Seduced

TWENTY-TWO

Sunrise was a gray intrusion, slower for the frigid weight of darkness and stars. I stopped south of the Coon Key light to let my face thaw and watched a gloom of silhouettes brighten into islands. Already, we’d stopped twice because of the cold.

“I should’ve asked before we left,” Martinez said. “Did you bring a gun? In my glove box, there’s a Glock compact. I went off and forgot the darn thing.”

“Someone like you,” I said, “I figured you always carried a gun.”

He sensed this was another test. Maybe it was.

“Never admit you’re carrying,” he said, but patted his hip to confirm he was. “I brought that Glock along for you. We should both be armed. I don’t care how cold it is-and it’s pretty blessed damn cold-your story about those pythons scares me.”

At the boat ramp, we’d sat talking in my SUV for half an hour, the heater on high. Some of what he’d shared I’d found truly shocking, but Sabin Martinez had yet to give me a reason to doubt his good intentions. Even so, I was reluctant to answer honestly about the pistol holstered at the small of my back. I’m not sure why-particularly after ruining my chance to trust Kermit, a man who actually believed me to be beautiful.

“In there”-I pointed to the duffel bag stowed forward-“I’ve got an old sawed-off double-barrel, probably too short to be legal. I don’t know if the shells are any good or not.”

“Twelve-gauge? That’s what I should’ve brought. We can test-fire the thing, if you want. There’s no one around.”

That was certainly true. I asked, “What time is it?” Behind us, Marco Island was a bluff of lighted condos. To the southwest, a navigation marker flashed off Cape Romano, a lonely intersection of sand and space. “I don’t see any boats-none that’re on fire anyway. Did Larry say where he was putting in?”

“I never said anything about his boat catching fire.”

No, he hadn’t. But Martinez had described how he had shorted out a voltage regulator on one of Luckheim’s motors. He’d also caused a pinhole leak in a hose that fed the carburetors.

“You knew what would happen or you wouldn’t have done it,” I said.

“Don’t expect an answer to that one,” the man replied, taking off his gloves. “So what? Caldwell, why do you think he agreed to be here? Just you and him, that’s what he expects. It’s because he plans to kill you. That wasn’t clear? Not kill you right away, of course. He’ll want to have some fun first. You researched the man. You should know.” His head turned to face me; eyes so dark, they reflected light. “Lonnie might enjoy that sort of sick, kinky business. In fact, I’m quite sure she does. But not you.”

I asked again for the time, then looked for myself. It was a little after seven.

“Hannah… don’t tell me you’re feeling remorse. What happens to the guy is all on me. Your only mistake was asking questions I shouldn’t have answered. I know better. Not that the cops will find anything. I’m good at what I do.”

Harney Chatham’s “Lysol man” took out his phone and formulated a test of his own. “Tell you what, I still have one bar showing. I can call. Tell him to shut down his engines; that I think someone’s trying to kill him. Or make up some cockamamie story that’s convincing. You know… a warning shot. We talked about warning shots. Say the word, I’ll do it.” He gave me time to think before asking, “How many women did Caldwell assault before he disappeared? I bet you have the number in a file somewhere.”

I turned away from the man’s hard stare. “Sun’s up,” I said. “Get your gloves on. I don’t see the point in waiting around here until it’s warmer.”

Martinez said what sounded like I thought as much as I jammed the throttle forward.

Off Camp Key, we flew across a tendril of sand. The bottom fell away, and I turned my skiff in the direction of Choking Creek.

In a labyrinth of oyster bars and islands, a GPS is no more useful than a compass. My eyes, my hands, did the steering while my mind reviewed something else I’d learned in the warmth of my SUV.

What happened that New Year’s Eve, more than twenty years ago, was a sordid story that diminished my respect for the late Harney Chatham. As Martinez had reminded me, however, most of the “facts” had been provided by a drunken (or drugged) college cheerleader.

