Death Island

by Joan Conning Afman

  “Did you tell him that?” Evan asked.

  “No,” Danny grunted. “It seemed presumptuous, you know. He’s not young enough to actually be my son.”

  “I think it might have been a comfort to him,” Jake said. “His mother was only sixteen when she had him, out of wedlock, and there was never a father involved. He just might appreciate having that kind of relationship.”

  He was spiraling into darkness again. He waved them off. They faded into gray shapes, almost like ghosts standing over him.

  “How many lives does this guy have?” he heard Jake ask.

  “He’s using them up pretty fast,” Evan replied. “But he never gives up, does he?”

  “Don’t give up, Danny,” Charlie said, her blue eyes boring into his. She was as real as if she’d been standing with the rest of them.

  * * * *

  When he woke again, he was hungry enough to eat a bear, no pun intended, and if bear was what was in the meaty stew they had left on the bedside table, so be it. He could smell the herbal salve Evan had smeared all over his body. Cautiously moving his arms and legs, he found that most of the pain had vanished. His muscles were sore, but not burning with pain. Maybe I’m getting used to it, he thought wryly.

  He set the empty bowl on a small table next to the bed. He hunched his shoulders, flexed his arms. Everything seemed to be working okay. He worked his legs to the side of the cot, then slid his feet to the floor. So far, so good.

  The door creaked open and Martin came in.

  “Hey!” he said. “Do you think you could find a different hobby than trying to kill yourself? It’s getting old, saving Danny.”

  Danny grunted. “Yeah, I bet. How do you think I feel about it?” He remembered that Martin had gone in search of Talon. He stood up, leaning against the wall for support. “Did you find him?”

  “Good news and bad news,” Martin said, dropping into a chair. He glanced up as Jake and Evan entered the cabin from the rear door. Danny tried to walk and found out he could do it, slowly, carefully. He sat down next to Martin, and they were joined by the other two around the coffee table.

  “The good news is that Talon’s alive,” Martin said.

  “Thank God,” Danny said, with relief so great he could hardly catch his breath. “Is he okay? Did that monster hurt him?”

  “He’s about eighty percent okay,” Martin replied. “But he may not be for long.

  The Tribe has him, and they’re treating him like an amusement.”

  Danny buried his head in his hands. “Oh God. Oh God.”

  Evan laid a hand on his shoulder. “Steady, Guy. That’s not good news, but—what about Javonne, Martin?”

  “Dead,” Martin pronounced.

  “We need to drink to that,” Jake said, and got up to fetch mugs and beer.

  “How did he die?” Evan asked. “Though I don’t really care. I’m just glad he’s out of the way.”

  “The Tribe went after him when he was running off with Talon. There were too many of them for him to resist them. While he was trying to fend them off, they got Talon away from him. Then they finished him off.”

  Jake set the ceramic mugs down on the table, and filled them with cold beer from the pitcher. Martin selected one and held it up. “Here’s to the end of one very bad dude.”

  “Evil to the core,” Jake said.

  “Brain-dead,” Evan added. “He didn’t know what he was doing, but he did so much damage, and there was no hope of redemption. We’re all better off with him gone.”

  Their toast was somber, but without regrets. How odd it was to be sitting here with three convicted felons toasting the death of an unfortunate, oblivious monster and feeling comradely about it. Life was certainly strange.

  Evan poured everyone another round. He lifted his cup, his face strained with sorrow. “And here’s to Talon,” he said. “A good and brave man, who never had a chance to become who he was meant to be.”

  Danny stared at Evan. “Talon isn’t dead,” he said. “We have to go after him!”

  Jake shook his head. “We can’t make war on the Tribe, Danny. They’re more numerous than we are, stronger, fiercer and better armed. Even if we took the whole Village, we couldn’t win against them.”

  Danny turned to Martin in anguish. “Martin?”

  Martin shook his head back and forth. “Nothing we can do, Danny. He’s a goner, poor kid.”

  This was as much sympathy as Danny had ever heard from Martin. He grabbed his arm, but Martin flashed him an angry look and pulled away. Danny put up his hands.

