Fever Dream

by Douglas Preston

  He glared around at the crowd. There were murmurs, hisses, inarticulate shouts of disapproval. “The Lake End?” someone shouted, “the hell with that!”

  “That’s right. No more bass fishing. No more hunting. Nothing. Just a wilderness area so those Wilderness Society sons of bitches can come down here with their kayaks looking at the birds.” He spat the words out.

  A loud chorus of boos and catcalls, and Ventura held up his hand for silence. “First they took the logging. Then they took half the Brake. Now they’re talking about taking the rest, along with the lake. There won’t be nothing left. You remember last time, when we did things their way? We went to the hearings, we protested, we wrote letters? Remember all that? What happened?”

  Another clamor of disapproval.

  “That’s right. They bent us over and you know what!”

  A roar. People were up off their stools. Ventura held up his hands again. “Now, listen up. They’re gonna be here tomorrow. Not sure when, but probably early. A tall, skinny fellow in a black suit—and a woman. They’re going into the swamp on a reconnaissance.”

  “Reconnay-sance?” somebody echoed.

  “A look-see. Real scientific-like. Just the two of them. But they’re coming undercover—those cowardly sons of bitches know they don’t dare show their real faces around here.”

  This time there was an ugly silence.

  “That’s right. I don’t know about you folks, but I’m done writing letters. I’m done going to hearings. I’m done listening to those Yankee peckerwoods tell me what to do with my own fish and timber and land.”

  A sudden, fresh crescendo of shouts. They could see where he was going. Ventura dipped into his back pocket, pulled out a wad of money, and shook it. “I don’t never expect nobody to work for free.” He slapped the wad on a greasy table. “Here’s a down payment, and there’ll be more where that came from. Y’all know the saying: what sinks in the swamp never rises. I want y’all to solve this problem. Do it for yourselves. Because if you don’t, nobody else will, and you might as well kiss what’s left of Malfourche good-bye, sell your guns, give your houses away, pack your Chevys, and move in with the faggots in Boston and San Francisco. Is that what you want?”

  A roar of disapproval, more people lurching to their feet. A table crashed to the floor.

  “You be ready for those environmentalists, hear? You take care of them. Take care of them good. What sinks in the swamp never rises.” He glared around, then held up a hand, bowing his head. “Thank you, my friends, and good night.”

  The place erupted in a fury, just as Ventura knew it would. He ignored it, striding to the door, banging through it, and walking out into the humid night onto the dock. He could hear the pandemonium inside, the angry voices, the cursing, the sound of the music coming back up. He knew that, by the time those two arrived, at least some of the boys would have sobered up enough to do what needed doing. Tiny would see to it.

  He flipped open his cell phone and dialed. “Judson? I just solved our little problem.”

  63

  HAYWARD EMERGED INTO THE BRIGHT SUN and stepped onto the motel balcony to see Pendergast below in the courtyard, loading his suitcase into the trunk of the Rolls. It was unreasonably hot for the beginning of March, the sun like a heat lamp on the back of her neck, and Hayward wondered if all those years living in the North had made her soft. She lugged her overnight bag down the concrete steps and threw it into the trunk beside Pendergast’s.

  The interior of the Rolls was cool and fresh, the creamy leather chilly. Malfourche lay ten more miles down the road, but there were no motels left in the dying town; this had been the closest one.

  “I’ve done some research into the Black Brake swamp,” Pendergast said as he pulled out onto the narrow highway. “It’s one of the largest and wildest swamps in the South. It covers almost seventy thousand acres, and is bounded by a lake to the east known as Lake End and a series of bayous and channels to the west.”

  Hayward found it hard to pay attention. She already knew more about the swamp than she wanted to, and the horrors of the previous evening clouded her mind.

  “Our destination, Malfourche, lies on the eastern side on a small peninsula. Malfourche means ‘Bad Fork’ in French, after the bayou it sits on: a dead-end slackwater branch-lake that to early French settlers looked like the mouth of a river. The swamp once contained one of the largest cypress forests in the country. About sixty percent of it was timbered before 1975, when the western half of the swamp was declared a wildlife refuge and, later, a wilderness area, in which no motorized boats are allowed.”

