Hell's Bay

by James W. Hall

  “All right, honey. So tell us.”

  Teeter drew a swallow of air, his eyes tilted toward the water’s edge.

  “She asked me if I was Daniel Oliver Thorn.”

  “What?” I grabbed hold of his shoulder. “Daniel Oliver Thorn? She said that?”

  Rusty peeled my fingers off her brother, and I stepped back and raised both hands in apology. I looked over at Milligan. He and Mona had heard the exchange. John was moving to the rear of the skiff with Mona dogging him, speaking under her breath.

  When I looked back at Rusty, her stare was fixed on me as she spoke to her brother. “All right, Teeter. What did you say when she asked you this?”

  “I said yes, I was. I don’t know why I said it.”

  “You told this woman you were Thorn, Daniel Oliver Thorn?”

  “Yes.”

  “And then?”

  Rusty was still glowering at me. Thorn, the poisonous black cloud. The man with toxic karma.

  “Then she asked me . . .” Teeter shivered and gazed off at the horizon. “She asked me how long I could hold my breath.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “The presence of aqueous liquid in the paranasal sinuses in conjunction with other findings—a plume of froth around the mouth and nostrils, emphysema aquosum, Paltauf’s spots, increased hemolysis, and so on—is regarded as clear and definite signs of drowning. You following this, Mr. Sugarman?”

  “So far.”

  Dr. Dennis Dillard sniffed and shook out his white handkerchief and blew his nose into it for the third time in as many minutes. He was a small, thin man with a carefully knotted red tie, a starched white shirt, and black trousers. He wore black off-the-rack reading glasses low on his nose. His whitish blond hair had thinned away to a transparent layer combed across his oily scalp. He was in his mid-forties. The walls of his office were crammed with plaques, framed diplomas, and other credentials.

  “So you’re in law enforcement, Mr. Sugarman?”

  “I am.”

  “With the state?”

  Sugarman shrugged, noncommittal. Let him believe what he would.

  There was a fist-sized ceramic skull on the desk, a gag gift with a springy hinge on its jaw. The only sign of levity in the room. Sugar reached out and jiggled the jaw into motion, watching it flutter up and down like the silent prattling of the dead.

  “FDLE?”

  Sugarman said nothing. He was not a practiced liar and wasn’t about to begin practicing today.

  “Maybe you could show me some ID.”

  “Would you like me to call Sheriff Whalen, have her ask you again to cooperate with me?”

  “Well, at least tell me this: Are you here in response to my emails?”

  Sugarman kept his face blank. This peevish little man was a snitch, tattling on the sheriff about something. Probably disgruntled about petty department politics. It was none of Sugarman’s business, but he saw no reason to set the medical examiner straight.

  “Just give me some kind of sign so I know who I’m talking to,” the doctor said.

  “I’m here to get to the bottom of Ms. Bates’s death.”

  “Does Sheriff Whalen know your mission? Why you’re here?”

  “To this point, the sheriff has acted very professionally with me.”

  Dillard huffed. Still not sure how deferential he should be.

  Sugarman had seen it before, feuds between the lab coats and badges. Desk jockeys and street cops battling for the bu-reaucratic table scraps.

  “So you ruled it an accidental drowning. You’re a hundred percent certain of that?”

  Dillard looked down at his notes inside the open folder and smiled to himself. A smug man, probably the most educated person on the county payroll. The type of guy who thrived on that fact, having found the ideal venue to browbeat his inferiors.

  Outside his single window, a team of brown-skinned workers mowed the grass and clipped the hedges while two white guys stood watch in the shade and chatted.

  “As you may or may not know, Mr. Sugarman, the sphenoid sinus is easily accessible at autopsy; and its content can be aspirated from the base of the skull with a cannula. In the scientific literature, the valency of the liquid content in the sphenoid sinuses has been consecutively investigated in deaths by drowning and compared with deaths of other causes. The results showed that in ninety-two percent of the deaths by drowning between one milliliter and four milliliters of aqueous fluid is found in the sphenoid sinuses. Ms. Bates’s sinus contained three milliliters.”

