Deep Shadow

TWENTY-NINE

WHEN I REACHED SHALLOW WATER, I ROLLED ONTO my back and continued kicking fast over the bottom toward shore, wanting to avoid the slippery limestone and muck beneath me. Through the night vision, I could see what was happening forty yards away.

The Komodo monitor was trying to climb onto the inner tube and get to Perry, who hadn’t stopped screaming for help since I’d surfaced. Underwater, the lizard had appeared big. On the surface, though, with its tail slashing and the breadth of its back visible in the glow of the beach fire, it was massive.

Perry was still alive. I was surprised. But Komodos feed differently than most animals, as I knew, striking and then waiting for their venom to do its work.

I could also see my BC vest, spotlight attached, drifting shoreward in the wake of all that splashing, and I could see King, too, sprinting toward me, the pistol in one hand, my flashlight in the other. The angle wasn’t good, and I knew it was going to be close. I was thinking about changing directions and swimming to the other side of the lake, but I remembered that King had left the Winchester leaning against the generator out in plain sight.

Was it still there? I swung my head to look and there it was, standing lean and western-looking against the Honda generator, with two rounds left in the chamber. And the pickup truck was parked nearby.

I was closer to the rifle than King was, but I was at least thirty yards away. And I was still in the water. I abandoned the idea of changing directions and decided to risk a footrace. Three times, King had fired the little pistol at me. Cheap pocket guns are notoriously inaccurate, and he had only three rounds left—unless the man had been smart enough to reload, which was unlikely.

King was sloppy. If I could get to my feet before he was close enough to open fire or if he started shooting too soon, his sloppiness would get him killed.

When my butt banged bottom, I swung my legs under me and yanked off my fins, hearing King yell, “Get your hands up, Jock-o! Don’t move a goddamn muscle!”

I glanced at him as I stood, feeling moss-coated rocks beneath my feet, and I yelled in reply, “Help your partner. Fire a few rounds, maybe you’ll scare off the lizard.” It was possible King heard me, but maybe he didn’t because Perry was shrieking for help now, his words interrupted only by his own wild sobbing and the depth-charge implosions of the monitor’s tail hitting water. I guessed that the monitor had begun to feed.

“Stay right where you are! I don’t want to shoot you but I will, goddamn it!”

It was the first time King had said he didn’t want to shoot me, which told me the opposite was true—this time, he meant to do it. I pulled my face mask down around my neck before throwing my hands up because now he was blinding me with the flashlight. King mistook the gesture for surrender and he immediately slowed to a walk. When he did, I dropped my hands and took off running toward the Winchester, kicking water, knees high, but it was tough to keep my balance because of the moss.

WHAP!

King fired. The slug threw a geyser up a few feet in front of me, where the water was only ankle-deep, but I kept running, trying to juke a zigzag pattern, which would have been a smart tactical move on land but not in the shallows of a lake, all limestone and marl. Only a couple of yards from shore, my ankle snagged the lip of a rock and I stumbled, almost regained my footing, but then hit a slippery patch, and I crashed, shoulder first, into the water, hitting hard.

When I raised my head, I heard King fire again—WHAP! The slug skipped off the water so close to my face that I wondered for an instant if I’d been hit, and I knew that King was lying again when he yelled,

“That’s the last time I fire a warning shot, Jock-o! Stay right where you are, goddamn it!”

It wasn’t a warning shot. The man wanted to kill me, but he had missed. And now he had only one round left—unless I was wrong about him reloading.

By the time I got to my feet and had stumbled another few yards, King was on me. He stood staring at me, the pistol aimed at my chest, too close to miss this time. He was breathing heavily, but he was grinning.

He said, “I thought we were partners, but now I get the feeling you’re trying to avoid me. We still got ourselves some trust issues, don’t we, Jock-o?”

He spoke in a normal voice that sounded inexplicably loud until I realized that, behind me, the lake had gone silent. I glanced over my shoulder. The inner tube was there, drifting shoreward, beneath a massive swirl that was animated by stars. There was no sign of Perry, so I knew that the lizard had taken him under.

I said, “Perry would agree about the trust issues.”

Glancing at the lake, King said, “Perry’s an idiot. Or . . . he was an idiot,” trying to sound tough, but he was shocked enough by what had just happened to add in a voice that suggested awe, “Jesus Christ, you ever seen anything like that in your life? Perry was right there, but now he’s fucking gone, man. What the hell is that thing? It’s not an alligator. What is it?”

I said, “It could have been you instead of Perry.”

“No way, Jock-o. Some people are born to be snack food, but I’m not one of ’em. Perry lived what we’d call an unhealthy lifestyle. Maybe it made him tasty. But if that slimy son of a bitch had messed with me? We’d be roasting the damn thing’s tail over that fire right now.”

I didn’t trust myself to respond.

King motioned with the gun, his eyes nervous as they swung from me to the inner tube. “Move your ass out of there. Lock your hands behind your head and walk toward the fire. There’s something I’m just dying to see.”

I did it as I calculated my next move, not listening to King, who continued talking to mitigate his nervousness, telling me, “I tried to help ol’ Per, I really did. But there’s only so much a man can do. He’s a murderer, you know. A couple days ago, Perry got drunked up and murdered five people. I tried to stop him because a couple were just kids—he stabbed them to death and then the asshole bragged about it. And I’m pretty sure he raped the girl. Or maybe you already figured that out, you being such a genius.”

King added the last part so bitterly that I believed he might shoot me in the back, so I said quickly, “I loaded two sacks with coins when I was down there. I found a couple of gold bars, too. I left them in the shallows, though, until we had a chance to discuss it. Just because Perry’s dead—or dying—that doesn’t mean our deal’s off.”

