I replied, “Seems like everyone on the islands wants to make a deal. It makes a stranger feel important. We can talk.” I glanced to my right: The Coast Guard cutters were closing in. I didn’t want to be here when they arrived. “But first, I need to confirm that Stokes is dead.”
“That’s the sort of thing a cop says. Confirm so-and-so’s done this or that.”
“Being sleepy makes me rude. We didn’t leave Florida until—what?—after midnight?”
Mr. Earl was shaking his head tolerantly. Said, “No, we left hours before—,” then caught himself. His mean eyes acknowledged his slip.
Okay, you caught me. So what?
“That’s something else a cop does. Tricks innocent people for no reason.”
I didn’t respond.
That’s when the man told me I could see the body if I wanted.
“I’ve got to ask you not to touch anything,” he said, leading the way into the house. “Desmond Stokes was my dearest friend. He
appreciated
what I did for him. That’s why he left the place to me. People been stealing from this island all morning, even though I keep telling them: I own everything you see.”
35
Desmond Stokes was sitting sprawled behind a desk in an office that had been ransacked, his head back, eyes open, mouth stretched wide in the pantomime of a scream. One hand was visible. On it was a cotton glove stained black with his own blood. His forearm and face were gray. Wasp-nest gray. Dry.
His body had been drained of fluid.
“See? Here’s what I told you. The man took his own life, but it was murder, the way the woman done it. Take a look for your own self. You’ll understand what I’m saying.”
I looked at Earl, and motioned once again:
Stay where I can see you. I
walked to the desk.
Stokes had worn green surgical scrubs, but was now naked below the waist. It took me a moment to confirm that his pants had been tossed into the corner. The chair was pushed away from the desk so that his legs and feet were visible.
The gentleman in white linen was correct. Not nice.
Stokes had scrawny legs, no muscle tone. His skin was the same bloodless color of his face, but the flesh of both legs was alive with animated, parasitic activity. For a man who was a phobic neurotic, it would have been the ultimate horror.
Perhaps that’s why someone had used duct tape to lash the doctor’s wrists to the chair’s armrests, to protect the patient from self-inflicted injury.
Possibly, though, they’d done it to add to his torment.
But, somehow, Stokes had wrestled his right hand free, and found a surgical scalpel ...
I paused to think about that. No ... it wasn’t plausible. Even crazed with adrenaline, this man didn’t have the strength.
I squatted beside the chair for a closer look. Saw that the tape had been cut cleanly. Looked beneath the desk—nothing sharp, or saw-edged. It told me that someone had used the scalpel to cut the tape. Then they’d handed the instrument to the hysterical Dr. Stokes. A ruthless irony.
The scalpel was similar to one of many I keep in my lab—a German-manufactured, one-inch blade. It was now buried into the dead man’s thigh. The last of many dozens of stab wounds between ankles and groin. His legs were a checker-work of contusions. They’d drained the life out of him.
Earl was correct. Murder, in its way.
“The doctor hated germs. Been fighting them all his life. When he couldn’t take it no more, I guess he used that little knife and went to war with them one more time, trying to kill them as they come out.”
“Who taped his arms to the chair?”
“I did. We were going through some paperwork last night when the man lost it. I was afraid he’d hurt himself. I went off to take a leak, and that’s when that Russian bitch locked herself in the room with him.” Mr. Earl had theatrical sensibilities. He knew how to communicate both sorrow and anger with a single sigh.
I stood. As with Jobe Applebee’s body, I chose not to linger on detail. I crossed the room to a wall lined with books, a microscope, jars of things that must be preserved in formaldehyde. Personal libraries have themes, usually unrealized by owners. This was the library of a physician who specialized in nutrition, real estate, and investment finance. He also had a researcher’s interest in the chemical properties of animal venoms. More telling, though, were rows of books on abnormal psychology, deviant behavior, chemical imbalances of the human brain, sexual dysfunction.
The physician knew he was sick, but that hadn’t altered his behavior.
I began to leaf through a stack of magazines. Luther Earl stood blocking an open window. I moved slightly to get a better view of the water. Coast Guard cutters were slowing as they neared the boat landing. Dasha had already docked the Boston whaler and was nearly to the porch. She was no longer handcuffed, I noticed.
