He runs.
He runs toward the river. It’s less than two miles away . . . or is supposed to be.
I should’ve reached it by now. Where is it? Where am I? How’d I get turned around? Why haven’t I found anything?
Seeing the hollowed-out base of a cypress tree, he collapses into it. He doesn’t check for snakes. He just backs in and falls down. A few minutes ago, he was more terrified of snakes, in general, and cottonmouths and rattlers, in particular, than anything else in the entire world. A lot has changed in the last few minutes.
Attempting to slow his heart and catch his breath, he listens for footsteps, blood bounding through his body so forcefully his eyes feel like they’ll bulge out of his skull.
Full moon.
Freezing. Fog.
Why didn’t you just go back? You had a choice. You knew what you should do and you didn’t do it. You’re gonna die out here and they’ll never find your body. Heather and Mom—
Mom.
She’d be expecting him by now. Needing him.
Having waged a futile war against MS for decades, his mother is now in the final stages of peace talks with this foreign captor of her body. The only terms she can get are complete and unconditional surrender, which she’s nearly ready to give.
He had promised his dad he’d take care of her, move back to the Panhandle to be with her, and here he is lost in the middle of a cypress swamp on a freezing night, hunted like one of the endangered animals he’s been trying to help.
Sorry, Dad.
But it’s not just about letting his dad down again. His mom can’t take care of herself. It’s dangerous for her to be alone. Each evening he feeds her, helps her with her medications, moves her from recliner to dining table, to bathroom, to bed.
Will she survive the night? Will I?
Caroline James had been a truly beautiful woman—the kind people stop to admire. Long before her diagnosis, she had a vulnerability that added to her attractiveness. As her disease progressed, vulnerable beauty became feeble beauty, but beauty nonetheless. It wasn’t until her husband and caretaker abandoned her that the last of her attractiveness wilted.
As if a physical manifestation of the spiritual withdrawals Cole’s absence produced, Caroline’s body began to wither—drawing in on itself. Curling. Constricting. Clinching.
Like the petals of a flower closing, the aperture of her allure shut down completely, never to reopen.
He pulls out his phone to check for a signal.
At certain places along the river there’s just enough reception to make a crackling, static-filled call.
He has no idea where he is. He thought he had been running east toward the Chipola River, but if so, he should have reached it. He keeps moving. Maybe he’s closer than he thinks.
No signal.
Not the faintest trace. Where the hell am I? Lost.
Think.
How do I find my way to the river?
He thinks if he can just make it to the river, he can flag down a passing boat or manage to make a phone call.
* * *
Fog-covered forest.
Cloud-shrouded orb. Diffused, intermittent light. Pale.
Ghostly.
Smattering of stars.
He sits shivering after taking the last sip of water from the bottle in his sling pack. The full moon is bright enough to cast shadows, but diluted, knocked down several stops like studio lights with scrims, by scattered clouds and a thick, smoke-like fog.
Snap.
Breaking twig. Leaves rustling. Stop.
Approaching footsteps. Ready to run.
Willing to fight. Relief.
He lets out a quiet but audible sigh as a small gray fox prances out of the fog. The dog-like creature—gray-brown on top, rust and white underneath—is barely three feet long. Out foraging for food, the animal doesn’t react to Remington’s presence.
Instinctively, he reaches for his camera.
Stop. No. Too dangerous. Can’t risk the flash revealing his whereabouts to the murderer or his friends—if they’ve joined him. If they’re going to.
Fog thick as he’s ever seen anywhere, the entire forest seems on fire, jagged outlines of trees etched in the mist, their tops disappearing as if into mountaintop clouds.
More footfalls.
The small fox darts away as a man steps out of the mist.
Remington sits perfectly still. Breaths shallow. Eyes unblinking. The broad, alpine man has long, unkempt brown hair, a burly beard, and lumbers along in enormous work boots, radio in one massive mitt, a blued Smith and Wesson .357 magnum in the other.
I’m about to die.
Though heading straight toward the tree base, the man seems not to have seen Remington yet—perhaps because of the darkness or fog, or maybe because of the leaves he has gathered around himself for cover, but most likely because of the man’s height.
Pausing just before reaching what’s left of the cypress tree, the man turns and surveys the area, his mammoth boots sweeping the leaves aside and making large divots in the damp ground.
Before Remington had moved away from home, he seemed to know everybody in the area. Now, he’s continually amazed at how few people he recognizes, and though the giant standing in front of him resembles many of the corn-fed felons he grew up with—guys with names like Skinner, Squatch, Bear, and Big—he’s distinctive enough to identify if he knew him.
Remington jumps as the man’s radio beeps.
—Anything?
—Not a goddamn.
—Okay. Keep looking.
—That sounded like an order.
—Sorry big fellow. Please is always implied. I meant, would you keep looking please?
—We could do this all night and never find him.
—Yeah?
—Or we could get the dogs out here and make short work of this shit.
—Dogs mean involving more people.
—We don’t catch him a whole lot more people will be involved.
