"I don't know. I guess I do feel somewhat kindly toward him now. I understand him better now than I did seven years ago. And somehow he's just not as bad as the young ones. The ones who should know better. The ones who could go into any business."
"He ate manatee, for chrissake."
"It was to survive, Thorn."
"That's probably the same thing the White brothers and Joshua Bond and all the other ones say. They're just trying to survive."
"It's different."
She shook her head, kept her eyes on the road, and was silent.
"Living off the land is one thing," Thorn said. "Ripping off the land is another."
Allison cut a look his way, saw the clench of his jaw. She looked back at the road, into the rearview mirror, and slowed to let a transfer truck blow past.
"Crotch was a pioneer," she said. "His only problem is he's lived a few years too long."
"You put him in jail. He made threats on your life. But you don't hate him."
She watched three great white herons drift low over a distant mahogany hammock. Wing tip to wing tip, they cruised like a squadron of angels coming down to escort another soul from this mortal plain.
"Thirty years ago," she said, "when I was a kid, Crotch Meriwether used to go to the Shack and take the Ravenel men hunting — my father, my uncles. I remember seeing pictures of him in my family album, a tall, sunken-faced man with long dark hair standing in the background looking shy. The other men were all excited, flushed and smiling, gathered around the kill. But I could see who the real hunter was from looking at his eyes. How serious he was, how intent, staring awkwardly into the camera.
"Then when I began the protection league, started looking around for bad guys to go after, Crotch occurred to me. I found out where he lived from some of the Miccosukees who knew Julius. I trekked out to his house. Because of who I was, Crotch trusted me. It took some wheedling, but I got him to agree to sell me a dozen gator skins. They were on the federal endangered list at the time.
"A few weeks later I came back to his place all wired up, and I got the whole transaction on tape. After that I only saw him once more, his afternoon in court. He wouldn't look at me.
"But now, from this vantage point, when I think about what I did, using his loyalty to my father like that to trap him, I feel guilty as hell. I betrayed a friendship and a trust Julius had worked hard to build. My father was a wealthy man, and the Crotch Meriwethers of the world usually stayed clear of men like him. But Meriwether and my dad got to respect each other. There was a kinship. I could tell from the way my father used to talk about him, and I could hear it in Crotch's voice when he recollected my dad that first time we met.
"So yeah, it's true, when he was in Raiford he threatened me, and I believe he meant it. But looking back on who I was back then, the hurt I must have given that man, threatening to kill me seems like a reasonable thing. Maybe even an honorable thing."
"Oh, come on."
"And think about it," Allison said, giving Thorn a difficult smile. "If he'd actually succeeded, Winslow would be alive today."
***
Fifty years back, Crotch Meriwether hauled the coral stones out into the saw grass marsh by shrimp trawler, making the arduous trip from Everglades City, navigating across the dangerous oyster beds of the Ten Thousand Islands, going up Chatham River till he ran aground and could go no further. Then he and his mules would slog the last twenty miles through streams and sloughs, water to his hips. Mosquitoes so thick, he had to breathe through a handkerchief.
He built his stone house big, like a national monument to hermits. One very large room, probably six hundred feet square. Tall windows placed high on the walls, rough cedar floors. And in the dead center of all that open space was a magnificent spiral stairway that twirled up to a loft where Crotch kept his cot. He'd salvaged the iron stairway from the debris of the Cape Hendry lighthouse after the hurricane of '36 reduced it to rubble. And now, more than fifty years later, that polished metal still gave off the faint glow of long-gone craftsmanship.
On Allison's first visit, the place had revolted her. It was an oppressive and tawdry museum of the trapper's trade, and going inside the house was as abhorrent to her as if she'd entered the unholiest inner sanctum of Lucifer himself.
The walls were covered with gator skins and the pelts of deer and raccoons, bears, panthers, and nearly every snake that flourished in those parts. There were skulls, too, and a few trophy heads, a wild boar, a bear cub, an eight-point buck. He'd also hung up his collection of vicious, sharp-toothed traps. And there were boiling tubs, awls and scoops and ladles and needles, the sinister gadgets he used in the crude surgery of animal skinning. She remembered the air in that big room, choked with carbolic acid and the stench of decaying fur.
