I still had a carrot and a knife, but I couldn’t see how either could be fashioned into a lock, and I shook my head, sending an extra spray of water at Olivia.
“Might be a lock back in the house,” Olivia said.
“Haven’t got time to look,” Josey said, definitely in officer-in-charge mode. She pulled off her thin cloth belt, threaded it through the hook where a padlock should go, twisted it into a knot, and pulled it tight.
Olivia, ever the den mother, glanced at the knot and said, “That’s just a loose granny knot, you need something more secure. Let me—”
“We gotta go. It’ll do for now. Come on, y’all get in the truck.”
I lifted my face up to the rain in a celebration of the fact that I was still alive. Muddy, filthy, but alive. Fervently, I hoped it was still so for Rasputin.
But before I could wax sentimental, Josey poked me. “Get a move on,” she said. Eyeing her truck, which was, I should note, truly a monster truck, I cast a last look at the panther. Good kitty, I thought as walked around the trailer to the passenger side of the Big Truck and I scrambled up into the cab. Olivia slid in next to me, muttering something about a loose knot while Josey jumped in behind the steering wheel.
Once Josey began the treacherous task of skidding out through the mud, under driving conditions considerably worsened by the passage of other vehicles churning up the muck pond that used to be a kind of road, stress and confusion made me need to talk. But I couldn’t bring myself to ask Olivia about Miguel. Especially not in front of Josey, who, after all, was Official Law Enforcement. Rather, I started to talk out all that had happened to me, as well as my anxious request to summon diverse law-enforcement agencies to the scene to begin the search for the madman who had kidnapped me.
“Be quiet, please. I need to concentrate on driving,” Josey said, not rudely, but firmly.
Olivia put her hand on my knee and squished it slightly, as if to cheer me up. Or maybe shut me up.
With a grimly determined Josey driving, we sloshed and slid our way out of the compound, grinding down and sticking a few times, and once spinning a half circle out of control and coming to rest against the slim trunk of a pine sapling. The cat trailer did a jackknife type of move, and then blammed into still another tree, but the trailer hitch held.
With four-wheel drive, a skilled driver, and perhaps an army of guardian angles corralled, no doubt, by Grandmom, we kept going. We finally arrived on a paved road, still in parade single file behind Adam’s vehicle. Olivia had not said a single word the whole time.
Once relief at being on pavement began to seep into me, physical pain from my attack did also. I felt my swollen right eye tenderly with my fingers and wondered if the moment was right to demand anew a troop of police to track my assailant. But when I glanced at Josey, I saw such a look of forlorn focus on her face, I decided to follow Olivia’s example and keep quiet.
When we finally got on Highway 64, in east Manatee County, Adam’s baby SUV pulled off to the side and stopped. Josey pulled her truck in behind it, and jumped out. Olivia did too. Not wanting to miss a second of the story, I slid out after her. We watched as Josey and Adam checked on the panther.
“She looks okay, despite all the heavy bumping the trailer took,” Adam said.
Josey only nodded.
Adam offered his hand, and Josey took it. “I just got a radio call from up north on the Little Manatee. Sorry to leave you. Take your friends home, or take them to the sheriff ’s office, get the cat high and dry, best you can. Don’t worry,” he said.
Josey nodded again, Adam patted my arm and said I’d “done good,” and then drove off, leaving the three of us standing in the rain on the side of the road for a moment, with a one-eyed panther tethered to the back of the Big Truck.
“Come on, get in,” Josey said.
Sitting for a moment on the side of the road in her truck, Josey turned on the radio and listened as the announcer hyperventilated about the rising flood and increasing dangers. “Twenty inches of rain in the last thirty-six hours,” he said, with the odd excitement that media people get at a disaster. “A hundred-year flood.”
“Shit,” Josey shouted out at the rain. But she started the truck, and, to my dismay, she turned north, driving away from downtown Bradenton, away from the police station, away from the sheriff ’s office, and away even from her house.
“Where are we going?” I asked, aware of the demanding tone in my voice, but not much caring.
“Boogie Bog,” Josey said.
“Why in hell are we going there?” I asked. “Should you be dragging that cat around like this?”