  “So she drowned,” Sugar said.

  “Without a doubt.”

  The doctor’s office was only big enough to fit two people comfortably, and Dillard had arranged his large desk crosswise, hogging two-thirds of the space for himself, leaving any interloper with a cramped third. A single chair was wedged into a corner. Sugarman stayed on his feet and prowled his tiny area. He touched the corner of a framed diploma, a B.A. degree from some college he didn’t recognize, a medical degree from a state university in Iowa. Sugar straightened that frame a couple of degrees.

  “No second thoughts about your ruling?” Sugar said. “Not a heart attack, some other incident prior to the drowning?”

  “She went into the water alive, inhaled, and drowned.”

  “So she lost her balance, tumbled out? That’s how you see it?”

  “That’s one scenario. Strictly speaking, it’s not my job to hypothesize. Florida State Statute four-oh-six-eleven puts any accidental death under my jurisdiction. Maintaining liaison with the sheriff’s office, as you know, is my role. To pass along my findings. However, let’s be clear: In some departments, medical examiners are a crucial part of the investigative team; however, in this particular setting, I’m treated as a subordinate, merely an advisor. Sheriff Whalen, and she alone, determines the direction of the investigation.”

  Sugarman waited for a moment, letting Dillard’s pissy tone die away.

  “Tell me about the Peace River. I floated down it once a long time ago. We’re not talking white water. Right?”

  “It’s a calm waterway, yes, but as the sheriff likes to point out, the victim was eighty-six years old. People of that age frequently lose their balance.”

  “No other signs of trauma?”

  Dillard settled his elbows on the desk, steepled his fingers, fingertip to fingertip.

  “Sheriff Whalen didn’t seem to think so.”

  “I take it you’re not a fan of the sheriff?”

  “I need to see some ID, Mr. Sugarman, before we go any further.”

  Sugar was tempted to play on Dillard’s wishful thinking and impersonate a Florida Department of Law Enforcement agent. It was probably the most direct way to get the truth out of this weasel. But if Sugar was going to lower his standards, this wasn’t the day and this wasn’t the man.

  “I’m a private investigator. I’m working for a member of the Bates family. Not Mona and not John.”

  “Who else is there?”

  “I’m not at liberty to disclose that.”

  “Well, well, well,” he said. “That puts a new light on things.”

  “Whatever findings I make, Dr. Dillard, will be exposed. If someone has been concealing facts or manipulating the investigation, it’s my duty and privilege to set the record straight.”

  Dillard tucked his chin and spent a few seconds appraising Sugarman over the brim of his glasses. Not the white knight he’d been hoping for, but better than nothing. After a moment more, a thin smile formed on his lips and his eyes brightened a degree. Sugar was in.

  “The body had no bruises?” Sugar said. “Contusions, bumps, fractures, anything consistent with a struggle before drowning? Or maybe something odd in her bloodstream— prescription drugs or alcohol? I assume you did a full toxicology workup.”

  Dillard ran a long finger along his neck as if checking his morning shave.

  “And I need to see the photos,” Sugarman said. “The autopsy.”

  He knew he was p
ushing it. But this little man in his cramped office with his framed degrees and his pallor and transparent skin and haughty style had pushed some button deep in Sugarman. Or maybe it was the accumulated effects of the day: Hankinson and his nigger remark. The white boys outside in the grass, supervising their Mexican slave labor. The Old South motoring on into the twenty-first century as if Lincoln had never freed anybody, as if Dr. King had never had a dream. Such a spike of rage was new for him, surprising. It twisted the muscles in his cheeks, felt like it was distorting his face into a teeth-baring growl. Not like him. Not at all.

  Dillard must’ve caught a whiff of Sugar’s anger. His eyes dropped to his desk and for a moment he seemed to be having a silent debate with himself. Weighing the risk of extending his hand to a stranger against his fear that his long-hoped-for savior would abandon him and never reappear. The fear won out, for when he snapped his eyes up at Sugar again, the brittle light of defiance had dimmed.

