Gone

TWENTY

IF THE MAKESHIFT MARKERS I REMEMBERED AT THE ENtrance to Drake Keys hadn’t been moved, I never would have spotted the Skipjack cruiser. Instead, a fast loop around the bay would have convinced me the boat wasn’t there before I hurried deeper into the islands toward channels that zigzagged toward Dismal Key.

A thirty-foot boat with Mercruisers required depth for safe anchorage, especially on a falling tide. As I approached the entrance, though, a glance told me there wasn’t enough water inside those islands to float a canoe. Plateaus of turtle grass, blades combed smooth by the tide, leaned toward gutters of deeper bottom, but there wasn’t a boat in sight. There were two navigable cuts, however, that sliced Cape Romano, and the shortest route to the nearest was through the shallow bay. That’s when I began to look seriously for the markers I remembered from my trips to the islands with Uncle Jake.

Normally, I don’t need poles or floating milk bottles to direct me through thin water. Even in unfamiliar regions, I have confidence in my abilities. But visibility had changed during the hour it had taken me to raise the shoals of Cape Romano. Now a flotilla of squall clouds muted the sky above while sunset painted the surface from a low angle, cloaking sandbars and nervous water with a blinding film of gold. I backed the throttle… squinted through my polarized glasses… thumbed the jack plate higher while searching for the best line to run. No matter how hard a boat passenger tries to pay attention, only the driver’s brain is actually branded with the self-taught ranges and contours of bottom required to navigate backcountry. I had run this little cut several times while Jake steered, but the placement of those old markers now refused to take shape in my head.

Twenty yards from the island, I knew I was in trouble. The hull lifted beneath my feet, as it always does in thin water, then my engine’s skeg banged bottom. Rather than kill the motor instantly, I got aggressive because I’d come too far to be stranded here in the middle of nowhere. Not if Ricky Meeks might soon return!

Instead, while my thumb worked the trim button, I steered hard to the right, jamming the throttle forward until the engine kicked and bucked us toward deeper water. By the time we’d broken free, my skiff was heeled precariously on its starboard chine, so I spun the wheel to the left, which caused a turn so sharp, I was nearly thrown from the boat.

Gradually, I got my skiff under control but continued steering hard rights and hard lefts until it was safe to run flat, the foot of my engine tilted deep in water that its cooling system required. For almost a minute, I thought I’d dodged a serious mistake. Then I heard BZZZZZZZZZZZZ! as my motor sputtered, then died, a cloud of exhaust steam floating past me while my skiff drifted to a stop.

I seldom say any profanity worse than shit, but I made an exception now.

This wasn’t the first time I’d been stopped by a warning buzzer and a computer chip that caused overheated outboards to shut down. Summer is the worst time in Florida for fast boats. Lots of dead sea grass adrift on the surface. Chances were good the problem wasn’t serious if I took the right steps to clean the water intake and exhaust vents. Trouble was, the time the task required would ruin my chances of finding Olivia. The sun was setting. Soon the blazing western sky would surrender to slow purple shadows and the pearly glow of twilight. Unless I was willing to poke around after dark, island to island, searching with a spotlight, it was time to turn around and head for home.

That’s exactly what I decided to do. In fact, I whispered it aloud. “Hannah Four, you reckless fool. Get your butt home.”

Part of me was relieved, part of me was disappointed. But there was something more powerful I was feeling-fear. Calm as I pretended to be, the anxiety inside me was a building pressure that required methodical action or I risked panic. My fear wasn’t groundless, the reality of my situation was plain enough that it didn’t need warnings from my imagination. It had been half an hour since I’d seen another boat or even heard a radio transmission on my little VHF. I was alone, no friendly stranger within hailing distance to help. The crunch and scream of a powerboat running aground is distinctive. Over water, an alarm buzzer can be heard for miles. To a man like Ricky Meeks, those sounds might bring him running like a wolf who hears the squeal of injured prey.

In the new silence of slapping water I did a slow turn, searching the area for a small boat hidden someplace in the shadows. If Meeks had witnessed what had just happened, he’d probably be grinning, his confidence sky-high at the prospect of dealing with a woman who was so incompetent around boats and water.

Nothing.

That’s what I saw. Pelicans roosting heavy in mangroves… snowy egrets aflame against a sunset sky, gliding to roost… a cormorant, it’s snaky emerald eyes watching from a few yards away while my skiff drifted toward the shallows.

Ricky’s aboard Sybarite, I reassured myself. The yacht was scheduled to return to Fishermans Wharf at eleven-more than two hours from now. I had plenty of time, if I got my engine running. That was first on the agenda, so I went to work trying all the normal remedies. I waited a few nervous minutes for the outboard to cool, then turned the ignition key. The engine started but was barely audible above the screaming heat alarm. I shifted into reverse and watched the propeller kick a ball of sea grass to the surface. A good sign! I shifted to neutral, engaged the idle button, then throttled forward to increase water flow through the cooling conduits.

