Hell's Bay (30 page)

Our pontoon hulls had eleven airtight sections, each one about six feet long. A total of thirty-three separate airtight compartments for the whole vessel. The sections overlapped and had been ferruled and welded for strength, designed and built so no single puncture could bring her down.

I dug the paddle in and found a rush of energy I thought was beyond me. The kayak sliced ahead, no tacking this time, plowing straight on.

As I muscled ahead, I replayed those gunshots I'd heard when racing back to answer Teeter's Mayday. Fifteen, sixteen, maybe as many as twenty. They'd nagged at me at the time, but I let it go. Now I understood it was very likely the woman named Sasha hadn't been firing at Teeter at all.

In fact, she'd proved herself to be more disciplined than that. Not one to spray lead indiscriminately. Instead, it was likely she'd been blasting methodical holes in the port pontoon below the waterline. Creating a set of slow, persistent leaks that hour by hour had brought the Mothership to her knees.

Even at high tide our anchorage was only six feet deep, so the houseboat wasn't going to be disappearing to the bottom of the deep blue sea. But it was cocked so severely, life aboard the ship was going to be very messy from this point on. The generators were now underwater, so there'd be no power, no air-conditioning, no lights, and what food and other essentials survived would depend on what Rusty and the others managed to rescue from the lower deck when they first realized the water was rising. Then there was the challenge of simply moving around on a ship tipping at such an angle.

Rusty, Mona, and our guests would be flushed out of their staterooms and the salon by the flood, and more than likely would be huddled on the second deck, in the cramped crew quarters and the wheelhouse. All the furniture would have shifted, glasses and wine and whiskey bottles tumbled from shelves, the television, the paintings, the gewgaws, the pots, pans, charts, anything not battened down.

But worse than that, much worse, was the fact that hotwiring the engines was no longer an option. The Mothership was not going anywhere for a good long while.

 

 

 

 

The final video had a time stamp running in the lower right corner. October of last year, three months after Abigail Bates went canoeing and drowned.

This one only ran ten minutes. Same gymnasium, same camera angle, capturing the first dozen rows of folding chairs, an edge of the bleachers, and the small raised platform used as a stage.

Only this time the podium and backdrop were draped with black banners and cluttering the stage were hundreds of flowers. Flowers in vases, flowers still in their plastic wraps, clusters of wildflowers, armloads of roses and daisies and gladiolus.

At the microphone a teenage boy stood shakily and peered into the glare. He was sweating and his face was gaunt, his scalp gleaming white, eyes full of fever. A few feet to his right, a lanky woman kept an eye on the boy. She wore black slacks and a dark long-sleeved blouse and was tilted ever-so-slightly in the boy's direction as though poised to catch him if he toppled.

He looked like he might. There was such a wobble in his stance, such a rattle and rasp in his throat as he brought his mouth close to the microphone, it sounded like his next breath could easily be his last. Sugarman winced and had to force himself to keep watching.

The resemblance was clear. The boy split the difference almost exactly between C.C. Olsen and the rawboned woman standing nearby. He'd inherited her cheekbones, strong mouth, swan's neck, and milky skin, along with C.C.'s wide shoulders, sunken eyes, and hawk-bill nose.

“I'm Griffin Olsen, in case there's anybody doesn't know. Son of Sasha”—he nodded at the woman hovering nearby— “and the late C.C. Olsen.”

A smattering of applause, then shushing, and the gym grew still.

“The air in the school is poisoned,” Griffin said, “and we damn well know whose fault it is.”

He swallowed a couple of times, then dragged a red handkerchief from his back pocket and hacked into it. He closed his eyes and seemed to be concentrating on getting his breath. His mother took a step his way, but the boy turned and waved her off, then tucked the kerchief away.

“We've heard the science say one thing when it comes out of Mr. Mosley's mouth and another thing when it came out of my dad's. What's clear to me is that science can be made to lie.”

He got some more applause.

“But everybody in this room knows in their gut what's happening. Whether science agrees or not, you know, I know, everyone knows.”

He waited till the next clamor died away to a murmur.

