Gator Wave

by David F. Berens

  “That’s where the alligator got it,” Gary said, pointing his light at the damage.

  A brilliant sparkle lit up as he moved his flashlight over the bite marks.

  Dani, walked toward the front and bent over. She picked something up and dropped it quickly.

  “What? What is it?” Gary asked.

  Dani had slapped her hand over her mouth and she said something, but Gary couldn’t understand.

  He moved closer. “Hun, take your hand off your mouth.”

  “A finger,” Dani said. “I think it was … your friend’s finger.”

  “Oh, gross,” Gary said. “But what was that sparkling?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe a ring or something.”

  Dani took a deep breath and felt around the inside of the boat. She pulled her hand out and Gary shined his light on the object. Definitely a finger—Matty’s finger. It had a large, golden ring on it with several jewels, maybe diamonds, mounted on the top. Before Gary could say anything, Dani reached down under her arm, opened her purse, and dropped the finger inside.

  “What the hell are you doing, Dani?”

  “I’ve lost a very expensive wig and a very expensive pair of rain boots. I’m sure I can pawn this thing and replace them.”

  “That is downright disgusting,” Gary said.

  “No. Disgusting is what you did by bringing another man out here, watching him get attacked by a vicious amphibian beast, and then leaving him to get eaten and die. That’s disgusting.”

  Gary was about to argue that he didn’t have a choice. If he had stayed behind to help Matty, he would’ve died as well, but before he could, the water churned up under the boat and a long row of razor sharp teeth erupted from below the surface.

  Before he could move, an alligator—maybe the same alligator—had snapped its jaws around Dani’s waist. He rolled and pulled her under in a thrashing, splashing, crashing explosion of reddening water.

  Gary was stunned, frozen in horror and shock. It was déjà vu all over again. He’d watched the same exact scene unfold with Matty and now with Dani. Only it wasn’t the exact same scene, this time, he had a gun. He reached behind his back, pulled the gun from his waistband and pulled the trigger until it clicked.

  He must have clipped the gator because it screamed and dove, taking Dani with it.

  “Dani!” he yelled, running after it as best he could. “Dani!!”

  He lunged forward and bumped into something. He aimed his gun and squeezed the trigger again, but it was empty. Between gasps of air, he pointed his flashlight at the object, thinking that it might be the alligator, or maybe Dani’s body, but it was neither.

  It was a glittery, sequined pink purse—Dani’s purse. He glanced around. All the commotion and splashing had caused the kayak to sink again, and there was no sign of Dani … or any … part of Dani. She was gone. Everything was gone. He tossed his gun away and it plopped into the water and sank.

  When all had quieted again, he heard the not-too-distant sound of an engine … a car … and it was close. He walked in the direction of the noise and discovered that they had been about twenty feet away from the Overseas Highway and his Jeep. He got in and tossed Dani’s purse into the passenger’s seat. Shivering, shaking, scared out of his mind, he screeched onto the road and tore off into the night.

  26

  I Ain’t No Fortunate Son

  “Troy Clint Bodean, sir.”

  “And that’s your full legal name? No aliases or anything like that?” the police officer asked, scribbling notes on a yellow pad.

  “Reckon that’s the only name I’ve ever gone by,” Troy said. “My brother used to call me T-Roy, but that has been a long, long time ago.”

  “T-Roy?”

  “Yup. You know, like Troy, but with the T and the Roy separated.”

  The man—apparently some kind of special agent—tapped a few keys on his laptop while Troy waited. He was a small, kind of rat-like fellow, with dark eyes, dark hair, and oddly large, oversized clothes on his wiry frame. It looked a bit like he might be wearing someone else’s uniform, which worried Troy a little. That and the fact that he’d brought him back to his apartment rather than a police station or federal building or the like.

  It was a small apartment building that smelled like mildew, cat urine, and low tide—which wasn’t all that unusual for Islamorada. The man who called himself Ian Bass, claimed he was an FDLE Agent on special assignment in the Keys. He said he was an undercover officer tracking unusual mob activity in the area and was close to a breakthrough in the case. But that was when he’d gotten a hunch that some kind of serial killer was on the loose.

