Bone Valley (25 page)

“Come on, get in,” Josey said.

Sitting for a moment on the side of the road in her truck, Josey turned on the radio and listened as the announcer hyperventilated about the rising flood and increasing dangers. “Twenty inches of rain in the last thirty-six hours,” he said, with the odd excitement that media people get at a disaster. “A hundred-year flood.”

“Shit,” Josey shouted out at the rain. But she started the truck, and, to my dismay, she turned north, driving away from downtown Bradenton, away from the police station, away from the sheriff ’s office, and away even from her house.

“Where are we going?” I asked, aware of the demanding tone in my voice, but not much caring.

“Boogie Bog,” Josey said.

“Why in hell are we going there?” I asked. “Should you be dragging that cat around like this?”

“I’ve got to see if the gyp stacks will hold,” Josey said.

“Oh my God,” Olivia said. “The gyp stacks. All that toxic waste.”

“What?” I asked, momentarily forgetting in my fatigue all the lessons about phosphogypsum that I had learned at the antiphosphate meeting with Angus John and Miguel.

“Those two stacks at Boogie Bog,” Josey said. “Two lakes filled with toxic waste behind a seventy-foot dirt wall. They’ve been at risk for a long time of breaking, leaking, or overflowing. This rain could do it.”

“You pour too much into any container and it’ll spill over,” Olivia said. “Any fool should know that.”

“If those gyp stacks don’t hold,” Josey said, “millions of gallons of that shit will flow right down into Bishop Harbor, and then right into Tampa Bay. The sea grasses and the marine life don’t have a chance.”

“Can we help, with sandbags, or something?” I asked.

Like a Greek chorus, Olivia and Josey both shouted “Sandbags?” in much the same tone of voice they might have said “You idiot.”

“You want to put up seventy feet of sandbags?” Josey asked.

Well, no, I personally didn’t want to, but what else could we do? I mean, if we couldn’t help out, why even go to Boogie Bog? Why weren’t we going to the police station so I could report that I had been kidnapped by a madman and an arsonist?

In a low voice, Olivia said, “There’ll be a massive fish kill if that gyp hits the bay waters.”

Yeah, now I remembered Angus John’s rant the night of the phosphate meeting, the night before he was blown up. And in the remembering, I understood why Josey and Olivia needed to go to the scene and see what was happening. Like rushing to the hospital, even after someone has called to say it’s too late: You still have to go; you still have to see the wreckage and remains for yourself.

And I still had to fend for myself. “You got a cell phone? Or a police radio?” I asked Josey.

“Not in this truck. It’s my own, not the SO’s. That dinky SO’s car wouldn’t have made it through the muck back there, so I drove my big guy.” She patted the truck with a look of satisfaction on her face.

“Do you have any Handi Wipes, especially some antibacterial ones?” I asked, reserving for a saner moment a complete analysis of Josey’s relationship with her “big guy.”

“Glove compartment,” Josey said. “Now tell me again what happened to you.”

Okay, finally, my turn. As I mentally began to organize my story for maximum dramatic effect, I leaned over Olivia and reached into Josey’s glove compartment where I systematically used up her entire store of Handi Wipes. Then I told both of them everything I could remember, from the moment Jimmie had gone next door to eat Dolly’s fried chicken, leaving me at the mercy of a crazed kidnapper with a raw-meat fetish who had demanded a videotape and then rewarded me by throwing me in the lion’s den.

“Big fellow, you say?” Josey asked.

“I never really got a very good look at him,” I said. “But yes, strong. Real strong. He kept picking me up and carrying me around like I was…well, like I was nothing.” Okay, sure I’m thin, but I’m also tall. I didn’t know many guys who could pick me up like I was a small puppy they were going to toss over a bridge into churning water. But I kept thinking about big guys, strong guys, which naturally led to me thinking about Theibuet.

“It could have been that Theibuet man,” I said. “This would be like something Sherilyn Moody might have thought up, and made him do. But like I said, I didn’t get a real good look at the face, I couldn’t be sure if it was Theibuet.”

“Why would Theibuet want a tape from you? What kind of tape?” Josey asked.

Oh, yeah, well, that would be the rub. I thought about it for a minute, and though I hated to let go of the Theibuet-Sherilyn conspiracy theory, I could not for the life of me imagine why either of them would want a tape of the man who was suing Jimmie doing manual labor. “He wouldn’t.” I had to admit it. Which led me straight back to my other theory. “Maybe that Jason Quartermine guy, or some thug he hired, came after that tape I had of his plaintiff—”

“Who is Jason Quartermine?” Josey asked.