  “Okay, okay. I know, don’t touch. Can’t you and I go after Talon? We’ll scout out their camp, go after him about three a.m.—”

  Martin sat there like a stone, shaking his head slowly back and forth.

  “We’ll set a fire around the camp and burn them out!”

  The three men stared at him, their faces mirroring their grief.

  Danny jumped up, faltered, and caught himself. He clenched his fists and glared at Martin, his face hard.

  “Then I’ll go alone. There’s no way I’m not going to go after that kid. Just no way.” He stumbled toward the door, gaining confidence with every step.

  “Danny, don’t do this. It’s suicide.”

  “So be it,” he tossed back over his shoulder. Anger gave him strength, and he walked through the door and let it slam shut behind him.

  * * * *

  Martin sighed. “Christ! I wish to God he had made it off the island, so I could do something else with my time except save his ass.” He slammed the mug down on the table, breaking it, and got up to follow Danny out. The ice-cold amber liquid flowed over the table surface and began to drip, drip, drip over the side onto the floor.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Charlie held onto Mindy’s hand, squeezing it harder than she intended.

  “Uh, Charlie,” Mindy said, wincing, “could you let up a little bit here? I may need this hand sometime in the future.”

  “Oh, sorry,” Charlie said. She turned and smiled at her best friend. “Thanks for being here. I’m scared to death about what this goon is going to say about me tonight.”

  “Maybe nothing. Maybe something really ghastly happened on the island, and it’ll be all about that.”

  “I doubt it. I gave him way too much info. Oh, here he comes.”

  His presence filled the room, and Charlie wished she had opted for a smaller screen when she’d bought her new flat screen. Larger than life size, he was overwhelming.

  Pierre LeGrande adjusted his mic and glanced up as if being on camera were a surprise to him. “Oh, good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Do we have a show for you tonight! And I want to remind you that the phone lines will be open at the end of the show for you to vote for the person you want to be pardoned and brought back to live among us. I’m allowed to tell you that the leading contenders seem to be Talon Larsen, Martin Sicilia, and Danny Manning. I think you should be very careful with your vote; the man you choose will be reinstated with citizenship and all its privileges. He’ll be set up with a job, if he wants it, and temporary living quarters.”

  He picked up the ornate crystal glass that sat on the marble-topped table beside him and took a sip.

  “Looks more like a cocktail tonight,” Mindy said. “Not wine, as usual.”

  “Tougher show,” Charlie said, and Mindy laughed. Charlie didn’t feel amused, however. She bit her nail. “I wonder what he’s going to say.”

  “Tonight,” Pierre began, “we have a lot to show you. The first scene is very disturbing, I must warn you. After Talon and Danny finished building the canoe—and a masterful job they did of it, too—they took it through an underground channel, which even we didn’t know about, and got it into the river. And here’s what happened.”

  The scene replayed, Charlie and Mindy on the edge of their seats. Charlie caught her breath. “Oh! They’re going to make it. And isn’t that Talon a gorgeous guy?”

  “No wonder Javonne was alw
ays after him,” Mindy said.

  “Why did he say this is disturbing?” Charlie asked. “They’re making it!”

  Just as Talon stretched out an arm to help Danny into the canoe, Javonne’s enormous form lunged up out of the dark hole of the cave entrance. With one powerful motion he grasped Danny by the arm and hurled him into the air, where he fell, flailing and gasping, onto the black rocks. The camera zoomed in on him as, wedged into a cleft, where he stared, unseeing, at the television audience. Then his eyes rolled back in his head, and he lay still.

  Charlie sat frozen in disbelief as Javonne splashed into the river and pulled Talon from the canoe, tossing him against a rock. As Javonne wrecked the canoe and Talon moaned in pain, Charlie felt as if she were coming apart inside, like a broken toy.

  “Oh, now, don’t get upset,” Pierre intoned, the camera focusing back on him.

  He smiled, as if he had thoroughly enjoyed the scene. “Danny Manning is like a cat, you know. He seems to have nine lives. Just watch. After this message from our sponsor, we’ll see what happened.”

