Strawman's Hammock (26 page)

Barrett squeezed honey into a Thermos of coffee that was strapped beside a fire extinguisher on the helm of Jarold's midmounted skiff. It was bracing cold, but not frigid. Jarold had an ordinary fatigue jacket pulled over the olive and tans of the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission. Bear pulled the hood of his Army-issued parka over his official wool cap. A stitching of white letters above the bill of the cap identified its wearer as FDLE. Bear tried to keep the chart in his numbed hands stable against a slipstream of winter air. Jarold navigated, as usual, by the seat of his pants.

There was no sophisticated equipment to keep the bird dog bound within the coordinates specified by the marine patrol, only the warden's intuition of wind and water and his mental catalog of buoys and landmarks. Jarold's one concession to modernity was a ship-to-shore radio. Barrett had his cell phone for backup, but kept it secreted in the deep pockets of his parka.

By noon they had worked past Dead Man's Bay. Gary's scarlet runabout was a distinctive craft. As Jarold and Bear searched the coast they gave a description of the boat to every fisherman or runabout found on the water. By noon they had canvassed more than twenty craft on the water, none of whose skippers had seen Gary's boat. Barrett would have bet that the younger Loyd had never been on the Gulf at all except for Roy's insistence that he had seen Gary's fire-engine red Whaler launch from the ramp near his restaurant.

“He's out here somewhere,” Barrett said.

Jarold checked his gauges. “Tide's running out and we need fuel.”

“Okay,” Bear conceded. “Let's head back.”

You could see the spines of oyster beds and the javelin tips of cypress knees exposed with the running tide.

“Think I'll play it safe,” the warden declared, and headed out for deeper water.

The green comb of treeline that marked the fall of land receded. The grass that rolled in waves from the shoreline to the sea disappeared. Jarold nudged the throttle of his jet-propelled outboard and the bird dog leaped to fifty miles an hour, pounding through the choppy water, each thrust forward a blow to the hull. Barrett could feel the spray of brine beating his face like BBs. He flexed his knees to absorb the heavy blows being hammered to the bird dog's rugged hull. A brilliant blue sky spread an unflawed canopy overhead and even Barrett, always uneasy away from terra firma, was exhilarated to smell the salt and feel the wind tearing his face.

Within minutes there was nothing in sight except an endless horizon and a rolling plateau of choppy saltwater. Most men, Barrett knew, would not head to open sea without sophisticated navigation. But he realized that Jarold's abjuration of the GPS was only part of a larger distrust for all things modern. Part of a character that for months on end lived and survived in solitary self-reliance. Without plumbing. Without air-conditioning.

Jarold Pearson wanted to find the way home on his own, following the smell and feel of the water to a time, more than a place, that would say, ‘Here, turn here.' To follow that voice off the deep water, back into sight of land, to seek some familiar landmark, some configuration of tree and green absolutely without distinction to Barrett or any other outsider, from that recognized place to yet another, a bald cypress, say, or an oyster mound identical to the other thousands that crowded this stretch of coast.

Finally, from those scattered constellations to fix the point that would lead to another point that would call him further yet to a trail of careless poles stabbed motley into the sand below the water to reach, finally, Roy's concrete ramp.

But he didn't make it. The warden was still in deep water when the voice came, that imperative born from equal parts of instinct and experience, ‘Here. Hard to starboard. This is the place.' Jarold trusted that voice. He was set to turn. But then Barrett saw something off the starboard bow, something dark and swollen lifting on a swell of briny water.

At first Bear thought it was a bale of marijuana. Drug running was so profitable and the instruments that Jarold hated so precise that it had become common off the Florida coast to drop four or five hundred pounds of grass for later retrieval. Occasionally a bale would be lost, of course. Or a cache might be dumped if a smuggler was threatened by imminent boarding from a legitimate authority. Barrett had seen several bales washed up onto shore, but he'd never seen one at sea.

“See that?” he shouted above the midmounted engine, but Jarold was already banking toward the floating mass.

Barrett was wondering how they'd get the thing on board when an ermine flash in the clear sky above got his notice.

