Micanopy in Shadow

by Ann Cook

  Tony shook his head. “Well, if she was here, there’s no sign of her now. Stay here.” He pulled another stick of gum from a package in his pocket, crammed it into his mouth, and climbed over the wooden fence to slog through the wet grasses. In a few minutes he shook his head again. “Nothing.”

  John thoughts raced. Was the ranger looking for a body? Surely Brandy would call for help if she were hurt. An ominous fact remained. She had not.

  * * *

  Beside Brandy, a little alligator, about six inches long, had blundered into the shrubbery. It spread it front legs, raised its narrow head, and poured forth a stream of shrill distress calls. She almost forgot the cottonmouth. If Mama heard her stripling, she would come and carry it to the water. Brandy would be an obstacle. But the cottonmouth had no such qualms. Its swaying ceased. In a lightning flash the black head shot forward and the gator’s tiny tail vanished down the white gullet. As the cottonmouth crawled on past the wax myrtle, Brandy heaved an enormous sigh.

  Cold wind whistled over her body, and moisture seeped into her jeans, her shirt, her hair. She raised her head a fraction. In the dim starlight, a rabbit streaked from a clump of red bay bushes and bounded off toward the basin. Pain forced her to ease her head back down, but not before leaves in the thicket quivered. For a moment yellowish eyes stared at her, startled by her motionless form. Then a black spotted bobcat sprang after the rabbit, its long legs and short tail close enough for her to smell damp fur.

  Brandy’s jacket trembled, but it still clung to the twig. She had closed her eyes when she heard sharp high barks coming from many tiny throats. The slight rise in the ground beside her, the twigs and sticks—of course. Why hadn’t she realized! A mother alligator’s nest. Hatchings were emerging. Early October was late for hatchlings, but possible, given the warm wet September. Somewhere in their mother’s cold reptilian heart beat the maternal instinct. She would come lumbering up from the lake to uncover the nest and shepherd her brood to the water.

  Shivering with cold and terror, Brandy craned her neck up and stared toward the lake. A cloud drifted across the quarter moon, hiding what dim light remained. She strained to listen for a slithering sound, heavier than the cottonmouth’s, or for the gator’s short, strong legs thrashing through the marsh grass. The mother would attack whatever seemed to threaten her hatchlings. Brandy twisted onto her stomach, shoulder in agony. If she had broken a bone, she must be careful. She wiggled a pitiful few feet from the mound. High, persistent little cries filled the night air.

  As the ragged cloud slid past, a band of faded moonlight fell over the shrubs, water, and grasses. The fronds of a scrub palmetto quivered, the leathery leaves of scrub sedge bent low, a cluster of runner oak shook, then flattened. The gator’s thudding advance was slow and deliberate and inevitable. Brandy squinted toward the sound. A dark green snout parted the leaves of a scrub oak, prodded ahead. Heavy legs steadily thrust the body forward. A few feet from Brandy, a seven-inch hatching poked its tiny head up and repeated its anxious call.

  When a blinding swath of light cut across the ditch and speared the white jacket, Brandy choked back a scream and closed her eyes against the glare. Distant footsteps could mean her attacker’s return.

  She waited—not only for the alligator’s thick snout.

  * * *

  John and Tony hiked two-thirds of the nearly three-mile round trip of Bolen Bluff Trail in the center of the prairie. They descended a slope onto one of the old camp dikes and walked out into the basin itself. At its end they peered over the ten-foot observation deck. Both thought this a likely location for a fall. Brandy might have concluded her interview and explored some areas alone. Still no sign of her. While they hesitated on the deck, dispirited and breathing hard, the ranger’s cell phone pealed. Tony put it to his ear as John gripped the railing, willing himself to stay calm.

  After a moment, Tony asked, “You found something?” John’s heart lurched. “You know it belonged to the missing woman?” John’s nails bit into his palms. “I see.” Tony nodded at John. “I’ll bring him over to check it out.” He replaced the cell in the clip on his belt. “They found a canvas bag tossed over a fence on the Chacala Trail south of here. The cell phone company says the phone in it belongs to your wife. There’s also a notepad, but it doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know.”

