Captiva df-4

by Randy Wayne White

  I explained that to Hannah. Added, "I think he was trying to scare you. Or maybe you misunderstood. We've both been up all night." I glanced at my watch: 6:30 a.m. "I want a doctor to look at you, then we'll get some sleep."

  For a moment, our boats were close enough, and I reached out and grasped Hannah's extended hand. Felt her long, cool fingers . . . felt the private little squeeze. An apology offered; an apology accepted.

  She pushed the rain hood off her head and ran those same fingers through her Navajo hair. "You really do think it's okay?"

  "Yes." I looked at my watch again: 6:30.

  "I had this awful feeling, Ford. I can't describe it. This feeling that some-thin' really. . . bad was going to happen. I had the same feeling the night my mama died, so I got in my boat, scared to death, lookin' for you . . ."

  She paused as she noticed me stare at my watch a third time: 6:30.

  "What's wrong, Ford?"

  "It's . . . nothing."

  "There's something wrong. Don't lie to me. I can see it in your face."

  I kept my voice calm—told myself there was nothing to worry about. "I just remembered that there's a woman due at my house right now. A friend of mine named Janet Mueller. She's been taking care of my fish."

  "Doc . . . we've got to warn her. Even if you're right about Raymond."

  I began to think out loud. "The police officer you called, he's already been there. . . . He had to walk out on the dock, maybe even knocked on the door." I was picturing it in my head: The cop walking out, shining his flashlight around. Walking up the steps to the breezeway that separated the lab from my house entrance, then peering over the rail to check my boats. I knew most of the Sanibel cops. If my truck was parked out front but my Hewes was gone, the cop would assume I was on the water. Pictured the cop turning, maybe shining the flashlight into a window or two before returning to his car.

  Finally had to admit to myself that a brief inspection by a policeman did not mean that my house was safe. Also admitted that I was already thinking in terms of a bomb. If Tullock wanted to target me, he would make it very personal; rig it in a way that wouldn't be prematurely triggered by some idle visitor. He'd select some element of the house that was used by me and me alone. That's where he would put it. With all the marina contacts he had through his government work it was possible—hell, likely—that he knew far more about my lifestyle than I knew about his.

  I thought about the door to my house ... I thought about the door to my lab . . . then I thought about the heavy lid that covered my fish tank. Thought about Janet Mueller, always so punctual.

  Six-thirty. . . .

  Don't worry, I'll take care of your fish.

  I looked into Hannah's face and felt a contagious panic sweep through me. Said, "Follow me in!" and gunned my boat. Heard Hannah yell something in reply—something, I realized later, that I should have already known: In Hannah's boat, the trip would have been quicker.

  In Hannah's boat, there was a chance ... a slim, slim chance . . . that I would arrive at my dock before Janet did.

  Chapter 17

  Dinkin's Bay is a lopsided lake of brackish water that is enclosed by mangroves. There are only two narrow holes through the mangroves into that lake. One opening is to the northeast—slightly more than two miles from the marina and my stilt house. Because the water there is deep, it is known as the mouth to Dinkin's Bay. Channel markers create a twisting, navigable road to and from the mouth.

  The other opening is to the northwest. It is much closer to the marina—a quarter-mile away, maybe less. That cut is also deep, but there are sandbars on either side which seal it closed. Because of its configuration, the cut is known to the fishing guides as Auger Hole. The Auger Hole is not considered navigable, unless you are in a canoe, or unless you are in a thin-draft boat like mine and it is a very, very high tide.

  That morning, the tide was not very, very high. In § fact, it was closer to low tide because the dynamics of a northwest wind push water out of the sound, then hold it off shore. As I raced away from Hannah, I pointed my bow directly at the mouth of Dinkin's Bay. From the corner of my eye, I noticed Hannah also speeding away, but she was steering much farther toward the south; she appeared to be heading into another bay, which the guides call Horseshoe.

  That made no sense . . . until I realized what she was doing. She was going to attempt to lop offa couple of miles; shorten the distance between herself and the marina. She was going to try and jump the bars and cross through Auger Hole into Dinkin's Bay.

  I thought: Not on this tide. Not even in a mullet boat.

