Ariel's Island

by Pat McKee

  “Grey! And you must be Paul, the desperate outlaw!” She yelled, like we were all old friends, unhooking the bungee cords that held the coolers. “Got a mess of fish and a cooler full of beer.”

  Agent Grey turned to me. “Paul, meet Rebecca, the perfect woman: she’s beautiful; she fishes; she brings beer.”

  “Men are pretty damn simple. I don’t know why other women have so much trouble with ‘em.”

  Grey shrugged. “Domestic relations would be far more amiable all the way around if more women showed up with beer.”

  “And if you men got your asses off the porch and gave me a hand with these coolers.”

  “What you catch?”

  “I was in the mood for a little fly fishing. Found a bed of bluegills and wore ‘em out.”

  Grey grabbed one of the coolers and lifted the lid.

  “Sure did—looks like a couple dozen nice ones, ‘bout a pound each. Perfect eatin’ size.”

  “You two clean ‘em, I’ll cook ‘em.”

  Even large bream are too thin to filet, so the best way to cook them is to cut off the heads and tails, gut and scale them, and batter and fry them, with skin, bones, and all. Most of the rib bones dissolve, and sweet meat just falls off the backbone. Agent Grey and I were soon at work with filet knives while Rebecca got the fish cooker fired up, all of us well hydrated with cold beer. Before it got good and dark, we each had a plate piled with Rebecca’s catch. Fish, hushpuppies, cheap beer, good company. If I weren’t in the fix I was in, I would never leave. Even under the present circumstances, these seemed like pretty good reasons to stay as long as possible.

  After supper, we sat on the porch in the darkness under the fans, satiated, a brilliant full moon casting shadows in the yard, the click and smack of insects, drawn by the lingering scent of dinner, slamming the screen. A couple six packs of beer had loosened even Grey’s tongue, and he was soon telling us stories of moonshiners and pot growers, and even his most famous quarry, Derrick Randolph, who had eluded Grey in one of the largest manhunts in history until hunger drove the fugitive from his Appalachian hide out.

  Rebecca told tales of growing up on the Satilla every bit as entertaining as Grey’s, and I soon realized many of her relatives were some of the very moonshiners and pot growers that Grey stalked. There was a curious respect on both sides, seldom resulting in violence or even prosecutions. The GBI would tear down one still, and the moonshiners would build one further in the swamp. The GBI would cut down one pot patch; the growers planted another. Grey and Rebecca had evidently reached a truce: Grey no longer concerned with her family business, Rebecca not afraid of giving comfort to the enemy.

  I told Rebecca of my encounter with the trooper, how I was saved from discovery by her fearsome reputation, that I was saved from bolting more by the fear of tangling with Bubba than having to deal with the trooper. Rebecca burst into unrestrained laughter, so much so I realized there was more to the story than I was privy to. Agent Grey was in on the joke, too, and I was out. When the laughter slowed, Rebecca was only able to squeak.

  “Bubba! You used that old dog story on him? Is Bubba still a Doberman?”

  “Oh, hell no, Bubba’s a Rottweiler! Figured Paul here would be more concerned with a dog that could bite through a two-by-four than one that could run down a deer. Told ‘im Bubba’s so sneaky that he’d be latched onto his ass before he’d even see him.”

  The two dissolved into laughter again. By now I was a bit impatient with being the butt of the joke.

  “So there’s no Bubba?”

  “Hell, no. He uses that story on everyone who comes out here just to keep them out of the house. He probably told you the barn is booby trapped, too, didn’t he?”

  “No, he told the trooper that. He told me the four-wheeler is.” I laughed at myself. “What’s the dog run for?”

  “That’s for my bird dogs. They’re off in Waynesville being trained for quail season. If they got a hold of ya, they’d lick ya all over.”

  “So, what about all that trust you were talking about?”

  “Guess you just earned it.”

