He heard a voice from deep within himself, calling him a coward, telling him that he should someway, somehow find his sight, find his feet, find his lost weapon and blow this freak’s head off. He also heard a voice of reason, a child’s voice, his child’s voice telling him to survive this night.
Another voice, a cold, clinical voice, told him that a powerful spear had creased his temple, turning the world into inky blackness. If he got to his feet, even if he could locate his weapon, he’d stumble, feel for a handhold and clumsily alert the killer to the fact that a third spear needed to be put into Ken Stallings. His leg had now gone completely numb. His mind raced for a way to beat this, a way to counter this, a way to find vengeance before he blacked out. His last thought was a running question: What about Jenny, the kids, tomorrow? Will I die here like this, never see them again, never open my eyes again, never feel again, never live to stop this bastard who’s killed me and Manley? Never… ever… ev… er…
The dispatcher’s voice from Stallings’s radio wafted across the water as the Tau Cross, with Warren Tauman aboard, made its way out into the Gulf and into the stormy sea.
NINETEEN
The blank page; difficult mirror, gives back only what you were.
Other FMP officers, Coast Guard and county marine cops arrived at the quadrants called in by the 7-11 Team, and they were at first confused by the onslaught of pea soup that they had motored into, a wall of rain and darkness. Somewhere in here their comrades were in trouble, unable to respond to repeated radio calls. Fear for Manley and Stallings ran high. The officers now searching for them were both friends and admirers of the two men.
Patty Lawrence was the first to spot the listless, bobbing little Boston Whaler, all instincts telling her there was something terribly wrong. She had been listening in when Stallings and Manley had made their last radio call to dispatch, advising of their position and intent. She and partner Bill Mullins hadn’t hesitated, but had raced toward the unfolding incident just off Madeira, hoping to be first backup, and then when dispatch lost contact, she’d become terribly worried. It wasn’t like Stallings to leave his radio for so long a time.
She advised Bob Fisher at dispatch to continue hailing the Delta-4, the 7-11 club, as loudly as he could, and that she and her partner would use his hail as a buoy, since a blinding fog had overrun the waters off Madeira.
“ How bad is the fog?” Fisher at dispatch wanted to know.
“ Like a goddamn blanket of misdirection, like a star nebula.”
“ Star what?” asked Fisher from his safe haven ashore. “Like in those Star Trek movies when the ship goes into a cloud of gases created by an ancient exploding star, so you don’t know what’s up, what’s down, what’s right or left.”
Bill Mullins agreed, saying, “You got that right.”
Lights from onshore and from boats all around bounced off the low-lying cloud that’d rolled in. “They’re out there!” She pointed, adding, “I got a glimpse of the boat. Move it, Mullins! Eleven o’clock.”
“ They’re out there and so’s the Crawler,” countered Mullins. “Did Fisher let the rest of the world know what’s going on out here?”
“ Says he reported it to the guard, the mainland police and the sheriff’s office. We’ll have company in a matter of-there it comes.”
They heard sirens blaring as other Marine Patrol boats began to encircle the area.
It was then that Patty caught a second glimpse of the appearing, disappearing, directionless little Boston Whaler. The turbulence was unusual, threatening, so her partner called for a weather report. The boat they searched for was identical to her own, save for the markings. “It’s them! There! See?” She pointed ahead, her partner now putting on some speed. “If you see any sign of a sailing ship moving off in any direction,” Mullins advised all the other patrol boats joining them now, “go at it cautiously, but contain it.”
“ Roger that,” replied another nearby patrol boat.
“ Any sign of your men?” asked a county sheriff’s boat.
“ We have the boat in sight. Going in for a look.” Mullins gave their coordinates so that the others might readily converge on the area.
Patty Lawrence felt the scene as if it were a floating graveyard. She didn’t smell death here on the water with the ocean odors and the light drizzle falling from the cloud they stood in; she didn’t taste death here-all was too sodden for that, the now steady downpour and lapping waves like a warning bell-but she sensed death here nonetheless. It felt like a palpable visitor, a dark figure shrouded and standing on the water between them and Stallings’s boat as they approached. Patty had once enjoyed a wonderful, carefree affair with Ken, long since over, and now all her fears for his safety seemed realized.
Patty and Mullins’s boat had to slice through this Mr. Death, and it did so, dispelling for a moment the Grim Reaper’s hold on her imagination. Only it wasn’t imagination staring back at her as they came alongside the 7-11. The boat fairly cried of crisis. It wasn’t anchored and was without mooring of any kind; it bobbed and waved and threatened to hit them as they approached. There was no one aboard, at least no one who could be seen. The lights reflected crazily around them, hitting and shoving and pushing one another for the right to penetrate the fog, when nothing could penetrate it now. Patty’s own spotlight was more trouble now than it was worth, reflecting back at them like a ghostly mirror. She thought for all the world she saw a kind of airy spirit in the lights and the fog, rising up from the unhappy scene, like the spirit of a departed friend.
Mullins pulled their boat in tight and Patty worked a grappling hook on a ten-foot rod into position over the errant gunwale, snatching the 7-11, the noise creating a din. She tugged and hauled with all her strength, pulling the lonely FMP boat into them.
Patty fairly well jumped onto the 7-11 when the two Whalers bumped, and she quickly tied off the two boats, feeling her way in the darkness but quite aware that what appeared to be two dead men with long spears sticking from their bodies lay at her feet.
“ Christ, Bill, it’s bad… really bad!” she called back to Mullins, who steadied the boat and cast off the anchor line.
Patty felt Manley’s carotid artery for a pulse but found none. His skin felt like wood. His eyes looked up at her like large question marks. She’d always liked Rob Man- ley-his swagger, his humor, his kindness to her over the years-and she gave a thought to Louisa and his four kids, the oldest just finishing high school at George Washington in St. Pete. “Is he… is he dead?” asked Mullins as he leaned in over the death boat.
“ ‘ Fraid so, Bill.”
“ And Stallings?” Fearfully, she looked across Manley’s wide chest, saw the bloody tissue about Ken Stallings’s head and the spear shaft in his leg and shook her head, afraid to touch him, afraid to move, terrified that if she tried, she’d faint at the smell of blood and the sights around her, which threatened to overwhelm her anyway. She’d handled bodies before, but none where the faces were familiar, the ties so strong.
Suddenly breaking the silence, Stallings himself answered Mullins from within the confining darkness of his useless eyes, “Bill? Patty? Is… is zat… you?”
“ Good God, he’s alive!” Patty shouted. “Ken, Ken, it’s us. We’ve got you. Hang in… hang in there.”
“ We’ve got to get him to a hospital, now!” Mullins shouted. “Take the wheel and follow my lights!”
Bill cast off and raised anchor, turning his boat directly for shore. Patty situated herself at the helm of Delta-4 and did precisely as Bill had instructed, following in his wake, her tear-filled eyes ever on his lights rather than on the bodies of her two friends in her peripheral vision, rushing her precious cargo to shore.
Bill radioed dispatch as to what was going on, and Bob Fisher promised that an ambulance would be waiting at Madeira Beach.
Meanwhile, the other Marine Patrol boats continued a frantic circling about the fog in an ever-widening arc from the original quadrants that’d pinpointed what Ken Stallings had called in as the Tau Cross, the suspect ship. They intended to search all night for it if need be. But somehow, Patty Lawrence feared, the Night Crawler had
