Hell's Bay

by James W. Hall

  “You could do that. You’re smart enough.”

  “Sure I could. How hard could it be? Just tell one thing, then the next. Keep it simple, stay out of your own way. Everything that’s happened. That’d make a hell of a story. Play up the biblical angle.”

  “Biblical?”

  “Family of Davids versus the Goliath clan. Smooth stones from the stream, barefoot shepherd with no armor standing in a field with his sling and rock. The giant laughing, mock-ing, saying he’ll cut off all our heads with a single swipe, feed our flesh to the birds and wild animals. Our boy lets loose his stone, and down comes that monster. Puts their army on the run, saves our people. That’s a story. That’s a great story. Ar-chetypal is what that is.”

  Sasha was quiet, looking out at the cove.

  “You don’t think that’s a great story?”

  “The Lord was on David’s side. The side of the Israelites.”

  “What? You don’t think he’s on ours?”

  “I hope so.”

  “You hope so?”

  “I think we’re about to find out.”

  “Hell, if God’s on Goliath’s side, I’d just as soon be dead. Isn’t any reason to go on clawing and scratching in that kind of world.”

  After a moment, Griffin levered himself to his feet, looked out at the bay Sasha had chosen as their home base.

  A narrow creek had carved a deep inlet into the mangrove forest; it was out of the wind, a mile east of the houseboat. Griffin drew a guarded breath, trying not to agitate the in-flamed tissues. Turning his head from side to side, taking in the cove, the comings and goings of egrets and pelicans, the sharp squeals of an osprey, the slap and jostle of water in the maze of mangrove roots.

  “This is a pretty place you brought us. A wild, beautiful Eden.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Hard to believe there’s places like this left.”

  Sasha was silent. Let him have his say.

  “Actually,” he said, “it’s breathtaking.”

  She looked at him closely.

  He turned a faint smile her way. “Word of the day,” he said. “Breathtaking.”

  His laugh started out fine, then turned into a deep, rattling cough. She moved to his side and pressed the damp cloth to his forehead and hugged his wasted frame to hers.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Walking across the gravel lot toward the canoe rental shop, Sugar spotted a thirtysomething guy down by the riverbank, sitting in an unpainted cane-back chair, smoking what looked like a hand-rolled cigarette. Sugar walked over and stood in a cloud of smoke that reeked of cloves.

  “You Sugarman?” Charlie kept his eyes on the river.

  “Yep.”

  Charlie reached out and patted the seat of the chair beside him. The young man had dirty-blond hair, hippie length, and a wispy goatee. He wore a single pearl in his right earlobe.

  Sugarman sat. His damp jeans had begun to chafe his thighs, and his boat shoes were slippery with mud. Not his finest hour.

  “Sheriff Whalen called, said you’d be by. Told me to cooperate.”

  Sugarman thought about that. Had she massaged Charlie somehow? Was she being helpful or trying to control the situation? Sugar thought again of the look she’d shown him at the gun shop. A sign that she knew more than she was willing to say. He let that go for now and settled back into the chair.

  “Pretty river,” Sugar said. “Nice spot to work.”

  “You want to know what happened. That’s why you’re here, right?”

  “Anytime you’re ready.”

  “She came to rent a canoe. I recognized her, then got on her case about what Bates International was doing.”

  “All right.”

  “I made some crack about wishing I’d brought a gun to work that day.”

  “That was fairly hostile.”

  “I was pissed off. It just came out.”

  “You own a gun?”

  “Hell, no. I hate guns.”

  “Okay.”

  “So I make this crack, and right away she pulled out this automatic. I found out later it was a Beretta nine millimeter. Serious-ass pistol. And she handed it to me.”

  “She handed it to you?”

  “She was like that. Put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is kind of lady. She was testing me. Held it by the barrel, offered me the grip.”

  “And you did what?”

