Deceived

20

My fishing clients are amused when I tell them I’ve never seen snow but plan to one day visit a mountain resort where people wear sweaters and sit by the fire when they are not skiing S-turns down a snowy slope.

Skiing down an asphalt straightaway-that was the sensation in my stomach when the BMW went into a skid after hitting loose gravel at the side of the road. I’m sure Birdy took her foot off the accelerator, yet the car seemed to go faster when she corrected the skid by yanking the wheel to the left, which only vaulted us into the path of the eighteen-wheeler. The truck protested with a diesel bellow and flooded our windshield with lights until Birdy fishtailed us to the right. We went off the road again and hit more gravel while the truck went speeding past, but Birdy didn’t overcorrect this time. She kept the steering wheel straight and allowed the shoulder of the road to punish the little sports car until we had banged to a stop.

“Jesus Christ, that was close!” Birdy whispered, then put her face in her hands.

I swung around in my seat and watched the eighteen-wheeler’s brakes flare as the driver slowed, probably using his mirrors to confirm we hadn’t crashed, and then went speeding on. To the west, a wafer of moon provided light, but all I saw was the truck and empty asphalt. No sign of the woman who had leaped in front of us.

“Did we hit her?”

“Jesus Christ!” Birdy said again, then sat up straight. “No. But, goddamn, that was close!”

“I felt something,” I said. “Like a thud against the fender. Are you sure?”

“Yeah… yes, I’m sure. I got a glimpse of her in the mirror when we went off the road. That’s what you heard, a sort of thump when we hit the berm. But I saw her. Standing there like a statue-what an idiot! Ran right out in front of us!”

I said, “Let’s go back and check. What do you think?”

“Yeah, I guess. I didn’t hit her, but she has to be in some sort of trouble. Or drunk. What was she wearing? A robe maybe. It wasn’t yellow, but it looked yellow because of the lights.”

“Are you okay to drive?” I asked.

“Stood there like a statue!” Birdy said again, then took a deep breath. “Probably some redneck who had a fight with her boyfriend, out here crazy drunk or high.” She opened the glove box and took out a flashlight. “Let’s go see.”

We turned around on the empty road and retraced our path with the windows down, Birdy driving slowly, until we found the BMW’s first skid marks. The night air was dense with April moisture and vibrated with cicadas and trilling frogs. We shared the flashlight. Ditches on both sides of the road were a tangle of weeds and beer cans, but no sign of the woman.

Ahead was the entrance to Sematee Evaluation and Treatment Clinic. I was already thinking it when Birdy said, “Hospital clothes, that’s what she was wearing. Or scrubs, something like that.” She looked toward the clinic’s security lights, way back in the trees, which showed a wedge of empty parking lot and a couple of low buildings that reminded me of government housing. “Think we should go find someone?”

I still wasn’t convinced we hadn’t grazed the woman. What if she had wandered off into a field and was dying? “Let’s park and search on foot,” I said. “We need to make sure she’s okay before we waste time talking to people.”

“I just got this car,” Birdy replied in a way that told me she wanted to check for damage, too. “Let’s find that church, we’ll get out.”

We turned around again.

THE REASON we hadn’t noticed the church was because it wasn’t there. The building had collapsed beneath the weight of its own rotting frame or had been intentionally demolished-a tiny structure the size of a schoolhouse, if photographed from a satellite, that lay a quarter mile west of the clinic.

We didn’t see the cemetery, either, until Birdy babied the BMW into the drive and hit her brights. That’s when the wreckage of the church appeared and headstones began emerging from the weeds, a dozen or fewer stones at the edge of the property where vines and cattails created a wall. From the satellite photos, I knew that a section of what might be swamp, and the lake that fed it, were nearby, then miles of sugarcane and citrus beyond that.

“At least no one will see the car,” Birdy said, getting out, and I had to agree that the spot seemed hidden from the road. She inspected the Beamer for damage-there was none-then popped the trunk so I could get the flashlight and mosquito spray I’d brought. Soon she was telling me that her friend’s night vision equipment didn’t work the way she expected.

“Maybe weak batteries,” Birdy said, holding a plastic scope to her eye. “It’s one of the cheapies-can’t see crap-but I’ll bring it along anyway.” She locked the car and listened to the chirring insects before saying, “Smithie, I’m sure I didn’t hit that woman. Not even a scratch on my fenders.”

“The poor thing’s out here all by herself,” I said. “How about we jog along the road? You take one side, I’ll take the other.” I turned and started away.