  “Charlie. Charlie, are you okay?”

  Charlie couldn’t respond.

  “Danny’s all right, Charlie. Did you hear him say that?”

  She forced herself to focus. “Yeah, yeah, Mindy. It was just such a shock. I thought he was home free. Didn’t you?” She swiped at the tears that ran down her cheeks. “If he could just get off that damned island!”

  “Charlie, get real,” Mindy protested. “If they had gone off in the canoe, where would they go? You’ve seen the maps. Even little tiny islands are hundreds of miles away, and to get someplace where the ships would find them—well, that’s a real long shot. They probably would have died of thirst or starvation out at sea.”

  “I don’t believe that,” Charlie said, regaining control of herself. She grabbed her glass of wine and downed it in one gulp, motioning for Mindy to refill it from the bottle on the coffee table. “I believe that if they made it off the island, God would guide them and protect them. I just don’t understand how this could have happened!”

  “Javonne happened,” Mindy answered, refilling her own glass. “You know what an evil creature he is, but very clever in his own way, and he wants Talon.”

  Charlie shuddered. “I can’t even think about that.”

  The man playing a doctor smiled his insincere smile and held up the bottle of pills he was paid to promote. “Results in just three days! You’ll be thinner, lose belly fat, feel more energetic!” Several lovely young women pirouetted for the camera, showing off their new, leaner bodies. “Side effects may include—”

  “Just what the Death Islanders need, diet pills,” Charlie huffed. “C’mon, Pierre, get back to it.”

  “All right,” Pierre LeGrande said. “Let’s get back to it.”

  “Isn’t it scary,” Mindy asked, “the way he seems to talk to you specifically?”

  Charlie threw her an exasperated glance and pointed to the screen, which showed Martin racing back to the Village, shouting for Evan and Jake. The three of them lashed branches together to make a stretcher, lifted a limp, unconscious Danny onto it, and again pushed back through the forest as they carried him home.

  “Well, that’ll be it for tonight,” Charlie said, reaching for the remote.

  “That’s not quite all,” LeGrande said, as if in answer. “I want to tell you about a phone call I made last week after the show.”

  “Oh, no,” Charlie groaned. “Here it comes.” She laid the remote down.

  LeGrande smiled, more of a smirk. “Ladies and Gentlemen, I had the rare pleasure of a conversation with Charlotte Adjavon, of Northington, Connecticut. I’ve since learned that she is more familiarly called Charlie, so that is what I will call her. Now, Charlie is absolutely convinced that Danny Manning never killed his wife, Kathryn, or anyone else, for that matter. It seems that she had a friendship with this man, that she was even alone with him in her house at times.”

  “Oh, brother,” Mindy scoffed. “No nasty inference there, do you think?”

  “None,” Charlie sniffed. “I think I hate this man.”

  “Hate is unchristian,” Mindy said. “Dislike him a lot.”

  “I could loathe him or detest him,” Charlie offered. “Is that better?”

  “Charlie is married to the Reverend Paul Adjavon, who is the minister of First Presbyterian Church in Northington,” Pierre continued. “She has organized a support group, dedicated to getting Danny pardoned and brought home. It is made up, mostly, of women from her husband’s congregation.” He paused, stroked his goatee, and looked off to the right. The camera view shifted, and he looked out at them again, his expression thoughtful, as if considering how much he should share. “I also have it on good authority that she called this meeting without her husband’s knowledge, and used the church without an okay from any committee.” He brushed some imaginary lint from his knee, then looked up again.

  “Now I know that wouldn’t fly in my church, Ladies and Gentlemen. Charlie and her ladies have absolutely inundated this program with letters, emails and phone calls asking for assistance in getting Danny freed. Her main reason for believing that Danny is innocent is that there have been other axe murders in Connecticut since Danny was arrested.” He lifted an eyebrow, his expression amused. “Has she never heard of copycat murderers?”

  “That jerk!” Charlie muttered, anger rising like a muddy tide.

