Some People Die Quick

by JC Simmons

  "Yes. I called Vickey and told her to get us some help fast."

  Vickey stood, the blanket still wrapped around her. "I could tell by his voice something bad had happened. He wouldn't calm down, kept saying get the Coast Guard. So I did."

  "How long did it take them to get there?"

  Vickey walked over to the fire, flicked ashes off her cigar. "Anna was a lucky lady. There were three Coast Guard helicopters doing maneuvers off the south end of Chandeleur Island. They responded immediately to my call, and reported overhead at the boat less than five minutes later."

  "It seemed a lot longer to me," George said, shaking his head.

  Vickey went back and sat down in her chair.

  "Was there any doubt that Anna's wounds were from the shark?"

  They both look incredulously at me.

  "The imprints of the bite marks proved it. There were broken teeth still imbedded in a couple of Anna's ribs. One whole tooth remained stuck in her skull."

  George got up, paced in front of the fire. "I identified the teeth. It's one of my areas of study. The teeth of the tiger shark are distinctly serrated from tip to base, much like a hammerhead's teeth, only more concave."

  George was beginning to sweat in front of the fire. The next question needed to be asked, though. "Describe Anna's injuries for me, the way they looked when you got her in the boat."

  George turned pale. Vickey threw the blanket off and sat up in the chair. She shot a fiery glance at me. "Is this necessary?"

  "It's okay, Vickey, I can handle it," George said, looking at me with an expression that intimated he would rather have a root canal then relive the experience. "Her arms were severely damaged; muscles were torn, tendons and nerves exposed. There was one bite completely across the chest, just below the breasts. Both of them were…" He paused, took a deep breath. "Both breasts were torn away. Her face was the worst. The skin was ripped loose, the skull denuded. Bill pulled it back in place and wrapped a towel tightly around her head."

  Did he tell you what happened?"

  "After the Coast Guard helicopter flew her away, he sat in the bow of the boat holding his head in his hands. He was trembling all over and felt really guilty. He thought there was something he could have done to prevent this from happening. I felt bad for him."

  "Did he tell you what happened?" I asked again.

  George sat down in his chair and looked me in the eyes. "He said it was the strangest thing he had seen in his years of diving and studying creatures of the sea. They'd just gotten to the bottom and were moving up on what proved to be the sub. They were at the bow, starting down the portside with Anna in the lead. The tiger shark suddenly came out of nowhere. Anna never saw it. He said it opened its mouth and took Anna in all the way to her waist. The first bite was below the rib cage. Each time the shark opened its mouth to bite, Anna tried to fight her way out. Bill said if it hadn't been for her air tank, the shark would have bitten her in half with that first bite. He said the shark would shake her like a dog with a bone."

  "What happened to the shark after you got Anna in the boat?"

  "It started circling very fast, like it was trying to find something. This was not a typical feeding frenzy behavior. We began to worry because it was almost as big as our boat, and could have sunk us if it had wanted to do so. It left at about the same time the Coast Guard helicopters arrived. Maybe the rotor wash scared it away."

  "Or the stimuli was removed from the water."

  " Something could have rubbed off on Anna's wet suit from her shark repellent experiments. We don't work with her on that, so we have no way of knowing."

  "Yes, that's true," Vickey said. "Only Anna and Susan worked on the repellent experiments."

  "Susan?"

  "Susan Weems. She spent six months here at the lab working with Anna on the Moses Sole toxin. She was a former schoolmate of Anna's from somewhere in Europe. A real strange lady, extremely intelligent, but she left three months before this happened."

  "Do you know where she is now?"

  "No, but I think Anna keeps in touch with her."

  Throwing my cigar in the fire, I said, "Okay, that's enough for tonight. Let's get some shuteye."

  We said goodnight. Vickey padded off to her room. George put a screen in front of the fire, and went down the hall.