Long before midnight, Lonnie, in hysterics, had taken Chatham aside, desperately in need of help. She’d been assaulted by a drifter, she said, who followed the college holiday crowd, selling drugs. His specialty was a date rape powder known as Devil’s Breath. Lonnie claimed she would’ve been raped if her boyfriend-who was already in trouble with the law-hadn’t come along and beaten the man to death.

The drifter’s body went into the gator pool where Reggie and I had seen crocs. A confession, written by Lonnie, went into a cement capstone atop the concrete weir. The next day, her boyfriend, Raymond Caldwell, fled the country. This required the assistance of a powerful man who could pull strings and owned a boat that could make the crossing to Mexico.

When I asked, “Why would Mr. Chatham willingly participate in such a crime?” I received the answer I expected. He didn’t. Not willingly.

Martinez offered two explanations, the first provided by Lonnie.

While a junior in high school, she had volunteered to spend the summer working for Chatham’s election campaign. He’d tried to seduce her. After weeks of being charmed and pressured, Lonnie finally gave in. By the time their affair ended, she had photographs to prove that the soon-to-be lieutenant governor was guilty of statutory rape.

Martinez didn’t believe it. He knew that photographs of some type were involved but had a different theory. Lonnie had done the seducing. Either that or, during the campaign, she had photographed Chatham with another eager volunteer who, as some suspected, often slept in the great man’s bed.

Chatham had never confided the truth about which version to believe. Not even to Martinez, a man who claimed to be Chatham’s only confidant.

This oddity troubled me, but I let it go. Nor did I ask for names or dates. There was no need. That summer, I’d spent my tenth birthday helping my uncle hack a tunnel to a secret spot-the very place to which I was returning on this dismal winter morning.

Loretta, the eager volunteer, had been generous about granting me free time during my childhood years. Now I understood why.

Martinez, of course, knew all about my mother. He’d asked, point-blank, if Chatham had died in her arms. This gave me an opportunity, once again, to invest my trust in a man I barely knew.

I answered him honestly. Yes, Chatham had died in Loretta’s bed. Lonnie wasn’t the only one who had breached the fidelity clause in their marriage contract.

How smoothly I shared a truth that was not mine to share. Sometimes, trust must be awarded before it can be granted. Angst and self-recriminations regarding Kermit had also played a role.

You are a beautiful woman.

As I was speeding inland toward the sun, the married man’s words chided me from a world I had seldom dared stray. Only once, in fact. Yet, over and over, they hammered at a wounded reality within.

Finally, I conceded, I’m a fool. Yes, a goddamn fool… but I am my own goddamn fool!

After that, I refocused on the task, which was avoiding oyster bars, and shielding my eyes from the glare. Martinez hunkered down beside me, a man who was as wide as a bulldozer yet nimble for his age and size. Articulate, too. He was using a pencil to mark our course on a chart he’d brought along. Occasionally, he made remarks or asked questions that confirmed his experience as a navigator. Watermen don’t travel as passengers. They pay attention, aware they might have to find their own way home.

Smart. Few would have bothered to obtain the correct chart on such short notice. I would’ve done the same. To believe otherwise would have redoubled my doubts about the man beside me.

My hand moved to the small of my back. The Devel pistol was there beneath a jacket and layers of clothing. Not easy to get to, but still a comforting weight.

South of Tripod Key, an unmarked channel appeared as a swath of green. It traversed a sandy shoal. Never had I seen the water in this area so clear. The cold snap had killed all murky microscopic plants and sent them to the bottom. A few fish lay stunned there, too: ingots of silver that might revive as the day warmed.

The air was warming now. The numbness of my nose and cheeks suggested otherwise, but the change was palpable. The channel narrowed. Islands crowded in; long bars of mangroves, trimmed like Japanese hedges. The insulation they provided seemed to generate heat.

Far to my right was Faka Union Bay, where we’d stopped to visit the Daniels cemetery. Ahead was an opening that might have been a gate. I used the trim tabs, tilted the engine, and threaded my skiff through. Air temperature climbed. It was if we had breached the mouth of an animal and were being shunted toward its radiant heart.

