Acts Of Nature Part 10

"But scootch on over out of the way there, sir. I have had some practical learning on how to get in and out of places folks don't want you to get in or out of."

I slid myself down the wall and didn't say a word about the hatchway under the room that I'd left wide open in my haste to meet these a.s.sholes. I was trying to decide if we were better off biding our time, hoping against hope that the two immature hicks would continue to f.u.c.k up somehow and give me an opening, or should I just tell Buck about the entry, let them loot whatever they wanted from the room and maybe he'd be satisfied and leave. The other possibility I was not yet ready to confront: that he'd simply kill us both and leave it to whomever stumbled onto our rotting bodies in a few days or weeks to piece it together. h.e.l.l, maybe he'd just kill us and haul our corpses onto his airboat deeper into the swamp to dump and let nature break us down. There are no small number of bodies dumped in the Everglades where all manner of forensic evidence is consumed by everything from alligators and wild boar right down to the billions of heat- and waterborne microbes. Sherry and I had both investigated some of those homicides. A chunk of dead biology doesn't last long in this soup. We'd be on a missing persons report. Lost in the storm. A couple years after Katrina there are still folks missing from New Orleans, and we weren't anywhere close to a city.

I was working on the scenarios, rolling them around in my head, when Buck took the crowbar to the doorjamb, gouging with a sharp edge at the outside of the frame, maybe figuring like a cheap thief he could bust a hole and then reach through and simply turn the lock b.u.t.ton from the other side. The other two stood and watched, waiting like dutiful, anxious apprentices for the foreman to sic them to task.

"Know what the problem is with people like you, Mr. Freeman, who come out here in the Glades to take what you want whether it's the fish or the game or even the fresh water for yourselves and leave nothin' but garbage and trash behind?" Buck said while he pried at a corner.

I did not answer, sure that he would do so for me.

"Y'all think you're ent.i.tled, you know? You think that just because this is open country and it don't look like what you have in the cities on the coast, that it's free and clear to just take and do what you want with. Build what you want in it. Come out here and p.i.s.s in it and then go on home.

"You know, my daddy and his daddy before him spent lifetimes living out here, taking what was natural and right and working their a.s.ses off and they didn't do it for riches, Mr. Freeman. They done it for survival and they done it for their families and really all they ever wanted was to be left alone and left to it."

The one called Wayne shifted his weight; the axe was now in his hand, hanging by his side like he was itching to do damage with it. The other one, Marcus, was still sneaking looks at Sherry, who was silent now but I kept watching her, the rise and fall of her chest, and it was slight but steady. Both of the boys looked bored, scratching at their dirty necks like they'd heard this speech before and had little interest in it. It was getting dimmer in the room, the light now slanting through the doorway that they'd left open, the window to the east gone dark in shadow.

I had held my tongue but decided to take a chance.

"I don't disagree with you, Buck," I said, purposely using his first name, and it caused a flicker in his eyes. "I know a man, actually someone I would call a friend, who lived the same kind of life your own family did. I've heard him talk the same way many times. The name is Brown. Nate Brown. Maybe you've heard of him?"

The use of Brown's name caused all three to stop moving. They may have even stopped breathing for a second. The boys looked at each other. Buck stood stock-still, staring at the end of the crowbar.

"Go on outside," Buck finally barked. "Find a d.a.m.n window to get through or somethin'." The boys picked up the tools from the floor and left.

Buck set the crowbar aside and bent down on his haunches to look me in the face, sitting on his heels in the way of farmers and country folks who work the dirt but refuse to sit in it. He adjusted the .45 in his belt, the grip exposed and handy.

"So, Mr. Freeman. You heard about the legend of Mr. Brown from some drunk fisherman or somethin' and now you say you know him and me? Is that it?"

I'd actually met Nate Brown during my first year in my shack. I had found the body of a child on my river who had been one of a string of abductions and murders of children from suburban homes. Brown had helped me to find the madman responsible and remove that stain from those he considered his people. I admired the old guy and his quiet ethics. But this man was nothing like him.

"I said I know Nate. I never said I know you, Mr. Morris. I said I'd heard Nate talk about the same things you just did but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't run into Nate Brown out here looting other people's properties after a storm just for leftovers."