  Lying in my bunk letting the night wash over me, I thought that I'd forgot to ask why they acted so strange in the lab when Anna mentioned the attack. There were some things I did learn, though. Anna initially had not told me about the threats, or about Susan Weems. We would have a talk in the morning.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A large shark had me by the left leg; there was much pain. Waking with a start, I saw Vickey Fourche standing at the foot of the bed holding my little toe, and grinning from ear to ear.

  "Breakfast is served."

  "A shark had my foot."

  Vickey laughed, padded out the door.

  After a shower, I went into the kitchen. Vickey poured me a cup of coffee. We sat in silence at the small table by the door looking out at the quiet morning, not wanting to disturb it; afraid it would shatter into little pieces.

  Vickey refilled our cups. "Anna is up, she'll be out in a little while. It takes her a long time to get started in the morning. She has to slowly stretch her joints and muscles. It's quite painful."

  Anna was one strong lady, one you had to admire, however I remembered how early she'd shown up at my house that first morning.

  "Get Anna to tell you about Susan Weems," Vickey said softly, almost a whisper. "There was something strange about that woman. I never liked her; she seemed to always be looking through you, never at you, eerie. I'd get goose bumps when I was alone in the lab with her."

  George bounded into the kitchen with the energy of youth and replaced the quiet of the morning. It did not shatter into small pieces.

  "Let's get going, Vickey," he said, gulping his coffee, full of enthusiasm. "We've got to finish up with that big old skate. Time's a wasting."

  "Is he like this every morning?"

  "Yes, ever since he quit smoking two years ago."

  They both laughed and headed out the door for the lab, exuding the healthy, vibrant essence of life. I was just a little bit jealous.

  Anna appeared a short time later. We had coffee together, and watched the early light change into a clear, bright, warm spring morning. A wonderful smell of fresh salt air wafted through the open window.

  "How about a brisk walk?" Anna asked. "I go every morning, even in the rain. It's about two miles round trip from the lab down to South Spit. Want to come?"

  "You bet. It'll give us time to talk."

  We left the house and walked the short distance to the lab. Anna looked in to see how things were going with George and Vickey. Satisfied that the work was proceeding as it should, we walked down to the edge of the surf and turned south. Today would have been a good day for surf fishing. The water was calm, the tide slack. One could wade out a quarter of a mile without the water being over their head, especially on the south end.

  High overhead Man-O-War birds soared in clear skies. On the marsh flats of Middle Spit, Long Billed Marsh Wrens, Willets, Semi-palmated Plovers, and sandpipers worked the waters edge. Approaching Smugglers Cove, we saw a white heron and several Brown Pelicans. Pesticides had nearly wiped out the pelicans along the coastal waters. It was good to see their return.

  A quarter mile down the beach a larger bird was feeding on something in the grass of the high water mark. It was blue-gray and about a foot and a half long, almost as big as a fish crow. When it flew, it was not unlike the flight of a pigeon. It had been feeding on a gull. This was the Peregrine Falcon, or Duck Hawk, as the locals refer to them. It was the first one I had ever seen on the islands. Maybe this was a good omen.

  The wind was calm, the sky, a light, shallow-water blue. A haze hung on the distant horizon, probably industrial pollution from New Orleans. As a pilot, I'd seen the smog layer go from almost nothin
g twenty-five years ago, until now, where it topped out at ten thousand feet. Sooner or later we'll choke ourselves to death, if we don't blow ourselves up first.

  "Did you get all the gory details from George and Vickey last night? Or do you want to ask me about them now?"

  "It's necessary for me to know everything, Anna. There are things you left out. For instance, you didn't tell me about Susan Weems, or that she worked here on the island with you for six months doing research on the shark repellent."

  "Susan Weems has nothing to do with this." She kicked the sand with her feet and there was anger in her voice.

  "How do you know? You want me to help you find out who did this to you, but you keep holding back information that could be important, like the threats, for example."

  "You want to know about Susan Weems? I'll tell you about her."

  "Thank you."

