Extinct (24 page)

“Out playing with the Frisbee. I ran them outside so they wouldn’t wake him. I put the food on the patio so we wouldn’t bother him. He can eat when he wakes up.”

Carolyn nodded and her mother dumped the cornbread onto a platter and they walked quietly out the door.

“You smell good,” her mother said, and smiled a little.

*   *   *

Vandiver covered his head with his pillow as his telephone rang.

It rang a second time.

He groaned, stuck his thick arm out to the bedside table, and pulled the telephone receiver under the pillow to his ear.

“Sir,” Douglas said. “You watching television?”

Vandiver slid the pillow off his head and stared at the receiver. Then he moved it slowly back to his ear.

“No, Douglas, I’m not.”

“Turn on NBC—they’re talking about a big shark.”

*   *   *

Paul stood up from the wicker table, pulling his plate with him.

“What do you want?” Carolyn asked. “I’ll get it for you.”

“I’ll be quiet,” he said, and walked to the door leading back into the house. He closed the screen door quietly behind him.

Alan lay on his side.

Paul stared at him for a moment, then opened one of the kitchen cabinets, pulled out a clean plate, and opened the drawer to the tableware.

Seconds later, the plate and a fork and knife in his hands, he walked quietly into the living room.

Still quiet, he sat down on the edge of the coffee table and stared for a moment at Alan, asleep a couple of feet away.

“Mr. Alan.”

Paul waited a moment. “Mr. Alan,” he said again, raising his voice only slightly.

Alan’s eyes cracked open.

Paul held out the plate. “We’re eating,” he said. “I thought you might be hungry.”

Alan swung his feet to the floor. “I am. Thank you.”

“We’re eating outside,” Paul said, and looked where Alan’s feet had lain up on the couch. “Mother doesn’t like shoes on the couch, but I’m not going to tell her.”

“Thank you,” Alan said.

*   *   *

When Alan stepped out the back door onto the patio, Carolyn looked at Paul. “Did you wake him, honey?”

“No,” Alan said. “I was getting hungry.”

“Cornbread’s pretty good,” Fred said. “But not worth the wait.”

Martha stared at him.

Paul slid an empty chair over beside his at the table.

*   *   *

Vandiver stared at the TV screen.
A white shark up a river?
Somebody must be smoking something, had been his first thought when he had heard the brunette reporter say that. But the man whose photograph had flashed on the screen was a marine biologist. Surely he would know a white shark when he saw one. And what other shark could be that big? That thought, of course, had made him stop and think. But the tooth found off the Everglades had to come from a megalodon that was a minimum of forty feet at the very least—not twenty-five. Was he missing something?

*   *   *

Alan stood a few feet back from the small wooden dock and looked at the pair of charter boats dimly illuminated in the glow of their running lights as they moved along the channel. One pulled a line downriver, the other craft, passing it, coming upriver. Carolyn came across the yard toward him.

“Paul said to tell you good night,” she said as she stopped beside him. She looked toward the river. “We have so many boats we might have scared it off.”

“I don’t believe it scares very easily.”

“Daddy called the hospital and spoke with Armon. A plastic surgeon in town from Dallas heard what Armon did and called the hospital and said that if Armon wants him to he’ll remove the scar tissue for free. But Armon doesn’t care about that. His main thing was he was worried that the burn on the back of his hand might keep him from boxing. But the doctors said it won’t. He’s going to have to wait until it heals properly. But then he can do anything he wants. Daddy told him there’s no reason not to keep running laps while he waits.” She smiled. “That and quit smoking. Would you like a glass of wine?”

“I think I would.”

Carolyn walked toward the boat.

*   *   *

“Operator,” Vandiver said. “I was given an Alan Freeman’s number in Biloxi, Mississippi, and it doesn’t answer. Would you check it again for me and see if it is the correct number? Thank you.”

*   *   *

Alan held the small plastic cup in his hand as Carolyn poured a second cup half full and placed the wine bottle back into the cooler at the front of the fishing cockpit.

