Trapped (46 page)

Plus we both like Washington. That’s where we hooked up,

when I first got hired by the bureau. So we throw the bags in

the car and drive from New Rochelle to D.C., four and a half

hours door to door, piece of cake.

“Amy, she loves the museum. She adores it. Everybody

says this about their kids, but Amy was truly amazing. Twice

as smart as me, and she was only twelve years old. Jean and

I had just the best weekend, watching Amy soak up all that

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knowledge. She was having such a great time, taking notes

and collecting pamphlets that we end up staying longer than

we intended. Would have made sense to stay over, and we

discussed the possibility, but decided we had to get back

home that night because Amy has school the next day and

I’ve got work and Jean has work—did I mention Jean was

a lawyer? No? She worked for the Legal Aid Society in New

York. Anyhow, it’s night, heavy traffic. We’re on the New

Jersey Turnpike when my eyelids start to get heavy. So I pull

into the Walt Whitman rest area and let Jean take over. She’s

wide-awake, fully caffeinated and raring to go. Amy’s in the

back, sound asleep. Probably dreaming of her eventual

Nobel Prize nomination for her sixth-grade world-studies

class project.”

“Oh Shane,” I say, knowing what’s coming.

“Yeah,” he says. “It was bad. Next thing I know, I’m wak-

ing up in a wreck and I’m the only survivor. While I was

asleep Jean got sideswiped by a tractor-trailer and we got

dragged under his rear wheels.”

I hug the big guy, but he doesn’t really hug me back. Too

tense, too focused on the pain.

“So that’s my story,” he says. “Why I resigned from the

FBI.”

“What did you do?”

“What can you do? I buried them. Then, see, I was so

afraid of forgetting, so unable to let go, that I spent a year or

so working on a family scrapbook. Which turned out not to

be such a good idea for me, mental health-wise. That house

in New Rochelle? Must have looked like Howard Hughes

was living there. I wasn’t saving my own toenail clippings,

or worse, but I was obsessing on assembling the perfect

family scrapbook that would somehow take us all back to our

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happy boring life together. That was my purpose in life,

culling through snapshots of dead people.”

“So what happened?” I want to know. “How did you get

through it? How did you survive?”

He shrugs. “Ran into someone more desperate than me.

This lady in the neighborhood, she came to me because she

knew I used to be FBI. Short version—she had a problem

with her missing daughter and I agreed to help her if I could,

and it turns out I could, and I sort of kept going from there.”

“I’m glad you did. No matter how this turns out.”

“Don’t say that. Don’t even think it.”

“Can’t help it. Sorry.”

“Try this,” he suggests. “Show me yours. The secret of

who fathered Kelly. Get it off your chest.”

I want to share, really I do, but as usual, something holds

me back. Something deep and veiled puts a cautionary finger

to my lips and says, no, not now, not yet.

“If we get her back,” I tell him. “If Kelly survives she

deserves to know what happened to her father. Knew I’d have

to tell her someday. I’ll tell her first, and then I’ll tell you,

promise.”

“Not if,” he says agreeably. “When.”

At that moment a gun blasts in the distance. I’m no expert

on gunshots, but when you hear one go off in the middle of

the Everglades you know what it is. Not a firecracker, not a

backfire. A gunshot, no doubt.

Shane grips my hand, doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t

need to.

Two more shots fire, and I know in my heart that

someone just died.

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15. Something Rises From The Black Water

Minutes go by, jagged little shards of eternity.

We’re at the edge of the hardwood island, facing the sunrise,

because the thudding sounds came from that direction.

“Shotgun,” Shane decides. “Fish had a rifle, so it’s not him.”

Thing is, I’m not thinking about our guide, or what he

might or might not have done. I’m thinking about an execu-

tion at dawn, because that’s what it sounded like to me. The

final, deliberate, carefully aimed shots that turn a living hu-

man being into something lifeless and ugly.

“Hard to say how far,” Shane muses. “Less than a mile,

that’s for sure.”

As I stare, something separates itself from the brightening

horizon and begins to fly back and forth, relentless and buglike.

“Helicopters are up,” Shane says approvingly. “Resuming

their pattern. Remind me to ask Fish if he’s got a flare gun.”

I’m hearing Shane but not fully processing his words—

helicopters, pattern, flare. I’m concentrating on the stillness

in my heart, wondering if it will ever resume beating. Of

course it never stopped, not really, it’s just a symptom of un-

bearable anxiety, thinking your heart has ceased beating.

Shane says lots of other stuff, probably reassuring things,

but I’m not listening.

We never do see Leo Fish coming back. All of a sudden

he’s there in front of us, soaking wet from the armpits down,

and looking especially grim.

“Best follow me,” he says, retrieving his little boat from

the bushes.

“Is it my daughter?” I ask, mouth dry.

“Can’t say,” Fish says, turning away.

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Back to the taciturn hermit. As Shane and I clamber into

the little boat, it feels like gravity has doubled. Everything is

much heavier, even the air. I’m at the point where breathing

is no longer automatic; I have to concentrate on expanding

my lungs, sucking in the syrupy air. The mosquitoes so thick

you have to breathe through a tightened mouth or risk draw-

ing them into your lungs.

Fish, not a young man, poles the boat with fierce concen-

tration, shoving us rapidly along, and the blood-tinted sky

ripples in the wake. The blood color gives way to garish,

neon-orange and by the time Fish nudges the little boat up

on dry land—five minutes? ten? my inner clock no longer

functions with clarity—the sky has become a thin wash of

blue with a few stars or planets still showing.

