by Tom Lowe
Her colorless lips pursed for a brief moment. “Come inside.”
I looked toward Max, who watched without a bark. Not a good sign for Max.
“Maybe I can just ask you a couple of questions here in the yard.”
She turned off the water and dropped the hose. “I don’t do readings outside.”
“Not looking for a reading.”
“I know what you’re looking for.”
“Everybody is searching for something.”
“Not everybody is hunting for who you want.”
“Who’s that?”
“The Indian. I don’t work for free.” She turned to go inside. I followed her through a curtain of beads into a dark room illuminated by three burning candles. The scent of candles was layered with the odor of cigarette smoke, cat urine, and incense. We sat at a round wooden table. Tarot cards on its surface. Cup of black liquid to one side.
She looked up at me through eyes the now the color of a fresh-cut lime. “Your dog’s okay where she is. Nobody’s gonna mess with her.” She sipped from the black drink. “Would you like tea?”
“No thanks.”
“He’s not here.”
“Who’s not here?”
“Joe Billie. Isn’t that who you want?”
“I suppose you know the answer to that. Did Carl in the bait shop tip you off?”
“Questions like that don’t bother me. Not anymore.”
“You know who I’m looking for. Where can I find him?”
“He’ll find you. That’s if he wants to. He’s mostly Seminole. Which means he’s mostly found if he wants to be.”
“Does he live at this fish camp?”
“He’s here sometimes. Visits the reservation, too. Where he really lives, even I can’t see that.”
“Where does he stay?”
Her eyes dropped back to mine. “The silver trailer next to the river.”
“Thank you.” I stood to leave.
“That’s twenty dollars.”
As I reached in my back pocket for my wallet, she stared above my head, her eyes narrowing, mouth opening like a baby bird.
“She fears for you,” said the woman, her voice now with a hint of compassion.
“What are you saying? My wife? Sherri?”
“Angela is her name.”
“Ask her who killed her!”
Catlike, the lime-green in the woman’s eyes changed shades, darkening some. Her skin twitched once below her right eye. She was silent.
“What’s her last name? What’s Angela’s last name?”
“I see nothing else.” She closed her eyes for a few seconds. “I’m tired.”
I dropped a twenty-dollar bill down to the table. It landed directly on one of the Tarot cards, covering it. She opened her eyes and looked at the money for a long moment, picking it up and slowly turning over the single card. A red patch appeared on her neck. She continued staring at the card. “Be warned of the three men. He’ll send them first. If you survive, then he will come.”
“Who?”
“You’ll know.”
“Know what?”
“He wears the mark of the serpents. If you see it the mark…it will be too late.”
“Stop the riddles and cut to the chase.”
“This is not a riddle. It’s a prophecy.” She seemed to breathe for the first time since she sat down. The dark green eyes were now tired eyes.
“Who and what are you talking about? Is it related to the murder of the girl?”
“I don’t know. I can’t see anything now. Whatever I said, it’s up to you to decide if you want to believe it. I need to rest.” She looked away, folded the money, stood up like her body hurt, and slipped through another set of beads.
Angela. Was that the girl’s name? Had she appeared to the woman? All of my training and experience in investigations told me it was phony. Smoke, mirrors, and bullshit. Even in the stale, recycled air, my neck felt hot. The room seemed oppressive and dark as a dungeon. I looked down at the table before leaving. The single card that the woman had turned over depicted an armored skeleton riding a white horse.
At the bottom of the card was one word: DEATH.
TWELVE
I closed Reverend Jane’s front door and wondered if Max could sniff the darkness on my clothes that probably clung to me like a curse. I could smell rain in the wind coming across the marshes. Two purple martin gourds hung from a pole, clanking into each other in the stiff breeze. The wind chimes were sounding like an angry bell ringers.
Max was unusually silent as I approached the car. Maybe a spell had been cast on her or me. “If I stink like a dungeon, Max, I’ll put the windows down to get some air in here and blow the ghosts out.” Her tail resumed its normal blur. Spell busted.