Buck's eyes took on an internal look, gla.s.sed over like he was seeing something in his own head that needed to be studied. The anger I expected didn't come. Or the denial.

"If you know Nate Brown, Mr. Freeman, then you know he is a man who did what he had to do in his time. And it wasn't all legal then neither. The Gladesmen do what they have to do."

"Buck," I said, "I know Nate as a man who holds his own ethics in high esteem. I think he does the right thing, for the people he represents and their way of living out here. Maybe you've got some of that in you."

I was trying to work an angle, pry at whatever relationship this young man had with Brown and the generation of Gladesmen before him. He stayed silent.

"Maybe Nate would be salvaging. Maybe he'd be doing what he had to do to survive," I offered. "But he wouldn't be hurting innocent people. He wouldn't be turning his back on someone who needed his help."

Buck stood up and now he was looking down on me. He was still working it in his head. He was being careful. Thinking things out. But there was a tension now in the guy's eyes and I could see his hand flexing on the handle of the .45.

"Times change," he finally said, turning toward the door. "You might do some ponderin' on time, sir. 'Cause you might not have a whole lot of it left."

When he walked out the door he closed it and then, with substantial force, jammed the blade end of the crowbar into the s.p.a.ce between the bottom of the door and the flooring planks, effectively locking it.

TWENTY-THREE.

As soon as I heard Buck's footsteps leave the deck I started crawling up the wall, shoulder and head pressing hard against the panel, pushing hard off my heels to gain an angle, then working it like a big old inchworm, a foot at a time until I was able to get my feet under me, and then stand. I was breathing hard. There was no doubt a raw abrasion now on the side of my forehead and my ear burned from the sc.r.a.ping pressure. Tough s.h.i.t. I stood in silence and now nearly in darkness. When Buck closed and locked the door the only sunlight that sneaked in was from the northside window. I listened for movement outside and was just about to move when I heard the CHUNK! CHUNK! sound of the axe blade against the south wall. The boys were probably trying to chop their way through a window and I knew that it would be a few minutes before they uncovered the fibergla.s.s skin that wrapped the room next door. It would puzzle them for a bit, but I wasn't sure it would stop them. As the noise and the steady blows increased, I used the cover to jump on the ball of one foot to the refrigerator, steady myself and crouch. Twisting my wrists, I got my freed fingers around the handle and pulled the fridge door open at the same time as I rolled to the floor on one shoulder. I didn't give a d.a.m.n how awkward I was. I had one goal in mind. sound of the axe blade against the south wall. The boys were probably trying to chop their way through a window and I knew that it would be a few minutes before they uncovered the fibergla.s.s skin that wrapped the room next door. It would puzzle them for a bit, but I wasn't sure it would stop them. As the noise and the steady blows increased, I used the cover to jump on the ball of one foot to the refrigerator, steady myself and crouch. Twisting my wrists, I got my freed fingers around the handle and pulled the fridge door open at the same time as I rolled to the floor on one shoulder. I didn't give a d.a.m.n how awkward I was. I had one goal in mind.

Scuffing back over on my hip I was able to position myself with my back to the opening and then flex my arms into it and use my fingers to search the low corner of the fridge. My trick with the tendons had given me a fraction of s.p.a.ce under my taped wrists to work with and the effort to get over here alone had loosened it even more. It took some repositioning, some sweat running down into my eyes, but my fingers found the bottle of water and the rest of the wrapped chocolate I'd left there. The boys either missed it or didn't care enough even to check it out. Anything without value to them was considered useless. But Sherry needed water and she needed some form of energy to keep her brain synapses from shutting down further. I snagged the bottle and chocolate and cupped them in my fingers and then rolled, shoulder to shoulder, to reach her side.

"Sherry," I said. Trying to whisper, but in the empty room my voice still sounded loud. When the chopping began again I hissed hard.

"Sherry. Come on, baby. Wake up! You gotta drink, baby. You need the water."

I rolled to my knees and again, using a shoulder for leverage, I got a hip up onto the bedside and then straightened to a sitting position.

"Sherry!" This time I spoke in a full hard voice and luck was with me. At the same moment, the sound of a splitting piece of wood vibrated through the shack and then in the silence that followed whatever progress they'd made outside I heard my name next to me.