A pair of terns wheeled to catch the sun on white wings. Barrett loved watching terns. More slender in body and bill than other gulls, the tern was also fitted with narrower wings and sometimes even a forked tail, which made him a spitfire in flight. Barrett watched the birds dive to strafe the bale below. A second pass swooped low over the floating mass. The birds cawed raucously. The seafowl paired overhead, beating to a virtual hover against the gulfward breeze, furious above waves that began to chop white.

At first Barrett thought the gulls were dissatisfied with their unstable roost. But then the terns plummeted in tandem toward the target that bobbed swollen below, and this time they stayed. They were closer, now, to the birds and their roosting place, much closer, and Barrett knew when he saw the fowl plunge their beaks that these tern were not feeding on marijuana.

There was meat here, not fresh by the looks of it, but meat nevertheless and the terns were after it, their sharp bills tearing past a wreath of weed into what Barrett now could see was a bloated and putrefied human being.

An explosion of bodily gases broke free as the birds punctured the corpse's drumtight skin. A sickening odor washed downwind, undiluted by sea breeze.

“Shit.”

Jarold banked hard to get upwind of the floater. Barrett clutched his stomach. The body appeared to be floating freely. No restraints apparent, or weights, though Barrett had retrieved more than one body that was supposed to never leave the seabed. That was the thing about dumping a body in the water—you could wrap a man in chains but if you didn't disembowel him, the bacteria in the victim's gut produced gases that converted the entrails into twenty three feet of ballast.

Jarold throttled back to pull alongside. A pair of beaks daggered greedily into the sockets of vacant eyes. Jarold gunned the bird dog toward the floating bale of flesh and bone. The terns briefly gave up their feast, putrid flesh hanging from a pair of probosci. But the fowl returned, this time to be unmoved by the warden's impotent charge.

Barrett reached for the cell phone in his parka. Even had they been able, Barrett would be loath to salvage these putrescent remains. Better to phone the sheriff's office, have Lou contact the coast guard.

“I'd call the marine patrol,” Jarold suggested as if reading Bear's mind.

“Good idea.” Barrett redialed.

The FMP could bring out a boat along with a net and a body bag. But in order for the patrol to rendezvous with the bird dog, Barrett would have to supply a precise location.

“One occasion when I wouldn't mind having a Magellan GPS.”

But Jarold was ahead of him.

“See the chart?”

Bear handed it over. Jarold inspected the chart and glanced shoreward, then far off to port. He placed a thumb gently onto the nautical map.

“Tell 'em we're at latitude approximate twenty-nine degrees, longitude eighty-three degrees. Got that?”

“Got it.”

“We're a little over two nauticals east of Marker 16.”

“Sorry.” Bear's hands were shaking. “Can you repeat that?”

“Here.” Jarold extended his hand for the phone. “Let me.”

Barrett surrendered his phone. The body rolled with a swell of brine. The terns attacked what might be a buttock. Barrett steadied himself on the gunwale. An identification would have to be made, he knew. But that would not happen without forensic assistance. There were no familiar marks to guide the way on that dumpling skin, no points of reference to mark a face black and swollen and beaked to shreds. In fact there was nothing distinctively human at all of this thing rotting on the open sea. But Barrett knew, nevertheless, why the outspoken heir to the Loyd fortune had been, for nearly a week, silent.

Fourteen

Medical examiners concluded that Gary Linton Loyd had died from a single, self-inflicted wound to the temple.

“Looks good for a suicide.” Midge's final report was given in the sheriff's office. “The weapon used was an automatic, nine-millimeter. We found the slug. And we were able to find traces of powder embedded in his shooting hand. He was drunk, too. Levels were way high.”

“Bothers me he wound up in the water.” Barrett frowned. “Usually, situation like that, you'd expect to find the body in the boat.”

“We figure either he sat back on the gunwale to ensure that he'd go in the water, or that, being drunk and standing, he went over the side with the impact of the slug,” Midge replied.

Cricket raised his hand. “Do we have his boat?”

Sessions affirmed. “Tide washed it into the shoreline. Fisherman found it this morning, half-sunk with rain in a marsh of sawgrass.”

“Anything onboard?”

