Ten Thousand Islands

by Randy Wayne White

  I wanted the boom. Hopefully enough to shatter the windows on a fast-moving yacht. Maybe even a little fire. And it had to be an impact explosive because I didn’t want to have to mess with lighting a wick in the wind, on a moving boat.

  To the woman, I said, “Go to the house and bring me a bottle of iodine and a box of baking soda. Hurry! And a bucket of ice. Don’t forget the ice.” I’d already placed three Mason jars by the bag of fertilizer on a bench next to the acid.

  “Have you cut yourself? I’ll bring a first-aid kit.”

  I touched my ear. I was still bleeding a little, but that’s not why I needed the iodine. I said, “A first-aid kit might come in handy, too.”

  I flew through a blur of mangrove switchbacks; twisting hedges of green that created ponds and creeks, one linked to another through a hundred miles of wilderness. The words of the old woman kept echoing in my head: He likes to use his women before he eats their souls.

  In his note, Dieter Rasmussen had warned of human anomalies. Bad genes, flawed brains. Remorseless liars, strengthened by their own pathology, who were destined for success.

  Teddy Bauerstock would do very well in Tallahassee. Tomlinson had said it and believed it—all his instincts, his intuition demonstrably wrong. So had Della, one of the women Bauerstock had killed. So had everyone else the man had ever met, probably.

  But he had not fooled me.

  I found strange comfort in that. Inexplicably, that small triumph brought the face of Dorothy Copeland once again to memory. A lovely face with a mild, wistful smile, silken hair hanging down.

  Then she was gone, a momentary nexus left in my wake.

  The Hinckley had about a half-hour headstart on me. I had to catch them before they got near civilization. I had to get their yacht stopped in a place where no one could see what I was going to do. My boat was more than twice as fast, true, but, once I got into the Gulf, the growing waves would neutralize that advantage.

  So I would stay in the backcountry just as long as I could. I’d gain a lot of time on them because Ted or Ivan—whoever was running the boat—had almost certainly taken the much longer route, out the channel past Panther Key, into open water. No one is going to run a half-million dollar vessel through the unmarked backcountry of the Ten Thousand Islands, even if it doesn’t draw much water. The region is too remote; has too many reefs of oyster and rock. Make the wrong turn, run aground hard enough, and you could be stranded for days before another vessel happened by. Even with a cell phone or a VHP radio, help is hours away.

  No, Bauerstock wouldn’t risk that. Particularly with a hurricane bearing down. That’s what I told myself, anyway.

  As I drove, I turned the VHF radio volume full on and switched to Weather Channel 3. Heard that Hurricane Charles had already slipped through the Yucatan Channel, and was being levered toward the Florida coast by an Arctic high-pressure ridge. The ridge was steering the storm like rails beneath a freight train. Predicted landfall was somewhere between Naples and Marco.

  The computerized voice told me, “… two hundred and ten miles off Marco Island, the air temperature is seventy-six degrees, water temperature eighty-two degrees, wave heights unavailable. National Hurricane Center at Miami places the eye of Hurricane Charles … slightly north of the Tropic of Cancer, moving northeasterly at fifteen knots … expected to make landfall at approximately noon tomorrow. Voluntary evacuation is urged for residents of all barrier islands, Siesta Key to Marco Island, Goodland and neighboring areas. A mandatory evacuation notice may be issued for Marco Island, Everglades City and Chokoloskee. Winds have been measured at one-hundred-thirty knots and gusting stronger, barometric pressure at 27.50 and falling. Charles may be upgraded to a Category Five hurricane in the next advisory….”

  I punched off the radio, feeling an irrational anger toward whoever the fool was who decided to replace a human weatherman with a digitized voice. The phonation was so badly coded that it sounded like a drunken polka king who’d been filching tranquilizers.

  No, it had been a group decision, more likely. Individuals are rarely so misguided. Because the voice was difficult to understand, I hadn’t been able to decipher the exact location of Charles, nor how many miles the storm still had to cover before it reached the coast. Computer profiteers like Ivan Bauerstock would’ve applauded the transition to something that was programmable. Maybe that’s why it made me so mad….