Birdy had the scope to her eye again and stopped me by saying, “What the hell’s that?” She was looking in the direction of the area we had planned to search, the quarter-acre lot the Candors had changed from wetlands by hauling in fill. There was no way she could see anything, though, even if the scope had worked, because vines and cypress trees separated us from the clearing.

“You’re wasting time,” I said. “What if she’s hurt?”

“Listen!” The woman deputy appeared to crouch into a shooting stance and began backing away.

“What’s wrong?”

“Someone’s coming!” she said, and motioned for me to return to the car.

I didn’t see or hear anything, so I switched on my flashlight-a small Fenix LED that Ford had given me. The light was blinding, and I used its beam to paint gravestones white as I probed among the weeds. Finally, the light spooked something. Bushes moved, branches crackled. I searched until I found the source: an armor-plated animal that made a squealing noise when the light found it, then bounced away in retreat.

“Armadillo,” I said, smiling. “Good thing you didn’t bring your gun.”

Birdy was explaining that animals sometimes sound like footsteps when a distant howl silenced her and caused the back of my neck to tingle. The howl climbed in pitch and became a shriek-the scream of a woman who was terrified or in pain.

“It’s her!” I said, and took off running toward the road but then stopped because the screaming stopped. I hadn’t had time to pinpoint the woman’s location but Birdy had. She was already zigzagging through the cemetery, using her flashlight to take what she thought was a shorter route through the trees.

“That might be swamp!” I yelled, but she kept going. So I followed. The cemetery had once been enclosed by a wrought-iron fence that had fallen and was hidden by weeds. Birdy stumbled over a section and went sprawling. It gave me time to catch up.

“Are you okay?”

“Shit,” she said, shining her light on a tombstone. The stone had been worn smooth by decades, and she looked at it for a second. “My ass just landed on someone’s grave. Good thing I’m not superstitious.”

I said, “Check your clothes for fire ants,” because what her ass had almost landed on was an ant nest, a sandy mound the size of a pumpkin. Fire ants like rough ground and attack in mass when their nest is disturbed. The bites burn like hot coals, so I was making a thorough search of my friend’s clothes when we heard a woman scream again and then men shouting. The voices came from the other side of the trees.

“Are they hurting her or trying to help?” I whispered.

“Before I call my dispatcher, let’s make sure,” Birdy said, then motioned for me to take the lead and I did.

WHAT I HAD FEARED would be swamp was actually the remains of a cypress strand that had been drained by a pond. The ground was soft but not mushy, and the pond appeared in the beam of my flashlight as a sheen of black that was dotted with lily pads and stars. When we were closer, though, pairs of glowing red eyes floated to the surface.

“Gators,” I told Birdy. “Keep moving.”

She did. It took us only a minute or two to cross the strand, but the screaming had stopped by the time we exited the trees. We were at the edge of the clearing we had come to search, a building lot that had been elevated with fill, then tamped flat by heavy equipment. Beyond that were more trees, then the lights of the medical clinic-but no woman dressed in a hospital gown, no sign of the men we had heard yelling.

“Sound plays tricks at night,” I said. “Maybe they’re up on the road.”

Birdy switched off her flashlight and told me to do the same. “Even if they aren’t,” she said, putting the nightscope to her eye, “I’m not walking past that damn pond again. Gators, my ass!” A moment later, she handed the scope to me, saying, “This thing’s useless,” and stepped up onto the rectangle of packed earth, her short attention span now back on the subject of artifacts.

Looking through the night vision scope was like trying to see through a green marble. I fiddled with the focus without success but did decipher something moving near the highway. I lowered the scope and was about to use my flashlight when another eighteen-wheeler zoomed past and illuminated what I was seeing. It was a person running-a woman, which became apparent when she paused to catch her breath only fifty yards away. I called out, “Are you okay?”

It startled her-and startled Birdy, too, whose attention was elsewhere. “I’m not deaf!” she snapped, and switched on her flashlight. She was kicking at something on the ground.

“I’m going to talk to her,” I said.

“Who?”

“The woman we almost hit,” I said. She was jogging toward us now, attracted by our voices or the light. Didn’t say a word until her last few wobbly strides, but then spoke to us in a rush, saying, “I need to use your phone! You gotta help me.” The accent was Caribbean, a singsong rhythm that didn’t fit her urgency.

