A Death in Live Oak

by James Grippando

  Percy was shaking, and the predator seemed to sense his fright. Slowly, a fraction of an inch at a time, the red eyes were creeping closer.

  It was decision time. If Percy rattled the chains and kicked the wall to make noise, his captors might burst through the door and beat him, shoot him, or worse. But if he remained still, God only knew what was in store for him. Carefully, he sat as upright as the shackles would allow, drew his knees to his chest, and planted the balls of his feet on the rim of the metal bucket. If he could launch it across the shed at those beady eyes, the noise, if not the odor, might scare it away.

  On the mental count of three, he summoned all his strength, straightened his legs, and sent the bucket of human waste flying across the shed. The clang of metal on the concrete floor sounded like a car crash, and Percy added to the racket by slapping the chains against the wall. Rather than retreat, the red eyes came straight at him with the speed and glow of a laser-guided missile. Percy kicked blindly in the dark, and the attacker—whatever it was—sank its sharp teeth into his ankle. He screamed, but the duct tape muffled it. He kept kicking at those red eyes but couldn’t shake his ankle loose from its jaws.

  The door flew open and the light switched on. Percy kicked and rolled in self-defense. Clawing and snapping at his feet was a rat as big as a bulldog.

  Then came the clap of a gunshot. The rat was suddenly motionless.

  Percy was breathing so heavily that his chest heaved. His captor—pistol in hand—stepped toward him and yanked the duct tape from his mouth.

  “What the fuck!” he shouted.

  Percy could barely breathe, let alone talk. It should have been pretty obvious that he’d been attacked by a rat. The dead animal lay at his feet, and it was hard to know how much of the blood on his ankle was Percy’s and how much was from the rat. That’s WTF!

  He pressed the barrel of the gun to Percy’s forehead. “I told you not to make noise.”

  “It bit me!” said Percy, staring up at his captor.

  Only then did it hit him; and simultaneously, the same realization seemed to come over his captor: Blondie wasn’t wearing his ski mask. He’d rushed into the shed without it in response to all that noise.

  Instinctively, Percy averted his eyes.

  “Too late,” the man said. “You’ve seen my face.”

  “No, no,” said Percy. “I was looking right up into the light. I have no idea what you look like.”

  The man pressed the barrel of the gun even harder to Percy’s forehead. Percy closed his eyes and braced himself, certain that this was it—this was how he was going to die, but not before Blondie gave him plenty of time to agonize over it. A minute passed, then another. It seemed like hours.

  The man jerked the gun away. Percy could breathe again.

  “You fucked up, big-time,” the man said.

  Percy wanted to talk his way out of it, but for the moment, he was relieved simply to have more than the thickness of his skull between his brain and a pistol.

  “You can sit here in your own piss ’til I figure out what to do with you.” He pointed with a jerk of his head to the dead rat. “Maybe you’ll get lucky and die of rabies.”

  Percy watched as Blondie walked away, switched off the light, and left through the only door to the shed. The red eyes had been extinguished, but it was another image entirely that stuck in his mind: He would never forget that inch-long tattoo of a lightning bolt that ran from the corner of Blondie’s right eye.

  Percy yanked the chain that held him to the wall, one thought consuming him: escape was the only answer. Without it, he was as dead as that rat.

  CHAPTER 53

  Andie heard the gunshot.

  She’d been in role since leaving the motel, and by 3:45 a.m. “Paulette Stevens” was deep into the forest, following the footpath through dense undergrowth. She couldn’t see the river, but she could smell the swamp in the air, the sulfur-like odor of standing water and rotting flora just off the banks.

  Andie stopped and listened carefully. Even for a trained ear it was impossible to tell where a single, unexpected gunshot in the night had come from. The gentle sound of moving water was not far off, the Santa Fe River. Wildlife chimed in, a symphony of nighttime predators and their prey. But that telltale second shot didn’t come; no reason it would, if the first had done its job.

