by Ron Base
“It’s too late,” she mumbled. “You can’t stop them.”
“Where?”
She threw up her hands, an exhausted heroine in a dreadful stage melodrama playing to the last row in the house. “Some place near Fort Myers Beach. A mobile park. That’s all I know.”
Tree found the gun on the floor where he dropped it when she attacked him. He picked it up. “Is it loaded?”
“Of course it’s loaded,” she snarled. “What the hell good would it be if it wasn’t loaded?”
He stuck the gun in the belt under his shirt. It fit nicely, he thought as he went out into the rain, hurrying down the front steps. He hated to think in clichés such as his heart beat like a drum. But that’s what it was doing. He was a gun-toting detective on his way to save the love of his life, heart pounding.
At the bottom of the stairs Detective Mel Scott materialized out of the darkness. Tree came to a stop. “Am I glad to see you,” he said.
Scott stepped forward, placing his weight on one foot so that he could slam his fist into Tree’s stomach.
The breath went out of him. He sank to his knees in the rain, the gun falling out of his belt, clattering to the wet pavement.
“Look at that,” said Scott sarcastically. “Our hero detective is packing.”
Cee Jay Boone bent down and picked up the gun.
35
Mel Scott yanked Tree to his feet and together with Cee Jay Boone hustled him over to a nearby SUV and pushed him into the rear. Scott got in beside him, jamming a gun into his ribs while Cee Jay slipped behind the wheel and started the engine.
“Looks like Mel’s not working undercover after all,” Tree said.
Mel said, “Shut up.”
They shot out the front gate onto Captiva Road, the rain intensifying, the sound of beating windshield wipers punctuating the silence.
“Where are we going?” Tree managed to gasp between the spasms of pain shooting through his stomach.
“Shut up,” repeated Mel Scott. He rammed the gun harder into Tree’s ribs. Cee Jay glanced at the rearview mirror.
“I tried to warn you to stay out of this. You can’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“You warned me as in ‘stay out of this Tree, for your own safety.’ Not, ‘I’m a corrupt cop, Tree, and I will kill you if you get in my way.’ I might have listened to that.”
“Too bad for you asshole,” Mel growled.
“What I don’t understand is how a couple of supposedly street-smart cops like yourselves got mixed up with Reno and his gang of losers.”
Mel chuckled. “Pal, you really are new to the scene. Any time you’re involved with bad guys, by definition you are mixed up with losers. But sometimes the losers have the money. That’s what you’re after. You got to be a little smarter, that’s all.”
“I could be wrong,” Tree said. “But driving me through the rain with a gun in my ribs while Dwayne and Mickey kidnap Marcello and my wife, that doesn’t strike me as very smart.”
“Mel, shut him up,” said Cee Jay tightly, eyes glued to the road.
“Last time, shithead, keep quiet.”
“What are you going to do, Mel? Kill me?”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m gonna do.”
Tree kept quiet.
____
In the darkness, Tree wasn’t sure where Cee Jay turned, but suddenly they swerved off onto a gravel roadway framed by low hedges. A lightning flash illuminated a grassy shoreline dipping into a shallow inlet. The car crunched to a stop. Cee Jay twisted around to Tree.
“Get out,” she said.
“What are you doing?”
“Telling you to get out of the car,” she said in a tense voice.
Mel Scott shoved him into the door, then reached across to pull at the handle. The door flew open, spilling Tree onto the roadway.
Tree was on his knees, realizing he’d lost his glasses. He groped in the darkness, panicky, desperate to find them. No luck. Cee Jay got out of the vehicle. Mel joined her, shining a flashlight at Tree. He raised a hand to deflect the glare.
Mel said, “See that boat over there, Tree? I want you to get on your feet and walk toward it.”
“I don’t see any boat,” Tree said.
“Tree, just do it,” Cee Jay said.
Tree got to his feet, his mind whirling, trying not to worry about lost glasses, concentrating on ways to save himself. He needed to be inventive. But he couldn’t think of a damned thing. He stood rooted to the spot in the rain until Mel delivered a stinging backhand.
