"You in trouble?"
The answer to that one was hard to exaggerate.
They finished their hamburgers, talked a bit about the old days. When the check came, Mahoney said: "You pick it up."
They walked to his bank two blocks away, and he took out the money and gave it to him in fifties. Then he handed him his house keys and told him where to find the keys to an old Volvo parked around the back.
"Drop the house keys in the mail slot," he said. "Trudy will let me in — if she's not too pissed at me."
Mahoney wished him luck and shook his hand, then turned and walked away. Jude felt a rush of affection as he watched the broad shoulders recede down the sidewalk, without stepping aside for anyone.
After picking up the car, Jude made a quick call to Tizzie, just to tell her they were leaving Washington, and what they'd learned so far. Tizzie sounded tense, and they weren't able to talk long. Then they spent the rest of the afternoon at the Library of Congress. Jude used his real name and Mirror ID to gain access to the librarian's office, where, after a brief interview, he was granted the right to use the research room. They were shown to a large, windowless chamber deep in the bowels of the building. It was practically deserted, except for three scholarly-looking types who looked as though they had spent their lives there.
Along one wall was a series of cubicles. They worked out of one that had a plain, empty table and a computer in one corner.
First they ordered photostated copies of maps — nautical, topographical, all kinds of maps in all kinds of scales — anything that showed the coastlines of South Carolina, Georgia and eastern Florida. They spread them out on the table as if it were a war room.
Then Jude called up the photo of Tibbett and his plane from the Web, downloaded it and printed a copy. He propped it up next to the computer and went on-line, calling up dozens and dozens of files of small planes. Eventually, he found what looked like a match, a five-seater single-engine Cherokee. He called up the specifications and found what he wanted: fuel capacity, consumption rate, and top speed. He estimated the distance capability with a full tank of fuel at six hundred and fifty miles, more or less.
Jude borrowed a compass from an assistant librarian and, using the map key, set it to represent the maximum distance. Then he centered it on the dot that represented Valdosta — Skyler's landing spot — and swung it in a half circle, creating an arc that dipped out into the ocean and took in a large swath of coastline.
"The island's got to be somewhere within the circle," he said. He looked at the marking with a deflated air. It took in more land and sea than he'd thought it would, all the way south to the Florida peninsula and north almost to Washington.
"Now think. Think hard — anything you can remember, any landmarks, anything at all that will help us place it."
They sent for reference books on the barrier islands and eliminated the larger, better-known ones such as Hilton Head, Pawley's, Ossabaw, St. Helena, St. Catherines, and Sapelo. The odds of a medical cult coexisting with a resort or tourist island were decidedly low. Next they obtained books on plantation farming, Gullah culture and early Indian inhabitants, and they combed through them, looking for something, anything, that might trigger a recollection from Skyler. They found nothing.
"Damn it," said Jude. "There's got to be something. Try, can't you?"
Skyler was trying. He closed his eyes and remembered everything he could. He attempted to gauge the size of the island, its shape, even its distance from the mainland. But all he could see in his mind's eye was a flat expanse of a brilliant green and golden blanket of cordgrass around the edges, giving way in the center to luxuriant woods. His recollections weren't specific enough to convert into hard and fast estimates of acres or miles, certainly nothing befitting a map.
They took a break and went out for coffee. As soon as he took the first sip, Skyler's eyes lighted up.
"I think I've come up with something," he said. "Remember I told you about the abandoned lighthouse? That could be the landmark we're looking for."
They returned to the reference room and ordered up books on old lighthouses and mariners' routes and landmarks in the coastal marshes. They pored through them carefully, page by page, but found not a single image, painting or picture that resembled Skyler's memory of his precious hideaway.
"How about the hurricane?" said Jude. "You mentioned that a hurricane struck the island — not the one when you were in Valdosta, but one many years ago. Try and figure out what year it was."
Skyler tried to remember. He took a pencil and scribbled some notes. He thought some more and finally pronounced that his best guess was 1989. Jude called up Nexis and punched in the information.
"If we can get the name of the hurricane, we can call up the meteorological data," he explained. "Then we can plot the path of the storm on our maps. That might narrow it a bit."
He waited while the computer ticked, searching.
"Here it is," he said. "Hurricane Hugo. Struck Charleston, South Carolina. Sustained winds of a hundred and thirty-five miles per hour. Caused extensive damage."
"That's it," Skyler exclaimed. "Hugo. I remember it now from the radio."
"What did you say?"
"I remember, it was Hugo."
"But how?"
"From Kuta's radio."
Jude looked up at him hopefully. "And do you by any chance remember ever hearing the call letters of the station?"
Now Skyler caught on. "Of course! WCTB."
Jude closed the books and rolled up the maps.
"I'd say we've got enough to go on," he said. "What are we doing wasting our time up here?"
They drove the old Volvo to the rooming house to collect their few belongings, but couldn't get there. The block was closed off by police cars and fire trucks, their lights spinning and cab radios barking out squawks. Firemen in thick rubber boots and bright slickers carried hoses that unraveled out of the trucks like fishing line leaping out of reels. Jude parked the car three blocks away, and they walked back. A crowd had gathered, kept on the other side of the street by policemen. They pushed their way to the front.
"Jude — that's our place."
A cop stood four feet from Skyler.
"What happened?" he asked.
The cop looked him over a full three or four seconds before answering.
"Fire."
"Anyone hurt?"
"No."
"What caused it?"
"Hard to say. Could be a gas explosion."
They gaped at the damage. Smoke or dust hung in the air. The front of the building was blown away, its facade reduced to a pile of rubble. The roofs of the buildings on either side tilted toward the open cavity. The back was still standing, so that it was possible to read the layout of the missing floors upon it — a partial staircase, the white plaster lines of the walls, the wooden ceiling planks sticking out. It looked pathetically quaint somehow, like an overly large dollhouse.
It was entirely unrecognizable from the rooming house where they had spent the night only hours before.
Jude grabbed Skyler by the arm and pointed across the way to the other side of the throng. A large man was standing alone, looking at the damage with all the others, but from time to time he turned and looked at the people around him, surveying the crowd. That was peculiar.
Skyler held his breath and waited for the man to turn away. He wanted to see if he bore a white streak down the center of his hair.
The man turned. He did not.
Jude and Skyler slipped back through the crowd and walked quickly to their car.
They were shaken. They decided it was definitely time to skip town.
Radio station WCTB was little more than a whitewashed cottage in a weed-infested lot on Gloucester Street in Brunswick, Georgia. It had a dish on top and a thirty-foot-tall metal broadcasting tower that looked like something out of the 1940s. The windows were blacked out, and the front door, painted Ashanti colors of yellow, orange and green, was closed. A table and chair sat out front under a tree that had a tire swing.