  “I took it, pointed it at her. Man, just thinking about it now makes my asshole pucker. Right over there’s where it happened.” He waved at the shoreline about ten yards away. “I was putting her canoe in the water and we got to arguing, and out comes this gun and next thing I’m pointing it at her. First gun I’ve had in my hand, ever. No shit. I hate guns.”

  “Yeah,” Sugarman said. “There’s not much to love about them.”

  “And right then a van came rolling up.”

  “Two women from Sarasota,” Sugar said. “I read the newspaper story.”

  “Yeah, they had kids with them. They saw me aiming the gun at Ms. Bates and jumped back in and got the hell out of here. Used their cell phone to call nine-one-one, because Sheriff Whalen shows up like ten minutes later. She wanted to know what I’d done. I showed her the gun. And, man, she was pissed.”

  “You kept the gun?”

  “When Ms. Bates was sitting in the canoe, daring me to do something, I fired it into the water. I don’t know why. I was freaking out. I just fired it and fired it till it was empty and dropped it in the river. Shallow water at the bank.”

  “Okay, you dumped the pistol.”

  “When Sheriff Whalen showed up, I dug it out of the mud and gave it to her. She bad-mouthed me for a while, called me every kind of fool, then left. A few hours later she comes screaming back, her along with the whole police department, lights blazing. They’d found Ms. Bates’s body, and bang, there I was in the backseat of the sheriff’s car and on the way to jail. Five days I spent in a cell. Never been arrested before. Now that was bad.”

  Sugarman looked out at the river rolling by. The young man sounded sincere. The story he told had a well-worn feel, but not the kind of rehearsed quality of someone who’d worked out a lie to repeat over and over. This guy wasn’t complicated. Wasn’t cynical or two-faced.

  Sugarman had a fairly dependable feel for people. Usually he could hear a story and tell if some of it was phony. If the false note was there, most of the time Sugar could detect it. He guessed it was something irrational, some gift. He didn’t try to overanalyze how he accomplished it. It worked and he used it, and mostly it helped. But there could be false positives, too. Sometimes when he was sure he’d heard a lie, it turned out the guy was telling a true story but thought no one would believe it, so his voice got squeaky and it all came out sounding like a lie. That confused the issue and kept Sugar on his toes.

  “The sheriff didn’t really believe you drowned her.”

  “She acted like she did.”

  “But then later on she let you go.”

  “Yeah.”

  “She tell you why?”

  “Not really. She just said the medical examiner’s report called it a drowning, and she was ruling it accidental, and I was free.”

  “You didn’t drive downriver and jump in and drown Ms. Bates.”

  “Hell, no. After the sheriff left, I just sat around shaking. Mad and worked up. My hand hurt like hell from firing the pistol.” He shook his right hand at the memory.

  “You said the first time the sheriff came by and you told her what happened she was pissed.”

  “Royally.”

  “She tell you why?”

  “What do you mean? ’Cause I was such a doofus, threatening the old lady, shooting off a pistol.”

  “I saw the sheriff earlier today. She was dealing with a guy named Hankinson. You know him?”

  “Christ, yeah. White-power Nazi guy. Spent half his life in jail.”

  “He was a little more than a doofus, and the sheriff seemed pretty patient with
him.”

  “Oh, yeah. She’s easygoing for law enforcement.”

  “So it doesn’t strike you as strange she was so pissed about the gun incident? That wasn’t out of character for her?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe a little. What’re you saying?”

  “Maybe you stepped into something. You were a monkey wrench.”

  “I don’t get it,” he said.

  Sugarman shut up. Airing his suspicions in front of Charlie Kipling wasn’t smart. What he was starting to see was two Timmy Whalens. The cool, unruffled lady he’d met earlier with Hankinson. And the Timmy on that July day last summer. Jittery, stressed-out, pinballing around town.

  “What do you think happened to Ms. Bates after she left here? Everybody seems to think she fell out of her canoe and drowned.”

  Charlie turned his head and stared at Sugar. His eyes were sad, tired, dark circles and pouches underneath, and the whites were spiderwebbed with red veins. His eyes seemed a couple of decades older than the rest of him.