“Get moving.”
His ears ringing, Tree, lurched forward.
“I can’t see the boat,” he called out to the darkness.
“Sure you can,” Mel Scott called back.
“Where is it?”
“Keep moving Tree,” Mel said. “Just a little further.”
There was no boat. He knew that. They were going to kill him. They were going to do it, right here in the pouring rain. He vaguely wondered if he would even hear the gunshot before the bullet roared into his head.
Something moved in front of him against the downpour.
Mel was right behind him, giving him another shove. “Come on,” he said.
A voice said, “Tree, get out of the way.”
Tree ducked to one side.
Mel moved his gun hand up. A shot went off. Tree, crouching away, couldn’t tell who fired. Mel dropped his gun and pitched forward.
“Get down!” Savannah Trask was shouting at frozen Cee Jay. “Down on your knees, now!”
Cee Jay, not as foolish as her partner, complied, slowly sinking to the ground. Savannah moved past Tree. “Down. All the way!”
Cee Jay sprawled flat on her stomach.
“Hands behind you,” Savannah commanded. She glanced at Tree. He noticed the gun in her hand. “You okay?”
Was he? The ex-girlfriend who broke his heart now saved his life. An ignominious turn of events, but he wasn’t about to complain.
“Pick up Mel’s gun,” she said, the same way you might ask someone to pick up a quart of milk. Tree dutifully retrieved the gun.
The rain let up, reducing itself to a hazy drizzle as Savannah moved in on the prone Cee Jay, producing a pair of handcuffs like magic. She tossed them to Tree who should have caught them, as they do in the movies. But he missed the catch. He shoved Mel’s gun into his pocket and quickly bent to retrieve the cuffs. Not far away, Mel Scott shifted and groaned.
“Attach one of the cuffs to her wrist,” Savannah ordered. When he complied, she said, “Now attach the other to her friend Mel. They can be together until I get help back here.”
Tree hoisted Cee Jay up and dragged her over to where Mel lay unmoving. He grabbed his arm up so that he could snap the other handcuff to his wrist. Cee Jay glared but said nothing.
Tree turned to Savannah. “They’ve got my wife and the boy.”
“Then let’s go and get them.” As in, let’s go for a walk or let’s stop at the supermarket. As if she rescued wives and children all the time.
“Agent Trask!” Cee Jay’s voice sounded muffled. “You can’t leave us here like this!”
“Don’t you just love the dialogue?” Savannah said.
They went along the trail to where Mel had parked his SUV. Savannah’s Jeep was a few feet behind it.
“How did you know where I was?”
“I followed you,” she said.
“Why would you do that?”
“Because I knew what you were going to do.”
“How could you know what I was going to do?” The notion angered him. “You don’t know me, Savannah, you never did.”
She stopped and turned to him. “I know you better than you think. Even when I was young and silly and wondered what it would be like to seduce every boy in the world, I knew there was only going to be trouble if we stayed together.”
“Except you got into more trouble after I left.”
That made her smile. “I guess it depends on what you t
hink of as trouble.”
“How about getting involved with Reno O’Hara and having a baby with him? How’s that for trouble?”
To her credit, she managed to hide any hint of surprise. “That certainly would be trouble, if it were true.”
“Come on, Savannah. That’s why you’re here. You’re trying to find your son. You’re trying to find Marcello.”
“You’re not making a whole lot of sense, Tree.” Her voice had lost its confident edge.
“I kept the love letter.”
“Love letter? What love letter?”
“The letter you wrote me.”
She was silent a moment. “I never wrote you a love letter, Tree. For the simple reason I was never in love with you.”
“You also wrote Marcello. He showed me the cards you sent him. The handwriting is the same.”
She opened the driver’s side door of the Jeep, paused, and turned to him. There were tears in her eyes.
“What is it?”
She reached to touch his face. “Things lost,” she said.
The Jeep windshield exploded, spraying him with glass and blood.
