by Carl Hiaasen
“But you told me you cleared the scene. You told me they’d never suspect we did it,” Drake McBride said.
“There’s nuthin’ to worry about. Honest.”
“Don’t worry?” Drake McBride raised his palms skyward. “Arson is a big-time felony, pardner. They put people in prison for it!”
Jimmy Lee Bayliss said, “I made friends with the fire investigator, and we’ve got no problems. They’re after some local kid, a known pyro.”
Drake McBride rose from his desk and poured himself a cup of black coffee. He didn’t offer any to Jimmy Lee Bayliss, which was just as well because Jimmy Lee Bayliss’s stomach was a wreck and his lips were still sore from the encounter with Duane Scrod Sr.
“I don’t understand what’s the big deal,” Drake McBride fumed. “It’s not like an orphanage got torched—just some worthless damn swamp. This time next year, you won’t be able to tell it ever got burnt.”
“Lightning strikes all the time in those woods,” Jimmy Lee Bayliss remarked.
“Exactamente! Now, are you tellin’ me these arson guys rush out and investigate every single wildfire? No way.” Drake McBride was indignant. “Now all of a sudden it’s CSI: Everglades. Talk about a waste of taxpayer dollars!”
Jimmy Lee Bayliss knew exactly why the authorities had taken an interest in the fire at the Black Vine Swamp. “It’s only because there were kids out there,” he said.
“Yeah, well, none of the little buggers got hurt, did they? Nobody even got their eyebrows toasted.” Drake McBride stood at the picture window and stared pensively out at the bay. “Bottom line: We had to do somethin’ to keep ’em away from Section 22. And it worked, did it not?”
“Yes, sir. No harm done.”
“And by the way—is that a stupid place for a field trip, or what? Way out in the middle of nowhere? If that was my class, I’d take ’em all to SeaWorld to watch those killer whales do ballerina dances, or whatever.”
Jimmy Lee Bayliss said, “Or Weeki Wachee. They got all these girls dressed up like mermaids, ridin’ water skis.”
“Now you’re talkin’!” Drake McBride finally smiled, though he became serious again when he returned to his desk. “Jimmy Lee, please tell me they’ve got no evidence that can tie Red Diamond to the arson. Please tell me I don’t need to start lookin’ for a lawyer and a bail bondsman.”
“They haven’t got diddly, sir.” Jimmy Lee Bayliss failed to inform his boss that he’d dropped a company pen at the crime scene.
Drake McBride sat forward and peered at him curiously. “What the heck happened to your face? Somebody punch you out?”
Jimmy Lee Bayliss chose not to admit that a lunatic with a rabid parrot had tried to remove his lips with a pair of pliers.
“I cut myself shavin’,” he said.
“Shaving with what—a weed whacker?”
“No big deal,” mumbled Jimmy Lee Bayliss, covering his mouth.
Drake McBride fixed him with a steely look that he practiced often in the mirror. “Look here, pardner—you say the situation is under control. Does that mean I can take the afternoon off and go run King Thunderbolt?”
“Absolutely.”
In his quest to look like a Texan, Drake McBride had bought a horse named Dumpling, renamed it King Thunderbolt, and was now taking riding lessons. Jimmy Lee Bayliss fully expected the animal to throw Drake McBride out of the saddle and stomp on him once it figured out what a phony he was.
“The arson investigator and I had a real good talk,” Jimmy Lee Bayliss said, trying to put his boss at ease.
Drake McBride leaned back and propped his shiny snakeskin boots on the desk. “That kid you mentioned, he sounds like a prime suspect.”
“Definitely,” Jimmy Lee Bayliss said. “A bad actor.”
“They should take a real hard look at him.”
“Oh, they are.”
“Any assistance that Red Diamond Energy can offer—”
“They got our full cooperation,” Jimmy Lee Bayliss said.
Drake McBride winked. “Give ’em whatever they need, okay?”
“I’m all over it.”
“One more thing, pardner.”
“Sure.” Jimmy Lee Bayliss hated it when Drake McBride called him “pardner.” The guy watched too many old Westerns on cable TV.