  The three of us, the wounded agent, the back-woods prom-queen, the disgraced lawyer, each craving solitude, each seeking the warmth, the trust, of another—for that brief moment, whatever we were looking for, we found. We joked and laughed and told stories and laughed some more, until I begged off to my bunk in the barn, leaving Agent Grey and Rebecca to themselves, hoping to keep my spirits at bay till morning.

  It was not to be.

  “Paul.” Rebecca had slipped into the barn and was sitting on the edge of my bed in gym shorts and T-shirt and evidently nothing else, a vision that made me think I was still dreaming. “Placido’s trying to get in touch with you again. Grey logged on to the computer to check the tides for our fishing trip. You gotta see this.”

  “What time is it?”

  “A little past two.”

  “Placido needs a better sense of timing.”

  Grey was staring across the room when I walked into the lodge a few seconds later, still shaking sleep from my head.

  “I have no idea how . . .”

  What I saw looked like the scene from the first Star Wars movie at the point when a hologram of Princess Leia appears to Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker projected from R2-D2—only in this case, the image was projected from Grey’s computer, and the quality of the hologram was so good that it looked as though two other people had entered the room. Placido appeared sitting at a desk. Melissa was opposite him, though from her surroundings she was not originating from the same location.

  “Paul! Thank God you’re safe! My father told me how you barely escaped Fowler’s killing spree. I’m so grateful to your friends who’ve helped you.” Melissa’s voice quivered.

  “Melissa. I was worried I might never hear from you again. It’s great to see you . . . even under these circumstances.” I did my best to sound positive, but I was almost overwhelmed to see her still alive. She looked much the same as she did when I last saw her, only she had exchanged her baggy sweatshirt for an over-sized T-shirt. She recovered her composure and got down to business.

  “This message should relieve any concerns you may have that my father’s contact is legitimate. Instead of flying to Italy as planned, Anthony brought me to the family island in the Bahamas where he can keep me isolated. Right now, he’s left the island for business in Miami, and he’s put me in the charge of the island caretaker. He knows there’s no way for me to get off the island, so I pretty much have the run of the place. I’m sending this message from the empty jet hanger on the far end of the island.

  “Anthony now suspects my father’s still alive and I’m in contact with him, but I don’t think he knows how. He’s holding me as bait, hoping to draw Placido out. My father can’t risk trying to rescue me; if he’s caught, Anthony will kill him, then kill me. Paul, we are counting on your offer of help. Anthony won’t be looking for you.”

  “Mr. McDaniel, Anthony will hold Melissa as long as it takes in his effort to get to me. Once he’s killed me, he’ll have no further use for Melissa, and he’ll kill her. That is his ultimate goal; then there will be no one to challenge his control of Milano Corporation.”

  “Paul, I need you. I need your help. I don’t want to die on this island.” With that Melissa’s poise failed her and tears welled in her eyes. “I’m sorry. I just . . .”

  “Mr. McDaniel, if you’re willing to help, meet me in the morning two days from now at the Cape Florida Lighthouse. I also want you to know I believe I have access to some information that might well prove your innocence. I think we can help each other.”

  I looked to Grey.

  “To get there I’m going to need some wheels and plausible cover. You think you can help me out?”

  Grey nodded.

  “I think we can work something out for Paul to get dow
n there. Once he’s there, he’ll be on his own. I’m too far along giving aid to a fugitive to help further.”

  “Understood, Mr. Grey.”

  Grey raised his eyebrows. “I have just one question: How are you doing this? I have a fair knowledge of computers, but this is something I’ve ever seen before.”

  “Mr. Grey, allow me to introduce you to Ariel, my assistant.” A face, then a figure appeared, superimposed over Placido’s image, beautiful, young, feminine, familiar: It was the face I’d glimpsed diving in the Atlantic off Frederica Island, the face of Oz to Placido’s Wizard, whose actions for now remained behind the curtain. Ariel looked straight at me and smiled.

