One major storm-and not necessarily one of a hurricane force-could wipe out the entire island, every house of strav/’ easily coming down and its floating counterpart quickly engulfed by a patient, hungry wolf at each door- the Atlantic on one side, the Gulf of Mexico on the other. Not unlike living near a dormant volcano biding its time, awaiting its moment of supremacy. These were Jessica’s thoughts as they pulled into the dark shadows of this isolated world.
Their car and that of the local deputy did not seem to disturb the solitude here in the least, and no one came out to greet their headlights. They climbed from their vehicle and followed the silent deputy to the door.
No one met them at the door, but on the inside, TV voices fought for preeminence with children in various stages of yelling, laughter and complaining; the household seemed bent on sending its industrious noise out into the world, but when the deputy knocked, the house fell as silent as a tomb, and when the man of the house cracked the door, he did so with a sleek-barreled twelve-gauge shotgun firmly in hand.
“ Whataya want? Oh, it’s you, Carl. What the devil brings you out here after dark?”
“ Got a couple people here from Miami to see Marilee.”
“ Miami?”
“ Detective Quincey’s with the metro police up there, and
Dr. Coran-she’s from the FBI, Mr. Lovette. They want to talk to your niece Marilee ‘bout-”
“ Reckon I know what it’s ‘bout, Carl.”
“ It’s official business, Mr. Lovette. They need to interview her about what she knows… you know, all that business on America’s Most Wanted?’’
A glance around the grounds showed Jessica that these people hadn’t completely ignored the American Dream. They were wired for cable via a satellite dish, and a broken- down, used ‘67 Cadillac sat alongside a pickup under trees beside the house.
“ They got the reward money with them?” he asked.
The deputy dropped his gaze. “It don’t work that way, Carl. They talk to Marilee, and if it leads to this pervert, then you’ll see some reward come of it.”
Jessica and Quincey had been told by Carl the Deputy that Marilee had refused any interview outside her home with anyone but America’s Most Wanted or Unsolved Mysteries, both TV programs having been contacted with her story. Jessica immediately understood the situation. Her uncle, a man in his fifties, was trying to sell her story to the highest bidder, the American path to riches. “You can’t withhold information from these folks, Mr. Lovette. You do and it’s called obstruction of justice, interference with an ongoing investigation, Jake.” The door remained closed, a chain still between them and Marilee. The deputy warned the man, “Jake, you really don’t wanna climb into that hole… Trust me, Jake.”
“ Don’t worry,” added Quincey, “whatever the girl tells us stays confidential.”
“ You can still work out whatever deal you like with any of them TV producers you like, Mr. Lovette,” added Deputy Carl Wotten.
Jake Lovette sized Quincey up, paying no attention to Jessica at the moment. He then unlatched the door, slowly stepped back, and lowered the shotgun to its resting place beside the door, telling them they were welcome to enter. When Jessica stepped into the ramshackle little house, she immediately noticed the number of babies and children littering the floor, which was plenty littered enough already. Marilee was the eldest child and the woman of the house, it appeared. She was shy, hardly capable of looking at the intruders, fearful of them, keeping her eyes pinned on Quincey as if he were the enemy. Jessica only now felt the lascivious leer of Jake Lovette pass over her. She tried to ignore the man, who smelled of stale beer and perspiration. The air inside was thick with smoke and the odors that come with dirty linen and dirty children.
“ You’re Marilee?” Jessica asked the tall, thin and emaciated young woman who was desperately trying to clean up the place and losing the battle.
She turned, faced Jessica and replied, “Yes.” Her voice was raspy.
“ Also known as Aeriel, Aeriel Monroe? You resided for a time in Miami?”
“ When I run off from home, in Screven, Georgia, I did, yes.” She spoke in a thick Georgia accent which was further hindered by her constricted vocal cords, scars left from her encounter with a man bent on her destruction, if her story could be believed. She hoarsely chastised the children to remove themselves to a back room and to play quietly. It appeared she was not so much being taken care of by concerned relatives here as she’d become, by some mutual consent or contract, her uncle Jake’s live-in maidservant, bottle washer and cook. Jessica momentarily wondered where the children’s mother had run off to.