  Had she been a civilian, Andie would have turned and run back to the park entrance. Had she not been working undercover, she would have drawn her weapon. As it was, she just kept going.

  Andie carried a flashlight in her right hand and a hand-drawn map in her left. In the dead of night it was easy to get lost in these woods. The ground was soggy in spots, and after several minutes of hiking through the brush, over fallen logs, and around ant mounds, she came to a clearing and read the sign. Wilderness campsites were filled on a first-come, first-served basis, no reservations. Highly convenient for last-minute planners—and for a bunch of skinheads who wanted to arrive in the middle of the night, raise hell in the morning, and then be gone, leaving no names, no credit cards, and no paper trail.

  A fine mist began to fall. It gathered on the green canopy above, hissing like static in Andie’s ears. In minutes, enough moisture had collected on the highest leaves to form little droplets that fell to the palmetto scrub and wild grapevines below. Soon, the entire forest glistened in the sweep of Andie’s flashlight. She continued down that path, passing a couple of tents in the darkness. She wondered if these unsuspecting campers had any idea that the same thugs who had started a knife fight outside the Theta house were gathering just a few hundred yards from their campsite. These flimsy pockets of shelter were just nylon on sticks, modest protection from wind and rain but not much else. All along this isolated trail, it seemed so easy for anyone with a knife and no conscience to get away with murder, just for the thrill of it.

  Just before the footpath began a long curve around a cluster of cypresses, Andie’s journey came to an end. Her flashlight bathed the marker to Campsite A-19.

  The instructions were to be there no later than 4:00 a.m. Some participants, like Andie, had timed their arrival close to the deadline. Others had pitched tents and spent the night. It surprised Andie to see them pulling up stakes already. The plan, as had been relayed to her, was to hike over to the Ichetucknee River and head off the black-frat search party around 9:00 a.m. By Andie’s clock, they didn’t need to break camp for another three hours.

  Andie approached William, a foot soldier in the organization. He knew her only as Paulette. “Are we leaving already?” she asked.

  “You didn’t hear?”

  “Hear what?”

  “The mission is canceled.”

  “What? When was that decided?”

  “Just now.”

  “What happened?”

  “I dunno. Steger says everyone has to pick up and go.”

  Steger was the supreme commander of the Aryan National Alliance. The Justice Department was building a case against him under federal racketeering laws, which was in part the basis for the FBI’s jurisdiction in Operation 777. Steger ran the Alliance from afar, known best for his hate-filled rants on the Internet against the perpetrators of “white genocide,” mostly blacks and Jews who sought the extinction of the white race through mass immigration, integration, miscegenation, homosexuality, abortion, and “forced assimilation.” Andie had never met Steger, but that was one of her goals.

  “Did he say why?” she asked.

  “Nope.”

  Andie gazed off into the darkness, in the general direction of the river. She wasn’t totally disappointed about the cancellation of the mission. If anything was to be learned from the alt-right march on Charlottesville, violence seemed inevitable in a face-to-face standoff between skinheads, who saw the lynching of Jamal Cousin as the end of “white guilt,” and the black frats, who were out looking for evidence that Percy was the latest victim of racial terrorism. But she was curious about the reason for the sudden cancellation.
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br />   “Do you think it has anything to do with that gunshot I heard on the way over here?”

  William shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “You heard it, too, right?”

  “Yeah. Woke me up.”

  “So it must have been pretty close by. I mean, if it was loud enough to wake you up.”

  William stopped packing up his tent, looking at her quizzically. “You always ask this many questions at four in the morning?”

  Andie hesitated, fearful that she’d stepped too far out of role and revealed her law enforcement core.

  “Cuz if you keep it up,” said William, “you’re gonna blow any chance you had at sucking my cock.”

  Leaders of the Aryan National Alliance fancied themselves as the new “intellectual” wing of white nationalism, but out in the field, women were still treated like biker chicks. It was Andie’s job to pierce the carefully crafted illusion put forth by white nationalists like Steger, and prove their direct linkage to guys like William—violent, criminal thugs who were at least honest about their supremacist ideology.