  “You’re the first person to ask me that.”

  “Really?”

  “The sheriff doesn’t care what I think. None of my friends wants to talk about it. They’re worried I did it and they don’t want to get involved.”

  “You didn’t do it.”

  “Damn right, I didn’t. I was getting ready to drive my truck down to the pullout and wait for Ms. Bates to show up to bring her back to her car when Timmy came back the second time and arrested me.”

  “You think somebody waylaid her.”

  Charlie Kipling was quiet for a while. He tugged on his blond chin whiskers and dug a toe in the loose soil.

  “Who you working for?”

  “Can’t talk about that.”

  “It’s Mona, isn’t it?”

  “I can’t go there, sorry.”

  “Well, it sure as hell isn’t John Milligan.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “ ’Cause he’s gotta be happy as a pig in shit how it’s turning out. This way he inherits the whole deal. The Horse Creek plan cranks up again.”

  “I see.”

  “So John Milligan, he’s the one I’d be looking at. He’s the natural suspect. He’s a badass. Barroom brawler, likes throwing his weight around.”

  “He’d kill his own mother?”

  He shrugged.

  “Ms. Bates was eighty-six. All Milligan had to do is wait a little and it’s his.”

  “Word going around is Ms. Bates was considering shutting down the entire mining operation, just pull the plug, walk away. Mona was working on her to do that. So maybe Milligan got worried the old lady was about to cave and do the right thing, and he whacks her.”

  Sugarman was silent, looking out at the river, its dark sparkle.

  “I’d put my chips on Milligan. Every chip I had.”

  “Let me ask you something, Charlie.” He watched as a couple of kids on inner tubes floated past. “You remember how Abigail Bates was dressed that day?”

  “Dressed?”

  “Any details? Her clothes.”

  “Fly-fishing shirt, all the vents,” Charlie said. “Baseball hat, tennis shoes, I think. Old beat-up jeans.”

  “Color of the tennis shoes, you remember that?”

  He shook his head.

  “How about the baseball hat? Any logo on it?”

  “Marlins,” he said. “I hate the Marlins, so I remember that.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Goddamn Marlins. Win the World Series, very next year that owner breaks up the team, trades everyone away. What kind of scumbag does that?”

  “Thanks, Charlie. Appreciate your time.”

  He nodded as Sugarman rose.

  “You know I can’t sleep worth a shit anymore,” Charlie said. “All these months later, I had maybe one, two good nights’ sleep that whole time.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “The goddamn guilt,” he said.

  “About what?”

  “Taking that old lady’s gun, dropping it in the water. If I hadn’t done that, she’d be alive today. She could’ve defended herself. That was my fault. Just at the exact moment she needed her gun, she didn’t have it.”

  Sugarman patted the young man on the shoulder.

  “You were a small piece of the action, Charlie. Don’t take that weight.”

  “Can’t help it. It’s how I’m put together.”

  Sugar gave his shoulder another pat.

  “Thanks for your help. You take care.”

  Sugar was behind the wheel of the Honda, about to slam the door, when Charlie turned in his chair and called something. Sugar leaned out the door.

  “Didn’t hear you, Charlie.”

  “Pink!” he yelled. “Tennis shoes she was wearing were pink. Like some teenage kid.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  It should have been simple. All I had to do was find the ignition wire, which was yellow with a red stripe, then locate the solid-red power-feed wire, then the kill-switch wire, which was tan and blue. Three wires. Strip the plastic covering back about three-quarters of an inch and twist the three together, voilà. After the engines started, I’d remove the red wire.

  It would’ve been that easy, except for one thing: The electrician Rusty had hired to wire the Mothership was Millard S lattery of Tavernier.

  I’d warned her about him. A sly drunk. Kept his flask hidden, always had his mouth full of Juicy Fruit to cover the reek of booze, never garbled his speech. Nice fellow, sharp wit, good stories.