  “Where did you pick up all this?” Hayward asked.

  “I find it remarkable that even the worst motels have Wi-Fi these days.”

  “I see.” Doesn’t he ever sleep?

  “Malfourche is a dying town,” he went on. “The loss of the timbering industry hit it hard, and the creation of the wilderness area cut deeply into the hunting and fishing businesses. They’re hanging on by the skin of their teeth.”

  “Then perhaps arriving by Rolls-Royce might not be the best idea—if we want to encourage people to talk.”

  “On the contrary,” murmured Pendergast.

  There was no sign at a crossroads and they had to stop and ask for directions. Soon after, they passed a few dilapidated wooden houses, roofs sagging, yards full of old cars and junk. A whitewashed church flashed by, followed by more shacks, and then the road opened into a ramshackle main street, drenched in sunlight, running down to a set of docks on a weedy lake. Virtually all the storefronts were shuttered, the flyspecked glass windows covered with paper or whitewashed, faded FOR RENT signs in many of them.

  “Pendergast,” she said suddenly, “there’s something I just don’t understand.”

  “What’s that?”

  “This whole thing is crazy. I mean, shooting Vinnie, trying to shoot me. Killing Blackletter and Blast and the Lord only knows who else. I’ve been a cop for a long time, and I know—I know—there are easier ways to do this. This is just too extreme. The whole thing is a dozen years old. By trying to kill cops, they’re bringing more attention to themselves—not less.”

  “You’re right,” Pendergast said. “It is extreme. Vincent made a similar point about the lion. It implies a great deal. And I find it rather suggestive… don’t you?”

  He parked in a small lot up the street from the docks. They stepped out into the ferocious sun and looked about. A group of slovenly dressed men were hanging out down by the boat slips, and all had turned and were now staring at them hard. Hayward felt acutely aware of the Rolls-Royce and once again questioned Pendergast’s insistence on driving such a car for his investigations. Still, it had made no sense to drive two cars here, and she’d left her rental at the hospital.

  Pendergast buttoned his black suit and looked about, cool as ever. “Shall we stroll down to the boat slips and chat up those gentlemen?”

  Hayward shrugged. “They don’t exactly look talkative.”

  “Talkative, no. Communicative, possibly.” Pendergast headed down the street, his tall frame moving easily. The men watched their approach with narrowed eyes.

  “Good day, gentlemen,” said Pendergast, in his most honeyed, upper-class New Orleans accent, giving them a slight bow.

  Silence. Hayward’s apprehension increased. This seemed like the worst possible way to go about getting information. The hostility was so thick you could cut it with a knife.

  “My associate and I are here for a little sightseeing. We are birders.”

  “Birders,” said a man. He turned and said it again to the group. “Birders.”

  The crowd laughed.

  Hayward winced. This was going to be a total loss. She saw movement out of the corner of her eye and glanced over. Another group of people was filing silently out of a barn-like building on creosote pilings adjacent to the docks. A hand-painted sign identified it as TINY’S BAIT ’N’ BAR.

  An enormously fat man was the
last to exit. His bullet-shaped head was shaved and he wore a tank top stretched to the limit by a huge belly, his arms hanging down like smoked hams, and—thanks to the sun—about the same color. He muscled through the crowd and came striding down the dock, clearly the authority figure of the group, pulling to a halt in front of Pendergast.

  “To whom do I have the pleasure?” Pendergast asked.

  “Name’s Tiny,” he said, looking Pendergast and Hayward up and down with piss-hole eyes. He didn’t offer his hand.

  Tiny, thought Hayward. It figures.

  “My name is Pendergast, and this is my associate Hayward. Now, Tiny, as I was saying to these gentlemen here, we wish to go birding. We’re looking for the rare Botolph’s Red-bellied Fisher to round out our life lists. We understand it can be found deep in the swamp.”

  “That so?”

  “And we were hoping to speak to someone who knows the swamp and might be able to advise us.”