Marilee/Aeriel had been expecting them, for she wore a flower in her hair, and she’d donned her best, perhaps her only dress which wasn’t a uniform from Nomad’s Pillow Motor Inn, where she worked by day. She wore a cloth choker about her neck in an effort to conceal both the visible and the invisible scars left there after so long a time, and her voice was smoker-thick hoarse, hardly above a whisper. Jessica didn’t need to ask why; it was painfully obvious that she’d lost partial use of her vocal cords due to the murder attempt, which had left her partially obstrutted physically and perhaps permanently scarred psychologically. Whether it was due to Patric Allain or some other monster she’d encountered in the world to which she had run away, this much of her story appeared painfully obvious. Marilee was in a hell of a lot worse shape than Judy Templar had been, Jessica told herself as she dug out a tape recorder from her bag and held it up to everyone’s eyes. “I need your permission, Marilee, to tape our session, for the record.” She looked to Uncle Jake before responding. “I ghat no pro-lem wif that.” Her voice was grating to the ear.
Jessica placed the tape recorder on the water-ringed, wobbly wood table between them, introducing herself and Quincey by their titles and for the record. “You are willingly giving your consent to being taped, Ms. Lovette?”
“ I… I do,” she replied like a nervous bride.
Jessica added, “And we would like to thank you for your cooperation.”
Again Marilee glanced up at Uncle Jake, who hovered about like a second conscience. She asked, “There be henny ra-ra-ward money in dis?”
“ Perhaps… if it leads to an arrest,” Jessica assured both Marilee and her uncle, who winked and smiled back when Jessica looked up at him.
“ Lady, we could sure use it,” Uncle Jake replied, his face and arms tanned so darkly that the skin had become a leather sheath with wrinkles and worry lines as deep and long as wagon ruts. Uncle Jake had been chewing on tobacco the entire time, and now he coughed up a wad of disgusting brown bile and spat out a nearby window. Through the window, Jessica could see the requisite row- boat bobbing, tied to the shack. “Guddem Florida Lottery ain’t worth spit,” Jake added.
“ Marilee, would you tell us now, in your own words, what happened the night of the fourteenth of May when you said you encountered a man who abducted, raped and choked you?”
“ He was the Night Crawler. One I’ve read ‘bout, butatta time, no one… give him a name. He near’t kilt me; it’s a miracle I’m still alive.”
Her lines sounded practiced, Jessica thought, and her voice was sounding more normal as the interview progressed. With Jake hovering nearby, Jessica didn’t doubt Marilee had had plenty of practice. Maybe this was a wild- goose chase. Jessica next asked, “He picked you up at a bar in South Miami?”
“ Tollee’s… I was working nearby.”
Jessica had information that she was hooking nearby and had sat down at the riverside bar to rest her feet and have a beer. “You went to the bar and had a beer, and then what happened?’’
“ He seemed nice; real polite.” She had to speak at an excruciatingly slow pace, each word painful. “Thought he must have money; he was well-dressed, you know, so when he offered to take me river-riding, why, hell… I said, why not? So I went with him.”
“ Did you ever tell the police this?”
“ Sure I did, b
ut they didn’t any of them want to hear it, not from me… not at the time.” Jessica realized why. The girl had been found naked, swimming in from the sea. Police at the time quickly determined that she was new to the area, an “out-of-town prostitute” with an arrest record. Detective Mark Samernow took her “story” of innocence and filed it away and forgot about it. It explained Samernow’s sourness from day one. He’d had information relative to the case but hadn’t recognized it at the time. He knew later, long after losing Marilee’s trail, that he’d had an eyewitness and that he’d let her go. But Marilee was among the first whom the killer had taken in Samernow’s jurisdiction. Samernow, having a daughter of like age and appearance, was likely sickened and disgusted by Marilee and wanted to be shed of her as quickly and efficiently as the system allowed, and so it went.
