Captiva

'Why should it?'

Hannah snuggled up close to me, very pleased. 'That's what I think! Arlis, he's an old man. He's sweet as he can be, and . . . he's one of us. One of the old Cracker people. Like, him and me are part of the same tribe.'

I guessed that she was parroting some past remark by Tomlinson, but did not comment.

'Arlis, his wife died more than two years ago. There's no other women on the island he gives a damn about, so . . . sometimes, when he's in a wanting mood, I help him feel like a man again. At his age, he needs the tea to help him. I don't do it out of pity. I care about the old bastard, and he cares about me. It's . . . private . . . and it's real sweet.'

'That's why Arlis was glad when Jimmy died.'

'Arlis hated Jimmy; he'd tell you the same himself. Arlis was so mad at me when I married him that he wouldn't even talk to me for a week. But he came around when he realized it was just me bein' . . . bein' me. I'm . . . kind'a a different sort of woman. I told you that before.'

I kissed her cheek, then her lips; told her I was finally beginning to believe that. Then I asked, 'Did Arlis hate Jimmy enough to kill him?'

She got up on one elbow, chin braced in hand. 'The bomb, you mean?' She shook her head. 'Arlis was glad about it. Real glad. But no, Arlis didn't have nothing to do with it.' She paused for a moment, looking into my eyes, then said, 'I'm the one that fixed it. I'm the one that killed Jimmy.'

She said it so matter-of-factly that it took a moment for it to register. 'You what?'

'About three weeks ago, he broke in the house and he hit me again. I told him what I was gonna do, and I did it.'

'But how? Jimmy was alone. He brought the bomb to my marina—'

'I'll show you how,' she said. Reached over and dragged the black duffel within reach, and took out the leather-bound book. 'Jimmy's mama sent this to me just before she died. She was a good woman, but sometimes . . .' Hannah had the book open; was leafing through it. 'Sometimes good women produce assholes for sons. I guess she knew that and thought maybe I needed protection. So she wanted me to have this.'

The book was very old; had the nutty, musty smell of autumn leaves. It was written in French, a language I cannot read.

'What this is, it's the lost books of the Bible,' Hannah said. 'The eighth, ninth, and tenth books of Moses. You can't find it anywhere anymore—I checked around after I got it. Some people don't even believe that the books exist, but here they are.' She had found what she was looking for and showed me. An entire page had been crossed out with black tape. 'I used this to put what they call an 'assault obeah' on Jimmy. This and a ceremony his mama had told me about. Wrote his name on Chipman paper, then burned it with a candle. The thing with Chipman paper is, it'll burn, but the writing on it won't. The writing shows right through the ashes. I called Jimmy up to the house three days before he died and showed him this Bible, showed him the ashes. He acted like it didn't scare him a bit, but it did. His face went sort of funny; kind of twitchin'.'

'That's all you did?' I suspected she could hear the relief in my voice. 'You didn't have anything to do with the bomb?'

She said, 'Nope, you can relax about that,' and closed the book. 'Whether you believe in this stuff or not— Jimmy, he believed. Maybe he was carryin' that bomb and got jumpy, knowing he didn't have long to live no matter what. Probably hit the wrong switch—drunk as usual. Or maybe nobody explained exactly how it worked. When he told Tommy to 'take care of Hannah'? The asshole meant take care of me. Like Jimmy was always gonna 'take care' of so-and-so; that's the way he always said it. You know— beat the hell out of them.'

I didn't want to press her, but I had to. 'Who didn't explain to Jimmy how the bomb worked? You need to tell me, Hannah. Who built the bomb?'

She stared at me a moment, then returned the book to the duffel bag and pushed it away. 'I don't know who did it and I don't want to know.'

'But you have some ideas.'

'That's right, I've got some ideas. If I told you, would it be the same as telling the cops?'

I thought about lying to her; looked into those eyes and realized that she would know the truth anyway. 'Yeah,' I said, finally, 'I'd pass the information along.'

Which, for some reason, made her smile. 'Let me think about it. Give me some time. Why don't the two of us just . . . relax a little before we do any more talking?' She had her hands on me, massaging my chest with strong fingers, her breasts hanging pendulously, brushing my face. Heard her say, 'Hoo! Looky there—the big guy's finally gone back to the barn!'

. I was about to make some reply to that—tell her no, I wanted to talk now—when the door of the house crashed open. I heard a man's voice yell, 'Jesus Christ, what are you doing?' Jumped to my feet to see Raymond Tullock filling the low doorway, his expression grotesque, a combination of outrage and shock. The beam of the flashlight in his hand was brighter than the oil lamp. He shone it on Hannah, then on me. Heard him say, 'This guy? You're fucking this guy?'

My voice was surprisingly calm considering how hard my heart was beating. I said, 'Get the light out of my eyes, Raymond, or this guy thinks you'll be eating that flashlight.' The whole time, I was fishing around for pants, shirt—anything to use as a covering.

Tullock lowered the flashlight, but he still wore the grotesque expression. 'Do you realize what you're doing to me, Hannah? Do you have any idea?' As he stared at her, I had the strong impression that he had never seen her naked before . . . that he was feeling both pain and wonder.

Hannah made no effort to cover herself. Said, 'Raymond, you've got a special talent for acting like a dumb ass.'

'Don't you dare lecture me! Don't you dare!' As he stepped toward her, I moved between them, ready to shove him away. But he stepped back immediately. Seemed to gather himself, and said in a cold, controlled voice, 'I've been looking for you all night. Trying to call you on the radio, driving all over the island. There're men out in boats trying to find you.'

'You serious, Raymond? You damn well better not be joking—'

'No joke. Arlis is the one who finally told me to check here.' Raymond bent down, picked up Hannah's T- shirt, seeming to take perverse delight in what he said next: 'That long-haired boyfriend of yours? A couple hours ago, some tourist found him out on the road, beaten nearly to death. Probably is dead by now.' He tossed the T-shirt in her face. 'They took him to the hospital, in case you're interested.'

Chapter 14

To see Tomlinson, I had to look through a wall of Plexiglas. He was lying on a stainless steel table, a sheet over his bare hips, his body a nexus of tubes and wires and monitoring equipment. The most troubling linkage was a fogged green hose—it was segmented like a worm—that arched away from the concrete wall, then snaked through his mouth, down his throat. The hose, the table were all part of the respirator that was now doing his breathing. When the table contracted, Tomlinson's body inflated, then deflated rhythmically, like a metronome. The ventilator machine made a cold, hydraulic keesh-ah-h . . . keesh-ah-h . . . keesh-ah-h whisper, steady as a mechanical heartbeat, and Tomlinson's limp body jolted with each breath like a skinny bellows.

It was after two a.m. Around me, in a tight little group, were all of the regulars from Dinkin's Bay: Mack, Jeth, Rhonda, JoAnn, Harry Burdock and wife Wendy, Big Nick S Clements, Javier Castillo, and some others, plus Janet Mueller as well. Felix and Nels didn't live at the marina, but they had been contacted and were on their way.

Jeth moved up close to me, fighting hard to control his emotions. Said, 'Why. . . why would some bastard hurt a sweet guy like . . . like ... He was such a guh-good man. . . .'Then lost it; didn't try to go on anymore. Sniffed loudly . . . covered his mouth and made a coughing noise as he shoved his way toward the back of the little room that the hospital had set up for us in the intensive care unit. Which set off the others... a lot of throat clearing and sniffing and the soft siren sound of restrained sobbing.