by Colin Kersey
“Gray? That you?”
“What’s that you’re playing?”
“Nothing.” She frowned in concentration as she tuned her viola, plucking a string with one hand and turning the tuning peg with the other.
“How’s your hand?”
“The pain is good,” she said. “It helps keep my mind off other things.”
What were these “other things,” I wondered. The possible sale of the trout farm, or simmering jealousy over her sister’s teasing were likely candidates. Though I tried, I could think of nothing to say that would cheer her up and I wolfed down a chipped beef, cream cheese, and red pepper sandwich in silence.
“I better get back.”
“Hey, there’s something you should know.” She continued tuning strings. “There were several strange telephone calls today.”
I froze. “Strange how?”
Her chin started to tremble. “I may have screwed up.”
“What do you mean?”
“The first several times, they just hung up when I didn’t answer.”
I waited.
“The last time, they left a message. Said they were looking for Devon Mudiyam.”
She tapped her fingers on the viola’s fretboard. “They said it was important that he call them back as soon as possible. That he owed them some money, but everything would be okay if you—he—called them back.”
“I should have picked up the phone. I could have at least lied.” She put down the viola. “I looked it up. Mudiyam is an Indian name. It’s you they’re looking for, isn’t it?”
“Don’t worry. You did fine,” I said.
Following Valerie’s disclosure, I was close to panic. Should I leave immediately, or could I risk waiting another day or two?
The derby had attracted a large crowd of predominantly men, many of them wearing camo and bright orange vests, eager to collect the thousand dollars for catching Moses. Unlike the serenity and goodwill of most days at the trout farm, however, people argued and fought over places to stand and cast their lines. Whenever lines got crossed, I hurried to untangle them before crude language and simmering tempers flared into blows. At one point, I had to use the newly installed life ring to rescue a drunk who had fallen into the pond while trying to retrieve his lure from a shrub on the little island. I had just finished hauling him out of the water when there was a loud bellow followed by swearing.
It took only a moment to locate the source and to see the reason for the outcry. I borrowed a pair of wire cutters to cut the barb off a treble hook that had snagged a large man’s ear. I handed him the remainder of the treble hook. “Here. A souvenir.”
After noting the large quantity of empty beer cans, I addressed the other two men in their party. “Your friend needs to see a doctor. Might need a tetanus shot in addition to a stitch or two. Can either of you drive?”
“Mind your own business, Tonto.”
“Wrong hemisphere,” I said.
***
That night, I stood leaning on the railing of the deck to the cabin. I had waited until dark before baiting a large, single hook with a nightcrawler and casting toward the island beneath the fir trees where I suspected Moses might be hiding.
My secret and, according to Nathan, illegal plan was to thwart Stu’s derby plans by catching Moses and releasing him into the nearby Skagit River. At least one of us could live free from being hunted. For how long—that was another matter.
Earlier, I had saved a bag of ice from the fish cleaning station which I had emptied into a bag-lined, 50-gallon trashcan hidden behind the barn. In my distraught state, I was not just trying to save a legendary trophy fish, but attempting to foil an army of assassins.
I held one advantage over all the men and women who had earlier thrashed the water with their lures and baited hooks hoping to catch Moses. As I was returning to the cabin following dinner and doing dishes with Valerie in the cool of an evening, I had often seen the swirl of a large tail fin near the northwest side of the island as Moses fed on insects.
I carefully cast my line out in that direction tonight. While I waited patiently for a strike, I continued to think about passwords. Heide had kept a journal in which she would sometimes stuff photos from magazines and write short, blog-like entries in her large, looping cursive. The fact that she kept a private journal had bugged me. I wondered what secrets may have been hidden there. Once while she was taking a bath, I snuck a peek.
I found references to a weekend date in Ojai as well as our honeymoon in Hawaii interspersed with numerous affirmations and places she hoped to travel. There was Paris, of course, London, Prague, Santorini, and Rome. One place that stood out due to its slightly more exotic location was Turkey—specifically Istanbul, which happened to be the correct character count. Sandwiched between a champagne bottle label, a business card from a restaurant in Laguna Beach and a pressed flower —the white plumeria she had worn behind her ear when we were married—was a photo and caption torn from a travel magazine of the Blue Mosque. Making the challenge of finding the correct password more difficult, was the fact that I would be locked out if I guessed wrong more than three times. And due to her financial industry employment, Heide was clever enough not to use a common word or name without modifying it with numbers or symbols. It was a sad fact of life that we were now living and working in a world populated by armies of cyber criminals.
A twitch in the tip of the fiberglass fishing pole caught my attention. I watched for several seconds until it moved again. Carefully, so as not to spook whatever might be nibbling at the nightcrawler on the other end of the line, I reached for the pole. It nearly leapt into my hand and I barely seized it before it disappeared into the pond. Monofilament line unspooled from the reel with a high-pitched whine. No sooner had I heaved back on the pole to set the hook when it went limp. Whatever it was, it was gone. Then I heard a sold splash somewhere nearby followed by a jerk like a waterskiing tow rope and I knew that this was a very big fish, and it was still hooked.
