by Carl Hiaasen
Drake McBride raised up. “So what’s the problem? You told me the cat was gone. You said the gunshots did the trick.”
Jimmy Lee Bayliss knew that his boss didn’t have the quickest mind, but being dumped on his head had made Drake McBride unusually slow.
The wildlife officer wouldn’t need to find a live panther on the property in order to cause major problems for Red Diamond Energy. If he saw even a partial paw print or the tiniest, moldiest lump of scat, the government might step in to supervise the oil-drilling operation, perhaps even halt it.
“The Endangered Species Act is a tough one,” Jimmy Lee Bayliss reminded Drake McBride, who cursed under his breath and collapsed once more on the dingy floor.
“And what if Officer Game Warden goes wanderin’ off into Section 22,” said Drake McBride, “and discovers our little private project there? I imagine we’d have some explainin’ to do, since that land belongs to the great state of Florida and not us.”
“I’ll think of something,” Jimmy Lee Bayliss said. “It’ll be at least ten days before we can sink the transfer pipe, so we’ll be okay as long as we keep the guy focused on Section 21.”
“And in the meantime, tell me your secret plan for cleanin’ up any old doo-doo that rotten cat left behind.”
Jimmy Lee Bayliss had no strategy for locating and removing panther poop. He said, “There’s six hundred and forty acres. About all we can do is pray for a good hard rain.”
“During a drought? That’s very funny.” Drake McBride covered his face with his hands and rocked sideways on the floor. “I might just die here,” he said miserably.
Jimmy Lee Bayliss wasn’t feeling especially happy and carefree himself. Only two weeks earlier he’d been looking at real estate brochures from Costa Rica, daydreaming about how he’d spend the millions of dollars he was going to make from the Red Diamond oil scam. Now he was worrying about staying out of prison.
“We should give Melton a nice raise,” he suggested. “He’s really ticked off about what happened, and we sure don’t want him blabbing all over town.”
“The orange paint come off?” Drake McBride asked.
“Most of it. Certain places were hard to get to.”
“You gotta find out who keeps doin’ this stuff and put a stop to it. Whatever’s necessary.”
Jimmy Lee Bayliss said, “I aim to, don’t worry.”
A stern, broad-shouldered nurse walked up and told Jimmy Lee Bayliss to move his boss back onto the chair. “He’s next up to see the doctor,” she said, “after the lady with the wasp sting and the man with the barbecue burn.”
“Glory be,” murmured Drake McBride, and struggled to his knees.
Twilly Spree wasn’t an outgoing person, and while he generally preferred the company of animals to that of human beings, he tried to be cautious in all relationships. Once he had become too fond of a dopey dog that he’d kidnapped from a knucklehead who had needed to be taught a hard lesson—several lessons, in fact. When the time came to say goodbye to the dog, Twilly had found himself so sad and empty that it was alarming. Such sentimental feelings, he believed, could only distract him from his missions.
The two kids in the backseat of the car weren’t too obnoxious and probably meant well, yet Twilly remained guardedly quiet during the drive to the Black Vine Swamp. His thoughts were on the boy who called himself Smoke, now a fugitive and in need of help.
It was disturbing that Duane Scrod Jr. was being framed, and Twilly suspected that the Red Diamond Energy Corporation was behind the plot. Someone working at the company’s drilling site had summoned the arson investigator, a brief meeting that Twilly had observed the previous day from his distant roost in a cypress tree. At the time, he hadn’t known about the stolen book bag, but he put the whole story together after speaking with young Duane on the run, and later with a talkative secretary at the sheriff’s office.
Twilly reasoned that Red Diamond’s only motive for pinning a bogus felony rap on an innocent kid was to hide its own involvement in the arson. Twilly didn’t know why Red Diamond would ignite a brush fire to scare away school kids on a field trip, but he was working on theories.
Because it was a new company, little information about Red Diamond was available on the Internet. However, private investigators hired by Twilly had dug up the name of the president and chief operating officer—Drake W. McBride—which was a beginning.
Meanwhile, Twilly continued his sneak forays to the Section 21 lease, where the same poor dunce had twice confronted him, and both times had been dealt with somewhat firmly.