“If somethin’ else bad happens,” Drake McBride said, “I don’t want to hear about it from my helicopter pilot. Understand? I want to hear about it from you.”
“Yes, sir. Speakin’ of the chopper, I need a lift out to the drilling site.”
“Sure thing—after you drop me off at the … what chacallit. You know, the horse place?”
“You mean the stable,” said Jimmy Lee Bayliss.
“Right.” Drake McBride adjusted the tilt of his cowboy hat. “The stable,” he said.
SIXTEEN
On the bus ride to school, Nick told Marta about Smoke’s surprise visit.
She said, “You mean that maniac knows where you live? That’s not cool.”
“He just wanted to borrow my biology book.”
“I’m so sure,” Marta said.
“To study for an exam, is what he said.”
“What exam? There’s no exam … is there?”
“Not that I know of. It was weird,” Nick said. “Then he took off before I could ask about Mrs. Starch.”
Marta frowned. “Don’t go there, Nick. Just let it drop.”
After their encounter with the man called Twilly, Marta had lost some of her enthusiasm for solving the mystery of Mrs. Starch’s disappearance.
Nick said, “I checked out a book by that writer Twilly talked about, Edward Abbey. It’s called The Monkey Wrench Gang, and the hero is this wild dude named Hayduke who wants to blow up a dam.”
“What for?” Marta asked.
“Because it’s plugging up this huge wild river. So he and these other guys launch, like, an underground war.”
“All guys, huh?”
“No, there’s a lady in the gang, too.”
“Stick with comics, Nick.”
“Seriously, it’s a good story. And funny.”
“But what’s it got to do with Mrs. Starch?”
Nick shook his head. “Who knows. Maybe nothing.”
“Look, I really don’t care where she is, or what she’s doing,” Marta said. “I just want her to come back to Truman so we don’t have to deal with Waxmo anymore. A witch that knows how to teach is better than a fruitcake from Mars.”
“Smoke said Dr. Waxmo’s gone.”
“No way!” Marta exclaimed jubilantly.
“Whatever happened, Smoke acted like he had something to do with it,” Nick said. “Sort of sketched me out.”
Marta clapped her hands. “I can’t believe we’re really rid of Wacko Waxmo. It’s too good to be true.”
“We’ll find out soon.”
Sure enough, a different substitute was sitting at Mrs. Starch’s desk when Marta and Nick walked into third-period biology. They exchanged glances and took their seats. Graham was already waving his hand at the teacher, whose name was Mrs. Robertson. Most of the kids knew her, because she substituted regularly at the school.
“Dr. Waxmo has called in sick,” she began. “Some sort of nasty flu bug, according to Dr. Dressler. So it looks like I’ll be teaching this class until Mrs. Starch returns.”
When the students broke out in grateful applause, Mrs. Robertson tried not to smile. Wendell Waxmo’s unstable personality was legend among other substitutes.
When the celebrating was over, she said, “All right, let’s get down to business. You have a question, Graham?”
The boy lowered his hand and said, “I’m ready with page 263.”
“Oh?”
“I memorized the whole thing, like Dr. Waxmo told us to. Gametes and chromosomes!”
“That’s good,” Mrs. Robertson said patiently, “but I use a different teaching method than Dr. Waxmo’s. I find it’s more helpful to study chapter b
y chapter, instead of choosing random pages.”
Graham looked crestfallen as Mrs. Robertson instructed the students to open their textbooks to Chapter 10. It was then Nick noticed that Smoke was absent, which meant that Nick’s biology book was absent, too. He would have to share with somebody else.
Marta passed him a note: Where’s your new friend?
Nick shrugged. Maybe the new, improved Duane Scrod Jr. was back to his old ways.
Torkelsen parked his SUV on the dirt road and approached the helicopter where the oilman was waiting.
“Hop in,” he said to the fire investigator.
Torkelsen strapped himself in one of the back seats. “When did you find it?” he asked.
“About an hour ago. I called you right away,” Jimmy Lee Bayliss said.
The chopper ride took only about three minutes. Torkelsen looked out the window while Jimmy Lee Bayliss chewed up a handful of Tums and hoped that the fire investigator wouldn’t ask about the tool marks on his lips. The helicopter touched down in a dry clearing and the two men stepped out, Jimmy Lee Bayliss leading the way.
