Rivers to Blood (13 page)

We all looked at each other.

“I think so,” I said, nodding. “There haven’t been any signs. And I’d know them.”

“He’s a drunk too,” Jake said to the doctor, nodding toward me, and I could detect no malice in his voice. “She ain’t been drinkin’.”

“Well let’s hope for the best,” he said.

“Is there anything we can do to help her chances of getting a transplant?” I asked.

He shook his head. “All we can do is wait.”

Jake sighed and turned and walked into Mom’s room.

“Thank you,” I said, and Dad and I followed after Jake.

Mom was sleeping in a nearly upright position, her mouth open, distressed gurgling and snoring sounds coming from it. Her jaundiced skin looked as thin and taut as parchment, etched by fine lines and small wrinkles.

“God I can’t stand to see her like this,” Jake said.

Dad nodded.

“She’s gonna be okay,” Jake said. “All she’s got to do is hang on until we get her a transplant. And she will. She’s strong.”

Convinced more than ever that Mom had been holding on because Jake was unable to let her go, I started to say something to him, but knew he would never hear it. Besides, how could I encourage him to let our mother die?

Mom’s lids parted and she looked up at us with weak, sallow eyes.

She seemed to be taking her final breaths, her helplessness increased by her inability to speak.

“We’re here, Mama,” Jake said, as only a Southern boy could. “We’re right here.” Without meaning to, Jake sounded patronizing.

She gave a half-smile half-frown expression that made my eyes sting and moisten.

“We’re gonna get you a transplant, Mama,” Jake said, his voice cracking slightly as his eyes filled with tears. “I swear to God we are.”

Her lids closed and she fell back asleep.

We were quiet for a long while, but eventually, inevitably our talk turned to the case.

“I think he was messin’ around with some white woman,” Jake said, “and her husband decided to teach him a lesson.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “You think he learned it?” I asked, an angry edge of sarcasm in my voice.

“I’m just sayin’ that’s the most likely thing that happened. It could be your inmate, but then why string him up?”

Ignoring Jake, I turned to Dad. “I think we’re spending too much time looking in the woods,” I said. “If he’s still in the area, he’s probably holed up on a houseboat or in one of the camps, waiting for things to die down so he can slip out—probably on a boat. He could head either direction on the river, come out at any town along the way, and disappear.”

Dad nodded. “I’ll have them start searching the camps and houseboats in the morning.”

“Rachel Mills said they found water in the victim’s lungs,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “But they don’t think drowning is the cause of death.”

“But at some point he was in the water,” I said.

We grew silent, our gazes drifting back to Mom.

“We need to get someone to stay with her,” Dad said.

“I’ve got somewhere I have to be,” Jake said.

“I’ll stay,” I said.

“But for how long?” Dad asked. “You two can’t do it alone. We’ll have to hire someone. Have either of you called Nancy?”

“I ain’t callin’ her,” Jake said.

“I’ve tried. I’ll call her again in the morning and let her know,” I said.

“Why?” Jake asked. “She don’t care.”

Eventually they left, and Mom and I were alone. Pulling one of the cushioned chairs over beside her bed, I sat down. Resting my elbow on the arm of the chair, and my head in my hand, I tried unsuccessfully to get to sleep.

After a short while of being unable to sleep I decided to call Nancy.

Divorcing herself from the chaos that was our family, my older sister Nancy had moved to New York the day after graduating from high school. Since then she’d had the least amount of interaction with us she could. None with Jake.

When after several rings I got her voicemail. I looked at my watch. It was a little after three here, an hour later in New York.

“It’s John,” I said softly. “Mom’s been put back in the hospital. I’m sure she’d love to see you. If you want to see her don’t wait. Call me when you can.”

I gave her the number and clicked off.

The call back was almost immediate.

“I can’t deal with this right now, John,” she said.

“Let me know when it’d be more convenient for you. I’ll see what I can do,” I said with an edge in my voice reserved only for family.

She hung up on me.

I leaned my head back and rubbed my eyes and I could feel the tension in my neck and shoulders, the fatigue in my stinging eyes.

A few minutes later, my phone rang again.

“It’s me,” she said.

“We don’t have a choice about when we deal with this,” I said. “Just how.”

“I know. I’m sorry. Let’s start over.”

“Okay. Nancy this is John. Mom’s been put in the hospital and isn’t doing very well.”

“Oh, John, I’m so sorry to hear that,” she said. “How long does she have?”

“I’m not sure,” I said, “but if she doesn’t receive a transplant, not long.”

She was silent a long time.

“You going to come?” I asked.

She sighed heavily into the phone and I had to hold it away from my ear for a moment. “I guess,” she said.

“Before or after she dies?” I asked.

“Really not sure,” she said. “When I decide, you’ll be the first to know.”

Chapter Twenty-seven

I
was in the chapel Monday morning counseling with Sandy Hartman when the second body was discovered.

The more Sandy spoke the more splotchy his face became, and though his voice was soft, his words carefully chosen, real anger and pain leaked out of them.

“I’ve never felt so helpless in my life,” he was saying. “I tried to fight. I tried to get away. I tried everything I could. Nothing worked. He was so strong. So powerful. Like he had this force coming from within him.”

As I listened, I saw Chaplain Singer through the narrow panel of glass in my door. He stood there for a moment, then, with a look of frustration, motioned me over.

I shook my head and nodded toward Sandy, but his expression grew more intense and he continued to motion for me.