“I'm a goner.” With that, the quiet room got even quieter. “They say I'm down to weeks. Which is no big deal. I'm tired out, sick of being sick. I'm just plain ready. Except I got one last thing I want to say.”

Sasha had bowed her head and was staring down at her feet.

“If the Bates family were storm troopers goose-stepping down Main Street, you all wouldn't think twice. You wouldn't let them spew mustard gas over this town. You'd risk your lives, do anything to protect your families. Pick up your shotguns, your pistols, you'd fight back.” Griffin worked his focus around the big room. 'You wouldn't let them murder your children. You wouldn't let them steal your water, poison your air.

“Just because they're Americans, just because they're running a business, paying piss-poor wages to a few people around these parts, that doesn't change a thing. These people are goose-stepping down Main Street and nobody's doing a damn thing. Look at you. You're hiding in the back room, hoping they won't come for you or your little girl or little boy. You're cowering in the dark, hoping it'll all go away.”

Griffin's voice was thickening. Each breath sounded like the rasping gasps of a gut-shot dog, as though more blood than air was filling his lungs.

“Well, it isn't going away. Not till you people stand up and fight.”

He looked out at the silent crowd and could not bring himself to say more. Nearly half a minute went by with him simply standing there, then his mother came over and put her arm around the boy's frail shoulder and turned him from the podium. But Griffin leaned back to the microphone.

“Somebody worked up the guts to cut off the head of the snake. But a few months later, look what happened. That snake grew a new head. This time somebody needs to chop up the whole damn thing and be done with it for good.”

The TV screen turned to white static. Sugarman stood watching it.

After a while he walked over and had another look at the radon detector. It said 27.4 in red LED lights.

He glanced around at the bare walls, listened to the squeal of a few schoolkids still in the parking lot, a car starting its engine.

The hallways were empty as Sugarman walked out of Pine Tree School. The last bus kicked up a white cloud of dust as it rolled down the narrow lane.

Sugarman opened his car and let it air out a couple of minutes before sitting behind the wheel. The harsh odor that gagged him an hour earlier was no longer apparent. Maybe the wind had shifted, or maybe his body was adjusting. Neither possibility particularly cheered him.

He replayed what he'd just witnessed in the video, then went over it a second time. If Timmy Whalen had steered him to the video to bewilder him with an abundance of suspects, it hadn't worked. He'd seen only one. A woman with a dead husband and a failing son.

Door open, sitting behind the wheel, Sugar waited for the sheriff to return. Half hour, forty minutes. The last of the parents left, the final straggling teachers pulled away for the weekend.

It was closing in on happy hour, and still no sheriff, when Sugar slammed the door and cranked up the Honda. He'd have to find a motel for the night, track down a decent restaurant. He was just making a U-turn to head out the gravel road when his cell phone chirped. He pulled over into the shade of a loblolly pine.

Rachel Pike's name appeared in the glowing box.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” she said.

While he waited for her to speak, he watched a hawk catch the updrafts above the gypsum stack. Beautiful bird riding the radon.

“Look, I want to apologize,” she said. “That crack about Thorn, that wasn't fair. You were right to be peeved. Truth is, it's one of many things I admire about you, Sugar. Your loyalty.”

“Thanks, Rachel. Apology accepted.”

“Whew, I was afraid I'd lost your friendship for good,” she said.

“You didn't.”

She was quiet for a moment, then said, “So anyway, I pulled Mosley's phone records.”

“You did? Jesus, well, thanks.”

“I got a source at AT&T. He owes me a couple.”

“Add me to that list.”

“You probably thought you'd never hear from me again.”

“That seemed like a possibility,” he said. “So did anything pop out?”

“Not much. Maybe it will for you. For that date, between nine and noon there was considerable traffic from the law office. I made you a printout. Mostly calls back and forth to other law firms, a couple overseas, one to a restaurant in Sarasota, an airline, somebody paying an electric bill. That kind of thing.”

“Maybe you can fax the list. I'll find a machine somewhere, call you back with the number.”

“I ran Mosley's cell, too. Two calls that morning, both outbound. First was at nine-twelve, and two minutes later he made a second call.”

“That would be about the right time.”

“You want the numbers, addresses, the names, what?”