  He clicked a few keys on his laptop and read from an open document.

  “The so-called Cowboy Killer is responsible for the deaths of at least three people including Earl Heskett, owner of Benny’s World of Liquor, Phil Claxton, the Vice Mayor of Pembroke Pines, and Haley Joel Osmet.”

  Ian looked over his shoulder, “Not the Haley Joel Osmet, but a girl who’s mother apparently had such a crush on the actor that she named her daughter after the actor. Strange world we’re living in Mr. uh…”

  “Bodean. But you can call me Troy.”

  He sniffed and turned back to his screen. “Says here that multiple eye-witnesses say the killer has a tattoo on his upper back near his right shoulder that says, ‘Tasty Cherries.’ You got anything like that?”

  “Nope. Don’t got any that I know of.”

  “Do you mind showing me?”

  Troy unbuttoned his rumpled linen shirt and showed the man his unmarked back. He felt a little odd when the man snapped a few pictures of it with his phone. He took several more, profile, front view, back of the head, and so on before attaching the photos to an email to send off to the FDLE. Troy also saw photos of the man he’d seen Officer Bass stuffing into the back of the Sheriff’s vehicle on the same email. That man didn’t have any tattoos either and didn’t look anything like the artist’s rendering of the Cowboy Killer Ian showed him.

  Ian spun his chair around and stood up. “Okay then, I guess you can go,” he said, holding his hand out indicating the door. “Stay out of trouble. Oh, and I don’t think I’d go back to the tennis club if I were you. I feel like this guy might have been looking for you.”

  “Lookin’ for me?” Troy asked. “Why in the world would anyone want to find me?”

  “Don’t know the answer to that question,” Ian shrugged. “But he was packing like an assassin.”

  “An assassin? What in the … why would anyone want to kill me?”

  He thought of a few times that he’d crossed paths with evil people in his life, but most of them were gone—either dead or in prison.

  “Uh huh,” Ian said. “So, I’d lay low if I were you. Find someplace other than the Islamorada Tennis Club to hole up for a while.”

  “But I don’t have anyplace else to go.”

  “Well, there are plenty of hotels around. It might be a good idea to get a room for a few days, don’t make contact with anyone, keep a low profile, order takeout, that kind of thing until I figure this thing out.”

  He started to tell Ian he didn’t have any money to get a hotel room, but before he could, his phone rang. He’d almost forgotten he had it on him. He reached into his pocket and pulled it out to show Cinnamon’s number on the screen. He looked at it, looked up at Ian, then back at the screen.

  “You gonna answer that?” Ian asked.

  Troy nodded and clicked the button. “Hello?”

  On the other end of the line, Troy could hear noise, but no one seemed to be on the phone. He put his hand over the mic and mouthed the words, ‘butt dial’ to Ian. Ian squinted, apparently confused about what that meant.

  Troy felt the need to explain. “It’s where the person’s phone is in their back pocket and perhaps when they sit down to dinner, or maybe on the couch to watch a movie, their bottom activates the phone and makes an unintended call.”

  “I know what it is, you id
iot,” Ian snapped.

  “Well, I didn’t mean no offense, officer.”

  Troy put the phone back to his ear. He strained to listen and could finally make out a few muffled voices, one of which he thought might be Cinnamon. Snippets of words broke through and sent a chill up his spine. He heard something about an alligator eating someone just before the call disconnected.

  He punched the button to redial her, but the call couldn’t connect. He tried several more times before looking up at Ian.

  “It won’t go through.”

  “It’s the cell tower strength. It really sucks here in the apartment. Probably the lead paint messing with the signal,” Ian said. “It’s always better out by the road. I’ve got to go, so why don’t you try to call back up there … and maybe get a cab to take you to a hotel.”

  Troy nodded and walked out the door. He walked up to the road near the entrance to the apartments. Under the faded sign announcing Lime Tree Apartments, his signal got up to two bars. He dialed Cinnamon again and waited.

