by R. J. Blacks
We pass the PT Cruiser and Fargo pauses to look at it.
“What’s with the bugs?” he asks.
“It came that way.”
“Is it supposed to be a joke?”
I proceed to tell him the whole story about how we got a discount to purchase the car as-is, bugs and all.
“I suppose for two grand it’s worth it,” he says.
We approach a ten year old olive-green Jeep Cherokee splattered with mud all over the side. He unlocks it with the remote, then gets in the driver’s side. I open the passenger door, climb in, and then close the door behind me. The interior is in pretty decent shape with brown leather seats and a nice stereo.
Fargo starts the engine and slips the transmission into drive. We race down a gravel road leaving a cloud of dust in our wake, kicked up by the tires. I now understand why he never washes it; even if he did, it wouldn’t stay clean for more than an hour.
Fifteen minutes go by without a word said so I make a lame attempt to break the ice.
“Nice car.”
“Thanks.”
“Had it long?”
“Five years.”
“Get it from a dealer?”
“No, an ex-sem.”
“What’s an ex-sem?”
“An ex-Seminole. It was a graduation gift for his daughter.”
“She didn’t like it?”
“Only had it two weeks, then runs off with this ranch hand.”
“Without the car?”
“Yeah. Her father puts it in storage, figures she’ll snap out of it and come back. But five years goes by and still no daughter so he puts it up for Blue-Book.”
“And you bought it.”
“How could I not? A five year old Jeep with only eight hundred miles, that’s a steal.”
I sit in silence for a couple of minutes, but something is gnawing at my curiosity.
“Can I ask you something?” I say.
“Sure.”
“How does one become an ex-Seminole?”
“Oh that. Well, it’s not like we shun him or anything. He left the rez at eighteen seeking his fortune. Goes to college, then marries this white woman. She disapproved of the Indian ways and convinced him to do the same. He lives like a white man so we treat him like one. No hard feelings. But he did manage to acquire ten-thousand acres and a thousand Crackers.”
“What are ‘Crackers’?” I ask.
“They’re the Florida version of the Texas Longhorn. Smaller, but they take the heat better.”
“Why are they called Crackers?”
“Because early cowboys cracked whips instead of using lassos to move the herds, or at least that’s the way it was told to me.”
“Sounds like he did quite well for himself.”
“Some might think so, if you measure success in white man’s terms. He hasn’t seen his daughter in a decade and his wife spends weeks at a time at the Orlando resorts without him. Not my idea of success. But he still tells anyone who will listen our traditions are nothing more than ancient superstitions and science is the only thing worth believing in.”
“What do you believe?” I ask.
“I believe in the oral tradition as it was told to me.”
“To each his own, I suppose.”
“My elders lived by it and I intend to do the same,” he snaps.
I sense that our conversation is venturing into dangerous territory so I remain silent for the next twenty minutes. We approach the State Police station and then Fargo pulls into the parking lot. We exit the Jeep and I follow him into the building.
A State Trooper approaches us. He’s wearing a name tag with “Detective John Bolt” engraved upon it.
“Thanks for coming,” he says, and shakes Fargo’s hand. His eyes turn to me and I notice him staring at my blue hair.
“And this is?”
“Indigo. Indigo Wells,” Fargo says.
I see the detective’s eyes flit from my hair to my legs as he gives me a quick full-body scan. It’s something men do, I’m told, by instinct, sometimes without even realizing it. I guess I passed the test because he redirects his gaze to my eyes and holds out his hand in friendship. I engage it and he shakes my hand heartily.
“How long have you been... you know... going out?” he says, turning to Fargo.
“She’s actually a friend of my brother. They drove down from Philadelphia, a couple of days ago.”
“A vacation... or permanent?” the detective asks, looking back at me.
“I guess you could call it an extended vacation. I’m planning to stay a year.”
“She’s doing research... for her PhD,” Fargo says.
“I see. Well, hang close to this man,” Bolt says, tapping Fargo on the shoulder. “As far as Nature Guides, he’s the best there is. Taught me everything I know.”
“Are you from around here?” I ask.
“No, I’m a transplant, like most of the folks in Florida.”
“What brought you here?”
“I was a detective in Chicago; needed a change from those horrific winters. In my vocation, you tend to spend a lot of time outdoors. Just couldn’t deal with those sub-zero days anymore.”
“Been here long?”
“Seventeen years. I mentioned the idea to my wife one particularly cold winter not expecting much encouragement from her. The next thing you know we’re driving south, with the kids in the back seat. It was supposed to be a vacation, but we never went back.”
Fargo glances at the wall clock, then cuts in.
“So what’s up?”
“This is a strange one,” the detective says, and then leads us to a darkened room with one-way glass. “This is completely confidential. Okay?”
“Sure,” Fargo says.
The detective looks at me in anticipation.
“Sure,” I say, mimicking Fargo.
On the other side of the glass, in a brightly lit room, is a girl sitting at a table. She looks to be about eighteen. She stares at the wall with a blank look on her face, as if she was in shock. A man in a white lab coat, a doctor I presume, takes her blood pressure and another man, dressed in a suit, types on a laptop.
