“My approach to settling problems differs a bit from the average.”
“I don’t know how, but this woman somehow controls snakes, insects, birds, and who knows what else? Don’t you see the position I was in?”
Jack stared at Weldon. No question, the guy had been thrust into an appalling situation: Finger a relative stranger for death or lose a family member. A no-brainer, but also a no-win.
“I see that a man has to put his family before strangers, which is regrettably acceptable. But when one of those strangers is my father, we have a problem.” Jack jabbed the knife blade at Weldon’s face, stopping the point an inch from his nose. “We have even more of a problem when it becomes clear that you took an awful predicament and used it to turn a quick buck.”
“I did no such thing!”
Weldon cowered back, pressing himself against the door as the knife point touched the tip of his nose.
“Now’s not the time for lies, bozo.” Jack was doing his best to check his flaring rage. “I could go along with you doing what you had to if you’d picked out the sickest Gateways folks, the ones with the shortest life expectancy. But you didn’t do that. Instead you picked ones who were not only the healthiest, but were unattached, guaranteeing that their homes would go back on the market years, maybe even a decade or two before their natural time.”
“No!”
“Yes!” The word hissed through Jack’s teeth. “Yes, you son of a bitch! You fingered people whose deaths would turn you a profit! And one of them was my father!”
Weldon’s face crumpled. His eyes squeezed shut and he began to sob.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”
“Three innocent people are dead and my father was put in a coma, and that’s all you can say?” He wanted to drop the knife and throttle him. “Get out!”
Weldon looked at him. “What?”
“Get out, you pathetic bastard. Out before I cut you.”
Weldon fumbled behind him for the latch. As the door swung open, Jack raised his right leg and kicked him. Hard.
“Out!”
Weldon fell out the door and landed on his back in the limestone powder and rubble. Without bothering to close the door, Jack threw the DeSoto into gear and hit the gas. He gunned the car into a tire-spinning turn, then raced back toward where Weldon was staggering to his feet. He let him scramble out of the way. Despite Jack’s dark urge to maim, maybe even kill the man, Weldon wasn’t worth the hassle.
He tore up the steep roadway out of the pit and onto the street. He knew Weldon wouldn’t be going to the police about this; he’d fear it would draw a loot of unwanted attention to the deaths at Gateways. Let him find his own way home.
As he passed the trailer park he pulled in. An impulse. He spotted Carl’s junker parked by a mildewed trailer. He got out and checked the door. Locked. He lifted the lid of a garbage can by the steps and found take out containers—KFC, Chinese, Domino’s. He pulled out his wallet as he scoped the area. No one about so he slipped the door latch with his MasterCard. Inside he closed the door behind him and looked around. He wasn’t sure why he was here. Just an urge to know a little more about Carl.
The air conditioner was off and the trailer smelled faintly of old food and sweat. The kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom lay to the left, the main room to the right. He noticed the disassembled remnants of Big Mouth Billy Bass, the singing fish, on the kitchen counter, neatly stored in a little box. Jack was struck by how clean the place was. Carl had said he loved his little trailer, and it showed.
In the main room sat a good-size TV. It looked like at least a twenty-seven-incher—pan-o-ramic, one might say. A battered Naugahyde recliner sat before it. The thick Direct TV program guide for September lay open on the seat, marked up with a yellow pen. Jack picked it up and saw that Carl had highlightedSurvivor ,Fear Factor ,Boot Camp ,Big Brother …secondhand living.
But that seemed good enough for Carl.
Jack shrugged. Whatever gets you through the night…
But nowhere in the trailer was there a sign of who Carl was. No family pictures, no sign that he had a past. Maybe his past wasn’t anything he wanted to remember.
Jack stepped out, locked the door, and drove back toward Gateways. He turned off the road and parked in the trees next to the security fence. He noticed other tire tracks nearby. After wiping down the steering wheel, gearshift, door and window handles, he stepped up on the hood and went over the fence.
Easy. Too easy. Semelee’s clan could do the same with their pickup.
Semelee…As he walked back to his father’s house he ran the Semelee situation back and forth and sideways through his head, looking for a solution.
He agreed with Weldon on one point: Semelee seemed to be able to control the swamp creatures. How, Jack didn’t know, but he’d bet it had something to do with the nexus point at the lagoon. She’d used that power to commit perfect murders—“sacrifices,” as she’d put it to Weldon—in plain view without anyone suspecting that a human agent lay behind the attacks. No question in Jack’s mind that she was behind the palmetto swarm and the alligator attack as well.
She had to be stopped, that much was clear. He had no idea how, but he’d worry about that later. The first thing he had to do was put Carl back in his trailer…his home.
10
“There you are,” Dad said as Jack stepped through the door. He’d obviously awakened from his nap. Looked like he’d showered and shaved too. “Where have you been?”
“Here and there. Did anyone call or come by while I was out?”
He shook his head. “No. All quiet. You’re expecting someone?”
Jack hid his frustration. “Yeah. Sort of.”
“Well, I need to do some grocery shopping. How about driving me down to the Publix so I can stock up?”
“How about I give you the keys and stay here? In case that call comes, or someone shows up.”
“Are you in some sort of trouble, Jack? Because if you are, maybe I can help.”
Jack laughed and hoped it didn’t sound as forced as it felt. “Trouble? No, not me. But someone I know might be in a little.”
“What kind?”
Jack knew he’d been acting strange—at least in his father’s eyes—but he wasn’t used to all these questions, or having his comings and goings noted and commented on.
This is why I live alone.
“You might say it’s a kind of family thing.”
“Do those toys have anything to do with it?”
“It might come down to that.”
Dad sighed and dropped into his recliner. “You are the hardest person to talk to, Jack. You were a great kid, but now you’re a stranger. It’s like you don’t want to know me or me to know you. You’ve got this wall around you. Is that my fault? Did I do something…?”
This was painful. Jack could see the hurt in his father’s troubled eyes.
“Absolutely not. It’s me. It’s just the way I am.”
“But it’s not the way you were.”
Jack shrugged. “People change. You must know that.”
“No. I don’t. Most people don’t change. Kate didn’t change. And Tom didn’t—although it might not be such a bad thing if he had. But you—you’re a completely different person.”
Jack could only shrug again. He wanted off this uncomfortable topic.
“Enough about me. How about you, Dad? How are you getting on down here?”
His father gave him a long, baffled stare, then shook his head.
“Me? I guess I’m doing pretty well. I like the climate enough, but…”
“But?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I think I made a mistake moving down here. Sometimes I wonder why I ever left Jersey.”
“I’d wondered the same thing. So did Kate.”
“I’ve never been the impulsive sort, but this was an impulse. A Gateways South brochure came in the mail one day and that was it. I took one look and had to be here. The graduated care aspect and the idea of never being a burden appealed to me…appealed to me so much it became an obsession that took hold and wouldn’t let go. I couldn’t get it out of my head that this was the place for me. I sold the old house and reinvested some of the money in this place and…” He spread his hands. “Here I am.”