Jonathon King - Shadow Men

Brown crouched nearby while I carefully separated dirt from leather. I went inside the boot with my fingers. It had filled with muck, and I brought out a handful at a time. Brown went through each small pile, studied it, and then swept it away. But as I got farther in toward the sole, he began to find bone; small phalanges that he recognized as foot bone. I was deep into the front of the boot, where the hard toe cover was remarkably intact, when my fingers touched metal. I curled them around the object and came out with a rounded, ancient, pocketwatch.

I stared at the piece lying in the palm of my hand. Brown exhaled deeply and then went to the skiff. I hadn't moved when he came back with his jar of water and poured it over my hand, washing away the dirt while I turned and rubbed the timepiece with my fingers. The metal was a dull yellow gold. I pushed the locket release but had to work my fingernails in under the lid to finally pry it open. Brown poured more water in to wash out the dirt that had penetrated inside, and I rubbed my fingertips over the inside of the lid to expose an inscription:

The Lord is thy Shepherd my son, let him lead you, and the Kingdom of God will by thine forever.

Your loving father, Horace Mayes

I sat with the disk of gold in my hand for some time, trying to connect the little I knew of Cyrus Mayes with this, his final resting place. A good and righteous man and his innocent sons had lost their lives to another being who was their polar opposite. If John William Jefferson had marked this death bed with a cross for some deeply warped recognition of a God, he had gained no mercy. If that deeply buried sense of religion had passed into his future gene pool and led his progeny to swing to his moral opposite, perhaps there was some hope in evolution. But his own son had ended his own life, and I could not help but think that the stain of John William's acts had stopped spreading.

Brown and I packed up the boat. I recorded the GPS coordinates of the gravesite in the unit as well as on paper tucked away where it wouldn't be lost or electronically wiped out. We were obviously overmatched by the crime scene. Billy would convince law enforcement to bring their own forensic paleontologists out to grid the sight and recover the remains of the Mayes family, and to try and determine the details of their murders. We made a feeble attempt to stake the poncho over the three-foot-square excavation we'd completed, but all we could hope for was a day or so without rain. I dropped the watch into another evidence bag, wrapped it up with the boot and the bone fragments, and tucked the whole thing into my pack. We pulled the skiff south to the spot where Brown had tied up his boat, and I was mildly surprised to see that it had not been scuttled by the PalmCo P.I.s.

We made the boat switch, tied off the skiff, and then Brown cranked up the engine and turned her back toward Chevalier Bay. I sat on the transom and calmly dropped the tracking device that had been planted in my satchel into the water behind us. The vibration of the engine hummed through my bones and told me how every tendon and muscle ached. When we finally hit open water the sun was slipping down and the blueness of the sky was already darkening. I focused on the old man for the first time in hours and noticed the crusted mud and grime and stink that covered his clothing. He appeared to be some caricature on a kid's slime show. Then I looked down at myself and saw that we were twins, and I began to laugh. Brown hadn't said a word since I'd pulled Cyrus Mayes's pocket watch from the rotting boot. He now turned to look at me with as close a look of merriment on his face as I had ever seen him carry. He then turned back into the sun, pulled down the brim of his hat and began to whistle. "It's a Long Way to Tipperary." And he stayed with the melody for a good part of the trip back to the docks in Chokoloskee.

When we got to the docks the sun was down and the last clouds on the horizon were bloodred. Dawkins's boats were still out on the water. I pulled out some clean clothes and a towel from the cab of my truck and showered off with a hose that the boat captain used to spray the salt off his decks. I tossed my ruined jeans and shirt and boots into the truck bed. When I was dressed and half human again, I sat in the cab and called Billy.

"I don't quite know what to say, Max," Billy said when I told him of our discovery of the grave, as well as the PalmCo investigators and their admission that they were working for the attorneys who had offered him the bribe. "I suppose I had little optimism that it would go this far when we started. I'm pleased, but saddened."

I told him I was convinced the investigators didn't know about the grave and were just following instructions to follow and mark me. I also told him that we let the P.I.s leave before finding the grave and that I doubted they'd be able to find it on their own. I didn't mention the shooting.

"I have some prosecutor friends in Collier County," he told me. "With the evidence, I should think we can get a recovery team and a group of forensics people out there tomorrow."

"All right. I'll stop over in Lauderdale and see if Sherry has any pull with the homicide guys over in Collier-she can get them excited about an eighty-year-old cold case."

"Speaking of Richards, she left a message earlier today, something about one of her fellow deputies getting a call about you from the sheriff up in Highlands County. That's the Reverend Jefferson's region, right?"

"Yeah. I ran into the sheriff while I was up there. Curious guy. Paranoid about some string of shootings in his jurisdiction.

"Well, he's apparently curious about you and was checking out your credentials," Billy said. "Richards said it might be nothing, but she was anxious to tell you about it. I tried calling her back, but I haven't been able to get through."

"All right, I'm heading that way. Let me know about the forensics response. I don't think we're gonna have to worry about intercepts anymore."

"Be careful driving back, Max," Billy said, and clicked off.

I went back down to the dock to say good-bye to Nate Brown. The old man had removed his shirt and used the hose to soak his head and chest. I tossed him my half-wet towel and he thanked me. While his face was in the towel I noted the scars on his back and under his rib cage. His chest hair was thick and snow white, and a stark tan line ran around his neck where his collar protected him from the sun. The wrinkles in his loose skin were pronounced and his stomach looked sunken and unhealthy.

"I'm heading back, Nate. I want to thank you for helping me, and I want to tell you not to worry about what happened out there with those company men. You're clear."

He did not answer.

"There will probably be some cops and scientific people out there tomorrow, and they'd probably pay to have you guide them back to the site," I said, even though I could anticipate his answer.

"Don't bother bringin' my name into it if you don't mind," he said. "Them boys'll take that GPS and find 'er just fine. Take 'em a while, but they'll get it."

He gathered up his shirt and tossed it into his boat, then handed my towel back to me.

"I'm a go check on that Nash kid. Like to get his daddy's shotgun back to 'im if I can."

I watched him lower himself down the ladder into his boat as smoothly as a surefooted cat. But I had the definite feeling that Nate Brown was not long for this world. He'd seen too much of what I had flippantly called progress. He didn't like it, and I had a feeling he was ready to leave it.

He started his engine and tossed off a line and the boat drifted back into open water. He pulled the bill of his cap, pushed up the throttles, and was gone.

During the drive back across the state I tried Richards's phone three times. I let it ring eight or nine times before hanging up. Her answering machine didn't come on. I set the cruise control on the truck when I got into the eastbound lanes of Alligator Alley, but the cut of my headlights through the middle of the vast darkness on either side ended up hypnotizing me instead of keeping me alert. Twice I caught myself drifting out of my lane, my head snapping up with the realization that even though my eyes were open, I was seeing nothing. I rolled down both windows and turned off the cruise so I would have to concentrate on the speed, then searched for a Stevie Ray Vaughn CD that I had buried in the glove compartment. I popped it in, loud.