  John felt limp. Brandy had to be somewhere in the Preserve hurt. She would never voluntarily leave her cell or her canvas bag. “No note from this guy calling himself “Steadly?”

  “No.”

  When they caught up with the other two rangers, John studied the bag, his lips a grim line. “It’s hers all right,” he choked.

  The bag was soiled and wet, even though it had lain in a dry oak hammock. Tony’s own eyes were downcast.

  “Looks like someone tossed it away,” the other ranger said. “There’s no sign of Mrs. Able anywhere we could find, on or off the trail.”

  “Can you get fingerprints from the bag?” John asked.

  “Can’t take fingerprints from cloth. Sorry.”

  Both men were tiring, but John had to press on and Tony seemed to understand.

  “We’ll need to check out Cone’s Dike,” he said, heaving himself back into the saddle of the ATV. He rolled his spent gum into a wrapper, shoved it into a pocket, and opened a fresh stick. Both men’s movements were slower now, more forced. Tony sighed and shrugged. “I left Cone’s Dike ’til last. It’s eight and a quarter miles, round trip, from the Visitor’s Center parking area. We’d better hustle.”

  John felt too miserable and anxious to say more than, “Let’s go then.”

  They rode silently in tandem to the visitor’s parking lot. “We can’t take the ATV much beyond here.” Tony said, “There’s a barrier to keep the cattle in.”

  John glanced down at his watch, faintly lit by the vehicle’s head-lamps. Midnight. He knew Brandy would be thinking of “night’s black agents …” if she could think at all.

  They left the ATV at the metal pass-through gate and tramped on, Tony throwing the flashlight beam among the pines and palmettos and along the crushed asphalt trail. A barbed wire fence bordered it on their left and lower shrubs and a marsh on the right.

  “I’ve been here recently,” Tony said, “chopping out camphor saplings and Chinese tallow.” He paused where the path widened. “If it wasn’t so dark, you could probably see bison droppings here and hoof prints. The herd comes across the ditch to roll in the sand.” John could smell the faint odor of crushed asphalt and recent manure.

  Tony gestured at the line of narrow, water-filled depressions on either side and highlighted the floating lotus plants. Then he turned the broad ribbon of light across the ditch to his right. It flickered over a white jacket, suspended like a ghost from the branches of a wax myrtle.

  John drew a ragged breath. “Brandy’s jacket. I’m afraid of what it means.”

  The two slogged across the shallow water and pushed their way through a thick mass of low-growing scrub oak. It wasn’t until John stood beside the wax myrtle and reached for the jacket that they saw the prone figure with the wide, frightened eyes.

  Brandy gave a little moan when John knelt beside her. Her frozen heart was bursting, but she remembered the mother gator. She could still make out her huge, muscular body moving forward, and whispered, “Got to get away. Listen!”

  John looked toward the scrub oak. Tony spotted it at the same time and heard the high-pitched calls. “We’ve got to move her, John,” he said. “Now!”

  He pulled off his ranger’s jacket, grabbed Brandy’s, and eased them both gently under her head and torso. She winced again but didn’t cry out. John lifted her legs enough to lay them on his own field coat. Together they lifted her a few inches and carried her to the safety of the asphalt trail.

  “Should be okay here,” Tony said.

 
; “Cottonmouth, too,” she murmured. She felt herself trembling uncontrollably. Her confused thoughts raced back in time. There were all those other times when she’d been in just such a fix.

  John knelt beside her. “I don’t know,” he said, “whether to kiss you or kill you.”

  Brandy stirred and groaned. Her shoulder throbbed. Her lips, caked with mud, could barely open. “I appeal,” she whispered, “to the better angels of your nature.”

  Lincoln was his favorite president.

  THIRTEEN

  While the three waited for the paramedics and the ambulance, John knelt again beside her. “Could you tell who did this?” he asked.

