Deadly Welcome (19 page)

John Geer loped off.

As soon as he was gone Buddy said, “This is just as rough on old John as it is on me. He’d follow her around like a dog if she’d let him.”

The phone rang and he snatched it up. “Yeah? That’s right. Hello! Skippy? We got trouble. I don’t want to take time to explain. Need you for a search. All those bay islands to the south of us here. It’s life and death, boy. Can you get over here fast? Good. I’ll be out in the bay on a Prowler. White with blue trim. It’s got a ship-to-who, and when you get close enough, you call me
on the Coast Guard emergency channel and I’ll tell you what to look for. You run that bird flat out, hear?”

He hung up. “It won’t take him long.”

John Geer had followed orders, and he had the twin engines of the fast little cabin cruiser turning over. They went aboard and Buddy took the controls while John Geer cast off the remaining lines. Doyle noticed that Geer had a pistol shoved into the waistband of his jeans. It looked like a twenty-two, possibly a Woodsman. Once they were clear of the docks, Buddy shoved the throttles forward. The boat came to life, the engines roaring in synchronization, the white bow cutting the blue morning water. They headed down the bay about four miles before Buddy throttled down. He sent John to the bow to throw over the small anchor. When it bit firm and the boat swung to rest in the tidal current at the edge of the channel, Buddy cut the motors, leaned below and turned on the ship-to-shore. From time to time, very faintly, they could pick up the routine reports of the search planes off Sarasota.

Doyle looked at the islands. They were unchanged from the days when the Caloosas had built their mounds there. Jungles of mangrove to the water’s edge and, where they were high enough, clumps of cabbage palm, some live oaks on the bigger ones.

Sunday fishing traffic passed them, and people waved casually.

“If you fixed the motor,” Doyle asked, “could he get to where he was going?”

“Running at night it would be cooler. It wouldn’t heat up so fast. He might make four miles. He might make ten. Depends on how fast. And at night he’d run slower. He could get where he’s going, maybe. He might have gone into the islands and then waited for daylight so old Lucas could guide him the rest of the way. It would have time maybe to cool down so it would start again. But even if it didn’t, he had a paddle in there. If he
took Betty along, I guess he figured on running. But he won’t get out of there fast with that motor. I wish to God I hadn’t buggered up the motor now. Maybe he would have just left them there. But if he’s stuck …”

“Shut up, please, Buddy,” John Geer said and turned away.

“
Slow Goose
calling Larkin on the Prowler,” a drawling voice came in, startlingly loud and clear. Buddy jumped for the hand mike.

“Larkin on the
Aces Up
, come in, Skippy.”

“
Slow Goose
to the
Aces Up
, I’m halfway from Davis, boy, and you should spot me soon. Where are you? Over.”

“
Aces Up
to the
Slow Goose
, I’m about a mile northeast of Windy Pass anchored beside the channel. Look for a twelve-foot aluminum boat with a bright red motor on it. Check the islands and the shore lines. If it’s pulled up under the trees we may be out of luck, but you might still be able to spot that motor. There can be one person in it or two or three. One is a woman. Betty, if you want to know. And in one hell of a jam, boy. Over.”

“Coast Guard to the
Aces Up
and the
Slow Goose
. This is an emergency channel reserved for Coast Guard use. Vacate the emergency channel.”

“
Aces Up
to the Coast Guard operator. This is an emergency. Repeat. This is an emergency. We’re using a private search plane because you people are busy on something else. This is the only channel we have in common with the search plane. Will continue to use emergency channel, but we’ll keep it as short as we can. Over.”

“Coast Guard operator to the
Aces Up
. No authority here to grant permission. But no way to stop you. Good luck. Over.”

“There he is!” John Geer called. Doyle saw the small amphib coming at them at low altitude, coming from a point just south of Ramona.

The small aircraft gleamed in the morning sun. He buzzed the boat and climbed high.

“
Slow Goose
to the
Aces Up
. I’ll take it high first and if no dice, I’ll make a low square search. I’ll give you the word. Over.”

They stood at the rail and watched the high slow pattern, squinting up against the brightness of the sky. Time passed with a sickening slowness.

“What the hell is he doing?” Buddy snarled. No one answered.