"Max," Sherry said, though I did not recognize the awful timbre of her wounded voice. "Max. Don't let him kill you too. Don't let that little b.a.s.t.a.r.d take you away from me."

I looked down from over my shoulder and her face was barely visible in the dark but what light there was caught the tear on her cheek. She was hallucinating, confusing one of the boys here with the teenager who killed her husband. But she'd somehow slipped me into the muddled equation.

"I won't, baby. No one's going to take me away, Sherry. But you have to eat, honey. You need to get strong."

While I talked, I used my free fingers behind me to unwrap the chocolate and then looked over my shoulder and moved it to her mouth. I rubbed it against her lips and then sighed when I felt her tug at it. The busyness outside continued but even if one of the crew came back in now I didn't care. When Sherry stopped nibbling I went down and retrieved the water bottle and tipped it onto her lips. Most of the water ran down over her chin and neck but I could hear swallows and just the sound of it made my own throat cooler. With my hands tied it took a few minutes, h.e.l.l, maybe more than a few, before I heard her say, "More." Again I gave her the chocolate first, then the water, and the pull was stronger and the swallows more full.

"She dead?"

It was the first thing Buck said after someone kicked away the pry bar and all three walked in. His flashlight beam had swung first to the wall where I'd been and then to Sherry where I now crouched. I had to turn my face away from the brightness and I could tell through the open door that it had gone full dark outside. The boys were carrying a big cooler and an old Coleman lantern and set them down in front of the makeshift kitchen counter.

"No. Not yet," I said. "And if she does die, you boys move up the line from simple looters to murderers. That's going to look real nice on your resume up at Raiford, Buck."

The young ones snickered. They'd gained some bravado since they'd been outside, hacking at the windows of the next room, maybe even gaining entrance. More likely, though, they'd realized how isolated we all were. If a tree falls in the woods with no one to hear it, does it make a sound? I heard one of them pumping the lantern and then the flash of a match. Wayne lit the mantle and turned up the gas and the throaty, hissing noise was accompanied by a brightening glow that nearly filled the small room.

Unexpectedly, Buck stepped over to me and grabbed a fistful of my shirt over the shoulders and with a strength that surprised me he used his leverage to yank me halfway up and then drag-toss me to the western wall. I rolled over once and tumbled into the electronically locked door. Without a word he then pulled Sherry's bed out away from the wall and positioned himself at the foot and shoved it across the plank floor until the head of it banged against the wall beside me.

"There you go, Freeman. Take care of your woman over there," he said. No more "mister," no more "sir." Buck had turned mean. The boys looked a bit shocked at the sudden outburst, but then those subtle, that's-what-I'm-talkin'-about grins came to their faces. Tough guys now. All three of them.

"All right," I said, wincing at the sting of the new abrasion where my face had met the floor. "Cut my hands loose and give me that first aid kit so I can change her bandages."

Buck stared at me for a moment. The light was behind him, his eyes in shadow and too obscured for me to see what was in them. Then he reached into his back pocket and came out with a knife in his hand. He flicked open the blade with his thumb and a snap of his wrist and then motioned to the one called Marcus to take it.

"Cut loose his hands," he said. When the boy hesitated, he turned on him. "I ain't repeatin' myself to you little f.u.c.kers again. That s.h.i.t's done. You do what I say, when I say!"

The boy took the knife and stepped over to me, bent behind me and sawed through the tape between my wrists. At the same time Buck picked up the first aid kit off the counter and tossed it across the room at me.

"I ain't decided whether the two of you are gonna live or die tonight," he said and it was a statement of authority, not indecision. "So you keep her goin' if you can."

Then he turned his back on me and pulled one of the two chairs over and sat down. "Let's eat, boys."

I turned my attention to Sherry. She had not uttered a sound when Buck shoved the bed across the room and her eyes were closed now. I ma.s.saged my hands and fingers, getting the blood back into them, and bent so my lips were to her ear.

"I'm going to change your bandage, Sherry," I whispered. "I know it's going to hurt. But it's got to be done."

