by Karen Harper
It was beautiful here. Serene. Private, special and Eden-like. She’d just take a quick photo, then head back. She pulled her phone out of her purse, touched the camera icon and zoomed in. Click. Click.
Still holding the phone, she looked closer at what was in the picture. No nesting pair but, with the zoom, she saw a shovel thrust into the mud near the hole.
She stared at the tiny frame, then enlarged the photo with a stroke of her finger on the screen. Laid out on a black piece of plastic, in the thick shade of looming foliage, were what appeared to be bones. Bones! Soil-stained, discolored bones! Thick bones, long ones. Too large to be from the delicate birds here. No skulls, but a large animal must be buried there or—
Humans in some sort of shallow grave.
She gasped and turned to flee, dropped one shoe. Would Nick be able to hear her phone call in the crowd? Despite the noise, she’d call him, tell him. Just in case, she’d run back, get that policeman at the gate.
As she lurched away, palmetto fronds slapped her, seemed to snatch at her.
Someone grabbed her from behind. Everything she held went flying. She was lifted off her feet, and a big, muddy hand clamped hard over her mouth.
“Well, lookee who I caught,” a strange voice whispered, the man’s lips in her hair.
30
“Where’s Mommy?” Lexi asked, craning her neck while in Nick’s arms.
“Your dad said she went to the bathroom. She’ll be back soon. Don’t tell me you have to go.”
“Nope. I can see better up here. Daddy can’t hold me if your arms are tired, because of his crutches. He doesn’t like them.”
“Shh, they’re ready to move Tiberia to his traveling cage now.”
The zookeeper in charge explained briefly what he planned to do. They had baited the travel cage with fresh meat and backed it up flush to the opening of the tiger’s current enclosure. The tiger would make his own transfer, they would drop the gate to the travel cage behind him and lock it, be sure it was safely stowed, then drive slowly out through the front gate.
It seemed to Nick the cat scented the meat but maybe scented danger too. Tiberia hesitated, crouched, then sprang at the exit.
“Bet that’s what happened when he killed his owner,” someone behind them said. Nick didn’t turn around and hoped Lexi hadn’t heard.
Tiberia roared, as if bidding the cage and everyone goodbye. The trap was sprung. With a clang, the door descended. Hemmed in, Tiberia roared again while everyone cheered or applauded. Nick saw Brit crying.
He looked back to the bench where he figured Claire would be but didn’t see her. He scanned the crowd. She wasn’t back yet. Maybe she had intentionally wanted to miss the tiger’s departure. He hoped she wasn’t feeling upset or nauseous. As soon as the zoo truck drove away over the narrow, decorated bridge, he’d go look for her.
“He was pretty mad he got tricked, got took,” Lexi said as he put her down and took her hand.
“Got taken, honey. Yeah, he was fighting mad.”
* * *
Claire fought fiercely. The attacker had pinched her nose shut and completely covered her mouth. With his other hand, he pinned her arms at her sides. She tried to kick, but he must be standing with his legs apart and she hit nothing but air. He was strong—too strong.
Getting out of breath. Furious. Fearful. Struggling, going limp. She’d done that once before, pretended, then fought back. When was that? Somewhere in drowning water...
So dizzy. Should have taken her meds. Exhausted now—the baby. Strength wearing out. Out... Would he put her in the grave with all those headless bones?
Then—but it must have been later—she was bound and gagged and laid out faceup on that tarp near the bones. No, the bones were gone, the shallow grave filled and covered with fronds. How long had it been? Mere minutes? Were they looking for her now?
The man moved back into her view, towering above her. A bearded man. A man she couldn’t place except for Jackson’s photo.
“Mmmph!” she said through the gag stuffed in her mouth. She thought she would throw up. Who was this madman to do this with so many here today, visitors, zoo staff, wildlife officers, police? If only they would turn their attention to Flamingo Isle. The birds must have run from this man. Why didn’t someone bring them back here and find him? They were all focused on the tiger cage.
