I started toward the Jeep.
Dan said, “Sean, wait a sec.” I turned to face him. “Leslie was right about you.”
“He’s not convicted yet. And he’s not in this alone. Find that sweatshirt. Get a court order, knock down his door, do whatever it takes. Find it tonight while he’s here.”
“Where you going?”
“To be with a friend.”
I sat with Max on my screened porch and watched the fireflies play tag in the dark down by the river. Heat lighting danced in the sky. I stretched out in my rocking chair, my feet up on the cypress table, Max curled in my lap. The cicadas and the crickets seemed to alternate their chanting. A bullfrog droned across the river.
I sipped three fingers’ worth of Jameson over ice and thought about Leslie, thought about the last thing she’d said to me, Let’s find a place where there are a lot of tropical flowers, turquoise sea and gentle people with genuine smiles. My chest felt like a vice was compressing it.
The temperature started dropping, and the wind picked up, pushing the air across the river. I could smell rain coming. I scratched Max behind her ears. She didn’t even open her eyes. “Max, let’s go to bed.”
I finished the Irish whiskey, picked up Max, and started for the bedroom. As I walked past Sherri’s framed picture, I stopped, my eyes falling on hers. “Goodnight,” I said. Max licked my chin, and we went to bed.
I lay there in the dark for more than an hour, the events of the day played back in my mind, scenes in slow-motion, intercut with my own public service messages of how I could have prevented Leslie’s death.
Max sensed my restlessness. She inched up beside me and laid her head on my chest. I rubbed her neck for a few minutes, my eyes heavy, my mind drifting to the sea. Then darkness descended like a high tide at midnight and carried everything away.
They had no faces. I felt myself reaching out to catch one. All I wanted to do was get my hands around a neck. They were dark figures at the foot of the bed. Faceless apparitions. Standing, staring, appearing somewhere between the threshold of madness and dreams.
In the white flash of a lighting bolt, I sat straight up in the bed. I tossed the sheet off, sweat dripping through my chest hair and down my sides. My heart pounded, and my lungs seemed to ache for more air than what the bedroom could provide. Distant thunder rumbled downriver. Through the windows, I could see the live oaks swaying in the wind.
Max stuck her head up like a prairie dog coming out of her den. She looked at me through sleepy eyes, her tail wagging. She crawled in my lap and licked my hand. She made one of her yawns that seemed to whinny at the same instant.
“Want some fresh air, Max?”
I opened my back door to the porch and stepped out into the night air. It was after 3:00 A.M. Standing on my front porch, I thought about Joe Billie and the native people that once populated the river basin. Maybe some of my night stalkers were spirits of these long-forgotten people. Maybe they were angry that I was here. I couldn’t fault them. After we annihilated their race, they had a right to be pissed off.
A cool breeze brought the promise of rain and the scent of blooming night jasmine. Within a minute, the first large drops began plopping, almost one at a time, on the tin roof. They were soft tears from heaven, and then the gentle weeping turned into frenzied sobbing.
Thunder hit on top of us with the percussion of mortars, lightning slicing through the black sky striking a large oak at the river’s edge. The light was a searing explosion of white heat, shearing a thick limb in a split-second freeze frame of rain and raging wind.
The air smelled of sulfur, burnt oak, and wet Spanish moss. I sat down in the porch rocker and put Max on my lap. Within a few minutes she fell asleep. I listened to the rhythm of rain beating the tin roof, the palm fronds scraping the screened porch, and the frogs singing in chorus of thousands. Long rolls of thunder seemed far away now.
The storm passed, and the night shadows became gray ghosts that faded into trees in the dawn of morning light. A mist rose from the river’s surface. Soon the sun, like a glowing red coal, cleared the tree line and backlit the mist. The light painted the river in red brushstrokes, steam rising, slowly twirling as if ruddy spirits were slow-dancing across a watery stage.
The reclusive dream weaver finally came. I was a young boy again walking through an orange grove on our farm. I stood on my tiptoes to pick one of the ripe oranges. I jumped and snatched the orange like a shortstop grabbing a fly ball barehanded. With my pocketknife, I sliced the orange in half. The juice dripped down my hands and wrists. The sun was warm on my face. I bit into the orange, and the sweet liquid quenched a thirst deep in the back of my throat.
FIFTY-SEVEN
The next morning I left the house early. I was beginning to feel very guilty about handing off little Max to my kind neighbors. First, I felt like I was taking advantage of their generosity, even though they insisted I wasn’t, and secondly, Max genuinely seemed sad when I left her.
I thought about that glancing in my rearview mirror on my way to SunState Farms, and realized I was being followed.
The driver was good. I hit my brakes for five seconds, and my pursuer or pursuers backed way off, almost out of sight. I sped up. The car followed, then it made an abrupt turn off the road, vanishing on a country road. He or she knew I had made them.
I slowed down, less than twenty miles per hour and watched my rearview mirror. Nothing. No pursuit. Only the flat topography of the rolling Florida landscapes.
I turned off the state road and began driving down a country road. The land was a mix of cattle pasture, scrub oak, and lakes. As I rounded a curve, I slammed on the brakes. A farmer drove a tractor at a speed of less than ten miles and hour. It was an old John Deere green tractor, puffing diesel fumes and taking up most of the lane.
I checked my rearview mirror, pulling out into the passing lane, I noticed a car far off in the distance. It was the same car that had been tailing me. Nobody was that good.
I passed the farmer and brought the Jeep up to more than ninety miles an hour. I wanted to put a lot of real estate between the posse and me. I swerved off the paved road and took a bouncy ride down a dirt road. I intentionally kicked up dust. Come get me, assholes! I found a wooded area, parked the Jeep, left the motor running, and ran to wait behind the natural cover.
The dark blue Ford sedan rolled quietly down the road. They were in no hurry, and I knew why. There was nowhere I could run where they wouldn’t find me. I knew they’d been tracking me by satellite.
There were two people in the car. A man and a woman. The man drove slowly, and I could see the woman pointing toward my Jeep. As they stopped, I chambered a round in my Glock and waited. Less than fifty feet from my Jeep they got out of the car. Both of them had drawn their weapons. The man approached the Jeep from the driver’s side. The woman covered him.
I crouched behind the palmettos, lifted my cell phone, and started recording video.
“Out of the car!” ordered the man, pointing the pistol directly into the empty passenger seat. “He’s not here!” he said, about to turn my way.
“I have a gun aimed at the back of your head!” I yelled. “Drop your weapons! Turn around slowly!” They hesitated. “You’ve got two seconds! One of you will have a bullet in your leg. Drop the guns and hold your hands in the air.” They both did as ordered and turned to face me.