“Watch out for rattlers,” he warned.
“You bet,” the fire investigator said.
They made their way to a hammock of cabbage palms. The camo-print book bag lay on the ground, partially concealed by dead fronds. Jimmy Lee Bayliss thought he’d done a very convincing job of planting the evidence.
Torkelsen picked up the bag and examined it.
“We were doin’ a fly-by when I saw some wild hogs runnin’ through these trees,” Jimmy Lee Bayliss said, “so I had the pilot set her down and I took off with my rifle. Didn’t catch those darn pigs, but I came across this thing and figgered you’d be interested.”
The fire investigator unzipped the pockets of the satchel and carefully sorted through the contents.
“What the heck’s in there?” asked Jimmy Lee Bayliss, as if he didn’t know. He’d been careful to remove any assignment papers that were dated after the arson; otherwise Torkelsen would have figured out that the book bag couldn’t have been left at the scene on the day of the crime.
“Schoolbooks, pencils, a calculator,” Torkelsen said. “And this—”
From one of the compartments he pulled out a small butane torch.
Jimmy Lee Bayliss whistled. “You hit the jackpot!”
Torkelsen used a digital camera to take pictures, placing the book bag and the torch on a mat of palm fronds.
“This isn’t far from where the fire was started, right?” Jimmy Lee Bayliss said, again as if he didn’t know. “The kid must’ve stashed his stuff here before he took off.”
“Sure looks that way.”
Torkelsen jotted down the brand and model number of the butane torch, which Jimmy Lee Bayliss had purchased at his favorite hardware store on the way home from the Scrod household. Jimmy Lee Bayliss had tested the device by using it to burn up the sales receipt so that it could never be traced to him.
The fire investigator repacked the book bag, slung it over one shoulder, and followed Jimmy Lee Bayliss back to the helicopter. The pilot lifted off and made an extrawide turn to avoid flying over the area of Section 22 where Red Diamond Energy was erecting its illegal oil-drilling platform. Even though the site was well concealed among the woods, Jimmy Lee Bayliss wasn’t taking any chances, especially with a sharp-eyed passenger such as Torkelsen.
When the chopper landed on the dirt road, Jimmy Lee Bayliss got out and walked with the fire investigator to his SUV.
“Is there a name tag on that backpack?” Jimmy Lee Bayliss asked innocently.
“Yep,” said Torkelsen. “It’s that same kid I told you about—Duane Scrod Jr.”
“Then you’ve got your arsonist!”
Torkelsen placed the incriminating bag in the back of the SUV. “This is a big help, Mr. Bayliss. Thanks a million.”
“Call me anytime.” Jimmy Lee Bayliss silently congratulated himself as he returned to the chopper, though he wouldn’t have had such a merry spring in his step if he’d known that he was being spied upon at that very moment.
Perched halfway up a cypress and shielded by branches, Twilly Spree sucked on a slice of store-bought grapefruit and waited for the Red Diamond helicopter to fly away. Then he climbed down and waded slowly out of the strand.
The spiders and mosquitoes didn’t concern him, nor did the poisonous snakes and the snapping turtles. Twilly was utterly at ease in the Black Vine Swamp, as he was in almost any wilderness. He felt much safer hiking among a few hungry gators and bears than driving down Interstate 75 at rush hour.
As he did every morning before the oil company workers arrived, Twilly went searching for signs of a particular panther. He would have been elated to see one measly paw print, but he found nothing. Twilly hadn’t laid eyes on the animal since the day he’d heard two rifle shots in the area. He never came across its body or any spots of blood, so he’d concluded that it had safely gotten away.
On the day of the fire, Twilly had heard a panther scream—there was no mistaking the hair-raising wail—and he chose to believe that it was the one that he’d been seeking. The sooner the feline returned to its territory, the better. This was truly a matter of life and death, although not Twilly’s own.
On the trail leading back to camp, he encountered the kid.
“You’re supposed to be in school,” Twilly said.
“I dreamed I saw the cat.”
“Where?”
