Dark Light

43

Chestra left during a lull in the storm, but a squall band was over the island now, lightning popping, and I could hear more rain rattling through trees toward the gazebo.

I also heard was a muffled bang. It sounded like a door slamming or the backfire of a car.

I checked my watch. Chestra had been gone nearly fifteen minutes. That seemed too long. I waited another five minutes before deciding it was too long. I should check on her.

My shirt and khaki slacks were hanging on a chair, still soaked. I dropped the towel and walked to the chair. I had one leg in my pants when I realized there was a vehicle sitting in the drive, headlights visible through the trees. They illuminated a section of Chestra’s house, the cab of my old Chevy, and froze silver tracers of rain.

I hadn’t heard it arrive, because of the storm.

As I zipped my pants, I opened the gazebo door for a better look. It was a pickup truck. Big tires, and vertical chrome exhaust pipes that would make a NASCAR rumble, if I was near enough to hear.

It was the same truck I had seen earlier that evening, lights out, parked in the drive.

I felt a chilly spike of awareness move from spine to neck, and I rushed to get the rest of my clothes, watching. As I hurried through bare trees, I saw Chestra’s front door open and a man appear. His shadow was massive on the house’s gray shingles. He turned and pulled an object through the doorway. Something heavy. I watched him drag the thing across the sand, toward the waiting truck.

I was looking for my shoes. Where were my shoes? I decided, to hell with my shoes, and charged out. As I did, I saw the man squat and heft the thing onto his shoulder. A box, maybe…or a sack. He took a few steps, then dumped it into the truck’s bed.

I yelled as I sprinted toward him.

There’s an old fake film clip of a creature that woodsmen in the Pacific Northwest call Sasquatch. In the clip, a guy in a hairy costume turns to face the camera, pauses, then flees, taking long, deliberate strides. The man’s reaction was similar: in a hurry but not scared.

He crossed in front of the truck’s headlights, then gave me one last look before getting into the cab. No, he wasn’t afraid. Not of me—although I doubt if he recognized me. It was Augie’s NFL-sized uncle from Indian Harbor. The man who’d head-butted me, then kicked me with contempt. The big square face; jaw like a robot, the frozen smile. He owned the marina where Javier had been shot and killed. Bern something…

The name came to me despite the crazy unreality of seeing the man here. At Chestra’s house. After midnight in a storm?

Bern Heller.

What was the connection?

He slammed the door, threw the truck into reverse, and backed out of the drive at an insane speed, tires squealing when they hit asphalt. The tires spun again when he sped away on Gulf Drive toward the lighthouse.

What the hell is going on?

The box…what was in the box? Old papers—my first thought. The promissory notes. Even if Heller knew about them, though, they couldn’t be that heavy.

He had left the door to the house open. I stopped, and yelled toward the stairs. “Chestra? Chestra!”

Silence.

“Marlissa!”

I heard a door slam, simultaneous with a gust of wind.

I considered running upstairs to look for the woman but my instincts were fixated on the weight of the box. Why was it so heavy? Why was the man in such a hurry? He was running for a reason.

I had witnessed Bern Heller’s secret craziness. I saw the vicious little boy who lived behind his eyes. If he had kidnapped Chestra…?

I sprinted to my truck, shifted to reverse, floored the accelerator, and turned onto Gulf Drive.

I t was raining again. The old truck’s wipers squeegeed brief snapshots of the road ahead. As I drove, my brain scanned for a connection.

Bern Heller…Sanibel…Javier…Indian Harbor…Chestra?

No meaningful linkage.

Gulf Drive turned sharply toward Casa Ybel Road. I nearly missed the curve. If my truck wasn’t so old and slow, I probably would have skidded into trees.

It was the back way to the causeway bridge. A route well known to locals, but Heller wasn’t local. If he wasn’t aware the bridge was closed, I had him. There would be police at the intersection turning away traffic—if there was any traffic on this stormy night. I would pull in close behind his vehicle, block his retreat, and ask the cops to take a look: Find out what was in the box he stole from my friend’s house.