And she recalled vividly his assortment of pistols and rifles, his array of knives, and his prized collection of hand-forged, razor-edged machetes.
CHAPTER 23
Fifteen miles past Monroe Station, Allison wheeled off Tamiami Trail and circled behind an abandoned souvenir shop. She headed south along a narrow gravel road, and fifty yards from the highway, behind the gutted remnants of a storage shed, she located the jeep trail the park service maintained for their firefighters. She swung onto it, heading now into the heartland of the Glades. She shifted into four-wheel drive and bumped across the ditches and potholes, hard-packed corrugated stretches, keeping them moving steadily south. Branches clawed at the sides of the Cherokee, the dense canopy putting them in a dusty twilight, continuing for three quarters of an hour, till the road dead-ended at a thicket of vines, mahogany, and fiddlewood.
They got out, unloaded the jon boat, sprayed each other front and back with insect repellent, then lifted the aluminum skiff above their heads, Allison in front, and began to portage into the dense tangle of branches. She held to a southerly course, fighting through the lashing branches, the snarls of vine and thick spiderwebs. Around them the trunks of the trees were covered with peeling gray lichens, their branches decorated with bromeliads, Virginia creepers, bright yellow snails, and an occasional cottonmouth.
Silently, Thorn took more than his half of the jon boat's weight. Along the trail, limestone outcroppings alternated with mushy earth, making every step a new adjustment. Allison stumbled over the marl and rocks; still, she managed to keep a brisk pace, Thorn breathing quietly behind her.
Though it was early still, nine-thirty, in only an hour or two, when the sun was higher, the air would clot with humidity and every movement would cost twice as much effort. It was punishing enough now, but the return trip would be hellish.
They forded small streams flowing dark with tannin-stained water. They struggled across brackish marshes that opened up to the enormous sky, splashing through water to their ankles, the noise of their approach flushing cormorants and great white herons, causing redbelly turtles to dive for cover.
On the high ground alongside another marsh, they rested briefly and watched a reddish egret standing a few feet away, poised, its neck cocked like a drawn bow, its huge wings spread to throw a shadow across the surface of the water so it could better select its prey. They waited until it struck, coming out of the water with a small bluegill in its beak.
"So you know where we are?"
"Roughly," she said.
"Roughly?" Thorn smiled through his sweat. "How roughly?"
"We're about ninety miles north of Cuba."
"Well, good," Thorn said. "As long as we're not lost."
By eleven the invisible steam had begun to rise around them. Breathe too hard and fast, you could drown in that air. Allison halted on the bank of a narrow creek. They set the jon boat down. Thorn wiped the sweat from his face. Allison sprayed more repellent into her hands, bathed it across her cheeks and forehead, coated her ears. She offered the can to Thorn but he waved it off.
"From here, it's just another three or four miles. Down that way."
She motioned at the creek. A hundred yards downstream
it doglegged to the right and disappeared into a dark mesh of mangroves and loblollies.
"Is it passable?"
"It was the last time I was here. Barely."
"Seven years ago."
She nodded.
Thorn poled the jon boat for half an hour, sliding them across the clear, still water. The twisty creek was nearly blocked with mangroves at several spots, branches whacking them in the face as they snaked around bends. Twice they were forced to tip the skiff halfway out of the water to wedge through narrow passages.
"You did this by yourself last time," Thorn said.
"That's right."
"And you could manage it this time too. You don't need me."
She looked at his smile, half serious.
"I could manage," she said. "But I don't mind the company."
The silence was a solemn weight in the air, as though some great suppressing presence was stalking in the nearby woods, and all the noisy creatures were aware of him and had stifled themselves, hunkering down till he passed. Not even a single gator floated in the stream, none along the banks.