“On the boardwalk,” said Duane Scrod Jr. “I had to check it out, in case it was, like, an Indian dream. But it wasn’t.”
“Too bad.” Twilly himself rarely dreamed, but he knew Seminoles and Miccosukees who had visions that sometimes came true.
Facing the sun, Duane Scrod Jr. squinted out across the swamp. “So you didn’t find anything? No tracks?”
Twilly shook his head. “A bobcat and some deer, that’s all. You saw that chopper, right?”
“Don’t worry,” Duane Scrod Jr. said. “They didn’t see me. I hid the bike real good, too.”
“You need to get your butt to school. The alternative isn’t pretty.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Did your book bag ever turn up?”
“Nope. I swear I took it home,” the kid said, “but I can’t find it anywhere. Weird.”
“You ask your old man?”
Duane Scrod Jr. snorted. “He’s locked inside his music room with that crazy bird. Says he chased off a government tax man and next they’re gonna send the FBI. There’s no use talkin’ to him when he gets like this.”
The boy clearly had a rocky situation at home—his mother had run off to Europe and his father didn’t always have both oars in the water. Twilly Spree felt bad for him, although not bad enough to risk blowing the mission.
“Hey, I saw the bottles got here,” Duane Scrod Jr. said.
“Yep. Everybody’s okay, for now.”
“That was a cool thing you did.”
“Go to school,” Twilly told him. “Don’t make me say it again.”
“Right. Later, dude.”
Watching the boy walk away, Twilly wished that he were better qualified to give out advice and wisdom. However, he’d spent most of his own life following his gut impulse instead of his brain, so he was hardly the proper model of a sensible grown-up.
He headed back toward camp, moving quietly by habit through the marshes and prairies and tree islands. On a soggy stretch he came upon something dark in the middle of the trail, something that hadn’t been there earlier in the morning.
Twilly dropped to the ground and put his face closer in order to be sure. Eagerly he studied the fresh find. He poked it with a twig. He turned it with a leaf. He even sniffed it.
There was no doubt: panther poop!
Dr. Dressler’s day turned sour when his lunch was interrupted by the arrival of George and Gilda Carson. They had come to make their weekly plea to have their “brilliant” son Graham moved up one or two grade levels at Truman
.
Based on Graham’s most recent report card, which Dr. Dressler held in his hand, Graham was exactly where he should have been.
“He has a C-plus average,” Dr. Dressler reminded the Carsons. “There’s nothing wrong with that, but it tells me that your son has all the challenges he can handle right now.”
“What do you mean by that?” huffed Gilda Carson.
“Yes, what are you driving at?” George Carson chimed in.
Part of Dr. Dressler’s job was putting up with the unreasonable demands of parents, but sometimes it wasn’t easy to be polite.
“We don’t normally advance a student unless he or she has straight A’s,” he explained, “and only then if they pass a series of tests showing that they’re ready to skip ahead of all the other students their age.”
Gilda Carson said, “We told you to give Graham those tests.”
“And I did.” Dr. Dressler handed her a copy of the not-so-brilliant results, which she showed to her husband.
“So he had one bad day. Big deal,” said George Carson. “Let him take the tests again.”
Dr. Dressler glanced wearily at the brass clock on his desk. He said, “Graham is a fine young man. He pays attention in class. He asks lots and lots of questions. He tries hard, but—”
“But what?” sneered Graham’s mother.
“But he’s a C-plus student.”
“Which is the fault of his teachers, Dr. Dressler. Clearly Graham is underachieving,” George Carson said, waving the test paper, “and that shouldn’t happen at a place like Truman. We pay an arm and a leg for tuition here ….”
Dr. Dressler tuned out the arm-and-a-leg speech, which he’d heard dozens of times from parents who’d decided to blame the school because their children were falling short of their expectations. More often than not, the students improved with a little extra help and went on to graduate with solid marks.
However, the Carsons were in no mood for a pep talk, and Dr. Dressler was in no mood for the Carsons. He was on the verge of saying something very frank to them when his assistant cracked open the door.
“Sorry to interrupt, Dr. Dressler, but Detective Marshall is here to see you.”