“This lawyer guy, Jason is this lawyer guy, he represents this worm who sued Jimmie, Jimmie, who’s like my friend and yardman, you know, you met him at my house at breakfast, and Jason’s guy claimed that Jimmie hurt this guy’s back by slamming into him at ten miles per hour. Jimmie got a videotape of the guy showing he wasn’t even injured.”

“That doesn’t make any sense to me. Even if Jason stole the tape, why go through all the trouble to put you in a panther cage?” Olivia asked.

“Yeah, Jason wouldn’t have thought of that. He’s not really very imaginative,” I said.

“By the way, you did real good with that cat, real good,” Josey said. “You know how to keep your head.”

“Yeah, you too,” I said.

“The panther’s name is Samantha,” Olivia said. “She’s a beauty, you need to see her in the sunlight. Very strong and graceful. Very smart.”

As she talked, Josey eased up on the gas, much to my relief, since I’d noticed she was speeding on a wet road in a stormy night, and I’d already had enough brushes with death this past week that I didn’t want to test the cosmic forces anymore. As she slowed down, Josey turned to me briefly, and said, “Samantha’s been at the compound off and on for two years. With her permanent injuries, she wouldn’t survive long back in the wild. Adam takes her away a lot, to show school kids, and civic clubs, trying to educate them on the beauty of the Florida panther. Some sick motherfucker shot Samantha up by where the new Wilderness Ridge Subdivision and Golf Course is now. Shot her in the head, and then cut off an ear, for a souvenir, I guess.” Josey said. “Adam found her himself. She survived, but lost her eye during the head surgery.”

“So, is she, like…tame?” I asked, thinking of her licking me in the cage.

“Not so you’d want to turn her loose in the kitchen,” Josey said. “But she’s a survivor, that’s for sure. And another thing that’s for sure, it’s a whole lot easier to develop a wilderness if you kill off the endangered wildlife first.”

As if working from the same script, Olivia added, “You got any idea how many bald eagles and ospreys and sand-hill cranes turn up dead just before a new subdivision or golf course or shopping center goes in?”

“No.”

“You need to read more,” Josey said.

“I read a lot,” I said.

“Not the right stuff,” Josey said.

Okay, enough about my reading habits. “What about the panther?”

“She’s used to people, but I wouldn’t want to get in a locked cage with her,” Josey said. “Why’d he put you in the cage? Why not just shoot you?”

“He said…the man said they’d have to kill the cat after it ate me.”

“Shit,” Josey said.

“Shit,” Olivia said.

“Why didn’t he just shoot me
and
the cat? I mean, if he wanted us both dead.” I thought this was a real good question. I mean, if I were going to kill somebody after stealing a videotape from them, I’d want to make sure they didn’t live through the ordeal to testify against me.

Neither Josey nor Olivia said anything for a long time. Then, just as I had given up on either of them responding, and was getting ready to ask another question, say, like, was Olivia bathing with Miguel, Josey said, “Because he wanted one of the wildlife-rescue people to have to put Samantha down.”

“Good Lord, do you know who grabbed me and put me in that cage?” I asked.

“Somebody who hates the big cats and wanted bad publicity for them, the panthers.”

“Like a developer?” I asked. And then I thought, or a phosphate miner, someone who wanted unfettered control to ruin a healthy wilderness in east Manatee County, without having to deal with the protected habitat of the endangered Florida panther.

Somebody like Theibuet, one of the newly enriched surviving partners in Antheus.

“Folks like you and Olivia,” Josey said, “forget there are a lot of people out there who hate the Florida panthers, or any big cat. Some cattle ranchers, for example, sheep ranchers, yeah, and developers. But right now, I’m thinking more like—”

“Phosphate miners,” Olivia said, cutting off Josey.

“Yeah, but why put me in a cage with one?”

“To convince folks that the panthers and the mountain lions are dangerous and vile creatures, not worth saving. You scare people badly enough, and you can push them into anything. In all of our recorded history, there’s no verified case of an unprovoked Florida panther attacking a human being. In fact, wild cats of any kind hardly ever attack people, but when a rabid one killed someone out west last year it unleashed a massive mountain-lion hunt. Before it was over, a bunch of cowboys had a cat roundup and killed four other mountain lions. And there weren’t many more than that in the whole region. That knocked out a whole species in the area. When the population is as small as it is with wild cats, one cat dead is bad, but five is extinction. They put those cowboys on TV like they were heroes for killing those four mountain lions,” she said, her voice bitter.