Not a surprise.
I placed the shotgun on a nearby table, barrel pointed at the open door where the woman would soon appear, then tilted my head listening to an approaching rumble. The sound of a helicopter?
Yes.
It wasn’t a Huey. Didn’t sound like Coast Guard.
Very soon, I’d have to disappear. Mr. Earl seemed to sense it. He began to show signs of nerves for the first time.
“Do you understand what I’m telling you? The woman poisoned our water with these damn worms, then she gave the doctor a knife, knowing he’d gone crazy enough to use it. She’s a
murderer.
Going to fucking jail in Nassau. Which is why the person you need to be discussing the formula with is me. Not her.”
My remark about making deals had stuck.
I said, “What formula?”
“The one that was on Applebee’s computer! He figured out how to get rid of these parasites in Florida, Africa. Name it, man! You really don’t know.”
“Do you have the computer? I’ll have a look.”
No. I could read it in his face. He didn’t have the computer. Presumably, Dasha had gotten away with that, too.
“Doesn’t matter if I have it or not, because the man used numbers instead of letters when he wrote. But I saw the file labels. There were words he used over and over. ‘Eradicate.’ ‘Cope-ee-pods’?”
I smiled, secretly pleased. Was it possible that Applebee and I had come up with the same solution independently?
“‘ Copepods,’” I said. “In that case, I do know the formula.”
That pleased him. His eyes glittered.
On a shelf, I’d found a box of copies of a recent
Rolling Stone
article—familiar, thanks to Tomlinson—and several old counterculture magazines. Each had an inside page marked with a paper clip. I opened one. Found nothing obvious. Opened another, and smiled again. Looked at it for a moment before saying to Luther Earl, “Nice picture of you. Twenty years ago, maybe? Love the ammo belts. You haven’t changed much. Except for your hair. And your name.”
Mr. Earl said, “Sometimes it’s good for a man to change his name. Gives you a real free and clean feeling. Down the road, you may want to consider it.”
I read silently for a moment. “Sounds like you changed your ethics, too. Unless you were just as full of bullshit back then. What the hell’s ‘Aquarian numerology,’ and how do you become an expert on it?”
The tall man beamed. “It was bullshit, man. But it’s the fool crap people want to believe. Can’t miss. Just like the deal I’m offering you.” He took a step from the window, hands out, big smile telling me that I’d be joining a winner. “I’ll form a limited liability corporation, give you forty percent of the stock. Forty
-five
percent. In trade, you share Applebee’s formula. Tell me this”—his hands moved as if to create a stage—“how much will real estate in the Disney World area be worth when owners start finding these fucking worms eating their skin? If we’ve got an exclusive on the formula, and we buy the land for nothing—”
He stopped. We’d both heard a noise in the hallway. I still had the shotgun leveled at the open door. Now I reached, checked the selector switch—semiauto—then touched my finger to the trigger. Waited for Dasha to appear.
A moment later, I heard a soft mewing coming from outside the window. Then a whispered “Mr. Earl?”
th-WHAP.
The rim-shot blast of a heavy-caliber handgun is definitive. My brain identified the noise as I ducked away from the doorway, the pepper odor of gunpowder blooming, both hands on the shotgun, aware that Earl’s head had disintegrated in the same instant that his body collapsed beneath it.
Where the hell was she?
To my left, Dasha’s voice yelled: “Ford! Toss your weapon toward the door. A long way away. Don’t be an idiot.”
She sounded calm. She appeared at the window in a classic combat stance, both hands holding a revolver that was pointed at my chest.
I hesitated ... no options. I pushed the shotgun away, cringing reflexively as the weapon hit the floor, wondering how she’d created the noise in the hallway. Was there another open window? Toss a rock, then sprint? She had the speed.
“Lock your fingers behind your head and drop to your knees. Do it!”
I felt sick. Stupid.
From my knees, I watched her step through the window into the room. I thought the revolver might waver for a moment. It didn’t. She wore the same khaki shorts and blouse, but now carried a canvas purse over her shoulder. She also wore surgical gloves.
She took a quick look at Earl. Shot in the head at close range, there was no doubt he was dead. Then she scrambled to the shotgun. “Did you fire this? I heard a burst.”