“I’ve got to see if the gyp stacks will hold,” Josey said.
“Oh my God,” Olivia said. “The gyp stacks. All that toxic waste.”
“What?” I asked, momentarily forgetting in my fatigue all the lessons about phosphogypsum that I had learned at the antiphosphate meeting with Angus John and Miguel.
“Those two stacks at Boogie Bog,” Josey said. “Two lakes filled with toxic waste behind a seventy-foot dirt wall. They’ve been at risk for a long time of breaking, leaking, or overflowing. This rain could do it.”
“You pour too much into any container and it’ll spill over,” Olivia said. “Any fool should know that.”
“If those gyp stacks don’t hold,” Josey said, “millions of gallons of that shit will flow right down into Bishop Harbor, and then right into Tampa Bay. The sea grasses and the marine life don’t have a chance.”
“Can we help, with sandbags, or something?” I asked.
Like a Greek chorus, Olivia and Josey both shouted “Sandbags?” in much the same tone of voice they might have said “You idiot.”
“You want to put up seventy feet of sandbags?” Josey asked.
Well, no, I personally didn’t want to, but what else could we do? I mean, if we couldn’t help out, why even go to Boogie Bog? Why weren’t we going to the police station so I could report that I had been kidnapped by a madman and an arsonist?
In a low voice, Olivia said, “There’ll be a massive fish kill if that gyp hits the bay waters.”
Yeah, now I remembered Angus John’s rant the night of the phosphate meeting, the night before he was blown up. And in the remembering, I understood why Josey and Olivia needed to go to the scene and see what was happening. Like rushing to the hospital, even after someone has called to say it’s too late: You still have to go; you still have to see the wreckage and remains for yourself.
And I still had to fend for myself. “You got a cell phone? Or a police radio?” I asked Josey.
“Not in this truck. It’s my own, not the SO’s. That dinky SO’s car wouldn’t have made it through the muck back there, so I drove my big guy.” She patted the truck with a look of satisfaction on her face.
“Do you have any Handi Wipes, especially some antibacterial ones?” I asked, reserving for a saner moment a complete analysis of Josey’s relationship with her “big guy.”
“Glove compartment,” Josey said. “Now tell me again what happened to you.”
Okay, finally, my turn. As I mentally began to organize my story for maximum dramatic effect, I leaned over Olivia and reached into Josey’s glove compartment where I systematically used up her entire store of Handi Wipes. Then I told both of them everything I could remember, from the moment Jimmie had gone next door to eat Dolly’s fried chicken, leaving me at the mercy of a crazed kidnapper with a raw-meat fetish who had demanded a videotape and then rewarded me by throwing me in the lion’s den.
“Big fellow, you say?” Josey asked.
“I never really got a very good look at him,” I said. “But yes, strong. Real strong. He kept picking me up and carrying me around like I was…well, like I was nothing.” Okay, sure I’m thin, but I’m also tall. I didn’t know many guys who could pick me up like I was a small puppy they were going to toss over a bridge into churning water. But I kept thinking about big guys, strong guys, which naturally led to me thinking about
Theibuet.
“It could have been that Theibuet man,” I said. “This would be like something Sherilyn Moody might have thought up, and made him do. But like I said, I didn’t get a real good look at the face, I couldn’t be sure if it was Theibuet.”
“Why would Theibuet want a tape from you? What kind of tape?” Josey asked.
Oh, yeah, well, that would be the rub. I thought about it for a minute, and though I hated to let go of the Theibuet-Sherilyn conspiracy theory, I could not for the life of me imagine why either of them would want a tape of the man who was suing Jimmie doing manual labor. “He wouldn’t.” I had to admit it. Which led me straight back to my other theory. “Maybe that Jason Quartermine guy, or some thug he hired, came after that tape I had of his plaintiff—”
“Who is Jason Quartermine?” Josey asked.
“This lawyer guy, Jason is this lawyer guy, he represents this worm who sued Jimmie, Jimmie, who’s like my friend and yardman, you know, you met him at my house at breakfast, and Jason’s guy claimed that Jimmie hurt this guy’s back by slamming into him at ten miles per hour. Jimmie got a videotape of the guy showing he wasn’t even injured.”