  Andie figuratively bit her lip and stayed in role, smiling. “I’ll try to do better, William.”

  CHAPTER 54

  Liz is in the hospital,” said Tucker Towson.

  It was midmorning, and Jack was still in Live Oak when he got the phone call. Jack was aware that Liz had restarted chemotherapy, and he also knew from his grandfather’s battle that chemo didn’t normally require hospitalization.

  “Is she going to be okay?”

  “She’s stable.”

  “Is there anything I can do?” asked Jack.

  “Yes, actually. She asked to see you.”

  Liz wasn’t on her deathbed, Tucker assured him, but the request still hit Jack like a dying wish. Without hesitation, he drove to Gainesville, arriving just before lunchtime. Tucker met him in the hospital cafeteria, and over coffee he gave Jack the update.

  “They hit her hard with this last treatment,” said Tucker.

  “Maybe too hard?” asked Jack.

  Tucker sighed deeply. “It’s her last shot, really. The doctor says her cancer has become resistant.”

  “Can’t they try a different drug?”

  “That’s what they did. And we switched to what they call a ‘dose dense’ treatment schedule. The nurse seemed a little nervous about administering it, because the medicine could burn her skin. I was asking myself, ‘If you’re so freaked out about a drop on your skin, what’s it doing to Liz on the inside?’”

  “It sounds like the two of you need to huddle with your doctors.”

  “That’s an understatement. She had vomiting with chemo before, but nothing like this. Around two a.m. I had to bring her into the ER. I’m afraid the treatment might kill her before the cancer does. I’m not exaggerating.”

  “Is she awake now?”

  “I think so. You should go up.”

  “Aren’t you coming with?”

  “No. She wants to talk to you alone.”

  Jack got that feeling again—the dying wish.

  Tucker remained behind in the cafeteria to make a few phone calls and update Liz’s worried friends. Jack rode the elevator to the second floor, checked in with the nurse, and went to Liz’s room. The door was open, and he knocked lightly before entering. She was awake, her upper body slightly elevated by the adjustable mattress. She turned her head and said, “Come in, Jack.”

  It was a double room, but the other bed was empty. Jack stepped inside and stood at the rail. IV tubes fed fluids and painkillers into her veins. A machine on the other side of the bed monitored her vital signs. Lunch—a tray of mashed potatoes, gelatin, and other soft foods on the bedside table—was untouched. It was too early in the treatment schedule for Liz to start losing hair, but the color of her skin and the glaze in her eyes were distinctly medicinal. Her cracked lips shone with a recent application of Vaseline.

  “Thanks for coming,” Liz said.

  “Of course,” said Jack.

  She looked at him with concern. “I’ve been thinking a lot about Mark.”

  It’s what mothers do, Jack thought. “You shouldn’t worry about anything but getting well.”

  There was a break in the conversation. She seemed tired and gazed out the window. Jack wasn’t sure if he should fill the silence. He waited, and finally she looked back at him.

  “The nurse said it’s hereditary.”

  Jack had heard of male breast cancer, but it was rare. He wondered if her worry had suddenly shifted to Shelly.

  “Do you think it is, Jack?” she asked. “Hereditary?”

  The answer seemed obvious. There wasn’t much scientific debate on that subject. “Are we talking about breast cancer?”

  “No,” said Liz. “Racism.”

  Jack did a double take. “A nurse told you that racism is hereditary?”

  “Yes.”

  It sounded unimaginably cruel—a healthcare professional telling such a thing to a cancer patient who was fighting for her life. “What’s that nurse’s name?”

  “I don’t know. It was a man. But listen to me. Do you remember the first day you came to our house? The demonstrators were outside our house. One of them had a sign that said, ‘Racism Is Taught.’”

  It was déjà vu; Tucker had asked the same question. Of all the things that had been said, that one seemed to hurt the most.

