The Heat Islands: A Doc Ford Novel (16 page)

"Want you to meet our only son. Preacher. He ain't smart, but he's got the goodest heart of any boy you ever seen...."

Standing him up in front of all those sweating white faces and black faces, girls his own age looking on and embarrassed for him, while the preacher cupped his meaty fingers around his throat and prayed and prayed and prayed.

"Heal this sinner of his affliction, Jesus ... cast out the evil demon that lives in the throat of this good boy...

Well, he had been a good boy. Sitting in his cell, face pressed into his hands, Jeth Nicholes could give himself credit for at least that. Only thing he'd ever intentionally hurt in his life was a gopher turtle. Found it out there on the shell road on the way to Chokoloskee and tossed it into a big puddle of oil at the asphalt dump just to see what would happen. Could still see that turtle blinking at him through the black smear, already dying and no way to help the poor thing. Thinking about it still made his throat catch, the idea of him doing something so cruel. Made him want to cry, really.

But before that and certainly after that, he'd tried his best to be kind to everybody and everything. Had hardly ever told a lie.

Well, that wasn't exactly true. He'd told some lies, but not many—and Christ, that wasn't the truth, either.

Fact was, he'd told plenty of lies, because what he did was tell people what they wanted to hear. His whole life he'd done that. A guy wanted to hear his boat looked nice, he'd tell him it was beautiful. A guy wanted to think he was a good fisherman, he'd say, Man, you're a regular fish hawk. Didn't matter if it was true or not, because the only thing Jeth wanted in his life was for people to like him. Wanted to get along. Felt people had reason enough not to like him, him being so slow and with that demon in his throat, so he just naturally bent over backward to please them.

Oh, he'd told plenty of lies, all right.

'Specially to women.

Thinking of that made Nicholes moan into his own hands.

God, had he told some lies to women. They'd come down from New York or Ohio or Chicago on vacation, lonely and frazzled from too much work, washed out from living in places that had no sun, nervous as hell and still acting like lawyers or doctors or important society women, even though they were sick of it and just wanted to let go for a while. So he'd talk to them. Talk to them real soft and shy, telling them the little lies they wanted to hear.

''Those sick people are damn lucky to have a woman smart as you taking care of them..."

"You're just too pretty to be worrying about things like that..."

Stuttering, of course, when he spoke, and he could see in their eyes that the stutter touched them; softened them right up, so the next thing he knew, they'd be out on some empty beach with the woman stripping off her bathing suit and running buck naked in the sun. Some looked like fashion models and some looked like librarians, but they all looked good because they were laughing and they liked him.

Didn't seem like he'd been doing any harm. Lord knows, they all seemed happy enough about it. But, if there was nothing wrong with it, how did he happen to end up being engaged to two women at once that time? That was a damn sin in anybody's book.

Hell, who was he trying to kid? Once he'd been engaged to
five
women, two of them married. And four of them were still sending him Christmas cards. And he'd never had any intention of marrying any of them; just told them what they wanted to hear.

Jeth Nicholas shook his head miserably.

A liar and an adulterer were just about exactly what he was. A sure-enough sinner, just like the preacher had said, with a ball of evil in him the size of an Ocala grapefruit.

Well. God had finally nailed him, and with good reason. He'd been out there adultering like a mad dog on borrowed time, and now the invoice was overdue.

From down the corridor came the echo of leather shoes on the hard floor. Nicholes listened as the footsteps came closer, expecting to see the guard pass by, but the guard stopped, standing there in his baggy blue uniform, looking down on him.

"Hey, Jeth, there's a guy downstairs wants to see you." Nicholes said, "I don't want to see nobody right now. Just don't feel like it."

The guard said. "Sharon told him you didn't put no names on your visitors' list, but the guy says he's a friend of yours. Guy named"—the guard looked at the slip of yellow paper in his hands—"guy named Marion Ford."

"Oh. Hum.... Nope, tell him I'm busy. No, wait a minute—that'd be lying. Tell him I don't feel too good. That'd be the truth."

