Shark River (32 page)

“His folks spent a fortune trying to find him, but he was gone, man. Vanished. It was like there was some dark thing out there stalking us. Hunting us down. Taking revenge on us, one by one by one.”

I was holding a can of Diet Coke. As I listened to him, the can began to slowly dent, then collapse in my hand. I told myself to sit back, relax, maintain an expression of indifference.

He sighed, paused, chewed at his hair for a moment, then went to the little fridge, opened the door and knelt to see in. As he did, he said, “That was the end for me. I couldn’t take any more. I borrowed money from my old man and bought a sailboat. Headed out to sea. Offshore, a hundred miles or more out, was the first time in years I’d felt any sense of peace. Or safety, after what we did. It was a kind of spiritual rebirth, man. And a release, too. It’s like I always say: I love being offshore because no one can hear you scream.”

He stood, holding a fresh beer. He told me that after months of cruising, he began to recover. Began to study Buddhism, doing sitting meditation twice a day every day. He also began to research the families of the three murdered sailors, wanting to make restitution, and finally found a way. He pretended to be the administrator of a private organization that provided scholarship money to the children of servicemen killed in action. Every extra cent he made, he funneled into that fund.

“I interviewed all three widows by phone. I got to know them. Nice ladies, but only one of them had children, Cheryl Garvin. I talked to her several times. That’s where I first heard your name, long before we ever met. A guy named Marion Ford, but everyone called him Doc. You were tight with her late husband, Johnny, and already sending her money to help out.”

I sat listening, trying not to react, as he added, “When you showed up on Sanibel, I put the two together right away. I figured you’d come to kill me. I expected that all along. By then, a couple more of us had either died in an accident or disappeared. And look who’s talking—me, the guy who always says there’s no such thing as coincidence. You with your spooky background. Tell me the truth, Doc. If you’d been sent to kill me, I’d be dead, right?”

I nodded as if I had no idea what he was talking about, and, before I could think about it, heard myself say, “If I had that kind of background, yeah. Unless they failed to assign some kind of time frame. An oversight that left it entirely up to me when to do it.”

He smiled for the first time. “I get it, one of your jokes. Like you still might
have
to pull the trigger. Uh-huh. But no, my point is, for us to end up friends is very powerful karma, man. It told me I was back on the right path. Maybe even forgiven. Two months ago, though . . . early December, it was the anniversary of the bombing, and it all came back for some reason. The guilt. The horror. You know why I pushed so hard for you to go to my retreat on Guava Key? Because I’d already arranged for Cheryl to be there, Johnny Garvin’s widow, and I was going to tell you both the truth. Finally get it off my chest. But she had to cancel at the last minute.”

I nodded and stood, feeling some of the old anger return, fighting it, then compartmentalizing it. I am very, very good at compartmentalizing emotion. I waited until I was under control before I said, “I’m glad she didn’t come. It was a long time ago and why put her through it again? Just to make yourself feel better?”

I watched the words hit him and saw them hurt. I took no pleasure in that. It was true. It had all happened a long, long time ago, and several years back I had made a personal decision to leave it all where it belonged—in the past.

Once a decision has been made, emotion—any emotion—is wasted energy and a poor use of time.

As I opened the door, showing him out, I added, “One thing you maybe overlooked. From what I just heard, anyway.”

“What’s that, man?”

“It was a violent time. There were a lot of subversive groups around. Not just yours.”

“Revolution, man. Yeah. There were tens of thousands of committed souls. The energy was so strong it came through the walls like heat.”

I said, “Uh-huh. So if the FBI didn’t arrest anyone from your little group, how are you so sure the bomb was yours?”

 

 

 

They didn’t drive to Mango on Sunday, because Tomlinson was too shaky and hungover. Instead, he puttered around the marina with Ransom, the two of them drinking bottled water and sneaking off occasionally to smoke.

My guess, anyway.