  Brandy tried to shake her head. Knives stabbed her throat. “Like a sitting duck, saw the tripod, spotting scope. Came from behind … never saw. Big, scary head, shiny eyes.” She shivered, and her voice fell to a whisper. Talking was painful. “Something slobbery.…” She paused to rest her raw neck, then labored on, wheezing. “Struck down … a grunting sound … a thud … a bellow. The choking stopped.”

  Abruptly, Tony laughed. “The bison. One saved you. They cross there, but not usually at night. Something disturbed them.”

  She glanced at the ranger, startled, then her lips twitched in a smile. Her throat was almost too sore to go on, and the next memory almost too painful. “Dragged … held down in water.”

  John laid his fingers on her crusted lips. “Don’t try to talk.”

  “The bison. He must have hit it with something, but it didn’t leave,” Tony said, reaching into his shirt pocket for a stick of gum. “Your attacker came back and tried to drown you, and bison will investigate anything strange. They’re very curious animals. My guess is, this one scared him off a second time.” There was wry amusement in his tone. “You heard typical grunting. If anyone threatens a bison, he’ll charge. And he might not leave the scene afterward. They’re unpredictable. Especially bulls.” He shook his head. “A bull can stand six feet at the shoulder, not an animal to mess with.”

  John patted Brandy’s hand and brushed her wet, matted hair back from her forehead. “Lucky the herd came by.”

  Brandy murmured again, in spite of John’s warning, “Guess I saw the herd, from tower—far away.”

  “Hush, now.” John had calmed and was breathing more easily. “It was smart, you know—throwing that white jacket up in the little tree. Helped us find you in the dark.”

  She looked up with eyes still reflecting fear. “Thought the bad guy came back.” She forced the words. “At least I did one thing right.”

  * * *

  “Badly reddened neck, visible marks,’ the paramedic said. “Her attacker probably used a heavy cloth—no grooves and no fingernail marks. She’s had a form of asphyxia—been deprived of oxygen.” The medic’s hands were soft and sure and probed gently. “Blood vessels in the neck were closed, at least temporarily. She’d have been unconscious for a time. A few small blood clots under the eyelids.” He stood back and spoke decisively. “Somebody tried to strangle this lady.” Brandy could still feel the prickle of stiff grass, the mud oozing around her ankles.

  “I don’t like the look of her shoulder. Could be at least partially dislocated. I can see bruises and a lot of swelling through her torn shirt and it looks out of place.” He bent over Brandy. “Can you move your left shoulder and arm?”

  Brandy tried and winced at the jabbing pain.

  “What about the dried blood?” It was John.

  “A nasty head wound, all right. Doesn’t look too serious, though. Probably stunned her.”

  Several hands were shifting Brandy up onto a litter. The medic’s voice continued from near her feet. “Her arm was almost wrenched out of its socket, but nothing seems broken. I could tell better in daylight. In the ER, they’ll fix her up.”

  Brandy felt a slight jostling, the motion of the litter being carried. John walked beside her, one hand resting on hers. Boots squashed through soggy grass and across water. In spite of what he’d said, he found a dry spot on her forehead and kissed it. The medics found a way to carry her around the pass-through

  “Robert Steadly,” she croaked. “Get away?”

  “There isn’t any Robert Steadly,” John said acidly. “You were scammed.” He dropped his voice, adding, “and almost killed.” He didn’t repeat his usual refrain—how she must be more suspicious, more skeptical, more cautious. It was too obvious. As they slid her into the ambulance with John at her side, he turned to the ranger. “We’ll never be able to thank you enough, Tony.”

  “Part of our job. Repay us by telling people about Paynes Prairie.”

  * * *

  The following morning the ER physician transferred Brandy to a hospital room. Here one physician examined her throat and another, her shoulder. “An attempt at ligature strangulation,” the throat specialist said. “We have to check your hyoid bone in the neck and see the condition of the thyroid cartilage and the tracheal rings in your larynx. If your carotid artery had been blocked for long, it would’ve been fatal.” He raised his eyebrows and looked at her severely. “We need to monitor your condition for a a few days. Someone from the Sheriff’s Office will talk to you while you’re here, but don’t strain your vocal cords.” He gave her something to soothe her throat and turned her over to a bone specialist.