36
A second explosion blew out a headlight. Tree caught a glimpse of Savannah, half her head gone, thrown back against the Jeep. He leapt into the darkness. Warm swampy water enveloped him. Vaguely, he heard another explosion.
Then he was beneath the water, kicking furiously, trying to get as deep as he could. He hit the spongy bottom, reaching blindly to grab the weedy grass undulating against him, pulling at it to propel himself along.
Finally, when he could stay under no longer, he broke the surface, shooting up into a tangle of mangrove roots. He hung amid the cable-like roots, not moving, breathing quietly. Wet earthy smells. Night sounds. Drizzling rain on water. An echoing breeze.
Slowly, carefully, he moved forward through the muck, pushing at the roots, squeezing through them, crawling up an embankment to find himself back on the road. He rose to his haunches, looking around, listening. Nothing. He started along the road, crouching, keeping close to the mangrove.
He came to a toll booth beside two portable washrooms. He stopped to catch his breath. He heard something. Footsteps on gravel, coming toward him along the trail.
Directly to his right lay a narrow wood bridge. He ran to it and crossed, his feet thumping against the boards. The bridge ended but the walkway continued, twisting through the encroaching mangrove. He reached a second bridge. On the other side, he came to a stop, holding his breath. Listening. He could hear someone coming.
Tree started running. The walkway twisted again so that he could see a structure that became the rear of the Ding Darling Education Center.
He ducked past cement pillars and found himself beneath the building’s overhang. Iron railings were piled against a wall. To the right was a fire door with a reinforced window panel. If he could somehow get inside, there would be a telephone.
He picked up one of the railings. Holding it like a club, Tree smashed at the glass. It cracked and buckled but held. Tree swung harder the second time, splintering the glass. He reached inside, hit the roll bar, and the door sprung open.
As he came up the stairs, an alarm bell started ringing. Good. That would bring the police. He just had to survive until they arrived. No big deal. Simply because his pursuer killed an FBI agent a few minutes before, and was anxious to kill him, didn’t mean he had anything to worry about.
He went through another fire door and found himself on the main floor. Faint light illuminated hanging birds, and a pelican mounted in foliage. One of the exhibits promoted The Changing Estuary. Seeing the Unseen, promised another display. Well, he would know in a minute or so, wouldn’t he? Behind him, he heard a clatter. A hulking figure darted through the fire door—Dwayne Crowley, the jailhouse naturalist, paying a visit to the Ding Darling Wildlife Preserve. Like so many visiting tourists, Dwayne had brought along a sawed-off pump-action shotgun.
Tree dived behind one of the exhibits a split second before the roar of the shotgun spread buckshot through the room, shredding a display board devoted to the history of the mangrove cycle.
Tree glanced up and saw he was adjacent to the replica of Ding Darling’s office. Ding’s cartoons and drawings were scattered across his desk near his eyeglasses, evidence Ding would soon return to render more beautifully drawn, wonderfully ascerbic cartoons, India ink masterpieces that captured so well the foibles of man.
The original swivel rifle used by poachers in the 1930s hung in its usual place on the wall above Ding’s desk. But the replica carefully reconstructed by Rex Baxter and friends, sat on a floor mount behind a roped-off portion of the office. It was shinier beneath the indirect lighting of the twenty-first century but otherwise looked exactly like the long-barrel gun used so many decades before by the illegal market hunters.
Tree heard echoing footsteps. Dwayne was coming.
Dwayne with his shotgun.
Tree grabbed at the long-barreled rifle.
The footsteps grew closer.
With great effort, Tree lifted up the rifle, swinging it awkwardly around, his finger clawing at the trigger.
Dwayne drifted into view, indistinct, but clearly the same pumped and tattooed dude Tree had encountered in Naples. Dwayne held the shotgun loosely in his hands, a man unconcerned by the evening’s challenges, a professional getting the job done.
The only problem was that ringing alarm. Sooner or later it would bring the cavalry. By that time, Dwayne Crowley would be far away.
Then Dwayne spotted Tree, his eyes going to the gun the length of a railway tie, a gun you see once in a lifetime, if that.