She felt caged now, trapped by her bonds, by the high double fence that loomed almost overhead. She’d seen no ladder this intruder had used, but it must be hidden in that thick foliage by the fence. Maybe he thought he had to move the bones before the flamingos were moved or this area was bulldozed. But whose bones?
Dear Lord, was he planning to take her with him so she wouldn’t tell? When he bent over her, she feared an attack, but he only leaned close to gather the edges of the tarp around her. To be buried alive? She remembered Jackson saying this little isle was the highest piece of ground for miles around in the Glades. How long had those bones been here, barely above the waterline?
He dragged the tarp with her on it back into the thicker foliage by the fence, where palms and other plants ran riot. She prayed he was going to just hide her, leave her. But she could ID him, even if she didn’t know him. She realized her purse was gone, her phone too, though she felt her shoes on her feet. And something big was wedged under the curve of her back. That could be her purse, but she hadn’t had time to put her phone back in it. She’d dropped it somewhere, hadn’t she?
He loosed the edges of the tarp. She lay in thick leaves that seemed to reach skyward forever. Her head hit the BAA fence, just about a foot from the ranch fence. If he tried to climb the fences with her, she’d fight, try to roll off, be dropped—but no. Jackson might have done that, but she had to think of the baby.
Through her gag she muttered, “Huh-uh, huh-uh!” hoping he would get the message to stop, to just leave her.
“You talk too damn much,” he muttered. “Shut up or I’ll shut you up better’n that. More’n once, I seen you yakking to Marta and Duck.”
Irv Glover! He had a beard now, not like in the picture of him she’d seen online, but it was him all right.
He must have spied on Duncan. The boy’s nightmares were real—hers too. But what was Glover doing here with buried bones? She nearly dry heaved in fear but was even more terrified when she saw a good-sized hole dug under the fence, and on the other side, a pile of plants that must have been stuffed inside to hide the opening. They lay, exposed roots and all, just across the two fences that the hole spanned. Was he going to put her in a shallow grave and then just walk out into the crowd?
But Glover belly-crawled through first, then pulled her through on her back, inching her along, wrapped in the black tarp like a pall. She remembered that a piece of denim had been snagged on the fence where they’d found Jackson. Maybe he had found the shallow grave and had been seen—had to be stopped and silenced. On the phone call Jackson had made to Brit in the car, he’d sounded panicked when he said he’d found something. Maybe he was being watched through the fences again or his phone too could have been bugged the way theirs were. Maybe he’d stumbled on the bones but didn’t want to panic her and Brit then, wanted them to come back so he could show them the bones.
Claire knew she was almost halfway under the fence of the Trophy Ranch grounds. Suddenly it seemed a fearful place, a place Nick had not wanted her to go. She had to leave something behind—if people searching for her were ever going to find this hidden hole under the fence—but her hands were tied and she couldn’t rip at her shirt, nor reach her watch to leave it either. She turned her head, again, again to try to rub an earring loose, even though that tore at her earlobe. She was sure her left small hoop gave way, but it was probably snagged under her in the tarp.
When the twisted wires at the bottom of the second fence snagged the plastic and scratched her forehead, she turned her he
ad to the side and saw the pile of bones already on the ranch side. Irv Glover used to work at the Trophy Ranch, so he obviously knew the territory and maybe hid out here when he sneaked back from Tennessee. And was she some kind of a trophy for him, someone he blamed for turning his wife and son against him—just as he had blamed the social worker he had killed?
* * *
Nick was in a total panic. Where in the hell was Claire? She seemed to have vanished into thin Everglades air. Both of the officers who had been here had moved into the parking lot to conduct the sudden glut of traffic onto the narrow access road, then left without knowing of the situation. No one still here had seen her.
He passed Lexi off to Nita to take home, while he, Bronco, Heck, Gina and Brit scoured the now deserted area. Gina had been back to the ladies’ bathroom over and over, looking for clues. Ann had searched the trailer, the storage areas and Jackson’s apartment.