I was torn. Had he kidnapped Chestra? Or was she still in the house, possibly badly hurt, unable to answer when I called her name But the box…its weight.

The thought of her stuffed into a box, riding through rain in the back of a truck, was sickening.

As I approached Beach Road, I saw taillights ahead. I couldn’t tell if it was Heller, but the vehicle didn’t turn toward the bridge. Nor did it turn on the next road, Lindgren Boulevard—the driver wasn’t escaping to the mainland via the causeway. The vehicle was headed for a residential area, streets named after seashells, then East Gulf Drive.

East Gulf Drive was near a large rind of public beach, the lighthouse, and deepwater docks on the bay side, Ferry Boat Landing, where Jeth moored the Viking…

The Viking…

That’s it.

The connection. I had it. Bern Heller and Sanibel. Jeth told me someone had snuck aboard the boat, stole some things—it was Heller. Which meant that he was no stranger to the area. But why was Chestra involved? I had no idea unless…

The wreck—Dark Light. Her family owned it. Heller had seen the Nazi artifacts. He wanted them, so did his nephew. Somehow, he had found her. The linkage was tenuous, but it was meaningful. It was all I had, and if I was right I knew where he was headed.

I was right.

W hen I skidded into the parking area at Ferry Boat landing, Heller’s truck was there—a much faster truck than mine, because the big man already had the Viking’s engines started. No cabin lights or navigational lights showing, but he was easy to spot. The docks were illuminated by shepherd’s crook lamps, plus the lighthouse was only a few hundred yards away: a medieval-looking tower capped with crystal. Its revolving column of light was much brighter here, illuminating clouds above, and whitecaps breaking bayside.

With each revolution, the beacon exposed Heller as if he were on stage. He was dragging a bag toward the Viking. A very heavy bag, not a box as I had thought. When he got to the gangplank, he lifted the bag, swung it to get momentum, then tossed it aboard.

I was out of the truck, running, and close enough to hear the bag hit. It was a sickening bone-on-wood sound. Distinctive, even with the rumble of engines.

He hadn’t noticed me pull in. I wanted to come up behind him and take him by surprise. He’d waved a semiautomatic at Jeth and me when he was seasick. Maybe he was carrying the gun now.

Maybe…

Behind me, headlights blinked from low beam to high. There was another vehicle in the parking lot. When Heller turned to look, he saw me. I watched his expression change from surprise to rage…then to recognition. He knew who I was. I was the Sanibel guy who’d taken the Viking from Augie. It registered on his face, a mixture of triumph and satisfaction.

His turn to steal the Viking.

Heller stepped aboard the boat and kicked the gangplank free. Before he turned to the controls and got under way, he showed me his vicious smile…along with his middle finger. Then he nudged both throttles forward.

It was like the day we’d found the wreck Dark Light. The day I watched his nephew make every mistake a novice could make, from bungling the anchor to losing this vessel.

Heller had already freed ropes at the front and back. But he hadn’t noticed four additional lines that ran from the Viking’s aft, middle, and forward cleats to outboard pilings—spring lines, they are called, because they absorb shock and limit a boat’s movement.

Jeth had used good braided line, and done a professional job, anticipating the storm.

When Heller pushed the throttles forward, the diesels rumbled, propellers frothed the water, ropes and the pilings creaked…but the boat didn’t move. He gunned it a couple of times…waited, then hit the throttles again before he shifted the engines to neutral.

I was sprinting full speed along the dock when Heller exited the cabin to see what the problem was. I didn’t break stride. His eyes widened as I leaped onto the Viking and put my shoulder down, hitting him belly high like a linebacker.

The bag he’d tossed onto the deck was there. I nearly tripped over it. An oversized duffel bag, like a pro jock might use. I only got a glimpse as we struggled, but a glimpse was all I needed.

Fingers of a human hand were visible, protruding through the top. Long white fingers, frail looking in death.

Chestra.

My legs continued to drive Heller backward across the deck. I wanted to kill him. But not here. He was bigger, stronger, and quicker. He had proven it. I wouldn’t give him another chance.

