This time he chose a Milky Way.
“So provoked,” he continued with bulging cheeks, “that I made a mistake. I uncuffed him from my wrist.”
“Why’d you do that?” my cousin cried.
“Because I intended to launch his sorry ass into orbit, though not before questioning him about the most important topic of all—his treatment of you, Miss Spence. That final conversation grew heated, and he ended it by kicking open an empty battery box and pulling out the aforementioned firearm.”
Skink acknowledged the dark O-shaped hole in his chest. It had been plugged with what appeared to be a wad of torn bedsheet. “The shooting was a lapse of vigilance on my part. I was distracted because the boat was sinking, but still, no excuses.” He shrugged. “Bottom line, the little maggot shot me.”
Malley wasn’t the most patient listener. “So, come on, did you kill him or what? Is he down … there?”
The governor turned his rawhide face to the clouds. A bright green fly landed on his snail-shell eyepiece, and my cousin shooed it away.
He cocked his head. “Hear that?”
“No, sir,” I said.
“How about you?” he asked my cousin.
“I don’t hear a thing.”
“All right.” He didn’t seem disappointed. “But it’s peaceful out here, no?”
“Governor, what happened after Tommy shot you?”
“The bullet knocked me flat. I’m sure he thought I was dead. He jumped in the canoe and went up a creek, literally. The houseboat stayed afloat for another mile or so, then glug, glug, glug … and here we are.”
“The cops’ll catch Tommy,” I said.
“Really? When?” Malley was upset that he’d slipped away.
“No police,” said Skink firmly. “I’m dead, remember? It’s a status I prefer to maintain. If I suddenly return from the grave, the authorities will hassle me about certain episodes from the past, some unsolved incidents. Malley, dear, I’m a dreary old fart. My memory’s shaky, my temper’s short. People say I did this, I did that. Dubious witnesses casting wild accusations, though in a few cases they happen to be true. I’ve got no appetite to see my name in the news again after all this time. Richard told you my improbable history, correct?”
“He did,” said my cousin.
“Then you grasp the dilemma. You’re a bright young woman.”
“So just disappear. Poof!” I snapped my fingers. “We’ll cover for you, make up a great story.”
Skink noticed Tommy’s suitcase propped upright against the transom. “Did you two peek inside? I’m guessing it wasn’t Bibles.”
Malley spoke up. “What if there’s a trial? Would it be, like, totally my word against his?” She strained to hide that she was dreading it.
“No jury will believe a word that jerk says,” I asserted. Then to the governor: “We’ll take you straight to the car, then you just drive off into the sunset, right? I brought the shoe box, so you’ll have plenty of money. Let the police go find Tommy.”
“Maybe they can, maybe they can’t,” he said. “But here’s a fact: I can find him. Right now, Richard, with this excellent vessel you’ve provided.”
“Listen, he’s sick as a dog. He won’t get far,” I argued. “The cops’ll catch him by this time tomorrow, and you’ll be long gone.”
“And if he gets away? Hitches a ride, hops a train, flees the state? Think of the harm he might cause to somebody else’s cousin.” Skink helped himself to a Coke.
Malley wore an expression that crushed my heart. Whatever Tommy Chalmers had done to her, the damage was written on her face. She’d made it through that ordeal the same way Skink had always prevailed, through sheer unstoppable will.
“I do not want him to get away,” she said.
“He won’t.” The governor and I said it at the same time.
“Hey, it’s not like I’m scared to testify,” said Malley. “I’ll do whatever it takes.”
But there were more tears than raindrops on her cheeks. The last time I’d seen her cry was at my father’s funeral.
Facing T.C. in a courtroom would be rough, him sitting there all clean-cut in a new coat and necktie, pretending to be some sort of model citizen. I understood that Malley needed to see him caught on the river, to be there in person, not just go home and trust the police to find him. She needed the final word, a final something.
I did, too. I admit it.
“You’re not going after Tommy alone, no way,” I told the governor. “We’re coming with you.”
“Definitely. Done deal.” Malley’s tone was sharp. “And don’t even think about throwing us overboard again, okay? That sucked.”