  After administering a muscle relaxant, the orthopedist carefully maneuvered her shoulder bones back into their proper position. The pain immediately lessened. “Partial dislocation, all right,” he said. “Stretched the ligaments a bit, too. A strong force really rotated that left shoulder joint; your upper arm is almost out of its socket. You may need to wear a sling for a short time.”

  She languished for two more days. The first morning John drove to Shands Hospital with Brandy’s robe, bed jacket, fresh jeans, and shirt stuffed into an overnight case. Again Kyra stayed with Brad. When Brandy woke on Tuesday, her third day in the hospital, it didn’t seem possible that only a week had passed since she discovered Shot Hunter’s body. Noble hadn’t contacted her again. She was sure he had not investigated her theory, nor was he likely to see a connection with the later attack on her.

  A portly plain-clothes detective with a thinning fringe of brown hair and a less than memorable face came by from the Alachua County Crimes Against Persons Squad. He took notes on a small notepad and asked her to repeat everything she had already explained to the Paynes Prairie officer the night of the attack. Then he jabbed his mechanical pencil at the paper in frustration. Officers had gone over the site again in broad daylight and had found nothing useful. He sighed, scratched behind his ear, and agreed it was not an opportunist assault. She had clearly been targeted. But so far the deputies found no threads, no helpful footprints, no fingerprints. The surface of the rock that someone threw at the bison was too rough. They discovered nothing that had not been surmised at the time John and the ranger located her. Finally, the detective shoved the notepad into his pocket and promised to get back in touch.

  “Any luck in the Shot Hunter case?” Brandy asked.

  “Not that I know of.” At the door the detective paused and added a last word, “We often get help from citizens. Call me if you or your family thinks of anything else, or if you receive any threat.”

  She assured him she would.

  Brandy spent a restive afternoon before her doctor approved her progress, although a sling supported her left arm and eased the soreness. When she lay in bed and thought about the day of the attack, she realized she had not seen the small silver car.

  “The news is all over town, of course,” John announced during his visit. “Mr. and Mrs. Irons are worried about you. At the time, he agreed with me. We both knew you were making a mistake the day you left to meet this phony Steadly. He thought you were even more foolish to follow his directions to Cone’s Dike. It’s a dangerous path.” He rubbed his forehead. “They bo
th send their best wishes.” John handed her an out-sized get well card, signed with a flourish, “Your admirer, Montgomery.” Lily Lou scribbled her signature, too.

  Kyra sent a more modest one, and Grant came by after his shift, dismayed that the attack occurred at the Preserve. “This sort of thing doesn’t happen at our park,” he grumbled. He didn’t bring greetings from his formidable aunt or his grandfather, Savage Wilson. She didn’t expect him to.

  Neither did Brandy hear from the Sharp contingent, although a brief story appeared in the Gainesville paper. She was certain the account of the attack blew through the clan like a hurricane. After all, the letter writer had used the maiden name of Caleb’s sister-in-law. Caleb and his grandson would certainly speculate at the drug store about the attack. Brandy’s cousin at Trinkets and Treasures did not contact her, either, although he certainly must have heard or read about it.

  That afternoon Brandy watched from her hospital window while her grandmother’s shabby pick-up lurched through the gate and swerved into a parking space, narrowly missing a nearby car. A few minutes later, as Hope perched on Brandy’s bedside chair, she was for once subdued. Her gray ponytail straggled into her collar, and her cheeks were so sunken that the bones showed under her skin.

  “Don’t look so devastated,” Brandy said. “I’ll be fine. The doctor plans to let me go home tomorrow.”

  Hope leaned forward, gripping the handle of her shoulder-strap bag. “Now listen to me, young lady,” she began. “I want you to drop this inquiry right now, you hear? I got you into this mess. I’ll get you out. Quit it right now, and I’ll spread the word. Nothing is worth putting your life in danger.”