Out of the corner of my eye I saw her tighten her eyelids. She was conscious and at least partially alert. With my fingernails I went to work on the tape that held the splint and then started to unwrap the gauze. I had to pull her hip toward me to unroll the bandages. Under two layers it was stained with blood. The third time I rolled her hip toward me she opened her eyes and deliberately cut them down toward her side. I thought at first it was a gesture of pain but when she furrowed her brow and did it again I followed her sight fine. Under her back I saw the wooden handle of my knife. I'd laid it next to her when I first changed her bandage and she'd been lying on top of it ever since. Buck and his crew had come in to this friendly, with no reason to search us for weapons or consider us a threat. Things had changed, but their mistakes hadn't. I glanced over at the trio but they were intent on their food from the cooler. I slipped my hand under Sherry and gripped the razor-sharp knife. Now I was armed.

I continued working on Sherry's wound. The last layer of gauze was sticking to her leg from the dried blood at the edges. I poured some of the isopropyl alcohol over it to loosen the catches, tugged at it again and she winced with pain.

"Sorry."

She squeezed her eyes tight again in answer.

Exposed, the flap that had ripped out when the broken bone ruptured through her skin was red and there was a circle around it that was also starting to flame. Infection. But it was impossible to tell how deep. I washed my index finger and thumb with the alcohol and then pulled the flap up. Sherry sucked air through her teeth.

"Careful over there, doc," Marcus said and then sn.i.g.g.e.red.

Even the boys were growing bolder. That too would be to my advantage. I did not respond. I took the tube of Neosporin from the first aid kit and again squirted the antibiotic cream into the wound. I used the last roll of gauze to rewrap the wound and then taped it in place. Shuffling down to the end of the bed, I checked Sherry's foot. It was cold to the touch and even in the indirect light from the lantern I could see her toes had gone pale. Circulation was going bad. The rest of the leg seemed swollen. She'd never be able to stand on it. We weren't going to be running anywhere. By the time I finished I was drenched with sweat. A trickle ran down the s.p.a.ce between my shoulder blades, no doubt leaving a path through the grime I could feel now like a second skin.

I checked over my shoulder and the crew was paying no attention to me. They'd started eating whatever they brought in the cooler and seemed confident that I was not much of a risk, though I could still see part of the handle of the .45 protruding out of Buck's waistband. While the suck and smack of their eating noises continued, I spun around into a sitting position and used what was left of the medical tape to strap my unsheathed knife to my calf. I pulled my pants leg over it and then shimmied back to the wall and pressed my back against the locked door. Logistics was now my problem and I rolled the new scenario around in my head like a rough stone, nicking at the b.u.mps and fractures and fissures, trying to smooth it so I would have some kind of a plan that might give us a chance.

Would I be fast enough to cut the bindings on my ankles, make it across the room, get my knife into Buck's neck, and then handle the boys before they could react? How quick was the Gladesman? He'd already shown his physical ability by tossing me across the room when he'd caught me unaware. But this time I'd be the one with the surprise. Would the young ones freeze up? Or were they seasoned enough to not panic and use their own blades? I looked up from under my eyebrows. Buck was hunched over in the chair, licking his fingers, and cut a look over at me. He was not relaxing; he was doing the same thing I was, working at his next move. They were waiting for something and I was sure he was the only with an idea of what that would be.

"Take a can of those peaches we found over to Mr. Freeman," he said to the boys without designating which one. The idiots looked at each other.

Wayne finally rose from his position on the floor. He bent and picked up a can and then used the knife from his belt sheath to stab through the tin and cut open the top. He looked over at me and hesitated.

"Should I tie his hands up first?"

"Only if you want to feed him yourself," Buck said, a touch of condescension in his voice that made the other one smile.

Wayne brought the can over to me and set it down on the floor a foot or so from my bound ankles.

"Can you get me a fork?" I asked.

"Yeah, right," the kid said. "Somethin' nice and sharp." He turned and walked away.

I stretched out and took the can and then shuffled on my knees to Sherry's bedside and then with my fingers I gently fed a peach slice to her. At the taste of the sweet juice her lips parted like a weak fish and she suckled at it at first and then slightly opened her eyes and took the whole thing into her mouth. I waited for her to chew and swallow and then gave her another.

"You're a cop too, ain't you, Freeman?"