  “I want you to know I’ve acquainted myself with Human Rights Provision one-twenty-nine, July seventh, nineteen-ninety-one, the Florida Whistleblower’s Act. The sheriff has absolutely no legal authority to retaliate against me.”

  “Lay it out for me, Dillard, top to bottom. Stop wasting my time.”

  The doctor swallowed once and looked out his window. A fine gloss of sweat shone on his forehead. He closed the folder, slid it to the edge of the desk, and offered it up with averted eyes.

  It wasn’t Sugar’s way to bully. But maybe he’d have to reconsider that, seeing how quickly Dillard caved.

  In the file there were eighteen black-and-white photos. Fairly good quality for a small-town medical examiner, clear focus, good lighting. Abigail Bates was a tall woman who had carried no extra fat. She looked tough and defiant, even flat on her back, naked under the glare of operating room lights.

  Despite the flattening effects of death, Sugar could see from her strong Roman nose and the wide flare of cheekbones a family resemblance to Thorn. There were five close-ups of her white flesh. Two showed her left upper arm and shoulder. On her triceps were four small but distinct bruises.

  Dillard had isolated them, taken two shots of the same four bruises. Sugarman set those photos next to the ceramic skull. He fanned out the others on the desk and examined them one by one. Another bruise on her thigh, as large as a pinecone, just above the right knee. A small laceration on her throat, a jagged cut that looked like something a submerged branch might do as Abigail Bates’s body was dragged downstream by the current.

  “And all this was included in your written report? These four bruises?”

  He nodded, his eyes on his wall of honors.

  “That’s a handprint, isn’t it?”

  “That was my professional analysis.” Muscles clenched in the doctor’s face.

  “Fingerprints, anything under her fingernails?”

  “One would’ve hoped, but no, nothing like that. Just those bruises and another set of slight discolorations on the edges of her hands which would be consistent with the victim striking at an object, hammering.”

  “Looks to me like someone looped an arm across the old lady’s chest and gripped her upper arm.”

  With his eyes on his wall, Dillard spoke in a pinched voice.

  “The sheriff thought otherwise. She said there could be any number of explanations for those bruises.”

  Sugarman took the file over to the chair and sat. Double-spaced, it was three pages long. Dry and clinical. No embellishments or ornament. A passing couple in a canoe spotted the body on the riverbank two miles short of the takeout. Sometime before that, Abigail Bates was last seen alive by a young woman in a kayak. The woman, a Ms. Featherstone, estimated the encounter to have taken place four miles short of the takeout.

  So somewhere within that two-mile stretch Abigail Bates had drowned. Included in the file was a map of the river, neatly drawn on graph paper, that sketched that two-mile section. Within that portion of the waterway were three lazy turns and one sharp one, but other than that the river took a straight shot to the southwest.

  “Someone took her under,” Sugar said. “Held her till she drowned.”

  Dillard was silent, staring at his hands lying on his desk.

  “You showed Sheriff Whalen these bruises, and she discounted them?”

  Dillard pushed his chair back and rose to his feet. He took his reading glasses off and set them on his ink blotter. Then he drew a sharp breath and held Sugarman’s gaze.

  “Abigail Bates was the object of loathing in this community. There was no political outcry when the investigation ended without a suspect. The sheriff knew full well she was under no pressure to produce one.”

  “You made your case to the sheriff that it wasn’t an accident, but she blew you off.”

  Dillard touched a finger to the corner of his mouth as if freeing a crumb.

  “Precisely.”

  “Why would she do that?” Sugarman said. “Why would Sheriff Whalen ignore such compelling evidence of foul play?”

  That won a bitter smile from Dr. Dillard. Misogynist to misogynist.

  “You’d have to ask the sheriff that. Personally, I never saw anyone work so hard to ignore evidence.”

  “You think she’s covering for somebody? She knows who did it, and she’s giving them a pass?”

  The smile on Dillard’s lips was almost too loathsome to behold. A pompous ass who’d been humbled by a black woman and was still stinging.

