Bill Mullins agreed, saying, “You got that right.”
Lights from onshore and from boats all around bounced off the low-lying cloud that’d rolled in. “They’re out there!” She pointed, adding, “I got a glimpse of the boat. Move it, Mullins! Eleven o’clock.”
“ They’re out there and so’s the Crawler,” countered Mullins. “Did Fisher let the rest of the world know what’s going on out here?”
“ Says he reported it to the guard, the mainland police and the sheriff’s office. We’ll have company in a matter of-there it comes.”
They heard sirens blaring as other Marine Patrol boats began to encircle the area.
It was then that Patty caught a second glimpse of the appearing, disappearing, directionless little Boston Whaler. The turbulence was unusual, threatening, so her partner called for a weather report. The boat they searched for was identical to her own, save for the markings. “It’s them! There! See?” She pointed ahead, her partner now putting on some speed. “If you see any sign of a sailing ship moving off in any direction,” Mullins advised all the other patrol boats joining them now, “go at it cautiously, but contain it.”
“ Roger that,” replied another nearby patrol boat.
“ Any sign of your men?” asked a county sheriff’s boat.
“ We have the boat in sight. Going in for a look.” Mullins gave their coordinates so that the others might readily converge on the area.
Patty Lawrence felt the scene as if it were a floating graveyard. She didn’t smell death here on the water with the ocean odors and the light drizzle falling from the cloud they stood in; she didn’t taste death here-all was too sodden for that, the now steady downpour and lapping waves like a warning bell-but she sensed death here nonetheless. It felt like a palpable visitor, a dark figure shrouded and standing on the water between them and Stallings’s boat as they approached. Patty had once enjoyed a wonderful, carefree affair with Ken, long since over, and now all her fears for his safety seemed realized.
Patty and Mullins’s boat had to slice through this Mr. Death, and it did so, dispelling for a moment the Grim Reaper’s hold on her imagination. Only it wasn’t imagination staring back at her as they came alongside the 7-11. The boat fairly cried of crisis. It wasn’t anchored and was without mooring of any kind; it bobbed and waved and threatened to hit them as they approached. There was no one aboard, at least no one who could be seen. The lights reflected crazily around them, hitting and shoving and pushing one another for the right to penetrate the fog, when nothing could penetrate it now. Patty’s own spotlight was more trouble now than it was worth, reflecting back at them like a ghostly mirror. She thought for all the world she saw a kind of airy spirit in the lights and the fog, rising up from the unhappy scene, like the spirit of a departed friend.
Mullins pulled their boat in tight and Patty worked a grappling hook on a ten-foot rod into position over the errant gunwale, snatching the 7-11, the noise creating a din. She tugged and hauled with all her strength, pulling the lonely FMP boat into them.
Patty fairly well jumped onto the 7-11 when the two Whalers bumped, and she quickly tied off the two boats, feeling her way in the darkness but quite aware that what appeared to be two dead men with long spears sticking from their bodies lay at her feet.
“ Christ, Bill, it’s bad… really bad!” she called back to Mullins, who steadied the boat and cast off the anchor line.
Patty felt Manley’s carotid artery for a pulse but found none. His skin felt like wood. His eyes looked up at her like large question marks. She’d always liked Rob Man- ley-his swagger, his humor, his kindness to her over the years-and she gave a thought to Louisa and his four kids, the oldest just finishing high school at George Washington in St. Pete. “Is he… is he dead?” asked Mullins as he leaned in over the death boat.
“ ‘ Fraid so, Bill.”
“ And Stallings?” Fearfully, she looked across Manley’s wide chest, saw the bloody tissue about Ken Stallings’s head and the spear shaft in his leg and shook her head, afraid to touch him, afraid to move, terrified that if she tried, she’d faint at the smell of blood and the sights around her, which threatened to overwhelm her anyway. She’d handled bodies before, but none where the faces were familiar, the ties so strong.
Suddenly breaking the silence, Stallings himself answered Mullins from within the confining darkness of his useless eyes, “Bill? Patty? Is… is zat… you?”
“ Good God, he’s alive!” Patty shouted. “Ken, Ken, it’s us. We’ve got you. Hang in… hang in there.”
“ We’ve got to get him to a hospital, now!” Mullins shouted. “Take the wheel and follow my lights!”
Bill cast off and raised anchor, turning his boat directly for shore. Patty situated herself at the helm of Delta-4 and did precisely as Bill had instructed, following in his wake, her tear-filled eyes ever on his lights rather than on the bodies of her two friends in her peripheral vision, rushing her precious cargo to shore.
Bill radioed dispatch as to what was going on, and Bob Fisher promised that an ambulance would be waiting at Madeira Beach.
Meanwhile, the other Marine Patrol boats continued a frantic circling about the fog in an ever-widening arc from the original quadrants that’d pinpointed what Ken Stallings had called in as the Tau Cross, the suspect ship. They intended to search all night for it if need be. But somehow, Patty Lawrence feared, the Night Crawler had already escaped the net.
When Jessica and Eriq arrived in Tampa Bay, the TV newscasters and the radios were aflutter with news that two Florida Marine Patrol officers had been struck down by what officials suspected to be the infamous Night Crawler, who had been approached by the FMP officers on a routine check which had turned out to be not so routine when one officer saw the body of a Night Crawler victim. Both men were fired upon, the suspect boat owner using a speargun. One of the officers was dead, shot through the heart, while the other was fighting to regain consciousness from a coma induced by a nasty blow to the head by another spear which, fortunately, had not penetrated his skull.
Both Eriq and Jessica knew how valuable Ken Stallings had suddenly become to their case; what he saw out there on the water was the ship which everyone in America wanted to see hauled ashore with its evil captain in chains. He had information no one else had. They raced to Grant Memorial Presbyterian Hospital in Madeira Beach, where Stallings was hanging on to life. When they arrived, they found an army of family, friends and newshounds, gathered in an enormous vigil which the hospital personnel were perturbed about and trying desperately to force into a small waiting room. A spokesperson, a Dr. Cameron Daniels, told the waiting crowd, “Mr. Stallings appears stable in every respect; we don’t expect to lose him. At this point, we can only give time the opportunity to do its magic and heal this man. We are hopeful, but as yet, he remains in a deep coma.”
“ When do you expect he’ll be out of the coma?” asked one foolish reporter.
“ If I knew that, I could tell you all to come back fifteen minutes before, now couldn’t I? I could also make book on the next Buccaneers game and make some real money. I’m sorry, people, but I can’t make such predictions at this point.”
“ Doctor! Doctor!” the press called out after Daniels, but the spry little man was through a pair of double doors marked Hospital Personnel Only before anyone could cut him off.
“ Let’s get out of here before someone spots us,” Jessica warned Eriq.
“ Right you are.” Outside in a drizzle, they decided to locate Bob Fisher, the dispatcher who had been in contact with Manley and Stallings during the crisis. “I want to hear that tape,” Eriq told Jessica.
“ That makes two of us.”
They made their way back to the rental car and were soon motoring toward the local headquarters of the Florida Marine Patrol. Local FBI field operatives, having expected them, guided them about the unfamiliar territory and informed them of all that had transpired out on the waters fronting Madeira Beach.