Slow Fall Read online

  “Because I'm real. Real.” Amy put clinched fists to her breast. “I'm flesh and bone a-a-and—”

  The quiver in her voice blocked the words. She squeezed her eyes closed, smiling grotesquely; then she swallowed hard.

  “The good, and peaceful, and… kind is a—” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand—quickly, not wanting the other to see. “—is a lie.”She pointed to the lake, her hand trembling.

  “It sits out there calm and beautiful and… it wants you to think that it's real, you know, that it's really there. But when you reach for it, when you try to grab it… it's worse than—than nothing. It's foul. It's foul and filthy and—”

  A shriek broke the litany.

  Amy froze, her mouth open.

  The shriek became a wail, then hysterical sobs. It came from the canal. Pickett rose. Amy grabbed his arm.

  “What is it?”

  “I don't know.”

  “I told you.” Amy's voice rose with her body. “It's evil, filth, I told you, I told you, I—”

  “Stop it!” Pickett took Amy by the shoulders and pushed her back down into the chair. “Wait here.”

  He sprinted across the lawn toward the canal and stumbled into the palmettos and ferns that bordered it, heading for the sound. He broke through the scrub to the canal, skidded on the mud. He was ankle deep in mud and water plants before he stopped.

  The wail was a whimper now, steady and low, farther down the creek. A bulky figure shuddered on the opposite bank.

  “Help!”—a male voice this time—”Over here.”

  Pickett scrambled out of the water. He slogged through the vegetation toward the voice. His wet socks kept slipping from his shoes. By the time he breasted the figure on the opposite bank, he'd lost the left one.

  Two teenagers embraced in terror. The girl, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, whimpered into the boy's chest. The boy pointed down into the dark water.

  “There. There!”

  The limbs of a sweet-bay magnolia swept the top of the canal just below where he was standing. It was in bloom, its scent overpowering. The kid pointed into the shadow cast by its bulk.

  Pickett kicked off his remaining shoe and stepped down into the warm water. It was waist high in the middle. As he reached the shadow near the opposite bank, the girl, who'd been watching him, began to wail. Pickett reached down into the darkness and pulled.

  A face emerged from the black water. Its small eyes stared into the twisted foliage above, dull and unseeing. The left eye glinted red in the reflected light, beside it and underneath, a small ragged hole.

  Pickett looked past the cowering lovers. Their green Ford hulked in the shadows of the bank above them. The dead man's bronze Chrysler was no where in sight.

  Abruptly, the girl's whimpering stopped. She gasped, Pickett wheeled around.

  On the opposite bank, one arm rigid, pointing at the white face bobbing in the black water, stood Amy Mooring. Her face was as white.

  “Filth,” she whispered, her voice rising. “Filth—evil. I told you… I told you…”

  It was too much for the girl in the jeans. She made a sound half way between a cough and a gasp and slid senseless through her boyfriend's arms, curling into a fetal ball on the mud.

  8

  “I dunno, Homer, looks like suicide to me…”

  Sheriff Homer Beane swung the beam of his flashlight to Bodie Pickett's face. “Goddammit, boy, you best watch your mouth.”

  He splashed toward the bank on which Pickett sat, nearly losing his balance in the murky canal. His wake glittered through the circles of his deputies flashlights; the rays danced in the cavernous foliage of the canal as the deputies scattered before his onslaught.

  Pickett hunkered on the wet grass watching the sheriff lumber out of the inky water like the title creature in a low budget monster movie.

  “I ought a throw you in a cell right—”

  “Come off it, Homer. You got nothing on me but thirty years and a hundred pounds.”

  “I'll tell you what I got on you, boy. I got obstruction of justice, accessory after the fact—”

  “That's bullshit, and you know it. What you got is two corpses with their damn heads blown off and not one goddamn idea what to do about it, that's what you got.”

  “When I get hold a you I'm gone—”

  He lunged at Pickett as if he meant to increase the number of corpses by one. But by the time he hauled his wet bulk and sloshing waders up the short incline to where the other sat, Sheriff Homer Beane was spent. He dropped to the grass next to the taller man, the fight gone out of him with the wind. He motioned vaguely to his men, who stood knee deep in the black water grinning, and between great gulps of air he shouted:

  “What the hell you ladies gawking at?”

  And they began their random milling again, poking at the bank and canal bottom in an aimless search for nothing in particular.