I said nothing.
“Goddamn it, I’m trying to help. Did you kill Broz?”
I said, “Somebody killed somebody. I saw a body.”
She translated. “Good. You got two of them. I don’t think I could have taken all three myself. Aleski—he was the most dangerous. He knew my moves.”
I could hear myself earlier telling the woman that she had nothing to gain in helping me—
wrong.
Now I understood. She’d needed muscle. I’d provided it.
Luther Earl had told me the truth. She’d freed the snakes to keep searchers at bay, then hid in my cell.
“The key to the handcuffs. Where’d you keep it?”
She replied, “In my mouth. I was afraid you’d catch on and frisk me.”
I watched her take a cloth and begin to scrub the shotgun’s exterior, erasing my fingerprints.
“Instead of going to all that trouble, why didn’t you just tell me what you wanted?”
She paused to glare at me. “Would you have done it?”
Of course not. A pointless question.
She added, “Unless you make it seem like their idea, most men are too stupid to understand anything. When Aleski showed up, though, I thought we were both dead.”
I watched her stand, step to the window, and toss the shotgun into the bushes. With no wasted motion, she knelt beside the body of Luther Earl and squeezed the revolver into his left hand.
I started to speak but she cut me off. “He was left-handed. Do you take me for a fool?”
She gave the scene a last, critical sweep as she snapped off the surgical gloves. Would authorities read it as she intended? Mr. Earl’s dear friend, Dr. Stokes, had died horribly, so he’d committed suicide out of grief—and, perhaps, guilt.
“Follow me. Keep your mouth shut and they probably won’t question you. But Bahamian feds can be assholes no matter how much bribe money they’re paid.”
I stood, feeling ridiculous. But was also relieved. I’d assumed she was going to kill me. Sphincter muscles are barometers of the elemental. Mine began to relax. Tentatively.
I followed her through the hallway, toward the main entrance. I was shirtless, bruised, and filthy. The
whopa-whopa-whopa
of a helicopter was shaking the house. I had to raise my voice to ask, “When the Coast Guard starts asking questions, what’s my role? How are we going to work it?”
Dasha stopped, turned. From the canvas bag, she took a sheaf of papers and held them up for inspection. “The only role you have here is to do what I tell you. Dr. Stokes signed title of his property over to me in exchange for Applebee’s computer files. Which I gave him. I cut the tape on his arm and handed him a pen. The doctor ... seemed very eager to trade.”
“You handed him a pen, and ... what else?”
“I gave him what he asked for.”
Did she mean the scalpel?
The woman continued toward the door. My instincts told me to bolt in the opposite direction, but she dragged me along as if caught in a weird force field. “These papers are witnessed by Dr. Stokes’s
late
administrative assistant, and notarized by a Nassau judge. A good woman, respected. The Bahamian cops aren’t going to ask many questions once they find out I’m the new owner. They depend on landowners for bribes. But, Ford?”
Dasha was stepping onto the porch into the sun, the green of tropic foliage melding with the jade of Caribbean Sea beyond. A mild smile changed the feral contours of her cheeks, as iceberg eyes took in all that heat and light. “If you ever do want to play a role? Come back and stay a few days.” She faced me. “Last night, on the plane? Maybe you had an interesting dream.
Fun.
Between professionals. It could be like that.”
I was grateful for the noise of the helicopter hovering above us because I was afraid to answer. The woman scared me. I focused on the aircraft, as if I hadn’t heard.
The copter wasn’t local Coast Guard. It was a U.S. special ops chopper used to ferry commandos into tight spots, a “Little Bird.” The cockpit was a Plexiglas bubble attached to a fuselage bristling with miniguns, rocket tubes, antennas, and infrared sensors.
Withering firepower, plus speed.
The craft displayed no markings, which I found odd. It had to be American.
Dasha stood her ground, as ropes were deployed, and four men wearing body armor and masks fast-roped down, weapons already shouldered: two submachine guns aimed at her, two .50 caliber machine guns covering the cutters. The helicopter then rotated a few degrees so that its rocket tubes communicated an unmistakable message to the Bahamians: Interfere, we’ll open fire.