  “Yes, I remember. And I suppose racism is passed on from one generation to another. But that doesn’t mean it’s hereditary in a genetic sense.”

  “That’s what I thought,” said Liz. “But there’ve been scientific studies on this. People who are racist are born without chromosome twenty-three.”

  Jack was still struggling to comprehend. “The nurse told you that racism is a genetic disorder? Seriously?”

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s based on genetic mapping. People born with racist tendencies only show twenty-two chromosome pairs, not the normal twenty-three.”

  “That sounds like bogus science to me.”

  “I hope you’re right. But when I heard about this study, I got so worried for Mark. What if Oliver Boalt makes him take a DNA test? What if the test shows that he’s missing chromosome twenty-three? What if the jury hears that it’s a scientific fact that my son is a racist?”

  Jack paused to unpack what she was saying. He’d heard that chemotherapy could cause depression. Maybe paranoia was another side effect. “I promise you, Liz. That is not going to happen.”

  “But the nurse showed me the study. It’s on the Internet.”

  The Internet. “Liz, anything and everything is on the Internet.”

  “Look it up. It’s on the website for the Wyoming Institute of Technology.”

  She seemed dead serious. Jack did a quick Google search on his phone. It came up instantly. The posted comments made it clear that not everyone saw the “study” for what it was, but in thirty seconds Jack had his answer.

  “Liz, this is satire. The study concludes that Joe Biden is a racist. This institute is a made-up place that claims to have saved the world from the Y2K virus and only welcomes visitors who consent to a full body cavity search.”

  “Oh,” she said. A smile creased her lips, and then she began to laugh. Jack laughed with her, and it made him feel useful to share in the first laugh she’d had in a long time. But then her laughter turned to tears.

  Jack took her hand. “Hey, it’s okay,” he said.

  A tear rolled down her cheek—just one, though surely more would have come if she weren’t so dehydrated.

  “I don’t think I can take this anymore,” she said, sobbing.

  “We’ll get through it,” said Jack.

  She closed her eyes. Talking, laughing, crying—it had sapped her strength. Jack took a seat in the chair by the window. The chromosome 23 website was a joke, but Jack was still bothered that a nurse had presented the “study” to Liz as fact—obviously just to torment the mother of Mark Towson, accused racist. It made him angry to t
hink about it, but the decision to raise hell with the hospital and staff wasn’t his. It was hers.

  In a minute, Liz was sound asleep.

  Brandon Wall and several dozen young men and women from the Divine Nine gathered on the bank of the Ichetucknee River. With them, dressed in the Alpha colors, were twelve highly trained hires from Colson Security, compliments of Leroy Highsmith. It was Brandon’s first time on the river since the tubing trip, when Jamal’s body was discovered by Kappa brother Percy Donovan. Brandon wondered if, this morning, one of the Alphas would find Percy.

  “Listen up!” said the park ranger. He was standing before the group, along with a deputy sheriff. “Just a few things to note before you head out.”

  The ranger paused, and the deputy stepped forward. “Simple rule,” said the deputy. “If you see anything of interest, don’t touch it. Don’t try to collect it yourself. You have the phone number we gave you. Call us, and a law enforcement officer will come and check it out.”

  He yielded to the ranger, who lectured the group on safety in the wilderness. Most of it was common sense. Look out for ant mounds and snakes. If you feel overheated, rest. His final point, however, raised a few eyebrows.

  “Most important, stay away from gator holes. Any questions?”

  There were none until, finally, a volunteer spoke up. “What’s a gator hole?”

  The ranger seemed thrilled that someone had asked. “That mist we had last night is the first precipitation this area has had in quite a while. In drought conditions, water drains from normally marshy areas and pools in holes. Some of these holes are burrowed by alligators. The gators hide underwater and wait for a wild turkey, a raccoon, or whatever to come by for a drink. When they do—”

  As if on cue, the deputy slapped his hands together in a loud gator chomp.