—I hear you. Let’s give it a little while longer, then we’ll call Spider. Either way, camera boy won’t leave these woods alive.
—Make sure Arl and Donnie Paul split up. We need to cover as much ground as possible.
That’s four he knows of. The calm murderer, the big bastard in front of him, Arlington, and Donnie Paul. Are there others?
When the big man finishes his conversation, he pockets the radio, unzips his jeans, and begins to urinate on the ground, the acidic, acrid odor wafting over to find Remington’s nostrils. Finishing, he zips, clears his throat, spits, and begins to trudge away.
At least four men.
Out here to kill him.
Dogs.
If they use dogs on him, the river is his only hope. Got to find it.
Where the hell am I?
He quietly pulls the compass out of his pocket.
It’s smashed. Useless. Must have happened on one of his falls or when he crashed into the tree.
Know where you’re going. Use a map and a compass.
Always tell someone where you’re going. Never go alone.
Always carry the essentials. If you get lost, stay put.
Make yourself seen and heard.
He had to move, to find the river, and the only people out here he could make himself seen and heard to wanted to kill him.
Maybe I should try to circle back to the four-wheeler. Maybe I could outrun them, make it back to my truck, then to town before they did.
If he knew where the other men were . . . but he doesn’t. He could walk right into them. And if they’ve seen his four-wheeler and truck, they’ve probably disabled them. Or might have a man watching them.
No, the river is his best hope. His only.
Time to move.
Carefully.
Quietly. Slowly.
Climbing out of the cypress stump, he avoids the damp ring of urine the big man left as he begins to make his way in what feels like the direction of the river.
The dry, dead leaves crunch and crackle beneath his boots, undermining his attempts at silence. He tries shuffling his feet, then sliding, then lifting them high and placing them back down softly, but nothing he does makes any difference. Quiet advancement through the woods this time of year is impossible.
He has no idea exactly where he’s heading. Just moving. He could be walking away from the river, could be walking toward one of the men hunting him. He has no way of knowing.
His breaths, backlit by moonlight, come out in bursts like steam from a Manhattan manhole.
His movements are awkward, unsteady, every shivering step a struggle in the turbid terrain.
Halting occasionally, he listens for the other men.
Body tight with tension, he can’t help but believe a high velocity round will rip through him at any moment, the scorching projectile piercing vital organs and arteries. Bleeding out slowly, painfully like a gut-shot animal. Or his head exploding in Zapruder film-like fashion. Of course, he could be attacked from close range, brained with an oak branch or beaten to death by the big man.
Panic.
He wants to run, everything in him giving in to the flight side of his fight-or-flight response, but he realizes it would be suicide. Even if he could remain on his feet and not run into a tree or trip and bash his head on a cypress knee, and even if his frenzied, out-of-control run didn’t alert his predators to his presence, he would soon tire, becoming even more dehydrated and disoriented.
Slow and steady. Careful and quiet.
He knows he needs to mark the trees he’s passing, to be able to identify them if he comes this way again, but doesn’t want to reveal his whereabouts to the others.
Gnawing.
Growling.
Grumbling.
He hasn’t eaten since lunch, and his body pangs remind him.
Cold.
Hungry.
Tired.
Lost.
Lonely.
Afraid.
He wants to sit down, find a place to rest a while. Just a few minutes. But he keeps moving, stumbling forward in the foggy forest, not sure where his unsteady steps are leading him.
Rustling in a thicket to his right. He stops. Listens.
A large, dark marsh rabbit darts out of the bushes, stops, turns, speeds away. Its small, red, rodent-like feet carrying it beneath a fallen tree. It then disappears into the dense undergrowth beyond.
Exhaling, he begins breathing again, his heart thumping on his breastbone the way the rabbit’s back feet do on the ground when sending out alarm signals.
Freeze.
Fear.
Panic. Inside.
He’s taken very few steps before he hears—what? The approach of a man? Has to be. Sound’s too distinctive to be anything else.
Hairs rise. Goose bumps.
Quickly. Quietly.
Ducking behind the base of a large pine and into the surrounding underbrush, Remington tries to hide and to still his racing heart enough to hear where the man is coming from.
Listen.
Heart pounding.
Deep breaths. Calm down. Relax.
Close. Footsteps. Forest floor.
Whatta I do?
Be still. But—
The steps stop suddenly.
Bracing.
Waiting.
Nothing.
Don’t forget to breathe.
Crouching so low, clenching so tight, holding himself so still . . . his body aches from the tension.
10
Now
* * *
I’m driving down Highway 22, the road that connects Wewa with Panama City, returning from doing something I haven’t done enough of lately—attending an AA Meeting.
The April evening seems delicate somehow. Stiller, cooler, its colors softer, more muted.
To my left, rows and rows of slash pines beneath the moonlight. Tall, straight, close together.
To my right, where once were endless straight lines of slash pines, empty fields as far as the eye can see, fenced in and awaiting the newly planted grass to grow and the arrival of tens of thousands of head of cattle.