The fight on my hands tonight was everything that an angler could wish. For more than ten minutes, the huge fish performed all manner of acrobatic flips, runs and changes of direction as it desperately sought to regain its freedom. I refused to fall for its tricks, however, and eventually it lay spent, in the dim shallows. When I first beheld the trout’s girth as it rolled, I was certain that it was Moses. I slipped on a pair of latex gloves to avoid infecting the fish with any human bacteria. It was only when I began to lift the fish by the gills that I spotted the telltale red ribbon of a rainbow trout illuminated in the light of the cabin. It was a lovely fish, something over twenty-two inches in length, I guessed, and by far the largest trout I had seen caught—but it was only a second cousin to the great Moses.
I used the needle-nosed pliers to free the hook from the trout’s lower jaw, then steadied him upright in the shallows. He had fought with such fury that he might stop breathing and drown now if not supported. When at last he recovered, the trout gave a slap of its tail and disappeared once again into the invisible depths of the pond.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
According to Stu, our resident expert on anything baseball related, the derby’s first weekend was “a grand slam.”
While several hundred trout had met their maker that day, no one had caught Moses. Consequently, the prize had been raised to $1500 which meant that the crowd of anglers would likely be even greater for the coming weekend. Of course, my intention was to be long gone by then. I was planning a trip to the public library to search for a job and a place to hide. It was also now time to try my luck at breaking into the Cayman Island bank account set up by Heide and her friend, Jeff.
I was mowing with the hammerknifer up along the road, carefully skirting the whitewashed split rail fence that I had earlier repaired, when I heard the engine of a large vehicle approaching. It had rained heavily early that morning, soaking the grass. By noon, however, the last of the clouds had fled across the mountains, replaced by a robust
sun in a cerulean sky. Now, heat waves danced among the patched and cratered asphalt road. A yellow school bus wound nearer, changing hues in the deep shade of alder, reappearing a moment later into brilliant light. Crickets hummed and chickadees called from the field just beyond the blackberry-vined, barb-wire fence across the road. The air hung heavy, a hammer of humidity and pollen from thistle and cottonwood.
The bus came to a yellow halt. Unoiled doors complained, then disgorged one small boy dressed in a t-shirt and blue denims. The engine roared as it started up. The bus coasted around the corner, roared again and was gone. The boy stooped to tie one black tennis shoe. Then he slipped down the opposite bank into shade and was gone, too. Another week and school would be over, the yellow bus parked and forgotten until school started again in the fall.
Vonda drove up a few minutes later in her car, a white Honda sedan. She waved as she passed by on her way to the barn to park. I didn’t wave back.
Until Catania’s visit and the mysterious phone calls, I had found driving the John Deere to be profoundly satisfying as therapy. Now that my life had become a tangled knot of complications, however, I found it annoying. My presence here was putting the Van de Zilver family in danger. There was just one small problem to making my getaway: where to go that afforded the same anonymity and invisibility. Not to mention hospitality.
Then there was the hundred million, which was an entirely different brain twister. Had the cartel or the FBI already found the enormous sum, or was it still sitting there waiting for me to come up with the correct password? Even if I did somehow manage to decode the correct series of eight letters, numbers, and symbols, where could I stash that much money so it could not be found or traced back to me? Would I even live long enough to be able to spend it?
The crack sounded like gunfire. Though I ducked reflexively and brought the tractor to an immediate halt, I was not fast enough. Something sharp struck the back of my head, neck and shoulder and stung my ear. I dove to the ground and crouched behind the John Deere’s rear wheel to provide protection from the road in case I was being shot at. Then I removed a triangular chunk of glass from the back of my neck. There were other, smaller pieces of glass still attached to my hair and skin. My fingers were now slick with blood. I touched my ear and discovered I was bleeding there as well. A warm trickle ran down my back.
I found the shattered green beer bottles, nearly invisible in the grass. I might have seen them before running over them if I had been paying better attention. Virgil had warned me about the hammerknifer’s tendency to hurl rocks and glass at you. The rear metal shield positioned behind the spinning blades was meant to protect anyone standing behind the mower. Unfortunately, that left the driver exposed.
Vonda opened the screen door following my knock. She had changed into cutoffs and a shirt that she had tied beneath her breasts that showed off her trim belly. “Howdy, stranger. Why didn’t you come in?”
I held up the blood-soaked t-shirt I had used as a bandage. “Would you mind driving me to an urgent care facility?”
“What’s wrong?” Valerie called from the other side of the room.
“Nothing, sis,” Vonda replied. “Let me take a look,” she said to me.
I bent down while she examined my injuries. “Looks worse than it is,” she said. Over her shoulder, she added, “He’s a little dinged up. I need some tweezers, antiseptic and bandages.”
“Let’s go down to your place and I’ll have you fixed up good as new in no time.”
Valerie returned with a first aid kit. “I’ll go, too.”
Vonda snatched the kit from her hand. “I got this, Val. You stay here.”
“Vonda!”
“What?”
“You know what,” Valerie said.
“What was that about?” I asked as we walked to the cabin. I felt another trickle of blood run down my back and fought off a moment of dizziness from the heat and possibly shock.
“That was nothing. Bitch seems to think I owe her something.”
