Death Island

by Joan Conning Afman

“You are a hell of a lot of trouble.” He grinned at Danny.

  Danny grinned back. “You didn’t have to save me. Knowing you, I wouldn’t have expected you to take the trouble.”

  “Yeah, it would have been a lot easier just to leave you there, spread-eagled across those rocks like a pig on a spit. The vultures were already circling.”

  Danny shuddered. “Really, Man, I don’t know how—”

  Martin interrupted with a shrug, and a terse, “No thanks needed.”

  “Those other guys who helped carry me here, who were they?”

  “Clay and Drew Painter. They’re the new “drops,” holed up in the first-stop cave. They’re not real bright, but no danger to anyone, I think.”

  “Are they still here?”

  “Nope. They looked around, said it sure wasn’t for them, and left. I tried to warn them about Javonne and the cameras, and the Tribe, but they said Thanks, but no thanks.”

  “They were sort of funny,” put in Evan, who had started to sweep the floor with a twig broom. “They kept exchanging glances and shuffling around like they were embarrassed to even be here.”

  Martin rocked back and forth, laughing.

  Evan continued. “We told them they were welcome to stay here, and we’d even help build them a house.” He chuckled. “Clay said they had hidden out for three years in the Florida Everglades, and he thought they’d be more at home outside on the loose than in the Village. They couldn’t get out of here fast enough.” He looked at Martin and grinned. “Of course, it didn’t help that Martin kept pretending to come on to Drew. The poor man was terrified.”

  “Aaah, I thought he was cute,” Martin joked.

  Amid the general laughter, Evan assumed a professional tone. “Let me take a look at that head wound.” With practiced hands, he loosened the bandage.

  “Jeez!” Danny gasped, stiffening. “That hurts!”

  “Sorry.” Evan peered at the wound. “Well, you’ll have a scar that I’m not qualified to fix, but not to worry. Women generally find a man with a scar intriguing. My wife always said she wanted to know how the guy got the scar. She even made up heroic stories about them.”

  “Not that you’re ever likely to see a woman again,” observed Martin.

  “Yeah, well, that’s probably true,” agreed Evan. He replaced the bandage. “A few more weeks of bed rest and we can get you up. I don’t think there’s any permanent damage. You might be lame, though, like me, or have problems with heavy lifting.”

  “I’ll be glad to walk at all,” Danny responded.

  “They shoot horses that go lame,” Martin observed helpfully.

  “Sometimes you say exactly the wrong thing,” Jake snapped. “Just shut up, will ya?”

  Martin stood up and shrugged. “Seems like I’ve worn out my welcome in record time.” He walked across the room and lowered himself into one of the chairs around the coffee table. Jake came in from outside with two cups of something steaming, offered one to Martin, and sat down in one of the other chairs. They leaned toward each other and began to converse in low tones. Danny strained to hear but couldn’t understand what they said.

  “Martin runs off at the mouth a lot,” Evan said, as he checked Danny’s bandages, pressing here and there with his careful hands. His voice was low and controlled and seemed to Danny to contain a note of warning. “Oh, but you know that, since you’ve been hanging out with him since you got here. Actually, he’s been good to you. He likes you in his own unpredictable way—but you know by now never to trust him farther than you can throw him, as they say. In one of his snits he’d just as soon burn this place down around us all as have a friendly drink with Jake over there.”

  “That’s—that’s a psychopath,” Danny managed.

  “Oh yeah,” Evan agreed. “Martin’s our own home-grown psychopath, that’s for sure.”

  Danny struggled to line up his thoughts in some sort of logical order, but the effort all seemed like too much work.

  “You’re tired,” Evan said. He removed the pillows and helped lower Danny into a flat position. “I’ll give you something for the pain, and to help you sleep.” He went off, bare feet padding across the wooden floor.

  Evan’s sleep potion tasted bitter and smelled vile, something like skunk scent. Danny choked it down.

  “What the hell is in that stuff?”

  Evan laughed. “Trust me, you don’t want to know.”