  I watched her for a while: she and her skiff getting smaller and smaller, our angles of passage expanding the distance. Then the outside wall of Dinkin's Bay interceded, and she disappeared.

  At Woodring Point, I turned hard to the south into the mouth of the bay. I ignored the channel markers and trimmed the engine high. The mangroves provided a break from the wind, so the water was much calmer. I jammed the throttle forward and watched the tachometer needle jump to six thousand RPM—sixty miles an hour, maybe faster. The speed made my lips flutter and teared my eyes. I used the nose on my boat like a rifle sight: kept it pointed on my tiny gray house, two miles away.

  As I drove, I fished beneath the console and pulled out my portable VHF radio. I tried to call the fishing guides on channel 8.

  No reply. If they were at the docks this early, they hadn't yet turned their radios on.

  Hit a button and tried to call the marina on channel 16.

  No reply. The marina didn't open until seven. Mack usually didn't get around to turning the radio on until later.

  Put the radio away and made a ridiculous attempt to try one of Tomlinson's tricks, a telepathic message to Janet Mueller: Sleep late . . . sleep late . . . sleep late. . . . Stay away from the aquarium. . . .

  Pictured Janet's face: the pudgy face with steady, steady eyes that had already seen way too much pain. Pictured her in her baggy pants and sweatshirt . . . saw her expression of astonishment as she marveled at the behavior of the tarpon . . . saw her in her gaudy peach ball gown before Perbcot: a shy, private girl in a grown-up's party clothes.

  Felt the panic in me grow stronger; attempted to use logic like an antidote: Raymond Tullock wouldn't do it. Not now. Not this damn soon!

  Heard a small voice say: You're wrong.

  I was so fixated on my fish house, straining so hard to will Janet away from it, that I didn't notice Hannah until she came sweeping across the channel a mile or so ahead of me, her plywood boat throwing a funneling wake. Felt shock close to disbelief—She made it?—followed by pure admiration. There are people in this world who are so strong, who possess such power of character, that the very attributes that set them apart also make the validity of their character suspect.

  Heard the small voice say: You were wrong again.

  It was true. Wrong about many things. Very wrong about Hannah.

  I was gaining on her small green boat. Now I was close enough to see the empty porch that encircles my house . . . and the empty platform below it on which sat my big wooden fish tank. Was close enough to see the rambling, rickety yards of empty boardwalk which lead from my house to the mangrove shore. Was close enough to see ... to see Janet Mueller come through the mangroves and step up onto the boardwalk, walking swiftly. New outfit on this chilly morning: furry red miracle-fabric jacket and green shorts.

  It seemed, then, that I could not make my boat go fast enough . . . seemed as if everything was being was dragged down by a leaden gravity created by my own anxiety . . . seemed as if time and movement were being dilated into a terrible slow motion. I leaned over the windshield of my boat, my weight full on the throttle, as if, by urging my boat along, I might free the both of us from gravity's grip. It did not help.

  I watched Hannah standing at the throttle of her boat, going fast, waving frantically, trying to get Janet's attention. . . .

  Watched Janet, as if lost in her own thoughts, walk oblivio
usly to the end of the boardwalk and step up onto the platform below my house. Realized that she was headed for the fish tank. . . .

  Saw Hannah, now no more than a hundred yards away, raise both hands over her head and flag her arms back and forth. . . .

  Watched Janet stop at the fish tank, look up at the windows of my house, then reach for the lid of the fish tank. Couldn't she hear the boat bearing down on her? . . .

  Saw Hannah cup both hands to her mouth—she was shouting now— as her boat dolphined closer and closer to the house, still going full speed. . . .

  Watched Janet lifting the lid . . . lifting it up on its hinges . . . pushing the weight of the lid higher. . . .

  Then saw Janet suddenly look at the approaching boat and jump back as if in surprise. Saw the lid slap shut just as Hannah's boat slid to a fast stop below my house, the chines of her boat plowing up a curtain of bright spray that soaked the platform and Janet, too. . . .

  Hannah was now talking to Janet, hands motioning animatedly. Janet hesitated. Said something back to Hannah . . . listened for another moment. Then Janet turned and hurried off the platform, jogging along the boardwalk toward shore. . . .