Birdy swung the flashlight but was polite enough not to blind the woman. She was pale-skinned, tall, and so emaciated it suggested anorexia or illness. I also got the impression her arms were heavily tattooed, but that might have been an illusion. The harsh lighting had distorted the color of the scrubs she wore. They were prison orange, not yellow. Instantly, Birdy, the amateur archaeologist, became Deputy Liberty Tupplemeyer.

“Mind telling us your name?” Birdy switched off the flashlight to calm matters, but her hardass attitude scared the woman.

“Don’t let ’em take me,” she said. “Even if you’re cops, don’t let them no matter what they say. Please.” Then backed away, taking nervous glances over her shoulder.

She was referring to the clinic, I assumed, or maybe she meant prison, but it didn’t matter. Her pleading tone was heartbreaking. The woman was exhausted, near tears, and out here all alone. I said, “No one’s taking you anywhere until we get this straightened out,” then walked toward her, moving slowly as if approaching a creature that had been wounded.

“You mean it?”

I told her, “I’m not a cop, but I want to help. Why were you screaming?”

The woman was still edging away and worried about someone surprising her from the road, which is where she was looking. She started to explain, “You’d scream, too, if they-” But then her breath caught as if she’d seen something, and she whispered, “Dear god.”

“What did those men do to you?” I asked. “We heard them yelling.” Then I told Birdy, “Call nine-one-one.”

The woman was focused on something in the distance and it took her a moment to react. “Not the police!” she said, then hurried toward me, pleading, “You have a car? Take me with you! At least let me use your phone!”

Birdy tried to get between us, saying, “Back off,” but I handed the woman my phone anyway, which surprised them both. Birdy’s body language showed disapproval but then softened when the woman hurried away to dial. “Poor thing looks half starved,” Birdy said. “If someone hurt her, I’ll have their ass.”

I was trying to eavesdrop when two shadows materialized near the road and floated toward us-two men who had seen our light and were closing the distance. At the same instant, a police car rocketed past, blue lights spinning but no siren, then braked hard at the clinic gate. Birdy saw the car, too.

“Sheriff’s department,” she said. “Good. I wonder if that trucker called.”

I listened to the woman say into the phone, “Answer, damn you,” before I told Birdy, “We’re not going to let those guys touch her. Are they orderlies, you think?”

Birdy turned to look. “Jesus, I didn’t notice. You have any ID on you?”

We were about to be caught trespassing, I realized, which didn’t worry me. Police would consider it a duty, not a crime, to check on the welfare of a pedestrian we’d almost killed, so I continued to eavesdrop, hearing the woman mutter a profanity when she got voice mail. Then she left a message, which I strained to hear, the woman saying, “It’s me! You gotta get me out tonight. Crystal… pick up the phone!”

Crystal? I edged closer, but there was nothing else to hear because a spotlight came on, panned the field briefly, then froze the woman in its beam.

“Brenita!” a man yelled. “When you gonna stop this silliness and come eat your dinner?” His voice mimicked kindness but actually taunted her. The woman, Brenita, stood rigid for a moment, then dropped my phone and ran toward the cypress strand where the pond created an emptiness in the trees.

The man hollered, “I’ve got your meds in my pocket!” talking as if he would reward her with ice cream, but Brenita continued running, so he said, “Shit!” then listened to his partner ask, “Who the hell are those two?” Meaning us. And then a second spotlight blinded us.

I turned my face away, worried that Brenita was unaware of the pond and of the animals that fed there, while Birdy went into full-on cop mode. She hollered back, “After you take that goddamn light out of our eyes, I’ll show you my badge! Then you can explain what you did to that woman-we heard her screaming, assholes!”

The lights went off, and I imagined the men stiffening to attention, before one of them replied, “How were we supposed to know you’re a cop?”

A minute later, I had retrieved my phone and was telling Birdy, “I think that woman knows Crystal Helms. How many felons you’ve heard of named Crystal?” The area code was local, and I was debating on whether to memorize the number or risk sharing my childhood friend’s number with police.

Birdy nodded, interested in the Helms connection, then added a link of her own. “The reason I didn’t see those guys coming was I was looking for more of these.” She switched on her flashlight and pointed it at a large conch shell nested in the earth.

“Look familiar?”

Yes, it did. The tip of the conch had been sawed cleanly, similar to the ceremonial shell horn we had found on Cushing Key.

Birdy had guessed right about where trucks had dumped the earth and artifacts taken from Sulfur Wells.