While I was mulling that over, Josey turned onto the service road into Boogie Bog. A tall security fence surrounded the site, but the gate itself was open, and Josey drove through it. I could see a lot of lights and activity up ahead.

“Did the dams hold?” Olivia asked the air around us.

I looked out at the night and the rain and the scurrying, and I could not help but wonder where in the storm Miguel was.

Budding disaster.

That was the scene and the sense of it.

Josey pulled her truck up behind other cars and trucks, and at once we took in frantic movements. People were running around everywhere, shouting and waving their hands, dressed in official-looking bright yellow rain slickers with DEP written across the back, and, like the men trying to turn the wheel on the defective dam lock, they appeared not to be achieving their set goals. Out of the crowd running around, one man turned, and apparently recognized Josey, or perhaps Olivia, and began to walk toward us.

“Too late,” he said.

“Dam break?” Josey asked.

“Nope, no break, but there’s some crumbling at the top and they’re overflowing. Both of them. Too much rain too fast. They were already full. We knew this would happen if it rained like this. We tried to drain them off into the collection ditches along Buckeye Road, but they’re overflowing too.”

“All that gypsum,” Olivia said.

The DEP man turned and looked at her. “All that shit, rolling down the hill, to Bishop Harbor.”

Josey took a step closer to the DEP guy, and then put her hand against his cheek. “I’m sorry. I know you tried.”

The DEP guy took her hand, and kissed it. And smiled, a sad, little wet smile. “Glad you’re still wearing the ring.”

They looked at each other for a moment before he dropped her hand and she pulled back from him.

So, okay, now I knew a couple of new things—why Josey wore the big ring and why she was so adamant that no one from the DEP had driven the DEP truck up to the dam to drown M. David.

Yeah, and maybe why she knew so much about Boogie Bog and phosphate.

Another man, dressed in jeans and no rain gear, with his hair plastered against his anguished face, came up to us. “Go home,” he said. “There’s nothing any of you can do here now. Nothing any of us can do, until the rain stops.”

But I watched Olivia turn and scan the crowd as if she were searching for someone. “Anybody see Miguel?” she asked.

“He was here, Olivia. But when the second pond began to overflow, he left,” the rain-plastered man said.

At the familiarity between him and Olivia, I turned to study him, and recognized him as Mr. Science Guy from the antiphosphate rally the night Angus had died. That seemed so long ago, even though it had been only last week.

“I hope they all rot in hell for this,” Josey said.

“We can only hope,” Mr. Science Guy said.

When Josey didn’t speak, I did. “Sheriff ’s office or police station. Phone. Please.” I didn’t even try to hide the sound of pleading in my voice. I needed to know if my house had burned, taking Rasputin up in the flames.

“Let me think,” Josey snapped.

“Think about what? I need to call the police and my house. Don’t any of you people have cell phones?”

The DEP man said, “I got a cell,” and patted his slicker pocket. “Don’t know if it’ll work out here in this rain. But let’s get under the shed, out of this downpour, and give it a try.”

Josey, Olivia, Mr. DEP, and I walked under the overhang of the shed. Science Guy drifted off into the crowd of other men, who were frantically doing things that apparently weren’t going to do any good. DEP Guy pulled a cell out of the pocket in his rain slicker, and I snatched it. My hands shook as I dialed home.

Jimmie answered, saying, “I done told you, she ain’t here.”

“Jimmie, it’s me, Lilly.”

“My good God, Lady,” he shouted out, “where’re you at? I done looked and looked for you. Delvon ’bout done drove me crazy calling for you.”

Instead of answering, I blurted out, “Did my house burn down?”

“Now would I be talkin’ to you from the phone in your house if it had done burnt down? But the kitchen is…it is…kind of a mess. But, Lady, it ain’t nothin’ I can’t fix, take a while. We can jes’ eat at Dolly’s tills I get it all fixed up. Don’t you worry, Lady, but you got to tell me where’re you at.”

“What about Rasputin?”

“Oh, he’s jes’ fine. The fire didn’t get to the porch. And, Lady, like I said, it ain’t nothin’ I can’t fix. It’ll jes’ take a while.”

Before I could absorb all that and respond, Jimmie started in on me. Where was I? Why had I run out in a storm? And why had I left an iron skillet of sizzling oil on the stove?