Suddenly the plane tilted and dropped, leaf-lazy in the sun. It swung up again and began a wide slow circle.

“
Slow Goose
to
Aces Up
,” the voice drawled. “Got your customer, Buddy boy. He’s in the middle of a little round bay right under me. Trying to start the motor apparently. He’s stopped now. Paddling toward shore. Fella in khaki with a kind of a cowboy hat on him. What now? Over.”

“We’ve got to get to him, Skippy. Fast as we can. Can you tell us how to get in there? Over.”

“
Slow Goose
to
Aces Up
. Damn if I can tell you how, boy. I noticed you got a dinghy. If you run south to the channel marker south of the pass and leave the big boat there, you’ll be close as you can get with it. Then you head in between those two bigger islands and turn right and … Damn, boy, it’s a mess down there. Tell you what. Once you get going in the dinghy, I’ll be Lura, the girl guide. When you got a turn to make, I’ll tilt a wing at it, flying right at you or away from you as the case may be. Only way I can see to get you through that mess. And some places you may have to wade. I see deeper water here and there, but I don’t know how the cowboy got in there. Over.”

“Just get us in there, Skippy. Over and out.”

They ran up to the marker. John waited for Buddy to edge the boat into the shallows beyond the channel and then dropped anchor. They dropped the dinghy over
the transom and climbed down into it. Three big men badly overcrowded the eight-foot dinghy. John Geer ran the small motor. It started on the first pull, and, at its meager top speed, it made a sound like a small and diligent hornet. Buddy knelt forward. Doyle had the middle seat.

As soon as they went between the two islands Skippy had indicated, they were in flats so shallow that Geer had to tilt the motor until the blade was thrashing half out of water for a few moments until it deepened again. The plane shadow swept over them and they followed the tilt of the wing. The guiding system worked. Doyle quickly lost track of the turns. They were in the narrow tidal channels that cut the low land into islands. Needle fish darted away in alarm. Blue herons stared with a fierce amber eye, then flapped slowly away. Doyle saw a water snake swimming near shore. Several times they had to step out and pull the dinghy across shallows and then start it again. As they walked in the shallows they shuffled their feet to minimize the chance of getting hit by a sting ray.

At last they came into an irregular open bay. Skippy flew directly over a dense shore line of mangrove and dipped the port wing. They couldn’t believe there was an opening there. They were almost on it before they saw it. The water was deep and sleek and green. The channel was narrow. At places the leaves touched overhead and they were in mottled shadow, ducking under limbs.

Doyle thought of the child who had been brought here long ago, sitting in her pink dress in the bow of the skiff, full of a child’s love for secrets and sense of adventure. If this was the right place.

The channel writhed and abruptly opened onto an almost circular bay a hundred yards across. Geer throttled down abruptly. The aircraft had climbed high again.

“There’s the boat,” Buddy said softly, an unnecessary comment. They had all seen it, the gleam of aluminum
and the red motor in the shade where it had been drawn up, empty, directly across the bay from the single entrance. With the small motor barely turning over, the dinghy moved very slowly.

“Old shack over there,” John Geer murmured. “See it under the trees. Little to the right of the boat.”

“I see it,” Buddy said. “Cleared off a long time ago but it’s grown up. Good high ground. Cabbage palm.”

Doyle felt dangerously exposed. Above the muted burbling of the small outboard he heard the sliding click as Geer worked a shell into the chamber of the target pistol.

“Where the hell is he?” Geer whispered. “I don’t like this.”

“Move it up a little closer,” Buddy ordered.

They could see the small shack more distinctly. The warped door had fallen out of the frame and there was a sagging shutter on the single window.

“She used to tell how he’d take her to a stone castle full of jewels and she was a princess,” Buddy said.

“Look to the left of the boat,” Doyle said. “About fifteen feet from it.” The figure was in shadows. It was face down over the mangrove roots, and utterly still. There were sun dollars on the faded back of the blue work shirt. The back of the white head was out of water.