  TEN MINUTES EARLIER

  Cinnamon Starr woke up in a tub of freezing cold water with someone banging insistently on the door to her one bedroom dung heap of an apartment. At first, she had been convinced she was dreaming about being a performer in the hit Broadway show, Stomp, but as the fogginess of sleep left her she realized that show was passé and hadn’t been a thing since Friday, December 12th, 2012.

  She pulled the stopper on the tub and let the water drain as she toweled off. Wrapping her hair in it, she draped her robe around her, grabbed her phone (without seeing the fourteen missed call notifications,) and tiptoed to the front door. She put her eye up to the peephole to see who was doing all the loud knocking.

  Her neighbor and sometimes shoe shopping buddy, Gary Suskind from the apartment down the way, was standing outside, soaking wet, muddy, and pale. He shook like a man who had chugged one too many Red Bull’s and his eyes were sunken and dark.

  “Gary, is that you?” she called through the closed door.

  “Yes, it’s me,” he hissed. “I know you can see me through the peephole. Let me in please. It’s an emergency.”

  She unlocked and unchained the door and before she could get out of the way, Gary shoved his way in and slammed it behind him. Naturally, it didn’t latch correctly. It hadn’t worked right since she’d moved in two years ago and Myrtle seemed less than interested in having it fixed. As it was, Cinnamon had to heave upward on the knob as she pulled it shut and engaged the deadbolt. Otherwise, it swung open—as it had now.

  Gary paced back and forth like a family member waiting anxiously for the bad news from the attending emergency room doctor. He steepled his hands in front of his lips and Cinnamon made a mental note to ask him what shade of pink he’d used on his fingernails. She thought it would coordinate perfectly with her latest Dusty Rose, rhinestone-sequined thong acquisition from JuJu’s Bodyscapes.

  He moaned and groaned and mumbled to himself and for a few moments she wondered if he was on drugs. He didn’t usually partake of anything stronger than weed, but who was she to judge. He was carrying on about an alligator and a kayak and the most random things, maybe even a dead body.

  She stood up and positioned herself on an intercept course to his southerly path across her Grandmother’s Persian rug. She was surprised when he didn’t slow and bumped into her and they toppled to the floor like lovers—him on top, her on bottom. She never noticed that her phone had tumbled out of her pocket and skidded across the vinyl wood flooring until it came to a rest under the couch. She also never noticed that it had connected to a call from one Cute Cowboy Troy—the name she had assigned to him in her contacts. Gary wasn’t a massive guy, but falling on her in such an unexpected way caused her to cry out.

  “If you two are going to be shagging and screaming at each other, at least shut your door. I’ve had two noise complaints and both of you know that three is an instant call to the cops.”

  Cinnamon craned her neck to see who was speaking and unfortunately got a rather unpleasant view upside down of the lower contents of Myrtle Hussholder’s thin nighty. She felt bile rise up in her throat and heaved to throw Gary off. Jumping to her feet, Cinnamon ran her fingers through her hair. As she regained her composure, she realized Myrtle’s eyes were tracking up and down over her body. Looking down, she saw that her robe had come untied during the fall and she was full frontal nude in front of the woman—who oddly, didn’t seem to be repulsed, but rather … pleased. Eww, thought Cinnamon. But before she could raise any sort of protest to the old woman’s gawking, Gary had grabbed her hand, jerking her out of the door. And that is how the one good-looking stripper on Islamorada came to be riding down Overseas Highway in a 1980 Daisy Duke model Jeep CJ-7 with the only man she knew—who had no interest in getting in her pants—in her bathrobe and house shoes … and nothing else.

  Five minutes later, Gary swung the Jeep into Robbie’s of Islamorada. Robbie’s was nearly world famous for their waterfront restaurant, daily tarpon feeding, party boat and charter fishing, snorkeling, parasailing, sunset cruises, boat rentals, jet-ski adventures, and serendipitously, kayak tours. But at this time of night—just before closing time—it was a dark, creaking, nightmarish place. The only customers left were local fishermen hunched over stale beers and the dozing drunk tourists who had passed through the “fun and rowdy stage” into the “two seconds before blackout” stage. One of them came stumbling out of the restaurant in what had to be a hard bourbon daze. He swore into his cellphone and promptly smashed it into the lighted sign above the pier.