Beyond the bars, the guard shifted his weight, leather belt creaking. "Look, Jeth, I know you're new here, but you don't mind a little advice, stop being so hard on yourself. This place ain't so bad. It ain't no disgrace. Ev'body makes a mistake—"

"It's not that," Nicholes said quickly. "You guys do a hell of a job here. Keep it damn nice, you ask me. I've been treated real good. You people are real professional."

The guard blushed slightly at the praise. "Well, we try to make it smooth as we can. Keep a clean shop, though you wouldn't know it from the way these other guys bitch all the time. I tell them, 'You try to keep six hundred lawbreakers happy, see how long you last.' " The guard put his hands on the bars and leaned toward him. "But personally. I hate like hell to see a guy like you come in. Shit, man. you're a famous fishing guide, in here with all these ... criminals. Just don't seem right."

Nicholes stopped him, saying. "Now don't go blaming yourself. I'm getting just what I deserve. I've been sitting here thinking about that."

"Aw, I think you're being too hard on yourself. Might do you good to talk to the people coming to see you."

Nicholes was thinking about Doc. the way he seemed to know things without even asking questions. Once Doc had said to him. "So the doctor said you weren't getting headaches because of your eyes, huh?" Figuring the whole thing out just by the way his pupils looked—those drops the doctor had put in his eyes. And he hadn't told Doc a thing about the headaches or going to see the doctor. Doc had just taken one look at him and said it. Figured the whole thing out by the way his eyes looked and because he wasn't carrying new glasses around. It was eerie. Nope, no way he could let Doc in here. Doc might take one look at him and see the truth.

Jeth said, "That lawyer woman said something about I could make two phone calls a week?"

The guard nodded. "Tonight and Thursday night for this block. I'll sign you up right now, you want."

"If you don't mind, tell the guy. Doc. I'll call him tonight. That okay?"

"You got it." The guard turned to go, then hesitated. He said, "You probably get sick of talking about fishin', huh?"

"No way. not me."

"You know. I'm kinda a snook fisherman myself. Not in your league, a'course, but I get out there on the weekends and bang the bushes. Give 'er hell. I got a couple Shimano Speedmasters and an old President that's a beaut."

Jeth was nodding. "Some of the best snook men I know are weekenders. They do stuff us guides can't. Always trying new spots, picking their tides just right. You'd laugh your head off if I told you some of the tides we gotta fish."

"No kiddin'! You really think so?"

"I know so."

"Say, if you've got time later, you think me and a couple of the other guards could stop up and sort of pick your brain? A lot of us, that's all we do is fish."

If he had time—that was a good one.

Nicholes said. "Hell yes. I'd like that a lot."

The guard turned his head back and forth, looking down the corridor before asking, "Can we bring you something? Anything you need?" Talking low so those rednecks across the way couldn't hear.

"Well, I have been sort of sitting here thinking about a Big Mac. Lots of sauce, no pickles."

"You got 'em, Cap'n. All you want."

"As long as it won't get you in no trouble."

"Hell, a case of beer and a dancing girl would be trouble. Not that I couldn't work it out. But some burgers, hell. You just wait."

When the guard's footsteps had disappeared. Nicholes returned to the window, looking out, trying to see Doc's old blue pickup truck, but it wasn't in the side lot. Musta parked it out front at the entrance. Thinking about Doc being so close gave him a kind of homesick feeling for Dinkin's Bay. Made him feel sad, so he tried to think of something to make himself feel better.

In his mind, he assembled the faces and bodies of some of his favorite women, but that didn't work. Hell, he'd never see a woman again, except for his lawyer—who wasn't too bad with that shiny black hair and those big knockers beneath the business suit. But she was cold, cold, cold. Besides, the only way a lawyer would screw a confessed murderer was on the bill.

His mind cast around for something better to think about, and he thought about his trip south to Cape Sable. There, that was something nice.

Great big sun ball. Yellow ... red ... orange ... oily purple, then—poof!—
green.

Seeing that green flash, sitting out there on the gray water all alone, was like the sign he had been yearning for a sign that there was reason and a purpose to living in this world; a private wink from God, telling him everything was going to be okay. And just like that, his stutter was gone; the demon taken away. That sunset had done what the preachers couldn't. After all those years of being afraid; afraid to talk to strangers, avoiding those damn
D
words and
T
words, hating the way his whole body damped up when that demon threw his head back and caused his tongue and jaw to spasm.