“Empty bottle of Jack Black. Casing from a nine-millimeter shell.”

*   *   *

The preacher at Gary's funeral laid the son's desperate act at the feet of a conscience wracked with guilt.

“He could not trust his sins to Jesus,” the preacher declared mournfully. “And so he tried to atone for them himself.”

The wake of Gary's funeral found Bear and his FDLE comrades in a state of exhaustion. Sheriff Sessions called them all together to his office to thank the investigators for their work and to wrap up what was nominally his own investigation.

Barrett ground his hands into his temples. “I never like to call the game on account of a suicide.”

“Well,” the sheriff drawled, “when your choices are an electric chair or a needle, I guess a bullet can look pretty good.”

“Good for him, maybe. Bad for us.”

“Not followin' ya, Bear.”

“You can't ask a dead man questions, Lou.”

“The hell cares? If he was gonna confess he wouldn't've took his boat out to the Gulf and shot hisself.”

“I'd be a lot happier if Midge could match some of Gary's DNA to semen in Juanita, or at least to the crime scenes.”

“His hair's already matched to hair got from Hezikiah's shack,” Midge reminded Barrett. “And Juanita's hair was found in Gary's Humvee.”

“We should wait for the rest of the DNA before we hang it up.” Barrett was stubborn. “The semen, at least.”

“Semen won't prove anything,” Cricket replied reasonably. “Look, Bear, we're not saying that Gary raped Juanita over the time he had her in that shack.
We're
not saying he had sex with the girl at all. We're just saying he killed her.”

“Of course he killed her.” Sessions growled irritation. “He took kinky pictures and sold 'em and somethin' got out of hand. Hezikiah knew what he was doin' with that girl, you can bet. Her uncle, too; wouldn't surprise me if the Bull had his boss man pegged. Maybe wantin' some money to keep quiet. I'd bet my hat that the morning Gary went out to Quiroga's trailer it wasn't to talk about baling straw. He went out there to kill him. Hadn't've been for you and Jarold, he would have.”

“The Bull, yes.” Barrett nodded. “That's another witness didn't give us much, did he?”

“You're out of line, Agent Raines.” The sheriff growled.

“We have to go with what we've got, Sheriff, you're right. I just hate loose ends, that's all.”

“In real life there are always loose ends, Barrett,” Midge said kindly.

Bear nodded. “I apologize. I do. To you all.”

Sessions nodded curtly. “Thank you, sir.”

*   *   *

The briefing ended on that note. Barrett was heading for the street when he felt a meaty hand on his shoulder.

“Bear.”

It was Lou Sessions.

“Yes, Sheriff?”

“Didn't want things to wind up sour, is all. You a damn good lawman, Bear. I could've been easier to git along with in the past. Think it's time we started fresh.”

Barrett extended his hand. “I can do that.”

“I don't suppose you thought any about the coming election.” Lou kept the offered hand.

“Not much,” Barrett lied.

“Well.” Sessions let him go. “I guess I can always manage an honest race. Not like either of us is gonna git much support from Linton Loyd, is it?”

“I never counted on it,” Barrett declared.

Sessions shook his head. “Aha. Well. Fresh start, then.”

“You bet.” Barrett nodded and headed for his sedan.

Barrett drove straight from Sheriff Sessions's feudal office to the open blacktop leading to Deacon Beach. A whirlwind of doubts swirled unanswered before the Bear but there was nothing he could do about it. It was Sessions's investigation, ultimately, and Lou was satisfied to name Gary Loyd as the county's most recent and horrific murderer.

“If I were sheriff, this case would not be closed,” Barrett announced to the interior of his car. “
If
I were sheriff.”

What he needed now was some time with the boys and a slow meal with Laura Anne. But before allowing himself those hard-earned pleasures, Barrett detoured off Ocean for downtown, slipped through the green light, and parked along a weed-split sidewalk before the brick facade of the
Deacon Beach Herald.

Pauline Traiwick was the paper's owner, reporter, and until the invasion of the digital age, the typesetter as well. Barrett spotted her neat, small frame when he opened the lead-paned door—a sixty-something in khakis who used to ride barrels and rope calves in Florida's rodeo circuit.