I interrupted him to give him a condensed version of the story—that is, a man broke in the house, wrapped me in a quilt, and demanded a videotape, making me think that it was Jason Quartermine, or a thug he hired, trying to get the tape of the faker plaintiff back. But, now I wasn’t so sure it was Jason’s doing. I mean, why would Jason want people to hate panthers?

“Uh-oh,” Jimmie said. “He wanted a tape? You mean, like, a tape? A videotape?”

“What do you know about a tape?” I asked, my voice suddenly snappish in the rain as little red bells of warning went off in my sore head.

“Was he a big guy?”

“I already told you that, strong anyway, if not big like tall big, but big like big big.”

“Big guy that wanted a tape?”

“Jimmie, tell me what you know about a big guy and a tape.” I motioned Josey in close so she could hear Jimmie over the phone. Something in the emphatic way he had said “Uh-oh” suggested to me that Official Law Enforcement was going to want to hear the answer. “Talk loud so Josey and Olivia can hear you,” I said to Jimmie.

“How do, Olivia, Josey,” he shouted out, his weedy old-man voice carrying with surprising volume. “I reckon he might’ve been after my videotape. One I done made with your camera.”

“The one with the faker plaintiff doing yard chores, right?” I asked.

“No’m, the other one.”

Oh, now what? Long ago, like a day or two in another lifetime, I had decided that Jimmie was hanging on to the firm’s video camera so he could tape himself and Dolly, and I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to steal a video of two old people fooling around. Surely there couldn’t be a porn market for that?

“Reckon I best tell you what’s been going on,” Jimmie said, still shouting fit to kill. “I got me a videotape of Miguel breaking into a shed in the backyard of a big man, and then he stolt him some stuff from the shed.”

“How’d you know he was stealing it? Maybe it was his shed and his stuff?” Josey asked, shouting at the phone in my hand.

“Miguel done broke in. He done tried pryin’ open a door, and when he couldn’t get that to work, he jes’ broke out the window, made him a good-size mess, and then he went on in.”

“What’d he take?” Josey asked in a perfect, coplike way.

“Bags of fertilizer and some other stuff.”

Uh-oh. But why would Miguel steal fertilizer after the bombing of his sailboat, and why steal what he had already purchased?

And this didn’t seem to have anything to do with why a big guy had put me in a cage with a panther.

“What’s this got to do with a big man?” I asked.

“It was some big man’s shed.”

“Where’s the tape?” I asked.

“It’s over at Dolly’s house,” Jimmie said.

“Why is it there?”

“I’s workin’ on it over there so that you wouldn’t catch me at it. Watchin’ it, her and me, tryin’ to reads the labels of the other bags of stuff Miguel toted out a that shed. Looks like it says pot-ass-see-um something on it.”

“Potassium sulfate?” I asked, and Josey swung around and stared at me like I’d just confessed to a felony.

“So what happened?” I asked, thinking I should divert Josey’s stare from me.

“Miguel done stolt all them bags a stuff, and then he run out a there real quick, so I took off trying to follow him.”

“Why were you following Miguel? Why’d you get that video in the first place?” I shouted over the phone. “I mean, I gave you that camera so you could catch the faker plaintiff being a fake, not to spy on Miguel and about get me killed. Why were you taping Miguel?”

“I didn’t like how you was foolin" round with Miguel, so the day you was goin’ canoein’ with him, I done followed you out to the canoe outpost.”

Remembering Jimmie skulking up, carrying the video camera that day, I nodded as if he could see me over the cell phone.

“After you and that Miguel fella paddled off, I stayed on at the canoe outpost for a bit, thinkin’ maybe I’d ask about getting me a job there. Didn’t seem like too much longer before you and that Miguel fella was coming back in. You didn’t see me, but I saw y’all having like, maybe, a fight or something at your car. Then you done sped off in one direction and he done sped off in another.”

“So you followed Miguel from the canoe outpost?” I asked. “Can you tell me where he went? Where this took place—I mean, where you videotaped him and the big guy’s shed?”

“Sure ’nuff can. I got me the address and everything.” Jimmie recited a house number on Morgan Johnson Road, in Manatee County.

“Say that over again,” Josey shouted at the cell phone. When Jimmie did, Josey repeated the numbers back to herself a couple of times.

“Why didn’t you tell me about this sooner?” I asked.