  Anna folded her arms across her chest, turned her back to me, and looked out to sea. Several porpoise were running parallel to the beach, chasing schools of mullet. "Susan and I met our first year at Stanford. We were roommates, became close friends, and lived together all the way through our Doctorates in Marine Biology. After that I went to the Mediterranean, Susan stayed in California. We kept in touch. When the research grant came up here, I called Susan and asked if she'd come and work with me. She agreed. It was great to be working together again. She stayed for six months, then left three months before the attack."

  "Why did she leave?"

  Anna looked at me with a pleading expression. "Susan is one of the closest friends I have on earth. There's no reason to expand on her tenure here, or what she was working on, or why she left. She had absolutely no reason to harm me."

  "Didn't say she did. How can I get in touch?"

  "You will not talk to Susan about this."

  "Do you want me to continue on this case?"

  "Yes."

  "Then don't tell me how to run it."

  She looked at me silently for a moment. It was an odd look, as if from a great distance. She looked out to sea. "I'll give you the address when we get back to the house."

  We walked along the beach without saying anything for several minutes, each in our own thoughts.

  Anna stopped and looked down at the gray sand. "I'm not holding anything back, Jay. It's very complex, Susan and I. She had nothing to do with my problem."

  There was nothing to say.

  As we continued toward the lab, the wind picked up, gusting and blowing the sand. Sea gulls flew as we neared where they were feeding.

  "It's my job, Anna, sorting out seemingly unimportant facts. Sometimes those are the ones that end up the most relevant."

  This small, broken person smiled at me through a torn and scarred face. There were some painful things ahead for her. Now I understood the reluctance of the police and Coast Guard to pursue their investigation.

  * * *

  When we arrived back at the lab, Vickey and George were finished with their work on the big ray. Anna took me through a cram course on the work she had done on the Moses Sole and the shark repellant experiments. She furnished me a copy of all the published data and her personal notes, making me promise to return them.

  Noon arrived on schedule. While we were going over the material, George and Vickey had been gathering oysters from a bed at North Bayou. They were a delightful treat for lunch.

  After we had eaten, Anna told George to take me back to the mainland whenever I wanted to go. She would do it herself, but there was some work she needed to do at the lab.

  Promising to be in touch tomorrow night by radio, I said that I'd call on channel sixteen and then we could switch to a discreet frequency.

  The Sound was choppy in the afternoon breeze. George ran the Mako full bore, grinning from ear to ear as I bounced around in the twenty-foot boat. My back would remind me of the trip for several days.

  Easing in through the Broadwater Marina's channel, I could see the tall mast of Picaroon towering above the other sailboats. George maneuvered up next to it. Guy had tied her bow to the dock. I asked George to help me with the lines; we would turn her around stern to. It's one of my idiosyncrasies.

  George said he needed to run into town and would use the lab's truck that stayed parked around at the restaurant. When he left, I added another spring line to Picaroon. After opening the hatches and portholes to get some ventilation moving, I sat in the cockpit and read through some of the papers Anna had given me.

  There were at least a dozen scientists who had migrated through the lab on Cat Island during the first year of operation. Most of them were working in their own field of expertise. There were two, though, who worked only on the shark repellent research with Anna. The one who spent the most time at the lab was Susan Weems.

  According to Anna's notes, almost every breakthrough with the toxin involved Susan Weems. Her discoveries were responsible for some of the most important advances with the research.

  In the scientific papers published, Anna gave full credit to Susan. On the surface, there was no real reason for Susan to have a gripe, but for some reason not reflected in the papers, she suddenly left the lab three months before Anna's attack by the shark, and right in the middle of an important experiment. Susan Weems and I needed a face to face.

  Anna had given me her address. She was living in Houston, Texas, working in a State marine experiment station in Galveston. Information gave me her home phone number, but had no listing for the experiment station in Galveston.

  Susan's home phone rang, but there was no answer. She was probably at work. Calling every state agency in Austin proved fruitless. No one was aware of a marine experiment station located in Galveston. So much for the efficiency of state government.