BZZZZZZZZZZZZ! Instead of stopping, the alarm shrieked louder.

I braved the noise long enough to see that the exhaust vents weren’t spewing water-pissers, fishermen call the little tubes that jettison hot water. In a rush, I killed the engine, the abrupt silence as piercing as that maddening alarm. Now I had to admit that the water intake hadn’t been choked with grass as I’d hoped. Either the engine’s cooling ducts were clogged, or I’d burned out my water pump. Fixing the first problem might take fifteen minutes. Replacing the pump required a marina forklift and meant I would be stuck here all night unless I could arrange for a tow.

Slowly, slowly, my eyes scanned the perimeter of mangroves and water that encircled my boat. Other than switching my good boots for boating shoes, I was still dressed for a party in my jeans and Navaho shirt. Even so, I felt naked and vulnerable as if nothing but a shower curtain separated me from some lurking, invisible evil. My chest had tightened, breathing required an effort.

Nothing.

Same as before. More seabirds racing darkness toward shore… mullet slap-thumping in the shallows… the mushroom girth of a manatee breaching the surface, then the farewell wave of its fluked tail.

I put my hands on the gunnel and peered into the water. It was black with tannin but clear, and only a few feet deep. Next step was to push my skiff to a shell ridge that was twenty yards away, mangroves thick on both sides. The ridge had probably been built by the same people who’d constructed the pyramids where I’d lived as a girl. The elevation would give me room to work, plus that ancient connection offered a homey feel. Nathan is right when he accuses me of being superstitious. In my superstitious heart, I believed I would be safer there.

From my toolbox, I took a Phillips screwdriver and a length of monofilament almost as thick as the line used in a weed trimmer. If I snaked the monofilament far enough up the pisser holes, maybe I could auger the cooling ducts clean. It was my last best hope of getting my engine running again. Fail, and I was stuck for the night, which was frightening to contemplate. Even if Ricky Meeks’s Skipjack cruiser was anchored near Dismal Key, I was close enough that I would hear his engine when he passed by. Close enough that he might even see me if he used a spotlight.

Suddenly, my body was shaking again, which made me so disgusted that I stomped my foot, banged the console with my fist, and reprimanded myself with a lecture:

Stop worrying and get to work! If the man shows up, do what Hannah Three would have done: charm him silly, then slap the hell out of him. Steal his wallet, too, if the fool gives you a chance!

My aunt wasn’t a thief-not that she had admitted in her journals, anyway-but just thinking of how that tough, bawdy woman would handle the situation caused me to smile. It helped me feel better and cleared my head.

Be prepared to be surprised, Marion Ford had warned. So that’s what I concentrated on instead. I took the pistol from beneath the console, opened the book titled Negotiators, and checked to make sure there was a round in the gun’s chamber. I engaged the safety, then placed the book on the starboard seat, closing the cover to disguise what was inside, yet kept the weapon within easy reach if needed. Then I laid out a spotlight and slipped a powerful little LED flashlight into my pocket because it would be full dark in thirty minutes or so. Finally, I looped the leather scabbard of my fisherman’s pliers onto my belt. The pliers had a wire cutter and a knife blade, which might come in handy.

I wasn’t sure I’d need a tow, but the possibility was a good excuse to take another precaution. I wanted someone to know where I was, and the tough situation I was in. It had been half an hour since I’d heard a transmission on my handheld VHF, but I tried the radio anyway, using emergency channel sixteen after reducing squelch.

“Break, break, sixteen, requesting assistance from any vessel in the Marco Island area. Any vessel… copy?”

In reply, I heard rhythmic static, which meant someone was answering, but too far away to make contact.

When conversing with fishing guides, I don’t use the name of my boat or radio call letters, but I couldn’t think of a better time to sound official. So I repeated the call, adding, “This is commercial vessel Hannah-Belltiva… Whiskey-Romeo-X-ray six-seven-niner-six. Do you read?”

Belltiva is a name I’d made up by combining Sanibel with Captiva, and it seemed to bring me good luck. This time the static was decipherable, and I heard: “Hannah-Belltiva… this is Key West Coast Guard, we have you broken but readable. Please switch and answer twenty-two Alpha.”

Instead of raising a local vessel, my weak signal had skipped across eighty miles of water to a tower somewhere near Duval Street and Mallory Square, where another relative of mine, Great-great-uncle Jake Summerlin, had sold cattle to meat buyers from Cuba!