  I swung in close to Dismal Key: a ridge of black trees rimmed with swamp. Said a silent greeting to the old hermit who once lived in a shack on the high Indian mounds there, Al Seeley.

  Al lived without phone, power or running water, just him and his little dog. He painted, he read books. He had a sharp intellect and an appreciation for the ironic. He loved to tell the story of a hermit colleague who came to Dismal Key determined to build a bomb shelter. He spent hours in the heat and mosquitoes digging through shell until he said, screw it, let global warfare do its worst. He was tired and in need of a beer.

  Heading out to sea only hours in advance of a Category Five hurricane, Al would have found that ironic, too. There was no place safer than the high mounds of his island.

  I busted out of the mangrove gloom at Turtle Key and went pounding through whitecaps, steering toward a sunset horizon that was a firestorm of smoldering clouds and tangerine sky. Big, big seas and lots of wind. I banged my way toward Coon Key Light: an offshore tower built of metal and wood that marked the back entrance to Marco and then Naples.

  In these seas, Ted or Ivan would have to take the back way to Naples. No way they’d run outside the islands and risk the surf at Big Marco Pass. They would see the light tower on the radar screen, and they would steer for it. Or maybe the marker was already programmed into their Loran and autopilot system. Either way, the thing was nearly twenty-five feet high and impossible to miss. If I kept my skiff close enough to the tower, that’s all their radar would pick up.

  My boat would be invisible until I decided it was time for them to see….

  I began to think I’d missed them. Or that they’d taken the more dangerous, outside route. I sat in my skiff, the engine idling, rolling in the heavy seas. I could feel each wave gather mass beneath the boat. Could feel it lift and thrust me skyward before I slid back into a green trough. From the top of each wave, I could see around the horizon. What I saw was not reassuring. I was the only boat for miles. No Hinckley. No Namesake.

  Where the hell were they? Could I have gotten that far ahead of them? Or maybe they’d already passed Coon Key Light and were on the Intracoastal to Naples.

  Or maybe, just maybe, they’d stopped back there in the Ten Thousand Islands to dump two bodies….

  I had no choice. My best chance of intercepting them was to sit right where I was.

  I watched a sunset that had no sun. The world became lemon-bright, as if seen through yellow glasses. A horizon of copper clouds sailed northward and then curled west. The clouds moved in horizontal bands, one above the other, striations of blue sky showing through. I was seeing the front rim of a hurricane, spinning in slow motion over the earth’s curvature. Fog drifted down out of that copper rim, moving toward me as a wave, and then I realized it wasn’t fog, it was a misting rain. The rain swept across the water in panels of silver, soaking me, dripping off the poling platform of my skiff.

  The lemon world became purple … then charcoal … then gray, as I waited.

  Behind me, the solar switch was activated and Coon Key Light began to strobe every four seconds. Wind blew the light across the water in streamers of green, along with the stink of bird guano.

  I’d missed them. Unless they’d run aground, or they’d had engine failure, there was no way it should have taken them so long to get to Marco.

  So what was Plan B?

  Plan B, I decided, was to get to Naples Yacht Club as fast as possible, and maybe catch them there. Get the law involved somehow, make them search the boat.

  I’d been holding my skiff bow into the sea. But now I nudged it
into gear and began to turn. I waited until I was atop a wave to complete the turn—which is when I noticed the shell of a dark hull wallowing on the horizon, not more than a mile away.

  It was the Hinckley.

  26

  Detective Gary Parrish was not a bluewater sailor. Judging from what I saw, he wasn’t much of a sailor at all. As I made my first pass, I could see him on his knees, hanging his head over the transom and vomiting. He’d made quite a mess on the big golden letters: Namesake.

  I approached the Hinckley from head-on. If someone is chasing you, they approach from behind, right? I ran at an angle as if I was going to pass them port to port, just as cars traveling opposite directions pass. In this failing light and at a distance, they wouldn’t recognize me. There was no color or detail. They would probably just think me some crazed flats fisherman trying to get his skiff back to Everglades City before the big storm hit.

