Rough Draft

by James W. Hall

  The sea’s fertile scent was everywhere, and a wilder fragrance was filtering in from farther out, riding the onshore breeze. A teasing mingle of scents. Odors carried directly from the islands, lobsters grilling over charcoal, the hard sweet fragrance of sunbaked sand, and the quiet hint of nutmeg and cloves and rum and fresh green mint. Scents that were possible only out there on the edge of the ocean, borne by the freshest winds.

  The last time she’d smelled that perfumed blend, she was a child, standing on the porch of one of the ghostly, long-gone houses of Stiltsville, a two-story affair that once stood somewhere off to the east Her father had brought her along with him to a party. It was someone’s birthday, a judge, a state senator, someone with an old teak yacht that was anchored in the nearby channel. They’d used rowboats and skiffs to ferry people back and forth between the yacht and the stilt house. Everyone was giddy. The sun was bright, and she remembered how clear and blue the water looked and how cool it was, jumping from the deck of the house, twenty feet down into the sheer streaming bay, kicking back up from the white sandy bottom. She was the only kid that day, twelve or thirteen at the time, on the brink of adulthood, watching her father drink beer from a bottle and smoke cigars and trade jokes and stories with policemen and lawyers and those rich judges and politicians. A glorious day. Permitted a glimpse into a world she’d never seen. Adults acting like schoolkids. Squealing women, pranks and skirmishes around the deck of that house. Large brightly colored beach balls and helium balloons bouncing everywhere. Everyone shirtless or in bikinis. No one shy about showing skin. She’d seen some bare breasts that day. A couple of the younger women showing off. Reveling in the attention of important men. She remembered the swirl of the party, someone giving her a sip of beer, then another. Hannah remembered the cops particularly, how funny they were, how droll. And how when one of the women sliced her foot on the barnacles that encrusted a piling down below, it was a cop who hauled her to safety and performed the first aid. It was a cop who didn’t shy away from the blood. And probably it was on that very afternoon, during that bright sunny July bacchanal that the seed was planted for Hannah’s brief career as a police officer. Those men. The silent respect that even the senator and the judge and the rich, arrogant lawyers gave them.

  “You ready?” Sheffield whispered.

  She nodded and pushed back from the railing.

  His hand touched hers. She gripped it, gave him a quick squeeze, then let go and turned toward the doorway.

  The knob was aluminum and turned easily in her hand. Before her the room was dark, only a small trail of light shone from one of the other stilt houses, a few hundred yards away. She stepped into the room, Frank just behind her. She inhaled the musty, mildewed air. Old canvas that never completely dried and tennis shoes with their lingering reek. The smell of decaying wood, and fried food and stale beer and conch shells imperfectly cleaned. A house hard-used, rich with the sour haze of ocean living.

  As she turned to pat the wall for a light switch, she glimpsed something at her feet and lurched hard to the right.

  “What!”

  Frank caught her as she was about to tumble. With an arm around her shoulders, he steadied her.

  “That,” she said.

  She motioned at the red laser light, taut as a trip wire, at ankle level just inside the doorway.

  Apparently triggered by the broken beam, a dull light switched on behind the one closed door. In the slit at the bottom there was a flutter of movement. As Hannah stepped toward the door, she heard their voices. Recognizing them instantly, like ghostly echoes across some broad and bottomless canyon. Her mother, Martha Keller, her father, Ed, calling out for her in unison.

  “Hannah, Hannah, come on, sweetheart. We’re going to be late.”

  In an instant she was at the closed door. She ripped it open and stood in the flickering glow.

  “Jesus H. Christ” Frank was beside her, his hands on her shoulders as if he meant to turn her around and steer her back to the safety of the living room.

  Across the room was a Super 8 projector mounted on a wood dresser. The large reel unrolled its narrow tape, sprockets turning, spraying colored light on the opposite white wall. Showing in grainy detail the house in Gables by the Sea where she had served her childhood, where her parents were murdered. A basic ranch-style in yellows and whites with a red-tiled porch and double doors with gleaming brass handles.