Jace paced on his crutches, back and forth over the bridge. Nick, Bronco and Heck walked the perimeter of the entire BAA fence where it was not absolutely obscured or overgrown by rampant foliage.
Nick had the sickening feeling that Stan Helter was somehow behind this, and he had to check that out before he called in the cops. He’d get Grant to help him.
“Wait!” Brit said, smacking her forehead with the heel of her hand. “Those flamingos we saw running around. Now that Jackson’s not here, if they’re disturbed, they leave their area. Let’s look there again, even though we scanned the fence. Maybe she went in to corral them and slipped in the mud.”
She and Nick jogged toward the shallow water surrounding the heavily leafed isle on three sides while Jace, swearing, came along on his crutches behind them.
They waded through the shallow water. The birds nearby scattered again, fluffing their feathers, but didn’t flee. Nick and Brit walked through the moat, then climbed the higher ground of the little island.
“Claire! Claire!” he shouted for the hundredth time. His voice kept breaking. This could not be happening, not after everything, not after how well things were going. And the baby.
“Look!” Brit cried, pointing, just as Bronco and Heck ran up behind them. “Drag marks! They look fresh.”
“And someone’s been digging,” Nick said, pointing. Raw fear clawed at him.
Brit said, “Jackson used to dig shallow holes on this high ground for nesting pairs. This was his bailiwick, and I almost never came back here, but if you look around the fringes of this little islet, you’ll see other depressions. It looks like he—someone—covered this one over. And it’s bigger than the others.”
Nick stooped and moved one palmetto frond, then a second. In a sudden spot of sun through shifting trees above them, his gaze snagged on a piece of white-brown plastic. No, not plastic. A bone. Part of a finger bone? He thought he would be sick to his stomach.
“Don’t touch that!” he ordered Brit when she reached for it.
“But it can’t have anything to do with Claire. These birds have small, delicate bones. Maybe Jackson buried some of them back here.”
From near the fence, Heck called to them. “The drag marks continue over here, near the fence. Like—I mean—heading for the fence. But there’s nowhere to go.”
“Just a sec!” Nick called to him. “We’ll be right there and get a ladder to go over.”
Scared to death he’d find more bones, even if they couldn’t be Claire’s, he moved a few other fronds away from the site. He’d glimpsed something white under one sharp leaf and thought it might be a bigger bone. He half wondered if Jackson had used this high spot at the BAA to bury all kinds of dead animals, maybe ones who weren’t well cared for, ones that Ben or Brit didn’t want outsiders to know about. He could not trust anyone, could not get his mind around the fact this wasn’t a nightmare.
They all stared at the small piece of white paper he’d uncovered, as if it were directions to a treasure trove. It was just a piece of wrinkled, smudged and lined notebook paper, folded in two, standing with the fold upright. He pulled out his handkerchief and picked up the card with it, just as Jace sloshed through the water, coming closer on his crutches.
“If she’s not here, let’s call the cops,” Jace insisted, almost slipping as he climbed the mud and soil of the small islet.
Nick looked down at the note, written in pencil in big, shaky printing. His voice shaking too, he read aloud to them the crudely printed words: “‘1ST SIGN OF COPS SHE DIES.’”
31
Once Irv Glover had dragged Claire far away from the two fences, he told her, “Be right back. Gotta stuff loose leaves back in that hole.”
He was quickly back, muttering something about the posse on his trail. It made her think of an old man who had dementia, who thought he was a cowboy from out west. Now who had that been? She was so dizzy, the trees above her spinning into the sky.
He picked her up and carried her deeper into ranch land. She fought to keep her head clear, to reason things out through her fear and desperate need for her medication. Could he have a car waiting nearby? But wouldn’t the guard near the ranch gate Nick had mentioned see them?
He hid her under some pygmy palms surrounded by a thick patch of crotons and left her, heading back toward the BAA.