“That doesn’t make any sense to me. Even if Jason stole the tape, why go through all the trouble to put you in a panther cage?” Olivia asked.
“Yeah, Jason wouldn’t have thought of that. He’s not really very imaginative,” I said.
“By the way, you did real good with that cat, real good,” Josey said. “You know how to keep your head.”
“Yeah, you too,” I said.
“The panther’s name is Samantha,” Olivia said. “She’s a beauty, you need to see her in the sunlight. Very strong and graceful. Very smart.”
As she talked, Josey eased up on the gas, much to my relief, since I’d noticed she was speeding on a wet road in a stormy night, and I’d already had enough brushes with death this past week that I didn’t want to test the cosmic forces anymore. As she slowed down, Josey turned to me briefly, and said, “Samantha’s been at the compound off and on for two years. With her permanent injuries, she wouldn’t survive long back in the wild. Adam takes her away a lot, to show school kids, and civic clubs, trying to educate them on the beauty of the Florida panther. Some sick motherfucker shot Samantha up by where the new Wilderness Ridge Subdivision and Golf Course is now. Shot her in the head, and then cut off an ear, for a souvenir, I guess.” Josey said. “Adam found her himself. She survived, but lost her eye during the head surgery.”
“So, is she, like…tame?” I asked, thinking of her licking me in the cage.
“Not so you’d want to turn her loose in the kitchen,” Josey said. “But she’s a survivor, that’s for sure. And another thing that’s for sure, it’s a whole lot easier to develop a wilderness if you kill off the endangered wildlife first.”
As if working from the same script, Olivia added, “You got any idea how many bald eagles and ospreys and sand-hill cranes turn up dead just before a new subdivision or golf course or shopping center goes in?”
“No.”
“You need to read more,” Josey said.
“I read a lot,” I said.
“Not the right stuff,” Josey said.
Okay, enough about my reading habits. “What about the panther?”
“She’s used to people, but I wouldn’t want to get in a locked cage with her,” Josey said. “Why’d he put you in the cage? Why not just shoot you?”
“He said…the man said they’d have to kill the cat after it ate me.”
“Shit,” Josey said.
“Shit,” Olivia said.
“Why didn’t he just shoot me and the cat? I mean, if he wanted us both dead.” I thought this was a real good question. I mean, if I were going to kill somebody after stealing a videotape from them, I’d want to make sure they didn’t live through the ordeal to testify against me.
Neither Josey nor Olivia said anything for a long time. Then, just as I had given up on either of them responding, and was getting ready to ask another question, say, like, was Olivia bathing with Miguel, Josey said, “Because he wanted one of the wildlife-rescue people to have to put Samantha down.”
“Good Lord, do you know who grabbed me and put me in that cage?” I asked.
“Somebody who hates the big cats and wanted bad publicity for them, the panthers.”
“Like a developer?” I asked. And then I thought, or a phosphate miner, someone who wanted unfettered control to ruin a healthy wilderness in east Manatee County, without having to deal with the protected habitat of the endangered Florida panther.
Somebody like Theibuet, one of the newly enriched surviving partners in Antheus.
“Folks like you and Olivia,” Josey said, “forget there are a lot of people out there who hate the Florida panthers, or any big cat. Some cattle ranchers, for example, sheep ranchers, yeah, and developers. But right now, I’m thinking more like—”
“Phosphate miners,” Olivia said, cutting off Josey.
“Yeah, but why put me in a cage with one?”
“To convince folks that the panthers and the mountain lions are dangerous and vile creatures, not worth saving. You scare people badly enough, and you can push them into anything. In all of our recorded history, there’s no verified case of an unprovoked Florida panther attacking a human being. In fact, wild cats of any kind hardly ever attack people, but when a rabid one killed someone out west last year it unleashed a massive mountain-lion hunt. Before it was over, a bunch of cowboys had a cat roundup and killed four other mountain lions. And there weren’t many more than that in the whole region. That knocked out a whole species in the area. When the population is as small as it is with wild cats, one cat dead is bad, but five is extinction. They put those cowboys on TV like they were heroes for killing those four mountain lions,” she said, her voice bitter.