  Positioned about ten feet down the sidewalk, her mother, the family historian, was filming another special occasion. Ed Keller waited on the front porch in a white shirt, red tie, and a blue seersucker suit, identical to the one he’d been wearing the day he was murdered. But this was Easter Sunday, a cloudless day, with nearly twenty years left in Ed Keller’s life. The breeze was stirring her father’s thick, dark mane. And then he began to smile as Hannah emerged from the doorway, stepping forth into the sunny day and the camera’s welcoming eye. Seven years old. Her lush blond hair was long and loose down her back. Dimples in her chubby cheeks, standing with legs and feet together, prim but with her head cocked demurely to the side, some copied gesture of coyness that she’d probably seen on television or in a magazine. A little girl so detached from the grown-up woman who watched her, so untroubled and hopeful and certain about the underpinnings of the world, that it was as if Hannah were staring through an interstellar peephole, given a quick glimpse of the inhabitants of some utopian moon, orbiting off in the deepest reaches of the cosmos.

  “There she is,” Ed Keller said. “There’s my princess.”

  She wore a simple yellow dress tufted with white nubby flowers. She was gripping a white patent leather purse that matched her shoes, a strap across her arch. One of her white socks had rolled down below her ankle. Her blue hat was as small and round as a robin’s nest. She stood for a moment next to her father, posing for the camera, a smile of artless pleasure. He had his arm around her back, bending down so their cheeks were brushing.

  She’d forgotten that look of his. That impish smile, that wink he gave Martha, their secret joy exposed.

  “Okay, then,” he said. “Come on, Martha. Your turn.”

  “No,” she mumbled, and the camera wobbled.

  “Come on, you shy goose. Let’s get one of you for a change.”

  He left his daughter’s side and walked directly toward her. Martha, filming him, protested all the while.

  “Come on, Mother,” Hannah called out. “It’s your turn.”

  And as Ed Keller reached out for the camera, his hand approaching the lens, the film went dark and there were the X’s and O’s and coarse gray light of badly spliced film.

  “That was your parents,” Frank said.

  “Yes. That was them.”

  “Those fuckers.”

  She looked at him.

  “Who’re you talking about?”

  “Whoever did this,” he said. “The sons of bitches.”

  When the film resumed, the color was more vivid, the focus precise.

  J. J. Fielding reclined in his hospital bed, staring into the lens. His shrunken face was gray beneath his outsized silver pompadour, all that hair balanced atop his head like some ill-fitting helmet

  “Is it on?” he said. “Yes? Okay, then.”

  The camera jiggled, then jerked to the right, giving a quick glimpse of the rest of the room. A television mounted high on the wall, the open door of a sterile bathroom, a visitor’s green leather chair, nothing more than a basic hospital room interchangeable with all other hospital rooms. Then the camera panned slowly back to Fielding and jiggled a few more times as if someone was locking it into place on its tripod stand.

  “We’re a little low-tech here,” Fielding said. “Good equipment, bad operators. But we’re doing the best we can on short notice.”

  He coughed and the rattle in his chest sounded papery and wet. He continued to hack for several minutes, a breathless seizure. Finally he grew still, settled himself beneath the sheets, smoothing them over his lap and thighs. E
yes down as if summoning his strength, taking a last run through his speech before he began.

  “Well then,” he said, lifting his head and peering into the camera.

  Hannah inched closer to the wall, studying Fielding and his room. As far as she could tell everything was identical to the Internet image. But something was bothering her, a small detail she couldn’t identify.

  As Fielding dissolved into yet another spasm of coughing, she saw it On the old man’s bedside table was the same stack of magazines she’d noticed before. Only now the copy of People was gone, replaced by a New Yorker, its cover showing what looked like a snowy skyline of Manhattan, and a silhouette of Santa steering his sleigh through the gauntlet of skyscrapers. An issue that had to be at least ten months old.

  Fielding wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “All right then,” he said. “So, what I wanted to do was to speak to you directly, my dear, tell you exactly why I fled. Although you probably believe you know the reasons for my disappearance, I hope you realize there is more to the story than what you read in die newspapers and what little the police shared with you. Please hear me out, my dear. Please be patient with me. There is so much you don’t know. So much I need to get off my chest.”

