Hell's Bay (21 page)

And this hair seemed to have a putrid root at its proximal end, which was a feature of decomposition. Nothing strange there. Hair was tough. Some hair had survived in thousand-year-old tombs. Microbes were the problem, and a hair left out in the elements on the edge of a river was about as ex-posed to microscopic critters as anywhere Sugar could imag-ine. But there were freakish situations. He remembered from the training session—hair that survived for years because it was trapped in clay, or isolated from air or sunlight. But no real ID could be made without the proper lab work. Post-mortem banding, a microscopic strip near the root of the hair, was a clear signal that the hair had been pulled out of a decomposing body. If the hair was alive at the moment of its plucking, it wouldn't show any banding. That was probably something his buddy Dr. Dillard could answer with one quick peek through the lens.

If it was Abigail Bates's hat, it might have come loose in a struggle, or it might have been knocked off when she fell overboard. So the banding wouldn't prove for certain she'd been the victim of an attack. But if the hair was black or brown as he thought, then probably it wasn't Ms. Bates's hair at all. Perhaps it belonged to the attacker, snagged during the melee.

He had to be careful not to jump to conclusions, but also had to treat the hat as evidence. He realized he should have brought along some surgical gloves and a plastic bag for such a situation. But the truth was, he hadn't expected to find anything. He was just going through the motions, killing time before his three o'clock at the Pine Tree School. Sher-iff Timmy had agreed to walk him through the four video-tapes shot during county-sponsored meetings, where local citizens faced off with bosses from Bates International.

Sugarman wasn't expecting much from that either. He had no idea what Nina and the medical examiner were trying to steer him toward. Even though he felt like he was wasting his time, it was his duty to follow the lead. It's what Thorn would've wanted, what Thorn himself would've done.

As he was setting the Marlins hat on the rock beside him, a young couple in a red canoe came ripping around the bend.

Sugarman waved hello and watched them work to swing the craft around the turn. It was a sharper angle than he'd no-ticed at first. The kids seemed proficient enough at paddling, but they struggled a bit to make that corner without drifting to the side where he sat.

“Nice day,” the boy called, when they'd straightened the canoe and were back in the middle of the river.

Sugar gave them a half wave, half salute as they slid away downstream.

He rose to his feet and looked down the river, then turned and walked inland from his position. There were no clearly marked paths through the brambles, but he found a few bro-ken branches about ten feet in, maybe an infrequently used trail, and when he pushed through an oleander shrub that blocked his view, he saw a narrow paved road about fifty yards off. Easy access from the road to the spot where he stood. Shorter distance between road and river than most places he'd noted.

He walked back to the rock. He studied the angles again as another kayaker shot past. This guy was an expert. Had the headgear, a nifty aluminum paddle, some kind of high-tech gloves, but even he had to take an extra dip of his pad-dle to fend off the current that thrust him toward the rock where Sugarman stood.

When the guy was gone, Sugarman climbed back down the boulder to the narrow band of mud at its base. This time the place he jumped onto wasn't solid, and he sunk to his an-kles in the glop. By the time he made it to firmer ground, his shoes were waterlogged.

He leaned out and peered into the water to check the depth. Some roots protruded from the bank directly beneath him, and there were some fairly large fish hanging steady in the current, waiting for bait to come tumbling into their faces. The river was at least twenty feet deep, with steep sides, a hard place to climb ashore if you went overboard.

He was turning to climb back up the rock when he spot-ted an odd color off to one edge of the crook in the river. Something was lodged about ten feet below the surface in a crevice or shelf of rock.

Something pink. Beyond that, he couldn't say.

Probably another soda can.

He climbed back upon the rock and sat in the sun for a few minutes. Another two canoes passed. The woman waved, but the guy was clearly suspicious of Sugarman and made a few extra strokes to get by faster.

Sugar took off his boat shoes and laid them on the rock beside him to dry. Pink soda can? Had he ever seen a pink soda can before?

