“Now that’s an odd question, even for you,” Charlie replied. “You serious?”
“Absolutely.”
“Why, may I ask, do you need that information?”
“I have my reasons.”
“Playing it close to the vest, huh? All right, hang on a minute.” There was a long pause. “Okay, I’ve got a whole team down there helping out the DEA. What’re you looking for in particular?”
“Someone who knows local poisons. Tribal stuff.”
“Poisons? Are you working a new case already?”
“In a way.”
Charlie reluctantly gave him the name and satellite phone number for the agent. “I suppose you’re going to keep me in the dark on this till our fishing trip this August?”
“Maybe not. My idea’s a long shot, but if it pans out, you’ll be the first to know.”
Chapter 38
Dex parked his Impala behind the Seminole Indian Casino in Coconut Creek, a town just east of Coral Springs. He strode through the muggy air and entered the windowless building. He sauntered up to the snack bar and asked for John Redfeather. The attendant nodded, her long black braids shifting across her breasts. She marched swiftly through the casino and disappeared behind a heavy office door.
A dark-skinned man of twenty-eight appeared in the open doorway, waved at Dex, and made his way through the maze of slot machines and frenetic players.
He shook hands with the police chief. “Looking to risk a little of your retirement fund, Dex?” His white teeth gleamed when his lips parted into a wide grin. His black eyes exhibited tremendous energy and enthusiasm as they examined his guest’s deeply tanned, somber face. John rapidly concluded that his friend wasn’t there for recreational purposes.
“Nah, not today, John. I don’t feel lucky enough.”
“Then you’re smart to hold on to your fortune.”
Dex chuckled and took off his hat. “Yeah, my fortune. I like that.”
“So what brings you to the casino? You investigating one of our employees?” John and his father operated the casino for the Seminole tribe.
“Nothing like that. You still got that paleontology degree?”
It was John’s turn to laugh. “You mean that worthless piece of paper that says I learned enough to stay poor all my life?”
“That’s the one.”
He squinted questioningly at Dex. “You find some ancient fossil or something?”
“Nope.” Dex scratched his head. “I want you to help me find one.”
“A fossil?”
Dex shuffled his feet. “Sorta. Only this fossil might still hunt and kill.”
“Oh no, you’re not talking about the Miccosukee Everglades monster, are you?”
“I guess I am,” he replied uneasily.
John slapped Dex’s shoulder. “Never figured you for a myth type of guy.”
“That makes two of us, but I have a hunch that before all is said and done, we’ll both be believers.”
Dex had piqued John’s interest. “Really? Hmm.”
“Can you help me or not?”
“Well, sure. When do you want to start?”
“How about now?”
“Now!” He whistled, but when he saw that Dex was serious, he added, “I’ll see if my father’ll cover for me today.”
“Thanks.”
Within twenty minutes, they were riding in the Impala’s front seat headed for the west end of Sample Road, where John docked his airboat.
“So what can you tell me about Demon Key?” Dex asked.
“Bad mojo. If my grandfather told me one story, he musta told me fifty.”
“Tell me a good one.”
“Well, first, you need a little background. Florida used to be a lot wider than it is today, and where the Everglades is now used to be arid land.”
“A desert?”
“Yeah. More than twice as large as it is now, when the sea levels of both the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico were much lower than today. People didn’t show up in Florida until about 12,000 years ago. They were basically small-game hunters and gatherers, although there were large animals roaming around that are extinct now.”
“Like what?” Dex was fascinated. He’d never heard these facts before, and he’d lived in Florida all his life.
“Like, uh, mastodons, saber-tooth tigers, giant armadillos, and some others.”
“No shit? Saber-tooth tigers? I always thought they were myths, too.”
“Oh yeah, they were real all right. My grandfather said that when the seas rose and half of the state was reclaimed by the oceans, these giant monsters disappeared.”
“How’s he know that?”
John appeared uneasy. “He found some early cave drawings that told the story.”
“That’s some story. Where’s the cave?”
“I’m going to take you there.”
They reached the dock, and Dex parked under the rain protection of a southern magnolia tree, while John prepared the airboat. The craft was a three-seater powered by a Cessna aircraft engine. Its top-end speed was 110 miles per hour, and it could reach that speed cruising on the water or saw grass during dry seasons.
John’s sixty-three-year-old father, James, had taken it out a few years ago and had been traveling at sixty miles per hour when he hit a stump. He had been launched high into a stand of trees a half-mile from Alligator Alley. Although he had sustained a broken arm, leg, and three ribs, he had managed to climb down and make it to the highway, where a sympathetic motorist had stopped and driven him to the closest hospital. The Redfeathers were a hardy lot.
A patch of blue appeared in the quilt of grays and blacks overhead. A few rays of welcome sunshine warmed the two men and temporarily relieved the gloom.
Dex climbed on board, and John fired up the engine.
“Hold on and keep your hands inside. I don’t want that saw grass slicing and dicing your arm into sushi,” John warned him.
Dex nodded. He was well aware of what the serrated edges of the saw grass blades could do. “You bet.”