“ Go on, tell us what happened,” encouraged Quincey, whose size made the walls here bulge.
She got up, paced to the door leading to the bedroom; she closed it on the children. “Don’t want them to hear this. Told it all to Uncle Jake.”
The man was her senior by perhaps twenty-five or thirty years, and Jessica realized that Marilee had literally turned herself over to him for a roof over her head, and food to eat. “Go on,” Jessica gently repeated.
She told of her seduction in broad strokes, embarrased still before Uncle Jake. Jessica kept interrupting, asking questions, searching for specifics. ‘ ‘What exactly did he say to you? What promises did he make?”
“ Promised to take me all around in his boat.”
“ All around where?”
“ Everyplace.” A bit exasperated with the girl, Jessica again asked, “Around the harbor, around Miami, the state?”
“ Said he’d take me to places I never heard of before.”
“ What places? Do you remember any of the names?”
“ Carmen islands, I think he said, or maybe Caramel or Caravel?”
“ Cozumel, maybe?”
“ No… not that. Someplace in the Caribbean, he said.”
Jessica didn’t want to lead her, but she wanted the girl to corroborate what their other witness, Judy Templar, had said about the Cayman Islands, but Marilee simply could not recall the exact name on her own.
“ Go on,” Jessica gently nudged her on.
Marilee described how the romantic moment turned sour in a sudden blink; she told of his brutality toward her, his repeatedly choking her and how ferociously she had fought back. She told of waking up in the cabin of his boat and pretending she was not yet conscious, and how she could not swallow. She knew instantly that he was dangerous, and that she had been choked near to death more than once by him. A clock on the wall told her that hours had passed.
“ Where did this happen?”
“ On the river.”
“ Just offshore?”
“ Yeah, he never lef sight-a land. Houses, beautiful hotels not two hunerd yards from the boat.” Her hoarse voice caught, snarled on every syllable in the river of her speech. She sounded like a stuttering computer.
“ What else did you see in his cabin?”
“ Nothin’ much… the usual stuff. A bed, a dinin’ area, but I was flat on my back on the floor, without… without no clothes on. He’d torn off my clothes, had raped me and beat me and choked me. I thought he was through with me then, that he thought I were dead, you know? I thought he was sittin’ there wondering what to do with my body by then, but I was wrong.”
“ What do you mean?”
“ He… he had me come to; poured water-damned cold water, salty water from the river-down on me to bring me round.”
Jessica and Quince both knew that the Intracoastal river fronting Miami, as in most areas of the Intracoastal, linked as it was with the sea, was, during high tide in particular, a salty environ.
Jessica put her hand on Marilee’s and gently pressed. “And then?”
She was crying softly now. “I… I…” The stammer, the tears and her now naturally hoarse voice conspired to outwit the tape. “I was choked.”
“ Choked by hand?”
“ Again, yes. He brought me around so he could do it again-even said so. Said I pleased him; said it-killing me over slowlike-it pleased him. Said he liked how I fought.”
“ Then you held a conversation with him?”
“ I pleaded with him, but it only made him wilder.”
“ What kind of voice did he have?” Jessica asked.
“ Mild, pleasant… never above a whisper… as pleasant as pie. All in a pretty accent. English, I think.”
“ How did you escape?” asked Quincey.
“ Second time I came around; it was nearly dawn then, but he was up on deck, tending to something or other there. I… I got up all my nerve and slipped up on deck. My hands were tied with rope, and he had a noose around my neck-a hangman’s noose! I knew if he found me alive again, this time he’d kill me sure. So, I just got out of there. I got up to the top and… and… I ran like a banshee, screaming, and hit the water.”
“ With your hands tied?” asked Jessica.
“ No, no… I found a knife… on the counter, cut the rope ‘n’ got outta there soon as I… I snatched off the noose. But I didn’t have no clothes. Swum ashore stark naked… run up to a house and begged help. Thank God they didn’t turn me away. They give me a blanket and called 911.”