  Thank God.

  I was a little more than fifty yards away now, already backing off on the throttle, slowing down. Hannah turned to look at me and grinned—a tall, gawky, handsome woman in a cheap yellow rain suit. Her grin so bright that her swollen eye seemed insignificant; did not detract at all from her beauty. She made a clownish show of wiping the sweat off her brow and slinging it away. Mouthed the words: "I told her."

  I raised a fist over my head and shook it—Good job!—and motioned her toward the pilings where she could tie up while I checked the place out. She idled around the corner of the house . . . caught the only available line of my mooring pulley system, and pulled it. But the counterweight didn't budge.

  I thought: That's odd, as I watched Hannah give the rope another yank. And yet another.

  My brain took its time; scanned dumbly for an explanation; neuron conduits began the electrochemical process of deduction . . . and suddenly, the message relays were seared by the acid shock of a single, numbing thought: Trip wire!

  But I realized it much, much too late to stop Hannah from pulling the rope a final time. Much, much too late to scream a warning, though I tried. And much too late to stab my hand out to stop her—an absurd gesture because I was still forty or more yards away. Yet I attempted to do that, too.

  Later, Ron Jackson would tell me the A.T.F. guys calculated that the radiant power of the bomb was no more than that of a quarter-stick of dynamite. It was a small and personalized little bomb, created for just one person; placed against a piling and triggered off the mooring rope so that a returning boater—me—could not possibly avoid it.

  So Hannah could not have avoided what happened to her. When she pulled the rope free, I saw a bloom of thermal energy shoot skyward, and in the same instant, I was knocked to the deck by the shock of the noise and rifled debris. When I got to my feet again, I saw that the platform and the back wall of my lab were on fire . . . saw Hannah facedown in the water, blown far from her listing, burning boat.

  Days afterward, Janet Mueller, who saw it all, would tell me that I gunned my boat toward Hannah, and when I was close enough, I jumped into the water beside her without pulling the throttle back or switching off the engine. Janet told me that, because I couldn't remember how I had gotten Hannah to shore, or how and why my boat had ended up high and dry, wrecked in the mangroves.

  What I could remember was the look of Hannah s face as I held her head in my lap. A pretty face, and peaceful, but her dark eyes were . . . wrong. . . because of the force of the explosion. Could remember the hoarse and strangely amused quality in Hannahs voice trying to ask me something ... or trying to tell me something. . . trying to make me understand.

  Leaned to touch my lips to hers. "Don't try to talk, love."

  But she was stubborn; wouldn't be silent. In a final effort to be heard, she lurched her face up toward mine and whispered words that, for a long time, made no sense: "Ford? Like before, I . . . didn't . . . sink!'

  Though her eyes remained open, Hannah Smith did not speak again.

  I remembered that. And I remembered threatening to punch one of the paramedics if he did not allow me sit at Hannah's side as they flew us to the hospital—"What's the big deal about a bruise on my forehead!"—and I remember the expression on the emergency room doctor when he turned to me . . . after pulling the sheet up over Hannah's face.

  The only other thing I remember clearly about that morning was standing alone, in an empty hospital corridor—I don't know how I got there—and watching Dr. Maria Corales walking toward me. She was wearing soiled surgical scrubs. She looked very tired. The way she put her hand on my shoulder communicated genuine concern. She told me, "We'll keep the respirator going until we hear from the family, or until the hospital's Human Subjects Panel meets. But the surgery didn't go well. I'm afraid I lost him this morning."

  It took me a long, dull moment to realize what she meant. She was talking about Tomlinson.

  They buried Hannah four days later, January 16, a Monday, one day after the official close of Florida's last mullet roe season. I couldn't decide whether it was good timing or cruel irony. Buried her in an incongruously modern cemetery on the mainland—one of those fairway-neat memorial parks that use standardized brass markers to make it easier on the mowing crews. The cemetery was close enough to the main highway so that all the tourist traffic made it difficult to hear the minister's words.