“Sure you did . . . sure,” King said, letting me talk. I got the impression that, if it wasn’t for the monitor lizard, he would have shot me where I stood, still ankle-deep in water, but he didn’t want to risk searching my body until he was a safe distance from the lake.

Maybe I was right because when we were close enough to feel the fire’s heat, King said, “Okay. Take off that wet suit. Let’s see what you really found.” As he spoke, he used the flashlight to search along the base of the cypress grove as if expecting to see something, but then he stuffed the light in his pocket and gave me his full attention. “Don’t be shy,” he added. “There’s no one around but just us guys.”

The coins were in a mesh pocket, near my left armpit, inside the neoprene. He would have to turn the wet suit inside out to find them, which might give me the opening I needed, but I didn’t want to appear too eager.

I said, “There’s no need to search me, I’ll tell you right now what I’ve got. I’ve got about a dozen coins on me, but there are three, maybe four, hundred more lying out there in bags. Why not do something smart for once in your life, King? Stop acting like a hard-ass. All we have to do is wait for that monitor lizard to clear out. You take your bag of coins, take the truck, too. You’ll leave here a rich man.”

“A monitor lizard,” he said. “That’s what that thing is? Like those three little bastards we saw earlier. Only the giant economy-sized version.”

“When the cops show up,” I said, “I’ll blame everything on Perry. Think about it. Why would I want the cops to find you? If they find you, they’ll find out what I took out of that lake.”

King tilted his head back to smile. “Now, isn’t that sweet of you, making me such a fair offer.” His smile vanished as he pointed the pistol at me. “I’m not going to say it again. Strip off that goddamn wet suit!”

I reached behind my back to find the zipper lanyard as King continued walking, making a slow circle, until he was on the other side of the fire, safely away from the water’s edge. The positioning provided me with a couple of options—neither of them good—but I would have to choose one soon because the man had made up his mind now. That was apparent. He was going to shoot me. Even with the prescription face mask hanging around my neck, I could read King’s intent in his twitching mannerisms and his nervous smile as he watched me peel the wet suit down around my ankles.

When I stepped free of the thing, he clicked his tongue and said, “My, my, my . . . Why, look at you, Jock-a-mo! You’d have been real popular back in the joint. I bet you’re a regular lady-killer.”

I said, “That’s something else we don’t have in common. Do you want to search this thing or not? Here it is.”

King motioned with the gun. “Kick it over here. I want that fancy night vision thing, too. Take it off.”

I had been hoping he’d give me a reason to get a hand on my face mask. It was the size and shape of a brick, and the monocular added enough weight to cause serious damage if I got a chance to rifle the thing at his face. As I was removing the mask, though, King told me, “Hold it. Don’t move,” his voice sounding strange enough to cause me to stop what I was doing.

He was looking toward the lake. When I turned, I understood.

In the oscillating light of the fire, I could see the Komodo monitor. It was gliding along the rim of the lake, tail ruddering smoothly, as it swam toward the marshy juncture where pastureland became swamp. Perry was in the lizard’s jaws. His body was hanging limp, his eyes open wide and dead, staring up at the stars.

Behind me I heard King whisper, “Look at the size of that goddamn thing,” and then I heard WHAP!

It took a microsecond for me to understand that King had just fired at the lizard—fired his last round. I was so shocked that I dropped low even as I saw the slug punch a silver furrow in the water that missed the monitor by yards. How the lizard reacted, I didn’t know or care. I was already turning toward King, my arm drawn back, and I threw the mask so hard that he didn’t have time to flinch before it glanced off his forehead.

He stumbled backward and fired off another round as I charged toward him, which was even more unexpected because the pistol should have been empty, and I thought, Wrong again, Ford. He had reloaded.

But it was too late to stop what was happening. I dodged past the fire as King got to one knee, his hand coming up fast, aiming the pistol at my chest, his mouth contorted as if to say something, but then I went airborne, diving toward him, and he fired again. The impact of the bullet that might have hit me, and the impact of me crashing into King were too closely spaced to know if I had been shot, but my hands and brain were still working as I tumbled clear of the gun, then used an elbow to knock the man’s jaw crooked and send him sprawling on his back.

I rolled to my feet, took a step toward him, hesitated—which was a mistake—and then stopped. Because I’d hesitated, I now had no choice. King’s mouth was bleeding but not badly. He looked dazed, but I had failed to knock him unconscious and he was still holding the pistol. He had fired five times since I had surfaced. If he had reloaded a full six rounds, he still had one round left. And now he was so close that it was unlikely he would miss again.

“You motherfucker,” he croaked, holding his broken jaw with his left hand. “You don’t feel so goddamn smart now, do you?”

No, I did not. I felt ridiculous and vulnerable, standing there in shorts, knowing that I had failed once again, and that I was about to be shot by a loser like King—shot for the first time, because I could see no blood when I glanced down at my belly. King was using a small-caliber pistol, though, and it would take more than one round to stop me unless he put a bullet through my head.

It was another one of those moments—perhaps my last. King would pull the trigger and drop me or within seconds I would have my hands on him and that would be the end of him. Either way, I wasn’t going to stop now.

I took a step toward him, saying, “Go ahead. But you’d better hit me in the heart,” and I watched him scoot backward on his butt.

I took another step, as King extended his arm, and I watched him squint one eye closed to fire. But before I could dive for him and before he could pull the trigger, we both heard a rustling noise in the shadows that caused us to pause. King’s eyes swiveled, I turned. We watched a person I recognized step into the circle of firelight. He was sighting down the barrel of the Winchester rifle, taking careful aim at King.

“I don’t want to kill you,” he told King. “But I will.”