“Let me take a wild guess,” Sugar said. “One of the numbers he called was listed to C.C. and Sasha Olsen.”

“Hey, you're good.”

“And the other one?”

“DeSoto County Sheriff's Office. Timmy Whalen's direct line.”

Sugarman watched the hawk bank hard and dive at a steep angle toward the west, talons out as it vanished into the late-afternoon shadows. Maybe it got its dinner, maybe not. In the long run, Sugar's money was on the hawk.

“You there?”

“Barely,” he said.

Rachel said, “Those three people you asked me to run through the NCI computer—John Milligan, Mona Milligan, and Charles M. Kipling, Jr. Nothing much there. The Kipling guy, you already know about. In jail a few days, then released. The other two, the Milligans, they came up empty. Not even a speeding ticket.”

“Figures.”

“I felt so guilty, I even ran the other two.”

“Which two?”

“The Olsens, C.C. and Sasha. Mosley called them, so I was curious who they were.”

“Guilt is a beautiful thing.”

“Yeah, well, I got squat on C.C. A drunk-and-disorderly charge when he was eighteen. But the other one, this woman, Sasha, now there's a special lady.”

“How's that?”

“You know what the Silver Star is?”

“Sasha Olsen? Get out.”

“Only the second woman since World War Two. Sergeant Sasha Lane Olsen. Florida National Guard, one-forty-third military police unit. Want to hear what she did?”

“I'll make the time.”

“She was ten months into her first rotation, her squad shadowing a supply convoy, Hundred-and-first Airborne riding shotgun. Convoy is ambushed. Guys with RPG's pop up out of trenches at one end of the street, bunch of snipers block their escape. Olsen manages to break away from the convoy and flanks the insurgent snipers. She and her guys kill three, mortally wound two more. Then things go bad up ahead, two squads of Screaming Eagles taking major fire, serious casualties, so Sergeant Olsen leads her guys, these weekend warriors from Podunk, Florida, directly into the kill zone. They assault one trench line with grenades and rifle fire, and then on her own, Sergeant Sasha Olsen jumps down in this ditch and cleared the second trench, killed four insurgents, one of them hand to hand.”

Sugarman was silent.

“You know this woman?” Rachel asked.

“Not yet.”

“Thorn's mixed up with her?”

“I'm not sure. Maybe.”

“So are we good? I can stop feeling guilty now?”

“Oh, yeah, we're good, we're very good. Thanks, Rachel.”

 

 

 

 

Rusty met me at the rear deck and tied off the kayak to the only cleat still above water. She didn't ask me why I was drenched, or about the gash in the side of the plastic craft. She didn't ask me about John Milligan or if I'd gotten through to Sugar or anyone else on the cell phone.

She looked me over and seemed to know everything she needed.

“We've got a problem,” she said.

“I noticed.”

We were both gripping the spiral stairway that led up to the wheelhouse like a couple of commuters hanging onto subway straps while the train careened around a bend. The tilt of the ship was even more severe than it appeared from a distance. Navigating the roof of an A-frame would have been easier. I peered into the salon and it too was worse than I'd imagined. The TV was facedown, surrounded by the glitter of its smashed screen. All the furniture had broken loose and was piled against the port wall. Water three feet deep, the remains of Teeter's breakfast mingled with the flotsam.

“It's more than the ship,” she said. “We'll right the ship. It'll require some time and money, but it'll be okay.”

“You're taking it well.”

“Not much choice.”

“And the other problem?”

“That would be Mona.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I overheard her talking to the shooter.”

“You did?”

“Other side of the mangroves, twenty feet away. I caught a snatch.”

“Well, I heard the whole thing,” Rusty said. “Both sides. Then Mona and I had a little talk afterward.”

“Let's hear it.”

“She remembered the woman. Name's Sasha Olsen. Her husband died a few months back, and now her son's at death's door. Sasha blames it on radon gas, uranium, some bullshit. I didn't follow that. But it's related to phosphate mining and your damn family. So that's what Mona thinks. Sasha's playing avenging angel. Payback for her husband dying and her kid being sick. Wiping out the Bates family and anybody else who gets in her way—like my brother.”