He had to listen to a lot of jokes about Mark Bryant’s dog, too. Good stories travel fast around the islands and islanders aren’t shy about exaggeration. Sunday morning, Jeth told me that he and Janet had found the runaway retriever a few miles away from the marina only an hour or so after the party ended. Sunday evening, though, the story had grown epically. I ran into Alex Payne at Bailey’s General Store, and he said he’d heard that the dog had assaulted half a dozen poodles on Captiva, then tried to swim across to Demere Key where, apparently, there was a female dog in heat.

“I heard even that big black cat you’ve got at the marina had to run for his life and still hasn’t come back,” he laughed.

Nope. Crunch & Des was in my lab, sleeping by the window, right where I’d left him.

Early Monday morning, Tomlinson came puttering up in his little dinghy, borrowed the keys to my pickup truck and took Ransom away with him. I gave him my new cell phone to use. I told him I’d been having some engine problems with the truck and he might need it if they broke down.

I waited until they were gone, then jumped in my boat and ran straight across the bay to Punta Rassa, where I’d already arranged for a rental car through the big resort and spa there.

I checked the contract twice to make certain I’d paid for full insurance coverage, no deductible. I checked to make sure it had a good emergency brake, too. Most rentals don’t.

It was a Japanese car, white, common, indistinguishable from a dozen other similar makes, foreign or domestic.

Perfect.

I sat in the car at the boat ramp parking lot, watching traffic come across the bridge from Sanibel. I was waiting to see the cab of my old blue pickup come up over the rise, Tomlinson and Ransom inside, and planned to sneak into traffic behind them.

Earlier that morning, right on schedule, I’d called Lindsey at her snowy hideaway, which now she was fairly certain was in Colorado, although her dad wouldn’t allow her to describe the little nearby ski resort where her bodyguards—Big Ben and Little Ben, she called them—now took her daily. I called her not just because I’d agreed to call her but because, I realized, I had come to look forward to our talks. Liked hearing her strong laughter. Liked hearing her energized plans for things we were going to do in the future. At one point, she’d told me, “Know what I’d enjoy doing? Coming back to Florida and just the two of us getting on a boat and going somewhere. Some place that’s peaceful and quiet, but wild. Not one of those resort places. A place that’s got some heart to it. After all this crazy crap is over and we know we’ll be safe.”

Something about the phrase “that’s got some heart to it” brought a specific location to mind. I told her, “If you want wild and remote, there’s an area south of here where the Everglades drains into Florida Bay. Nothing but mangroves and empty beaches and this river that runs clear back up into the sawgrass.”

“Can we go there and camp? Promise?”

The last time I’d camped in that area was years ago, just after my parents were killed. I’d gotten in my little skiff and disappeared on my own, alone for more than two weeks.

I didn’t tell her that. I’d never told anyone that.

“We’ll get a houseboat,” I said, and talked with her for a little longer before listing my plans for the day—driving alone to Mango—so that she could pass them on to her father, via telephone, as I knew she would.

It was the first time I’d ever lied to her.

 

 

They were being followed.

I wasn’t certain at first. With Ransom driving, they came rolling over the high bridge, then east on the six-lane highway with its 7-Elevens and strip malls. I filtered in behind, keeping a car or two between us, but I could see they were so busy talking that there was no danger of them taking notice of me.

Ransom was an inconsistent driver. She’d speed up, then slow down, drifting back and forth across lanes. She probably didn’t have much experience driving in traffic. Maybe she’d never driven in traffic before. What had she told me? Cat Island had one tiny little section of paved road, that’s all. Everything else was shell or sand.

Florida attracts some of the worst drivers from around the nation and around the world. It had to be a white-knuckle introduction to life on the modern highway.

But she seemed relaxed, unimpressed. I could see her laughing and chatting away as she tailgated and swerved and cut off cars that she’d passed, indifferent to blaring horns and angry finger-grams flashed her way.

She and Tomlinson seemed to have more and more in common. They were both horrible drivers.

Because she was unpredictable, it took me awhile to spot the car that was following them. I noticed a green Ford Taurus with the plain, unadorned look of an inexpensive rental.