After visiting Dr. Dillard, he'd swung by the sheriff's of-fice, and Timmy Whalen told him that he was welcome to poke around the Peace River all he wanted, though she assured him that she and her deputies had searched every inch of river-bank from the canoe rental place to the location where the body was found and beyond. They'd done it a half-dozen times in teams of two, looking for any sign that somebody might have lain in wait for Abigail Bates. They found a few camping spots where overnighters had illegally pitched tents. They found some used condoms, some whiskey bottles, and a pair of swim goggles, but nothing suspicious.

Sugarman took off his shirt, folded it, and placed it on the rock beside his shoes. He leaned forward and squinted at the pink thing ten feet down. Hell if he could bring it into focus. Was it worth getting his jeans soaked, diving down to re-trieve a pair of panties or some old swim cap from twenty years ago?

But this spot intrigued him. It was the only piece of ter-rain in the entire two miles he'd tramped through that seemed like it might work as an ambush point. Most of the river was forty or fifty feet across. Hard to imagine anyone diving from the bank and being able to outswim a canoe going down-stream. Even if the paddler was eighty-six.

But this spot, no, it was a bottleneck that required a little backpaddling and quick maneuvering. Not a lot, nothing that could be deemed dangerous. But it was a kink in an other-wise smooth course.

If someone had taken a position where Sugarman was sit-ting, then as the paddler came around the bend just twenty feet upstream, she'd have only a few seconds to react before she was alongside the rock. The boy and his girlfriend had been surprised to see him there and had faltered for a heart-beat. Even the high-tech kayaker who'd sailed on by was carefully focused on his stroke. So it was plainly a spot that gave the advantage to the rock-sitter.

Sugarman unbuckled his belt and skinned it out of the loops and set it beside his shirt. He'd brought a change of clothes and some overnight shaving stuff, but that was back in his car parked a couple of miles downstream. If he stripped to his Jockeys, would that qualify as indecent exposure? A black man in underwear in this backwoods spot? Probably would. With the right eyewitness and the wrong judge, Sugar might be looking at thirty days in jail.

In his jeans, he hopped down to the mud bank again and squatted as close to the water as he could get. But the pink thing wasn't any clearer.

What the hell. It was a hot day.

He hopped forward and dropped feetfirst into the river and was immediately swept forward by the current, banging a knee into the rock wall. He found a hold on the ledge and positioned himself directly above the pink object, then took a long breath and pushed himself straight down.

He opened his eyes for a few seconds and glimpsed the object, but his buoyancy was drawing him away from it. He snatched at a root and held on. Nice thick wood, bowed out from the riverbank ledge like a handle for stand-up riders on a bus. He gripped the root with one hand and bent lower and plucked the pink thing from its cranny. Then he stayed there a moment more, feeling the cool current wash over him. When he let go, he bobbed back to the surface, let the river carry him toward the bend, then kicked his feet and swam a few strokes to a small muddy ledge. He dragged himself out, his jeans weighing about fifty pounds.

The pink thing was a shoe. A Keds tennis shoe.

He climbed back to his rock, then lay down in the sun and examined the shoe. Torn at the toe, some scraping in the rub-ber rim. Shoelaces were green-and-red plaid. Nice identifier. Sugar set the shoe beside the hat.

He lay in the sun for fifteen minutes until his jeans were a little drier. Then he put on his damp boat shoes, picked up his loot, pinching the sneaker and cap by the edges, and hiked back through the brush to his car.

A little scene was playing in his head. An old woman wearing pink Keds, held by someone beneath the water. Maybe her attacker used that convenient root to stay station-ary while the old lady drowned. While the old lady, Thorn's grandmother, kicked and fought, and in the process wedged the toe of her tennis shoe into a crevice in the rock.

Goose chills washed across his back. Then another wave.

The chills were probably triggered by his wet jeans. Yeah, probably that.

He'd never been one to trust gut reactions or telepathic prickles on the skin. Most of the cases he'd solved over the years were accomplished through thoughtful consideration. Boring but effective logical steps and rational, orderly rea-soning. Goose chills weren't evidence. Goose chills were just the body's attempt at raising its hairs to increase their loft. Some evolutionary leftover from when man was cov-ered in monkey fur and fluffing it could keep him warm and make him appear larger and more threatening. That's all it was. Invisible monkey fur trying to fluff.

