them.”
Harry grunted.
“How about you finish them up and I’ll drop by later to get ’em back into safekeeping. If I never read another psychiatric case history it’ll be too soon.”
I glanced out the window: chop in the waves from the wind, but little more than scudding cumulus above. Larger pleasure boats were out; the big white Bertram was rolling slowly a quarter mile out. I wondered if it was a charter. Tourists loved dolphin cruises. My body felt the need for a tour across the water, but via kayak.
First though, there was my homework. I sighed, unboxed the last of Rudolnick’s files, set them on my table. Pressed my palms against my temples and read.
Harry arrived close to eight, brushing mist from his hair. I’d finished my Rudolnick files and found nothing else exciting. I had just changed into swim trunks. The rough weather was predicted to last several days and I wanted to get a last run in before the storm arrived.
Harry looked at my swim gear.
“You just got in, I hope.”
“Heading out. I need it.”
“Carson…”
The local cutaway popped on the tube and I made a final check of the Doppler, studying the direction of the clouds on the time-lapse replay.
“I’ve got to get out there for a bit, Harry, clear my head.”
“Look at the damn clouds, Carson. They’re a wall.”
I looked through the deck doors to the horizon. It looked like war being waged between earth and sky, vertical mountains of indigo smoke lit by jitters of internal lightning. I’d be cutting it close, but I needed the water and the exertion.
“They’re moving almost parallel to the shore right now, Harry, trouble for Florida, not for me, at least not for another hour. I’ll be back and on my second beer by then.”
Harry shook his head. He would have made a good Daniel Boone, a lousy Thor Heyerdahl.
“I’ll have a scotch here, keep an eye out. When you get back I’ll take the files to storage.”
“I’ll be fine, bro,” I assured him. “Go home and play some tunes, blow out the jets.”
A murmur of thunder blew in with the wind. Harry grunted, picked up the files, and headed for the door.
I fought hard past the breakers, putting burn in my shoulders, a rasp in my breathing. Salt stung my eyes. Flying fish jumped my boat. A half mile out, I stopped paddling and stretched my back.
The breeze shifted direction, carrying the scent of rain and ozone, and I knew it was time for that beer. Twilight had almost deepened into night, and I spun to the pinpoint light of my deck. After a dozen strokes I became aware of a light at my back, behind it the burr of a wide-open motor.
I saw a bow bouncing. Bearing down on me.
I cut at a right angle, but the craft angled my way. I waved the paddle above my head like a pennant, idiotically yelling, “Stop!”
I dove overboard and pulled hard toward bottom. The thud of the boat hitting my kayak reverberated through the water. The engine slowed as the craft spun in a tight circle. I surfaced, stroked to the side of a thirty-foot Bertram.
Light struck me, a circle of white. I looked into its brilliance and turned away. A rope ladder tumbled over the side. I pulled myself up the ladder, light blazing in my eyes, the boat rocking in the waves.
“Easy with that light,” I said, climbing into the craft. “It’s blinding me.”
“I was afraid we were going to miss you,” said a voice from the helm.
“Miss finding me in the water?”
“Miss hitting you just right. I haven’t driven a boat in a while.”
I froze and looked into the face of the man at the helm. A videotape honed into resolution: Crandell. He was grinning.
“Howdy, Carson,” said a voice beside me, strangely familiar. I turned.
Tyree Shuttles.
I spun to dive from the boat, but an arm encircled my neck and threw me to the deck. Something burned hot in my bicep and my mind turned to water and washed me down a hole in the deck.
Crandell’s grin followed, like the Cheshire cat tumbling through the dark.
Jack Kerley
A Garden of Vipers
CHAPTER 38
“I’m not going to believe it,” Clair Peltier said. “You people are simply mistaken.”
Her hand shook as she let the curtain fall back into place. She walked to Ryder’s bedroom, closed the door. Outside in the drive was a Coast Guard truck, a battered and bent red kayak roped in the bed. It was ten a.m., the succeeding bands of storm now in their thirteenth hour.
“Where was the kayak again?” Harry Nautilus asked.
“Washed up on Fort Morgan beach, just east of the point.” Lieutenant Robert Sanchez was twenty-seven and wrote left-handed on a clipboard. “It was a strong storm, Detective.”
“He was an expert in the things. Kayaks.”
“Did he wear flotation, sir?” Sanchez asked. “On a regular basis?”
“No,” Harry Nautilus admitted.
“We have a team scouring the area, walking the beach. We had boats out but weather made us pull them. The choppers were grounded as well.”
“Are you looking for a swimmer? Or a body?” Nautilus’s voice was matter-of-fact, a professional talking to a professional.
“The wind might have blown him across the mouth of the Bay, toward Fort Morgan. Into the ship channel. There were several freighters in and out of the bay last night. Currents at the point are powerful. I once heard a diver describe them as freight trains under the water. There’s debris down there, wrecks, things to get hung up on.”
“I see,” Nautilus said, his voice a whisper.
Sanchez cleared his throat. “Pardon me, Detective, but why would your friend go out in a kayak knowing a storm was blowing in?”
“He made it through his childhood. Sometimes it made him think he could make it through anything.”
Sanchez nodded politely, like he understood. A blast of wind shook the house, screamed across the windows. The lights muted to brown, flickered, returned.
“As soon as the storm lets up, we’ll go back out, Detective. There’s another heavy storm fifty miles out, but we might get a chopper up for a half hour.”
“Thank you,” Nautilus said, wondering if the search was little more than a formality.
“Would you like for me to leave your friend’s kayak, sir?” Sanchez asked. “Or I can haul it away, if you want.”
“Leave it,” Clair Peltier said from behind the bedroom door, her voice breaking. “And get that goddamn helicopter in the air.”
CHAPTER 39
I had been swimming underwater for days, through green-black water so mossy it abraded my skin. Occasionally I’d see wobbles of light on the surface and swim that direction. Once there, the surface bent from my