  “Before we sign off,” Pierre continued, “I leave you with these last thoughts about Mrs. Charlotte Adjavon. “A minister’s wife who spends time alone with a man who is duly convicted of five axe murders, including that of his very pretty wife …” Katie’s pert face, with her wide blue eyes and magnetic smile, filled the screen—“and who goes secretly behind her husband’s back to organize a committee of which she knows he will disapprove and not support … Well, I leave you to your own judgment as to what she and Danny Manning may also have been doing that their spouses didn’t know about.”

  “That swine!” Charlie exploded. Anger turned to fury. “I’m going to call our lawyer and sue him. He just about said I had an affair with Danny.” She grabbed the phone, but Mindy stopped her.

  “He didn’t say anything you didn’t tell him,” she said. “It’s true he twisted things around to make it sound like you were having an affair, but if he’s got the conversation taped—and I bet he has—he didn’t say anything untrue.”

  Charlie buried her head in her hands. “Oh, God, oh God!”

  Charlie’s eyes blurred with tears, and she could barely see Pierre LeGrande as he wound up the program. The familiar scenes of the red cliffs, the made-for-television cave, the long river, the stockade-enclosed Village swam before her eyes, and she heard him giving directions and phone numbers for calling in. “It’s your choice who gets pardoned and voted off the island,” he intoned. “Just call the number you see on your screen, and remember, you have two weeks, no longer, to vote. Next week we will tell you what the tallies are so far. And now…”

  Mindy reached over and clicked off the television. She put her arms around Charlie, who could not control her sobs. “Paul will never forgive me for this,” she said through her tears. This will be the end of our marriage.”

  “Do you want me to stay until Paul gets home and try to play referee?” Mindy asked.

  Charlie raised her wet face to look at her best friend. “No, thank you, Mindy.

  He’s going to be so angry that not even the Salvation Army could stop him. Just go home, and thanks for being here. I’ll get myself under control in a bit.”

  “He wouldn’t—hit you, or anything, would he?”

  “No, never. Paul fights with words, not fists. Go along, Mindy. I’ll phone you tomorrow, whatever happens. I may need a place for Courtney and me to stay for a few days.”

  “You know you’re always welcome with us,” Mindy said. She gave Charlie a fierce, tight hug, and kissed her on the cheek. “Call me. She picked up her coat and, leaving
Charlie scrunched into a corner of the blue leather sofa, let herself out.

  An hour later, Charlie heard the door open, and Paul’s even stride cross the wooden floor to the den. He stood in doorway, looking at her, wearing an expression she had never seen before. He didn’t even look like Paul.

  “Do you hate me?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said. He turned, crossed the floor again with the same measured step, opened the door and went out. She knew that, at least for that night, he wouldn’t be back.

  * * * *

  This simply could not go on. Since the incident in New Haven, he had seen the red Ford Focus parked in the church lot, right next to Paul’s, for several hours on evenings when he knew there were no church meetings scheduled. Most insulting of all, for as much as two hours after the Sunday service ended, the red car was there. Didn’t the woman’s husband wonder where she was? Didn’t Charlie care when he didn’t come home after church?

  He had tried again at the last Session meeting, before Paul joined them, to get the committee to squelch Charlie’s attempts to free Danny. But Norma Harris, not even looking up from her knitting, had said that the group was now meeting at her house, not the church, and that she had nothing but admiration for Charlie’s courage. When Paul had come in and sat down, the subject was dropped, and no one brought it up again.

  He had taken Paul aside after the meeting and informed him that if the minister couldn’t get his renegade wife under control, the Session would reconsider his appointment at First Presbyterian. Paul seemed shaken and promised he would talk to her, but said he couldn’t forbid private meetings at members’ homes.

  His anger broiled as hot as lava, at the same time that a conviction froze like ice in his mind that something had to be done about Charlie.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Paul had come home Monday after two nights away. Charlie didn’t go to church on Sunday, and no one except Mindy checked in with her. When Paul finally did come home Monday at lunch time, he looked at her with a blank face, as if trying to identify the stranger in the kitchen. He looked exhausted. His eyes were red, as if he had been crying, but she had never seen him cry, ever. He was very pale, and there were dark circles under his eyes.