  Something else to my advantage: in heavy weather, men standing huddled in a cabin acquire tunnel vision. They don’t look out the side windows, they seldom look behind. They stare hypnotically through the slapping windshield wipers and see little else but the glow of their own red and green running lights.

  Namesake already had her lights on, obeying the laws, not wanting to attract any attention. The white anchor light was mounted on the antenna stem atop the cabin, which is why I could see Parrish and the mess he was making so clearly.

  I was running without lights. Which is why it was unlikely they would notice me.

  But Parrish hanging over the stern was an unexpected component. If I swept in close and lobbed one of my Mason jars at Namesake, he would see me. He’d hear and feel the small explosion and see me very clearly for several seconds, at least, as I blasted past. Plenty of time for him to draw his weapon and empty a clip at me.

  The chances of a nauseous man hitting a moving target with a 9mm in heaving seas were not good. Still, all it would take was one lucky round.

  If possible, I wanted to eliminate Parrish before I attacked. I needed to do it quietly, without attracting the attention of Ivan Bauerstock, whose silhouette I could see in the computer glow of electronics. He was sitting in the yacht’s helm seat, head pushed forward as if straining to see through the rain.

  Where were Ted and Nora?

  No sign of them.

  If they were aboard, they had to be together in the cabin below deck. It was an unsettling possibility—no, probability—that sickened me. It also underlined the need to hurry.

  I passed the Hinckley a couple hundred yards to sea-ward, then swung in behind them. Jumped the wake and turned into their Jetstream contrail, throttling, closing the distance between us.

  Had Parrish noticed?

  No. He was still retching. He appeared oblivious to everything around him. I could see the top of his head and shoulders clearly, heaving up and down. He was such an easy, unguarded target that I was tempted to ram Namesake from behind. Any small impact would have flipped him off the back of the boat. That’s exactly what I would do if my first attempt to snag him didn’t work.

  As I bore down on them, I took the heavy Loomis bait-casting rod from the standup holder. It was still rigged with the Bomber lure that Tomlinson had been using. I tested the reel’s star drag; tightened it. Tested it a second time and tightened it even more.

  Shifted the rod to my right hand, which rested atop the throttle. I was closing distance at twice their speed, planning in fast. I expected Parrish to lift his head at any moment and see me, but he didn’t. I was forty yards behind them, then twenty, then ten. When the bow of my skiff seemed almost on top the teak dive platform off Namesake’s stern, I pulled the throttle back, and matched her speed, wallowing in her exhaust stream. I pressed my hips to the wheel, holding course, as I cast the plug toward Parrish. The first cast was long and banged on the deck behind him. I yanked the plug back, reeling furiously.

  Parrish looked up, alerted by the sound, or maybe the breeze that the lure created as it flew past his head.

  Then he saw me. In the stormy dusk, with the aid of the anchor light, I could see the man’s expression change. It went through abrupt transitions: puzzlement … awareness … shock … horror. He looked at me, then recognized me. Gary Parrish did not want to believe what he was seeing.

  I had the lure back and I cast again, thumbing the line so that it wouldn’t backlash.

  I saw his grimace of surprise when the lure hit him just below and to the side of his neck. I saw his face contort with pain as I struck hard, arching my back, burying the gang hooks into his cheek and throat. Parrish’s right hand flew up to pull the plug away, but he only managed to bury the hooks in his palm, disabling himself.

  With my left hand, I turned the wheel sharply as the rod bowed the spool and level-wind feeding line now, monofilament burning the skin of my thumb as I jumped the big boat’s wake once again, surfing away at an angle, still feeling torque and the big man’s weight in the butt of the rod. I glanced astern and I saw, for a grotesque microsecond, Parrish’s face being dragged through rollers behind me, his eyes wide, his mouth thrown open in a soundless scream as he fought to free himself.

  I turned my eyes away, still holding the rod. I held fast, not looking back until the line broke; nearly lost my balance when it did. Then I reeled in the excess line and stowed the rod in its holder.

  My attention turned once again to Namesake as my skiff lunged ahead into the waves.