She touched her cup to his, sipped from it, then turned toward the rail and leaned against it. For a moment she looked at the section of beef, soft and sagging over the rail. Then she raised her eyes out across the river to the marshland glimmering a sparkling blue in the bright moonlight.

“It’s still beautiful to me.”

Alan stepped beside her and moved his hand around her shoulders. She leaned her face against his shoulder. He could feel the warmth of her skin through his shirt. He moved his hand to her hair. It was soft and carried the scent of her perfume. Her eyes came up to his. He kissed her forehead gently. She rubbed her face against his shoulder. He kissed her cheek. She turned toward him and moved her arms around his neck and brought her lips up to his. Her lips were soft and slightly moist from the wine, and warm. He pulled his face back and looked into hers, then kissed her again, this time harder. She kissed him back and then kissed his neck at his open collar. He set his cup on the rail. “Alan,” she said. He caught her chin and turned her face up to his again. “Alan, okay?” She looked toward the house.

He moved his hands to the sides of her face, kissed her lightly, and nodded. She leaned back against the rail. Below her, the water bubbled as a bilge pump discharged into the river. She caught his cup and handed it to him and then turned back toward the rail and leaned against it, looking down at the water.

*   *   *

Paul heard someone coming up the hall, and he jumped from the window back into his bed and pulled the covers over him.

Martha pushed the cracked door open and looked at Paul sleeping.

The scream was shrill and piercing.

*   *   *

Carolyn fought against Alan, pushing him back against the cabin. She spun to face the rail. He moved past her.

“Alan, don’t.”

He moved his face carefully out above the rail and looked down at the water.

The dark reflection of a circular cloud, lighter at its wide middle from the moon shining through it, moved softly on the water. He looked back at Carolyn. She had her hands at the sides of her face. He shook his head. “It’s a reflection.”

Slowly, she stepped forward. She held her body back as she leaned her face forward. She stared down at the water for a moment, then started crying.

Fred dashed out the door of the house. Martha came behind him. Carolyn looked at them and closed her eyes. When Paul came from the house and ran toward the dock, Carolyn moved over the side of the
Intuitive
and walked to meet him.

Paul’s face was pale.

She knelt on one knee and caught him in her arms.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It was just a reflection.”

She looked up at her father and mother.

“I’m sorry. It was just a reflection.”

Alan stared over the side of the
Intuitive
into the water. If it
had
been there, hiding, looking up at Carolyn, observing … It had consciously tried to wear down the grass and mud next to Fred and the others, he thought again. Something wasn’t right.… And he thought for a moment longer, then looked at the section of beef and pushed it off the edge of the cockpit.

It splashed into the water and sunk from sight, leaving ripples spreading out across the river.

CHAPTER 28

Carolyn glanced at her watch, sipped from her coffee, and set the cup on the kitchen table. “We told the Sheriff we were coming back out—and I have to refuel, too.”

“What?” Fred asked from the living room without taking his eyes off the TV.

“I said I’m going to have to refuel—you and Armon didn’t remember to.”

Her father walked toward them with his head turned back over his shoulder toward the TV. “You didn’t have a charter scheduled when we were cleaning the boat. I thought I’d get to it later.”

Carolyn nodded. “And I didn’t think to look when I started her over here. I’d be a fine one to go to sea with.”

Her father walked to the back door.

“Daddy, you don’t have to go. Why don’t you get some sleep here? When I get back I’ll pick you up.”

“Oh, I don’t mind.”

Martha spoke from the couch in the living room. “You need the sleep, Fred.”

As Alan and Carolyn walked out into the back yard, Martha said in a lower voice: “Maybe they don’t want you along, Fred.”

He stared toward the door. “Tonight? You have to be kidding.”

“I know Carolyn, Fred.”

*   *   *

As Carolyn turned the ignition keys to the
Intuitive
’s big engines she looked back at Alan dropping the float off the stern and the line beginning to feed out into the water. She swung the
Intuitive
in a circle wide enough to make certain she cleared the line with more than enough space to spare. As Alan climbed up the ladderlike steps to the flying bridge she straightened the craft down the channel and looked back past the stern again, waited until the line jerked in behind them, and then she pulled back on the throttles until the float was riding gently in a steady pull behind them.