“Must have been very difficult being born blind and losing her mother as a kid,” I offered.
“Yeah, guess what? I lost my mother too,” she said. “Not only that, but I went from being an only child, to suddenly being my little sister’s nursemaid. Once Valerie was born, it was like I no longer existed.”
I opened the cabin door and followed her inside.
“Sit down.” She nodded toward the chair. “In my opinion, she’s had it easy.”
“How can you say that?”
She used the tweezers to lift something from my neck. “Hold out your hand.” She laid a sliver of green glass in my palm. “Green, like Heineken. You find the bottles?”
I shook my head. I was contemplating whether the bottles were an accident, or a deliberate act of sabotage planted by Stu. Or worse, a warning from the cartel.
“Ow.”
“Sorry. That piece was in deep.” She laid another sliver in my palm. “You’re bleeding from a couple of places.” She wiped several blond hairs from her face, leaving a smear of blood on her cheek.
“Mom was always taking her places, signing her up for private music lessons and what not. Me, I was lucky to get a used clarinet for band practice. While Miss Valerie was attending plays and going to concerts, I got to stay home to clean her room and the rest of the house.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t easy on either of you.” I hesitated. “But…”
“Let me guess: you think she’s a touch loony like everyone else up here?”
She ran her fingers through my hair, lifting it from my head and neck as she explored for more glass, then stood so close that when I turned my head, I was looking at her throat from barely an inch away. When she pulled my head forward to examine my neck, my lips rested on her neck. The smell of her soap and shampoo were intoxicating.
“Oh, boy,” Vonda said. “This piece is nasty. I’d offer you a bullet to bite on, but I forgot my shooter.”
I felt a sharp twinge as she removed a glass splinter.
“Hold out your hand,” she said.
I looked down at the wicked, curved green fragment she placed in my hand. I also noticed a pale pink nipple winking at me from beneath her shirt.
“I think I got it all. Let me wash off some of the blood so I can see better.”
She returned from the bathroom with a washcloth that she had wetted with warm water. As she began to wipe the back of my neck, she rested her body against mine. Her strokes were slow. Tender. Erotic.
I dropped the glass slivers on the floor, not caring whether my bare feet would find them later and sighed. I remembered the sweet, consuming surrender of making love and how it was with Heide, our spontaneous lovemaking sometimes ending on the floor, the back of a car, the balcony of our apartment and, once, even in the dressing room of a Victoria’s Secret as women giggled nearby.
When she finished my neck, she ran the washcloth over my shoulders and down my back. Her breathing grew louder as she moved the now bloody cloth down my chest and then my stomach. Needing an escape, however temporary, from the heartache and anxiety that tormented me, my desire ignited, and I was suddenly weary of trying so fucking hard not to do something I wanted so much to do.
She dropped the washcloth and her hands, smooth as blades of grass, slid up my cheeks and into my hair. My own hands traveled up the pathways of her body and found her breasts irresistible.
“Oh my,” she breathed. She bent down and we kissed, long and hungrily. The rest of it came easier and quicker than it should have.
Afterwards, I thought I would feel racked by guilt and anxious about Stu’s threatened response. But as we lay together on the tiny cot, sunlight streaming in the gaps between the window and the roller shade, a fly buzzing furiously against the glass, and a thin layer of sweat bathing our bodies, I couldn’t prevent my hand from exploring the wonder of Vonda’s body. It was no great surprise to either of us when she guided me into her yet again.
***
I be
gan worrying the moment Gray came to the door. He was hurt—I didn’t know how badly—and now Vonda was in his cabin. I had been pacing back and forth from the kitchen to the far end of the living room, listening to the ticking of the clock and waiting for her to come back. And the more time that went by, the more my worry turned to hate. I wanted to stab her in the eyes, let her know what it was like being blind and teach her a lesson she would never forget!
Finally, unable to stand the pain a second longer, I buckled Patsy’s harness around her and started down the hill.
I felt the tug from Patsy at the same instant I heard the duck as it lifted from the pond. I knew it was a mallard by the way its wings squeaked, just like Momma taught me, and I wished I could fly away, too. Leave behind all this worry and hate and pain. But I had to know the truth.
Near the edge of the pond, I stopped. The noises coming from the cabin told me everything. Vonda could not be quiet if you paid her a million dollars and she was certainly not trying to be quiet now. I stood there, the tears running down my cheeks. I might be blind, but I was not unseeing.
“You won’t believe this, Momma,” I cried. “This time she’s really done it. She’s stolen Gray from me.”
Unable to resist the strange sounds coming from the cabin, Patsy jerked her harness from my hand, and I fell face first in the grass. I clawed the grass and the earth beneath it with my fingers as I wept for my loss. First Vonda, then Gray. And now, even my dog had betrayed me.
I lay there, feeling sorry for myself, until rage took over. I needed to go back to the house. It would not be easy without Patsy, but I had done it before.
As I stumbled up the hill, I chanted under my breath, the words like the shrieks of a bow across the strings of my viola.
“I’ll kill them. Kill. Kill. Kill.”
PART III
MOSES
But the Lord called out to the man, “Where are you?”
