“That’s a cell phone number,” Sheppard said, sitting across from him.
Manacas nodded. “Hal’s. It’s probably useless as a phone number now, but it might work for my purposes.”
Then he fell silent, his eyes glazed over again, and he began to sketch, slowly at first, then picking up speed. When he finished, he’d filled three sheets, front and back. He had numbered each one and handed them to Sheppard in order. “He’s living in some sort of structure that’s elevated out of the water. I’m picking up a lot of water and not just because it’s in the Glades. It’s like it’s… I don’t know …” He shook his head. “Surrounded by water? Yeah, surrounded. That feels right.”
“The Glades is pretty goddamn big, Manacas. You’ve got to do better than that,” Sheppard said.
Manacas slapped down the next sheet of paper. “A trail. A canoe trail through the mangroves. That’s what this is.” He stabbed his finger at the sketch. “Bay, I kept picking up the word bay, I don’t know what it means. But the trail leads to it.”
“And what you’ve drawn here is a map?”
“Yes, but the way I see things and the way they exist when you’re there differ somewhat.”
Sheppard studied the sheet and pointed at a series of squares and rectangles. “What’re these things?”
“They have numbers on them, going from low to high. I think they’re mile markers. The trails out there have mile markers.”
“You know that from drinking at the pub.”
“Look, I’m not the wilderness freak that Hal is. I don’t go canoeing around in there. I get to the pub by airboat, a straight shot from Flamingo.”
The door to the interrogation room slammed open and Young hurried in. He dropped a map of the Everglades in front of Manacas and leaned into his face. “You want protection from Fletcher? Then make it worth my while to put my ass on the line for you.” Young’s fist slammed down over the map; his voice reached a fever pitch. “There’s Florida Bay and there’s Hell’s Bay, Eddie. Which bay is it, asshole? You’re supposed to be one of the best.”
“Jesus, man, take it easy.” Sheppard grabbed Young’s arm and pulled him back.
Young wrenched his arm free of Sheppard’s grasp, his face still livid. He blinked hard several times and stepped back from Manacas, aware that he’d lost it.
“I’m doing the best I can,” Manacas said quietly.
“It’s not good enough,” Young snapped.
Manacas’s eyes glazed over once more. He picked up the pencil, made another sketch. “I’m not getting a name, but there’s a large hammock of trees near the entrance to this place, where you put the canoe in. That’s all I’m getting.”
“Is Hal there now?” Young asked.
“I didn’t pick up anything psychically. But after what happened today at the pub, I doubt it.”
Young stared at him a moment longer, then asked Sheppard to step outside with him. When they were in the hall, he said, “What do you think? Is this all bullshit?”
“He was definitely tuning in on something,” Sheppard replied. “But he’s also a liar. It’s your call.”
Young thought about it, but not for long. “We keep him a day or two, while we check out his maps or whatever the hell they are. We’ll go in tomorrow at first light.”
“What about Fletcher?”
“I’ll tell her we caught him, then lost him and Bennet. He’ll be in protective custody for forty-eight hours.”
“You’re putting our collective ass on the line, Gerry.”
“Only until we know for sure. If nothing comes of it, we turn him over to Fletcher and good fucking riddance.”
Chapter 27
The turnout for the fair that evening surpassed Mira’s expectations. The unofficial count so far stood at about fifty thousand, many of them in costume. She felt the turnout boded well for the success of the fair over the course of the Halloween weekend.
The only problem seemed to be at One World’s booth. Since five that afternoon, when she’d returned from dropping Annie in Miami, she and Nadine had been reading almost nonstop for customers. She didn’t think they would be able to sustain this same pace tomorrow, when the crowd would be double or triple what it was tonight.
“Annie would enjoy this,” Nadine remarked during a temporary lull in customers.
Mira agreed, but she didn’t want to talk about Annie. She knew it would lead back to an earlier disagreement, when Nadine bluntly expressed her contempt for Mira’s decision to take Annie to Miami for the weekend.