The airboat sailed over the high waters past small hardwood tree islands, through mangrove tunnels, and across several lakes before they reached their destination. Dex peeked at the speedometer several times during their trip and noted that they were only traveling eighty miles per hour. Thank God John was taking it easy on him.
John eased the angled bow onto the sandy shore of a small island an hour and a half later and cut the engine. He tossed an anchor out into the muck, grabbed a black duffel bag, and jumped onto the island. Dex followed him into the cool shade beneath a woven canopy of tree branches.
“Here,” John announced, and brushed a blanket of leaves from an old trapdoor. He bent and tugged on the steel ring. The door creaked open and fell flat against the leafy ground.
Dex pointed. “Down there?”
John reached into the duffel bag and threw Dex a powerful flashlight. “Yeah.”
Dex guided the beam into the opening and illuminated a shallow limestone cave and a ladder. John nudged him aside and climbed down into the cave.
“Your shoes and pants are going to get a little soggy.”
“I’ve got more at home.” Dex joined his friend in knee-deep water below.
The blue patch of sky was quickly swallowed by another approaching storm. Rumbles sounded in the distance.
John’s expression was stolid red granite. “Follow me, and watch your step if you don’t want a dunking. The floor in here’s as slippery as ice.”
They cautiously waded into the silent shadows to their left, the bobbing beams skimming the limestone walls and ceiling like darting specters. Dex noticed weatherworn paintings on both sides of the tunnel that depicted deformed and evil-looking creatures. He shivered and hurried after John.
The water deepened, and it felt like they were descending at a slight angle. The water level reached his waist, then his chest. How much farther?
Finally they came upon a large circula
r chamber. Dex guessed its diameter to be close to fifty or sixty feet. The dome roof was broken by a myriad of gnarled tree roots, and water dripped into the pond covering the chamber floor. John’s flashlight beam roamed the decorated walls until he located what he was searching for.
“Over here,” he called out.
They moved closer to the paintings, and John nodded toward a series of faded pictures that were barely visible.
“If you look closely, you can make out the history of the first Florida inhabitants. They hunted small animals like the squirrels drawn here, gathered berries and nuts, and lived in small huts. This was long before my tribe appeared.”
Dex admired the artistry of such a primitive culture. The human figures, animals, and objects were remarkably well drawn. Slowly, John guided him around the chamber. Each set of drawings was successively brighter and more colorful, and the historical representations more recent, until they came to a section where the drawing style changed drastically. The depictions were more realistic.
“Seminole,” John pointed out proudly. “Now, many centuries passed from the previous pictures to this one. Notice that the Seminole landscape is marshy and watery, while the older ones displayed solid ground, thickets, and scrub.” He waded to a spot twenty feet away.
“Here’s what you’re looking for,” he told Dex.
“What we’re looking for,” he corrected his friend.
“Right.” John ran his large hand over the pictures. “More Seminole. See that creature?”
Dex peered at the strange-looking monster. It appeared to be a giant alligator of some sort, with an eel tail, and legs and feet that resembled flat paddles.
“That it?” he asked.
“Yeah.” John pulled a camera from his duffel and snapped several digital pictures, until he was satisfied with the results.
Dex tapped his finger on the final drawings of the set. “It appears as if the monster destroyed the whole damn village.”
John smiled. “Pretty good for an amateur paleontologist. In fact, the rest of the sets tell the story of your creature and the destruction it wrought, including the annihilation of entire village populations.”
Dex gestured at a blackened section of the wall between the old drawing and those by the Seminole tribe. “What happened there?”
John frowned. “I was wondering the same thing. Looks as if the drawings there were burned away.”
Dex shook his head. “Strange. I wonder who’d do something like that?”
“Vandals, and it looks recent.”
John rubbed his fingertips over the area and inspected them. They were blackened with soot. “Real recent.”
“You remember what was there before?”
“Nah. The last time I saw these drawings was when I was a snot-nosed kid.”
“Well, at least we have these drawings of the monster,” Dex sighed.
“Yeah, I suppose. On the bright side, we got what we came for. Now we can take these photos to Florida Atlantic University’s library and try to identify the creature. Unfortunately, I didn’t save many of my college books. I sold them for beer money.”
“Well, a guy’s gotta drink. So, where do we start? It’s a big library.”
“When do we start is more like it. I have a sneaking suspicion that if this monster really existed, and I’m not saying that it did, it was a refugee from the Jurassic or Cretaceous periods. Hell, maybe both.”
“What periods?”
“The age of the dinosaurs. They died out about sixty-five million years ago.”
“So how could it be hanging around here if it’s extinct?”
“That’s a damned good question, Dex. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find out.”
Chapter 39
If the Swinsons had emigrated from Brazil, maybe the poison injected into Teddi had, too. Jackson wasted no time phoning the FBI’s rainforest poison expert, Art Holloway, but all he got was the agent’s voicemail. Jackson left a message, and then made a whopping mess in the kitchen building himself a stacked Dagwood sandwich. When he was half through his monstrous creation and a bottle of Moosehead ale, his sat phone rang. He snatched it from the center of the table.
“LaFevre?”
“Right.”