Twilly Spree felt a tap on his shoulder. From the backseat, the boy named Nick Waters asked, “Could you please turn down the radio?”
“Nope,” said Twilly.
“Then at least change the station,” said the girl named Marta.
“Negative.” Twilly’s driving music was classic rock, nothing else.
Nick, hovering at his shoulder, asked: “Do you work for Mrs. Starch?”
“I told you, no more questions. Eat some pizza.”
Marta said, “He doesn’t like mushrooms or olives.”
“Too bad.” Twilly opened the windows to blow out the cheesy pizza smell. “For your information, I don’t work for anybody,” he said. “I’m what’s known as ‘unemployable.’ ”
“Are you, like, homeless?” asked Marta.
“Just the opposite. I can live anywhere.” Twilly was half tempted to pull over on a remote stretch of road and abandon the two kids, but he thought they might be helpful later. At the very least, it would be good for Duane Jr. to know that somebody else cared about him.
Twilly turned off Route 29 onto a dusty farm road. A few minutes later, the Prius was inching down a bumpy, overgrown passage that had once been a railroad spur for a logging operation. The path ended at a broken gate that bore a rusty “No Trespassing” sign. Twilly parked beneath a giant strangler fig, shut off the radio, and instructed his passengers to be still. He listened for the high-pitched whine of the oil company’s helicopter, but the sky was quiet.
Quickly he got out and began concealing the car with tree branches and palm fronds that he’d cut and stacked for that purpose. One-armed Nick Waters pitched in to help, but the girl named Marta apprehensively stood apart, brandishing her cell phone for Twilly to see.
“Libby Marshall is number two on my speed dial and her dad’s a sheriff’s detective, so don’t get any crazy ideas,” she warned.
Twilly smiled. “I’ll try to control myself. You ready to hike?”
“Definitely,” the boy said.
“How far?” asked the girl.
Twenty minutes later, knee-deep in swamp water, she asked again in a much louder voice.
Twilly raised a finger to his lips and continued wading. He led them along a boggy trail through a treeless marsh until they entered dry pine flatlands. There he saw recent signs of white-tailed deer, bobcats, and raccoons, although he didn’t stop to point out the various tracks and scat. Twilly had no time to play nature guide; he was in a hurry.
Balancing the pizza boxes on his free hand, the boy named Nick came up beside Twilly. In a hushed voice he said, “Are there panthers out here?”
“Didn’t you hear one scream while you were on the field trip?”
“No, that was you,” Nick said. “Wasn’t it?”
Twilly winked and shook his head.
“No way!” The boy looked thrilled.
A few paces behind, the girl named Marta was griping. “Why can’t we use the boardwalk like normal people? My brand-new Converses are totally trashed!”
A red-shouldered hawk clutching a mouse in its talons passed overhead. Once more Twilly paused to listen—the only sound from above was a woodpecker making holes in a dead tree.
When Marta caught up, she said, “This is ridiculous. Where’s Mrs. Starch?”
Twilly inserted two fingers in his mouth and whistled. There was no response, which was the agreed-upon signal for him to proceed.
/>
Suddenly Marta blurted, “Nick, what if he’s not really taking us to Mrs. Starch? What if he’s gonna chop us to pieces and feed us to the alligators?”
“Human flesh is tough. Gators prefer fish,” Twilly noted, and resumed walking.
Nick remained at his side. “She’s just scared is all,” he whispered.
Twilly understood. He was the first to admit that he wasn’t a reliable-looking person.
“Soon everything will become clear,” he said. “More or less.”
“I trust you.”
“Well, Nick Waters, I wouldn’t go that far.”
“My father always says to stick with my gut instincts.”
“He got hurt pretty bad in Iraq, right?”
Nick looked taken aback. “How’d you know that?”
“Duane mentioned it,” Twilly said. “You didn’t mess up your arm playing lacrosse, like you told me, did you?”
“No, that was a lie.”
“I figured. I never saw a back-assward sling like this before.” Twilly flicked the odd hump in the boy’s shirt behind his right shoulder.
He said, “There’s nothing wrong with my arm. I’m teaching myself to be a lefty.”
“Like your old man’s gotta do.”