“I hope she’ll at least get to go trick-or-treating down there,” Nadine went on.
“Tom’s family is taking about twenty kids trick-or-treating, Nadine. Don’t worry about it.”
“You’re missing the point.”
Mira rolled her eyes.
“You gave in to your fear, Mira, which means you’ll attract reasons to be afraid.” With that, she pushed to her feet and announced she needed to eat. “What can I get you?”
“A slice of veggie quiche.”
Nadine nodded and walked off. Mira reached under the table for her cell phone. She hadn’t heard yet from Sheppard and felt uneasy about it, uneasy in a vague, nonpsychic way. She started to punch out his number when two people in costumes and masks stopped at the table. The man, dressed like Zorro and wearing a mask, seemed much older than the woman. He said, “We’d like readings.”
“I’m working the booth alone right now. One of you will have to wait.”
“That’s fine. How much?”
“Twenty for fifteen minutes.”
He handed her a twenty, gestured to the woman, and they ducked under the canvas awning. They sat down at the small, circular table where Mira had been doing her readings. She picked up a deck of tarot cards, set them in front of the man, and he cut them without her asking him to. She fanned them out. “Pick six.”
He selected his cards quickly; she noticed that his hand trembled and wondered if he was ill or just nervous. Almost immediately, she felt a vague pain in her groin and suddenly knew the man had prostate cancer. She also realized the woman’s silence irritated her. Dressed like a witch, she wore a full mask and a black cloak that covered her from the thighs up.
Mira placed his cards in a straight line, two for the past, two more for the present, and the last two for the future. But when she turned them over, she didn’t know what to say. Nothing good appeared in these cards.
“Christ,” the man laughed. “That doesn’t look too promising.”
“You need to take better care of yourself,” Mira began, then something inside her clicked into place and she slid The Hanged Man out of the spread. “This man may present a danger to you. He …”
“In what way?” the woman asked.
Mira raised her eyes, looked at the woman, then reached out and pulled her mask down. Lenora Fletcher just smiled and lifted the mask off her head. “So they caught Manacas and lost him. Detective Sheppard tangled with Bennet and lost him, too. But I suppose you haven’t heard any of that.”
“Why should I? I’m not a cop.”
Fletcher leaned across the table. “When you speak to Mr. Sheppard, do tell him that if he’s interfering in a federal investigation, I’ll make sure he gets nailed for it.” With that, she got up. “Let’s go, Rich.”
The man had tilted his mask up, revealing small, pale eyes and a sharp nose. “Tell me what danger this man presents to me,” he said, pointing at The Hanged Man.
“He fulfills your expectations.” Mira didn’t know what the hell that meant. But he apparently knew, because he simply smiled, thanked her, and followed Fletcher out into the noisy crowd.
“Maybe it’s time to hang it up,” Evans said.
“I can’t do that.” Fletcher hooked her arm through his as they made their way through the street fair crowd. “I’d be admitting that Hal won.”
Evans gave her arm a squeeze and she realized she’d just pas
sed one of his little tests of fortitude or resilience or some goddamn thing. “Exactly,” he replied. “What’s good about the situation is that the local cops have done the hard work. They’ve flushed Hal out of the Everglades.”
“Or driven him deeper inside of it.”
“I don’t think so. Even in the old days, Hal could be pushed only so far. He’ll be spooked now, ready to run. And he’ll do it with or without Rae.”
“So what’re you suggesting?”
“That he’s going to finish what he started. You and Steele were his primary targets. Steele’s dead. I think he’s going to come after you now and that you need to be ready.”
Fletcher hated to admit it, but she felt he might be right. “What do you have in mind, Rich?”
“A plan,” he replied.
Sheppard felt like the old man in the nursery rhyme, the guy who just wanted to fall into bed and pull a blanket over his head and not wake up till morning. But he still needed to pack the gear they would need in the morning. He also wanted to study the sketches Manacas had made and compare them to a map of the Glades. Then, if he still had the ability to move, he intended to drop by Mira’s and repay the money he’d borrowed.