“ He didn’t pursue you?”
“ Sure he did, but by time he’d turned the boat, I was long gone.”
“ Marilee’s as strong a swimmer as ever I seen in a woman,” added Uncle Jake. “Then when you awoke, the motor was chugging?” asked Quincey. “He was taking the boat out of the Intra- coastal? What kind of boat was it? Was there anything special you recall about the boat?”
“ Big is all I know… and no, I don’t know where he was taking it, but we were moving, yes.”
“ Tell me, Marilee, and think hard now,” began Jessica, “when you were in the man’s cabin, did you see anything-anything-the slightest bit out of the ordinary?”
“ What do you mean?”
Jessica tried another tack, asking, “Can you tell me if you saw anything that might tell us something about this monster or his habits? What did you see lying around that cabin, on the bed, on the countertops?”
“ Place was full of instruments.”
“ Instruments?”
“ Computer stuff. A lot of blippin’ and mechanical stuff.”
“ State of the art, would you say?”
“ It was… seemed so, yes.”
“ Anything else catch your eye?” pressed Jessica.
“ Besides the knife? I thoughta using it on him. But jumpin’ for shore seemed the wisest choice I had.”
“ Did you notice anything else unusual before leaving the cabin?’’
“ Well, there were some sewing things.”
“ Sewing things?”
“ Like they use making nets, I think.”
“ Anything else?”
“ Some papers; you know, magazines and stuff like that.”
“ What kind of magazines and papers?”
“ I couldn’t tell you, but they all had to do with fishing and boating, I think.”
Uncle Jake prompted with, “Just try to remember, sugar.”
“ I was half crazed with wantin’ to get out of there. I didn’t look at no damn papers, so how’m I ‘spose to recall… something ‘bout…” She suddenly stopped, as if a flashbulb had just exploded on the horizon of her brain. “What is it, Marilee?” asked her uncle Jake. “Oh… oh, Lordy, God, yeah, he kept sayin’ I’m goin’ to mount you… goin’ to mount you… I took it he meant he was goin’ to rape me again, but… but…”
“ Try to remember,” Jessica encouraged. “It could save lives.”
“ Bastard… bastard… said he was going to stuff and prepare me for mountin’ on his wall, like I was some goddamned billfish or marlin. One of those papers was on how to prepare game fish for… for mounting. I… I guess I forgot
‘bout that part. Maybe, maybe I wanted to forget.”
“ Are you sure that’s what he said?” pressed Jessica, excited by this unsolicited corroboration.
“ I’m more than sure. He… he even said he had experience ‘cause he worked at a place once where trophy fish were done up.”
“ Are you sure he said that?”
“ Said they were turned into works of art, and asked me if I didn’t want to be a forever work of art as a sacrifice for his god, something like Thou or… Thor or something.”
“ Did he say where this place was, where he learned to mount trophy fish? Did he give you a name, anything?” Quincey pleaded.
“ No, nothin’.” Marilee had become too distraught over the memory to go on now, and Jessica felt they had gotten all they might from the young woman who-although far from robust since her encounter with the killer-fit the victim profile preferred by the Night Crawler. Jessica imagined her as having had natural good looks before all this had happened, but the debilitating aftermath of her encounter with this fiend had worked dramatic effects upon her appearance, as well as her self-esteem and confidence as a woman. Of this, Jessica had no doubt. They said their good-byes to Marilee and her uncle. Just outside the cabin, they said good-bye to Carl Wotten, the deputy, who wished them success. His final epitaph: “I hope you catch this sonofabitch and fry him several times over in the chair.”
The night sky was impenetrable, the ocean breeze a purring, sniffing cat, and Jessica, on first hearing the unmistakable sound of soaring tobacco spit thudding into dry leaves, now saw that Uncle Jake was leering out a window at her. She shivered and thought only of getting back to the blacktop safety of U.S. 1.
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