A Hard Death

by Jonathan Hayes

  And then she heard it: a desultory, hollow clicking right next to her ear, so close it was like someone had leaned in to whisper to her, but had instead shaken a rattle.

  The light grew brighter, and Deb let her head ease down to see she was lying in a nest of snakes. A fistful of newborns crawled over her stomach, her thighs, her legs: slender gray snakes, hours old, a hatched yellow pattern across their backs. And next to them, two feet from her head, was their mother: an Eastern diamondback rattler about five feet long, her belly grotesquely bloated with live young.

  Deb didn’t move, didn’t flinch. Light poured through the buttonwoods; she saw the snake’s tail lift slightly, saw the sequenced ripple of muscle as the big snake squeezed out a glistening, translucent egg sac. A stillborn fetal snake lay inside, coiled and immobile.

  The hollow was bright as day. In the roar of the airboat engine, Deb stopped breathing. The newborn snakes on her belly and legs had stopped moving now; it’s the warmth, she thought, they’re attracted to my body heat.

  The rattler’s body shone in the light, shuddering with effort. A flap under her belly gaped as another little killer baby emerged, its narrow head squeezing obscenely out through the bloodied cleft. The body followed, seeping out onto the earth next to Deb; the baby snake, almost a foot long and fully venomous, quickly roused and pressed up against her.

  The mother’s swollen belly and tail twisted; the movement made an abortive rattle, the sound Deb had heard earlier. The big snake brushed dryly against Deb’s shoulder as she slid to the aborted egg sac and began to tear open the sac, to eat the dead fetus.

  The rattler seemed barely aware of Deb, but that would change if she tried to move. Rattlesnakes were brutally fast—she would coil and strike before Deb could even swing her legs out.

  Deb had managed two rattlesnake victims in the Glades. The first man lived, but the second, a German tourist bitten when he left his campsite to pee, had taken hours to reach the ranger station. By the time he made it, his entire leg was glossy and boggy with liquid blood, bruised the color of eggplant. He’d died in the back of her Jeep on the way to the hospital.

  Deb lay immobile, her lips not moving as she prayed.

  CHAPTER 132

  Brodie, up on the bench behind the airboat’s stick, peered into the press of branches and leaves. The ranger had to be on this tributary; the other channel quickly dead-ended, and she wasn’t on the river where they’d found the kayak. She’d have been paddling before they’d chased Jenner to the water; it was unlikely he’d have caught up with her, so where was he? Maybe they’d gone in different directions.

  What had Jenner been looking for on the farm? They’d got out of the boat shed—why didn’t they just run? Brodie needed to find him, learn just what the hell he was up to.

  But they’d catch him all right. A man can move pretty easily through the mangroves on the water, but the forest was an impenetrable tangle of branch and root and sapling and shrub: no way could Jenner get through on foot. He had to stay on the water.

  Brodie spat. He could’ve used Tony, but Tony wasn’t there—fled or dead now, he figured.

  He doubted the cops were already at the farm—he’d have heard the sirens, maybe seen them crossing the bridge over the channel. His money and his passport were already secure—Brodie could leave his rental car at the farm. The cops would be piecing burned flesh together for months, and they’d never know whether or not they’d found any bits of Mr. James Brodie of Mendocino, California.

  As soon as they found Jenner, got him to talk, Brodie would be on his way. Get rid of Jenner; the girl, too, if they found her—she didn’t matter so much, as she didn’t know his name. Then kill Tarver.

  It was all still doable. He could do it. He could get away free now—free and rich.

  He pushed the stick forward and the airboat jumped a little, then slipped downstream. He was surprised at how far back they’d come—the current was sliding them along.

  Brodie turned and glanced downriver; the dock and boathouse were in sight.

  And suddenly, so was Jenner—the unlucky bastard had chosen to move at just the wrong moment. He was creeping around the spit of forest that separated the river from the channel the girl had taken.

  He said nothing to Tarver, and looked back at the bank in front of them, pretended to look for the girl. But he nudged the stick slightly forward, revved the engine, and let the airboat move faster.

