Hell's Bay (16 page)

“How the hell did that happen?” said Mona.

I shushed them both.

A crocodile was sunning, half submerged in the mud of the bank. Teeter's back was propped against its midsection. The only scenario I could imagine was that in some panicked state he'd scooted backward out of the water and pushed himself atop the creature, then went rigid when he realized what he was pressed against.

The croc's hide was a dark olive green, and he had a row of horny plates running down his back and tail like the jagged peaks of a mountain range. Long narrow snout, fourth tooth on the bottom jaw overlapping the upper lip, giving the creature a toothy smirk. His outer eyelids were drawn closed. He was around fourteen feet long, large for an American croc. Probably weighed four hundred pounds—most of it muscle and teeth.

It was long past mating season, well into the dry months of the year, when the few crocodiles that inhabited this area slept through the day and plied the silty waters at night. They were far less fierce than gators, shy creatures, rarely seen. Usually only aggressive in protecting their nest or their hatchlings. Late summer, when the water was at its highest, that was nesting and hatching time. So, in that regard, at least, things were tipped slightly in our favor.

I drew the pole out silently and slipped it forward, planted it in the soft mud, and leaned my weight against it, nudging us ahead another few yards.

“No noise,” I whispered.

Teeter was gagging on his sobs, stopping every few seconds to draw a ragged breath, then giving out a husky groan of doom.

I kept my voice low and called to him to quiet down. It was going to be all right. No sweat.

He turned his head, his right cheek just inches from the left eye of the croc. He raised his hands in helpless pleading. What was he to do?

“Don't move. Just stay cool.”

Mona turned to me and rolled her eyes. Yeah, right.

In the distance I heard the drone of an outboard engine. Whether it was approaching our position or passing by was impossible to tell. I poled into shallower water, coasting forward till we were only ten feet off the bank where Teeter lay paralyzed. I was so focused on him and the sleeping croc, I didn't notice the submerged log in our path. When the chunk of timber scraped the starboard hull, the screech it made was as piercing as a startled parrot.

And that's what woke the croc.

The eyelids slid open, the creature's eyes reflecting an orange light. It lifted its snout a few inches.

I reset the push pole and shoved us forward till the bow was only a yard offshore. The crunch of the sandy bottom grinding against the keel turned the croc's head in our direction. Crocs, like gators, have a limited area of high-resolution vision. I just didn't know exactly how limited.

“Don't move, Teeter. It doesn't know you're there.”

I wasn't sure of that either. The croc's eyes were impossible to read. It might be looking directly at the approaching boat, or in its peripheral vision, it might have noticed the large human lying against its back.

I tried to work out the reptile's age. He could be a young buck full of reckless energy, or might be sixty years old, a seasoned veteran whose long survival had depended on avoidance not confrontation. The only certain way to know the age of a croc was to study a cross-section of its teeth, which had growth rings like trees. But from my limited vantage point, I was pretty sure this one had to be fully mature. Based on his size and a couple of dings and broken plates on his tail, I judged him to be on the downhill side of middle-age. An aging warrior. Even less likely to attack.

With the bow now touching the shore only a couple of feet from Teeter's outstretched shoes, we were in the red zone. Whatever happened was going down in seconds.

I drew the tip of the eighteen-foot push pole from the suck of mud behind me and swiveled it around slowly from the opposite side of the skiff, keeping it level to the water and out of the view of the croc.

“John, Mona, kneel down. Flat on the deck. Slow.”

As they lowered themselves, the croc huffed and arched its back, which jolted Teeter upright into a sitting position. Then it slapped its snout twice against the muddy bank in warning.

The geometry of the situation was delicate. The direction the creature faced led off toward a narrow break in the mangroves, maybe a creek, definitely a tempting getaway. Behind him along the shoreline was more sand and marl and a deep burrow that looked like the remnants of the croc's nest. Best outcome: The croc shoots forward, Teeter rolls away behind him. Worst case: The creature makes a Uturn and flees back toward the familiarity of his burrow, sending Teeter sprawling right into his path.

I brought the tip of the push pole down to the water's edge, inching it slowly toward the croc's snout. A poke in the neck was what I had in mind. Startle it into motion and direct it, as much as possible, forward, away from the prodding pole.

It didn't work that way.

I had the pole positioned for my first jab when the outboard engine I'd heard earlier roared around the Mothership and headed straight into our cove.

I took a quick look over my shoulder. Rusty was at the wheel, Annette and Holland standing beside her at the edge of the console. When she was twenty yards off our stern, she cut the engine back and coasted up fast.

“Thorn! What the hell's going on? Teeter was calling Mayday.”

Her arrival sent the croc into action. It lunged at the pole, a move so quick and crushing, I was hurled backward against the engine and poling platform. Before I could draw the pole away, his jaw clamped three feet up its length and he gave it a vicious shake, wrenching it from my grip.

As the croc shook his head, he bucked Teeter off his perch and threw him several feet. He landed hard and lay spread-eagled on his back, motionless, staring up at the empty sky.

Rusty had seen enough. She revved her engine and blew past my skiff, crashing ashore between the croc and Teeter. As her bow slammed the hump of marl, Annette pitched toward the bow deck, Holland onto his side, shooting pictures the whole way down.

The croc shot straight ahead toward the overhanging branches and splashed into the shadowy waters of the narrow creek, swishing away into the thicket. I jumped overboard and slogged through the deep mud to the beach. I was hauling Teeter to his feet when Rusty arrived beside me.

Teeter blubbered, trying and failing to shape words.

Embracing him, Rusty smoothed her hand across his wet hair and cooed to him: “Hush, hush, it's all right. The alligator's gone, it's gone now, Teeter. Everything's fine.”

“It was a crocodile,” Mona called.

Rusty pulled away from Teeter and turned on Mona. I'd known Rusty for more than twenty years and had seen her in more taxing situations than nearly anyone I'd ever met, but I'd never seen her lose her cool, much less witnessed the look that hardened on her face just then—both stricken and dark with fury.

Mona recognized it as well and turned away under its glare.

“I told her a lie,” Teeter said.

“Hush, hush, sweetheart. Everything's okay.”

Teeter pried himself out of Rusty's embrace. He dragged in a breath and looked at his sister, then at me.

“She asked my name, and I lied.”

“Who?” Rusty took Teeter's hand in hers. “Who, Teeter?”

“The woman in the yellow bass boat,” I said.

Teeter nodded.

“Bass boat?” Rusty dropped Teeter's hand and closed in on me. “What happened here, Thorn?”

“I don't know. This morning, about a mile up the Wood, we had a brush with a woman in a bass boat. She came at us headon, missed by a few inches. Few hours later I heard Teeter's Mayday, and came running. Halfway across the bay I spotted the same yellow boat near the Mothership. When she saw us, she ran.”

Teeter clenched his eyes tight, determined to stop crying.

“I lied to her. I don't know why.”

“Enough,” Rusty said. “Let's get back to the ship. We can talk about this inside.”

“No,” Teeter said. “I have to tell you. It's important.” He was fetching for breath. A wet gargle in his throat.

With a gentle finger Rusty steered a loop of hair out of Teeter's eyes.

“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.”

 

 

 

 

“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.”