Hands shaking, I switched channels, then spent a frustrating several minutes shouting my location and describing my situation, at least some of which the Coast Guard radioman understood before our frail signal vanished. I tried a couple more times without success, then gave up.

Even so, I felt a hundred times better when I slipped into the water and pushed my skiff to the shell ridge, the mucky bottom trying to suction off my boat shoes with every step. The U.S. Coast Guard knew my name, where I was, and that I might need help! I dropped an anchor off the stern, then went to work, stopping every minute or so to sweep the area with my eyes, then listen for the distant whine of an approaching jon boat.

My engine’s tiny exhaust tubes were clogged with gray marl. I could see that right away, which gave me some hope. Clean the pisser holes, and my water pump would probably work just fine. In ten or fifteen minutes, I could be in clean Gulf air headed home!

It wasn’t that easy, though. I tried to drill through the marl (which is rough gray clay), using the monofilament. I made a quarter inch of headway before my plastic auger finally bent, so I used the other end. After another quarter inch, it snapped, too. Maybe I’d gone deep enough to get my engine running. Maybe water pressure inside the engine would kick the rest of the muck free, but it was better to do the job right than waste precious minutes on a failed test.

I stood and stretched, still confident but worried. A screwdriver was too thick, the shank of a fishhook wasn’t long enough. I needed a drilling tool as thin as the monofilament but stronger.

I turned and considered hunting through the storm detritus that settles at the rim of every mangrove swamp. Drake Key was different though. The shell ridge behind me rose ten or twelve feet above flotsam left by storms. Atop the ridge grew a gumbo-limbo tree, buttonwoods, and a thicket of Spanish bayonet plants, their leaves spiked with three-inch needles.

I didn’t have to think about it for long. Bayonet plant needles are as sharp and tough as darts, and I had hundreds to choose from. Exactly what I needed!

–

MOVING FAST but not rushing, I scampered up a cascade of shells, not stopping until I grabbed a buttonwood limb to steady myself at the top of the ridge. That’s when I noticed it-the air conditioner kick of a small generator, then a patch of blue canvas visible through vegetation that rimmed the bay below. Odd noises, too, were coming from the area. It was a garbled squawking, like parrots fighting… the grunt of what might have been a wild hog… and the feathered whap-whap-whap of a wounded bird trying to fly.

I felt my breath catch, then fought the temptation to turn and run. Instead, I took quiet steps down the back of the ridge, mangroves so thick that light faded, like slipping into a cave… then kept changing angles until I confirmed what I was seeing. The blue canvas was a sun shade on the flybridge of a boat-a low flybridge built atop the boat’s cabin. A Skipjack cruiser. Ricky Meeks had found a pocket of deep water way back in the mangroves and that’s where he had hidden.

As I looked on, the boat floated still as a painting, no one visible above deck. The dinghy that Cordial Pallet had described was missing from its brackets, I noted, but there was no sign of a fast jon boat that Meeks no doubt would have tied to the stern-a huge relief.

My chance to find out if Olivia was aboard! To finally meet the girl face-to-face and urge her to return home with me. The temptation was to call the girl’s name. Better yet, climb aboard the Skipjack in case Meeks had left her tied up or locked in a cabin.

But I didn’t. There was something else I saw now that I was closer… the source of the strange noises. Deep in shadows separating me from the boat, a gaggle of vultures were battling two feral hogs to get at something that lay in the bushes. The area being so dense with mangroves, the vultures were getting the worst of it because their wings kept tangling in vines. And one of the hogs was bigger than me, probably two hundred pounds of muscle and tusks. When it grunted, the sound was so coarse that the shell ridge vibrated beneath my feet.

Why didn’t you bring the damn pistol? That’s what I was thinking as I watched the animals squabble. My Great-great-aunt Hannah One had hunted hogs for meat and money, but I was more interested in self-defense. Boars didn’t often attack people on the islands, but it happened, and the prospect of being mauled by an animal that size was sickening. How would the hog react if I tried to detour around it to get to the boat? Or even heard my voice?

I don’t know why but into my head came the message from church that morning-the promise that guidance and protection belonged to those who had faith and behaved boldly. I’d been disgusted by my inability to control my shaking nerves and was sick to death of being scared. The bullying behavior of that boar hog, the mean way it strutted, was irksome, too. Maybe that’s why my attitude changed so abruptly. Whatever the reason, a mix of anger and cold calm settled into me, a change as solid as it was swift, and for the first time since leaving Fishermans Wharf I felt strong, not flighty and timid. Neither Ricky Meeks nor some damn feral pig was going to bully me!

Hands cupped to my mouth, I stood on my toes and yelled, “Olivia! Are you in there? I’m a friend!”

