projects that required no driving on his part.

  “Was that all cash in the shoe box his?” I asked.

  “Years ago he came into some money, which he told me to give to charity. Without telling him, I set aside a few bucks for his future well-being, just in case.” Mr. Tile winked. “It’s a good thing I did.”

  I rode in the backseat because Malley wanted to sit up front so she could dominate the musical selections. The sedan didn’t have satellite radio but she found a tolerable FM station that was Bieber-free. Mr. Tile even let her turn on the dashboard blue light once, when no other cars were around.

  He asked us lots of questions about Tommy Chalmers, but he didn’t press Malley for every ugly detail of the kidnapping. He was a total gentleman about it.

  On the subject of Skink, he had little more to say except that they were old friends who understood each other very well. We told the trooper (who was retired, as I thought) how the governor had collapsed unconscious after pitching a whacked-out fit; how we thought he was actually dying but then he popped up like nothing was wrong and told us it was just a trance.

  “Who knows,” said Mr. Tile.

  “Aren’t you worried about him?” Malley asked.

  “Every minute of every day.”

  “You told that reporter he was dead,” I said. “I saw it on the Internet.”

  “That was his idea. What do you two plan to tell the police about your colorful travel companion?”

  I looked sideways at Malley. She shook her head.

  The trooper said, “Do whatever you think is right. He’ll understand.”

  “He who? I don’t know who you’re talking about,” I said. “Some stranger gave me a ride up to the Panhandle. Dude wouldn’t even give me his name!”

  Mr. Tile chuckled. “That works.”

  “The problem is my mom. She knows who ‘he’ really is.”

  “Your mother’s extremely grateful that you and your cousin are safe and sound. I’m guessing she’s not interested in causing any grief for the governor.”

  Mr. Tile’s cell went off, a plain default ringtone. The conversation lasted several minutes. He did more listening than talking. After he hung up, I asked if it was Skink on the other end. He said no, it was the sheriff of Walton County, another old buddy.

  The body of Malley’s kidnapper had been discovered by a fisherman. It was wedged under a floating tangle of branches where the gator had hidden it for leftovers.

  However, the dead man was not Thomas Chalmers. That name had been stolen from a shrimper in Dulac, Lousiana, who’d been killed by a lightning strike two summers earlier.

  The fingerprints of the corpse in the Choctawhatchee River belonged to a person named Terwin Crossley, age twenty-six. Born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, Crossley was last known to reside in Valparaiso, Florida, where he’d stated his occupation as roofer. His rap sheet listed convictions for armed burglary, forgery and aggravated stalking.

  The initials T.C. were the only true information about himself that he’d given to my cousin.

  “I am such a stupid idiot,” she said, her voice raw with despair.

  “No, you’re just young,” Mr. Tile told her, “and he was a bad, bad guy.”

  There was more news from the sheriff, he said. “At 3:37 a.m., a UPS truck driver called 911 about a suspicious person in the road—”

  “Wait,” I cut in. “You’re talking about today?”

  “Yes, early this morning,” the trooper said. “The truck driver reported a suspicious-looking person kneeling by a roadkill in Ebro, a couple miles west of the Choctawhatchee bridge. The driver said the dead animal was either a coyote or a stray dog that had gotten hit by a car. The man in question had a pocketknife in one hand and the driver thought he looked mentally unbalanced.”

  “Shocker,” said Malley.

  “He was wearing camo trousers and a woman’s shower cap. The UPS guy honked so he’d get out of the way.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “The man dropped his pants and mooned the truck.”

  Malley cheered. “Major style points!”

  “He was gone by the time the deputies got there,” Mr. Tile reported. “So was the coyote.”

  “Oh well,” I said. “It’s better than leeches.”

  * * *

  The day after we got home, Detective Trujillo interviewed me for a couple hours. He never once asked if the person who gave me a ride upstate was Clinton Tyree, former governor of Florida, so technically I never had to lie about meeting the man. Some old stranger drove me to the Panhandle is what I said, which was close enough to the truth.

  The detective didn’t ask me about exotic woodpeckers, either, and why
would he?

