Hell's Bay

by James W. Hall

  When I kissed her, Mona held back. Lips so indifferent I almost drew away. But a second or two later, her mouth warmed and softened and I felt her rise from somewhere distant and wintry, as though she’d been hibernating and was shaking free of that slumber, coming into my arms with a slow, drowsy need and a ravenous hunger.

  She planted her hand flat against my chest as if feeling for my heartbeat or else preparing to shove me away.

  As our kiss deepened, the hand coasted down my shirt, button by button. At my waist, she wormed a finger inside the fabric and circled in on my navel. She broke away from the kiss, drew a long gasp, smiled at my bewilderment, then brought her lips to mine again with new frankness. Her fingertip still skimmed the edges of my navel.

  It felt like more than simple physical exploration. Something instinctive. As if driven by impulse, Mona was harkening back to the primal situation. Invoking the umbilical, the broken cord. The scar that marked the severed union between mother and child, one generation and the next, the closest bond two people ever have, and the endless exile that follows.

  As I was easing her back onto the deck, Holland cleared his throat and broke us apart.

  He was in the doorway of the wheelhouse, camera in hand. But he managed, with some new show of restraint, not to snap us in our intimacy.

  “Sorry, kids,” he said. “But Uncle Fuck-up is trying to fix things. You better see this. He’s pretty trashed.”

  Before I stood, I looked into Mona’s eyes. Neither Bates nor Milligan, but more than their match in certain ways. A woman who easily could have surrendered long ago to the poisonous rivalries, the lessons in isolation at the core of that family, but somewhere she’d overcome, and had even managed to win for herself the childhood Abigail had not granted my mother.

  When we made it outside and saw what was unfolding, I cursed and hammered a fist against the rail. Milligan was in one of the kayaks and was paddling at a leisurely clip, heading east into the open bay, closing in on the spot where the killer had instructed me to go.

  Mona called out to him, then called again and another time, her voice lost in the wind. Milligan continued to paddle.

  We hustled down to the lower deck. Rusty was there, hands cupped to her mouth, bellowing his name, commanding him to turn around. Holland took a picture of John, focusing his long lens.

  Only Annette stayed inside, typing away on her laptop.

  “Here we go,” Holland said. “Party time.”

  He offered me the telephoto lens, but I waved it off. I could already make out the yellow bass boat idling from the mouth of the distant creek.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  I ducked back into the salon, found the walkie-talkie on the bar, thumbed the call button, then thumbed it again.

  Annette looked up from her typing, saw what I was doing, and hastily settled her fingers on the keys to get it all down as it was unfolding.

  In my hand, the radio crackled and the woman spoke.

  “Yes.” Same dispassionate tone. Neither question nor statement, just a dead one-syllable word floating through the ether.

  “Leave him alone. He’s not the one you want.”

  “This is Thorn I’m talking to?”

  “That’s right. Turn your boat around and wait. When he’s safely back on board, I’ll meet you out there.”

  Rusty had opened the door and was listening to my speech. She shook her head firmly. No way was she going to allow me to put myself in that kind of jeopardy, not on her watch.

  “I give you my word,” I said into the mike, staring hard at Rusty. “I’ll be there. Let him turn around and come back, I’ll give you what you want.”

  “How good is your word?” It was more challenge than question.

  “You’ll have to trust me.”

  There was a long silence. I could hear the light swells sloshing against the hull, the purr of the generator turning gasoline into fluorescent light and chilly air.

  When she came back, her voice was sharp.

  “Your word any better than Abigail Bates’s?”

  “You drowned her, didn’t you? You killed that old woman.”

  Rusty’s shoulders slumped. She stared down at the carpet, shaking her head in helpless disbelief.

  “Why’d you do it? Who hired you? What’s your name, goddammit?” I didn’t expect answers. I wanted to goad her, get that anger to foam up again. I wanted her, most of all, to focus on me. “What’s wrong? You afraid to talk? What’re you worried about? You’re not too smart, are you? Afraid to engage with me, afraid I’ll confuse you, manipulate you?”