  Less than a minute later—a quick swooping turn, a couple of gunshots to show Jenner they’d spotted him—and they had him. Tarver dragged him up onto the boat, kicked him in the ribs to help him focus, and then, while he lay there winded, tied a noose of yellow nylon rope around his neck, tying the loose end to one of the seat stays.

  Jenner lay on the floor of the boat, unable to move.

  CHAPTER 133

  Above the engine, Brodie yelled, “Where’s the girl?”

  “What girl?” Jenner grinned feebly.

  Brodie nodded, and Tarver kicked Jenner in the flank. He doubled up, gasping as the cord bit into his neck, his fingers trying to get under the rope. He lay there, gasping and retching from pain.

  Brodie turned the airboat around and cut the throttle, moving back to the river opposite where they’d found the kayak; he was sure the ranger was in there somewhere, and he wanted her to see what he was going to do.

  “Two questions. One: where is the girl? Two: what were you doing at the farm?”

  Jenner was still struggling for breath. “I was looking for Lucy Craine at the farm; I saw her go into the farmhouse, and I was trying to get her. Then it exploded.”

  Brodie snorted. “It didn’t ‘explode’—I exploded it.” He grinned slightly. “So no need to worry about the Craine girl anymore. Where is the ranger, the one Nash shot?”

  It was Jenner’s turn to shrug. “I don’t know. I put her in the kayak, told her to head to the sea. By the time I got back, she was long gone…”

  Brodie looked at Jenner for a minute, then shook his head. “I sure wish we were playing poker tonight, doc—you can’t lie to save your life!”

  CHAPTER 134

  The light from the airboat had gone, and Deb couldn’t see the snake, only feel it twisting next to her, a slab of dry muscle thick as a grown man’s calf, curving up her side as the baby snakes swarmed her body.

  They were crawling all over her now—she didn’t know how many. Burrowing into her hair, sliding up her shirt, between her breasts. And the mother now, pressed against her. All of them touching her, pressing her, tickling her, twisting on her, as if she were being caressed by the fingers of a dozen insane men, men who’d kill her if she made the slightest movement.

  The big snake pulled back; Deb felt its coils gathering, imagined the head rising.

  Then she heard a small splash from the river; something was coming toward them.

  The slow rattle began, then got louder.

  A weak light shone into the buttonwoods from the water; there was a sharp intake of breath, and the snake rose up in front of her face, its rattle, lifted above the coils, shrilling quickly now. The narrow, deadly head, eyes hard and black as carbon, swayed as the snake prepared to strike.

  She mustn’t move. Whatever she did she mustn’t move.

  The light grew brighter, and Deb closed her eyes. She anticipated the attack, the snake’s body shooting straight at her, recoiling in a fraction of a second leaving blood and venom and death in its wake.

  The light flared through her eyelids, and she saw orange and she heard the rattle reach a crescendo, a high buzzing as dry as a cicada on a hot summer’s day. Something hard nudged her leg.

  She opened her eyes and saw the shotgun blast, the snake’s head explode into a cloud of blood, the headless body thrashing and knotting, rolling over her hip to smear blood across her stomach. And when her ears could hear again, the first thing Deb heard was the shimmering rattle, still shaking as the snake’s headless body writhed and twisted.

  A small
man, a shadow behind the glare of a flashlight, was leaning into the bushes, the shotgun now pointing at the ground by her leg. The light shifted as he reached in to grab her wrist, and she saw the lower part of his face was covered by a bandanna, bandit-style.

  CHAPTER 135

  Brodie’s eyes scanned the banks of the river. Nothing. It was probably just thunder out over the Glades.

  “Okay, enough of this shit.” He turned to Tarver. “Throw him over the back.”

  Tarver was confused. “What?”

  “Make sure he’s tied to the seat rail, and toss him in! Jesus! Don’t you even speak English?”

  Tarver, muttering, dragged Jenner to the stern. Jenner struggled, tried to clutch onto something, anything, but Tarver moved him too quickly, pushing him against the low rim at the side of the boat, then rolling him over.