  As he drifted off, he was visited once again by the faces of Katie and Charlie, who floated up out of the fog of his disturbed memories to haunt him.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Charlie sat frozen in horror as she watched Danny’s glider crash onto the rocks. She was too shocked even to cry, until the camera mercifully moved away from the body smashed on the black rocks, the glider in splinters sliding piecemeal into the ocean, the big black birds circling and circling, ever lower over Danny’s body.

  Pierre LeGrande, with a stunned expression on his face, appeared on the screen. He had dropped his crystal glass, either by accident, or in a calculated gesture of shock, and the wine, a blood-red Merlot, pooled on his chair-side table and dripped over the edge onto the beige carpet.

  The symbolism, intentional or not, was unmistakable.

  Charlie clapped her hands over her eyes and began to weep. Her hands were wet with her tears as she strained to see the TV through them. Then, in anger and despair, she snatched up the remote. She stopped short of pressing the off button when Pierre began to speak.

  The phone rang insistently. She ignored it and heard dimly, as through a wall, Paul’s firm voice give the greeting and instructions for leaving a message.

  Pierre, for once, seemed short of words. He struggled to compose his features, working his face like cookie dough, until the superior, all-knowing expression was in place. He cleared his throat. “Well,” he began, “Danny Manning’s bid for freedom seems to have failed.” He paused and collected himself, becoming once more the unflappable commentator. “Failed miserably, I might add, and we should have expected this result. No one has ever escaped from Death Island, and it has been Death Island, literally, for many men. Danny Manning is just one more casualty.”

  Charlie let the remote do its job, and the screen went dark. Anger possessed her—a fury she didn’t know lived inside her. She jumped up. “No!” she screamed.

  “No! No! No!” The tears still came, fast and hard.

  The phone rang again, and again she ignored it, as Paul’s voice repeated its message.

  “Mommy?”

  Charlie looked up. The little girl, looking like a duckling with her soft blond hair and clad in her fleecy yellow sleeper, stood at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Why don’t you answer the phone?” Courtney asked. “Do you want me to answer it for you? Why are you crying? Where’s Daddy?”

  At the sight of Courtney, Charlie forced herself to calm down. She crossed the floor, knelt, and put her arms around her daughter. “I’m sorry, Court,” she said. “Mommy’s had some very bad news, and it’s made her very sad. I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

  “Are you going to answer the phone?” Courtney asked, as the phone rang again.

  “I don’t want to talk to anyone right now,” Charlie said. “Come on, Sweetie, let’s go back upstairs.”

  She took Courtney’s hand as Paul on the answering machine began again. How many times had it rung?

  “Where’s Daddy?” Courtney persisted.

  “Working late,” Charlie replied. “You know he has meetings at church at night.” How awful to have to mislead your own child, Charlie thought bitterly, when what you wanted to scream was, “Oh, probably sleeping with Heather, or maybe Sarah, or maybe taking turns sleeping with every woman in the church, including Norma Harris, who’s at least sixty five!’

  “People need him to help them,” Courtney murmured, and seemed content to let Charlie lift her into bed and tuck the covers securely around her. She watched while her daughter’s breathing slowed and s
he drifted back to sleep. She went back down the stairs and headed toward the kitchen.

  “There must be some of that Australian merlot left over from our last dinner party,” she muttered, and sliding open the door to the tiny pantry alcove, she spied the bottle, half full. She poured herself half a glass, not bothering with the antique wine goblets inherited from Grandmother Charlotte, for whom she was named, but grabbing the nearest water glass from the counter.

  She heard the television sputter back to life in the den. Paul must be home. Charlie took a great gulp of wine, and walked listlessly toward the den. She noted that Paul had flung his blue cashmere scarf, the one she had bought him last Christmas, carelessly over the arm of the sofa.

  “Danny’s dead,” she said in a toneless voice, as she went into the den. She sank down on one of the leather loveseats opposite her husband, and took another gulp of wine. She stared down into its rich red depths and swirled the glass slightly. She wondered if there was enough wine left in the bottle to get her buzzed enough to soften the pain she felt.