In a moment they were passing a Bertram, illuminated in the glow of its running lights and the bright moonlight and cruising in the opposite direction. Its captain nodded and raised his hand. Ahead of them the Pascagoula flowed directly to the Sound. But after the channel passed under the Highway 90 bridge the river’s thousands of years of depositing silt where its mouth widened into the Sound had built shoal water too shallow for any but the smallest boats to navigate. The
Intuitive
had to cross over into Bayou Chemise and follow it into the East Pascagoula and then move down its channel past Ingalls Shipyard into the marked cut leading out toward the Gulf.

Minutes later Carolyn angled the boat out of the channel toward the Intracoastal Waterway and turned west toward Biloxi and the Broadwater Marina.

Ahead of them lay the dark, murky waters of the Sound, to its left the long, broken line of barrier islands, some of them not much more than small isles, and some of them miles long, and to its right, the Mississippi shoreline, some of it brightly lit commercial areas, some of it dotted with condominiums and marinas and yacht clubs, and some of it deserted, dark stretches of sand.

*   *   *

Nathan stood knee-deep in the Sound. Nettie hadn’t left the sand that spread from the water up to the highway. “Nathan,” she said, “I’m telling you, that’s not real smart.”

“Huh?” Nathan asked, cocking his ear in her direction and away from the stiff breeze blowing in off the Sound.

“I said that’s not real smart.”

“Yeah,” he said, and nodded, obviously not hearing what his wife said. He shined the glow from his floundering lamp back down onto the water. He wore a blue wind-breaker over his sweatshirt and dark swim trunks and high-top tennis shoes in case anybody had broken a bottle in the water. A flounder’s narrow-set eyes glowed in the lamp’s beam and he jabbed his gig down into its side.

“Got me a good’un,” he called back over his shoulder as he lifted the flat, wiggling fish from the water.

“Huh?” Nettie called. Neither one of them could hear all that well. She had ended up buying a hearing aid shortly after they had retired. He said nothing was wrong with his hearing, if people would just talk plain. And few in Mississippi did to his way of thinking. He had moved there from Peoria, Illinois. He had met Nettie shortly afterwards. With her hailing from the bootheel of Missouri, she could understand most everybody pretty well. They had been married for two years.

“Look at that fool,” Nathan said. His thin face was raised out over the Sound past the markers that delineated the channel passing behind Deer Island toward Biloxi Bay. Beyond the markers, a tall spray of water, glistening in the bright moonlight, sped across the surface. “What are those things called?”

Nettie understood him this time. “Wave runners—I think.”

“Hadn’t the fool heard about the shark?”

“That’s what I was just saying about you, Nathan.”

“Huh?”

“That’s what I was just saying about you, Nathan. Out there in water up to your knees like you haven’t got good sense.”

“You think a shark is a terrestrial animal, Nettie? How in hell would he get to me here?”

“That’s what I’m waiting to see,” she said. “I heard insurance companies don’t pay off on life policies for seven years if somebody just disappears.”

“That’s not true, Nettie.”

“Well, I’m not taking any chances, anyway. I’m keeping my eyes on you so I can say I saw what happened.”

Nathan jabbed his gig down again. “Got another one. Bet you’ll want to eat them, too—despite the nagging.”

“I’m watching.”

“Huh?”

She didn’t answer.

“I’ll be damned!” he yelled.

“See the shark, Nathan?”

“No. Let the sucker flip off my hand back into the water.” He watched the flounder swiftly moving out of sight a few feet away. After a moment all that was left to see was a small dark stain in the water from the blood seeping from the gig wound. In a moment the stain had vanished, dispersed into such small particles it was impossible to see as it continued to move on the receding tide toward the markers, the same direction in which the blood from the flounders Nathan carried in the net bag at his side had been traveling since he had gigged the first one over an hour before.

Beyond the markers, the tall shower of spray glistening in the air suddenly turned in the direction of the beach.

A moment later the shower began to lessen, then disappeared as the thick fin slid under the surface.

Nathan stepped into a hole up to his thighs in water.