  Jenner hit the water and was immediately dragged back behind the boat, choking and spluttering as he tried to get his face above the surface, fighting to wedge his fingers under the noose.

  “Okay, let’s see if we can get a rise out of your little pal…Tarver—watch the banks for movement.”

  Jenner’d just managed to get his palm inside the rope when Brodie gunned the airboat; the rope snapped tight and they shot forward, Jenner bouncing and spinning behind. He had one hand jammed between the yellow rope and his neck, and with the other struggled to hold the tow rope for all he was worth, feeling his biceps tear as he fought to give his neck some slack.

  The water banged against his back, flailing him from side to side, gasping and retching, gulping in water, vomiting it back out. The rope dug deep into his palm as the noose locked tight around his neck. His fingers went numb, his neck shredding as the rope cut a deep groove into his skin.

  The boat slowed abruptly to an idle, and Jenner’s momentum slammed him against the low transom.

  Brodie leaned over him and said, “Where is she?”

  Jenner, chest heaving as he fought for air, shook his head.

  Brodie straightened, faced the dark mangroves.

  He yelled, “Officer! You want to see me do him one more time? This next one will kill him, I figure.”

  Brodie was pretty sure she was near. He muttered to Tarver to keep watching.

  “You stupid bitch! You’re going to die out here, you know that? If you’re lucky, you’ll bleed out before the gators find you…”

  Tarver was moving the spotlight along the bank, shifting shadows through the foliage.

  Jenner had worked the noose a little looser. He grabbed the back rail of the airboat, pulled himself a little bit out of the water, struggling to get his breath.

  They stared into the mangroves.

  Brodie sighed. “Well, doctor—looks like you’re out of time. I don’t think she wants to play.” He climbed back up onto the stick.

  “Tarver, push him away, and let’s finish this.”

  A hundred yards behind them, some branches swayed, and Deb appeared, staggering in waist-deep water, exhausted, hands barely above her head.

  Brodie nodded at her. “Wasn’t expecting that.”

  He turned to Tarver. “Okay, get him on board now, then help her in.”

  Jenner lay on the floor of the boat. When he lifted his hands to loosen the rope, he saw his fingers were torn open, a grooved burn across the soft flesh of his palms where he’d fought the rope.

  Deb grunted in pain as Tarver dragged her over the rail into the airboat. She lay next to Jenner.

  He said, pointlessly, “You shouldn’t have.”

  “It’ll be okay, Jenner. They were going to kill you.”

  “They’re still going to kill me. Now you, too.”

  CHAPTER 136

  Brodie turned the airboat back toward the farm, then let the engine idle and climbed down from the stick.

  Jenner lay close to Deb on the floor, Tarver watching, pistol in hand. Tarver was getting antsy, peering toward the farm, prodding Brodie about when they could leave, when they could just get the fuck out of there.

  Deb shook her head and whispered, “It’ll be okay, Jenner. Just wait, it’ll be all right, you’ll see. We just need a little more time.”

  Brodie squatted next to them.

  “Okay, doc. Let’s just do this. And let’s save some time—we both know how this is going to go. I’ll ask you some questions, you either answer or you don’t. If you don’t answer, I hurt you, or maybe her, until you answer. In the end, you’ll answer—trust me on this.”

  “What’s in it for us?”

  Brodie shook his head. “Enough. You know how this is going to play out—it’s a question of whether or not there’s pain.”

  Jenner nodded. “Okay. No pain.”

  “Good. We’ve all had enough of that.” Brodie spat into the dark water. “Who did you tell, and what have you told them? Call anyone in Port Fontaine?”

  Jenner shook his head. “I called a friend in New York, he’s bringing in the DEA.”

  Brodie sat back and grinned. “Avoid the locals, smart. I mean, don’t think the feds aren’t for sale, but, yeah, you can buy a hick cop for the price of a doughnut and a pack of smokes.”

  He looked at the girl. She was lying close to Jenner, eyes closed.

  “Sorry about your ranger friend, doc. I’ll make it quick.”

  He looked at Jenner again. “Okay, the one last thing—there was some money, Craine gave you some money—I don’t suppose…”

  “He took it back.”