  “No, he’s not,” Paul said. “Look.” He leaned forward and peered at her closely. “You’ve been crying!”

  The wine forgotten, she set it on an end table and stared in disbelief at the screen. “Is that Danny? He lived through that?” She watched, amazed, as four ragged men hauled the clumsy litter through the forest.

  Paul got up and sat next to Charlie on the other loveseat. He put his arm around her. “Charlie,” he said with some concern, “does he mean that much to you?”

  She nodded, as fresh tears of relief rolled down her cheeks.

  “I don’t get it,” Paul said. “We hardly knew him.”

  Charlie turned her head to look at him. “He was a human being, Paul, a person we did know and like. How can you be so— so cavalier about it?”

  He withdrew his arm. He met her eyes with a steady gaze from his own. Blue, like the scarf she had bought to match. She always noticed, because they were such an unlikely shade of blue with an almost violet undertone, which darkened with his mood. His eyes were dark now.

  “He is a murderer, Charlie,” he said, his voice cold. “Not once, but five times over, including his own wife! If anyone deserves to die, he does.”

  “Don’t you remember?” she asked insistently. “I was with him that afternoon, Paul. It was a Sunday, and the Youth Group was scheduled to see a movie at church. He called here about two in the afternoon, said Katie wasn’t feeling well and he was going to cancel the Youth Group. I said I’d fill in for her—I made cookies and he brought soda, and we made the popcorn right there—”

  Paul regarded her intently. “That was the same day they found Katie dead?”

  “He went home and found her. But someone had already called the police—they never found out who—and when they got there, Danny was standing over her body holding his axe.”

  “So, he went home and killed her,” Paul said. “Maybe she wasn’t sick at all. Maybe she said she was and had some guy over.”

  “Trust a man to think of that! No, Paul, I was with him, and we were joking and fooling around with the kids, and there’s just no way he went home and killed his wife.”

  “You don’t know that, Charlie. People snap.”

  “Well, he didn’t! I know he didn’t kill those women, and he sure as hell didn’t kill Katie.” She shifted her eyes from his astonished expression to the television, just as the figure of Pierre LeGrande again filled the screen.

  He had regained his air of self-importance. “Well, that is a dramatic change of events!” He settled more comfortably into his chair. “It seems Danny has been rescued, and I might well guess, being taken to the Village.” He pursed his lips.

  “He reminds me of Alfred Hitchcock,” Paul said dryly.

  Charlie didn’t answer, as LeGrande continued. “Now, as you know, viewers, there are no cameras inside the buildings at the Village, so all we’ll be able to do is pinpoint whose house they’ll take him to and monitor the comings and goings of the men in the Village. In the meantime—which might be a long time—we’ll check in on some of the other inhabitants of Death Island. After this brief message, we’ll meander over and see what’s going on with the Tribe, at the other end of the Island.”

  Charlie felt Paul’s eyes on her. “So, Miss Agatha Christie, you truly believe that man is not a murderer?” he asked. His tone was cool and held an undercurrent of amusement.

  “I just know he isn’t,” she insisted. “And, furthermore, Paul, there was another murder—with an axe—just like the others down at the shore a few weeks ago, remember? Just before you went to West Palm for the Convention.”

  He looked away. “Copycat crime,” he said. “It happens all the time.” He no longer sounded amused.

  She shrugged. “Maybe so, Paul, but it could also mean that Danny was framed, and the real murderer is still out there!”

  “Doubtful. Look, Charlie, I don’t like your obsession with this man.” He started to rise, but she tugged at his arm, pulling him down beside her again.

  “Paul, I want you to help me free him!” she pleaded.

  “What could I do, even if I were so inclined, which I’m most definitely not?” Paul asked.

  Charlie knew it was a rhetorical question, but she plunged in anyway. “You have a pulpit; you have connections! You can reach a lot of people. Help me set up a committee to publicize his innocence and get people to vote him off the Island. Please!”

  His cold look, the blue eyes darkening almost to black, surprised and chilled her. He stood up, shaking off her hand.