  In a sudden crackle of light Fielding’s image disappeared and the bedroom wall went white. Behind them the loose end of the film began to slap against the housing of the projector.

  As she stared into the bright square of light, Hannah’s eyes were blurry with swelling tears. She wiped them angrily.

  “Look,” Frank said and stepped past her. Pointing at the letters framed by the projected light. Hidden while the movie image ran, the careful printing in black Magic Marker was now fully visible.

  See page 276.

  Hannah nodded. She rubbed the last of the blur from her eyes, then walked over to the projector. She yanked the cord free from the wall, and lifted the bulky machine off the dresser. She raised it above her head, held it a moment, then hurled it down against the floor.

  Hannah stood in the dark and felt the sift of ocean breeze through the leaky walls, the warm air passing across her bare legs and arms. Beneath the floorboards she could hear the nervous dance of the bay.

  Frank touched her back, steering her gently toward the living room, then out to the deck. They came to a halt at the railing facing back toward the shore. The glimmer of houses and condos.

  “You’ve seen that piece of film before? You and your parents.”

  She stared out into the dark breeze.

  “I haven’t watched it since I was a kid. I thought it was in an old Army footlocker of my dad’s, along with a lot of other paraphernalia of his. Someone must have stolen it from my attic. God knows how or why.”

  “To motivate you, pump you up,” he said. “In case your spirits were flagging. To keep you on the chase, remind you why you care.”

  She turned her face and looked at him.

  “It was a shitty thing to do,” he said. “Unnecessary.”

  “This whole thing is shitty, Frank. Start to finish.”

  He was quiet for a moment, shifting beside her, then settling his weight against the rail.

  “It’s almost over,” he said. “Just a little more.”

  “You sure of that, are you?”

  “You saw him. The old guy’s about to die. Tomorrow night this time, he’ll be gone.”

  She studied his profile for several moments.

  “How do you know that, Frank? Tomorrow night this time?”

  “Trust me,” he said. “Twenty-four hours, it’ll be all over.”

  “It’s over for me right now. This is it, Frank. I’ve had it.”

  “You can’t quit. You’re so close.”

  “I’m giving up,” she said. “The old guy can die and rot in hell for all I care. This is too hard on Randall. It’s too hard on me. I’m quitting, Frank. As of this moment, I’m finished with this bullshit.”

  Hal was sitting in the front compartment of the kayak. He was floating directly below the stilt house listening to them talk. Listening to Hannah Keller resign. But she couldn’t resign. Hal had been chasing J. J. Fielding for five years and this was the closest he’d come. His employers were unhappy with him. And when those people grew unhappy, they sent others to replace the ones they were unhappy with. Men who disappointed them were not fired, they were executed. Hannah Keller couldn’t quit. Hal Bonner wouldn’t let her.

  Frank saw it first, a dull gleam about twenty yards out in the dark.

  “Jesus Christ!”

  Hannah followed his gaze and saw a shimmer of moonlight on the narrow hull of the kayak, a wide-shouldered man paddling off into the dark.

  Frank was at the top of the ladder, staring down.

  “Somebody’s stealing our goddamn boat?”

  Frank said yes, and in the next instant he was climbing over the rail.

  “What the hell’re you doing?”

  “I’m going to get it back.”

  He pitched forward into the dark and she heard the splash, then a few seconds later heard him rise to the surface.

  “You okay, Frank?”

  “Fine,” he shouted. “Just fine.”

  And she could hear his fleet flutter-kicking and saw him in a stray glimmer of moonlight taking long powerful strokes toward the kayak. In the next moment she was over the rail and perched on the edge of the deck. As a ragged flash of lightning tore through the western sky, Hannah picked a spot on the shimmering surface and dove.

  Resurfacing quickly, she swam, keeping her head above water, following the sound of Frank’s thrashing kick. It was thirty yards or so through the rising chop before she caught up with him.

