John Miller - Too Far Gone

Leland stole things, and people didn’t like it. In these parts a man with more smarts than a tire tool didn’t go near another man’s traps-nets, crab traps, the floating jugs that marked trotlines, or muskrat or nutria traps. Stealing from the residents out in the swamps was suicidal, unless you were Leland Ticholet. If people knew Leland stole from them, they didn’t say it to him.

Grub wondered if the wardens knew what sort of crazy bastard they were messing around with asking after Leland. Grub didn’t like Leland, but he didn’t like the wardens even more.

Leland didn’t have friends, but a week earlier, when he’d come over for some gas, which the new boat used a great deal of, he’d had with him a little soft-handed stranger who was wearing a shirt with the collar turned up like it was cold and a big straw hat with a wide brim and he’d had on sunglasses. Moody wondered if he was a fisherman Leland was guiding, which was what Leland claimed, but Grub didn’t see any fishing pole rigs or bait either. The man acted like he might be a movie star trying not to be recognized. One time they had filmed part of a movie around the dock, and Grub heard that some of the actors were famous, but he didn’t know much about movies or the people that were in them. They all wore odd hats and sunglasses and talked funny. Grub didn’t watch television or go to movies because he couldn’t sit still long unless there was a lot of shooting and chasing, and he tended to lose track of what they were all about.

Grub lived in a surplus school bus that Mr. Moody parked in the trees near the bait and gas store, for free so long as he did chores for his keep. Grub got to eat the sandwiches that Mrs. Moody made that didn’t get sold. People in the boats sometimes gave him money for helping load and unload their boats. He also cleaned fish for a dime each. He kept all his money in coffee jars that he hid in really good places so nobody could steal them.

That new boat was a puzzle that nobody could figure out. Nobody knew where Leland got the boat from, and nobody dared to ask him anything they could help not to, because he might get crazy and growl in your face, throw you in the water, or break something. Mr. Moody said it was likely he stole it, because there wasn’t any way he’d scraped up enough in one piece to get it, and nobody in their right mind would finance a maniac like Leland Ticholet even if God Himself cosigned the loan. Mr. Moody allowed as how God had better sense than to do something so stupid as that.

That morning, Grub watched Leland come racing in, pull up to the pier, tie the boat, jump up, get the pump handle, pull it to the gas tanks, and squat down while the tanks filled up. When Leland was done, he put the pump handle back, ran in, and paid Mr. Moody by signing his book for it, which went against what Mr. Moody owed him for the gator hides he didn’t actually buy-just traded goods for them.

Grub waited until Leland was inside the store before he ran up the dock to the boat and looked inside it. There was something big wrapped up in a bedsheet. Grub figured it was a person, on account of the shoes sticking out at one end. It appeared to Grub that the sheet was moving, that whoever it was wrapped up in there was alive. If he’d had time he would have poked the bundle with something to see if it moved, but if Leland was to catch him poking at his sheet deal, he might get crazy.

Grub had quickly jumped up onto the graveled lot above the dock, scampered back to the store, and hidden behind the live-bait well. Leland came back out with a loaf of white bread under his arm and a cola in his hand, and pretty soon he was eating a handful of bread, and was hauling ass away from the dock at full speed, no matter the signs said NO WAKE. Leland wasn’t big on minding signs-if he could even read them, which Grub doubted he could.

Grub figured that the little movie star with the sunglasses and the straw hat was likely who was rolled up in the sheet. Grub considered mentioning the man in the sheet to Moody, but the store owner didn’t care about what people did as long as they didn’t do things that could make trouble for him. Plus, if Leland was to find out that Grub was telling his business, like wrapping up people in things and driving them around the swamps, it might end up being him that was rolled up and lying in the bottom of that fancy new boat.

Grub couldn’t swim, and didn’t want to have to learn all the sudden either.

Alexa followed Casey West’s Range Rover, glancing down to find Manseur’s number in her phone’s directory and press the button to dial him. He answered immediately.

“Yeah, Alexa.”

“Michael, the West letter is a fraud, so the hunt for Gary West is back on. I think LePointe or Decell authored it.”

“You sure?”

“Casey said Gary writes everything out by hand and it isn’t in his voice at all and he wouldn’t send it to LePointe because he hates him. I have the letter with me. We won’t find West’s prints on it, but it gave me an opportunity to get LePointe’s print for reference, and I’m on the way to get some of Gary’s things.”

“Why would the doctor try something so transparent?”

“Desperation,” Alexa said. “We’re ripping his world apart and he can’t do anything about it.”

“Where are you now?”

“I’m following Casey to her house for Gary’s fingerprints. I’ll see you at HQ in half an hour or so. You’ll be there?”

“Where else would I be? The mayor’s got the press assembling and he’s going to get the cops to go door to door to enforce the order. They’re going to pull every available cop off whatever else they’re working on.”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think LePointe had something to do with the hurricane’s timing.”

“I wouldn’t bet any of my money he didn’t,” Manseur said.

Casey sat at the dining table where Alexa had first met her, crying. Grace Smythe, who had finished seeing after her parents’ packing, had been there when they’d come in and had taken Deana out in the backyard and was playing with her, which amounted to making sure the child didn’t jump into the pool.

“I never thought Uncle William could be so horrible. It makes me wonder if he’s behind Gary’s disappearance, and that letter is supposed to give Decell the time he needs to get everything cleaned up so nobody can prove anything. Is that possible? Kenneth Decell knows how to cover things up. You’re never going to find Gary,” Casey sobbed. “Unko knew Dorothy Fugate very well. Very, very well. Boy, did he know her well!”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I saw him with her. Once, seven, eight years ago when my grandmother and Aunt Sarah were away in New York and I was supposed to be staying with a girlfriend, I came back home to get something. The servants were all off that day. I used my key, and as I was passing his office-the door was cracked open-Dorothy was bent over on his desk naked except for the nurse hat and he was behind her. His pants were down and he was standing there-you know.” Casey smiled. “She was chanting.” Casey laughed suddenly. “I can’t say it. It’s too vulgar.”

“Go ahead,” Alexa said. “We’re adults.”

“‘Oh, Dr. Fuckerman! Oh, Docky Big Dick! Oh, pour it to me, Dr. Fuckerman! Dr. Fuckerman. How distinguished!’”

Alexa didn’t mean to, but she laughed too.

“‘Oh…Docky Dick! Pour…it…to me! Heeeere I come again, Dr. Fuckerman!’ And Unko’s bare buns and those socks being held up with those garters and his shoes on. Shirt and tie in place! It was like a…a Monty Python skit.”

Casey leaned back and laughed harder. Soon, they were both laughing.