Maybe she could roll away or find something to saw her wrists free. There was a patch of sharp-sided sawgrass in sight, but that would take forever. Could she rub or snag her partly protruding gag against a tree trunk until it pulled out?
But he was back fast, with another tarp, dragging the bones on it. He went past her with a narrow-eyed scowl. Despite the lack of skulls, surely, those were human bones. If she could only talk, could reason with him—if that was possible with a murderer. Maybe she could sympathize with him, play on his love for Duncan—Duck. She would have to call that poor little boy Duck if she had a chance to speak.
The sound of the other tarp being dragged and his footsteps swishing through the sawgrass faded. If only she could scream. Maybe someone inside the BAA fences could hear her from here, or she could attract the guard at the ranch gate. Surely Glover didn’t mean to just leave her here until dark when he could move her again.
Or bury her here.
* * *
Nick was sweating but felt ice cold. “Grant, thank God you answered.”
“Nick, you okay? You sound upset.”
“I need your help, friend. Claire has disappeared from the crowded gathering at the BAA today.”
“Disappeared? Like how?”
“I don’t know, but there are—are signs—she’s been abducted and taken onto ranch land, which scares me to death.”
“Damn, man! You sure?”
“Not exactly. Can you come to the BAA now? In case I need to confront Helter about information or a search, I need your help, but no cops, at least right now. We found a note.”
“I’m walking out the door right now. A ransom note?”
“Not so far. We found drag marks and a threatening note saying no cops. Grant, maybe we can figure this out together. I’m scared to call in the police. I might need to bargain with whoever took her—if they contact us.”
Nick heard a door slam. Thank God some kind of help was on the way.
* * *
As soon as it got dark, Glover was back again. By then, Claire had managed to rub and hook the gag out of her mouth, though she’d scratched her cheek and chin against rough, ragged bark. She’d just gotten it out, was gasping for breath when she heard his quick footsteps coming through the patch of sawgrass.
He shone a flashlight beam in her face.
“Well, lookee you,” he said.
“It’s been out for a good hour,” she lied, “but I didn’t scream. I know you plan things out so well it wouldn’t have done any good. I just couldn’t breathe well—for me or my baby. I’m sure you understand my worrying about my unborn baby,
what with you being a dad. It’s really clever how you came back to Naples and kept an eye on Duck.”
“I think Duck knew it was me watching sometimes, but the beard fooled him. Fooled a lot of folks, that and my new name.”
“A new legal name? That took some doing.”
“Got a few connections. Keith Morrison, that’s me.”
She’d been hoping he’d brag that Stan Helter had helped him get an alias, but the fact he’d offered her his new name scared her even more. He didn’t plan to let her go.
“No one had a clue you were here,” she plunged on, trying to use positive interview techniques she’d learned long ago: get the suspect to trust you, like you. Build him or her up, because they often have abused, damaged psyches. “You know,” she added, “Duck said he dreamed you were back. Fathers are very important to their children.”
“So you’re pregnant?”
“Yes. I’m hoping to have a boy half as good and courageous as your son.”
“You try to turn him against me?”
“Irv—or Keith, if you wish—I never said a word against you to Marta or Dun—Duck. I lost my father when I was young, and I know how that hurts. Even if you’ve done some bad things in the past, it’s important that he looks up to you for things you do now.”
“Yeah, well, sorry you’re hatching a baby like those pink birds, ’cause that makes all this harder. Sorry too I had to knock out the black guy, but he kept digging around there, was turning up the bones. But being sorry don’t keep me from doing what I have to, and don’t give me that sob story about my son. Once I clear this place for good, I’ll take him with me and we’ll get along fine then.”
Worse and worse, she thought. But she was getting dizzy just lying down. Trying to keep her voice steady, she said, “I can feel my purse under me. I have pills in there I need to take or I get very sick.”
“Thought they was drugs—kind I could sell. Stashed ’em back a ways, buried to get later.”