There was no car in front of the silver Airstream. I drove by the trailer and parked about one hundred feet away under the boughs of a live oak.
“Max, I’ll be right back. Anybody fly by on a broomstick — bite ‘em.” I pulled out my shirttail, hiding the pistol that was wedged under my belt.
The Airstream looked like an advertisement in a page from an old Saturday Evening Post. Circa, 1950’s. There was no mailbox. No address.
I strolled around the perimeter like a lost fisherman circling the small backyard, which was fifty feet from the river. A canoe was turned upside down, supported above the ground by two sawhorses.
The trailer had no rear door. Approaching the front door, I wasn’t sure whether to knock or kick through it. The only backup I had was a ten-pound dachshund. I knocked hard. I couldn’t hear anyone moving inside. As I turned the handle, the door opened with a squeak. I pulled out my pistol and entered.
The smell of burnt wood, dried grasses, and rich humus came from the shadows of the interior. The tiny living room had a worn rust-colored couch, unfinished wooden rocker and a bookcase. On the shelves were a dozen small canning jars, each sealed. Most were filled with tree bark, roots, leaves, soil, and dried berries.
I searched the premises. Not sure of what I was looking for or what I might find. Was he a sex offender? A murderer? Was he simply cut from a different branch?
The kitchen was smaller than most bathrooms. No sign of eaten food. No empty cans in the trash. The bar-sized refrigerator had no food in it.
There was a closed door leading to what I assumed was the only bedroom. My grip tightened around the Glock as I slowly turned the doorknob with my left hand. How many times in Miami had I felt the same thing? Entering a rat hole where a killer, high on drugs and adrenaline, was coiled like a snake. Would Billie be on the other side of the door with a bow pulled back, the tip of an ancient arrow ready to impale me to the wall? I raised the pistol and shoved the door open.
Dust danced in the streaming light coming from a single window. There was a cot next to one wall. A multicolored Seminole blanket folded neatly at the head of the cot. On the blanket was an eagle feather. I knelt down and looked carefully at the feather. I spotted a long gray hair on the blanket.
The room grew darker as storm clouds blocked the sun. There was a clap of thunder and rain began to beat the aluminum trailer like a thousand drumsticks. I sat on the cot, laid my gun down, and picked up the eagle feather. Holding it, my hand trembled. I could see dried blood at the base of the quill.
* * *
Later that night the rain tapered to a gentle drizzle. After I fed Max, I poured two ounces of Irish whiskey and took down a photograph of my wife Sherri from the old river rock mantle. I walked to the porch and sat. A whippoorwill sounded across the river. A sonata of frogs filled the rainy night air. Under a cone of light spilling from the kitchen onto the porch, I looked at Sherri’s face. I touched the image, my fingers moving across cold glass. I longed for her warmth, her smile, her laugh. God, how I missed her.
* * *
We were on a much-delayed vacation. Sailing from Miami to Key Largo. It was later in the afternoon and the sky was splashed in purples and gold. The sails stretched
in a southeast wind. Eternity made a whoosh…whoosh…whoosh sound cutting through water, the setting sun reflecting the blush of a twilight sky. Sherri held the ropes near the bowsprit, her hair dancing in the wind. Suddenly, on both sides of the boat, two porpoises began leaping out of the water in unison.
Sherri laughed. “Look, Sean! Not only do they have a smile on their faces, it’s in their eyes. What a fabulous way they see the world around them.”
Six months later, she was in a hospital bed. Through her fight with ovarian cancer, the chemo treatments, an arsenal of pills, the constant blood work, her eyes never lost their light. The last week before Sherri’s death, she asked me to take her home. She wanted to be in our bedroom, surrounded by her books, little Max curled up next to her.
The night Sherri died I held her hand and wiped the perspiration from her face. She said, “Remember the dolphins, Sean?”