“A Park Ranger found her early this morning at the Wildlife State Park. It’s that place where the kids go for some, shall I say, intimate activity. We’re still trying to get a positive ID on her.”
“What’s the problem?” Fargo asks.
“It was dark, before daybreak, when he found her. And she was up in a tree... alone.”
“Up in a tree?”
“Yeah, took the fire department an hour to get her down.”
“Why was she up in a tree?”
“That’s the strange part. She claims she and her boyfriend were attacked by alligators, hundreds of them. You know wild gators better than anyone around here. What do you think?”
“What does the boyfriend say?”
“We haven’t located him yet. At this point we don’t even know if there really was a boyfriend.”
“Was she drinking?”
“We did find a bottle of Southern Comfort in the car.”
“Drugs?”
“A small amount of Marijuana, but nothing to get excited about.”
“Can I go out to the site?”
“Sure, I’ll go with you,” Bolt says.
We load into Fargo’s Jeep and he drives out onto the highway. About twenty minutes later we turn onto a dirt road which takes us through some gates and then past a faded green sign which reads: “Wildlife State Park.”
The park is remote and largely undeveloped and appears to be rarely used. The road ends at a sandy clearing which fronts up to a medium sized inlet leading out to a much larger lake. It’s heavily wooded with Pine, Cypress, and Oak. In the clearing I see a blue Camaro parked under a tree with Florida tags. Around it are eight or nine police cruisers with their lights flashing. There are troopers everywhere scouring the grounds for evidence.
Fargo parks the Jeep and then he and De
tective Bolt get out. I grab the lunch bag with the sample jars, slip the strap over my shoulder, and then tag along behind as the two of them saunter over to the abandoned Camaro.
“The girl says that last night, the Camaro was closer to the water. About here,” he says, framing out the location with his arms. “Then the boyfriend gets out of the car and urinates against that tree,” pointing to a tree about a hundred feet away. “She says she looked away for maybe three or four minutes, and when she looked back, there were a dozen gators around him. Having nowhere to go, he scrambles up the tree.”
“So where is the boyfriend now?” Fargo asks.
“This is where it gets interesting. She claims the gators circle the tree so he gets this idea to hang from a branch and drop through the sunroof. He asks her to drive the Camaro under the tree, which she does, and then he drops into the car just like he planned. But by now the car is completely surrounded with gators. He slams the car repeatedly into drive and then reverse, but there are too many.”
“Couldn’t he just run over them?” I ask.
“She claims he tried, but the alligators were too big and there were too many. The car would get stuck so he would have to reverse direction. Now the gators are everywhere, surrounding the car and trying to get onto the hood, so he decides to abandon the vehicle. The two of them crawl out onto the roof and she stands on his shoulders. She was a cheerleader so it was easy for her. She manages to pull herself up onto a large branch and into the tree. Then it’s his turn. He can’t quite reach the branch so he stacks a cooler and some boxes on the roof. He grabs the branch and starts to pull himself up. Then the branch breaks. He falls and in seconds he’s covered in alligators. Then she blacks out and that’s the last thing she remembers. What do you think? Is that possible?”
Fargo takes a deep breath.
“You know, gators don’t hunt in packs, like wolves or lions. They don’t have the intelligence to do that. If you do see several in a group it’s because they’re opportunistic, looking to chime in on an easy meal. Out here, I’d say there might have been two or maybe three. And to that girl, in the dark, alone, it probably seemed like more.”
“Exactly what I thought,” Bolt says.
“But that doesn’t mean she’s lying,” I interject. “I’ve taken courses in psychology and she’s probably been so traumatized, she really believes what she thinks she saw.”
“I’ll leave that to the experts,” Bolt says.
A trooper approaches with a black plastic evidence bag. It appears to contain a round object the size of a soccer ball. He opens the bag, shows the contents to the detective. Bolt recoils. The trooper closes the bag.
“Now we have a body, or what’s left of it,” Bolt says.
He turns to the trooper.
“Take this to the lab and get a DNA confirmation.”
The trooper nods then strolls away.
“Mind if I look around?” Fargo asks.
“Help yourself. As far as I’m concerned this is an unfortunate accident, unless the D.A. wants to make something out of it. But I don’t think she will.”
“Shouldn’t those gators be trapped?” I ask. “They’ve tasted human flesh. They could kill again.”
“There’s got to be, what, ten thousand gators in that lake?” Bolt says, looking at Fargo.
“Yeah, that’s about right.”
“What are you going to do, trap a couple, look down their throats for signs of human flesh, then trap another pair, and so on, until you find the right ones? That only works if they’re in a pond, and there’s only one or two.”
“What about—”
“—the public? Good point. I’ll get the park service to put up a couple of signs. The locals already know the danger, but those tourists, those pain-in-the-ass tourists that think the entire state of Florida is a theme park. You know the ones. The ones that feed the alligators like they’re pets. Yeah, we don’t want any of those folks getting injured do we,” he says, laughing.