  “They've been at it for at least an hour, Homer. What the hell you think they'll find down there?”

  “Murder weapon, maybe. Something. Anything. Hell, I won't know what they're gone find down there till they find it, now will I?”

  Homer Beane whipped out a handkerchief and blew his nose.

  “Nobody's gone know squat till we get that medical report anyways.”

  “You send him to Memorial?”

  “Whataya think that ambulance was for, smart ass? Take him to the airport?”

  Pickett laughed and shook his head.

  “What the hell was the siren for? You think maybe they could wake him up before they got there? Not that it'd matter much if they did.”

  “And whataya mean by that?”

  “What I mean is that the quack you got doing the butchering down there couldn't tell the difference anyhow. Look, Homer, you thought about calling in the Florida Bureau? They got the resources for this sort—”

  “No I aint thought about calling in the Florida Bureau, smart ass, because I aint gone call in the Florida Bureau. This happened in my county, and I'm gone get the sumbitch that done it.”

  He spat eloquently at the canal.

  He missed.

  One of the deputies—a skinny kid no more than 18—watched the spittle slide off the flat black housing of his state of the art Mag-Lite Adjustable Beam Flashlight. He looked up at Homer sheepishly:

  “Sorry, Sheriff.”

  “I'm gone get that sucker.” Apparently, Homer didn't mean the deputy. “And don't you worry none about that.”

  And that, said Homer's expression, was that.

  Pickett sighed and stared down into the grass. “How's the girl?”

  “Which?”

  “Amy.”

  “Aw, she's okay, I guess. Ed called her father, and he come and took her home.”

  Homer chuckled; it became a cough, then a wheeze. He pulled out the handkerchief again and mopped his brow.

  “Roger and Ed never did get along too good. Hell, I member when those two was just—”

  “How about the other two?”

  “The kids? They're okay I spose. The boy still didn't seem to know what was going on—white as a frog's belly when we had him look at the body again. Higher than hell.”

  Homer snorted and shook his head.

  “Just don't know where they get that stuff.” He scratched his belly thoughtfully. “The girl weren't worth much. In shock the doc said. No wonder—hell, drops by the creek for a little snort a coke and some grab-ass and prac'ly steps on a corpse.”

  Homer hawked, then spat at the canal again.

  This time the young deputy saw it coming. He stepped back out of the way, caught his boot on a cypress knee and went over backwards into the canal.

  A few half stifled laughs spluttered from the darkness.

  “Je-sus—” said Homer.

  “S-s-sorry, Sheriff,” said the deputy, pulling at his wet shirt.

  Homer looked down and shook his head. He spit on the wet earth between his legs.

  “Anyways,
I spose we got all there's to get from the boy. They'd just got there, seen the body, and the girl'd started hollering. Then you show up like the Lone Ranger, and…”

  The rest's history, Homer said with his hands. He stared at the canal for moment.

  “What was that Mooring kid doing down here anyway?”

  “She must've followed me from the party. She seemed pretty shook up herself.”

  “That gal's never been anything but. Hell, why Roger lets that kid run loose I don't—”

  “Anyone make the body?”

  “Naw… I'll get some pitures, show them around tomorrow. Don't expect nothing, though.”

  “How you figure that?”

  “Look, whoever dumped him cleaned him out—no wallet, nothing in his pockets… didn't want nobody knowing who he was. Would he a done that if anybody round here was likely to know him in the first place?”

  Pickett opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, Homer continued.

  “Hell no. This here's a city job. Some greaser gets knocked off in Orlando, or maybe Daytona, they drive him to Belle Haven, and dump him in the first lonely spot they come to.”

  “What about the car?”

  Homer shot to his feet and stuck a stubby forefinger at Pickett's face.

  “What the hell you know bout any car, boy?”

  “The car that dumped the guy here. Did anyone see the car?”

  “Look, boy, if you got something—”

  “Christ, Homer, would you get off my—”

  “If you're holding something back on me, boy, I'm gone jam an accessory rap so far up your shaggy ass you're gone think you had hard time for breakfast!”

  “Gimme a break. I just thought maybe the two kids had seen a car or something.”

  “You see a car, boy?”

  “I got here after the corpse, remember?”

