A Mighty Fortress (33 page)

“No worries,” I said. “We PIs have our ways.”

“I suppose you can just run some search on your computer, then?”

I smiled, because I figured I’d try something simpler first. “Something like that.”

“Anything else, Mr. Porter?”

I thought for a moment. “Would you mind reading me the Parable of the Lost Sheep?”

Fortunately, Levi was still working on the mulch when I was leaving. I pulled up alongside him, rolled down the Volvo’s window, and waved to catch his attention. “My mind is slipping, Levi.”

He wiped his brow and gestured for me to get on with it.

“Pastor Harkin just told me the highway Bob Hunter lives on. And I already forgot it.”

Levi glanced toward the sanctuary. “That right?”

“I don’t want to bother him again. You know whereabouts he lives?”

Levi shook his head. “Out on Arcadian Highway. About nine miles south. I don’t know the number. It’s a white farmhouse. About the only house on the left side for about a mile.”

I thanked him again, and then I said a prayer for forgiveness on my way out of the parking lot.

Levi’s directions proved excellent. The house was white, cracker style, barely noticeable from the highway behind a thick copse of pines, oak, acacias and myrtles. A weathered mailbox with no names or numbers marked the entrance to the gravel drive that curved into the woods.

I steered the Volvo onto the drive and stopped a moment… for what, I didn’t know. Then I realized that just sitting idle would only make me look more suspicious to a paranoid sniper who might be hiding out in the nearby woods. So without further ado, I gave it the gas. A cat scratching a chalkboard wouldn’t have sounded as unnerving as the crunching of gravel under my tires, echoing through the woods and seemingly amplifying against the house.
 

I passed through the trees and parked behind an early eighties model Ford F-150. Rust had eaten random patches of metal around the fender and tailgate. Best I could tell, the truck used to be a shade of blue, but years of sun and oxidation had rendered it the color of ashen coral. A shotgun and a long-range rifle hung on a rack in the rear window.
 

I parked at the end of the drive past the truck, and then I opened the door and stood outside my car. The heat and humidity swirled around me like a vortex, and brought with them a swarm of invisible gnats that were testing the waters of my skin, planning what could be a brutal assault. The Volvo’s engine ran for about thirty seconds after I exited the car. It sounded like it was panting, whimpering for a drink. I knew just how it felt.

In plain view, the home was smaller and older than it appeared from the road. The white paint on the wooden siding was flecked, revealing long streaks of gray, decaying wood. The front porch ran the entire façade of the house and wrapped around the western side. The three steps leading up to the porch were worn and beaten, too, and three wooden rocking chairs, covered in dust and dried leaves, leaned at forty-five degree angles against the front wall of the house. A porch swing sat on the porch up against the railing, longing for chains to connect it to the rusted hooks overhead.

Behind a screen door, a thick wooden door was cracked open. I stepped closer and caught the troubling smell of spoiled meat and garbage escaping the house. There was no doorbell to ring. Two empty screw holes were bare on the door, apparently where a doorknocker was once attached. I pulled the screen, about to knock on the door, when the unmistakable buzz of a chainsaw cut through the air and bounced off the acoustics of the surrounding woods. The saw was close.
 

I left the porch and followed the echo. The saw ran in quick spurts, each lasting about five seconds. I reached the back of the house, just as another rip of the saw, now growing louder, zipped over my head, followed by the engine of the saw cutting off.
 

A red barn stood about fifty feet behind the house. Rounding the house toward the barn, I saw a screen porch, coated in mildew and dust, at the back of the house. As I reached the back of the barn, I could hear whacking and grunting sounds echoing through the air. The thumping acquired a rhythm and kept going. I knew the sound, and knew where it was coming from.

I turned the corner behind the barn. There, a sinewy shirtless man with long arms was chopping wood. A dead tree lay prostrate, perpendicular to the barn. He’d cut large slices of the trunk with the chain saw, and now he was breaking down the chunks with the head of a large axe. His frame was lean, somehow muscular but without much muscle. He wielded the axe with no gloves and swung it with a graceful form befitting a lumberjack.