“Shouldn’t we turn southeast fairly soon?” The pencil in Martinez’s hand tapped the chart, our exact location.

“We could,” I said, “it’s doable, but we’d have to climb through a quarter mile of mangroves to reach the mound. There used to be a shorter route.”

He consulted the chart, then considered the wall of islands that blocked our way. “There’s no opening… none that I see here… and this chart’s up to date. God knows how long that river’s been landlocked. That’s what I think it is, an archaic river. If there are Indian mounds, it would make sense. They had to have access.”

“More sense than hiking through mangroves,” I agreed.

The man squinted at the chart. “Wouldn’t this be simpler?” He pointed to a river half a mile east that ran parallel to Choking Creek. “The entrance is tricky, but it deepens once you’re in. We tie the boat and blaze a trail, so getting back will be easy. Give it some thought. By this afternoon, it’ll be in the mid-sixties. You know what that means.”

There was no need to confirm I did.

“Are you sure you’re willing to waste time just on the chance of saving time? Personally, I don’t mind a tough hike.”

I motioned to the front storage hatch. “There’s a saw and hedge clippers, a machete, and some other stuff in a bag. If you don’t mind, go ahead and get ready.”

The man’s bushy beard parted to show a friendly, bearish smile. “You plan to cut our way in?”

I replied, “It’s been done before.”

The confidence I wanted to communicate did not reflect my doubts as we drew closer to that wall of green. I dropped off plane and idled along a shoreline where there was no shore, only the tangled claws of prop roots beneath a curtain of waxen leaves.

“Impossible,” Martinez said.

A few minutes later, I lifted an awning of branches, switched off the engine, and nudged my skiff ahead. There it was: an opening, where blunt stubs of tree limbs walled a channel. Over the years, new mangroves had bridged the space, but it hadn’t changed much. Watery daylight was visible on the other side.

“I’ll be darned,” the man said. There was admiration in his tone.

I found that reassuring. I’d begun to fear there was a reason Martinez favored hiking in from the next river.

“We’ll have to do some cutting,” I said. “Keep low; watch your eyes.”

I pulled the skiff into the cut. Tree limbs sprung back into position and hid our presence. Overhead, waxen leaves interlaced to form a shaded cavern. Spiderwebs glistened like ice crystals in the fresh sunlight.

“Listen.” Martinez held up a hand, his head cocked. “A boat. Hear it?”

From somewhere in the distance, miles away, the whine of an outboard motor vacillated like gusting wind. A bumblebee sound that came and went… then grew steadily louder.

“You’re the expert. Think it could be him?”

“Shush,” I said.

A minute or more passed. In my mind, a black catamaran hull was attempting to cross a flat too shallow for twin, oversized engines. Then, as if influenced by my anxiety, what I hoped would happen happened.

The sound of a fast boat plowing itself high onto a sandbar is distinctive. Familiar braying notes reached my ears, a series of staccato thuds that ascended into the howl of engines starved for water. The driver refused to concede. After several pointless attempts, the howling became a sustained scream that, abruptly, went silent.

Wrong. The engines were silenced by what we heard next: a gasoline whoosh, then the faraway thump of an explosion. The soundless void that followed suggested images of smoke and flames.

Martinez was forward, hedge clippers in hand. I was on the stern casting deck, holding the skiff steady. We looked at each other. I felt dazed. Not him. “That stupid damn hick,” he said, pleased with himself. “I told you there was no need to worry. Well… at least he’s not freezing his ass off anymore.”

Hick? Luckheim had only posed as a redneck, if what Martinez had told me was true.

Humor, in this remote place, and under the circumstances, strained my patience. The laughter that came next struck me as bizarre. It was a while before I could speak. When I did, what the man heard me say was, “Raymond…? Hand me those clippers.”

“Of course it was his boat,” was the response to a question I had not asked.

What I’d said was, “Raymond… hand me those clippers.”

Although still uncertain, I felt a chill when the big man did.