  That Sheriff Whalen might be guilty of protecting a murderer seemed to be of far less importance to Dillard. He’d been sitting in his tiny office stewing about the personal in-justice of being treated as hired help, the injury to his ego, composing emails, trying to stir up the higher powers. He’d been plotting his revenge when Sugarman stumbled into the picture.

  “Covering for someone is one possibility, I suppose.” Dillard lifted his eyebrows. Letting Sugarman fill in the blanks.

  “But you think it’s more than that.”

  “I have my suspicions.”

  “What? Whalen is in on the crime? She’s an accomplice?”

  Dillard sat back down in his chair with a quiet sigh as though elated to finally hear the words uttered aloud. After a moment his shoulders lifted and he washed his dry white hands against each other. Now, on to business.

  “I heard something about videos,” Sugar said. “Protest speeches.”

  Dillard cocked an eyebrow.

  “Well, well, someone’s been a busy boy.”

  “You know about them?”

  “Of course. They were made by C.C. Olsen at Pine Tree School, his folkloric record of the ills of the community.”

  “Bates International, the big bad corporate villain?”

  “Oh, my yes, a lot of anger seething around these parts. Misdirected, I must say.”

  Sugarman looked down at the ceramic skull. Its jaw had stopped moving. Quiet now, said its piece.

  “So,” Dillard said. “I presume you’ll be needing copies of everything. The autopsy report, photos. I’ll have my girl reproduce them for you.”

  “Yes,” Sugarman said. “Have her do that.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Rusty took teeter to his cabin to help him get washed up, and I ordered Mona and John Milligan to have a seat at the gal-ley table.

  “I need a whiskey,” John said.

  I stepped to the right, blocking his path to the bar.

  “Sit down. We’re going to talk.”

  We stood face-to-face, an arm’s length apart. His face was ruddy from our hours in the hard, unfiltered sun, but there was a darker shade simmering beneath the surface, the unmistak-able burn of rage. I readied myself to duck and sidestep the right cross he seemed to be measuring.

  Then he closed his eyes, sucked a noisy breath through his nose, and blew it out in disgust. He turned away and slid into the leather booth. A man unfamiliar with backing down.

  Annette wedged in at the other end of the booth while near the bar Holland bebop
ped to some tune in his head and tinkered with the settings on his Nikon. He was wearing black trousers today, a black open-collar shirt, and a white watch cap that he’d rolled down over his ears. Some kind of punk-ass fashion statement. Across the galley Mona had be-gun to wander about, carrying dirty plates to the sink and rinsing them, straightening the countertops, storing leftover food from our breakfast in Tupperware containers.

  “Now talk to me, John. This complete stranger comes out of nowhere and terrorizes Teeter. She knows my full name. That’s two people in two days. You and her. So, talk. What the hell’s going on?”

  “It’s about the river,” Mona said. “The watershed, phos-phate mining. It has to be.”

  “All right, Mona. Go on.”

  “My grandmother was drowned in the Peace River. That was no coincidence. It was a warning, clear and simple.” She studied the backs of her hands pressed against the counter-top and nodded to herself as if lost in a long calculation.

  “Come on, let’s hear it.”

  She sighed and raised her head, then finger-combed some snarls out of her hair and glanced around the galley at noth-ing in particular.

  “I’m a biologist. A Ph.D. from Florida State.”

  “Relevance,” Holland said from the bar. He had Mona in the sights of his Nikon, adjusting the focus.

  “I run the mitigation program for Bates.”

  “Define ’mitigation,’ ” Holland said.

  Annette said, “Mona is a problem solver. Her job is to find ways to ease tensions between the company’s interests and the interests of the community.”

  “Use the word in a sentence,” Holland said.

  I swung around and put myself in the center of his frame.

  “Here’s a sentence for you, Holland. Either cut the shit, or I’ll mitigate your ass overboard.”

  From four feet away he snicked a picture of me, then an-other. Then switched to his motor drive and machine-gunned me with a dozen more.

  “He’s like that,” Annette said. “He’s just playing. Don’t get in a huff.”

  Mona’s eyes were muddy as though her emotions had burned down to a hard nub of grief.