April Evil (25 page)

“What was he doing way out there?”

“You know they figured he was the one who took the Campbell boat. They think he headed north, pretty well out. Campbell said there was about two hours of gas in the motor, at cruising speed. So he was pretty well out when the motor quit. He’d taken a five-gallon can from Campbell’s shed. Out there in the Gulf he filled the tank again. Filled it with straight oil. I guess when he found out his mistake, he tried to paddle toward shore. But the wind was out of the northeast. Dan says his hands were a mess. By dawn he would have been too far out to see any trace of land. The sun baked the moisture out of him. The body was probably twenty-five pounds lighter than he was when he took off in the boat. They think that toward the end he started drinking Gulf water. That makes it quicker. He must have been delirious at the end. He’d chewed on the corner of one of the suitcases, and he’d chewed his hands and his arms. All alone out there with hundreds of thousands of bucks, and with all that money he couldn’t buy one damn glass of water. It’s not a good way to die, Ben.”

Halpern was gone by the time he’d finished dressing. The sun was nearly down as he drove home. Now it was all over, the last loose end snipped off. He drove slowly home to Huntington Drive and he looked at the Mather house as he drove in.

Joan met him at the door. The screen door hissed shut behind them as they walked arm in arm into the house.

John D. MacDonald was an American novelist and short story writer. His works include the Travis McGee series and the novel
The Executioners
, which was adapted into the film
Cape Fear
. In 1962 MacDonald was named a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America; in 1980 he won a National Book Award. In print he delighted in smashing the bad guys, deflating the pompous, and exposing the venal. In life he was a truly empathetic man; his friends, family, and colleagues found him to be loyal, generous, and practical. In business he was fastidiously ethical. About being a writer, he once expressed with gleeful astonishment, “They pay me to do this! They don’t realize, I would pay them.” He spent the later part of his life in Florida with his wife and son. He died in 1986.