“After pirates were executed, they were hung inside these devices so their relatives couldn’t cut them down and bury them. Public humiliation. Before the condemned man was killed, he was measured for his suit of iron, and pirates were supposedly more terrified of this than of their coming execution.”
“How do you know all this?” one of the white-shirts asked.
Anne looked up at the bodies swaying in a hard breeze.
“Unfortunately, it’s my area of expertise.” Her voice was vague and far removed from the moment, and Thorn realized then that it wasn’t casualness he detected but a numbed state somewhere between bewilderment and panic.
Anne said, “Originally the contraptions were forged by blacksmiths. Each one custom-fitted so the bones of the dead man would stay in place for a long time after the flesh rotted away.”
She glanced again at the pennant fixed to the old flagpole at the end of Thorn’s dock. He’d noticed it himself a few minutes earlier. No flag had flown on that pole for years. This particular pennant was intended to be secured to the mast of a ship. It was triangular and across its black field printed in gold script were the words the Black Swan.
Neither Taft nor the other men had mentioned the pennant. No reason they should notice it, really. The three men in the tree were occupying their full attention. While the investigators worked, Thorn sat on Lawton’s yellow bench and looked out at the water and tried to draw a few even breaths. His own personal iron band was tightening invisibly around his chest.
As a pontoon boat motored by out on the sound, a sunset party with drinks and finger food, Thorn heard the noises he’d been anticipating: the crunch of gravel in his drive, the throaty purr of Alexandra’s Accord.
Anne took that moment to draw away from the investigators and walk over to Thorn’s bench and sit down close beside him.
“They said I could take a break.”
Thorn inched away slightly. Like that would do any good.
“You doing okay?”
“No,” she said. “Not at all.”
“That pennant? You recognize it?”
She swallowed hard and watched Alex and Lawton climb out of the Honda.
“It’s part of that long story I was getting to. That flag is from the boat he was on the day I met him. The guy at the Lorelei.”
“Daniel Salbone.”
She stiffened, then turned her head slightly so she was using the extreme edge of her peripheral vision to see him. As if to look at him head-on might push her beyond her limits.
“How did you know that? Vic told you, didn’t he?”
“No, not Vic. One of those guys in the tree told me.”
“What guy?”
“The little one on the end. He was chasing Salbone.”
“He was?”
“Former Secretary of the Navy, Jimmy Lee Webster.”
“When was this, that he told you about Daniel?”
“Last night.”
“So what does that mean? You’re working with them? Trying to capture Daniel?”
“I could care less about Salbone. I’m trying to recover Janey. That’s all.”
She swiveled slightly and peered at him for several seconds, her mind working at the tangle until after a moment she seemed to grow weary of the effort and turned her gaze back toward the dock and that flapping pennant.
“I knew it,” she said. “Down in my gut I knew he was still alive. Now he’s come back to get me. He told me he would, and now he’s here. Daniel’s here.”
“Maybe,” Thorn said. “It’s damn strange, though, murdering three men, then leaving behind your calling card.”
“He’s not a violent man. Something bad must have happened.”
Thorn watched Alexandra and Lawton having a conversation beside the car, Alex probably warning him to behave himself.
Thorn said, “With people like Jimmy Lee Webster chasing him, trying to kill him or put him away, it might’ve brought out a different side of the man. A side you don’t know.”
“Why here?” she said. “Why didn’t he try to find me at Vic’s?”
“I’ve been wondering the same thing.”
Thorn watched Alex stride across the yard. She was wearing faded blue jeans and a white collarless blouse, weekend clothes. She had on a blue Miami PD baseball cap and her long jet-black hair was tucked up inside it.
Because of her dark sunglasses, Thorn couldn’t tell if she looked his way or not. She kept her head erect, appeared full of no-nonsense gravity. Strictly business. She marched over to the base of the gumbo-limbo where Taft stood talking to two of the white-shirts. She glanced up at the bodies in the tree, then shook hands with the investigators. Lawton peeled off from behind her and headed over to the bench. The puppy galloped along at his heels.
