“And what did you learn?” he said, his slightly superior smile in place, never taking his eyes off me.
“Getting thrown off the Florida Marine Patrol over losing that serial killer might explain some of it. At least that’s what the Marine Patrol cops in Dade County think. However, my bet is there’s a lot more than just that going on.”
“Lee Bob Batiste was a mistake,” he said. “I don’t make many, but that was a big one. Borrowing money from my law firm and not correctly accounting for it was another. I paid my debt to society on the so-called embezzlement charge and I count Lee Bob as an important lesson learned.”
“That swamp rat kills nine people in the Everglades, he’s still walking free because you blew up the case, and you think it’s an important lesson learned? You’re going kind of easy on yourself there, don’t you think?”
He frowned, then took a minute to gather his thoughts. “Since you seem so interested in that chapter of my life you might as well hear the real facts.” He sounded frustrated now, even annoyed.
“Bobby Batiste was illiterate and semi-educated. He barely spoke English. He was Cajun, raised in the Louisiana swamp, but he moved to Florida in the eighties. The guy was so loony he lived up in a giant cypress tree on the west side of the ’Glades. He ended up killing campers who crossed the imaginary boundaries of an imaginary empire he thought he ruled. He drew lines of death for miles around his tree house. Anybody who wandered in there got killed. He was a scavenger who’d steal food out of his victims’ backpacks and turn it into Cajun dishes over their own campfires. He had this strange dream of creating a kingdom in the swamp where he would bring kidnapped women to help him repopulate. He had actually already started building his capital city using money and credit cards he took off the dead bodies.”
Nash set his drink down before he said, “I wanted that collar. I wanted the killings to stop. I arrested him and had him in cuffs. He had some of the victims’ DLs in his wallet; I got a little anxious and started asking questions. I never thought Bobby would just flat out confess to nine murders right when I grabbed him, but that’s what he did. He thought he was a demonic angel, immune from human prosecution. I’d never seen that kind of deep psychotic illness before, so yeah, I learned a big lesson there. Before I end my time on earth, I intend to fully atone for that mistake.”
“Good shit,” I said dryly.
“You don’t like me much, do you?” he said softly.
I let that hang there.
He took another moment before he smiled and said, “It’s okay; a lot of people feel that way. It sort of comes with this gig. Because of what I do, it can get sorta pronounced, but there’s a deeper reason than just fame or jealousy. Wanna hear?”
“Sure.”
“If you make people think they’re thinking, they will love you. But if you really make them think, they’ll hate you. Since I really make people think, I have picked up a fairly long list of enemies. The good news there is, a nonthinking enemy is usually very easy to deal with.”
The boat lurched again. Nash was ready this time, but I almost went down. My bottle of water flew from my hand and rolled across the room. I started after it, but Nash waved me off.
“Leave it,” he said, and took a step closer, forcing me to turn back and focus on him.
“Do you know where we are right now?” he said.
“The point of no return?”
“I was thinking more about where we’re standing. Our location on this ship. Ever since I was a boy, the mysteries and social crimes perpetuated in this cabin have fascinated me.”
Oh, brother.
“HMS Bounty was rebuilt by King George of England and sent all the way to Tahiti to get breadfruit plants to take to the West Indies for cultivation. Do you know why?”
“Haven’t a clue.”
“It was a cheap food source, which could be used to feed American plantation slaves. So at its heart, the mission the Bounty was rechristened to perform was a gross social corruption. But in the end fate had other plans.”
He moved closer to me. His eyes were wide and shining. There seemed to be a glazed insanity hiding behind that cherubic face and Cary Grant costume.
“Commander Bligh was just thirty-three and something of an innocent,” Nash continued. “He’s been portrayed in books and film as a terrible tyrant. But if you read the ship’s logs as I have, actually Fletcher Christian was the real malcontent. Christian had once been Bligh’s protege. Christian organized a mutiny with eighteen out of forty-two crew members. After it was over and he’d taken the ship, only these original mutineers wanted to remain on the Bounty, while all but four of the loyalists boarded a leaking, unsafe lifeboat and went with William Bligh. They preferred to set off across thousands of miles of open ocean with their courageous captain rather than remain behind with the treacherous Mr. Christian.”
I had no idea what we were actually talking about. I was pretty sure it had nothing to do with Fletcher Christian or the mutiny on the Bounty.
Nash paused, then asked, “Why do you suppose Fletcher Christian took the ship? What caused him to put his saber to William Bligh’s throat and force him into a lifeboat with only a sextant and a watch to navigate with? Can you discern the reason?”
“The goal gradient phenomenon?” I answered.
“You’re a lot smarter than you look,” Nash said. “Exactly right. William Bligh, if you read his logs, was a great commander. A great sailor and leader. Fletcher Christian was a young officer stuck in middle management, bored, unhappy, and filled with malaise. This is what spawned his moment of corruption. It’s the same situation I battle every day.”
Nash crossed the cabin and picked up my water bottle, then dropped it into the trash. When he turned back, he was smiling again.
“Our municipal police and politicians are the Fletcher Christians of modern society. They want control, but not responsibility. They’re staging a mutiny against the laws of democratic justice. Like Bligh, I’m backed up at the rail with a saber at my throat, offering you a chance to get in my leaking lifeboat. To sail a courageous voyage to help me free society from these lawless tyrants.”
“So you’re cast as our misunderstood commander, sent to prison by a bunch of ungrateful pricks because of a rigid management style?”
He stood there, his brow furrowed, angrily flexing the muscles in his jaw.
“The way I see this, it’s all part of the same fabric,” I continued. “We can talk about corruption and the broken-window theory, or the goal gradient phenomenon, but that’s just camouflage. What this is really about is revolution against social order and the real joke is you’re getting filthy rich while you’re doing it.”
He was standing opposite me, his eyes shadowed in the dark cabin, staring malevolently.
“A man can’t take everything and be everything at the same time. It creates isolation and that causes failure,” I said.
He pinned me with a withering gaze, then said, “If you’ll excuse me, I have other guests to entertain.” He turned abruptly and walked out.
CHAPTER 36
While I was at sea learning about broken windows and social corruption, Hitch had spent the day doing scut work on our two cases, trying to set up interviews with Lita Mendez’s balky neighbors and putting together a victimology profile on Hannah Trumbull. It had left him in a prickly mood.
One of the most important parts of a homicide investigation is establishing victimology. Neighbors and friends often know things about a victim that can be surprisingly helpful. I once worked a case where a neighbor told me the vic couldn’t wear cotton because it gave her a skin rash. The dead woman’s body was found in a motel lying on cotton sheets. But the neighbor had explained that when the victim traveled she always took silk sheets in her luggage to remake hotel beds. That information led us to realize the killer had obviously not known the woman well and was unaware of her allergy. He was trying to make it look like a suicide and had purchased new sheets to get rid of his semen stains. We were able to trace the sheets to a nearby Walmart, and a credit card led us to the killer. You never know where a case-breaking lead might come from.