I opened the door and Max bolted between my legs in a mad dash for some earth. I flipped on the floodlights and would have laughed if I hadn’t felt so bad for leaving her home alone for hours. She squatted and peed for a full minute, looking up at me through eyes that seemed to ask, “Where the hell have you been?”
“Chow time, Max.” That’s all it took to see her charge across the threshold and beat a path to the kitchen. I poured a cup of her favorite dog food into her bowl. For me, it was leftover chili. I pulled a cold Corona out of the refrigerator, managed to fit the bottle in my back pocket, picked up my chili bowl and Max’s bowl and together we headed out to the back porch to dine.
As Max ate, I took a long swallow from the beer, sat the food on the table beside my chair and looked at the moon’s reflection across the river. I reached for the bowl of chili and noticed something on the far end of the table.
I recognized it. The black flint arrowhead I saw Joe Billie pull out of the river. It was lying on the table like a black diamond. The arrowhead was fitted into a long wooden shaft, trimmed with eagle feathers and notched at the end.
NINE
The next morning, the St. John River was a late sleeper. No visible current moving. No ripple across the surface. The humidity was already building, and it was a little before eight A.M. The beards of Spanish moss hanging from my live oaks were wet, stained with dark smudges from heavy dew. They seem to sweat under the rising sun.
A shaft of sunlight crept around a tree and broke through the screen directly hitting the black arrowhead on the table. In the light, I could see that the arrowhead still retained its edge. I glanced down at Max, and she looked up at me.
“So where do you think that arrowhead came from, Max, at least originally? We saw Joe Billie pull it out of the river, but how did it get there?” Max wagged her tail and half barked and half whined, a signal she uses to encourage me to let her outside for her morning ritual. “Just a minute, I have an idea before we heed nature’s call.”
I got a plastic trash bag from the kitchen and a pair of barbeque tongs, carefully lifting the arrow into the bag. I sealed it. “Max, we’ll have the lab see if Billie left any prints on it. What lab?” I wanted to call Ron back, to send the arrow to him for processing, but at that moment I didn’t feel like a lecture.
Something moved down by the river. Through my kitchen window, I could see a small boat chugging in the river. It belched smoke from the engine like puffs of blue fog.
I poured a cup of coffee and escorted Max down the steps and into the yard. We headed toward the dock. I’d seen the man, usually very early in the morning. I figured he was a commercial fisherman. I waved, which caught his attention, and signaled him to come to my dock. He made a half circle in the center of the river and steered the boat toward Max and me.
“Good morning,” I said.
“Mornin’,” he said, killing the small motor.
He was in his mid sixties. His face and hands were dark, basted by sun, work and water. The left side of his pewter beard was streaked a dark eggplant color. He leaned over and spit tobacco juice.
“Toss me a line. Want some coffee?” I asked.
He tossed the line. “No thanks. Got me a thermos in the boat.”
“I’m Sean O’Brien. I moved here a few months ago. Thought I’d introduce myself. I’ve seen you on the river. Usually at the crack of dawn.”
“Name’s Floyd Powell. I was lookin’ at stringin’ a trot line from near here to the opposite side. But the river’s too deep. Catch nothin’ but cats and rays.”
“Are you a commercial fisherman?”
“Yep.” Another spit. “Cute dog. Keep him away from the river’s edge. Even at the end of the dock, dog's too close to the river. He’s a little bit, but he’s big time gator bait.” Floyd used a paddle to lift the top off a cooler in the center of the boat. Dozens of large catfish and one bass thrashed in the sunlight. “That’s what I done so far this mornin’.” He placed some Red Man in his cheek and listened, his eyes constantly looking back toward the river, scanning. Watchful.
I remembered seeing a photograph on a fish camp wall of a man twenty years younger than the man in front of me. In the photo, he was barefoot and shirtless, in front of a shack with a girl about age five or six standing on his shoulders. His arms were outstretched to help her balance. They stood next to a monstrous alligator that was tied by the neck with chains and suspended high in the air from the blade of a front-end loader.
“Are you the same Floyd Powell in the picture on the wall at Raven Moon fish camp, the one with the huge gator?”
He cocked a gray eyebrow and spat tobacco juice. “You recognized me in that old picture? Damn, that’s impressive. You a cop?”
“Not anymore.”
“My daughter was five in that picture. She’s twenty now. This river’s got some bigger gators than that. Right here in this bend, I seen one that’d go ever bit of fifteen feet. I hunt gators in season, and I’m licensed by the state to hunt nuisance gators. Had a little processing house about ten miles down river where the power lines cross north of Hontoon Bridge. I’d butcher the gators, sell the hides, meat, whatnot. Some fellers bought the place recently. Said they was part of a fishin’ club. They didn’t look like people who fish. I used to guide. You can usually tell.” He glanced at Max. “How’d you make the connection between me and the old picture?”
“Didn’t at first, but your name was written below the photo with the length and weight of the alligator. I’ve had some practice remembering names and faces on photos.”
“Bet you have.”
I broached the next question so I could get a good look at his eyes. “Let me ask you something.” He glanced up from his boat. “Did you hear about the murder yesterday on the river?” His eyes were as dark as the water. No looking away. There was a slight nod of the head. “It happened about a half mile south of here. A young woman was found. She’d been beaten and stabbed.”
He chewed the tobacco thoughtfully, quiet for a long moment. The catfish beat at the side of the container. A hawk cried out. “Not much in the newspaper. No picture. Law ain’t arrested nobody yet.”
“I wonder if you or anyone may have seen something.”
“Such as?”
“Anything out of the ordinary.”
“What’d you drivin’ at?”
“Do you know Joe Billie?”
“Know of him. Can’t say I really know him.”
“Where’s he live?”
“You do sound like a cop. I’ve had ‘nough experience in that area. Used to do a little poaching.” He stuffed some tobacco leaves between his gum and cheek. “You might find Billie at Hangin’ Moss Fish Camp.”
“Thanks. That’s not too far from here.”
He looked at me like I had said I was going to swim across the river in the dead of night. “You gonna question Billie about the killin’?”
“Why?”
“It’s not ‘cause you said you ain’t a cop no more.”
“Then what is it?”
“They say Billie’s a descendant of Osceola. It was Osceola who gave the guv’ment hell during the Seminole Wars. Never beat him. Few years ago, a bone hunter was caught diggin’ up one of the Seminole’s sacred burial sites. This Indiana Jones fancied himself to be an anthropologist. But I heard he was sellin’ skulls to some devil worshipin’ cult. The fella had been warned by game and fish to stay the hell outta the wildlife refuge and the protected mounds. A state biologist I know said he’d heard this idiot went and dug up a medicine man’s head. You just don’t do that to the Seminole people. They didn’t get the name ‘unconquered’ for nothin’. Rumor has it that Joe Billie tracked the guy, caught him doin’ a dig, hog-tied the ol’ boy, carried him down to the glades. The bone hunter ain’t been seen since.”