  “Certainly not!”

  “But, Paul, surely if there’s even a tiny chance that he’s innocent…”

  “I will not use my pulpit or my position to …” he waved a hand at the television screen, “influence some silly reality show! I would be the laughing stock of the town, if not the nation. Bill O’Reilly would probably talk about me on his program and tear me to shreds in front of the whole country.” He stood up and walked toward the door. “I want you to drop this, Charlie. It’s unbecoming for a minister’s wife to be making such a fool of herself. The man got what he deserved.”

  She sat, stunned, listening to his firm footsteps climb the stairs.

  Pierre LeGrande resurfaced. Charlie could hardly focus on what he was saying. She simply could not believe that Paul, ever-sensitive, always-helpful—who bolstered his own self-esteem and feelings of self-worth by solving problems for others—would turn her down cold. His own wife! She considered. There had been tension between them lately, and maybe his refusal to help her was just one more indication of the growing distance in their marriage.

  The screen floated over a maze of green jungle, and Charlie refocused her eyes. It all seemed irrelevant anyway, and maybe Paul was right. Maybe it was a silly reality show, a ‘bread and circuses’ kind of thing that intelligent people shouldn’t even bother watching. She reached for the remote, but as the camera swooped lower, she paused.

  Fascinated in spite of herself, she watched as the camera wandered among the members of the Tribe. Men who looked as though they had been born on the island, had never known civilization or had a bath or a shave, lolled against trees or sat around on rocks, shouting and laughing as if they were at the corner bar.

  Charlie’s mouth fell open, and she ran her hands through her hair on both sides of her face in disbelief. These men had painted themselves shocking colors—bright blue, red, green, yellow. What did they make the paint from? Their hair, both on their heads and on their faces was twisted, braided or curled into fantastic configurations and adorned with bones, twigs, and feathers, among other things she could not determine. Some of the men were naked. A few wore loincloths of animal skins, and some sported garments made of woven grasses or feathers.

  There was a bonfire in the middle of the gathering, and while some of the men were eating or drinking, others were dancing around the fire in a primitive, warlike manner. There were drummers, too, beating skins str
etched over wooden frames with hefty sticks.

  “My God!” breathed Charlie.

  “Thirty, thirty-five wild men, at least,” LeGrande said from the background. “Wonder what they’re up to?”

  As in answer, one of the men, his skin mottled blood red and black, his dark hair braided with bones, picked up a torch and stuck it into the fire. It blazed alight. In his other hand he held a primitive but sharp-looking spear. “To the Village!” He shouted.

  “To the Village!” came a chorus of yells. The men, in a colorful circus of movement and sound, lighted their torches in the fire. The picture faded and gave way to LeGrande’s portly figure.

  He was smiling, which Charlie found more offensive than his usual haughty attitude. “Well, viewers, this was an exciting evening. Danny Manning, optimistic fool that he was, crashed his glider on the rocks, was rescued by Martin and Jake, and is even now being carried off to the Village.

  “However,” he paused and held up a manicured finger, “you must remember that due to the college basketball games that this station in all its wisdom ran instead of our program, there was a time differential in the scenes we have shown you tonight.” He glanced at his watch, as if to make the point clear. “Danny crashed several weeks ago. The scene we just showed you, of the Tribe, is happening now.”

  Charlie bit her lip. What did that mean for Danny?

  “What does that mean for Danny and the Villagers?” LeGrande echoed. We have come to the end of our show for tonight, but you won’t want to miss next week!”

  Charlie snapped off the television and went back to the kitchen to refill her glass. Retracing her steps to the den, she noticed Paul’s scarf again and picked it up, intending to hang it in the hall closet. She caressed the softness of it, and admired the lush blue color all over again. As she folded it over a hangar, she noticed a dark smudge. What was that? She rubbed her finger over it. Lipstick—could it be? A tinge of red came off on her skin. She stared at the offending spot for a moment, then walked thoughtfully back to the den. This was definitely a two-drink night, maybe more, she reflected, sinking back into the comforting blue leather.