“I remember,” I said, trying to be strong when my insides were tearing apart.
“Remember their smiles…let it remind you how to smile. Somewhere…you’ve lost that…I miss it in you…promise me two things, Sean. Promise me you’ll move away from the dark side — the side you enter to try and make a difference. You need to reclaim yourself. And that’s where you will make the difference in the lives of others. And promise me you’ll watch over Max. She loves you almost as much as I do.” Her hand trembled as she stroked Max, who had snuggled next to her.
I leaned over and softly kissed Sherri’s lips. They were cool. She smiled one last time as I looked into her eyes and saw the light fade.
* * *
I placed her picture on the porch table, sipped the whiskey and felt it burn in my empty stomach. I called Max over to my chair and lifted her up. She licked my chin and lay down in my lap. I scratched her behind the ears and stared into my dead wife’s face.
I finished the drink and realized the rain had stopped. A slice of moon perched far beyond the live oaks. I sat there in the dark until after midnight watching fireflies play hide-and-seek along the banks of the river, their tiny lights reflecting in the dark current like meteor showers in the night sky.
THIRTEEN
The next morning I drove with Max to near the spot I had parked when I found the girl. Was her name Angela like Reverend. Jane said? She was now a body under a sheet in the coroner’s cold storage filing cabinet tucked away like another crime statistic.
Max followed me to the spot where I’d found her. I knelt down and began to search the area. Max sniffed blades of grass. She seemed to sense that something was wrong here. Deer tracks, wide and deep. The deer had been running. Had the deer been frightened by the person who had killed the girl?
“Let’s see where these came from, Max.” She ran ahead, barking and wagging her tail. Max and I were now backtracking, following a trail in reverse hoping it might lead to the start of how the girl got to the river.
We were within seventy-five feet of the road when Max stopped. This time the fur rose along her spine, a whine coming from her throat. She found a single shoe, a woman’s shoe. It had a high heel and a closed toe. I took a pen from my shirt pocket and lifted the shoe from the ground. It was the shade of cherries. No brand name.
I held the shoe with a handkerchief and carefully poured some of the contents from the toe area into one of the Ziploc bags I’d brought. The soil trickled out of the shoe like coal dust. Holding it to my nose, I could detect the faint odor of phosphates, possibly manmade fertilizers.
I lowered the shoe back where Max had found it and looked around for a second shoe before calling Detective Slater on my cell. “I found what I think may have been one of the victim’s shoes.”
“Where? Under your car seat?” Slater asked.
“It’s where you should have found it if you’d searched the crime scene the right way.” I fired back, regretting my comment the instant I said it. “Look, Detective Slater, she wasn’t wearing shoes when I found her. This shoe is another two hundred yards north of the river, near Highway 44. Maybe she lost it running from the perp. Maybe she’d been in his car. Or she could have been some poor kid in the wrong place at the wrong time hitching a ride. The shoe’s here. I’m leaving it and any other evidence right where I found it. Come get it.”
I could almost hear his mind crunching through the phone. “I’ll be there in an hour. Don’t touch anything. And don’t leave.”
“I wouldn’t think of it, Detective. Did you get an ID on the girl?”
“No, but we have the autopsy report.”
“You took a DNA sample from me. I know there was no match. But I don’t know exact cause of death or who she was. I was hoping you could tell me that.”
“Stay put until I get there.”
“I’ll make this easy. I’ll tie a white handkerchief on a tree limb next to Highway 44. You pull off the road and walk about seventy-five feet straight north from the tree and you’ll find the shoe. But you won’t find me. Do your own police work, Detective.”
I hung up. Max had vanished. “Max!”
Silence.
There was the noise of something moving in the brush. “Max, where are you?” Nothing. Then there was a sound you never forget — the sound of a rattlesnake.
“Max!”
I stepped around a large pine tree and stopped. The snake was as thick as my arm. Body coiled, ready to strike. The eyes trained on Max like heat-seeking weapons. They were dark, polished stones. The snake’s tongue tested the air in flickers of black.