That brought Dwayne to a halt.
Tree noted the look of blank surprise on the ex-convict’s hatchet-like face. A sixty-year-old guy, soaking wet, covered in sand and grit, pointing this ancient blunderbuss at him, the last thing he expected.
Tree had no idea what would happen when he pulled the trigger. He was as surprised as Dwayne when the big gun detonated with a kick so powerful it propelled Tree backward. Three pounds of buckshot hit Dwayne, punctuating him with dozens of small holes, lifting him off the floor into a display case.
Tree figured Dwayne must have been dead before he hit the floor.
37
The rain had pretty much stopped by the time Tree parked on San Carlos Drive. He lifted Dwayne Crowley’s shotgun off the passenger seat and got out of the car. Dara Rait’s mobile home sat in the misty darkness of the Bel Air Motor Park.
He’d run back to the Jeep—ignored Cee Jay Boone’s hysterical entreaties to be freed from the semi-conscious Mel Scott—found the key still in the ignition, and all the time tried not to look at Savannah’s limp body, tried not to think of what he was doing or remember who she was and what she had been to him. He did his best not to dwell on the fact that a few minutes before he had done the unthinkable and killed a man.
Him. Tree Callister. Killing someone. Who was this guy, anyway?
No time for any of that. Just get to Freddie. Crawl behind the wheel and start the Jeep’s engine. Don’t think of anything else.
Except Freddie. Nothing else mattered but Freddie.
____
A distant Roy Orbison sang “Only the Lonely.” Tree inspected Dwayne’s shotgun. One cartridge remained in the chamber. To do what? He wondered. To do what was necessary, he told himself.
The interior of the mobile home remained dark. If anyone was in there, they were certainly being quiet. He slipped over to a dumpster adjacent to the trailer and crouched behind it. After a couple of minutes huddling there, feeling slightly foolish, he crept across to the front steps. The entrance door was locked. He cursed himself. Absolute fool that he was, he had gone to the wrong place in order to rescue the damsel in distress and save the day.
Then he heard something—noise coming from the trunk of the car parked at the side of the motor home. He stepped closer, not sure he was hearing right.
Again: Thump! Thump!
Thump!
He opened the driver’s door, found the trunk release, pulled until he heard a metallic pop. He went back and gingerly lifted up the lid. Freddie lay on her side, duct tape over her mouth, hands tied behind her back. The edges of her hands were bloody and scraped where she had been hitting against the underside of the trunk.
Tree lifted her out. Her wrists had been bound with plastic strips. He twisted them off. Her hands free, she tore at the duct tape, finally ripped it off her mouth, breathing hard, weeping softly.
“Good grief,” she said. “Good goddamn grief, Tree. You came for me.”
“You thought I wouldn’t?”
“How was I supposed to know?” Brushing away tears. “It wasn’t exactly listed in the marriage contract.”
“Oh, yes it was. You didn’t read the small print. Third page, fourth paragraph down: ‘Husband will rescue wife as needed.’”
“I missed that part.” She kissed his lips and that made everything he had been through so far tonight worthwhile.
“Where are they? There’s no one inside the trailer.”
“They went off down the street with him,” she said.
“Let’s go and get him.”
“I’ve got a better idea. Let’s call the police.”
“You always want to call the police,” he said. He started for the street.
She called after him, “Tree,” and then ran to catch up. “You haven’t got your glasses.”
“No,” he said.
“Can you see anything?”
“I only need them for reading.”
“What’s that?” She indicated the shotgun.
“It’s a shotgun,” he said.
“Where did you get a shotgun at this time of night?”
He wondered when there was a better time to get shotguns. “It belongs to Dwayne Crowley. He tried to kill me with it.”
“What did you do?”
“I’m not entirely sure, but I think I killed him.”
They passed barriers marking off the road construction in progress. Beyond the construction a sign said “Maryland Cottages.” Eight of them, abandoned on either side of a roadway going toward the Matanzas Pass Bridge. A white van was parked just off the road.
