An Ordinary Drowning, Book One of The Mermaid's Pendant (31 page)

Gusts of
wind rocked the vehicle and a male voice swore in Spanish. The voice sounded
familiar, but her headache interfered with her ability to concentrate. She
waited, trying to hum around the gag, but her chest refused to expand against
the restraint of her arms. Just when she thought that she might vomit into the
gag and choke, the vehicle veered and abruptly halted. The driver opened his
door and got out; whatever they’d ridden in rocked in reflex. He swung open the
door near her feet and cool, humid air caressed her soles.

Her
captor leaned in and caressed her upper thigh, murmuring unintelligibly.
Tamarind desperately soaked up as much of the moisture in the air around her
feet as she could. Still, she felt parched.

Father,
help me
. The
thought formed before she recognized it.

When the
unknown abductor tugged her toward him, her feet touched the earth and again
she felt the strange power flow through her soles. She urged it to fill her and
something responded to her silent plea, swirling through her chest and into the
far reaches of her mind. Almost she felt as if she could understand it. Seconds
later, he launched her up and over his shoulder and her stomach heaved
dangerously.

John.
Why didn’t you come for me?

The wind
wrestled with her abductor as he walked and he cursed again. It snatched his
words away and Tamarind sensed a thread of anger in its swift fingers—anger
separate from the passion brewing the hurricane. The new power in her blood
sang in response. Tamarind slumped against the shoulder he carried her over and
waited.

He
stopped and fiddled with something in front of him. She tentatively stretched a
toe behind her. Her bare feet didn’t recognize the smooth, hard surface.
Abruptly he opened a door and the wind howled past them as he stepped forward.
Tamarind sensed the room around them before he turned and pushed the door shut,
leaning against it for a long moment. In the sudden quiet, his breathing
sounded harsh and uneven. After a moment, he pulled her from his shoulder and
she tumbled onto the floor, hitting her head and bruising her back. When he
spoke this time, she recognized the voice. Its caress chilled her.

“Ah,
mi
cariño
. That was
muy dificil
. But now we’re alone, I can assure you
that it was worth it.”

Jesus
knelt over her and rolled her onto her side. Then she felt the cold blade he
wielded as he cut the bindings on her ankles. Pain prickled through her feet
along with the rush of blood. He cut the blindfold away from her eyes, dragging
the flat of the blade across her cheek as she looked at him for the first time
in more than a month.

He
clicked his tongue and shook his head slightly. “So wide, your eyes,
mi
dulcinea
. Perhaps you are surprised to see me after all this time spent
ignoring me. Perhaps you guess I have heard the stories you have been telling
about me and you are afraid.”

The gag
wedged Tamarind’s tongue back into her throat, which was so dry that she could
only shake her head.

“Ah,
mi
reina
, you pretended innocence all those weeks of turtle watching.
Innocence when that
gringo
looked at you lustfully every night on the
beach, innocence when I took you dancing and tried to touch you. But you
weren’t innocent when you returned and led me to Playa Melones to fuck, and you
aren’t innocent now. You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

As he
spoke, he used the tip of the knife to toy with several strands of hair near
her left ear.

“Even
when you came back that night, you wouldn’t let me touch your hair.” His voice
sounded husky, strange. “Your hair. It’s almost alive. You must be so proud of
it. Too proud, perhaps.”

The
blade caught and tugged at the strands for a moment.

“There
are some that say you are
del mar
, but I, I say you are nothing but a
foolish woman.”

He held
up the severed strands for her to see, watching her eyes as he lifted them to
his nose and inhaled. He dropped the strands onto her face and laughed as she
blinked to clear hair from her vision. She was still blinking against the
scratchy filaments rubbing against her eyeballs when he leaned over. Even so,
she caught the bright flash of steel through the tangle of hair against her
cheek.