“That goddamn bus come yet?”
“No, Lawton. Not yet.”
The puppy lifted his leg on the side of the bench and made it his own.
“Hell, I’ve decided I don’t like Miami anymore. Too many goddamn Cubans jibber-jabbering everywhere you go. I like it better down here, more like America. Why’d we have to leave anyway? You kick us out because of something I said? Did I insult somebody?”
“No, Lawton, you were fine.”
“Well, why then? Why’d we get our walking papers?”
“You don’t have to leave,” Thorn said. “You and Alex are welcome to stay as long as you want.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, that’s not what Miss Bossy High-and-Mighty says. She says we’re not living in the Keys anymore.”
“She said that?”
Anne stood up.
“Hey, you’re not going to introduce me?” Lawton said. “Juicy young thing and I don’t even get to know her name. I’m available, you know. A highly eligible bachelor. Got a good monthly stipend, plus Social Security. Got my own teeth, and my prostate is tough as a little acorn.”
“You’ll have to pardon Lawton,” Thorn said.
But Anne wasn’t listening. She was staring at the gibbet cages.
Lawton picked up his puppy and held him in his arms. The dog seemed to be doubling in size every twenty-four hours. A gloss to his coat, his ribs no longer showing.
“‘Death isn’t the greatest loss in life,’” Lawton said to Anne. “‘The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.’” Lawton set the puppy down. “That’s my Zen wisdom for the day. Ignore it at your peril.”
Anne glanced around and seemed to notice Lawton for the first time. He gave her an old goat’s lusty smile.
“So what’s with the tree ornaments?” Lawton said. “Is it goddamn Christmas again already?”
Alexandra shook hands with Sheriff Taft and turned and headed over to the bench.
Thorn stood up. “Let’s go, Dad. They don’t need us here anymore.”
Alexandra tucked a business card into the pocket of her jeans and motioned for Lawton. The puppy pawed at Alex’s leg trying to get the top dog’s attention, but she was ignoring it.
“Thorn said we could stay. No hard feelings. Stay as long as we like.”
Alex kept her gaze fixed on the old man.
“We’ve got to get back. Thorn’s got some problems he needs to attend to. He doesn’t need us around.”
“That’s not true,” Thorn said. “I do need you. I need you very much.”
She half-turned, reached up, and removed her glasses. Staring at him with eyes that had changed since morning. Grown neutral and remote. Looking at him with almost scientific distance, as though she were examining a victim lying before her, choosing the best camera angle. No hint of anger, no sign of love.
“I’d say three dead men hanging from the branches of your tree constitutes a fairly serious problem, Thorn. I don’t believe you’ll be having much time for distractions anytime soon.” Although Anne stood less than a foot away from Thorn, Alex didn’t look at her. She put the sunglasses back in place and waved at Lawton again. “Now come on, Dad. We’ve got to go.”
�
�Please don’t leave, Alex. I need to explain a few things.”
“No need,” she said, still looking at Lawton. “I think I’ve got the picture. Dad, come on.” And this time she used her police voice, do-it-by-God-or-else, and Lawton shrugged at Thorn and followed her back to the car.
Twenty-Three
It was five after five, an hour before their next scheduled conversation, when Janey called out, “Daddy, Daddy,” while across the room Sugarman was paging methodically through the slick pages of a guide to tropical wildlife.
He swung off the bed and rushed to the computer.
“I’m here,” he said. “What happened? Something wrong?”
“I know it’s early, but I couldn’t wait,” she said. “So much is going on.”
“What? Where?”
“In the jungle,” she said. “So many birds and things. I had to tell you before I forget them all.”
Sugarman leaned back in his chair. He smoothed a hand across his forehead, the muscles clamped tight.
“Did the police trace the phone line? Do you know where I am yet?”