Fargo wanders over to the Camaro and stoops down. I excuse myself from the detective and join Fargo. He studies the ground then lightly runs his finger over some tracks in the sand.
“Those police cars destroyed most of the tracks. They should have quarantined the area.”
Fargo checks out the inside of the Camaro and then wanders over to the tree, looking up at the branches. He’s totally engaged in whatever he’s doing so I use the opportunity to stroll down to the lake. No one seems to notice me so I wade into the water, up to my knees. I open one of the specimen jars and scoop up some of the algae-laden water. I tightly close the lid then place it into the insulated bag. I take out another jar and scoop up some mud from the bottom. As I look up, I notice a crime-scene photographer taking my picture.
“I’m not with them,” I say.
“Doesn’t matter. You’re here, that makes you part of the investigation.” And then she takes another picture.
“Who sees these pictures?” I ask.
“Only the D.A. and her staff,” the photographer says, snapping a third picture.
“Not the press?”
“They’re sealed, until the case is closed.”
“Then what?”
“Then they become part of the public record.”
“What does that mean?”
“That means anyone can request them under ‘The Freedom of Information Act.’”
“Even the press?”
“Anyone.”
Damn. That’s the last thing I need, a picture of me collecting water samples splattered across every newspaper and on every TV news program in the country. Someone from GWI might recognize me and figure out what I’m up to. I turn my back to the photographer and wade into deeper water, sneaking the specimen jar back into the bag. I peek back at her and see her wandering away. It was a close call. But fortunately this is a local issue and those pictures will probably never make the national news. Next time I’ll have to be more careful.
“Hey, get out of there,” I hear, from an unknown source.
“Now! Get out of there,” he shouts, and comes running to the edge of the water.
It’s a State Trooper, and he’s flailing his hands wildly. I turn and start walking toward the shoreline.
“What’s the matter with you?” he says, “There are man-eating gators out there and you’re going for a swim?”
Man-eating gators? I hadn’t considered that. How dumb. Somehow the presence of all those policemen made me feel safe. As if the alligators wouldn’t even consider coming around with all that activity on the shore. But we’re dealing with a couple of rogue gators here. They could be sick, or crazy, or desperate. Who knows? I felt really stupid.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I thought it was safe.”
“You’re damn lucky one of those gators didn’t have you for lunch.”
“I won’t do it again.”
“You’re from up north, aren’t you?”
“Philadelphia.”
“Yeah, figured so,” he says.
As I approach the trooper, I casually nudge the lunch bag behind my back with my elbow, trying to make it less conspicuous. It’s not unknown for crime scene investigators to confiscate everything in sight, even if their use by the D.A. is of questionable value. It then occurs to me the idea of using a lunch bag is paying off in a way I never imagined. It’s so mundane, no one even seems to notice it.
When I reach the bank, the trooper strolls away shaking his head from side to side. I hear him mumble something like “idiot” under his breath. I deserve it. I was well versed in the dangers of city life; how I should stay out of certain neighborhoods and avoid certain streets or risk being mugged. But living here, out in the country, where the law of survival played by different rules, I was a neophyte. I learned a lesson today that will probably save my life someday.
I see Fargo stooping down at the water’s edge, away from all the activity. He appears to be studying something in the sand. I stroll over and stand right i
n front of him.
“What’s up,” I say, trying to make conversation.
“You’re standing on evidence,” he says, gazing at my toes digging into the sand. I step back.
“I’m sorry,” I say, feeling the blood rush to my face in embarrassment.
“It’s okay. I’m done.”
Fargo stands up, walks past me, and then approaches Detective Bolt.
“Do you still want me to hang around?” he asks.
“I think we have it under control. I’ll ride back with one of the other officers.”
“Call me if you need anything else.”
“Will do, and thanks for coming. One of these days we’ve got to deputize you.”
“No need,” Fargo says.
If you wouldn’t be such a stubborn bastard and take the oath, we could pay you for these outings, at the standard rate. Don’t you realize the state allows us to use “expert advisors” and pays good money for the privilege?”
“Like I said, no need.”
Fargo turns and makes his way back to the Jeep and I follow close behind. He unlocks the doors and we both climb inside. He starts the engine, and then maneuvers the Jeep between the police cars and back out the road we came in.
We drive a couple of miles and Fargo hasn’t said a word.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Nothing,” he says.
We drive a couple more miles and he still hasn’t said anything.
“You know something, don’t you?” I say.
“Kind of.”
“That girl, the one in the tree. She was telling the truth, wasn’t she.”
“Not exactly.”
“There were more than a couple of gators weren’t there?”
“There weren’t hundreds.”
“How many then?”
“Based on the tracks, I’d say twenty, maybe thirty,” he says.
“Why didn’t you tell the detective?” I ask.
“Because if I tell him, he’ll tell another, and that guy will tell another, and the next thing you know it’ll be in the papers.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Because once it’s in the papers, there’ll be this big uproar about ‘killer alligators’. Then the state will feel obligated to declare open season on alligators, to appease the critics. Hunters will be coming in from everywhere and shooting at anything that moves. I’ve seen it before; it’ll be a bloodbath.”