He entered the dimly lit courtyard of his building, where most of the windows had been opened to the cool night air. He heard televisions, kids, the sounds of family life. A part of him envied his neighbors. A week ago, his biggest worry had been losing his job; now he worried that he if he had another run-in with Bennet, he wouldn’t survive it.
He unlocked the door, turned on the hallway light, stepped inside, and stopped dead. His living room looked as if it had been torn apart by dinosaurs on a rampage. The couch cushions had been shredded, foam leaked from them, feathers littered the floor. Books were strewn everywhere, covers ripped off, pages ripped out. The answering machine had been destroyed, the phone wire cut. The Guatemalan huipiles that had hung on the wall had been reduced to ragged strips of colorful cloth. And that was only the living room.
It got worse in the hall, where his artifact collection lay in a crumbled ruin on the floor, the sun god from Peru, the masks from Colombia, the icons from Ecuador. His bedroom was uninhabitable, the mattress sliced open, lamps broken, his computer monitor reduced to a gaping hole with glass strewn around it.
Sheppard sank to the corner of the mattress, trying to compute the damage in dollars and cents. He had insurance, but not enough to compensate for all this. Rage smoldered inside of him and he shot to his feet and returned to the living room. He found the spot where the sliding glass door had been jimmied. But so what? What the hell did it tell him? Not a name, not a face, nothing immediate.
Sheppard slammed the door shut, took one sweeping look around the room, and dug out his cell phone. Young answered on the second ring.
“It’s me,” Sheppard said. “I’ll be ready to leave in two hours.”
“I was just about to call you to suggest the same thing.”
“Should we take a chopper?”
“I don’t know. There’s a storm moving this way. The seaplane might be better. We’ll play it by ear.”
“I think we should try Hell’s Bay first.”
“Then with luck, we’ll launch the canoe by midnight at the latest. We may not get far in the dark, but at least we’ll be there.”
“See you then.”
“Hey, Shep?”
“Yeah?”
“Why the sudden rush?”
Sheppard looked slowly around the room again. “I’ll explain when I see you.”
Rae never saw the airboat, but she heard it, the roar of its engine like bursts of gunfire that filled the silence between rolls of thunder. She could almost see it in her mind, skimming the surface of the water like some primitive beast with wire mesh wings. The airplane engine at its rear propelled it forward at speeds up to a hundred miles an hour. Park ranger? A fisherman? Tourists? Or Hal?
No, it couldn’t be Hal. He didn’t have an airboat, did he? The only boat she’d seen was the canoe, tethered to the ladder, bobbing in the water without its paddles because he had hidden them.
Hidden them so I couldn’t escape.
Well, guess what, Hal. She didn’t need the goddamn paddles to get out of here. She had the screwdriver.
Just in case the airboat belonged to Hal, she moved quickly around the main room in the chickee, closing the shutters. The smell of impending rain filled the air and the stink of her fear trailed closely behind it.
Fear he would sense.
As she closed the last shutter, she glimpsed the sagging dark clouds that hung over the mangrove like some Biblical sign of doom.
She stopped next in the kitchen, where she turned off the generator and switched on her flashlight. Her eyes swept through the room, making sure nothing was out of place. The table, set for two, held an unlit candle and cheap plastic placemats marking his place and hers. He would see it as soon as he entered the kitchen and believe that she had planned a homecoming for him.
Should she lock the padlock on the den door? Or had he left it that way as a test?
Leave it. You’re ready.
As ready as she would ever be for this.
Rae rushed back into the main room of the chickee, shut the door, and realized she no longer heard the airboat. Had it passed? Had the driver turned off the engine? What?
She strained to hear something beyond the shutters, some small sound that would tell her for sure he was headed this way. Thunder sounded, drumrolls that got louder and closer with every second.