The St. Joe Company recently sold most of its timberland—some 400,000 acres—to a Mormon Church-owned cattle company called Deseret Ranches.
For half a billion dollars Deseret Ranches has become the single largest private landowner in Florida.
Now when the slash pines are cut down, loaded on log trucks, and hauled away, they are not replanted. Instead, the land has been cleared, fenced, and grassed for pasture. Where once the planted pines stood in tall, stately silence there will soon be herds of bellowing cows grazing beneath the watchful eyes of cowboys—an image that harkens back to Florida’s original cowman crackers, the horse-riding cowpokes named for the cracking sounds their whips made as they drove their herds across the flat, prairie grass plains of North and Central Florida.
The two lane highway straddles what used to be and what is still to come.
It’s dark and a little foggy, the moon having ducked behind a bank of clouds.
I call Merrill. He answers on the third ring.
“What’re you working on?” I ask.
“Right this minute or in general?”
“In general,” I say. “This week.”
“Couple little things besides looking for Randa and Daniel and keepin’ an eye on Chris.”
Chris is Anna’s ex-husband who was recently released from jail. He is both dangerous and a disruptive force in our lives.
A few months back a friend of ours, Daniel Davis, went missing while Merrill was watching him. The significant other of Samantha Michaels, Daniel was doing a true crime podcast with Merrick McKnight, Reggie’s significant other, at the time. We know or believe we know who he’s with, but we question whether or not he went willingly—something hard to fathom given his relationship with Sam and her condition at the time.
Randa Raffield is a young woman who vanished off the face of the earth in the seven minutes between crashing her car on Highway 98 between Mexico Beach and Port St. Joe and the first deputy’s arrival on the scene.
Merrill and I are looking into both cases, as well as keeping an eye on Chris and awaiting his next move.
“I really appreciate you doing all that,” I say.
“Tol’ you you don’t have to tell me that every time.”
“Can’t help myself. I really appreciate all you’re doing.”
“So you keep sayin’, but guess what? Nothin’ to be grateful for. Ain’t turned up shit on Daniel or Randa. You heard from her lately?”
“Not a word,” I say. “Not since she broke our bet.”
A couple of months or so ago Randa Raffield had bet me I couldn’t solve the Angel Diaz case before she did, saying if I did she’d return Daniel safely to us. And though I had won the bet, she had refused to return Daniel.
“This shit draggin’ out lot longer than I ever thought it would,” he says. “Didn’t think it’d take even half this long to find them.”
“She’s a talented, resourceful woman.”
“Hope for Daniel’s sake that’s all she is. ’Cause those ain’t the first words I’d’ve said about her. Dangerous, deadly, murderous bitch comes to my mind. Why’d you ask?”
“What you’re working on? ’Cause I’ve got one week to work on the Remington James case and I may need a little help.”
“Just let me know.”
“I will. Th—”
“Bitch, don’t thank my ass again,” he says and hangs up before I can.
I drive slowly, in no hurry to return to my empty house, and think about Remington James and the dark night he spent some twenty miles and three years away from where I am now.
What were you doing out there? Was it really just to check your camera traps? How’d you wind up on the far side of Cutoff Island? Was there really a murdered woma
n? What happened to her? Who was she? Why hasn’t anyone missed her? Come looking for her? Did Robin Wilson and his corrupt cop force cover it up?
When I get back into town, I drive by my house and continue down toward the river to Byrd Parker Drive where Reggie and Merrick live.
I don’t call or text, just show up unannounced.
Merrick McKnight, a former journalist and now true crime podcaster, lives with his two children in an old clapboard house not far from where Reggie lives with her mom and son in a single wide mobile home close to the landing. Though they don’t live together, they night as well, and I’m far more likely to find them at the same place, so I start with Reggie’s.
Reggie’s mom, Sylvia Summers, opens the door.
“John,” she says, “what a pleasant surprise. Come on in. How are you?”
“I’m good,” I say. “How are you?”
“Not bad for a sick old lady,” she says. “Not bad at all.”
Reggie and Merrick are on the couch. Merrick pauses the movie they’re watching—a Nordic crime thriller about a cop with insomnia I vaguely recognize—and they stand.
“Everything okay?” Reggie asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “Sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to ask y’all a few questions.”
“What’s up?” Reggie says.
“Have a seat,” Sylvia says. “John, would you like some coffee?”
“No thank you. Won’t be able to sleep as it is.”
“I don’t sleep much anymore anyway,” she says, “so I drink it day and night. It’s my one remaining vice and I can’t get enough of it.”
I sit in a chair not far from where Merrick and Reggie are on the couch.
Sylvia starts walking down the hallway. “I’m going to finish the letter I was working on before. Call me when y’all are ready to start the movie back. It was good to see you, John.”
“I won’t stay long at all,” I say. “Just a few minutes.”
“Take your time. I’m in no rush. Got nowhere to be, nothing to do. I already figured out who did it, just want to see the end for confirmation. Come back for dinner sometime soon.”
She disappears.
“Do you have news about Daniel?” Merrick asks.
The Remington James Box Set Page 21