“I’s tryin’ to catch up with that Miguel fella again, follow him to where he’s stayin’. I’s gonna tell Miguel I got me this tape of him stealin’ I’d take me to the law if’n he didn’t leave off of you. See, the day I got this tape, afterward I tried to tail Miguel but he done lost me in all that damn traffic on the Trail. But I figured he’d’ve come back sooner or later to the big guy’s house. So I’s waitin’ up on him. I waited plumb through a whole night outside that big guy’s shed for him. That’s how come I didn’t show you the tape a him stealin’ stuff. I knowed if you knowed what I was up to, you’d make me give you back the video camera.”

“Damn straight,” I shouted, in perhaps not a ladylike manner.

Josey put a hand on my back, and then took the phone from me. “Finish your story,” she said over the cell to Jimmie. I shut up and squeezed into Josey so I could hear Jimmie.

“Like I said, I was hangin’ ’round the big fella’s house, hopin’ to catch that Miguel fella again.”

“Okay,” I shouted at the cell, “but how did the big guy connect you and me?

“Reckon I shouldn’t’ve mentioned you and the tape to that big fella,” Jimmie said, a little less of the shout in his voice, but still audible.

I snatched the phone back from Josey. “You told the big guy about me?”

“Well, see, when Miguel didn’t come back and I couldn’t figure out how to find ’im, I done knocked on the front door of the house, and I told the big fella I’s an investigator workin’ for you, and I done got a tape of this here Miguel fellow stealin’ his fertilizer and I’s gonna turn it over to you, but first I gots to know how to find Miguel, if’n he knows. That big fella took it real bad, real bad, and was about to beat up on me when some real estate guy drove in. Anyhow, when the realty guy got out of the car and seen us, the big guy backed offa me and I lit outta there lickety-split.”

“Jimmie, did you give that man my address too?” I asked.

“No, no, ma’am, I didn’t. You shouldn’t be thinkin’ I’m that stupid. But…could be, yeah, that he followed me. He didn’t spend no time with that real estate guy ’fore I seen him hop in his SUV. I seen this from my rearview mirror, and I sure thought I’d done lost him on the Trail, you know how the traffic gets, but maybe not.”

Oh frigging great, my handyman-houseguest-client led a madman right to my own personal door.

Then I wondered why it would matter to the big guy that Jimmie had a video of Miguel stealing fertilizer from him. Big Guy must have been afraid that videotape would hurt him in some way, or he wouldn’t have tied me up in a quilt, ransacked my house looking for the tape, and then forced me to tell him where it was in my office.

The only thing I could figure out, standing there in the rain at the scene of a disaster, was that the big guy was afraid the tape of Miguel stealing the fertilizer from his shed would implicate him in the fertilizer bomb that had killed Angus.

“Fertilizer bomb,” I said, looking right at Josey.

“About that,” she said.

“What?” Olivia asked.

“The big man must have been the one who made the fertilizer bomb that killed Angus. I mean, he had the fertilizer and the potassium sulfate. When he realized Miguel knew he had the stuff, and there was a tape showing Miguel taking it out of his shed, he must have panicked, and tried to get the tape back from me,” I said. “He didn’t want to be linked to the fertilizer and potassium, or to Miguel.”

“Y’all still there?” Jimmie shouted over the cell phone.

Josey snatched the cell phone back from me. “You need to be real careful the man after that tape doesn’t come back to Lilly’s house, you hear?” she shouted. “Wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to get out of there.”

“Ain’t hardly a fit night for travel.”

I snatched the cell phone back. “Go to Dolly’s. Lock the doors and give Bearess half a cup of coffee to make sure she stays awake. And don’t lose that tape.”

Josey grabbed the phone back, but then it went dead. She shook the cell, she banged on it, and she cursed at it, but the cell phone was still dead.

“Don’t you think the rain finally got to it, maybe shorted it out?” Olivia asked.

“Well, frigging great,” I said. “Let’s find somebody else with a cell phone and call the Sarasota PD and get them out there to my house.” I made a move in the general direction of the clot of men in yellow DEP rain slickers, but Josey beat me to it. She barreled her way into a crowd of wet men, and told them to find a phone that worked, or a radio, and call 911 and tell them an officer needed assistance and to get a team of armed deputies to the address on Morgan Johnson Road. And, then, to send a Sarasota police officer to Dolly’s house on Tulip Street.

Josey squeezed my arm tight. “Come on. You two come with me.”

With a sinking feeling, I realized my Big Night Out wasn’t over yet. I also knew without being told that Josey, Olivia, and I were going to the address that Jimmie had given us.