“Max! Stop!” I blurted. She paid no attention to my command. Here was an animal she’d never seen, and it was shaking a new toy. Playtime with death.
The next few seconds switched to a film gate of macabre slow motion. Max’s nostrils quivered. She froze, mesmerized by the unblinking dark pearls. The snake coiled tighter. Head poised to strike.
“Max move!” My scream sounded distant. The strike was a blur.
The snake was dying before it could bury its fangs into Max’s face. An arrow had gone right through the rattlesnake’s head, impaling it in the ground. Its body wrapped around the shaft in a death grip, the rattle growing quiet, softly caressing the yellow quill feathers as constricting muscles and nerves died. The black pearls seemed to stare somewhere beyond Max.
I turned around as Joe Billie stepped from between two tall pine trees.
FOURTEEN
“Where’d you come from?” I asked.
Joe Billie looked at Max, who seemed as bewildered as I was, and said, “Ever think about getting a Lab? Don’t think you’d see a lab playing with a rattlesnake.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Passing by. Thought you could use the help.”
He held the long bow to his side, and a hunting knife was strapped to his belt. There were no other arrows. No quiver.
“Where are the rest of your arrows?”
“Usually carry one. You aim better when there’s no second chance.”
I glanced at the dead snake. “Where’d you learn to shoot like that?”
“Had good teachers.”
He approached the snake, placed a boot on its head and slowly pulled out the shaft and arrowhead.
“Why’d you leave that arrow at my house?”
“You said you had a bow, thought you might appreciate it one day.”
“I do appreciate your gift, but I was surprised to find it on my porch.”
Billie said nothing.
“I’d hate to use something that ancient in my bow. Seems it ought to be in a glass case to protect it.”
“It might protect you one day.” He threaded the bowstring in the notch on the arrow shaft and pulled the string all the way back to his right cheek, arm’s knotting. He held the draw, rock solid, sighting a pine tree as a target. “You hold your breath. Draw back. Keep both eyes open. Block everything out but the spot. Then let go.”
“A young woman died near here the same day I met you.”
Joe Billie didn’t flinch. No emotion. No visible c
hanges in breathing. He slowly eased the bowstring back down, removing the arrow.
I said, “Seems to me like you’d have passed by her if you walked down the river.”
“Where’d she die?”
“I’ll show you.” I scooped up Max with one arm and headed for the river with Joe Billie following me. I thought about what Floyd Powell had told me sitting in his boat at the end of my dock. The bone hunter ain’t been seen since.’
“Stop,” he said abruptly.
If I turned around, would I be hit with an arrow through my spine? I slowly turned to face him. He was reaching toward a bush, examining something.
“You remember what the girl was wearing?”
“Yellow blouse, blue jeans.” He pointed to something caught on a palm frond.
“It doesn’t look like a thread from blue jeans, but it’s blue,” he said, reaching for the bright blue thread clinging to a barb on the frond.
“Don’t touch it.” I used my pen to carefully lift the thread off the thorn. I pulled a second Ziploc bag out of my shirt pocket, lowered the thread into the bag and sealed it.
“You always carry those?”
“When I get into a murder investigation and I’m the one they’re investigating.”
“That why you’re curious as to my whereabouts? You think I killed the girl.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Didn’t have to.”
“There’s a lot more room to hide a body in the Everglades, don’t you agree?”
He slowly turned his head toward me, his brown eyes searching my face for a few seconds. “I didn’t kill him.”
“Clayton Susskind?”
“Someone digs up your grandfather, cuts his head off, sells it. How’d you feel?”
“Angry. But not enough to kill.”
“I told you, I didn’t kill him. It was the last moon after the Green Corn Dance. I took him in the rock chickee to sweat out his demons with the fire and smoke. I gave him the black drink of our ancestors to show him the wrong he did.”
“Did it poison him?”