“Art Holloway here. What can I do for you?” he asked guardedly, uncertain of exactly who he was speaking to.
“Charlie Simmons gave me your number,” Jackson began. “I’ve got an FBI agent up here in Florida who’s been victimized by an unknown poison.” He explained Teddi’s condition and the fact that the suspect’s family had come to America from Brazil.
Agent Holloway’s tone was more relaxed. “That’s a tall order, LaFevre. There are so many voodoo-like concoctions down here, it would be difficult to nail it without the actual poison . . . or perhaps a sample of her blood.”
“I could ship you the blood.”
“You could, and I might get it a month from now. I’m out in the middle of nowhere.”
“Can you give me the location of the nearest town?”
“This is a scrambled call, right?”
“My phone’s receiving your call in scramble mode.”
“All right, I guess it wouldn’t hurt. I’m close to Manaus, Brazil.”
“Oh God, you are in the middle of the soup down there.”
Manaus sat near the junction of the Negro and Amazon Rivers in the northern Brazilian state of Amazonas. It was the chief port for the region’s far-reaching river system, making it a drug smuggler’s paradise. The tourist trade was its second economical resource, making it easy for foreign smugglers to assimilate.
“Shit’d be more like it,” Holloway grumbled. “It’s hotter than a bitch, and a mosquito here could feed a family of four.”
Jackson chuckled. “Any airstrip nearby?”
“A small private one, but it’s under water half the time. You could land a chopper on the high ground.”
“Where do I latch on to a chopper?”
“We all flew into Paramaribo, Suriname. It’s a hop, skip, and a jump by chopper from there.”
Jackson heard staccato bursts of automatic weapons in the background. “I’ll call you when I leave Florida.”
“Remember, I’m not promising you any results.”
“I wouldn’t believe you if you did.” Jackson heard a sharp intake of breath.
“Hey, aren’t you that psychic guy the agency uses occasionally?”
“I confess.”
Agent Holloway laughed. “Maybe you can give these shamans down here a run for their money.” The exchange of gunfire sounded closer. “Gotta run.”
“Goodbye, Art, and stay low.”
Jackson contacted the bureau and requested that they prepare his travel arrangements to Manaus, and then he phoned Dr. George and told him what he needed done. While the doctor whined about being overworked, Jackson absently flicked the whistle-flute necklace that dangled on a pushpin stuck in his kitchen message board.
It was a reminder that this was the strangest investigation he’d ever undertaken.
Jackson arrived at Holy Cross Hospital late that afternoon. The weather hadn’t changed a bit, except that the road ponding was deeper than before. He stomped the rain from his shoes and shook his umbrella before entering the lobby. When he stepped from the elevator, he was pleased to see that the three FBI agents were still deployed outside Teddi’s door. They waved as he passed them and stepped into her room.
Like the rain outside, Teddi’s condition hadn’t changed, either. She lay there, motionless, and stared wide-eyed at the ceiling. He was surprised that she didn’t use her telepathy on him as soon as he entered the room.
He leaned over her face so she could recognize her visitor.
“Thought you were gone for good,” she said, directing the softly spoken words into his mind.
“I had some things to take care of,” he said evasively. “How are you doing?”
“I think I’m getting worse.”
Jackson fro
wned. “Doc George says your vitals are holding steady.”
“He can’t see inside my brain.”
“Meaning?”
“It means that I’m hearing voices,” she replied, exasperated.
Jackson stiffened. “Voices? What are they saying?”
“That’s just it, I can’t understand them.”
“There’s more than one?”
“I . . . I think so. They sound different anyway.”
“Are they speaking in various languages?”
“Maybe, but it sounds more like the words are all garbled — like run together.”
He pursed his lips and clasped his hands together. “They might be talking so fast that you can’t comprehend the words.”
“Y-e-a-h, maybe you’re right.” She paused. “Jackson, I’m scared. You’ve got to help me.”
He leaned over and planted a kiss on her forehead. “Teddi, that’s just what I’m going to do.”
Dr. George pushed the door open and handed him a sealed vial of blood. “Here’s Teddi’s blood sample. I had it drawn an hour ago,” he said brusquely. “Personally, I think that you’re wasting your time.”
“Well, since your international databases have failed to identify the unknown toxin, I can’t do any worse, can I?”
Dr. George glowered at him. “Well, it is your time.” With that, he turned in a huff and beat a hasty retreat.
“Whose blood’s that?” Teddi asked. “Mine?”
“Yeah, yours.” He quickly described his idea, leaving out some of the vital details. He didn’t quite trust Teddi and her voices.
“If that’s your plan, there’s one basic flaw.”
He arched his brows quizzically. “And what’s that?”
“That’s not my blood in the vial you’re holding. Nobody’s drawn it since I first arrived.”
Chapter 40
Brothers Morris and Munro Lapis sat quietly in the their fifteen-foot johnboat a hundred yards south of Demon Key and watched their twitching Rapalas on the rain-rippled surface. A five-foot Florida gar’s wavy silhouette passed between the boat and a stretch of saw grass and swamp lilies in the shallows, but didn’t strike their bass lures.
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