  Back when I didn’t believe the ivorybill still existed, Skink had warned me that if word of a sighting ever leaked out, the river basin would be overrun by tour boats, swamp buggies and roadside souvenir shops, all sorts of greedheads trying to make a buck off the bird. He’d said it might be the last of its kind on the entire planet, or maybe the first of a hardy new generation, but either way it deserved peace and solitude. He might as well have been talking about himself.

  I put the ivorybill in this story because it’s key to what happened, the main clue that led me to Malley. I also don’t believe anybody’s going to see that particular bird again until it chooses to be seen. Same goes for Skink.

  My cousin spent like five hours talking with Detective Trujillo and a female officer. After that, the case was officially closed and the “Help Us Find Malley” billboards were taken down. The police department put out a press release saying she was home safe and asking the media to respect her family’s privacy. The press release also said that the suspect in Malley’s abduction had accidentally drowned before the authorities could apprehend him. The gory details were left out.

  That gray suitcase full of evidence, which we’d brought back for Detective Trujillo, ended up in a police warehouse somewhere. There was nobody to investigate, nobody to arrest. Terwin Crossley had acted alone, and died alone.

  In fairness to alligators, they don’t often kill human beings. It happens at most once or twice a year, which sounds like a lot until you consider that Florida has more than one million wild gators and eighteen million people. Statistically, bumblebees are more deadly.

  The first thing my cousin did when she got home was rinse the black dye from her hair. A doctor checked her out, and she’s going to be fine. The handcuff marks on her wrists have already faded away. Once a week she goes to see a counselor—“head shrinker,” in Malley’s words—and honestly, I think it’s helping her, even though she says the lady smells like petunias and vinegar.

  Sometimes Malley and I talk about what took place on the river that afternoon. We saw a man die, and we’ve both had bad dreams about it. T. C. was a rotten guy but it was still a gruesome thing to see.

  If I hadn’t snagged his shirt with the fishing lure, he probably wouldn’t have toppled into the water, and the alligator wouldn’t have grabbed him. On the other hand, he wouldn’t have been out there in the first place, trying to paddle away, if he hadn’t done anything wrong.

  I’ve got no idea what kind of childhood Terwin Crossley had, whether his parents were kind and loving, or cold and cruel. Maybe he was one of those kids who never had a chance to become a decent person, or maybe he was born a creep.

  Either way, I’m not brokenhearted over what happened to him, not after what he did to Malley, not after the twisted threats he made from the canoe. As far as I’m concerned, the gator that ate T.C. deserves a medal from Crime Stoppers. Maybe I’ll go straight to hell for saying that, but it’s the truth. I can’t speak for my cousin, because she’s never put that particular thought into words.

  We’ll never know if the animal that took Terwin Crossley was the same one that had swum off with the canoe two days earlier. After the kidnapper’s body was recovered, state wildlife officers set out baited hooks in the area. That’s standard procedure after a fatal alligator attack, and they almost always nab the culprit.

  Not this time, though. They didn’t catch anything, not even a dumb garfish.

  Mostly what Malley and I wonder about is whether Skink somehow knew what would happen to T.C., even before the gator appeared—whether it’s possible for a person to be so powerfully connected to nature that he develops an almost mystical kind of intuition. The governor’s reaction to that shocking scene was so mild and matter-of-fact that you couldn’t help but wonder if he was expecting something like that all along.

  Malley’s not a hundred percent convinced he did, and neither am I.

  I do believe, though, that some things aren’t meant to be understood. And I also believe in karma.

  * * *

  I’ve never told my mother that Skink taught me how to drive. My plan is to surprise her when I get my learner’s permit.

  One weekend we went to Saint Augustine to see Kyle and Robbie, who were there for a surfing contest. On the way up, Mom semi-casually mentioned something you might call a cool coincidence, and also ironic: Her own mother, my late Grandma Cynthia, had handed out campaign buttons and bumper stickers for Clinton Tyree all those years ago when he ran for governor. Weird but true.

  That night after dinner my brothers got me alone and quizzed me about the Malley adventure. They said I had “balls of steel” for going to find her all by myself. It took every ounce of self-restraint not to tell them about Skink, who in my mind was the true hero of the rescue.

  Not to mention one of the coolest old farts ever.

  Just about everything he told me was true. The Rousseau novel he quoted from is called Emile. The Shakespeare line he tossed at us came from a play called Corialanus. “Sporange” is a real word (“a cellular structure where spores are produced”), and it really does rhyme with orange.