  “You got it wrong,” she said, resuming her patient tone.

  “I don’t think so. I think you’re the one who’s got it wrong. You’ve lost your way. Nobody drowns an eighty-six-year-old woman. Nobody with a soul. Nobody human.”

  “There,” she said. “Now you’re getting it.”

  A flash of chilly sweat lit up my skin, and in the next moment my cotton shirt was glued to my back.

  This woman was no wild-eyed maniac. That’s what she was telling me. No emotional zombie, no flailing crazy. She was like me, like Rusty and the rest of us, except for one small defect: Somewhere along the way she’d stopped giving a shit. And she recognized the fact, knew how far she’d drifted. There was discipline in her actions, self-control. She wasn’t the kind to be rattled or misdirected. This wasn’t the brash and reckless adversary I’d been imagining and secretly hoping for.

  Through the back window I watched the bass boat cruising slowly toward John Milligan’s kayak. Maybe a hundred yards separated them.

  Mona pushed through the door and saw me holding the walkie-talkie.

  “Can she hear?” Mona whispered.

  “No.”

  “Dad’s got a gun.”

  “What?”

  “He takes it with him everywhere. A Beretta automatic, like Abigail’s.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “He was carrying it today when we were fishing. Holster under his arm. That’s why he kept his Windbreaker on the whole day.”

  “Oh, great,” Rusty said. “Fucking wonderful.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that before? You didn’t think it was relevant?”

  “It honestly slipped my mind.”

  “So is there anything else you haven’t shared?”

  Mona flinched, then glanced back out the window at her father paddling steadily toward the approaching boat.

  “He’s an excellent marksman,” she said. “Goes to the range every weekend. He’s trying to save us. I didn’t know he had it in him. Risking his life to save us.”

  I wasn’t so sure that’s what was happening, but I let it slide. I wasn’t certain of anyone’s motives anymore. Not even my own.

  In the stiff silence, Mona’s gaze drifted back to me for a moment, and the hurt I’d given her was clear. The flush in her cheeks radiated upward into her hairline, and her ears were glowing with warmth as if she’d been bitch-slapped by some charmer who’d lured her close with sweet talk just to get a clear crack at her.

  I told her I was sorry, and after a moment she nodded.

  I pressed the call button again. When the woman didn’t respond, I spoke in a loud, unmistakable voice: “Let him go and I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  There was no response for several moments. The bass boat continued to close in on the kayak. They were about fifty yards apart. A good marksman would have had a high-percentage shot by then.

  “Maybe I’ll take all of you down,” the woman said. “Just to be sure.”

  “Sure of what?”

  There was no response.

  “Sure of what?”

  The radio clicked on, then a second or two of static ended with another click, as if the woman had been about to reply but caught herself.

  I smacked the walkie-talkie onto the bar and headed to the door.

  Rusty blocked me, lifted both hands.

  “No, Thorn. Absolutely not.”

  I
drew a breath, tried for a coherent sentence, though the whistle shrieking in my head made that nearly impossible.

  “I’m getting the other kayak and paddling out there.”

  “Why? Are you suicidal?”

  “I have to, Rusty.”

  “Thorn, goddammit. For once in your life think it through.”

  I reached for the doorknob and she steered my arm away.

  “John put himself in the middle of this. Going off halfcocked apparently runs in your family, Thorn. But here’s how it is. For some reason she wants you, which makes you our bargaining chip. Think about it. You rush out there, she shoots you, the rest of us are out of options.”

  I brushed past her, went through the doorway and into a hard gust. As the wind direction changed, it had repositioned the Mothership on the axis of our anchor line, swinging our stern closer by thirty yards to John’s kayak.

  Out in the bay the bass boat revved, then the woman slammed it into gear, gunned it, and steered straight for John. I grabbed the camera from Holland’s grasp and focused the lens tight on the action. Ten yards away from MiUigan, she swung to the right and cut the motor, slewing sideways toward the bow of his kayak.