“No, sweetie. That isn’t going to work. We’re going to have to do it ourselves, the old-fashioned way.”
“Oh.” She looked away and wiped sweat from her face. “Well, I saw a flock of toucans, Daddy. Four or five.”
“Toucans,” he said. “You’re sure?”
She was excited again. A kid who’d seen some exotic birds.
“With big bills, lots of colors. Yellow faces and throats, black bodies. Their bills are like candy corn. Red, yellow, green, a lime color. They flap their wings a few times, then glide. I saw them twice while I was looking out. And a giant green iguana and a great blue heron and a cormorant.”
“Go slow, Janey. I’m writing this down.”
“The battery is lower. It’s below half. And I ate a whole sandwich but only drank one Coke. I’m not that thirsty.”
“Good, good.”
“What about that butterfly, Daddy? Did you look it up?”
“I looked it up, yes. I’m afraid it’s no help.”
Trying to find a neutral tone between the gloomy truth and false hope.
“Why not?”
“It’s a blue morpho butterfly,” Sugar said. “It’s called ‘the emperor.’ It’s all over Central and South America, out in the Caribbean, Trinidad, Tobago. All over the place. So it doesn’t tell us anything real specific.”
“Oh,” she said, her voice falling away into a sigh.
“It’s okay, honey. Don’t worry. We’re going to do this. I promise. Now there was a bird you mentioned before. What was it? One you saw right at first.”
“No, wait,” she said. “I forgot this other thing. An animal. It was very cool. Like a squirrel with long legs and fat and no tail.”
“What color?” Sugarman said. “Hold on, I have a book.”
He swung from the chair, hurried to the bed, and pawed through the volumes littering the guest bed until he found the Rain Forest Mammal Guide.
“Reddish brown,” Janey said. “It was walking down the path that runs along the edge of the jungle. I thought it was a rat at first, a giant rat, but then I got the binoculars and it looks more like a squirrel with long legs. And fat.”
Sugarman paged through the mammal book until he found the plates. Drawings of squirrels, pages and pages of rats, porcupines and armadillos, rabbits. And then a page of creatures he didn’t recognize.
“No tail?” he said.
“Yeah, and pointy face like a squirrel.”
He held the page up to the Web camera. Pointed at one.
“Like this?”
She paused, peering into the screen.
“The one above it.”
“This one? You’re sure?”
“I think so. Is it reddish?”
“Yes, reddish, no tail, like a giant squirrel. Only with long legs.”
Sugarman checked the numbered print against the descriptors on the opposite page.
“An agouti,” he said.
“Agouti?”
“Yeah, I guess that’s how you say it. Agouti. Hold on, I’m checking its geographical range.”
Sugarman used the index, tracked down the page. Read the paragraph.
“What’s it say, Daddy?”
He read aloud.
“‘Chiapas and Campeche, Mexico, southeast through all countries of Central America. Northwest Venezuela, north and west Colombia, and Ecuador west of the Andes.’”
“Wow,” she said. “I’m really far away, huh?”
“Yeah,” said Sugar. “Really far.”
“Does that help, Daddy?”
“It helps, yeah. You’re not on an island. I think we can rule that out. Mexico, Central America, northern South America. You’re on the coastal mainland somewhere. That’s an important step.”
“But the toucans, they were so neat. Like a zoo.” She paused for a second. “Daddy? What’re you doing?”
“Looking for the toucan, sweetie.”
She was humming a song. Something he vaguely recognized from the radio, the pop stations she and Jackie preferred. His nine-year-old daughter was singing in a jungle somewhere a thousand miles away while Sugar paged through the heavy bird guide, past the owls and cuckoos and nightjars, the hummingbirds, trogons, and jacamars, birds he’d never seen, never imagined. Finding at last the toucans, which shared the page with the woodpeckers, motmots, and kingfishers.
“What did its bill look like, Janey?”