Nick nodded and grew quiet.
“Good for you,” Twilly said.
He tried to recall if he’d ever cared about his own father as deeply as Nick Waters cared about his. The emotions were complicated, as were his childhood memories.
From behind them, the girl called out, “I hope you’re both happy. I got blisters on my blisters!”
They were now close enough that Twilly Spree could smell the woody haze from last night’s campfire.
“When’s the last time you saw a wild panther?” he asked Nick.
“Never.”
“Then this is your lucky day.”
NINETEEN
The secret camp was in shadows, beneath a tangled canopy of trees. There were two pup tents and a fire pit. Pegged to the ground was a faded green tarp, covering a chest-high stack of supplies.
A flap opened on one of the tents, and a gangly figure crawled out. It was Mrs. Starch. She rose slowly, brushing herself off, her eyes blazing at the sight of Nick and Marta.
“What’s the meaning of this?” she demanded.
“They carjacked me,” Twilly said. “Sort of.”
Mrs. Starch scowled. “Oh, please.”
Despite the chilly reception, Nick was relieved to see his biology teacher unharmed and still as ornery as ever. Except for the straw hat, she had on the same clothes from the field trip: baggy long-sleeved shirt, canvas pants, and wading boots. Still, Mrs. Starch looked different—older, and more tired. Her heavy makeup had worn off, and a stripe of coffee-brown roots bisected her mass of tinted blond hair, which was tied in a ragged ponytail. There was no sign of her huge dragonfly sunglasses.
“It’s your turn to entertain them. I’m heading out on poop patrol,” Twilly told her, and sauntered back into the woods. Nick assumed he was taking a bathroom break.
Mrs. Starch began pacing, as she did in class. It had the same nerve-wracking effect on Marta as always; she turned greenish and queasy. Nick set the pizza boxes on a tree stump.
“What do you have to say for yourselves?” Mrs. Starch said.
Marta was in no condition to speak, and Nick had not yet composed a presentation. The best he could muster was: “We were worried.”
“Worried, or just plain nosy?” Mrs. Starch shot back. “It’s rude enough that you broke into my home. Now this?”
Nick thought he heard a faint, muffled cry, but he couldn’t tell where it came from. Still clutching her phone, Marta sat down on a log near the fire pit and took deep breaths to ward off the nausea.
The wind picked up from the north, putting a cool bite in the air. Mrs. Starch’s footsteps crunched on crisp twigs and leaves as she stalked back and forth in front of them. She seemed not quite as tall as Nick remembered.
“You have no right to be here. No right,” she said.
Marta raised a limp hand. “It was all Nick’s idea.”
“Undoubtedly,” said Mrs. Starch.
“We just want to know what’s going on,” Nick heard himself say.
“Get more specific.”
“Okay, the fire. Tell us about the fire.”
“Ah,” said Mrs. Starch.
“And Smoke—I mean Duane Jr.”
The teacher stopped pacing and planted her knuckles on her hips. “Anything else?”
“Yes,” Nick said. He had so many questions.
Marta peeped: “Your house—all those stuffed animals …”
Mrs. Starch wagged a bony forefinger in protest. “Now, that’s personal. Way too personal.”
Again Nick heard an odd cry—like a bird trapped in a pillowcase. “What is that?” he asked Mrs. Starch.
She glanced worriedly behind her. In the dappled shade, the anvil-shaped scar on her chin was so dark that it looked almost purple.
“I didn’t hear anything,” Marta said.
Mrs. Starch bent down until she was nose to nose with Nick, and up close her nose wasn’t especially attractive. It was smudged with mud and freckled with what appeared to be tiny insect bites.
“I’m going to show you something extraordinary,” she said, “but if either of you tells a living soul, if you blab a single word about this, then I swear I’ll … I’ll …”
“Flunk us?” said Nick.
“Kill us?” asked Marta.
“Worse!” exclaimed Mrs. Starch. “I’ll lose all respect for you. All respect.”
Nick blinked. It was news to him that Mrs. Starch had any respect whatsoever for them, and judging by Marta’s baffled reaction, it was news to her as well.