  I saw the black flicker of the automatic in John’s right hand, and the wake from her boat swelling under him, jostling his aim.

  “Why the fuck doesn’t he shoot?” Holland said.

  I watched as the woman lifted her own weapon, what looked like a bulky .45, and held it steady on John. She was shielded by the boat’s console, exposing only her head above that pulpit of fiberglass. They were twenty feet apart, the choppy water dying out around them.

  Then her lips moved. She was speaking to John, and I watched as he replied. I couldn’t read their expressions, could not decode the tension in their stances. The lens flattened all that. They could be negotiating, or arguing, or greeting each other with the warmth of lovers after a long separation. They held their pistols in place and conversed, a back-and-forth that lasted half a minute. In the middle of their conversation a cormorant sailed into the frame and flopped onto the water between them and began to paddle toward the kayak. Glossy black bird, a notorious moocher looking for scraps.

  Whatever passed between John and the woman caused Milligan to lower his aim, take hold of his paddle, and ease alongside the bass boat.

  “Give me that.” Mona reached for the camera.

  I released it into her grasp, leaned forward, and squinted at the scene. John rose unsteadily to stand on the seat of the kayak. The woman set her pistol on the console and bent over the starboard gunwale and held out her hand. Milligan took hold of it, and she boosted him on board.

  They exchanged words, then she returned to the wheel, cut it sharply, and accelerated back toward the creek.

  “What the hell just happened?” Rusty said.

  “Didn’t look like he was forced,” said Holland. “That fucker was on the dark side the whole time.”

  Mona lowered the camera and stared down at the water slapping against the transom. I watched the bass boat carve a sweeping turn into the creek mouth, then disappear behind the veil of mangroves.

  All I could be sure of was that Milligan knew exactly how defenseless we were, and if he’d teamed up with the woman, as it appeared, we were now outgunned, and we’d been seriously outsmarted. If massacring us was their mission, they had no reason to wait. Once Milligan filled her in about our lack of defense, they could simply return within range and circle the Mothership with guns blasting.

  I scanned the restless bay, watched the drifts of foam gathering at the shoreline. The cormorant nosed around the bobbing kayak for a few more minutes then flailed its wings and executed a clumsy takeoff. Around us the wind hummed through the railings and set off a chorus of clangs and tinkles as it rushed across the open decks.

  “That slime weasel,” Holland said. “That lying cocksucker.”

  Mona’s eyes were blurred. Her shoulders were hunched forward, and for a moment I thought she might be about to hurl herself overboard.

  “It doesn’t make sense. Dad and her. It makes no sense at all.”

  “Who is she, Mona?”

  She shook her head, her lips sealed tight against the words muscling into her throat.

  “Inside,” I said. “Everybody inside.”

  Rusty moved to the door and Holland followed, but Mona kept her grip on the rail, squinting against the gray sunlight that pulsed off the surface of the bay. She was focused on the trail of white froth, the dying wake of the bass boat.

  Wrapping an arm around her shoulder, I drew her from the edge and steered her toward the doorway. Rusty waited there, her gaze alert to my arm cradling Mona. As I approached, her lungs emptied in a slow, silent heave, and her shoulders sagged. The recognition settled on her face, grew firm and final.

  As I passed, I dodged her gaze and guided Mona into the salon and eased her onto the couch. She slumped back against the cushions and stared through the starboard bank of windows toward the distant creek mouth.

  “What’s going on, Mona? You saw something. You recognized her.”

  Before she could answer an electronic ring tone sounded, then it played again. The first dozen notes of some chugachuga rap song.

  Annette extracted the cell phone from the holster fixed to her belt. She flicked it open with a practiced snap and huddled forward, pressing it to her ear.

  In unison Holland and Rusty went for their own phones, but after they’d fiddled with them for half a minute, it was clear that neither had reception.

  Annette glared up at me as I positioned myself in front of her and held out my hand.