  Deciding to try her at home later that night, I settled in to read all the material Anna had given me in hopes of finding something that might shed some light on the attack.

  At five o'clock Guy showed up to see if everything was all right with the boat. "You turned her around."

  I waved him aboard.

  "Did you find out anything on the island?"

  "Anna gave me her research notes. Did you ever meet Susan Weems?"

  Guy was surprised at the name. "I'd forgotten about her. Anna would come by my office every month to sign documents related to the funding of the lab. She brought Susan by when she first arrived; there were insurance papers she had to sign. She filed her Grant application with me. She was a looker. The two of them made a beautiful pair; almost made me wish I was single again." He absentmindedly wiped at a grease spot on the cockpit combing. "But boy, Susan had a stare that could pierce through to your soul. It was a look you'd see in some grade 'B' horror film. They look comical, until you see one in person. I would not want to get that lady mad at me. Do you think she had anything to do with Anna's attack?"

  Standing and bending forward, I stretched my sore back. "Don't know. She did leave the lab rather suddenly, and in the middle of an experiment. You didn't know she was leaving? That wasn't required? What about the papers she filed with you?"

  "Anna had complete autonomy concerning the hiring and firing of personnel at the lab. My only responsibility was seeing that the paperwork was correct with the funding, insurance, etc."

  "When did you find out that she'd left?"

  "It was a couple of weeks after she'd been in Texas. I received a letter asking me to forward her paperwork to a Houston address. When I mentioned it to Anna, she dismissed it, saying Susan had a better offer. There was no reason for me to pursue it any further."

  Sitting back down, massaging my back, I said, "Tell me about the threat. Anna said it came through your office."

  "The first was a phone call. My secretary took it. She said the voice, she couldn't tell if it was a man or woman, stated that Annatoo Yillah was not going to make it through the week. That the first attempt had failed, but this time it wouldn't. In the next day's mail, we got a letter typed on rag paper and it basically said the same thing as t
he caller. Here, I brought you a copy of it." He handed me a manila folder.

  "Did you run it through the crime lab for prints?"

  "The only ones on it were mine and my secretary's."

  "When did you tell Anna about the threat?"

  "The same day I got the letter. The telephone call really didn't bother me. It did puzzle me, though, because there aren't a lot of people know that my office is involved with the lab on Cat Island. After the letter arrived, I radioed the lab. Anna came over that afternoon. She basically dismissed them as some warped environmentalist until she read the letter. When she saw how her name was spelled, it got her attention. Not many people know it's, 'Annatoo.' Even I didn't know it."

  "She introduced herself to me as Annatoo."

  Guy shrugged his shoulders.

  "Then you suggested she get in touch with me?"

  "She asked for help. You were the one I thought of."

  "Does every person who comes to the lab to do research have to check in with your office?"

  "They do. There are the insurance forms to be signed, even for visiting scientists. The liability thing, you know."

  "Get me a list that I can compare with the one Anna gave me."

  "It's in the folder." He pointed to the one lying on the seat beside me.

  "Well counselor, you make a good detective. Want to go into partnership?"

  "Nope. My job pays better and is a lot safer."

  George walked up grinning from ear to ear, said hello and started his boat. Guy tossed him a beer. George waved, still grinning, as he rounded the breakwater, headed for Cat Island.

  "Wonder what he's been up too?"

  Guy laughed. "With that boy, there is no telling."

  Two young girls in identical string bikinis walked slowly by the stern of Picaroon, their heads bowed, eyes cut toward us. They proceeded hesitantly, waiting, wanting us to say something, invite them aboard for a drink, a night sail around the Barrier Islands, maybe a little dope, a little sex.

  The parade had started. Along this part of the coast, and in every marina, from spring throughout the summer, it begins every afternoon around six o'clock. You can set your watch by it. The girls walk by hoping to be invited aboard. Some are out for a good time; others…well there are many reasons.