by J K Franko
“Can you get the bow line, babe?” Roy shouted across to her. “I’ve got the springs and stern.”
Susie freed the boat from the bow line and clambered aboard. She took her usual seat of the two in front of the helm while Roy stood at the controls. The seat next to Susie was conspicuously empty.
Roy eased the boat gently away from the dock and began the slow trek down the channel and out to the bay.
Much of the area around them was made up of mangroves and very shallow, so they had to follow the channel for almost ten minutes at about six knots before reaching the bay. Once there, Roy gunned the engines and the Yellowfin leapt forward like a playful dolphin.
The boat had a top speed of sixty miles per hour, and with its stepped hull, traveling at that speed—even in rough water—was surprisingly smooth.
It had been a long time since either of the two had felt the warm breeze and salt air on their faces.
It was bittersweet, as the third member of the family who’d always accompanied them was missing.
It brought back memories.
It felt good to be on the water again.
In Florida, as in most of the U.S., a license is not required to run a boat, provided that you own it. However, Roy had studied for and obtained an International Certificate of Competency, certifying him to captain boats up to twenty-five meters. He’d obligated Susie to do the same. To him, it was a question of safety—if they were out on one of the boats and something happened, he didn’t want her stranded and clueless.
Roy had by this time logged almost 600 hours as a captain.
He made a few maneuvers, cutting port and starboard. Testing systems. Everything seemed to be working well. The fact that the boat had been idle for some time didn’t mean that it hadn’t been maintained. Roy ensured that both boats and his jet ski were cleaned and serviced weekly. He’d hired a maintenance company for that purpose.
When he was satisfied that everything was running well, in the middle of Biscayne Bay, Roy brought the boat to a slow stop, then shut off the engines.
He came around toward the bow, sitting down, straddling the coffin box in front of Susie, facing her. She was watching him keenly, but she said nothing as the water lapped gently around them.
Roy knew she was waiting for him to start the conversation, and so he got to it.
“Suze. What you said the other day. I want you to know that I heard you. I always hear you, even if sometimes it may seem like I don’t. I understand where you’re coming from. All of it. And you got me thinking.”
He put both palms down in front of him, between his legs, and leaned forward as if needing the support. “Back with Bareto, it was just too dangerous.” Susie folded her arms. “We were too close to it. We would have been prime suspects. It would have been impossible not to get caught. But this... ” He looked up, as if searching for the right words, then back at her. “This Harlan guy. If—and it’s a big if—if we choose to do it, well... I think it might actually be doable. I think we could get away with it.”
Susie raised her eyebrows and uncrossed her arms. Sure, she’d been expecting a revelation, maybe an apology. But she hadn’t known it would be this.
Roy thought he noted a twinkle in her eyes and held up a hand as he scooted forward, closer to her. “But I need you to hear me out. All of it. I mean really listen to me. It’s important that you understand everything, fully, and I mean everything, Suze.”
He was serious. Susie relaxed and settled back into her seat to listen.
It took just over thirty minutes for Roy Cruise to lay out his detailed plan for killing Joe Harlan Jr. By the time he’d finished, having spoken his plan aloud for the first time, he was exhausted.
He also felt a bit queasy—and Roy doesn’t get seasick. Somehow, putting the whole thing into words and sharing it with another person made what he had concocted seem much more real. These were no longer just musings in his study.
He felt good sharing it with Susie, relieved to have confessed why he’d been skulking around for the last few days. He sat back and looked around, letting everything he’d explained sink in.
Bay sounds were all that they heard for several minutes. The lapping of the sea against the boat. The creak of boat parts as they pushed and pulled against each other with the roll of the waves. The distant hum of faraway craft. The occasional slap of a fish hitting the water.
They both sat in silence, until Susie spoke. “Roy, are you sure about this?” She breathed. “I mean, the other day... I was pissed. I mean... I was upset about the interview, and Liz. And with the whole third-anniversary thing... ” She trailed off and started to bite her thumbnail, something Roy knew she did when she was anxious.
“What?” Roy asked carefully, “You don’t want to do it?”
“No... I mean... Yes... ” Susie spoke through her thumb, then realized what she was doing, and lowered it, sitting on her hand. “No, I’m not saying that. I... I do feel like there’s this hole... from Camilla. I don’t think she got the justice she deserved.”
“Stop calling it justice, Suze. This isn’t justice. This is revenge pure and simple. Like you said. Call it what it is... ”
“Right,” she interrupted. “That’s fair. Look, I don’t know if an ‘act of revenge’ will fill this hole,” she spread her hand over her chest, “in my soul, but… I feel like something is pulling me in that direction. Something’s compelling me to do this. Does that make sense?”
Roy nodded. “I feel the same.” Susie lifted her eyebrows and opened her mouth to speak, but he continued quickly to try to maintain control of the direction of the discussion. “Like I said, I may not show it like you do, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t feel it, Suze,” he said, earnestly. She bit her lip in acquiescence. “I want revenge for our little girl. And if we can’t get that by killing Bareto, then…” he nodded as if to convince himself, “…then, it’ll have to be by avenging another wrong.”
Her eyes widened as she looked at him.