  Treading water, she struggled for breath. Behind her a strobe of lightning pulsed through the sky and in that instant she saw Frank struggling with the wide-shouldered man who was hunched low in the kayak.

  Frank and the man were grappling for the paddle. Another flare of lightning lit the sky, followed instantly by a blast of thunder. The sky rumbled for half a minute while Hannah circled the kayak, looking for an opening, a chance to seize the attacker. But the two of them were whirling unpredictably. Frank snorted and heaved for breath as he ducked the savage swings of the paddle. The other man worked grimly in silence.

  Then it was over. A blow she didn’t see, some lung-emptying whack. Frank was suddenly floating facedown in the water. The man made a threatening wave of the paddle in Hannah’s direction, then plowed away into the dark.

  She stroked to Sheffield’s side, pulled his head up, turned him onto his back, and got her right arm around his chest and side-stroked a few feet to the bottom of the stilt house. Behind her the man in the T-shirt paddled steadily into the darkness. A double slash of lightning framed him for a halfsecond and she saw his broad back, narrow waist, the blunt shape of his head.

  Hannah could haul Sheffield back to the ladder, but she knew that was no good. The bottom rung was within reach, but there was no way she could haul the two of them up. Even if the rotten wood could hold their weight, she simply didn’t have the strength to muscle him all the way to the deck.

  Frank coughed. He puked up a half-cup of seawater, then went slack again in her arm. He was breathing, but he was clearly far too weak to make it to shore on his own.

  “Frank?’

  He mumbled something, eyes shut. He made a strangled, whistling sound as he drew breath.

  She looked back at shore, the dim twinkle of lights.

  Pushing off from the nearest piling, she tightened her right arm across his wide chest, took a grip on the slab of pectoral muscles near his armpit. His butt jounced lightly against her right hip, his legs trailing. She scissor-kicked and made a short stroke with her left hand. High school Red Cross water-safety training. They moved through the water, two feet for every stroke. Two feet and two more.

  Frank coughed and hacked up more watery phlegm.

  She spoke his name again but he remained limp in her arms
. The air temperature dropped a sudden five degrees and as the storm swept in off the sea, the water was churned to froth around them. She kept her head above the chop and stroked another two feet, then another.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Misty was packing her green Samsonite. She was trying to hurry, but trying to do a thorough job too. Leaving this place where she’d lived for five years, she didn’t want to forget anything she’d be sorry about later.

  She had all eight derringers and her extra ammunition tucked in among the blouses and jeans and T-shirts and panties. She’d taken down all the Barbies, laid them out on the bed side by side, but then decided no, she didn’t want them anymore. They belonged to some other girl. Some sappy young thing who’d thought that expressing herself artistically was a way to be admired and respected, maybe even loved. But it hadn’t worked that way. People just looked at the Barbies and shook their heads.

  Misty took down all her cosmetics and put them in a Ziploc bag. She chose a handful of cassette tapes, Hole, Kurt Cobain, a couple of Megadeth. She was moving quickly but not in a frenzy. A cold, shivery speed to her actions. She didn’t know how long she had before Hal came back again.

  The icy shudder in her belly was spreading through her limbs. There was a clammy smell of blood tainting the air and the tackiness on her fingertips wouldn’t wash off. But it wasn’t the blood that worried her. It wasn’t the fact that this man was a killer. What frightened her was that she kept hearing his strange, awkward voice, seeing his intense eyes, his full lips. What frightened her was that she wanted to stay and wait for him to arrive, see what was below his surface, what the two of them would be like together. She knew it was crazy. Knew it was death. She had to run. She had to get away.

  She made another pass through her closet, found an old Dolphins sweatshirt she’d always liked, and laid that on top of all her blouses and jeans. She snapped the case shut and carried it to the door. She should probably take apart her computer and put it in the trunk of her car. But when Misty tried to picture her future somewhere out in America, she didn’t see a computer anywhere. What she saw was a cheap motel room and a diner where she fried hamburgers and popped the caps off Budweisers. What she saw was the desert of west Texas, tumbleweeds rolling down the streets and lanky cowboys wandering in to buy a Bud and stare at her tits. What she saw was doom.