I used our momentum to back him up until he hit the guard railing. The man gave a woof of pain and surprise as we both tumbled overboard into black water.

I surfaced first, as a column of light panned the marina basin. The beam swept across me, then was gone. A moment later, Heller’s massive head appeared. He was sputtering and blowing water from his nose—draconic.

He was within arm’s reach, glaring at me. It must have surprised him when I submerged. I found his legs by feel and spun his back to me, as if I were a lifeguard making a rescue.

This was not a rescue.

I came up behind him and locked my arms around his neck, fingers burrowing into soft flesh beneath his jaw mandible. At the same time, I wound my legs through his legs from inside out. Like a grapevine.

He was immobile. The only thing keeping us on the surface was the air in his lungs, the air in my lungs.

From the parking lot, I heard a man yell. There was a sudden flurry of colored lights, red and blue mixing with the lighthouse’s pale metronome—police. How had they found me? The difference between perfect and imperfect timing is sometimes only a few seconds. Their timing was not perfect.

Heller began to speak, shouting, “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Ford—”

I silenced him, closing his throat with the edge of my forearm. An instant later, I ceased applying pressure. He inhaled mightily, then exhaled, making a guttural woof. Immediately, I ratcheted my forearm tight. His lungs were empty; mine, full. I exhaled as I readjusted my grip. I took the man under.

He struggled; I held. He became desperate—my arms and fingers were locked; his legs tied up by mine. Then he panicked, his strength freakish.

I anticipated the three stages. It is the way men die underwater. I had taken men better than Bern Heller beneath the surface. I knew.

Exhale and human lungs still retain a volume of air. Consciously, I relaxed all but those muscles required to control the man. He conserved nothing and therefore expended everything—his breath…his cold composure, once so intimidating. His life.

I waited. Patiently.

Underwater, the human eye fails, but pupils remain apertures sensitive to changes in darkness and light. My eyes moved to the surface where a radiant beam sped past…then another. The lighthouse’s pulse became an exact gauge of Heller’s slowing heartbeat.

Light-light…dark. Light-light…dark.

Unexpectedly, another light then appeared: a spear of incandescence that probed from the darkness above. Then there were several lights above us, much brighter. They were coming from the Viking, or the dock.

Heller’s huge hand had tried to break my fingers free of his throat. His hand was still locked on mine, but now only tapped gently, as if keeping time to a fading melody.

Police were up there waiting, I knew. I wanted only a few more seconds…

They didn’t allow it.

I felt a depth charge percussion, then another—the sound of men jumping into water. Their lights were beside me now. I felt frantic human hands grab my shirt. I pushed them away; they grabbed again. I surfaced, taking Heller with me.

Police, yes. Their lights were blinding…and their hurried questions, to my surprise, were based on a flawed assumption.

“Is he okay? Did he fall overboard?”

Talking about the unconscious man who was still alive: Bern Heller. The man they believed I had gone underwater to save.

T he police wanted me to look at the body inside the duffel bag.

I told them, “I’d rather not.”

They pressed.

EMTs were on scene. Heller was faceup on a gurney inside an ambulance. In the glare of lights and silver rain, efficient silhouettes moved around him working to bring him back.

I hoped they failed. I feared that if I saw Chestra’s body inside the bag, I would lose control and try to fight my way to the ambulance; try to get my hands around his throat—damning behavior for a man being credited for a heroic rescue attempt.

I had told them I followed Heller because I saw him steal what I thought was a box from Mildred Engle’s home on Gulf Drive. I’d ended up trying to save the man when I realized he couldn’t swim.

“We know you’ve been through a lot,” one of the officers now said to me. “But…we found a body aboard the boat. He may have been headed out to dump it when you saw him fall over. Do you mind taking a look at it?”

I minded. But I followed the officer, anyway, feeling sick.

It was nearly 1 A.M. Storm winds gusted, no longer gale force. I had a towel around my shoulders. I felt exhausted.

Unreal reality. I wished I was aboard No Mas, discussing inanities with Tomlinson.