Geer whispered, “If he killed old Lucas like that, we better figure on coming in here with more than just one little …”

The three shots were authoritative, heavy-throated, evenly spaced. They had a flat sound in the stillness, and were harsh in that special way that can happen only when you are in line with the muzzle. Merged with the middle shot, Doyle heard the once-heard-never-forgotten sound of a slug smashing into flesh and bone. He plunged over the side of the dinghy into two feet of shallow water, turned and grasped the dinghy as the slow-turning motor threatened to move it away. Buddy had plunged
out of the dinghy too, but stayed on his feet. And, with ponderous strength, ran diagonally toward the shore, angling away from the cabin, head down and knees high. There was a shiny red-black stain on the back of Buddy’s right shoulder, spreading as he ran. There was another shot but Buddy kept running. He dived headlong into the mangroves about sixty feet from the shack, and about a hundred feet from the dinghy.

Doyle had turned the dinghy so that it was between him and the shack. He pushed it until he was near the stern, and then pulled down on the near gunwale so as to tip the far side up to give him cover as he reached and turned the motor off. With the dinghy tilted he could see John Geer crumpled in the bottom of it. He could see his face. The slug had entered just above the left eyebrow, hammering a black, round, lethal hole delicately rimmed with a froth of blood.

The aircraft sound grew loud, and the amphib came down so low that Doyle thought for a moment the man was going to attempt a landing in the tiny bay. But it lifted and cleared the trees at the end, and droned away until the sound of it was lost. The bay was still. He heard a sleepy sound of birds, a heat-whine of insects, a crashing in the thick brush where Buddy had disappeared.

“John?” Buddy’s call was loud in the stillness.

“He’s dead,” Doyle called back.

After a long silence Buddy called, with pain and hoarse anger in his voice, “What are you trying to do, Donnie? You crazy bastard! You can’t kill everybody in the world! Where’s Betty?”

There was no answer. “Are you hurt, Alex?”

“No.”

“I think I got it bad. I think he smashed hell out of my right shoulder. I’m beginning to feel kind of funny. There’s a lot of blood. Where do you think he is?”

“Near the shack. But I’m not sure.”

“Maybe he’s working his way toward me. I’ve hunted with him. He can move without a sound. Where’s John?”

“In the dinghy.”

“Where’s his gun?”

“Maybe it’s under him. I’ll see if I can find it.”

“Don’t get careless. Don’t give him a chance at you.”

It was difficult to shift the body. He saw the muzzle under Geer’s left thigh. He tilted the dinghy further and worked the gun out. He opened his mouth to call to Buddy that he had it, and then changed his mind. He waited a few minutes longer. Then he called, “Buddy.”

“Yes?” The reply was alarmingly weak.

“I can’t find it. I guess he dropped it over the side when he was hit.”

“Then you … better … try to get out of here. I … can’t.… Things are fading.”

He checked the gun. The safety was off.

“Doyle!” It was Capp’s voice, coming from the vicinity of the shack.

“What do you want, Mister Deputy, sir?”

“I want that little boat, Doyle. You shove it into shore nice, and I’ll leave you healthy. I have to come get it and you’ll be dead as the rest of ’em.”

The final phrase made Doyle’s heart sink. Up until that moment there had been frail hope. Now there was no room within him for anything but an anger so great that for a moment it blurred his vision.

“You haven’t got a damn thing to lose by letting me have it too, Donnie. What guarantee have I got?”

“You took too much time, Doyle. You lost a chance. I’m coming after it.”

He knew what the dinghy meant to Capp. With it he could get to the mainland. With his knowledge of the sloughs and swamps, he had a chance to get away. He heard a slow sloshing sound and knew that Donnie was wading out toward him. He could visualize him, the
pale watchful eyes, the revolver ready. And he wouldn’t want to take a chance on holing the dinghy.

Doyle weighed his chances. They were not good. He knew that he could put at least one hole in Capp, but one little twenty-two slug was not going to prevent Capp firing at least once, and from a range that would make a miss unlikely. And the impact of that slug would make the chance of a second hole in Donnie Capp very unlikely.

His only possible chance, he knew, would be to make Capp lose some of his animal caution. And so, as rapidly as he could without exposing himself in any way, Doyle began to scuttle backward in the deepening water, pulling the dinghy with one hand, holding the target pistol in his right.

Capp gave a grunt of surprise and anger, and, as Doyle continued to pull, he heard the thrashing, splashing sound of Capp running through the shallow water to overtake the boat before Doyle could reach the entrance to the bay.