  Ivan Bauerstock hadn’t noticed that Parrish was missing. More likely, he’d noticed but just didn’t care. He’d probably figured the man had fallen overboard. They would have to kill him one day anyway, and what could be easier to explain than an actual accident at sea?

  I could see Bauerstock still sitting at the helm seat as I swept in for a second pass. He wasn’t looking in my direction. Didn’t yet know I was in pursuit, judging by the way he behaved.

  I’d stopped just long enough to take all three Mason jars from the cooler and wedge them between my ankles. I’d dealt with enough explosives to be reasonably confident at least one of the jars would detonate if it impacted hard enough against the hull of Namesake. I’d also dealt with explosives enough to know not to ever, ever trust them. Particularly concoctions made with anything less than laboratory-grade chemicals.

  This time, I approached from the mainland, coming fast out of the darkness as if to ram them on the starboard side. At the last instant, I throttled back, turning hard toward Namesake’s stern. I waited a moment to get my balance, then I threw the Mason jars one after another, holding them like footballs, giving them all the velocity I could.

  There was so much adrenaline in me that the first jar spiraled over the bow; missed everything. The second hit the cabin trunk just aft the side windshield, but didn’t detonate. The third jar hit the cabin right outside where Bauerstock was sitting and it did detonate, but with such an impotent little whoof that I was surprised Bauerstock heard it.

  He did, though. I saw him jump. He also saw the blue alcohol and ammonia flames riding soap bubbles harmlessly along the side deck; harmless because the fire burned at a temperature much too low to ignite wet fiberglass.

  Bauerstock didn’t know that, though, and I watched as he slowed the big Hinckley to a crawl and came out onto the deck carrying two fire extinguishers.

  I didn’t hesitate. I already had my anchor ready, cleated to a few yards of line—the most primitive of boarding hooks. Now I swung in behind the yacht; put my bow against his stern as if attempting to push him out of the way. Touched a toggle switch, turning on my navigational lights, then tossed my anchor over his transom. Removed the ignition cord from my belt and left my engine idling as I crabbed forward onto my skiff’s casting deck, fighting for balance. I timed a lifting wave and swung over onto Namesake, then stood to see a very surprised Ivan Bauerstock staring at me. I heard his frightened voice say, “My God, it’s … it’s you. I thought Parrish killed you!”

  I stood there using the gunwale for balance bef
ore I answered. I said, “That’ll be the day.” Then I began to move toward him. There was so much wind and wash of heavy seas that I had to yell to be heard. “Where are they? Where’s Nora?”

  Bauerstock was backing away. “Listen to me, Ford. You can’t blame me for my son’s behavior. I have nothing to do with his private life.”

  “Where are they? Where’s Nora!”

  “Teddy’s going to be a very important man. If you can overlook the last few weeks, we can help you tremendously down the road. Whatever you want!”

  Bauerstock had backed into the white helm seat. He was still holding one of the spent fire extinguishers. When I reached for him, he swung the metal canister hard at my head. I caught his arm, locked my fingers under his chin until the fire extinguisher clanked upon the deck. Then I pulled his face close to mine. In a voice hoarse with anger, I whispered, “I don’t blame you, Ivan. I just don’t like you.”

  He tried to fight as I swung around behind him, and began to push him toward the water. He was yelling, “I can pay you, I can pay you! Don’t do this to me, please.”

  I got my right hand on his belt, my left hand in his hair, then I ran him toward the transom. He gave a terrible soprano yelp as I lifted him airborne and vaulted him overboard.

  Ivan Bauerstock was still screaming at me as we idled away, his words indistinguishable in the wind.

  The door through the aft bulkhead was locked from the inside.

  Someone was down there, hiding in the cabin.

  I lifted myself between the companionway entrance and used both feet to kick the door open. It took awhile. The boat was solidly built. Finally, the door shattered, brass hardware flying.

  There would be no surprising Ted now. He’d be waiting.

  I squatted and looked down the steps into a beautifully appointed cabin. I got a whiff of something as I did: a metallic, human odor that I couldn’t identify. The room was dimly lighted; had a candle softness. Music was playing through the built-in sound system. Willie Nelson. The place might have been set for a romantic dinner but for the storm outside.