His own personal sign from God...

Thinking about it, Jeth felt the same warm swell of emotion, a rushing sensation of peace and safety that had left him sitting on his boat, bawling like a baby.

He'd had a lifetime of being bad. Now it was time to hurry up and do some good.....

Ford pulled away from Glades Detention, onto the open blacktop, thinking: I
have overlooked something, or I lack information. Which?

Jeth had refused to see him. Why the hell would he act like that? Something was missing from the equation; maybe many things. But something that specifically concerned Jeth.

Ford shifted through the gears, his old truck gathering speed through the heat, the gearshift knob kiln-fired beneath his hand, the cab oven-hot but cooling slightly with the windows open.

What I ought to do is buy a new
truck. No. I like this one. I buy a new truck. I won't own it. it'll own me. Maybe Just have the garage add air conditioning....

He drove through palmetto flats, then turned west into the commercial outskirts of municipal Southwest Florida, a burgeoning hedgework of asphalt and concrete that extended fifty miles in each direction, Tampa to Naples, pressed right up against the Gulf of Mexico. Real estate brokers, title-insurance offices, 7-Elevens, notaries, law firms, U-Haul rentals, and all the other service components of a society on the move. Here were the nuts and bolts of mobility; the infrastructure to which the rootless seekers and dreamers tethered their hopes of living happily in the sun. Many made it. They did good work, took pride in their lives, raised pretty kids. They earned and enjoyed their little chunk of success. But here, also, were the repo car lots, the boarded businesses, the pawnshops and bail bondsmen; the symptoms of dreams that had gone sour, and the agents who gathered up those broken hopes and resold them at a profit. It was the urban spore of a state on the make; a here-today, gone-tomorrow economic combat that left Ford anxious to get back to his house on the water.

But first he had to make a few more stops.

Jeth had had his first-appearance court hearing that morning. Ford had called the county clerk's office and found that out. Law-enforcement people, presumably Detective Roy Fuller, had submitted enough evidence on the booking sheet to have the court decree there was probable cause for charging Jeth with first-degree murder, no bail set. The judge had also appointed a public defender to work on Jeth's case, an Elizabeth Harper. Ford wanted to talk with Harper, and also try to get a copy of the medical examiner's autopsy report on Marvin Rios. Tell the pathologist about the fish kill, and see if it shed new light on Rios's death. Then maybe check at the newspaper library, find out a little more about Senator Robert Griffin. It didn't make sense, him having dinner with an oddball like Sutter. Rios had to be the connecting thread.

Ford drove along, mulling it over, troubled by something but unable to put his finger on what. Hugging the slow lane, thinking. Cars ahead of him, cars behind him. jockeying for position in the traffic and the heat, brake lights pounding out the thudding pulse of harried commuters.

A beer would be good right now, if I didn't have to pee so bad. Jesus, why am I even bothering with this? He's got an attorney now. The legal system is tilted to favor the guilty, so someone who is innocent—presuming Jeth is innocent
—
should skate right through. No need for me to go poking around.

So what was it that was troubling him?

As he drove. Ford began to organize the few facts he had assembled, putting them in neat columns, or as if on the trays of a lab scale. But then he stopped himself. He realized he was making a fundamental mistake. That's what was troubling him. The fundamental mistake was that he was theorizing in advance of the data. If one fell into that trap, then it was only natural to force all incoming data to fit the theory rather than assembling a theory from the facts. And he did not yet have sufficient information. Nor. he was sure, did Detective Roy Fuller, or the judge who had decreed probable cause, or Jeth's attorney, for that matter.

Which was why Jeth's position was so precarious.

Facts, Ford knew, could be stretched, torn, and reconstituted to support any proposition. That's why he followed his own strict lab procedures so veraciously. It was also why he had little faith in the legal system.

The legal system, Ford knew, was an abacus of shrewdness, not a scale of justice. Indeed, true justice was an anomaly. It was not that legislators, attorneys, and judges weren't good and decent human beings—though some certainly were not. The problem was that they and their legal forebears had gradually perverted the legal system for the protection of their own profession. Jurisprudence was no longer a moral process. It was a competition in which the competitors—attorneys—created their own rules.