window sash, fixed a hole in a screen that looked like it had been plucked open by an animal-rodent, bird, or reptile based on its size, the meticulous snipping, and random uselessness. I’d also finished the first quarter of Peter Matthiessen’s Shadow Country, a Florida history lesson unparalleled.
Luz Carmen staked out a spot down on the dock. Apparently, she’d finished the English-language version of Chronicle of a Death Foretold and was starting on my paperback copy of All Quiet on the Western Front, which she must have dug out of the back of the armoire while I was sleeping outside. Her choice of reading material while grieving over a dead brother was not mine to ponder, but I do have an innate problem with people who can read so damn fast. How do they do it without missing the subtleties, innuendo, and small word gems that authors sweat through and take days of writing and rewriting to achieve? It seems both cheating, and self-cheating.
But I am a slow reader, and it’s probably just jealousy. I read slowly. I write slowly, and none too poetically considering that most of my experience has been filling out incident reports as a cop and now writing up surveillance narratives for Billy. When I stole glances at Luz, I noted that every once in a while she would look up from the book and stare out into the green of the river forest.
What was in her mind’s eye was hers alone. I thought of the advice shrinks give, that people shouldn’t be alone at times of great loss. But who isn’t alone with their thoughts? You handle them your own way, and hopefully grow stronger. Closure is bullshit. In the absence of some kind of biological memory wipe, there is no such thing. Personal loss is always with us. We learn to live with it; we don’t make it go away.
I was about to interrupt Luz for a late lunch when my cell phone rang.
“Mr. Freeman, this is Dan, over at the ranger station.”
“Yeah?”
“I just wanted to give you a heads-up that Joey finished with your truck and dropped it by here. So it’s in the parking lot.”
“Great, Dan. Thanks. I appreciate it,” I said, wondering what the hell the real reason for the call was. Dan had been around long enough to know that when I was at the shack I often didn’t make contact with him or anyone else for days or weeks at a time. He wouldn’t call with something as minor as my truck being dropped off.
“What else, Dan?”
“Uh, well, I wanted to let you know there was somebody messing around near your Gran Fury early this morning, just around daybreak. I was up, and I keep an eye out. When I saw the guy, I scared him off with my big beam flashlight.” The ranger had started out with reticence, as if he didn’t want to be the one giving me bad news. Now his words were running as fast as he could get them out.
“He scrambled the hell out of there fast. I looked over the car this morning; it doesn’t look like he got it open or anything like that-no scratches or nothing. Probably just some kid, you know, looking for an unlocked car to steal change and stuff out of.”
I let him stumble through the whole explanation, do his duck and cover before responding. I went inside the shack out of hearing range of Luz Carmen and closed the door.
“OK, Dan, did you get any kind of look at this guy-race, size, clothing, or distinguishing tattoos?” I said, tossing the tattoo thing in there to goose him a little and remind him that I was, after all, an ex-cop.
“Uh, yeah, well, black guy in dark, maybe black clothes, with long sleeves. He was uh, probably under, like, five ten. Kinda skinny.”
“Carrying anything, Dan?” I said, moving him along step by step. Witnesses don’t always get their memory pictures focused until you put a frame around them. “When he scrambled away, do you recall him carrying anything?”
“Yeah, you know, he was carrying some kind of package under his arm. But I checked the car, Mr. Freeman, and I don’t think he got inside. It was still all locked up, and there was no damage, you know?”
I was walking circles around the table, setting up the scene in my own head.
“And he was kinda limping.”
“What?”
“When I told you he was scrambling away, it was more like he was crab walking. I remember thinking he wasn’t like, sprinting or anything, when I got the light on him. He was more like trying to stay low, but pulling a leg behind.”
“OK, Dan, that’s good-that’s the kind of thing I need. Did he have a hat on? Was something covering his head, his hair?”
“Uh, no. But he was dirty.”
“Explain.”
“The light picked up the grass and stuff on his back-like maybe he was under the car, hot-wiring it or something.”
You don’t hot-wire a car from underneath. From underneath, you’re either changing the oil, or sabotaging the damn thing.
“And you said this all happened early this morning?” I asked.
“Yeah, at daybreak.”
“And you’re calling me now, at two P.M., to tell me my truck was delivered?”
I was trying not to get angry with the guy, and ask what the hell took him so long. After all, he had no idea what I was into, the safekeeping of Luz Carmen or the threats. I never tell the innocent people on the periphery of my life about what I do. People get crazy enough with all the out of proportion crime news they see on television. It’s that contextual half-truth that hurts them, not the real stuff they’ll never know about.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Freeman. You know, I just thought if you had a lady friend out there, you wouldn’t want to be disturbed.”
A lady friend…
“It’s all right, Dan. Thanks for calling. I’ll be in soon,” I said, and punched off the cell.
I recalled a quote I picked up somewhere: “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.”
Was I being talked about? Hell with it, I didn’t give a shit. I stepped outside and called down to Luz Carmen.
“Pack up. We gotta go.”
– 22 -
I was standing where Dan said he’d been when he saw the man messing with the Gran Fury. I was trying to re-create the smoky light of predawn in my head; how good a look could the ranger have managed? The distance was maybe thirty yards. There is little ambient light out here at night. But when Dan showed me the big Inova T3 flashlight he used for spotting poachers and night fishermen, and for checking the occasional snarl of a bobcat, I had to figure he got a decent look. The high-intensity beam can throw 150 lumens at someone 300 feet away. No wonder the ranger saw flecks of dry grass on the prowler’s back.
My own truck, newly washed and polished, was parked in front of the car, but I kept my focus on the Gran Fury, as if it were a suspect.
First I got my truck keys from Dan and carefully backed the F-150 away. Only then did I approach the Gran Fury to begin an inspection, searching the grass around it first, looking for any kind of obvious disturbance. Then without touching the car, I peered in all the windows, carefully looking at the door handles and what I could see of the steering column, to determine whether the visitor had actually been inside before Dan lit him up. The hood was locked down with no sign of tampering. The doors were tight-nothing.
I got down on the ground from the side of the car opposite from the ranger station, figuring the guy would have done the same, using the car body as a shield. I used Dan’s light to illuminate the undercarriage, starting from the front-no out-of-place wires. No signs of unusual connections to the engine. I moved the light back a bit. The front wheels and brake lines looked undisturbed. Back further, there was no indication the bottom edges of the front doors were scratched, and there was nothing like a pressure switch attached to them. I ran the light over the oil pan and the driveshaft and then to the back wheels. On the nearest rocker arm, I found it. The sight of the gray- colored package made me blanch. I think I actually held the light on it for a full minute, frozen, no panic, but