Skink was in full predator mode, too preoccupied to argue. He burped volcanically and jammed the empty Coke can in the cooler.
“YOLO,” he said.
Then he reached for the rope and hauled up the anchor as if it were weightless.
TWENTY-TWO
I let him take the wheel. Like I had a choice.
When he rammed the throttle down, the bow porpoised once and then we were skimming full-speed upriver, weaving around stumps and logs. Malley and I clung to the rail of the boat—a radical thrill ride with no seat belts.
We made it to the creek in five minutes. The governor cut the engine and signaled for us not to speak. Besides the thump of my own heart, the only sound I heard was the boat’s wake sloshing against the bank.
Quickly Malley got restless. She pointed to the narrow entrance of the creek and mouthed the words, “Let’s go!”
Skink ignored her and closed his good eye. He looked like a grizzled old iguana. The rain had quit, and amber stalks of sunlight punctured the clouds.
A gunshot went off, the echo pinging through the trees. Skink turned sharply toward the sound. From the same direction came a second shot. Moments later a gangly, wide-winged bird came veering from a gap in the creek, then rose and crossed the river, flapping furiously.
Another heron, only this one was as white as cotton.
The governor restarted the engine. “Here we go, boys and girls.”
Slowly he steered the boat up the creek, which was lined with palmettos and bright wild azaleas. My cousin sat beside me on a cushion in front of the console. She edged closer, whispering, “T.C.’s got three bullets left.”
I’d already done the grim math. Even though I’m not into guns, I know most revolvers are six-shooters. Tommy had used one round on Skink and two just now. That left a slug each for me, Malley and the old man.
The only advice that came to mind: “Be ready to duck.”
“Really, Richard?”
It’s impossible to explain why we weren’t completely paralyzed with terror as we closed in on this desperate, trigger-happy sicko. Having Skink there calmed us, though Malley and I were also aware that he was freakishly fearless, abnormally immune to the threat of a loaded weapon.
Soon we came upon the canoe, which had been dragged out of the water. On the bank lay Skink’s spinning rod, which Tommy probably had found too challenging to operate with only one good hand.
The governor slotted the Pathfinder through a patch of reeds, beached the bow and stork-stepped to the bank, steadying himself with the nine-iron. Sternly he told us to stay where we were.
“Get real,” said my cousin.
Skink looked to me for a vote of support, but I said, “We’ll be right behind you. Let’s go.”
The landing was mucky and roped with vines. Talk about pig paradise—everywhere you turned the dirt had been trenched, trampled or pawed. Palmettos and pine saplings lay in mauled clumps, their roots chewed to pulp.
Maybe that’s what Tommy was shooting at, I thought. Another wild boar.
I was the only one in bare feet, the price being a gnarly green thorn in my right heel. Malley yanked it out with her fingers. Ahead, Skink stooped like an old-time gold prospector as he followed the kidnapper’s meandering tracks.
None of us spoke a word.
This is a part I didn’t learn about until later. Some of the details I’ve filled in on my own.
With four hours to kill and some real money in his pocket, Dime had decided to take the Malibu for a joyride, undoubtedly thinking: What could possibly go wrong?
He was dating a woman near Mossy Head but she wasn’t home, so he backtracked to DeFuniak Springs and wheeled into a roadside bar for a drink (possibly two). He was cruising back toward Choctawhatchee Bay when a plain dark sedan appeared in his rearview.
Dime thought nothing of it until he saw the flashing blue light on the sedan’s dashboard. Nervously he steered the Chevy onto the shoulder, braked to a reasonably smooth stop and scrambled to invent a believable story. Nothing clever sprung into his head, not one decent idea. His palms were damp on the steering wheel.
The officer wore street clothes—a striped golf shirt, beige pants and brown loafers. He was a muscular African American man with close-cropped white hair, and he looked considerably older than most of the uniformed cops Dime had dealt with. Yet a cop he most certainly was, a semiautomatic on one hip and a badge from the Florida Highway Patrol on his belt.