  “Tell her this trip’s a total bust,” Annette said into the phone. “There won’t be any article. I’m not about to give these people one word of promo. They’re a bunch of worldclass losers.”

  She got out one more bit of juvenile complaint before I bent down and pried the phone from her hand and snapped it shut.

  “You fool,” Annette said. “That was my editor.”

  “You didn’t say we were in trouble. You didn’t ask her to send help.”

  “What difference would that make? She’s in New York.”

  Holland groaned.

  I opened the phone. In the small screen’s bottom right corner the signal-strength indicator was showing a single bar.

  It was instinct that made me dial Sugar’s cell. I pressed the phone to my ear and walked to the rear door as the wavering ring faded and returned.

  Apparently when the wind swung us around on the anchor, it pushed us thirty or forty yards farther east toward the distant mainland, just enough to bring us into the fringes of the nearest cell tower’s coverage.

  I heard Sugarman answer. Down a well full of static.

  “Listen, Sugar, it’s me.”

  I heard him say my name, then his voice broke off.

  I pulled the phone from my ear and checked the reception. Nothing. I opened the salon door and stepped outside, extended the phone toward the east, feeling like some Stone Age fool presenting a sacred stone to the sun. Still nothing.

  I went back into the salon, grabbed a pair of scissors from a kitchen drawer, located one of the laminated aerial photographs Rusty had made, and snipped out the section I wanted and tucked it inside my shirt.

  I went back onto the deck, climbed the starboard ladder to the roof. Keeping my profile low, I held the phone up to the sky. Still no bars, still feeling like an idiot.

  Maybe it was some electromagnetic fluke that brought us fleetingly into range, something totally unrelated to the houseboat’s shift closer to the mainland. But there was only one way to find out for sure.

  A moment later when Rusty appeared on the roof, I had the green kayak loose from the bungee cords and was angling it over the edge of the upper deck.

  “What the hell’re you doing?”

  “Stay low,” I said. “Down, Rusty.”

  She glanced back at the creek mouth, then settled to her knees.

  �
�Thorn, talk to me.”

  “I’ll stay in the mangroves.” I held up Annette’s phone. “Just go far enough to get a signal.”

  “You’re a crazy man.”

  “Roger that.”

  She helped me get the kayak down to the water, bringing it alongside. She held it steady while I climbed into the cockpit.

  I wriggled a hand into my shirt and came out with the section of the laminated map. An overhead view of Cardiac Bay’s eastern edge, our mooring spot, and the creeks and channels just to the east. I got my bearings, ruled out a halfdozen dead-end creeks, and studied the maze of wider canals that penetrated the solid forest of mangroves. I was looking for some waterway that carried me as far east toward the civilized mainland as I could get.

  Then I looked out at the water, sighting across almost a mile of open bay, and located what appeared from the photograph to be the veiled opening of a narrow canal that led maybe a hundred yards almost due east. A canal I would never have noticed without Rusty’s aerial image. Only trouble was, the canal dead-ended on the fringes of the inlet where the shooter was.

  “Pretty funny,” said Rusty. “You, of all people, depending on modern technology.”

  I peered at the horizon as if I could catch a glimpse of the wispy beams of electrons showering down from distant towers.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Funny as hell.”

  I pushed away and dipped a paddle into the choppy water. Bobbing ten feet off the stern, I brought it around to face her.

  “Tell me something, Rusty.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why’d the shooter leave the walkie-talkie?”

  “What?”

  “If she thought she’d killed me already, why leave the radio behind? And more than that, why bring the damn thing along in the first place?”

  She gave me a bewildered shrug.

  “I left it on the bar,” I said. “Keep an eye on it.”

  And I dug the paddle in deep.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  A few minutes before his three o’clock at the Pine Tree School, Sugarman made a quick detour by Dillard’s office. The good doctor was at lunch, so Sugar took a run at his secretary, Mary Suarez, a brisk woman of about fifty, with closecropped hair, orange lipstick, and a pugnacious squint.