With her jeans soaked to the knees, the Ace bandage on her ankle turned to a soggy mess. She peeled it off, used it as a pad as she kneeled in the front of the boat. Thorn poled from the rear, leaning his weight into the long fiberglass rod, sweating profusely, only the deep rasp of his breath audible now. Allison stayed low in the bow, parrying the swipes of twigs and limbs.
At the tributaries, the current boiled. Big fish hung under shadowy crags. Off to the east she caught glimpses through the mangroves and stunted oaks of the wide, sunny prairie beyond. Thorn groaned softly with each thrust of the pole. No doubt his hands were blistered, his back stiffening up. They crept deeper into the Glades, and with each mile the gloomy silence hardened around them.
Several times they lost their way in the maze of islands and diverging streams, coming around the same bend, seeing the same lightning-scorched pine three different times. It was almost noon when they emerged into a small pond surrounded by sabal palms and palmetto, a thick stand of saw grass, and Allison sighed and pronounced that they'd arrived.
Twenty yards south of the pond, the back side of Meriwether's great stone house was barely visible behind a dense stand of mahogany and magnolia, cabbage palms and shrubs of every kind.
Thorn waded through the water, hauling the skiff onto high ground, peering at the house as he worked. Allison sat down beside the boat and massaged her aching ankle.
"Intriguing architecture," Thorn said. "Early crematorium."
"Unfortunately, Mr. Meriwether is not at home."
"How do you know?"
"He would have been out here by now. In fact, I've been expecting him to appear any second for the last half hour. I don't know what his technique is, but he's got some kind of brainwave radar, anyone comes poling down Matheson Creek like we did, Crotch Meriwether knows about it miles upstream."
"He's probably out slaughtering a few manatees for supper."
Allison sat down on the overturned jon boat and scanned the surrounding woods. Something wasn't right. The silence that had followed them downstream was now a freakish hush. No bird calls, no rattle of underbrush, no heavy flap of wing. Not even a pulse of wind to stir the dry leaves. It was beginning to unnerve her. Beginning to make her doubt her plan, the whole misguided day.
When it happened, Allison was lost in the layers of her meditation, but somehow she heard it all, every brutal nuance, and could replay the moment, parse it into microseconds, each awful sound. The groan of a man straining, a blade's quiet whistle as it sliced the air in half, the nauseating crunch of human flesh and bone, followed instantly by the whanging double note of a whipsaw. And in the second it took to swing around, Allison felt all her confidence collapse, a frail old building imploding inside her, falling into itself dust and chaos.
Somehow Crotch Meriwether had materialized from the open field and clubbed Thorn to the ground, and now as Allison whirled and screamed, the tall man raised his bright machete over Thorn's fallen body for a second blow.
Thorn lay facedown in the grass, the tall man's brogan planted squarely on the back of his neck. Though his face was smashed sideways into the dirt and weeds, Thorn managed to bark out a muffled threat as he clawed the ground, trying to push himself up.
Before Allison could rise, Meriwether chopped the machete down, a glancing blow against the side of Thorn's skull. Blood erupted through his thick blond hair, and began to leak down his right cheek. His body went limp.
Meriwether hopped back from him, glared across at Allison, and held up the long blade and twisted it in the light to show her he'd used the flat, unsharpened side.
"Don't want to dull my blade just yet," he said, and smiled at her. "Might need it later."
Allison wailed, and hurled herself at the man, but he dodged a half step to his left, snapped out a bony forearm and cracked her across the bridge of her nose.
She staggered backward, her head thrown up, face tilted to the sky, and she watched an asteroid shower explode, bright crimson comets etched against the black heavens. Then her body tottered, and she felt herself step forward off a ledge. And she dropped — a slow, pleasant free fall through miles of empty space.
***
Thursday, Orlon and Rayon slept late. It wasn't till eleven that they arrived at the warehouse. Wearing matching Nike warm-ups, Orlon in dark blue, Ray in white with red striping. While Ray unlocked the office door, Orlon stood behind him, buzzing his cordless razor over his slick head, scraping away some last neurotic stubble.