  The governor was also right about Linda Ronstadt—she’s got an awesome voice. I downloaded her Heart Like a Wheel album after my mother bought me a new smart phone to replace the one at the bottom of the river. I offered to pay her back, but she said no.

  Which worked out okay, because I needed the money for something else. I’d gone back to work for that car-washing service—and I mean, every day—so I had exactly two hundred bucks in my fist when I walked into the surf shop in Saint Augustine.

  The owner, Kenny, my dad’s friend, was behind the counter. After I counted out the cash, he said, “thanks, dude,” and put in the drawer of the register.

  “Don’t you want to know what it’s for?” I asked.

  “The skateboard you took last year.” Kenny was smiling. “Look up,” he said.

  A bubble-eye video camera was mounted on the ceiling above the counter. I counted three more in the store.

  “So you knew all this time it was me who stole it?”

  “You didn’t steal it, Richard. You just forgot to pay before you walked out. I knew you’d be back one of these days.”

  “You did? How?”

  “Because your Randy’s son, and that’s what he would have done.”

  “No, he would never have taken it in the first place.”

  “Maybe he would, if he’d lost his dad when he was young and needed something special to keep the memory close,” said Kenny. “You tried that board yet?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, you should. It would make him happy.”

  After I got back home, I pulled the Birdhouse from my hiding spot in the box springs beneath my mattress. I didn’t want Mom to get sad if she saw it, so I waited until she left for the office before I put on my helmet and rode the board down A1A.

  Damn, it’s fast.

  * * *

  Obviously Malley didn’t have to go away to the Twigg Academy. After everything that’s happened, I think Uncle Dan and Aunt Sandy would love for her stay at home until she’s, like, thirty-five. They were seriously shaken up. Malley promised to cut back on the daily drama, which she has, so far. Her parents call or text her all the time, which is understandable though it annoys Malley.

  School started last week, and she’s a major celebrity because of the kidnapping. The attention makes her really uncomfortable, which is epically not like my cousin. She even shut down her Facebook page and got off Twitter. In the halls kids sometimes stop her to ask about T.C.—who he was, how he chose her—and she tells them just enough of the bad stuff to make sure the same thing never happens to them.

  A few days ago she broke the seventeen-minute mark for the 5,000-meter run. It would have been a state cross-country record for a girl her age, except it didn’t happen at a track
meet. Malley had been running by herself with her stopwatch early in the morning at the high school. She does this all the time. She says nobody bothers her because nobody can catch her.

  What she doesn’t know is that she’s never really alone when she runs. One of us is always hanging around near the track, out of sight, just to make sure there are no fake Talbos on the scene. Some mornings I’m the designated lookout. Other days it’s Uncle Dan, Sandy or Mom. Even Trent helps out. We’ve got our hiding spots.

  T.C. is no threat to Malley anymore, but all of us who care her about her are still extra protective. Maybe that will change someday, but I’m not so sure.

  Speaking of Trent, he finally sold two houses, one of them a sweet oceanfront estate. To celebrate he bought my mother a jade necklace, he got himself a new set of golf clubs and he gave me a supernice fly rod.

  Then he took us to dinner at his favorite steakhouse and, okay, I couldn’t resist asking if he’d ever heard the legend of the Florida swamp zombie.

  “What the heck’s a swamp zombie?” he said, all intrigued.

  “It’s like a Bigfoot, only smarter and gnarlier. I actually saw one in action. He had buzzard beaks hanging from his face.”

  My mother knew who I was talking about. She gave me a don’t-make-fun-of-your-stepfather look.

  “Never heard a that one,” said Trent, hitching an eyebrow. “Are you bustin’ my niblets, champ?”

  “Yeah, I am. There’s no such thing as a swamp zombie.”

  The next night I had my first so-called date with Beth. We went to a Will Farrell movie and she laughed almost as loud as me, which was a good sign. Next weekend we’re going fishing on my skiff near the inlet. Beth officially broke up with Taylor, so everything’s cool in that department.

  Except now Taylor keeps texting Malley begging her to go out. She’s told him to get lost in, like, thirteen different languages, literally. Malley’s got an app that translates her snarky insults into Spanish, French, German, Greek, I forget all the others.