  “Ariel operates the most elegant and sophisticated means of communication ever developed. Ariel is what is often referred to as artificial intelligence, though I think you’ll find her capabilities far beyond mere artifice. What Ariel accomplishes is nothing short of magical.”

  I gawked.

  “Surprised, Paul? Sorry I blew you off during our brief-writing marathon, but Placido wasn’t ready to bring you in on our secret. Now you’re one of the family.” Ariel smiled at me again, disarming, her tone, her features, her gestures, perfectly human.

  “You said you thought you were a lot like me, but you’re—”

  “Dedicated, intelligent, hardworking—”

  Grey couldn’t help but break in. “Modest.”

  Placido shook his head. “Mr. Grey, a lot of thought goes into deciding what attributes may be useful in an AI program. I haven’t found modesty to be one of them.” There was no defensiveness in Placido’s voice, just clinical precision from the mind of Ariel’s creator.

  Ariel seemed as knowledgeable of her own development and as disinterested in discussing it as Placido. “Mr. Grey, once we have resolved our present circumstance, I will be delighted to give you a full briefing of my capabilities, that is, if it pleases Placido.”

  “Of course, Ariel, of course. But for now, I want you to do everything possible to assist Mr. McDaniel.”

  “I shall.”

  I couldn’t imagine how a high-powered word processor and super-slick video conferencer—as beautiful as she was—could help me rescue Melissa, a prisoner on an island a thousand miles away, but I was willing to throw my hat in with Placido to figure it out. As Ariel’s image faded, I swear she winked at me.

  “Melissa, you know I’m going to do all I can to help.”

  “Thank you, Paul. Thank you.”

  My decision to help Melissa had already been made. Looking back, I wondered when the die had been irrevocably cast. Was it when I decided to flee Fowler’s den rather than surrender to the island police? Was it when I made the offer to help Melissa find Placido? Or was it when I agreed to meet her on the beach? Or even earlier, that evening when I became so hopelessly infatuated with Melissa? Whenever that decision had been made, at this moment there was no doubt in my mind that I would not only risk my career, but risk my life, to rescue Melissa. And now with Ariel’s offer of help I felt even more emboldened.

  Grey was resigned to the inevitability of my desire to help Melissa, as foolish as he may’ve thought it was. So he and I landed on a plan, at least one that’d get me to the lighthouse; after that, as he said, I was on my own. I’d drive my Porsche up the river road and abandon it in the woods. We agreed that I’d steal Grey’s truck and his old wallet. Grey had more than one expertly crafted extra set of IDs, and I chose an Alabama driver’s license with a picture of a younger Agent Grey sporting short-cropped beard and gray hair. Rebecca worked her own magic on my hair and on the scruffy stubble that’d been growing since Fowler’s, and I got outfitted with some of Grey’s old clothes. From a distance I could pass as Grey, but I didn’t know how much close scrutiny my disguise could stand.

  Agent Grey and Rebecca were headed for a week-long fishing trip to the Slow River Fish Camp where he had a cabin on the Altamaha. He’d find the Porsche and report the truck and wallet missing when he got back. Or maybe he wouldn’t.

  Late the next afternoon, I was heading down I-95 in Agent Grey’s ancient pickup truck, a short gray beard, gray hair under a ball cap, mirrored aviator glasses, and an old wallet of Grey’s in my pocket. The shotgun lay on the floorboard, backpack with my laptop beside me. It was about an eight-hour trip if I drove straight through, but I’d have to make a few stops for food and fuel, so with some additional time for contingencies, I figured I’d drive all night and pull up at the lighthouse by early morning with some time left for reconnoitering.

  Twelve

  The cop got a clear shot at me as I crested the hill, the only rise for miles along the flat South Georgia landscape. He was parked on the shoulder, radar gun aimed up the south-bound lane of I-95, just before the Florida line, no exit close. Since getting on the interstate, I had kept uncharacteristically under the speed limit, chugging along in the slow lane, cars flying past, doing my best not to attract attention, heart pounding every time I would see a patrol car cruise up behind me, then shoot by, like sharks searching for the scent of death in the water. But I knew that I had only so much time to make it all the way to Miami, and I picked up the pace, soon cruising over the speed limit, in the flow of traffic with the rest of the lawbreakers.