 

Sasha unfolded the Bimini top to put Griffin in the shade. He lay on top of the bedroll, staring up at the canvas straps and aluminum poles. She wet a cloth and brought it to his fore-head, but he pushed her hand away.

Though it was hard to imagine his breathing could grow worse, it had. More mud-sucking gasps. Spasms in his throat, airways rattling. But he brought his eyes to hers, bearing down on her like she was the one suffering.

“You still strong? You still stone cold, Mama?”

“I'm fine.”

“When I get well, you know what I want? I want to get a tattoo.
Mom
inside a heart. Put it on my forearm.”

“With flowers,” Sasha said.

“No, keep it simple, just
Mom
and a heart.” He drew a breath and let it out. “And you know what else? I want to learn to play the electric guitar. And something else. Maybe I'll write a book. Tell our complete story. Start to finish.”

“You could do that. You're smart enough.”

“Sure I could. How hard could it be? Just tell one thing, then the next. Keep it simple, stay out of your own way. Everything that's happened. That'd make a hell of a story. Play up the biblical angle.”

“Biblical?”

“Family of Davids versus the Goliath clan. Smooth stones from the stream, barefoot shepherd with no armor standing in a field with his sling and rock. The giant laughing, mock-ing, saying he'll cut off all our heads with a single swipe, feed our flesh to the birds and wild animals. Our boy lets loose his stone, and down comes that monster. Puts their army on the run, saves our people. That's a story. That's a great story. Ar-chetypal is what that is.”

Sasha was quiet, looking out at the cove.

“You don't think that's a great story?”

“The Lord was on David's side. The side of the Israelites.”

“What? You don't think he's on ours?”

“I hope so.”

“You hope so?”

“I think we're about to find out.”

“Hell, if God's on Goliath's side, I'd just as soon be dead. Isn't any reason to go on clawing and scratching in that kind of world.”

After a moment, Griffin levered himself to his feet, looked out at the bay Sasha had chosen as their home base.

A narrow creek had carved a deep inlet into the mangrove forest; it was out of the wind, a mile east of the houseboat. Griffin drew a guarded breath, trying not to agitate the in-flamed tissues. Turning his head from side to side, taking in the cove, the comings and goings of egrets and pelicans, the sharp squeals of an osprey, the slap and jostle of water in the maze of mangrove roots.

“This is a pretty place you brought us. A wild, beautiful Eden.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Hard to believe there's places like this left.”

Sasha was silent. Let him have his say.

“Actually,” he said, “it's breathtaking.”

She looked at him closely.

He turned a faint smile her way. “Word of the day,” he said. “
Breathtaking
.”

His laugh started out fine, then turned into a deep, rattling cough. She moved to his side and pressed the damp cloth to his forehead and hugged his wasted frame to hers.

 

 

 

 

Walking across the gravel lot toward the canoe rental shop, Sugar spotted a thirtysomething guy down by the riverbank, sitting in an unpainted cane-back chair, smoking what looked like a hand-rolled cigarette. Sugar walked over and stood in a cloud of smoke that reeked of cloves.

“You Sugarman?” Charlie kept his eyes on the river.

“Yep.”

Charlie reached out and patted the seat of the chair beside him. The young man had dirty-blond hair, hippie length, and a wispy goatee. He wore a single pearl in his right earlobe.

Sugarman sat. His damp jeans had begun to chafe his thighs, and his boat shoes were slippery with mud. Not his finest hour.

“Sheriff Whalen called, said you'd be by. Told me to cooperate.”

Sugarman thought about that. Had she massaged Charlie somehow? Was she being helpful or trying to control the situation? Sugar thought again of the look she'd shown him at the gun shop. A sign that she knew more than she was willing to say. He let that go for now and settled back into the chair.

“Pretty river,” Sugar said. “Nice spot to work.”

“You want to know what happened. That's why you're here, right?”

“Anytime you're ready.”

“She came to rent a canoe. I recognized her, then got on her case about what Bates International was doing.”