Marilyn battered St. Croix
,
only
65 miles away, throughout the afternoon on its way north to the other U. S.
Virgin Islands, St. John and St. Thomas, and Culebra. John, driving Valerie’s
Jeep north on Route 251, refused to turn the radio on and listen to the reports
from Miami. He met almost no one on the way to Ana’s small house; only a single
black car turned east at the intersection of 251 and 250, away from Dewey. Many
Culebrenses had fled their homes for the safety of the shelter built with
relief money after Hugo had ripped through the island in 1989. Some huddled in
the largest public buildings: the school and its library, the clinic and ferry
terminal, and the two churches. Most of the owners of the guesthouses,
including Valerie, had opened their doors to anyone looking for a place to
hide.

John,
his elbow propped on the window frame, looked out at the landscape as he drove.
The treetops danced against the buttermilk sky and tired shrubs rustled,
imitating the constant shushing of the ocean enclosing Culebra. Under a stand
of palm trees on the east side of 251, a herd of wild horses huddled. The
whites of their eyes showed even from a distance. Nothing else moved, on land
or in sky. Valerie told John that morning that the seabirds had risen in dark
sheets from their nesting grounds over the past few days and streamed away to
the northeast and safety. The air, heavy and hot, smelled like kindling and
dust—overriding the faint metallic scent of the ocean.

In the
silence, he heard Tamarind’s voice, clear and musical. Anguish rippled its
edges.

John
slowed down and looked around, half expecting to see Tamarind sitting next to
him, her bare feet hanging out the window and her corkscrew hair filling the
cabin. But no mischievous eyes peeked back at him, no fingers tapped in time
with the radio on the seat beside him. Instead, an image of Tamarind hunched
under the low-hanging night sky when he’d read
The Lion, The Witch, and The
Wardrobe
to her filled his mind. Her rounded shoulders burned themselves on
his soul’s retina.

He’d
just reached the access road to Tamarindo Estates when a dented blue Pontiac
crested the hill and roared toward him. He almost ignored it, but then he
caught sight of Ana’s wild white hair as the driver turned south onto 251.
Quickly he turned the Jeep around and followed after the speeding car,
alternately banging on the horn and flashing the high beams. The driver didn’t
notice him until he’d turned onto 250 and even then he refused to stop, only
slowing down enough for John to come along his left side. John leaned over
while driving and jerked down the passenger window.

“Hey,
you, Ana! Where’s Tamarind!”

She
looked at him. The contrast between her brilliant blue eye and the cloudy left
one silenced the howl of the wind and the rumble of the two engines. In her
look, she subsumed life and death. When she smiled, a chill split his cranium
and discharged along his spine. Something gleamed on her breast.

John
swerved the Jeep toward the Pontiac.

The
driver swore in Spanish as the Jeep rammed his car and pulled hard on the wheel
to veer away from John.

“Pull
over,
amigo
!”

The
driver darted glances at John and pulled ahead of him, but John punched the
accelerator and swerved in front of the Pontiac. The old car went right and
skidded to a halt. The driver jumped out, leaving his door open, and ran around
the back of the Jeep where John met him.

“
Qué
te pasa
?” The man’s hoarse voice cut across the wind. He punched John’s
shoulder with the heel of his hand.

“
No
hablo español.
”

John
brushed past the man, knocking him into the Jeep’s trunk as he did so. He’d
almost reached the Pontiac’s right taillight when the man grabbed his left arm
and spun him around. The first punch landed on his chin, but the second one
John blocked. He grabbed a handful of hibiscus flowers and pulled the man
closer to him.

“Look, I
bet you
comprende ingles muy bien
. So listen up: I need to talk to Ana
and I’m either gonna do it with you standing or with you flat on your back. If
you’re in such a hurry to get somewhere that you won’t stop unless someone runs
you off the road, I’d think you’d want me to leave you able to drive when I’m
done with her. Got it?”