  Tiny stepped forward, leaned over, and deposited a stream of tobacco juice at Pendergast’s feet, so close that some of it splattered on Pendergast’s wingtips.

  “Oh, dear, I believe you’ve soiled my shoes,” said Pendergast.

  Hayward wanted to cringe. Any idiot could see they’d already lost the crowd, that they would get nothing of value from them. And now there might be a confrontation.

  “Looks that way,” drawled Tiny.

  “Perhaps you, Mr. Tiny, can help us?”

  “Nope,” came the response. He leaned over, puckered his thick lips, and deposited another stream of tobacco, this time directly on Pendergast’s shoes.

  “I believe you did that on purpose,” Pendergast said, his voice high and cracking in ineffectual protest.

  “You believe right.”

  “Well,” he said, turning to Hayward, “I get the distinct feeling we’re not wanted here. I think we should take our business elsewhere.” To her utter astonishment, he hurried off down the street toward the Rolls, and she had to jog to catch up. Raucous laughter echoed behind him.

  “You’re going to walk off like that?” she asked.

  Pendergast paused at the car. Someone had keyed a message in the paint of the hood: FUCK ENVIROS. He got in the car with an enigmatic smile.

  Hayward opened the driver’s-side door but didn’t get in. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? We haven’t even begun to get the information we need!”

  “On the contrary, they were most eloquent.”

  “They vandalized your car, spat on your shoes!”

  “Get in,” he said firmly.

  She slid in. Pendergast turned and screeched off in a cloud of dust, and they started out of town.

  “That’s it? We’re running?”

  “My dear Captain, have you ever known me to run?”

  She shut up. Soon the Rolls slowed and, to her surprise, swung into the driveway of the church they had passed earlier. Pendergast parked in front of the house beside the church and stepped out. Wiping his shoe on the grass, he glided onto the porch and rang the bell. A man soon opened the door. He was tall and rail-thin, with heavy features, a white beard, and no mustache. He reminded Hayward a bit of Abraham Lincoln.

  “Pastor Gregg?” said Pendergast, seizing his hand. “I’m Al Pendergast, pastor of the Hemhoibshun Parish Southern Baptist Church. Delighted to make your acquaintance!” He shook the bewildered minister’s hand with great enthusiasm. “And this is my sister Laura. May we speak with you?”

  “Well, I… certainly,” said Gregg, slowly recovering from his surprise. “Come in.”

  They entered the cool confines of a tidy house.

  “Please, sit down.” Gregg still seemed rather bewildered; Pendergast, on the other hand, ensconced himself in the most comfortable chair and threw one leg over the other, looking completely at home.

  “Laura and I are not here on church business,” he said, removing a steno pad and a pen from his suit. “But I had heard of your church and your reputation for hospitality, and so here we are.”

  “I see,” said Gregg, obviously not seeing at all.

  “Pastor Gregg, in my spare time from my pastoral duties, I have an avocation: I am an amateur historian, a collector of myths and legends, a rummager in the dusty corners of forgotten southern history. In fact I’m writing a book. Myths and Legends of the Southern Swamps. And that is why I am here.” Pendergast said this last triumphantly, then sat back.

  “How interesting,” Gregg replied.

  “When I travel, I always look up the local pastor first. He never fails me, never.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “Because the local pastor knows the folks. He knows the legends. But as a man of God, he is not superstitious. He isn’t swayed by such things. Am I right?”

  “Well, it’s true one hears stories. But they are just that, Pastor Pendergast: stories. I don’t pay much attention to them.”

  “Exactly. Now this swamp, the Black Brake, is one of the biggest and most legendary in the South. Are you familiar with it?”

  “Naturally.”

  “Have you heard of a place in the swamp called Spanish Island?”

  “Oh, yes. It’s not really an island, of course—more an area of mudflats and shallow water where the cypress trees were never cut. It’s out in the middle of the swamp, virgin forest. I’ve never seen it.”

  Pendergast began to scribble. “They say there was an old fishing and hunting camp there.”