Startled, vultures squawked and thrashed their wings, trying to scatter, while the boar hog whirled to face me. The animal didn’t bother to drop what was in its mouth while sniffing the gloom for my scent-something long and thin, but rounded at one end. A piece of dead raccoon, possibly, or a bloated fish. I couldn’t be sure, and didn’t much care as long as the animal didn’t charge me.

“Olivia, don’t be scared! My name’s Hannah Smith and I want to talk! Olivia…?” I took a few steps closer, straining to see. Was it my imagination or had the curtains inside the cabin moved? Hopeful it was true, I tried again. “Olivia! Please come out!”

This time the boar hog reacted by snorting and lunging stiff-leggedly in my direction, warning me to stay away. But the threat only sharpened my mood. In reply, I made myself bigger by waving my arms and yelling, “Shoo! I’ll fry you for breakfast! Scoot!” The pig backed away a step but was still glaring at me as its tusks cracked a bone inside the thing it was eating.

Now I was wondering whether I should get the pistol and shoot the boar or finish with my engine and approach the cruiser by water. But was it worth risking that shallow bay if Olivia wasn’t aboard? Had I really seen those curtains move? I needed a solid reason to keep me from heading straight home once my boat was started.

Squall clouds moving toward the island were still purple-pink with sunlight, but it was darkening in this swamp of tangled trees and sulfur. Dark enough that details of the cruiser and everything around me were becoming grainy. I remembered the powerful little LED flashlight in my pocket and used it, pointing the laser-sharp beam at the cabin.

“OLIVIAAAAA!” I yelled, loud as I could. Which was more than the hog could tolerate and caused the thing to trot toward me, crushing tree limbs with its weight. In a rush, I swung the light at the animal. Held the LED in both hands like a pistol, aiming at the boar’s eyes as it crashed through brush, closing the distance between us, coming faster, and growling… until its eyes strobed like flashbulbs when the light pierced them. Squealing, the hog flung what it was eating toward me, then spun away, taking the other hog with it into the bushes.

“That’ll teach you!” I hollered after it. Then, only mildly interested, I checked to see what had been in the animal’s mouth before I called for Olivia again. Several seconds later, though, I was only able to whisper, “Dear God above…”

What I saw was a human hand, fingers missing, attached to what remained of a forearm. Even from the distance of several yards, I couldn’t deny what the hog had been eating. I felt eerily calm while, slowly, the flashlight revealed bloody details I didn’t want to see, or remember. No… I was in shock, but didn’t realize it. The same chilly calm stayed with me while I stood my ground and used the light to search the mangroves below until I had found the body.

Yes… a human body. Vultures had returned and were now competing with crabs for what had, until recently, been a person, judging from the freshness of what I saw. Man or woman, though, I couldn’t be sure because a frenzy of wings and crawling shadows obstructed my view. If I descended the ridge, the vultures would scatter, but my feet wouldn’t allow me to move. So I used the flashlight to probe. The victim was an adult, from the size… an adult who had sought safety by balling into a fetal position, then was left to die.

My eyes moved from the corpse to the Skipjack cruiser, to the corpse, then swept the area nearby. Hanging from a bush was a raspberry-colored garment that looked feminine enough to have been a woman’s blouse. A length of denim cloth covered a portion of the dead person’s thigh: blue jeans. Now my eyes moved from my own legs to the corpse to the cruiser as I put the details together.

Somewhere deep in my brain, a detached observer was amazed by my analytical behavior and also approved of the rage gathering inside me.

“Olivia? Oh… Olivia!” I whispered the girl’s name, giving it different meanings, while the detached observer advised me, You can’t let that son of a bitch get away with this.

“I won’t,” I promised the shadows. “I swear to God, he’ll pay.”

Slowly, slowly, then, I began backing away, which is when two things happened at once-something confusing, the other startling:

In the lifeless cruiser, a light blinked on, then the cabin door opened. Out stepped a tall, frail girl, mousy hair tangled, her expression, when she turned my direction, that of a child who feared punishment if caught looking at the sky.

Maybe Olivia saw me, maybe not. I couldn’t be sure because at the same instant, from the other side of the ridge, I heard a man’s voice calling. A voice with a sarcastic edge, ordering, “Hey, you! Hannah Smith! Get your ass down here… darling!”

Olivia heard the man, too, and fled instantly to the cabin. A girl so scared would be no help, and I couldn’t rescue her by hiding in the mangroves. I took a last look at the corpse, thinking, It’s the private investigator, then had to decide whether to escape to the cruiser, or return to my skiff and get the gun.

My body didn’t want to do it, but I finally turned in the direction I knew I had to go, my conscience urging, Protection is promised to those who behave boldly.