“What?” he asked, looking her in the eye.
“That!” she pointed at him. “Yes! That’s it! That’s exactly how I feel!” she said excitedly, delirious at the fact that they both finally seemed to be on the same page.
“But should we find someone else?” Roy asked, leaning back. “I mean, why Harlan?”
Susie said nothing for a few moments, then answered, “I’ve thought about that, too, a lot, these last days.” She leaned forward and took his hand in hers, looked into his eyes, and continued. “I mean, for me, the answer to ‘why this guy’ is—like you said—that we have no connection to him at all. If we pick someone that killed somebody texting while driving, that’s a connection. Tenuous, sure. But still, a connection. And, the fewer connections, the better.
“Plus, we have a pretty clear idea that he did the crime. I mean, the girl’s parents tracked us down and asked us to do it. And the fact that they approached us, that they’re feeling the same things we felt, going through the same things we went through, that means something to me. Somehow, it seems right. It feels right. They’re asking for justice—revenge, like you said—and if we can get some... something... out of that, some sort of closure, then…” she finished the sentence with a shrug, still holding his hand.
Roy sighed.
“Look,” Susie continued, “I don’t think it’s easy to choose who. Of course, it isn’t. If we were just starting from scratch, maybe we’d look for someone else, but we are where we are because of everything that’s happened... because of everything that has come to us. This guy feels right—this feels right to me,” she said with a determined smile as she squeezed her husband’s hand.
She gave it a few seconds, studying Roy, and when he didn’t respond, she sat back, releasing his hand, and added, “But if you think we should find someone else... ”
“No. Babe. Listen,” he jumped in, “the plan is done. I think we
can do this. If he’s guilty, then whether it’s him or someone else makes no difference. Guilty is guilty. Revenge is revenge. Right? There’s just one thing I think we have to do before we agree to do it.”
“That’s why you kept saying ‘if we do it’ before?” she asked.
He leaned closer to her and spoke softly but seriously. “We have to be sure. We have to be one hundred percent positive that he did what the Wises claim. We have to be certain that he actually did rape that girl before we do anything. Deal?”
Susie nodded, eagerly. “Deal.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Susie’s justification for killing Harlan, and specifically Harlan as opposed to someone else, was weak in my opinion.
I could have understood—conceptually—the logic of her wanting to avenge Camilla by killing someone who had caused a death by texting while driving. I would never have condoned it, but there would have been logic to it.
Her argument that killing someone who had committed “their crime”—texting while driving—her claim that killing such a person would create “a connection to them”—to her and her husband—seemed weak to me.
But, okay. Fine. Forget texting and driving. Why not go after a person who had intentionally killed someone and gotten away with it—someone who truly deserved it? That made more sense to me than killing the Harlan boy.
When I put this to Susie, she responded by telling me a story. Well, the beginning of a story that gave me the first bit of insight into what was truly motivating her actions.
* * *
Susie was unpacking her suitcase on a luxury cruise ship.
She was sixteen years old, and at that awkward stage that a lot of girls go through, though she had gotten there a little later than most. A late bloomer, her mom said.
She was all arms and legs. Her father would often tell her that she looked like a newborn fawn. He would call her his ‘gangly-growing-girl.’
Needless to say, this only added to her already heightened insecurity about her body. Her breasts were too small, in her opinion. And, she was still dealing with getting the hang of the whole period thing. So, having her dad kid her about looking like Bambi really didn’t help. It just added more stress.
Her mother, on the other hand, was great about it. Very supportive. In fact, the two of them were very close, to the point that Susie couldn’t understand when some of her friends complained about how they hated their mothers. No doubt, Susie’s mom wasn’t perfect, but she could tell that her mom cared about her. That she was trying to help her, look out for her, and guide her. She really didn’t see how you could expect more.
As she unpacked her suitcase, she felt trepidation over some of its contents. The white bikini Grandma Font had bought her for the trip stressed her out. When she’d tried it on, the bottoms had looked like granny panties and she’d barely filled in the top. She shoved it deep into a drawer and put other clothes on top, as if burying it would make it go away.
As she unpacked, she could hear the high, tinny sound of music coming from her brother Chris’s headphones as he put away his own clothes. A typical boy, he was just taking everything from his suitcase and shoving it into drawers in no particular order. Filling one drawer, then the next, and so on.
When her parents had told them that they were going on a cruise, Susie had been super excited. When they’d added that they would be going with their neighbors, the Wests, less so. Though her brother got along great with Alan, the Wests’ younger son, there was typical teenage awkwardness between Susie and Ben, the Wests’ older son. He was only a year older than her and they went to the same high school, but the similarities ended there. He was closer in mental age to Chris than to Susie.
This meant that she was probably going to spend a lot of time alone on the trip. So, she’d planned for it, bringing several books, which, as she unpacked, she organized on her nightstand in the order she planned to read them.
While she had fantasized a bit about the idea of maybe meeting a cute boy on the cruise, when she weighed the excitement of the possibility against the stress of it, she thought she’d probably be happier just tanning and reading. The thought of meeting a cute boy while wearing Grandma’s white bikini—which she would avoid wearing at all costs—made her palms sweat.