He raised the axe again, his back towards me. I didn’t like the feeling of walking up, unseen, on a man of questionable sanity swinging a blade. The last thing I wanted to do was startle him. I was about to say hello, but the vicious snarl of a dog stopped me in my tracks.

The man lowered his axe and turned to see what was going on. A black dog with German Shepherd in him was growling at me, seemingly bouncing and waiting for my next move. “Get back,” the man yelled at the dog.
 

The dog looked angry, livid, his lips curling over his fangs. He seemed ready to get me, but somehow he wasn’t looking directly at me.

“I said get back, Joe, get back!”

The dog yelped, but reluctantly obeyed his master. He turned, dashed back ten yards, and then walked back and forth in five-yard circles.

“I’m sorry,” I told the man. “I didn’t mean to startle you or your dog.”

“Shut up,” he said slowly, in a low voice.
 

I started to move, but he raised the axe. “Don’t you move an inch.”

“Listen, I’m not here to start any trouble.”

“Mister, you’re gonna find yourself in a world of pain if you take another step.” For the first time, I heard the full brunt of his voice, deep and churlish, and an accent that reminded me of the slow drawl I’d heard Sunday morning in Scalzo’s condo.

“Fine.” I raised my hands, straightened my legs. “I won’t move. You can set the axe down and call the dog off.”

The dog barked louder, as though he knew I was talking about him.

“Joe’s not concerned with you.” He was talking slower, seemed to be staring at my legs.

“You could’ve fooled me.”

“He’s concerned with that pygmy at your feet.”

“The what?” I asked.

Just then, I looked down and saw what he was talking about: a coil of brown and charcoal keeled scales, hidden in the grass by my feet. The snake’s head was thick and pointed at me, its black eyes immune to the sun blazing above us. The rattle on its tail was shaking vibrantly, making a soft rubbing sound, nothing like the rattlers I’d seen in the movies.
 

“It’s a pygmy rattlesnake,” he said, and hushed for me to be quiet.
 
Then he took an easy step toward the snake. Slowly lowered the axe head. The snake coiled tighter now, wagging its rattle more. “You walked up on him. Another step, and you’ll need an ambulance.”

I expected him to raise the axe and hack into the reptile that seemed ready to strike at me any moment. Instead, he continued lowering the head of the axe, with the blade pointed toward him and away from the snake.

The snake couldn’t get any tighter, so it retreated a few inches, giving me enough time to take a slow step back.

“Stay still, damn it,” he hissed. “Easy does it.” He continued lowering the axe head.
 

Without warning, the snake jolted and struck at the axe head.
 

The man I presumed to be Bob Hunter seemed to expect that reaction. He turned the axe head and pinned the snake to the ground with the dull side. The snake’s tail flickered for a long moment.

Bob then slowly reached down and gripped the snake right behind the head. He dropped the axe and extended his arm, holding the snake. Dangling from Bob’s hand, the snake only looked to be about three feet long. “Haven’t seen one in the yard for years,” he said. “See them more often down closer to the river.”

He turned with the snake and walked a good thirty yards to the line of the woods. There, he sent it on a short flight with a flick of his wrist. Afterward, he turned and marched back toward me. He bent over to pick up the axe and moved it against his shoulder. He looked me right in the eyes, and something about him reminded me of the reptile he’d just carried into the woods. “Who the hell are you?” he asked.

My throat felt scratchy from the heat and oak pollen I felt tightening my chest. “Ensign Myles Jeffrey Porter, sir, United States Navy.”

He stared at me for a short moment, his eyes squinting under his leathery brow. “That supposed to mean something to me?”

“Not yet,” I said, “but I’d like to talk to you about a book I’m writing.”

Joe, the dog, stepped toward me, took a good whiff, and started nudging my side. I leaned over to pet him.

Bob seemed satisfied with Joe’s approval. He laid down the axe and invited me inside.

I followed him as he made long strides toward the back porch. There, he ascended three wobbly steps and held the tattered screen door open for me. I followed, and the steps felt rotten, ready to break under my feet.