  “Yeah, figured he would, that fucker. The rich get richer, eh, doctor?” He glanced over to Tarver and nodded, then looked back at Jenner. “Anything else I should know?”

  And at that moment the night turned into day.

  CHAPTER 137

  They came out of nowhere, two boats, big searchlights flooding the whole estuary with light, Tarver and Brodie and Jenner blinking in the blinding light. Brodie threw an arm up to shade his dazzled eyes, and Tarver lifted his pistol; a shotgun blast blew his knee out from under him, and he collapsed, howling, on top of Jenner.

  Jenner pushed out from under him and rolled on top of Deb to shield her. Looking up, he saw Brodie calmly lift both his hands and place them on his head.

  He whispered to Deb, “Deb, the feds…Hold very still; for now, we’re all suspects.”

  She shook her head. “It’s not the feds, Jenner.”

  He struggled to sit up, back braced against the front-row seat struts.

  The searchlights dimmed, and Jenner saw more boats arriving, sliding downriver, and out of the feeder channel, three smaller boats, not much more than canoes with an outboard. And the boats, small and large, were full of people, all told, Jenner figured, probably twenty men. They were short and dark, all wearing bandannas pulled up above their noses. Their faces were broad, hair black, skin mahogany from days in the sun. Some carried cane machetes, others held pistols and shotguns; most of the shotguns were pointing at Brodie, who was grinning wryly.

  The boats formed a pontoon ring around the airboat. A man stepped onto the airboat, followed closely by the only big man in the flotilla, a hulking giant whose David Beckham T-shirt bulged like a frying sausage about to pop; in his hands, the shotgun looked like a squirt gun.

  The first man ignored Tarver’s moaning and turned his back on Brodie to squat next to Jenner. He peered at the rope burn on Jenner’s neck and shook his head, then lowered his bandanna to speak. His English was heavily accented but fluid, and he spoke with an almost elegant intensity. “Doctor, this is not your fight now. We will take you to land safely; you have no cause to worry.”

  He looked at Deb. “Your lady…She is okay?”

  Jenner said, “She’s lost some blood; she needs to get to a hospital.”

  The man spoke urgently to some of his followers in a dialect Jenner didn’t recognize. The other men began to redistribute themselves among the remaining boats; Jenner realized they were making room for him and Deb.

  “We will take you to land. We have a…” He turned and
spoke to the man behind him in the same dialect.

  The big man thought for a second, then said, “Pickup trock.”

  “Yes, we have a pickup trock; we will take you to the hospital. We can only take you at the entrance, you understand?”

  Jenner nodded.

  “There is one thing we must ask of you.”

  Jenner looked up at him expectantly.

  The man gestured loosely to Brodie and Tarver. “This human filth, this ordure, they do not exist now. They are gone from the world. You do not see them.” His speech was measured and even. “You make your way to the land all by yourself, thanks to God, and a good stranger drives you to the hospital. You do not know what happen to this scum, this animal. You understand, gentleman?”

  Jenner nodded.

  The man said, “Lady? You understand what I say too?”

  “Yes,” Deb said. “And thank you.”

  The man tucked his pale gray bandanna higher up his face and nodded.

  He reached out a hand to Jenner and helped him to his feet, then had his men move Deb to one of the outboards. He watched Jenner get into the smaller boat, then nodded to the man at the helm. As the boat picked up speed, he nodded at Jenner, then lifted one hand high in salute, fingers clenched into a fist.

  The last time Jenner saw him, the man was turning to Brodie and Tarver.

  CHAPTER 138

  In Port Fontaine, the heavy rain had started late enough to spoil no plans—the restaurants were all already empty, the shops closed, even the fairy lights in the trees were dark as Jenner drove up the Promenade to Stella Maris. The smaller pastel houses along the commercial strip gave way to the big white mansions, many now deserted as their owners made the annual summer pilgrimage to their cooler homes in East Hampton or Edgartown or Kennebunkport. To his left, the Gulf was vast and black and empty, the waves sliding onto an empty beach, silent and cold.