I had spent the weekend with Mom in the hospital. Mostly sleeping and unable to speak when she was awake, the quiet gave me extended time to think, to process the things swirling around my mind. Our attempts at communicating were more frustrating than anything else, so my weekend was largely wordless.

My aunt Amy had been late relieving me at the hospital and I had been late for work. Chaplain Singer was very disappointed. He had looked at his watch and shook his head when I came in, but continued to whisper into his phone. I knew this was coming, but I had no idea he would interrupt a counseling session to do it.

“I heard you used to drink,” he said.

I had opened the door just a few inches and he was leaning forward talking through the narrow opening.

“I’m with someone right now,” I said. “I’ll talk with you when we’re finished.”

“You’re not hungover, are you?”

I shook my head.

The question’s only purpose was provocation. He seemed frustrated it didn’t provoke me.

We were quiet a moment.

“Warden Matson runs a very tight ship,” he said. “It’s his way or the highway. If you don’t get on board, you’re gonna get run over.”

If he used one more ra-ra cliché I might just have to step out into the hall and pummel him.

“You’re already on his bad side,” he said. “You better tread carefully.”

I held my hand up. “Uncle,” I said. “I can’t take any more.”

He looked confused, then shook his head. “I don’t know if I’ve met anybody quite as self-destructive as you.”

“Then you really need to get out more.”

I closed the door and apologized to Sandy. As I walked past him, I glanced down at the scar on his neck. From this angle I could see it better, and I realized it wasn’t just a straight line, but looked to be more complex.

“That little fucker has a real hard-on for you, doesn’t he?” Sandy said.

I had never heard him talk like that before, and I wondered if it was a result of the rape.

“Not me so much as my job.”

“You’re not going anywhere, are you?” he asked, his voice quiet again and slightly panicked below the surface.

I shook my head.

“You don’t know how much this is helping,” he said. “If we had to stop … I’m not sure what I’d do.”

“We won’t stop,” I said.

He nodded and gave me a small, tight-lipped smile.

We were quiet a moment and he began to relax again.

“You mind if I take a better look at your neck?” I asked. “Your collar covers part of it, and I still haven’t gotten a good look at the scar.”

He turned his head and pulled back the light brown collar of his correctional officer uniform.

I stood, walked around my desk, and leaned over to get a better look.

It wasn’t just a cut, but a mark, a symbol of some sort. I was sure of it now. Whatever the symbol, it was significant to the rapist, and could very well be the key to catching him.

The shank being used to inflict the wound had to be extremely sharp, almost like a scalpel. The scar consisted of a vertical line with a smaller horizontal line intersecting three-quarters of the way up on one end and two smaller lines at the other end extending out at a forty-five degree angle. This made it look like a cross on one end and an arrow on the other.

“Do you know what it stands for?” he asked.

I shrugged. “Let me look into it and see what I can find out.”

“Thanks,” he said.

Before I could say anything else, the phone on my desk rang.

“Chaplain Jordan,” I said.

“John,” Jake said. “We’ve got another one.”

“Another what?” I asked.

“Body,” he said. “On the river. You’re not gonna believe this one. Dad said meet him at Turtle Mason’s houseboat.”

Chapter Twenty-eight

T
urtle Mason, also known as Snake Man Mason and Barefoot Mason, lived in a battered old houseboat on the Apalachicola River.

The quintessential river rat, Turtle lived a primitive life in the hardest way possible, and seemed at least twice as old as his sixty-something years. Subsisting on cheap beer, homemade hooch, and the creatures he pulled from the river and swamp, Turtle caught snakes, turtles, and the occasional gator and sold them to a wholesaler who came to the end of the road to meet him every three weeks.

A local legend, stories about Turtle had grown to mythic proportions over the years. He was missing teeth from inebriated brawls, toes from river rot, and chunks of calf muscle from gator bites. Whether on the hot pavement of town or deep in the snake-filled swamp, Turtle Mason never wore shoes.

By the time Sandy and I had launched his boat at the end of the road, Rachel had arrived and we pulled up to the dock to pick her up. The day was bright and hot but the wind that whipped the faded flag at the landing helped and held the promise of rain.

“Whatta we got?” she asked.

I shrugged. “No idea but I can imagine.”

“Crime scene unit’s on the way,” she said.

I shook my head. If something had happened to Turtle Mason, the entire community would mourn—including me.

Turtle and I had never been close. We were from different cultures. Unlike most of the kids I had grown up with, the river had never been a big part of my life. The river rat subculture was one of fishing, hunting, boating, skiing, tubing, and just hanging out on a sandbar—all in various stages of intoxication. Underage drinking and over-the-limit fishing and hunting weren’t activities the sheriff’s son was often invited to. But Turtle’s legend extended far beyond the banks of the river.

Sandy gunned the motor, the bow of the boat coming up out of the water as we sped away from the landing. Expertly navigating us toward Turtle’s place, Sandy carefully negotiated the boat around branches floating down the river, fallen trees sticking up out of the water, and sandbars created by river bottom dredging done by the Corp of Engineers.

As we raced past the thick green growth of the river swamps starting at the banks and stretching back for unseen miles, I wondered if Michael Jensen was hidden among them watching us. I had the same thought when we passed the dilapidated old camps spread sporadically along the embankments or the many houseboats moored to the cypress trees they held.

When we arrived, hair windblown, eyes watery, we found Dad, two of his deputies—one of them Jake, Fred Goodwin, and Robert Pridgeon, his gray-and-green game warden’s uniform soaked through. Dad was standing in the small deck of Turtle’s houseboat. The others were seated in their boats, which were tied to Turtle’s.