The screened porch had been turned into a storage area filled with heaps of junk upon junk: old shelves and tables covered with every kind of trinket and tchotchke ever known to clutter the table at a flea market. We walked on, through a mudroom that led to the kitchen. The smell I’d caught a whiff of on the front porch was in full bloom here, and I figured it was probably coming from the fridge, from which he pulled a jug of brown liquid. Then he took two cloudy glasses from the cupboard, glancing at one to make sure it was clean. He scooped a few cubes of ice from the freezer with each glass.
 

He set the cups on the counter and wiped his brow and neck with a rag that looked like it hadn’t seen a washer since the Bush years. “Tea?” he asked as he filled his glass.

“Please.”

The tea was sweet. Maybe it was because of how thirsty I was, but it was surprisingly good, too.
 

“One thing the sun’s good for is brewing tea.”

The kitchen chair creaked as he pulled it out. He sat at the far end of an oval kitchen table that would catch a fair sum in an antique shop. The kitchen walls were covered with ornate floral wallpaper that had begun separating and peeling. He nodded for me to take a seat. I did, and took another sip of my tea.
 

“So tell me about this book you’re writing and what it’s got to do with me.”

I took a hard drink of the tea and cleared my throat again. “Well, where to begin. I guess I’ll cut to the chase. I see a doctor in Tampa, a specialist in treating PTSD, something that she diagnosed me with. That’s Post-Traumatic—”

“I know what it is.”

“All right. Well, part of my therapy, the things we’ve talked about, she’s always encouraging me to write out some of my ideas in a book, and my experiences, you know, talking to guys like you.”

He finished the rest of his tea with a giant gulp. “And what exactly do you mean by that, ‘guys like me’?”

“Well, I’ve heard a little about your war experience as a sniper, and how it might have affected your family life.”

“That so?” He stood, turned, and walked back to the fridge. He filled his glass with more tea. Then he opened a nearby drawer that rattled and sounded like a junk drawer. When he turned around, he held the tea in one hand and a magnum pistol in the other. It was a .357, if I had to guess.

He returned to the table as though the gun were invisible, except that he set it down and looked me in the eyes again. “Now, why don’t you tell me why you’re really here?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that, putting aside the fact that this ‘story’ you’re working on sounds like a bunch of malarkey, I was warned about a fellow like you showing up here.”

“By Pastor Harkin?”

He winced at the name. “What the hell’s Jerry got to do with it?”

“I talked to him as part of my research, and he told me about you. I thought maybe he’d given you a heads-up that I was coming.”

He shook his head. “Nope. The fellas I talked to was policemen from Tampa, same city you say you’re from. They was here earlier this week looking for someone.”

“Who were they looking for?”

He ran his tongue over his lower gum, as if he was trying to remove a seed or strand of tobacco stuck in his teeth. “What’s it matter? All that matters is, they told me I might get a visit from a guy who looks kind of like you. They said he was big and tall like you, but that he had a beard. Now I see you don’t have a beard, but I see you got a bandage on your jaw, and your face’s all nicked up like it hadn’t been shaved in a while. So I have to reckon you could be that man they told me to look out for, and that if I did see you, to tell you to get the hell off my property.”

“They thought I was looking for the same person?”

He nodded, slowly, and turned the gun so it pointed in my direction. “So, I repeat, you mind telling me why you’re really here?”

I took a deep breath. “I guess I should apologize first.” I reached for my pocket, and he in turn grabbed the pistol and pointed it at me.

“Not another move.”

“I want to get my wallet, that okay?”

He stood, walked to my side, and took my wallet from me. Then he returned to his seat.

“Look in there,” I said. “You’ll see the name I gave you is my real name. I really was an ensign. I was discharged three years ago. And you won’t see anything about it in my wallet, but my shrink really does want me to write that book. But what I left out, and the part I apologize for, is that’s not why I came by here. I mean, I
would
like to talk to you sometime about that. But the truth is, I’m really here because I’m looking for your daughter, and I think she’s in danger.”

He took a moment to look through my wallet. He laid down my CC license and studied my driver’s license, presumably to confirm my status as a veteran. Then, he spent some time with my business card.

“That’s my business card.”