Dime couldn’t see a name on the badge. He was trying not to get too close because he had liquor breath in the middle of the afternoon, a condition generally frowned upon by law enforcement. The trooper didn’t ask for his driver’s license or demand to see the registration and insurance papers for the Malibu. Instead the conversation went something like this:
“Sir, where did you get this car?”
“It’s my uncle’s.”
“Wrong answer,” said the trooper. “Try again.”
“Okay, it belongs to a friend a mine.”
“Strike two.” The trooper opened the car door and told Dime to get out.
A light rain was falling, but from the thickening clouds Dime knew heavier stuff was on the way. He stood slack-armed and dejected while the big cop patted him down, the cop old enough to be his grandpappy except he was the wrong color.
Dime didn’t want to get charged with auto theft or driving under the influence, and he most definitely didn’t want to go to jail. He’d been there before. Afterwards he had promised his pappy (and himself) that he’d never give the law any reason to lock him up again, even for one night.
“Okay, here’s the God’s honest truth,” he said to the trooper, “but it’s gonna sound sort a crazy. First off, I ain’t on drugs.”
“That’s good to know.”
“Every word I’m ’bout to tell ya is true as the gospel.”
“Let’s hope,” the trooper said.
Dime spun through the story about renting his boat to a couple of kids, a boy and a girl who seemed way too young to be tooling around the county in a Chevrolet. About how they paid him with cold cash and left the car as a security deposit—a perfectly good vehicle!—keys and all.
“That’s more like it,” said the trooper.
“You believe me?” Dime was so relieved that he could have hugged the man.
“Tell me where they went.”
“For a ride on the bay.”
“You know for a fact?”
“Well, yeah. I tole ’em to keep outta that river.”
“Do you have another boat?” the trooper asked.
“Not my personal self,” said Dime, feeling a thousand percent better about the situation. “But I know where I can git one.”
We get so hooked on being connected 24/7 to our friends, our playlists, our Tweets and Instagrams, whatever. The battery in our smartphone dies and it’s like somebody shut off the oxygen to our brain. Where’s my charger? I can’t find my stupid charger! Mom, drop everything and take me to Radio Shack!
That’s me. I’m definitely attached to my phone. Malley always gets crazy stressed whenever her parents confiscate hers, which happens on a regular basis due to her acting like a smartass brat. Without her cell she’s unbearable, mean as a moccasin. And when her computer freezes, she turns pure psycho. One time she threw it against a wall and cracked the screen. I’m not quite that bad, but my mood turns foul when my laptop crashes.
It’s amazing how soon you forget your electronic pacifiers when they’re at the bottom of a river, how easy it is to stop fixating on all the texts, messages and posts you might be missing. Not once did Malley and I gripe about being isolated from our precious social networks. Pursuing a desperate criminal through the wilderness drastically rearranges your priorities.
Skink had survived war and a multitude of other perilous adventures. My cousin had survived a kidnapping, and I’d survived the hunt to track her down.
If luck was an ingredient, how much did we have left?
“Don’t look up,” Skink said.
“How come?” Malley asked.
On the ground we saw where Tommy Chalmers’s footprints abruptly stopped, as if he’d been plucked off the planet by some aliens in a spaceship.
“He’s in the tree,” the governor reported in a murmur.
“Which tree?”
“The one we’re under. Keep your voices low, act confused and do not look up.”
The black dirt around the trunk was pitted by jumbo pig tracks. A wild boar had chased Tommy way, way up a pine.
“There’s fresh blood on the bark,” said Skink.
“So what do we do?” my cousin asked. Then, purposely louder: “Gee, which way do you think he went?”
We were both trying so hard not to look up that we were staring like morons at our own tracks in the muck. Skink said we should continue walking, circle back through the woods and wait for Tommy to climb down.
It sounded like a decent plan, except Tommy didn’t cooperate. We’d taken only a few steps before a hoarse voice crooned from above:
“Why, there she is! My sweet, beautiful bride!”
Skink spat a curse word. More than one, actually.
“Can we look up now?” Malley asked archly.
