It sobered me. It leached the alcohol out of my brain. Stringing a cable across a busy waterway was not vandalism, nor was it a statement of political dissent. It was attempted murder, nothing less.
Garrett said, 'Hand me those bolt cutters. I'll snip this side, then we'll pull our way back and get the other side, too.'
I said, 'No. Not yet.'
'Huh? Why the hell not?'
'Did you contact the Coast Guard?'
He said,
'The Coast Guard.'
'I hope you're not serious. There's plenty of time for that later.'
'I
Garrett demonstrated his impatience by being meticulously patient. 'No, Doc, I didn't call the Coast Guard. I don't keep a VHF in a rubber dinghy. An idiot might, but I don't. What I did was go bust-assin' back to Cabbage to get the bolt cutters, then decided I could use some help. Which is where I felt kind'a lucky spotting you. Because I figured you'd be a good man to help me cut this bastard down before some poor sonuvabitch comes flying around that corner and cuts his head off. Which could happen any minute now!'
I told him to calm down, take it easy. Used my hand-held VHF to raise the Coast Guard on channel 16. I asked for the duty officer. The Coast Guard had me switch to 22-Alpha for extended traffic. While I waited, I opened the forward locker and broke out the big spotlight and plugged it in. Also got out the disposable gas air-horn. Handed them both to Garrett and told him that unless deaf and blind people were racing around Pine Island Sound, he should be able to stop any boat for miles.
It took quite a while to give the Coast Guard all the information they wanted, and the duty officer finished by suggesting we stand by.
'Christ awmighty, are you happy?' Garrett sputtered when I was finished. 'This'll take all night.'
I didn't need all night. All I wanted was a few minutes alone with the cable. Anyone sick enough to rig such a thing was also sick enough to include a booby trap. Jimmy Darroux was a failed bomber. But there might be other, more skilled bombers waiting in the wings.
I handed Garrett the VHF. 'If a judge ever starts questioning you about mishandled evidence, you'll thank me.'
I had grabbed the flashlight, Leatherman pliers, a chunk of heavy monofilament line, and had slipped overboard into waist-deep water. 'I want to take a closer look at the cable before we cut it.'
I watched while Garrett and my skiffdrifted away on the incoming tide . . . then used the flashlight to follow the cable up over the seawall.
The cable appeared to be belted around the base of a palm tree. Before approaching the palm, I tied my Leatherman pliers to the monofilament, thereby making an effective plumb line. Then I walked slowly, very slowly, holding the plumb line out just as far from my body as I could get it. If there was a trip wire in my path, the monofilament would catch harmlessly on it.
There was no trip wire.
Even so, I remained cautious. Garrett had told me the men had lifted something heavy out of their boat. Something that made them grunt. The typical marine battery weighs thirty-seven pounds. A five-gallon can of gas weighs more than forty. Add a blasting cap and you have the ingredients for a powerful bomb.
I had good reason to be cautious.
I used the fishing line to probe around the cable. No strings or wires running from it. Used the flashlight to check overhead. No strings or wires to be mistaken for harmless vines. The cable was secured with a common screw-down bridle. I slid the fishing line delicately, very delicately, into the chock, alert for the first slim resistance of wire.
Nothing.
I took a couple of deep breaths . . . relaxed . . . used the screwdriver head on my Leatherman to free the cable. Then I half swam, half waded across to the channel marker, where, after a less exacting inspection, I disconnected that end, too. Had there been a mad bomber, he almost certainly would have placed the device on the Useppa side of the cut, where it could do the most damage.
Garrett came puttering up as I was coiling the cable. Shut off the engine and, after a properly dramatic pause, said, 'You get a few beers in you, you act like a damn lunatic. I'm serious.'
'Nothing but screws and chocks holding it. So I figured, what the hell, why wait for the Coast Guard?'
Garrett said, 'No shit, Sherlock,' as I climbed into the boat.
As we idled back toward Useppa's harbor, I asked Garrett what he thought the men might have dumped. He said, 'You didn't see? What the hell were you doing up there?' Before I could invent an answer, he said, 'Here— take the spotlight. I'll show you.' Then turned the wheel. When the bow nudged the beach, he took the light and began to sweep it back and forth. 'Probably wake up everybody on the whole damn island. There-— see that? There's another one . . . and another.'
What he was showing me appeared to be lengths of bar stock, chunks of two to three feet, scattered along the northwestern fringe of the island. I removed my glasses, polished the salt spots off, and looked again.
What I was seeing were fish. Dozens of them. I stepped out of the boat, carrying the flashlight.
They were big snook, ten-to-twenty-pounders. The snook is a prized saltwater game fish; an extraordinary animal, both in terms of behavior and physical beauty. It has an efficient, cartilaginous jaw that flares cutlasslike around black peregrine eyes that are ringed with gold. Its body is pewter-bright, amplified by yellow, with an armorwork of scales covering a dense and broadening musculature. It is a heavy, functional, predator's body, as if all the thousands of years of the species' evolution were the refinement of one moonless night in murky, prehistoric water. The black lateral line, running from gill to caudal fin, is a sports car touch, something that might have been dreamed up in Detroit. On any other animal, the stripe would appear frivolous. You see a snook for the first time and, along with the lingering impression of beauty, you think: Survivor.
But these animals had failed the genetic mandate. They had not survived. I went from one to another, touching, lifting, inspecting. They had been dead for more than a day and not kept on ice. The scales were loose. The eyes milky. Their skin had the withered look of roadkill. On several, I found telltale geometries as if etched in blue, then baked hard: net scars.
I retrieved one of the smaller fish and carried it back to where Garrett waited.
'The marine patrol stops you, Doc, they'll take your boat. Snook are out of season.'
'I've got a collector's permit. I'm taking it back to the lab to see if I can find out how it died.'
Garrett made a grunt of contempt. 'How? Shit, that's not obvious? The two guys in the mullet boat strung their catch wire, then carried up a couple of boxes of illegal fish and dumped them. Let people know who did it; show just how pissed off they are. A lot of sportfishermen live on Useppa. The mullet guys were just saying thanks for the net ban.'
I panned the spotlight once more over the rows of carcasses, switched it off, and backed out. Most of the way back to Cabbage Key, we both kept a glum, funereal silence. Then Garrett cleared his throat, said in a soft, musing way, 'You know, I voted
I knew a little bit about his background. 'You come from a family of commercial fishermen, so it's understandable—'
'Yeah . . . but that's not why. You know what it was? It was those fishing magazines, the way they preached for the ban, but still ran their ads for big engines and lorans and sonar. You know as well as I do,
He said, 'You know what else? Those stupid commercials about the mullet fishermen netting dolphins and turtles and manatees—what bullshit. Nothing but lies. Hell, it was almost funny to people who really knew something about it. But you know what really did the trick?' Garrett paused, thinking about it. I got the impression he was trying to explain it to himself. 'What really did it was this guy named Tullock, used to come down to the docks, this state guy, a marine extension agent. He's the one—'
I interrupted. 'Raymond Tullock?' It had to be—there weren't that many marine extension agents named