He would be using a flashlight when he came in here and would see the futon. She’d covered it with a blanket and stuffed clothes and a pillow under it. She just hoped it would look like a body to him.
Will any of this fool him?
A sour lump of fear slithered up her throat, a wave of cold washed across her back. Her resolve nearly deserted her. I can’t fight someone like Hal, I can’t I can’t…
You will, whispered the voice of reason. You don’t have a choice.
Rae moved the futon closer to the window, so the beam of his flashlight wouldn’t strike it directly when Hal opened the door. Then she scurried into the shadows to the left of it, where she would be hidden by the door when he walked in. And there, heart beating wildly, the screwdriver clutched in her hand, she stood with her back to the wall and waited.
Almost immediately, the fearful part of her hurled what ifs at her. What if he sensed something wrong, what if he had already reached into her and found the truth… No, he hadn’t reached yet. She knew what it felt like and she hadn’t experienced it since he’d left.
Rae squeezed her eyes shut and conjured her sealed room, the seamless walls, the perfect corners, not a nick or a crack in its structure. She shoved her fear down deep inside and filled her mind with pleasant, dreamlike images.
She heard splashing in the lagoon—Big Guy? No, no, not the gator. The paddles. The canoe now rounded the chickee, gliding along the right side. When it bumped up against the ladder, the vibrations raced like electricity through the floor of the chickee and coursed up through the soles of her feet to her knees.
Moments ticked by, each more excruciating than the one before it. Then: “Rae?” The echo of his voice hung in the air, as thick and oppressive as August heat.
She shut her eyes and focused on the dreamlike images. A heartbeat later, a liquid warmth moved through her, just beneath her skin, as if she had stepped into a steaming bath scented with sweet, erotic oils. This, she knew, was how Eve had felt that first time with Adam, this quickening of the blood, this sense of wonder, this strange and terrifying ecstasy.
He was reaching.
Her consciousness split down the middle like an atom. Part of her clung to the dreamlike images, the other part hunkered down in the shadows, silent, waiting. When he withdrew, her heart raced, dampness spread between her thighs, her shirt stuck to her skin like adhesive.
He said somethin
g aloud, she couldn’t hear what it was. She didn’t have to hear it. Just the sound of his voice triggered images of their lovemaking, of the things he had done to her, the way he had made her feel. The hidden part of her recoiled in disgust; the other part of her savored the memories, felt drugged by them, and wanted more.
The floor creaked, his footsteps receded. The muscles in her right hand, the hand that clutched the screwdriver, began to ache and twitch. Her tongue slipped along her lower lip, moistening it. She heard other noises now, clumps, thumps, bumps, sound effects in a silly Batman movie. Hal was unloading the canoe.
“Rae?” he called again.
Sweat rolled into her eyes, she raised her arm. It seemed that her joints creaked so loudly that even Big Guy could hear them. The door squeaked as it yawned inward. Light pierced the room like sharp, metallic arrows.
“Hey, babe, we’ve got to talk.”
He pushed the door open wider; a carpet of light widened at his feet. His shadow fell across it like a coffee stain, fell just in front of him, eddying, moving like some huge, grotesque protozoa, farther into the room where she could see it.
The shadow loomed larger and taller than she remembered, an optical illusion of some kind. A joke. A trick. Then she could see him, the physical Hal, the real Hal, the motherfucker who had uprooted her life, invaded it, and nearly succeeded in rewriting the script with himself in the lead. Not goddamn likely, she thought. And her rage broke free of the sealed room and exploded out of her.
Rae lunged at him, the screwdriver suspended above her head like a bright new moon, the tip of it aimed at the soft, tan flesh at the back of his neck. Then her arm began to fall.
At the last possible second, Hal spun around, threw up his arms to protect himself, and deflected the blow. The screwdriver sank into the fleshy juncture where his arm connected to his shoulder and the impact jarred Rae to the tips of her toes. Her hands flew away from the screwdriver’s handle and she stumbled back, his shriek ringing in her ears.
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