Buck was speaking, but I did not turn my eyes from Sherry's.

"You've got the look. That confidence thing like cops and prison guards got. I seen plenty of it over the years."

While Sherry ate I swallowed a couple of the peach slices myself. I had not eaten anything but a small piece of the chocolate in more than twenty-four hours and was thinking of my own strength.

"I think Wayne here was right about what he heard when the lady said she was a cop. And I think you're one too. You ain't called her your wife or your honey or your fiancee." your fiancee."

I fed another slice to Sherry and one to myself. I was listening, just as Buck had obviously been doing. I may have underestimated him and that was a bad sign.

"What I think, Officer Officer Freeman, is that she's your partner," Buck said. "You all might have been stupid enough to be out here in the Glades during a hurricane, but I don't believe that it was for no reason." Freeman, is that she's your partner," Buck said. "You all might have been stupid enough to be out here in the Glades during a hurricane, but I don't believe that it was for no reason."

He paused again, maybe letting his thoughts catch up with him. It reminded me of the long, southern drawl used by Nate Brown, who never hurried his speech, but never said much that was just filler either. I found myself wondering whether they lived in the same area of southwest Collier County.

"No, officer. I think you all know exactly what's in that f.u.c.king room next door and that's the reason you're out here," Buck said. "n.o.body builds a bunker like that out in these parts without having something d.a.m.n valuable to store inside. And the fact that we got two cops out here trying to get into it makes me believe that there are drugs involved. Bricks of cocaine? Bundles of pot? Stuff got air-dropped into the Glades and then pulled out by some group of dealers who are smart enough to store it out here until they got a buyer on the coast that can move it fast."

Again he took that pause, and when I looked up his face was in shadows but the light was on those of his young crew and they were more hang-mouth stunned than I was.

"No s.h.i.t! Buck," Marcus said, a smile beginning to build in his eyes.

"Whoa," was all Wayne could say and if Buck's scenario hadn't included a couple of law enforcement officers, one near death and one tied up in the corner, the two of them would have high-fived each other.

Still I didn't react. I had to give Buck some credit. If I hadn't already been inside the computer room next door, seen the digital readouts and odd collection of cables and wiring, the tale he was spinning might have made perfect sense to me too.

"So whataya say, Officer Freeman? Am I right? You and your partner there doing a little recon work and got stuck in the storm?"

This time I kept my eyes focused on the dark circles where Buck's eyes could still not be seen in the shadow, but I knew he could see mine.

"No. You're one hundred percent wrong," I said. It was an easy line to say convincingly because it was the truth.

That childish hissing noise came from one of the boys behind him.

"Yeah, right."

"Well, it don't matter what you say now, officer. I'm thinking we got a big payday coming and when daybreak comes so we can find a way into that room, that's what we're gonna do come h.e.l.l or high water," he said and tossed Marcus the roll of tape.

"Tape his hands back up," he said to the boy.

Marcus came over, swaggering a little now, and gave me a little chin nod, and I reacted instantly by crossing my wrists and offering them up to him.

"So you ain't such big s.h.i.t after all, Mr. Law," Marcus said, wrapping the tape around while I again flexed my tendons to keep the binding as loose as possible. But I had already won my battle. The kid had either been too c.o.c.ky or was just plain stupid. Because I had submissively raised my hands to him, he'd taken the easy offer and bound them in front of me instead of making me roll over and taping them behind my back.

"An' Wayne!" Buck said, snapping orders to the other one and reaching down to pick up a package sheathed in oilskin that they'd brought in with the cooler. He unwrapped a gleaming over-and-under shotgun and tossed it three feet into Wayne's surprised hands. "You got first watch."

TWENTY-FOUR.

When the traffic lights are lying on the ground, you consider the intersections as four-way stops, and then steer around the dented and broken yellow thing in the road, and then avoid the power lines still attached to it if possible. It's one of those rules you learn in South Florida if you've been here for a few hurricanes.

As Harmon made his way to the Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport at dawn, he wondered why folks couldn't figure that out. Do all transplanted New Yorkers just figure, "What the f.u.c.k, I'll just plow right on through and everybody else can look out for me because only the rude and pushy survive in this world"?