  “Quite right. Belonged to the Brodie family, but it was closed up thirty years ago. I believe it’s just rotted back into the swamp. That’s what happens to abandoned buildings, you know.”

  “Are there any stories about Spanish Island?”

  He smiled. “Of course. The usual ghost stories, rumors that the place is occupied by squatters and used for drug smuggling—that sort of thing.”

  “Ghost stories?”

  “The locals are full of talk about the heart of the swamp, where Spanish Island is located: strange lights at night, odd noises, that sort of thing. A few years ago, a frogger disappeared in the swamp. They found his rented airboat drifting in a bayou not far from Spanish Island. I expect he got drunk and fell off into the water, but the local folk all say he was murdered or went swamp crazy.”

  “Swamp crazy?”

  “If you spend too much time in the swamp, it gets to you and you go crazy. So people say. While I don’t exactly believe that, I must say it is an… intimidating place. Easy to get lost in.”

  Pendergast wrote this all down with expressions of interest. “What about the lights?”

  “The froggers go out at night, you know, and sometimes come back with stories of strange lights moving through the swamp. They’re just seeing each other, in my opinion. You need a light, you see, to frog. Or it might be a natural phenomenon, glowing swamp gas or something like that.”

  “Excellent,” said Pendergast, taking a moment to scribble. “This is just the sort of thing I’m looking for. Anything else?”

  Encouraged, Gregg went on. “There’s always talk of a giant alligator in the swamp. Most of the southern swamps have similar legends, as I’m sure you know. And sometimes they turn out to be true—there was an alligator shot in Lake Conroe over in Texas a few years back that was over twenty-three feet long. It was eating a full-grown deer when it was killed.”

  “Amazing,” said Pendergast. “So if one wanted to visit Spanish Island, how would one go about it?”

  “It’s marked on the older maps. Problem is, getting there’s a whole different deal, with all the mazes of channels and mud bars. And the cypresses are thick as thieves deep in there. During low water, there’s a growth of ferns and brambles shooting up that are well-nigh impassable. You just can’t go straight through to Spanish Island. Frankly, I don’t think anyone’s been out there in years. It’s deep in the refuge, no fishing or hunting allowed, and it’s hell getting in and out of there. I would strongly advise against it.”

  Pendergast shut the steno b
ook and rose. “Thank you very much, Pastor. This is all very helpful. May I contact you again if necessary?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Very good. I’d give you one of my cards but I’m fresh out. Here’s my telephone number, if you need to call. I’ll be sure to send you the book when it’s published.”

  Getting back into the Rolls, Hayward asked, “What now?”

  “Back to our friends in Malfourche. We have unfinished business there.”

  64

  THEY ARRIVED IN THE SAME PARKING LOT, AND parked in the same dusty spot. The same group of men were still down at the docks, and once again they all turned and stared. As he and Hayward got out of the car, Pendergast murmured, “Continue to allow me to handle the situation, if you please, Captain.”

  Hayward nodded, slightly disappointed. She had been half hoping that one of the good old boys would step over the line so she could bust his ass and haul him in.

  “Gentlemen!” said Pendergast, striding toward the group. “We are back.”

  Hayward felt a fresh cringe.

  The fat one—Tiny—stepped forward and waited, arms crossed.

  “Mr. Tiny, my associate and I would like to rent an airboat to explore the swamp. Are any available?”

  To Hayward’s surprise, Tiny smiled. A number of glances were exchanged in the crowd.

  “Sure, I can rent you an airboat,” said Tiny.

  “Excellent! And a guide?”

  Another exchange of glances. “Can’t spare a guide,” Tiny said slowly, “but I’d be right glad to show you where to go on a map. Got ’em for sale inside.”

  “Specifically, we’re hoping to visit Spanish Island.”

  A long silence. “No problem,” said Tiny. “Come on round to the private dock on the other side, where we keep the boats, and we’ll set you up.”

  They followed the immense man around behind the structure to the commercial dock on the other side. Half a dozen sad-looking airboats and bass boats sat in their slips. Pendergast, pursing his lips, looked them over briefly, selecting the newest-looking airboat.