Instead, I stepped aboard the Viking. There were a half-dozen law enforcement people shielding the bag and the body from me. My presence, a civilian, caused them to lower their voices. The officer I was following held up a finger—it would be a minute or two before they were ready.

I turned my back to the group and waited. The lights inside the boat were on, cabin door open. No one stopped me when I stepped inside and took a look.

Three suitcases there, Heller’s name and Wisconsin address on one of the tags.

Yes, he had been attempting to escape by water. But where?

I didn’t give it much thought. I didn’t care.

I had been aboard this vessel enough to notice that along with the suitcases, Heller had brought something else into the cabin. It was a trunk. The old steamship variety: wood and leather, with a brass lock.

The lock was sprung. I opened the trunk.

Inside were packets of letters, some sheet music, and old photos. I looked at one. Marlissa Dorn. Not a glamour shot, but taken when she was about the same age.

A beautiful woman.

The promissory notes were there, too. Some were in an envelope, others scattered throughout the trunk—rectangles of fragile brown paper signed by Marlissa and Frederick Roth. It was the box I’d seen him take from Southwind.

I was confused. When had Heller loaded the bag containing Chestra’s body into the truck?

I stepped outside. People standing around the body made room.

I forced myself to look at the bag. It wasn’t Chestra.

It was a man, his face unrecognizable because he’d been shot execution style in the back of the head—grotesque.

I recognized the straw cowboy hat, though. Heller had called him Moe.

The officer asked, “Any idea who it is, Doc?”

I shook my head. If this was Moe, then Chestra was—oh God. I brushed past the cop, and sprinted toward my truck before he could ask anything else.

Several minutes later, I skidded to a stop in Southwind’s driveway expecting the worst.

C hestra!”

The front door was closed but not bolted. I stepped inside, calling for her.

“Chestra!”

Behind me, the tree canopy flickered with light, bare limbs gray, black, bronze.

I sprinted up the steps, still calling for her…then stopped at the head of the stairs…

Chestra was at the piano, bent over the keyboard as if she’d fallen sleep. The piano’s candelabra was a pyramid of lighted candles. The balcony doors were closed, but curtains allowed moonlight. A white lace shawl covered her head. She looked frail, like an October leaf about to blow away.

“Chestra.”

She stirred. Slowly, then, the woman removed the shawl and looked at me. She had been holding a compress to her forehead, I realized.

“Doc? Doc, thank God you’re not hurt. I was worried.”

I walked to the piano. There was a bowl of ice and another cloth compress on the stand next to her. I knelt and put my hand on her shoulder. “Are you all right?”

She had been crying, and I could see a plum-sized lump above her left eye.

She used her hand to dismiss the subject. “Yes. But he did surprise me. I was terrified, of course, but I tried not to show it—remember my philosophy about men and wolves?”

Never show fear. I remembered.

“I inherited a little popgun of a pistol from Marlissa, and I managed to get it on him, but he wrestled it away before I could—”

Shoot him?

She didn’t finish. She looked at me. “What about you? Did you catch him?”

“Yes.”

Her tone became expectant, although she tried to mask it. “I hope you didn’t do something crazy—like kill him?” She looked at me suddenly, searching my face.

I said, “Almost. But, no.”

She nodded. “I don’t know why the fool didn’t shoot me. But it was the strangest thing, Doc. He had the gun, pointing right at me. Then there was a lightning flash, and…he got the queerest expression on his face. It was as if he’d been struck dumb.” The woman touched a gentle finger to her forehead. “He just stood there, staring, then he must have hit me. When I came to, I heard your truck leave. That’s why I called the police. I was worried you would follow him. And he was monstrous.”

No wonder the cops reacted so quickly when they spotted my truck at the ferry landing.

There was a box of tissues on the piano and she took one. She dabbed at her eyes, then blew her nose delicately, before standing and walking past me. She was bundled in a white robe, hair frazzled from the storm. “If you don’t mind, though, Doc, I’d prefer not to discuss it anymore. I’m not prepared for visitors, I’m afraid. And I have a lot to do.”

Outside, lightning flared twice. It illuminated her face…abandoned it to shadows…then illuminated her face again. I took a step back, and shook my head, trying to clear what had to have been a hallucination.