Had I needed to tail someone, it was the kind of car that I would have selected.

I watched the car pass my blue pickup, then linger until my truck had passed it. Then the Ford fell in behind, but in a different lane. When Ransom slowed unexpectedly to something approaching school-zone speed, the Taurus had to pass once more. When the car gradually reduced speed so that Ransom could again slip by, I knew I was watching a solitary surveillance. Had even one other car been involved, the Taurus would have handed her off and continued at speed.

Nope, it was a lone tail. And not someone particularly good at what he was doing.

 

 

Mango is about fifty miles southeast of Sanibel, and there are a couple of ways to get there. Like me, Tomlinson tends to stick to the slower back roads and I was pleased when I realized that he was doing the navigating. We went south on U.S. 41—an illustration of crazed manners and automotive chaos. In South Florida, melting pot driving habits are so unpredictable and dangerous that defensive driving is not enough. You must drive tactically. After fighting our way southward, we turned inland on Corkscrew Road, a two-lane asphalt. I dropped back a quarter-mile or so from the Taurus, then pulled up closer when a cement truck slipped out between us, providing me with good cover.

I drove and watched the scenery change from car dealerships and office condos to orange groves, Brangus cattle, and phosphate pits; vast acreage interrupted by an ever-growing number of gated communities with names like Cross Creek Estates, Eagle Ridge, Jamaica Bay—names founded not in geography but at the desks of advertising agencies. The logos varied but the template was the same: little guardhouses, rolling fairways, stucco and spray-creted houses with red synthetic roofs pressed to look like real Spanish tile, lakes and palms in sodded lots, communal pool and tennis courts, and high, ivied concrete walls built to keep Florida out, thereby preserving inside the careful replication of a Midwestern suburb.

We turned south, and the land changed again, from fertilized green to dry-season gray, cypress trees standing in sawgrass, limbs bare as winter maples, and black water that glittered on the distant curve of horizon.

A cement truck turned down a shell access road, leaving just the three of us on this isolated, narrow highway. My blue pickup, the Taurus, and me, all of us separated over a mile of fast asphalt.

I decided it was time to make my move.

 

 

The driver of the Taurus had Latino features, the black hair and coloring. He was wearing a collared Polo shirt and narrow, wraparound black sunglasses.

He drove one-handed, forearm draped over the wheel. Cool and very relaxed. He was focused on the pickup, and no doubt figured I was up there ahead of him. He hadn’t done a visual ID, just assumed if the truck was rolling, I was in it. No problem. He’d stay right back there until it was time to make a move of his own. Or maybe call in for backup; just a messenger boy assigned to keep me in sight.

I came up behind him gradually, opened the glove box and placed the Sig Sauer on the seat beside me. Then I pulled the ballcap I was wearing down low, punched the accelerator and passed him. I got a pretty good look at the guy from his blind spot before I touched a shielding hand to my face, not wanting to risk him recognizing me. I pulled back into my lane after a safe distance . . . and then gradually, very gradually, began to slow.

I wanted to put as much space as possible between the Taurus and the pickup. Wanted to now do to him what, presumably, he had planned to do to me: separate me from traffic, isolate me, then strike.

He was a tailgater. He came flying up behind me with a road rage flamboyance. I watched in my mirror how he put his bumper up close to mine, his mouth working: What the hell kind of idiot was I to pass him, then slow down?

I waited until he swerved out to pass me, then I slammed the accelerator down.

Neither vehicle had much horsepower. But the little Toyota had enough to keep him from getting around me. A lone semi coming from the other direction forced him in behind me again. Once again, I slowed, watching his reaction in the mirror.

Now he was furious. Tomlinson and Ransom were out of sight, and there was a real possibility I’d just ruined his surveillance. Some idiotic tourist in a little white car. He laid on the horn, shot me his middle finger, and swerved out to pass again.

We were on a long section of straightaway. The road had been built with fill dug by a floating dredge—typical of roads in the Everglades. There was a canal running along the eastern edge of the road, sawgrass and cypress domes beyond.