  Since Millard’s last day on the job, I’d spent maybe a hundred hours rewiring switches, tearing out light fixtures, and redoing every plug in the staterooms and heads, grounding them, reversing the feeds, tightening loose connections. And then I spent another hundred hours tracking down a dozen other fire hazards Millard left behind.

  Rusty had hired him because Millard was cheap and she was cutting every corner she could find to hit her budget. She knew he was a lush, and had given him a stern warning to stay sober on the job. It hadn’t worked.

  As the trip got under way, I’d been pretty sure I’d located all his screwups, and corrected them, but I still found myself constantly sniffing for the telltale tang of shorting-out cir-cuitry.

  I’d never thought to check the wiring harness. There was no outward sign of trouble. The ignition system functioned perfectly, all the instruments in the wheelhouse operated fine. If the woman in the bass boat hadn’t slashed the harness, Millard’s shortcuts probably would have gone undetected for years.

  Instead of the standard color-coded wires, Millard had decided, God knows why, to use a random mix of red, green, white, blue, and black. No apparent rhyme or reason to his choices. Probably a two-flask afternoon.

  I had the electrical blueprint open on the chart table and was looking back and forth between its orderly diagram and the tangled clutter spilling out of the wiring harness, trying to figure out which wires were connected to the relay that would turn over the Mercury outboards without shorting out the rest of the system.

  So far the Westerbeke generators had been running fine, the air-conditioning still pumping, the lights and appliances powered up. But I could wreck all that with one wrong move. Blow the entire panel.

  The Mothership’s keyed ignition used a multiple-position switch, same as most cars. A quarter turn of the key lit up the accessory circuit that powered the radios and interior lights. Click two was the instrument cluster and spark-control computer, and click three engaged the starter motors. With three positions, times two engines, times six batteries, the number of wires running to the ignition switch was in the mid-double-digits. Even on a lazy day moored safely at the docks under no pressure, I would’ve had a hard time concentrating on finding the right combination.

  Mona shifted at the edge of my vision.

  “You wanted to talk to me?”

  I kept my focus on the schematic for a moment, trying to bring some order to my thoughts and let my pulse cool. I
wasn’t sure what triggered my arousal. Maybe it was the flush that came to Mona’s face out in that nameless lake, a woman lit up by that place, those fish, savoring that stillness. A kindred spirit. Her hair, her face, some trick of light. Or the briny scent she secreted like some lush flower releasing its spores into the wind. Maybe watching Teeter die on the floor of his cabin had quickened my needs. That weird catalyzing effect the dead have on the living. Thanatos stimulating Eros.

  I ran a finger along the blueprint, tracing the intricate path of the ignition wire, from the batteries in their hatch on the stern deck through the aluminum tubing that crisscrossed the inner walls and eventually led to the wheelhouse. The task was to choose the right wire and trace it back to the fuse box, jumping over the busted-up circuit breaker to draw juice directly from the twelve volts and send it to the Mercury outboards.

  “Okay, then, I’m leaving. I’m going back below.”

  “You recognized her voice, Mona. The woman in the boat. You know who she is.”

  Mona sighed and settled into the swivel seat beside the wheel. She looked out at the darkening sky, the whitecaps kicking up on the bay.

  “I did and I didn’t,” she said.

  “Let’s hear the ’did’ part.”

  “Her voice is familiar. I believe she’s someone I’ve met.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  She waffled her hand. Somewhat sure.

  “And her face? When you saw her this morning, did you recognize her?”

  “I don’t know. She came at us so fast, I didn’t get that clear a look.” Mona drew her shoulders back from the slump she’d settled into. “It’s somebody from home. Summerland, Wauchula, Ona. Somebody from that world. But I don’t know. Familiar features, familiar voice, but no name, nothing specific. I can’t place the context. Some store or office around town, she’s a clerk, maybe works at the school. I’m almost certain it’s somebody from up there, but beyond that, I’m drawing a blank.”

  “Okay.”

  “Not that it would matter much if we knew her name.”