It’s just a phase. You’ll grow out of it.
“Easy for you to say, Mom.”
On day two of the cruise, Susie went down to the pool after lunch and staked out the same lounge chair she had occupied for most of the prior day. She was wearing a blue one-piece swimsuit and Wayfarers, and had brought her first book—already half-finished—with her.
She had just gotten back into the storyline when she heard a voice say, “Hi there, stranger.”
At first, she thought the words were addressed to someone else, and she just kept reading. Moments later, she felt a tug on her big toe. Susie started, then sat up and lowered her book, squinting up at the person standing over her who was backlit by the sun. She raised a hand to deflect the glare and get a better look at the intruder.
As she did, blond hair came into focus, done up in a high ponytail. The “woman” removed her sunglasses, and smiled. Susie stared for a moment, then suddenly recognized the face, the face of a girl. As she did, a surge of emotions shot through her—joy, excitement, sadness, and fear—all at once.
“Deb?”
The girl in the red bikini sat down on the edge of the lounge chair next to her.
“Small world, huh?”
Susie studied her old friend as her heart thumped in her chest. She had grown, as Susie had, since they’d last seen each other. But Deb was more developed than Susie. She had the body of a full-grown woman. Her breasts were… well, they were breasts. She looked like she was about the same height as Susie, but while Susie looked like Bambi, Deb looked more like Jessica Rabbit—at least in Susie’s eyes.
“How have you been?” Susie asked.
“Good. You?”
“Good.”
“Whatcha reading?” Deb still had that Texas drawl, though it was lighter now.
“Bourne Supremacy.”
“Ah. First one was good.”
“Right? This one’s okay so far.”
They chatted back and forth at a comfortable rhythm. Like two kids warming up to play ping-pong. Neither taking the conversation beyond small talk.
“You here with your family?” Deb asked.
“Yeah. You?”
“Nah. Came with my Aunt Jenny. Just the two of us. She’s over there.” Deb waved at an attractive fortyish woman wearing oversized sunglasses. The woman offered a big smile and waved back enthusiastically from the other side of the pool. “She saw you lying here by yourself, reading, and told me to introduce myself. Wants me to make friends. I almost shit my bikini when I came over and saw it was you!”
Susie laughed. Deb had a gift for interspersing her speech with vulgarities in ways that had always made Susie laugh. Hearing her doing it again conjured up good memories.
“So,” Deb said, “anyway, I gotta get going—get ready for dinner. We should hang. You have plans?”
“I’m meeting my folks, but I could try and get out of it. I’m kind of an eighth wheel anyway.”
Deb laughed. “Huh?”
“I’ll explain later. Where are you guys eating?” Susie asked, gathering her things.
“Lido deck.”
“Cool. Let me talk to my parents and I’ll meet you there. What time?”
“Seven.”
“Okay. See you later.”
Susie caught up to her parents and the Wests at one of the ship’s bars. They were having pre-dinner drinks.
“Honey, it’s great you found a friend. Isn’t that great, Mark?”
“It’s not a boy, is it?” her father asked with mock seriousness.
“No, Dad. It’s a gir
l. Her name is Debra.”
“You go on up and get ready for dinner,” said Susie’s mom. “And when you’re ready, I’ll take you so I can meet this Aunt Jenny. Just swing by here right around seven. We aren’t going anywhere.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
Susie went up to the cabin to get dressed.
She opted for khaki shorts with a light blue polo and a pair of Converse sneakers. As she looked into the mirror, she saw that she had gotten some sun. Her skin was radiant. Her eyes were jet-black. She smiled, thinking she looked kind of cute—seeing some light at the end of the tunnel, maybe...
At seven, she and her mom walked into the Lido and scanned the area for Deb and her aunt. She spotted them at a table in the middle of the room. As they approached, Aunt Jenny and Deb stood to greet them.
“I am so glad that the girls met,” Aunt Jenny said enthusiastically.
“Me too!” Theresa Font replied.
“When I saw your girl by the pool all alone, I told Deb, you have just got to go and say ‘hello!’ There aren’t a lot of kids their age here, so they need to stick together, right?”
“It’s so nice of you to ask Susie to dinner. Are you traveling alone? You’re welcome to join us—though, we’re just two married couples, so I don’t know how much fun we’ll be.”
“Well, aren’t you sweet! I appreciate that so much. I am meeting a friend later. If it’s alright, maybe the two of us can join you?”
While the ladies firmed up future locations and possible meeting times, the two girls excused themselves to go check out the buffet.
During dinner, Deb’s aunt read a book while the girls continued their small talk, gradually becoming reacquainted. When the girls returned to their table with dessert, they found Aunt Jenny speaking to a man—not bad looking by Susie’s estimation, though a few years younger than Deb’s aunt.
“Girls, this is Stan.” The girls politely greeted the new member of their party, then seated themselves. As they ate dessert, Deb and Susie stifled giggles and rolled eyes at each other as Aunt Jenny suddenly seemed much more animated than earlier. Her voice had gone up at least an octave in pitch, and she was laughing loudly at jokes that, in the girls’ opinions, were lame.