I realize, with a sickening shock, that darkness made the

wilderness smaller. With the blooming light comes a sense

of vast distance. The tiny helicopters are miles and miles

away, too far to make any sound. They say the horizon is only

about three miles away when you’re at ground level, but

from here it looks a thousand miles and a million years, with

distance and time hopelessly entangled. Vast but hardly

silent—a million birds are screaming bloody murder and

things are splashing in the water, disturbed by our presence.

Before I quite know what is happening, Fish has grabbed

the rope and he’s running across the grass, dragging the boat.

Moving with urgency, as if he knows that some terrible thing

awaits us. Which he must. He came this way, right? He’s

already been here. He knows but won’t say because he’d

rather show me.

Panic is like a fierce little bird trapped in my chest. I want

to fall to my knees and let it happen, a full-scale panic attack,

fluttering heartbeats, hyperventilation, the whole works. But

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my legs have ideas of their own, they carry me forward, over

the damp grass and the firm mud beneath, through the ragged,

toothy fronds of saw grass and palmetto slashing at my knees.

Racing forward, my eyes searching wildly for the one terrible

thing I hope never to see, my daughter’s name resonating

within me,
kellykellykellykelly
on an endless loop until

suddenly I burst through a thick stand of palmetto bushes or

trees or whatever they are, and go facedown with a great

womp! into the black water.

Shane pulls me out, holds me up, shakes me. Shaking me

dry or maybe trying to shake some sense into me. Hard to say

because I’m blubbering and with water in my ears not really

listening. I see his mouth move, but what is the silly man saying?

“Nutter!” he says.

So he thinks I’m crazy. That makes two of us. Then the

syllables begin to separate themselves and I realize he’s

saying, “Not her.”

Not her. Not Kelly.

He sets me down, looking as worried as ever I’ve seen him.

Worried for my state of mind, obviously. As he should be.

“Back with us, missy?” Fish wants to know.

Too soon to speak, but I manage to nod in the right places.

“Shots were fired here,” he says, indicating a thick area

of mangroves. “I was too far away to see it, but there’s plenty

of trace left behind. See the way those branches are bent?

Two people lying there. Hiding, is my guess. Just above,

where the branch is busted, that’s from the first shotgun. Ten

gauge, from the sound of it, and looks to be a slug shot.

Sorry, missy. That’s the size gun and ammunition a man

might use hunting deer or wild boar.”

“Or people,” I manage to gasp.

“Or people,” he concedes. “Which is what he was doing,

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right enough. The way he fired the first two shots, he was

maybe tryin’ to back ’em out of the mangroves. There’s no

blood, no indication they was hit.”

“They?” I ask. The guide’s methodical approach helps calm

me, ever so slightly, and my heartbeat is no longer fluttering.

It helps there are no bodies. I was expecting bodies.

“The two was hiding in the mangroves,” Fish explains.

“You see that area over there? Where it opens up and the

water looks a little deeper along the shore? That’s one of

Ricky Lang’s old camps. Used to be trailers and shacks and

such like, until the rangers burned it all down. Ricky lived

here till he was about twelve years old, is my guess. I’m also

guessin’ he has someplace nearby where he kept his captives.

Yur daughter and the young man.”

“Seth,” I tell him. “His name is Seth.”

“Whatever you say, missy.”

“What happened? Where are they?”

Shane wants to know as badly as I do. We’re both waiting

on Leo Fish, hoping he has the answers.

“Can’t know for sure,” he concedes. “Signs and trace give

me clues, but it ain’t certain. Two people hiding in the man-

groves, two shots to scare ’em out. Minute or so later, comes

another shot from a different gun. A twelve gauge, probably

an AA-12. Very distinctive sound.”

“An AA-12, are you sure?” Shane wants to know, his

voice laden with concern.

“Ain’t dead sure of nothin’ in this life, son. But it had the

sound of an auto assault shotgun, firing a single. The Cuban

paramilitary units used to train with the AA-12, pretending

to invade Cuba. Very scary noise, when firing on full auto.

Those boys would spook the wildlife for miles around,

playing with their full-auto shotguns.”

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“Two shooters,” Shane says.

“Yup, they was two. One killed by the other.”

Shane and I both have the same reaction. We look at the

bare ground, as if expecting a body to materialize. Fish shakes

his head and goes, “Sorry, missy. I ain’t used to explaining.

That dark stuff spattered on the mangrove?” he says, pointing.

“That’s blood, and if you’ll pardon me for saying so, it includes

specks of brain matter. So we know it was a head shot.”

If there’s blood and brains on the mangrove leaves I’ll take

Fish’s word for it. I have no desire for a closer look. I’m still

trying to puzzle out why, if someone was killed, there’s no

body. And how does he know that one shooter killed the other?

How—and this is killing me slowly—how does he know

the spatter doesn’t come from Kelly or Seth?

“Because I seen him, missy. The dead man. He was shot

from behind and fell back in the water. Made sure of who it

was afore I come back for you.”

Fish hefts his push-pole, studies the oily black water, then

plunges the pole into the surface not a yard from my feet. He

levers the pole down, grimacing with the effort.

Something rises. A wet thing with not much of a face.

“Sorry, missy,” says Fish. “Seems like you need to see this,

to prove it ain’t your daughter. This a local boy name of Dug

Whittle and you’ll notice he dint let go of his shotgun. A ten

gauge. So he was the one shootin’ at the mangroves.”

“Ricky did this?” Shane asks.

“That’d be my guess.”

“Oh my God,” I say, seeing what happened, finally pic-

turing what Fish had seen at a glance. “She escaped! Kelly

escaped! She was running away. She and Seth.”

“Looks like,” Fish says, lowering the pole. “But it didn’t

hold. Ricky Lang has got ’em now.”

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16. Later Alligator

She floats in a jungle canopy, under a blanket of lush

green fronds that cover her, good as any camouflage. All she