  I don't know how many hundreds of people attended. Enough to render the island of Sulphur Wells nearly empty that afternoon. Enough to illustrate Tomlinson's theory about Hannah's position in the community. When a chieftain dies, the whole tribe turns out. I stood and talked with Tootsie Cribbs for a while. Met his nice wife and three children. His kids looked so uncomfortable in their Sunday clothes that I guessed they would have preferred to be in school.

  I didn't blame them.

  Also met Hannah's two brothers. There was Bob, who'd flown in from Atlanta, and Cletus, who now lived in Orlando. They weren't at all what I had expected them to be. Both were huge, hulking men, but their expressions were mild, faintly bovine; they didn't have Hannah's wild eyes. Nor were they fishermen. Bob was an attorney; Cletus worked in administration for Disney. It was Bob who told me, "Hannah was a romantic. With her grades and with her talent—all-state basketball; class president three years in a row—she could have gotten a scholarship, no problem. Florida State wanted her, one of those ritzy Ivy League women's schools, too. But she'd get her mind set on something and nobody could talk sense into her. Our dad fished day and night so his kids wouldn't have to fish. So what's Hannah do? She becomes one of those back-to-the-roots people. I loved her dearly; she was one of my favorite people in the world, but Hannah was . . . different."

  I could not argue.

  Mostly, I looked after Arlis Futch. The man was miserable. He looked as if the last few days had aged him twenty years. He walked around in a fog, too tough to cry, in too much pain not to. Looked up at me more than once and said, "I sure 'nuff hope they catch the ones that kilt her."

  More than once, I answered, "You can count on it, Arlis."

  The fire department had done a superb job of saving my stilt house. Even so, much of the lower decking had been destroyed and most of my lab, too. My optical equipment had either cracked or fogged because of the heat. Many of my slides were ruined and whole rows of specimen jars had exploded. Because my one-room house is under the same tin roof, heat-saturated smoke had invaded the place, ruining my telescope, melting some of my record albums, and the stink of the smoke was on everything I owned.

  The only bright spot was that Crunch & Des, the black cat, had been panhandling around the marina at the time of the explosion, so he was still his lazy, healthy, indifferent self.

  For several days after Hannah's death, I was led to believe that the e
xplosion and fire had also somehow killed all the specimens in my fish tank. But Janet Mueller finally told me the truth: The reason she had dropped the lid so abruptly that Thursday morning was not because she heard Hannah calling to her, but because she had been shocked to find all the fish, including our six tarpon, swirling around in a green chemical foam. She decided that my raw-water pump had somehow sucked in some kind of pollutant, but didn't want to tell me right away. Wanted to give me time to recover from the concussion she insisted that I had suffered. "A big chunk of wood hit you right in the head, Doc. I saw it. That's why I still think you need to see a doctor."

  I didn't want to see a doctor. It was my own stupidity that had allowed the explosion to occur. A mild concussion didn't seem penalty enough for the harm I had caused. Nor did I tell Janet what I suspected was the truth: A couple of drunk sportfishermen in a pickup truck had poisoned my fish as punishment for my traitorous association with the netters. Didn't mention my suspicions to Nels Esterline, either. Why reopen old wounds?

  Everyone from the marina community joined together in an attempt to help me. No one worked harder at that than Janet. A change had come over her since the explosion. She was no longer the weepy, nerve-shattered woman she had been when she arrived at Dinkin's Bay. Maybe it was because she had finally come to terms with what had happened in her life. Or maybe it was because the explosion required that she refocus her energies on the needs of others. Every day, I would find her picking through the wreckage of my lab, sorting and boxing and scrubbing.

  Not that I was staying at my stilt house. No. I couldn't stand the smoky stink of the place; the images that flashed into my brain caused by just standing on the charred dock. I had spent the first night sleeping on Tomlinson's sailboat, but there were too many ghosts there, too. Finally, I rented a one-bedroom condo unit down on the beach. I moved in enough personal items to be comfortable—my shortwave radio; a few books—and had my telephone forwarded. It was a pretty tourist place called Casa Ybel. Each morning, I'd sleep just as late as I possibly could, then do a very long beach run, a very long surf swim. Each night, I'd force myself to stay awake just as late as I possibly could, my brain whirring away with devious little ideas; nasty, nasty scenarios.