Tommy sat on a branch, his legs dangling, the gun held in his left hand. His right hand, the catfish hand, had swollen so grotesquely that it might as well have been inflated by a bicycle pump. The fingers didn’t resemble real fingers anymore—more like scalded purple sausages. In fact, the whole arm was bloated all the way to the shoulder socket, as if he was wearing one of those padded tubes used for training police dogs how to maul crooks.
“Hi there, sweetie,” he called down to Malley. “You been missin’ me? Now, tell the truth.”
“You need a doctor, T.C. You look like poop on a Popsicle.”
My cousin, smooth as ever.
“Come on down from there,” she said.
“Ha, not with him around.” Tommy waggled the pistol barrel at Skink. “Or him, neither.”
I admit I flinched when he pointed the weapon in my direction.
The governor said, “We’re not armed, son.”
“You got a spear!”
“Naw, it’s just a golf club.”
“Shut up, dude, it’s a spear! I already shot you dead once, so are you some kind a zombie or what?”
“I’m just an old man who wants to talk.”
“No, a swamp zombie with a spear is what you are!”
Tommy was nearly delirious from the infection, though you couldn’t blame him for not wanting to tangle again with Skink. He wasn’t the least bit afraid of me; I was just a ninety-five-pound nuisance.
Malley said, “Then I’ll tell them to leave. It’ll just be you and me, T.C.”
Under his breath the governor said to my cousin, “Bad idea, butterfly.”
“Okay, but I got three bullets left,” Tommy hollered down, “say they get any bright ideas to come back for you. I shot at some dumb hog that got on my case, I’m not afraid to shoot a zombie.”
I wondered if Tommy believed in Bigfoots, too.
“You heard the young lady,” Skink said to me. “Let’s go.”
Of course we would be coming back for Malley. We’d be coming back for Tommy, too.
Side by side Skin
k and I began to walk. He said, “This will happen fast, so be sharp. Your job is getting your cousin out of the way. Do whatever’s necessary, Richard, but leave me a clear path to Mr. Chalmers. Comprende?”
The governor was smiling, naturally. As calm and casual as if he were strolling to the post office.
After disappearing from Tommy’s line of sight, we doubled back in silence, approaching the tree from a different direction. Skink pointed to a fluffy wax myrtle shrub, and we crouched behind it, spying.
Tommy had begun an unsteady descent from the pine, raining broken twigs and scabs of bark. He looked like a drunken scarecrow. The seat of his jeans had been ripped open, exposing a pimply crescent of gouged buttock where the angry boar had implanted a tusk. That explained the blood smears on the tree trunk.
When he finally reached solid ground, Tommy gave a feeble pump with his gun hand, yelling, “Oh yeah! Killed it!”
The governor told me to get ready.
Tommy held out his unbloated arm, beckoning my cousin for a hug.
“You poor baby,” she said sweetly.
Then she stepped forward and slugged him in the belly. It sounded like a sledgehammer hitting a sack of wet rice. He crumpled, goggle-eyed and wheezing, but he didn’t let go of the gun.
Skink was already on the move, crutching his nine-iron through the marsh bottom at a surprisingly zippy pace. I dashed past, grabbed Malley by the waist and pulled her off to the side. The governor was kneeling on Tommy’s neck, prying the pistol from his fingers.
My cousin broke free and ran back to kick and punch at her kidnapper. She was calling him names, screaming questions.
What made you do it?
How did you pick me?
Why’d you lie?
What’s wrong with you?
T.C. didn’t say a thing. He appeared half-conscious, loose-jawed and limp as a dirty rag.
Once again I dragged Malley away. Skink let go of Tommy and stood up, barking like a deranged pit bull, and I mean barking. It was more startling than one of his loud dreams, because he was wide awake.
After dumping the remaining bullets from the gun, he beat it against a maple tree until the cylinder broke apart and the barrel snapped. Then he began chanting in some unrecognizable language while performing a cripple-step jig that was even weirder than Malley’s pig-scaring dance. All the time he kept spinning that nine-iron like a drum major twirling a baton.