“Doc? You’re white as a ghost. Can I get you something?”

I said, “No. But I need to sit down a minute.” I walked to the bar and poured soda water over ice, intentionally not looking at Chestra. In the strobing light, her face had changed…no, it had appeared to change. One moment she was old, an instant later she was young. Old…young…dark…light.

Heller had stared at her instead of killing her. Had he experienced the same dizzying hallucination?

“Men,” I heard her say. “Hard on the outside, but so soft on the inside. Sit there and rest, dear.”

I plopped down in the chair near the piano. She patted my shoulder as she passed.

I felt distanced from reality.

Several hours had passed since I had sat aboard No Mas and taken a couple of puffs from a joint. I’d been in water that was dark and cold; I’d sobered. I was sober enough to realize the drug had affected me. But had it done this?

The drug had scrambled my sense of time. It had also intensified various fixations, and I’m tunnel-visioned to begin with, prone to what shrinks call OCB. So it had skewed my judgment, too.

Tomlinson covets varieties of cannabis that cause hallucinations. Could hallucinations be so emotionally authentic that they registered inside the brain as fact?

Was that why Chestra was behaving so distant now—as if our time together in the gazebo was something I’d dreamed? Or…was it because I had called her Marlissa?

I remembered Tomlinson telling me that she had ended their relationship when he’d done something similar…But, no, this was ridiculous. I was just tired and beat-up, that’s all.

I noticed something for the first time. The hallway was a chaos of clothing, personal items, and suitcases. Either Heller had made a mess of the place, or…

She saw my expression.

“Yes, dear, I am packing to leave.”

“What?”

“That’s right. It’s time. Thanks to you and your friends, I found out the truth tonight about Frederick Roth. I had no idea it would be such an emotional experience. Marlissa has become more than a hobby, I’ve realized. In a way, I’m her…custodian. It broke my heart when I was told Freddy abandoned her. Doc”—the woman paused long enough to smile at me—“you made Marlissa’s memory…her story …romantic again. Thank you for that.”

I said, “You’re welcome. But does that mean you have to leave, go back to Manhattan?”

“Let’s just say I’m going. Leave it at that.”

I stood. “Do you need help?”

She shook her head. “No, I want to be alone. With Freddy. I’m sure you understand.”

No, I didn’t. I put my drink on the table as she opened the balcony doors. I followed her outside. She was reaching for the light switch when I caught her. I placed my hands on her shoulders.

“Chestra. Why are you doing this?”

As I pivoted her, she reached for the switch again and turned on the lights. There were two flood lamps above the balcony doors, megawattage for security. They produced harsh, unfiltered beams that had a surgical sterility.

What she then did was intentional, like punishment. Chestra pulled me close, then tilted her face into the blinding rays, as if looking into the sun. She held the pose to make certain I had all the time I needed to see what she really looked like.

My reaction was involuntary: I stepped back.

This was not the woman I had lifted into my arms during the storm.

The woman smiled, still holding the pose, forcing me to look at her again. Something familiar was in her smile—the diamond glitter of her eyes? Yes.

“Don’t you agree, Doc? It’s time for me to be gone.”

Chestra expected me to turn away. I didn’t. I’d seen what she looked like in bright light, but I also knew how she felt and reacted when lights were dim. We had more in common than I had realized.

Instead, I put a finger to her chin and rotated her face toward mine. I held her there while my other hand found the wall, then the switch. The spotlights blinked off.

In the fresh darkness, the moon was huge, pale as a winter sun. She tried to pull away, but I wouldn’t allow it. I touched my lips to hers.

She smiled, and placed her hand on the side of my face. “Good-bye, Doc.”

Then she led me down the stairs to the front door.

After it closed behind me, I walked to the beach, alone. Wind pushed moonlight off the Gulf of Mexico, and I stood in the dark, listening, as the piano began, first tentative, then with more certainty, her voice matching the cadence of waves.

Never mind…

The sun is on the sea

In my mind

Waves wash over me

We’ll never know

All that we possess

’Til the end of time

We can only guess…