Ray got the door open and stepped a foot inside the front office, and stopped short. Speechless, he stared at the overturned desk, the shattered computer, fluorescent lights dangling, shelves pulled over, books and magazines and papers strewn everywhere, an electric sputter coming from somewhere. Then he saw the snakes. Goddamn snakes slithering through all the debris.
For a moment he thought he should go back outside, shut the door, take a deep breath, open it again and maybe everything would be back in place.
"Would you fucking look at this," Orlon said. "The entire Mormon Tabernacle Choir's been in here having an orgy."
Ray stepped over the broken watercooler, took a look down the hallway toward the warehouse. Back there, standing in a swath of sunlight, he saw the orangutan squatting over some papers on the floor, taking a dump.
Orlon banged his razor down, pushed past Ray, stalked down the hall, grabbed the ape by the scruff of the neck, hauled it over to its cage and flung it inside. He told Ray he was gonna kill the damn thing, throw one of the diamondbacks or the mamba into its cage, see which one came out alive. Look what the little bastard did, all the iguanas loose, the snakes going crazy feeding on all those white mice. Little dabs of white scrabbling everywhere.
"That ape is worth forty thousand bucks. You aren't going to kill it, man."
"So deduct it from my next paycheck, 'cause I'm strangling the little son of a bitch right now."
"We don't even know he did this."
"Hey, Rayon, look around you, the place is locked up tight. You don't see any windows broken, do you? The alarm's not ringing. And right over there, the ape's cage is standing wide open. Who you think did it? The mice? The fucking iguanas?"
"Cool down, now. Your blood pressure's about to detonate out your ears."
Orlon stayed put, kept glaring in at the ape. "Listen," Ray said, "why don't you go over to the airport, see about the Bangkok shipment. It was supposed to be in last night. Calm yourself down, and I'll straighten up around here." Orlon cursed the ape a couple more times, bringing his face close to the bars, the orangutan rolling over on its back, kicking its feet playfully at Orlon.
"Go on, man. When you get back, things'll be normal again."
Orlon stalked off toward the front door, muttering to himself as he went.
The shipment at the airport was nothing major. Just some animals they'd ordered a few weeks back, unrelated to the exotic one
s they were assembling for Patrick. It was Ray's idea, invest some of that extra loot they'd been making lately to build up their stock. Made smart business sense. Don't let all this cash slide through their fingers.
Back in September they'd faxed their man in Bangkok a list of legal things they wanted, mainly snakes, some turtles, tarantulas, and toads. Though the unwritten agreement was that the guy would ship an extra surprise or two that wasn't listed on the shipping receipt — then bill them a few weeks later by fax.
That's how they did it sometimes, showing up to take charge of a legitimate order, lizards, iguanas, then if the Fish and Wildlife turd-brains were there holding the shipment, ready to throw them in jail for the illegal macaques or chimp or baby gibbons in the same crate, Ray and Orlon would get all shocked. "What the hell? We didn't order that. That's an endangered, illegal animal protected by international treaty. This is obviously some kind of stupid fuckup, that asshole in Bangkok can't read goddamn English. I mean, hey, officer, you see a chimp or a macaque on the shipping manifest anywhere? On our order forms? No? Well, see, there you go, it's that fucking guy in Bangkok did this, not us."
"Yeah," the wildlife guy would say. "That same asshole in Bangkok made that same mistake last month and the month before that and before that. His English isn't getting any better."
But what the hell could they do? Oh, yeah, sure, they'd confiscate the animal, register another complaint against the White brothers, but if they tried to make a case out of it, the state's attorney would drop it in a half second. Why bother a couple of legitimate entrepreneurs just because some illiterate Asian twelve thousand miles away screwed up?
While Orlon was away at the airport, Ray attacked the mess. He set things upright. Swept up the broken glass. Then he spent a while just locating all the animals, snatching them up, dumping them back in their pens. An hour into it, he found a couple of cobras burrowed behind the bathroom wallboard, already starting to build nests out of the insulation.
Gone Wild (Thorn Series Book 4) Page 23