  Even though this cop had plenty of speeders to pick from, I felt a shot of adrenaline as soon as I saw him, one that changed to a blood rush when he jumped into his cruiser and hit the blue lights, speeding onto the highway, pulling past traffic, in hot pursuit. He was after some other quarry, I told myself; he wouldn’t have picked me out from the crowd; he was after someone else, and I kept telling myself that as I saw him in my rearview, glancing up, trying not to stare, getting closer, closing fast, on my bumper. He hit the siren. My heart hammered against my ribs and my eyes blurred.

  I pulled over slowly, taking every moment I could to think out my situation. It’d been little more than an hour since I left Grey’s lodge. It was unlikely that someone had spotted my ditched Porsche and made the connection between it and Grey’s missing F-150. This had to be a routine traffic stop, part of the endless hassling of the poor by the powerful, the cop pulling over some red-neck in a beat-down pickup truck, rather than chance an encounter with a heavily armed drug dealer—or worse, a politician or a judge—in a shiny S-Class Mercedes flashing down the fast lane. Unless Grey set me up and ratted me out. The possibility that Grey had yet one more surprise seemed remote—remote, but not out of the question. All I could do was try to keep calm and see how this would play out, and keeping calm seemed almost impossible. Hell, I was having a hard time just keeping control of my bladder.

  The officer moseyed up, looking in the bed of the truck, taking note of the dented tackle box and the few old fishing rods I’d found in the barn and tossed in the truck as props: suspected murderers didn’t go on fishing trips, I thought. He rounded the cab, his eyes fixed briefly on the Berretta on the floorboard, and it was far too late that I thought how out of place an engraved-steel shotgun looked in a rusted-out truck, how it contrasted with the salt-corroded reels and sun-splintered rods in the truck bed, how fugitives are caught by failure to attend to that one telling detail.

  I handed over my license and registration. He looked in at me and back down at the license, studying the picture, and back up again.

  “Mind taking off those glasses and cap?” In the days I’d been on the run I’d not shaved. Rebecca trimmed my hair and beard, dying them Agent Grey’s shade of gray. With a ball cap and aviator sun glasses Grey and I could pass for twins. Trouble was, the picture on his license was taken without cap or glasses, and we certainly weren’t twins.

  “Sure.” Pulling off my cap and glasses. “I hope I ain’t as ugly as that picture makes me out ta be.”

  The cop had said nothing about the picture. I was already sounding defensive, and he squinted at me all the harder.

  It was only now, and for the first time, I wished
my law-school experience had given me some exposure to police procedure. Rather than learning how to help the poor and defenseless in a criminal law clinic, rather than spending hours at some metal-desk store-front down by the projects, interviewing crack-addled criminals, attending countless arraignments, sipping stale coffee, inhaling the stench of wasting bodies and wasted lives, I had spent my academic career in the rarified atmosphere of the law library, ensconced in the overstuffed leather chairs of the third floor, studying the intricacies of the corporate form, becoming useful to the rich and powerful. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but my superior knowledge of advanced corporate finance provided no advantage on the shoulder of I-95, running from what stood to be a sure triple-murder charge. Though I was a top graduate from one of the nation’s finest law schools, the only practical information about criminal procedure I had came from TV shows, and that told me cops were trained to listen, let people talk, ramble on, giving more information than necessary, saying something stupid. This was the point when nerves caused the guilty to jabber. I’d already violated the common wisdom. I resolved to keep my mouth shut, managed a faint smile, and hoped I didn’t do something else to give myself away.

  It seemed like a hundred hammering heartbeats before the cop nodded. I pulled the cap on my head, hooked the glasses behind my ears, helmet and shield for the coming battle.