  It looked exactly like a scene from a tropical thriller novel or murder mystery show on the ID Channel. Gary parked his Jeep in the first open spot—it was marked for handicapped customers, but at this point, he counted himself as mentally disabled. He buried his face in his hands, and began to sob.

  “Gary, hun,” Cinnamon said, running her hand across his back, “what’s wrong? Why are we here? I mean, I’m not all that sad to be out of sight of that crone, but—”

  “It’s Dani!” he cried, interrupting her. “He’s gone.”

  “Oh, Gary,” she said, “I’m so sorry. We both know that relationship wasn’t going to last. What was it? Another woman? Er, another … man?”

  “No!” He looked up, mascara was running down his cheeks. “Dani didn’t leave me. The alligator got her. Same one that got—”

  He stopped talking suddenly.

  “Alligator? What? What are you talking about, Gary?”

  A massive pelican splashed into the water in front of them startling Cinnamon so that she almost wet herself. For Robbie’s to be such a fun-loving, daytime water sport activity spot, this place sure was creepy at night.

  “The alligator ate the kayak,” Gary wheezed, his eyes shining like those of Jack Torrance after a few weeks at the Overlook Hotel.

  She squeaked when he grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “And poor, sweet, beautiful Dani. The damn thing ate Dani, too.”

  And that was when Cinnamon ruined Gary’s luxury noble fluffy wool seat covers.

  27

  Splashing And Thrashing

  Troy punched Cinnamon’s number again and again, but it went to voicemail every time after a couple of rings. He wasn’t an expert on such things, but he figured since it was actually ringing, that her phone was on and receiving the calls—and she wasn’t rejecting them. The music at Woody’s was pretty dang loud now since they’d added the wacky drummer … maybe she just couldn’t hear it ring.

  There was a time in his life, a time that was long gone down the dusty road of the past, that he would have simply walked on home and let things play out. But the years between the war in Afghanistan and his arrival in the trailer park, island town of Islamorada had taught him a healthy respect for the fact that there were a whole bunch of messed up people out there. People who would do bad, after-midnight things to a pretty girl like Cinnamon. People who would take pleasure in her pain and not give two-pennies of a ca
re about her at all.

  As he tucked his phone back in his pocket and stared blankly at the empty, windy, wet stretch of Overseas Highway stretching out in front of him, a thought occurred to him regarding Cinnamon’s active, yet unanswered cell. He’d seen more than enough cop shows to know they had ways—ways as foreign and unknowable to Troy as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle or the Schrödinger equation—of tracking the location of an active cellular phone as long as it was equipped with GPS. And since, he’d just come from the apartment of an FDLE officer, he figured that the man might have access to such tracking equipment. If he didn’t have it in his apartment, he could probably make a quick call to someone in another, more important location, who did.

  He jogged back toward the Lime Tree Apartments and took the metal steps two at a time up to Ian Bass’s apartment. Only, he underestimated just how slick the well-worn edges of the stairs would be and on the last one, his foot slid off, scraping his shin against the edge. At the same time, his bad knee buckled in pain as his foot slammed into the next step down. He yelped in pain and simultaneously lost his balance. He fell backward, clanging his way down, banging into every step along the way. In the silence of the night, it sounded like a group of grossly inaccurate high school cymbal players had decided to practice the rousing conclusion of John Phillip Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever right there on the stairs.

  When he reached the bottom, he lay flat on his back for a few seconds, catching his breath and waiting for the telltale stab of pain in one or more broken bones. As he slowed his breathing, he realized the rain had stopped and there were a few stars beginning to poke through the late-night clouds. The smell of fish and trash and cat urine told him he was lying in a popular feline restroom. He dreaded to think what he might be laying in, so he slowly eased himself up to a sitting position. As he did, a door on the second floor flew open and he heard a screeching sound that reminded him of the loose drive belt on the pickup truck he’d owned back on Pawleys Island. It got louder until he saw the source of the awful racket.