like a few generations. As a detective, he’d learned to be wary of chance because of criminal circumstances. What was mixing in his gut with the whiskey?
The guy at the Tiki Bar.
Kim Davis had introduced the man as Eric Hunter, a friend of Frank Canfield, Maggie’s dead husband. Coincidental? Maybe. Maybe not. O’Brien knocked back the rest of his drink and listened to a bull gator grunt at river’s edge. It was the start of mating season. The natives were restless. O’Brien could identify on some primal level. He gently lifted Max and said, “Let’s hit the bed, lady. Maybe you can teach an old dog like me how to sleep like you.” She licked O’Brien on his unshaven face.
Although he had returned to the comfort of his own bed at home on the banks of the St Johns River, calm was an ephemeral feeling. His sleep had been awakened by silent screams from human skeletons and the punctuated chant from a whippoorwill in an ancient live oak outside his window. He saw Maggie’s face and then a close-up of Jason’s eyes-frightened eyes.
O’Brien shook the narcotic of sleep’s illusion away and watched early morning light pour through an opening in the curtains on his bedroom window. He replayed the images he and Nick had seen around the sunken U-boat. The human remains, the mystery surrounding the sinking of the sub, the cargo of rockets, jet parts, and two canisters lovingly sealed by Pandora herself. He thought about Maggie Canfield, more than twenty years ago when she was Maggie Greene. And he thought about the telephone call he received from the woman who identified herself as Abby Lawson.
In his rambling kitchen, O’Brien made a pot of Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee, called Max from her roost in his recliner, stepped onto the porch, and walked down the sloping backyard to his dock that extended fifty feet into the river. His property bordered the Ocala National Forest. From the view on his dock, the river made a wide oxbow turn, flowing around live oaks, the limbs draped heavy with beards of pewter-gray Spanish moss.
It was about a half hour after sunrise and the river looked like hammered copper. The morning light broke through the cypress trees, illuminating water bugs on the surface as they made figure eights and elliptic orbits resembling tiny skaters. A slight breeze carried the scent of honeysuckles, decaying oak leaves, and damp moss.
O’Brien and Max watched a great blue heron stalk the tannin water, stopping to carefully step over cypress knees that protruded up from the dark mire like giant, gnarled fingers. His thoughts drifted back to the discovery of the U-boat and its cargo.
Max turned her head, the alarms firing in her brain. O’Brien had noticed that her reaction to human-produced sounds and scents was different from those in nature. Her defense mechanisms ignited faster when approached by intruders walking upright.
O’Brien scratched her back. “You have hound dog ears, and you can certainly hear things I can’t. What do you hear, Max?”
She half barked and half whined, paced the dock, and started to run toward the house. “Hold on, Max. How do those little legs move so fast, huh?”
A car pulled in at the end of his driveway. Rarely did he ever see a car pull in his long drive. His nearest neighbor was almost a mile away, and lost motorists didn’t need to use his drive to turn around. There were plenty of access roads leading into the national forest. His driveway made a slight bend to the left from the front of his house to the road. Even from his dock, he had a line-of-sight to the end of the drive. But visitors seldom noticed him from that distance.
He watched a woman get out of the car and start toward his front door. She stopped, hesitated, like she wanted to turn around, and then continued.
“Come on Max, let’s go see who has come calling. If it’s the Avon lady, boy did she get the wrong house … that is unless you want something for your nails.” Max scampered up the backyard, climbed the steps leading to the porch, and waited for O’Brien to open the screen door. He heard a knock.
“Be with you in a second,” O’Brien said, checking the drawer for his Glock. He wedged the pistol under his belt, beneath his shirt, and opened the door.
The woman was frightened. O’Brien cut his eyes from her to the car. A small gray head barely protruded over the console. The woman at his door was about one hundred and ten pounds, mid-thirties, auburn hair pulled back, and hazel eyes that were filled with fright and fervor. She wore blue jeans and a blouse open enough on her shoulders to show a powder sprinkling of freckles.
“Mr. O’Brien?” she asked.
“That’s me.”
“I apologize for coming to your home unannounced. But ….” She bit her lower lip and said nothing.
“I’m the one who called you-the one who talked about her grandfather being murdered.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
There was a strong gust of wind for a moment causing acorns to rain down from a live oak, beating against the tin roof before falling into O’Brien’s yard.
The woman bit her lower lip and tried to smile.
“You said your name is Abby Lawson?” O’Brien asked.
“Yes … and I’m sorry I had to hang up before I could explain further. My grandmother, she’s in her late eighties, I was visiting her, bringing some dinner over, when we watched the story on TV. I saw the expression on her face when they reported about the submarine. It was like she’d seen a ghost. I told her I was going to find you.”
“I assume that’s your grandmother in the car.”
“I talked her into coming. She’s not well … lymphoma.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. How’d you know where I live?”
“I used to work for the Volusia County Sheriff’s office. You’d helped Detective Leslie Moore with one of her cases before she was killed. She and I were friends. One day she mentioned how much respect she had for you, and how good you were at seeking justice for the families of victims … murder victims. Leslie said you had a natural- born talent for it, a sixth sense. Anyway, she had mentioned you lived off Highway 46 near the Ocala National Forest. I grew up in DeLand so this wasn’t too hard for me to find.”
“Would you and your grandmother like to come in?”
Max wedged out the door and trotted over to the Abby Lawson. “Your dog’s so cute. Now I remember Leslie telling me you had a little dachshund, too.”
“She’s my watchdog.”
“I can tell by the rambunctious wag of the tail. Look, I don’t want to impose. I’m prepared to pay you.”
“To do what?” O’Brien studied her face, the eyes that evaded his, a red patch appearing on her lower neck. “Would you like some water, soft drink, or something?”
“No, I’ll get right to the point. If you want to talk further, I’ll come inside. If not, I’ll turn away and never bother you again.”
O’Brien was silent.
“My grandfather was twenty-one when he was shot and killed off Matanzas Beach. The year was 1945, the nineteenth of May. The war in Europe had just ended. My grandfather had fought in the Army overseas where he was wounded and lost some of the function in his left leg. He was shipped back home, recuperating, and on active- reserve. One night he was surf-casting, trying to put food on the table, when he spotted something out in the ocean. Then he saw six men row to shore in a life raft. My grandfather hid, watched them bury something. Before they started back to their boat, he saw someone else, a man, walk down from the road to meet the men. Mr. O’Brien, four of those men were German soldiers, two were Japanese. The man they met, my grandfather said, looked American. They buried something in the sand that night. My grandfather saw it … he saw one of the Germans shoot and kill another one. Granddaddy managed to get to a phone booth to call my grandmother. He told her everything and said for her to call the Navy in Jacksonville and tell them what he saw.”