“I told you, Daddy. Like candy corn. Yellow with a pink or orange tip. Blue on the bottom beak.”
“Keel-billed,” he said. He held it up for her to see.
She squinted for a moment, then said yes, that was it.
“Listen, Janey, can you see the horizon out your window?”
“The horizon?”
“Where the sky meets the land, can you see it, or are there trees in the way?”
She got up and walked around the room. The Web cam caught her at one window, peering between the slats. In half a minute she was back.
“Yeah, out two windows I can see it.”
“Okay, good.”
“Why, Daddy?”
“It’s something we can do tonight. Something I remembered from when I was in Scouts. Listen. Do you remember which direction the sun came up this morning?”
“In the east, Daddy, where it always comes up. I’m not a little kid.”
She stepped back from the camera and held up an arm and pointed toward one wall and recited, “North, south, east, west.”
“Good, Janey. So can you see the eastern horizon?”
She looked behind her, then back at the Web camera.
She said yeah, that was where the marina was.
“So the sun came up over the water this morning?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Great,” Sugarman said. “Then tonight, just as it gets dark, we’ll try something that should help tell us where you are. It’s still a full moon. It should work.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Oh, I remember,” she said. “It was a kingfisher, Daddy. That other bird. The one I saw before. It looked like a kingfisher, but it was different. Smaller.”
“Can you describe it?”
She was silent for a moment, looking to her left, grimacing.
“What’s wrong, Janey?”
He saw her rise from her seat, then bend down to the screen, mouth twisted out of shape, gritting her teeth.
“I need to go to the potty.”
“All right.”
“My stomach’s not feeling so good all of a sudden.”
“Oh, sweetheart. I’m sorry.”
“I maybe ate my sandwich too fast. I was so hungry I couldn’t help it, so I kind of wolfed it. Or it was the water. I don’t know. But I gotta go, Daddy. I’ll sign off and call you back in a few minutes. Okay?”
“Okay, sweetie. Go on. Sign off. I’ll be here waiting.”
&
nbsp; And she disappeared.
Sugarman sat still for a moment staring at the screen, blinking away the fog in his eyes.
It only took him a minute to find the correct page for the detailed description and a moment more to discover that the keel-billed toucan, despite its exotic coloration, its enormous quirky bill, was a bird quite at home in a lot of places in the Caribbean lowlands from tropical Mexico all the way to South America, the same territory as the agouti. Telling him nothing he didn’t already know.
His circle had shrunk to just a quarter of its previous size, but it was still one hell of a giant slice of pie.
The interrogation took place in Thorn’s living room. A solid breeze dancing in the old lace curtains. One of the white-shirts handled the questioning while his two partners talked quietly a few feet away on the upstairs porch.
Thorn planted himself in the upholstered chair, an overstuffed softie that angled beside the window with a western view. He glanced out, watching the ID techs finish their work and some other men from the ME’s office balanced atop two tall stepladders taking down the bodies from the tree.
Anne accounted for Thorn’s whereabouts from about ten that morning until that very moment. He’d been at Vic Joy’s estate in Islamorada all morning and through the afternoon.
“Those bodies weren’t here when I left,” Thorn said. “So they were strung up between ten and whenever the sheriff arrived.”
“We’ll handle the math, thanks,” the white-shirt said.
The man wore black-rimmed glasses that looked like they’d been hastily plucked off the rack at a drugstore checkout counter. He was Thorn’s height and roughly his build. Lean but wide-shouldered. Black trousers and black shoes. Maybe not a Mormon missionary, but a zealot nonetheless. Probably with his own share of rehearsed speeches at the ready.
He informed them that his name was Ralph Fox. Special Agent Fox, head of a joint task force made up of agents from both the CIA and the FBI and a couple of other federal agencies. He paused to see if Thorn registered the magnitude of his position.
Thorn considered saying, “Wow,” but restrained himself.
Off the Chart Page 25