“Nobody else besides you two must know,” the teacher said forcefully. “Not your mummy or daddy, not your gabby little pals on Facebook, not your third cousin in Goose Falls, Arkansas, nobody. Is that clear?”
“As a bell,” Marta murmured.
Mrs. Starch grabbed Nick’s left shoulder. “This is life-or-death,” she whispered. “Can you understand that?”
“We won’t tell anyone,” said Nick.
“Life-or-death,” Mrs. Starch repeated. Then she dropped to all fours and scurried into her tent.
As expected, the local newspapers and TV stations identified Duane Scrod Jr. as “an unnamed juvenile” with previous arrests for arson. But even if the authorities had released the boy’s full name, the impact on Dr. Dressler’s steady, well-organized existence would have been no more shattering. TRUMAN STUDENT, SOUGHT FOR ARSON, FLEES COPS That was just one of the unpleasant headlines that prompted the school’s board of trustees to call an emergency meeting on a Saturday. The board members were highly distressed and asked many tough questions of Dr. Dressler, who answered as best he could.
Some of the remarks were quite unfair, in the headmaster’s opinion, yet he didn’t waste energy trying to defend himself. The mood in the room was too tense, which he could understand. It was disgraceful enough that a Truman student had been charged with a serious crime, but the sensational media accounts of Duane Scrod Jr.’s escape and mad dash across campus—leaving the sheriff’s detective panting in defeat—had pitched the board of trustees into a fever.
Although technically it wasn’t his job to arrest and handcuff arsonists, Dr. Dressler expected to be punished, possibly even fired, for allowing the detective to confront the boy while classes were in session.
In the end, the board voted to reprimand the headmaster and ordered him to expel Duane Scrod Jr. from school, effective immediately. When Dr. Dressler pointed out that Duane Jr.’s grandmother donated large sums of money to Truman every year, the board members quickly huddled for another vote. This time they decided that the boy should be “suspended temporarily” until his criminal case went to court, at which point his status at the Truman School would be reviewed.
Dr. Dressler faced two undesi
rable chores. One was to notify Millicent Winship, Duane Jr.’s wealthy grandmother, and the other was to notify Duane Scrod Sr., his kooky father. The headmaster had flipped a coin, and now he was driving to the Scrod residence.
Turning down the road, he noticed a sheriff’s deputy sitting in a squad car parked on one corner. At the other end he could see a black sedan with tinted windows—probably another officer in an unmarked car. They were waiting to grab Duane Scrod Jr. if he tried to sneak home, although Dr. Dressler thought they’d have a better chance if they concealed themselves.
The headmaster pulled in next to the graffiti-sprayed Tahoe belonging to Duane’s father. As before, concert music was coming from the windows: Beethoven, this time, not Bach. Reluctantly, Dr. Dressler got out of the car and trudged up the steps and rapped on the screen door.
The stereo cut off and a raspy voice yelled, “Come in! Make it quick!”
“Mr. Scrod?”
Cautiously the headmaster stepped inside. Duane Scrod Sr. was reclining in a Naugahyde lounger in front of the TV set. The picture was on, but the volume was turned down. Duane Sr.’s cap was propped crookedly on his head, and his faded shirt was unbuttoned to the waist. Perched on the threadbare arm of his chair was the enormous blue-and-gold macaw.
“I ’member you,” Duane Scrod Sr. said groggily to Dr. Dressler. “So does Nadine.”
“May I sit down?”
“Nope. State your business and be on your way. I already had too many visitors today.” Duane Sr. didn’t take his eyes off the television screen. The bird, too, seemed entranced.
“What are you watching?” Dr. Dressler asked.
“A cookin’ show. From France.”
That wouldn’t have been the headmaster’s first guess. Based on Duane Sr.’s rough appearance, Dr. Dressler would have expected to find him tuned to pro wrestling or maybe a demolition derby on a Saturday morning. But you can’t judge a book by its cover, Dr. Dressler reminded himself. Af ter all, the man was into classical music.
Duane Sr. took a slug of Mountain Dew and said, “Junior’s mom lives in Paris. We were thinkin’ she might turn up on this TV show, when they get to the part of the recipe where they put in the cheese. She has a shop, that’s all she sells—fancy cheese! You imagine?”