The
other man’s eyes darted from side to side as John spoke, but when John
finished, he nodded once sharply. John pushed him away and the man staggered
into the Pontiac. He didn’t move, but watched John make his way around to the
passenger side where Ana waited, smoking a clove cigarette. She looked at John,
the cigarette held between her lips with the first two fingers of her right
hand. She dragged on the cigarette and exhaled into the wind, which snatched
the fragrant blue smoke and whisked it into oblivion.

“Where
is she?”

She
shrugged.

In the
eerie bright overcast, John glimpsed a Goddess figure on a black cord around
her neck. The stone in its belly winked as she moved. He reached into the
window and snatched the cigarette out of her fingers and flung it away.

“I know
you know where she is.”

“
La
mujer del mar
?” The wind tore at the driver’s words, flinging them at
John’s head like darts.

John
looked across the front seat of the Pontiac. The man bent now and looked back
at him from the other side.

“
Sí.
”

“
Jesus
la sacó.
”

“What’d
he say about Jesus?” John held his face near Ana’s wrinkled one.

“He said
that Jesus took her.” Her fingers dropped to the Goddess around her neck and
lifted it. Almost immediately, she dropped it back onto her shirt as if it
burned her. “She wanted to be with him during the hurricane.”

“No.”
The other man frowned. “
No es la verdad.
Jesus la agarró
.” He
mimed putting his arms around someone and pulling her with him.

Ana scowled
and pinched her lips together.

“Where
did you get that?” John pointed to the Goddess.

Ana
looked down at her chest. “I found it.”

“Give it
to me.”

She
snapped her face up and looked at him. “No.”

John
ignored her eyes and stared instead at the glistening wire-wrapped stone in the
figure’s belly. Suddenly he reached into the window, grasped the Goddess, and
yanked. Ana yelped. The black cord broke at the juncture with the figure, which
remained in John’s fist. Ana screeched and lunged, but John pulled his arm to
his side and stepped away from the Pontiac. She released the door latch and
began to swing the door open.

“
Amigo
,
don’t you have someplace to go?” John backed away from the Pontiac.

“Ay!”
The man opened his car door and slid into the driver’s seat. “
Carme! Tenemos
que ir ahora! No tenemos tiempo para esta tontería
!”

Ana
paused, her right leg outside the open car door and her hand grasping the open
window. She looked at Jaime and then back at John, who now stood near the rear
bumper of the Pontiac. In this dark frame, she seemed shrunken, contained. The
wind howled around her, tousling her hair, and nipping at her skirt hem. At its
sudden ferocity, John realized that it had stilled during their conversation.
Without saying another word, she tucked her leg back inside the car’s cavity
and slammed the door. Its rattle underscored her silence.

John ran
back to the Jeep and jumped into the driver’s seat. In its close interior, he
brought the Goddess up where he could study it. He’d seen several dozen of
these figures lying about Valerie’s kitchen and at The Mermaid’s Purse. This
one appeared to be identical to all those others. Absently, he rubbed the stone
with his thumb. After a moment, he set the figure on the dash behind the wheel
and started the Jeep. He pulled out onto 250 without looking and drove, only
vaguely aware of the road in front of him. Around him, the empty sky appeared a
hazy bright citrine; where he could see the harbor on his right through the
dark fringe of mangrove and thorny scrub, the sickly tint contrasted with the
dull aquamarine of the seawater. The road hugged the ragged coastline, wending
south and north along its many coves and channels as if nature would not be
hurried. As he drove, the storm held its breath.

He’d
nearly passed the Wildlife Refuge Office when he saw the black car that he’d
seen a few minutes earlier parked on its far side. Teresa, the wildlife
manager, drove a green Chevy. John braked and turned, cutting a wide swath
across the dusty verge as the Jeep skidded toward the driveway leading to the
office. He pulled in front of the low concrete building and shifted into park.
As he did, he realized that his breath came in gasps. For a moment, his vision
dimmed as his chest constricted and the heat enveloped him in its wet wool.
Then he managed to wrench open the driver’s side door. Overhead, the sky had
darkened and the wind picked up again.