Randy White - Ten thousand isles

I froze, my fist poised a few inches from her chin, as she whispered, "Doc? Doc! Oh, thank God! Thank God it's you!"

I got to my feet and pulled her up. She was wearing only a white bra and panties, blood on both. She'd used a fish billy to club me, and now I retrieved that, too. She was shaking, seemed on the verge of hysteria. I sat her in the settee booth and kissed her forehead, then cheek, trying to calm her.

"Where's Ted?"

She made a gesture that asked for a little time to get herself under control. It appeared as if she might faint. "This can't be real. Doc, are you sure this is real? Is this really happening? I can't tell the difference anymore."

She was probably still suffering the effects of scopolamine. "Did he give you something? Did he make you drink something or give you a shot?"

Nora's expression became savage and she looked at the motionless figure beneath the sheet. "Him? You mean that son-of-a-bitching animal? He gave me a shot, yeah. He gave Delia one, too, before he strangled her. Know what he did? He ate one of her eyes. I saw him. He made me watch. Like it was a grape. Then he raped me. And he kept on raping me. I had no choice, Doc. You have to tell the police. Lot of times they don't believe women, but I had to do it. I had to make sure he could never hurt me again."

I patted her back for a moment, then went to the V-berth and pulled the pillowcase away. Ted Bauerstock lay there blinking up at me, recognizing me, his pupils gigantic. He still hadn't moved and I had to lean to hear his weak voice as he gasped, "I'm paralyzed. The bitch stuck a needle in my neck. You've got to get me to a hospital."

I looked at Nora. She sat there tapping her fingers together, very nervous. Her speech became accelerated. "He thought I was unconscious. I grabbed the needle when he turned his back. After that… after that…" She began to cry. "… I'm not sure what happened after that."

I pulled the sheet down, looking at what she'd done to him, then covered him as Bauerstock whispered, "She's going to jail for this. I'll make sure of it. She'll never have a free day."

I said, 'Jail? Teddy, the lady ought to get a reward. Or a bounty. After what you've done?"

"I don't know what you're talking about. I haven't done anything wrong. I'm running for the senate-"

I put my hand on his mouth, silencing him. I didn't want to hear it. After a moment, I said, "You need to answer one question. If you expect me to help you, it'd better be the truth. Why did you kill Dorothy?"

"I'm not answering anything. I need a doctor."

"No answers, no doctor. Why'd you murder that child?"

The smile that grew out of his mouth was infuriating. "Honesdy?"

"If you're capable."

"Because it felt good and… I like it. The power."

"That's what I'll tell the cops."

The smile widened. "No… won't happen. They won't believe you. They never have. They never will."

I said, "For them to believe you, Ted, they've got to hear you," and I dropped the pillowcase over his face.

When she'd calmed down, I said to Nora. "You're safe now. You didn't do anything wrong. Get your clothes on. Did Ted bring the wooden totem aboard?"

She nodded. Her face was pale; wet with tears. She looked very fragile in the cabin light.

"Find it and bring it with you."

I touched my pockets as I went toward the steps. The gold medallion was in one. The syringe the old woman had given me was in the other. If I sold the medallion and the totem, the Egyptian cat and the rest of the artifacts, it would make a sizable scholarship fund. Or maybe donate everything to the museum. One way or another, keep the name Dorothy Copeland alive.

Topside, I made sure my skiff was still in tow, then seated myself at Namesake' s helm. I touched the LCD window of the Cetrek autopilot. I saw that it was keeping us on a flawless heading of 312 degrees, directly at Coon Key Light, but at the very slow idle speed of only three knots.

The yacht was equipped with a steering wheel, but also some kind of computer-type joy stick that I didn't know how to operate. I disengaged the autopilot, turned the wheel and the yacht came around. I pointed her bow out to sea. Felt

Nora come up beside me and lean her warm weight against my shoulder, as I listened to the robotic voice from the VHF radio say, "… Hurricane Charles continues to move northeasterly at a speed of eighteen knots, with sustained winds measured at a hundred thirty knots. Charles is expected to make landfall at ten a.m. tomorrow. Mandatory evacuation has been declared for Marco Island and the neighboring cities of…"

I switched off the radio and said, "You remember how to run my boat?"

She nodded.

"I'm going to help you get aboard, then cut you loose. I want you to follow me until I get this boat up to speed, but not too close. Pay attention because I'm going to jump. I'll blink this boat's running lights twice to warn you, then go over the port side. It'll be on your left. All you have to do is put my skiff in neutral. Don't worry about finding me. I'll swim to you. Can you do that?"

Nora's voice had regained some strength, and I felt like hugging her when she said, "Of course I can do it. I'm not an invalid, for God's sake. Don't treat me like one."

I was experimenting with the autopilot, learning how it worked. I also had both radar screens on, watching the scanning arm show blobs of islands, nothing else. I figured out that the Doppler was also linked to the computer screen built into the console, and I accessed a perfect satellite picture of the storm: a red vortex less than three hundred miles away.

That gave me an idea. I touched the cursor to the center of the hurricane, and punched the exact heading into the autopilot, 225 degrees. I clicked on Auto-track and then Engage. Waited for a moment, then felt the autopilot take control of the steering, running direcdy southwest toward the target I had designated.

"What are you doing?"

I said, "Teddy likes eyes? His computer's got him headed for a big one."

A few minutes later, with Nora trailing me in the skiff, I throttled the Hinckley up to a jarring twenty knots. I made sure the servo-systems were vectoring properly. Then I jumped overboard into the black water.

A little after 9:30 that night, Nora and I dragged ourselves through the wind, up the highest Indian mound of Dismal Key. We had flashlights, tent, mosquito netting, sandwiches and beer, each of us muling bags. We were soaked, exhausted.

I'd tied my skiff in the mangroves with a spider webbing of lines to hold her. Even if the storm surge was more than fifteen feet or higher, we'd be safe and so would my boat.

The walls of Al's shack were still standing, the screen broken out of the windows. But I didn't want to be inside a building, not in a wind that was expected to exceed a hundred miles an hour. It took me a while to find what I was looking for, but I finally did: a room-sized hole dug into the shell mound, the ironic hermit's bomb shelter. It wasn't far from the key lime and avocado trees that grew there. The hole would provide windbreak enough that the tent would survive. Even if the tent didn't, we would.

That night, cuddled together to stay warm, Nora said into my ear, "I don't know which part of it's a dream, which of it's real. It's the drug. I can still feel it, but it's wearing off. I can't believe what I did to him."

I said, "I think you're imagining things. What do you think you did?"

After she told me, I pulled her closer and said, "You're not the one. I did it. Your brain mistranslated. It happens all the time in dreams. When I ate those mushrooms, the same thing happened to me."

"Are you positive?"

"I'll swear to it. Besides, he deserved it."

She moved her face onto my chest. "I would love to believe that."