While I was mulling that over, Josey turned onto the service road into Boogie Bog. A tall security fence surrounded the site, but the gate itself was open, and Josey drove through it. I could see a lot of lights and activity up ahead.
“Did the dams hold?” Olivia asked the air around us.
I looked out at the night and the rain and the scurrying, and I could not help but wonder where in the storm Miguel was.
Chapter 31
Budding disaster.
That was the scene and the sense of it.
Josey pulled her truck up behind other cars and trucks, and at once we took in frantic movements. People were running around everywhere, shouting and waving their hands, dressed in official-looking bright yellow rain slickers with DEP written across the back, and, like the men trying to turn the wheel on the defective dam lock, they appeared not to be achieving their set goals. Out of the crowd running around, one man turned, and apparently recognized Josey, or perhaps Olivia, and began to walk toward us.
“Too late,” he said.
“Dam break?” Josey asked.
“Nope, no break, but there’s some crumbling at the top and they’re overflowing. Both of them. Too much rain too fast. They were already full. We knew this would happen if it rained like this. We tried to drain them off into the collection ditches along Buckeye Road, but they’re overflowing too.”
“All that gypsum,” Olivia said.
The DEP man turned and looked at her. “All that shit, rolling down the hill, to Bishop Harbor.”
Josey took a step closer to the DEP guy, and then put her hand against his cheek. “I’m sorry. I know you tried.”
The DEP guy took her hand, and kissed it. And smiled, a sad, little wet smile. “Glad you’re still wearing the ring.”
They looked at each other for a moment before he dropped her hand and she pulled back from him.
So, okay, now I knew a couple of new things—why Josey wore the big ring and why she was so adamant that no one from the DEP had driven the DEP truck up to the dam to drown M. David.
Yeah, and maybe why she knew so much about Boogie Bog and phosphate.
Anot
her man, dressed in jeans and no rain gear, with his hair plastered against his anguished face, came up to us. “Go home,” he said. “There’s nothing any of you can do here now. Nothing any of us can do, until the rain stops.”
But I watched Olivia turn and scan the crowd as if she were searching for someone. “Anybody see Miguel?” she asked.
“He was here, Olivia. But when the second pond began to overflow, he left,” the rain-plastered man said.
At the familiarity between him and Olivia, I turned to study him, and recognized him as Mr. Science Guy from the antiphosphate rally the night Angus had died. That seemed so long ago, even though it had been only last week.
“I hope they all rot in hell for this,” Josey said.
“We can only hope,” Mr. Science Guy said.
When Josey didn’t speak, I did. “Sheriff ’s office or police station. Phone. Please.” I didn’t even try to hide the sound of pleading in my voice. I needed to know if my house had burned, taking Rasputin up in the flames.
“Let me think,” Josey snapped.
“Think about what? I need to call the police and my house. Don’t any of you people have cell phones?”
The DEP man said, “I got a cell,” and patted his slicker pocket. “Don’t know if it’ll work out here in this rain. But let’s get under the shed, out of this downpour, and give it a try.”
Josey, Olivia, Mr. DEP, and I walked under the overhang of the shed. Science Guy drifted off into the crowd of other men, who were frantically doing things that apparently weren’t going to do any good. DEP Guy pulled a cell out of the pocket in his rain slicker, and I snatched it. My hands shook as I dialed home.
Jimmie answered, saying, “I done told you, she ain’t here.”
“Jimmie, it’s me, Lilly.”
“My good God, Lady,” he shouted out, “where’re you at? I done looked and looked for you. Delvon ’bout done drove me crazy calling for you.”
Instead of answering, I blurted out, “Did my house burn down?”
“Now would I be talkin’ to you from the phone in your house if it had done burnt down? But the kitchen is…it is…kind of a mess. But, Lady, it ain’t nothin’ I can’t fix, take a while. We can jes’ eat at Dolly’s tills I get it all fixed up. Don’t you worry, Lady, but you got to tell me where’re you at.”
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