  Pickett's voice was calm, but his eyes moved nervously under active brows.”If your two kids didn't see a car coming or going when they drove up, you're going to have one helluva time getting anywhere with that theory of yours. Anyway, why'd anyone drive a corpse from Orlando—or anywhere—through twenty miles of scrub with nobody around for miles just so they could dump it in Ed's backyard?”

  Homer bridled.

  “I don't know what you was doing up there at Ed's place—and I don't believe for a second you're in with that money crowd—but I don't wanna hear no more bout Ed's backyard. There aint nothing to connect this with Edmund Ayers or anyone else in this town, and less you know something I don't, which damn sure aint likely, get out a here. I got work to do.”

  He straightened, and headed back toward the canal, brushing at the seat of his pants. As he got to the edge, he turned.

  “But not too far.” He turned back to the canal, folding his arms. “I want you round for awhile.”

  Pickett stood and shook out the tightness in his legs. He walked back to the road past half a dozen county police cars, down it a couple hundred yards, then right onto Lake Drive. Ed's house was only a block farther down, across the one lane concrete bridge that spanned the canal. The moon had set long before, and down the canal to the right the deputies' flashlights cut a ghostly shadow dance out of the black air. Pickett walked the block to Ed's house and his car.

  The house was dark save for a blue glow in one upstairs window. As Pickett glanced up, a white face bobbed to the center of the blue rectangle. This one was alive; it belonged to Mark Ayers.

  The Nova again sat before the front door. Pickett sat with one hand on the wheel and the other on the ignition key, staring at his lap. He looked up, his eyes closed, took a deep breath, and turned the switch.

  The engine caught on the first try.

  Pickett smiled, draped a long arm over the seat, and guided the Nova back through Ed's artificial rain forest, and back to the street.

  He drove back across the canal bridge and turned off Lake back onto the canal road and towards town. He was following the slow curve of the road when his headlights flashed bronze in the scrub to the right of the road.

  The Nova slowed and turned onto the shoulder. The dead man's Chrysler was just visible, parked off the shoulder behind a copse of pine and sumac.

  Pickett drove on another fifty yards to the next intersection, took a left, and parked in the shadow of a cinder block sign that read in peeling white on pink, BELLE AIRE ESTATES/`WHERE A HOUSE IS A HOME'. He sprinted back to Lake past two rundown cinder block boxes that had given up trying to be homes 30 years before, and back along the shoulder toward the Chrysler.

  He opened the driver's door with a handkerchief and let the ceiling light burn. The keys were gone, and there was nothing in the front or back seat. In the glove compartment was an owner's manual and a rental agreement between Reasonable Rentals of Umatila and Herbert Purdy.

  He snapped the glove compartment shut and looked up to see headlight beams swinging around the curve from the lake. He pulled the door shut, cutting off the ceiling light, and lay down on the front seat.

  The lights passed, flashing across the dashboard above him.

  As he sat up again, another pair of lights began their sweep around the same curve. He quickly ran his hand inside the front seat, pulling out a nickel and two pennies, something sticky that smelled of mint, and a wad of paper. He stuffed the paper into his pocket, wiped the minty stuff on the dash, and climbed through the front window to the ground.

  Headlights flashed across the top of the car just as Pickett scrambled to his feet. He crouched in the Chrysler's shadow and waited.

  The engine revved down. The backup lights went on; blue lettering said: WEKIWA COUNTY SHERIFF. The Wekiwa County Sheriff said:

  “Back there, ass hole. You blind?” He was between Pickett and the Nova.

  Pickett rolled away from the Chrysler and into the foliage that bordered the canal. As he reached the water, the Wekiwa County Sheriff bellowed:

  “Use your gloves, for Chrissake. Jeez—”

  Pickett doubled back along the canal to the intersection where he'd left his car, then crept back to the road and sprinted across.

  The Nova ignited on the second try. Pickett drove off in the direction it was pointed. He didn't look back.

  9

  Bodie Pickett drove around Lake Anna then for another half mile on a dirt road that paralleled the Lake Faun canal. He slowed, squinting into the headlights and the wild growth on either side of the Nova.

  Banana trees appeared on the left. They dusted the top of a tin mailbox. “J. B. PICKETT” decorated the box in rough hand painted letters. Pickett turned the Nova down a muddy track on the other side of the mailbox and the banana trees.

  A moment later, the Nova rolled to a stop beneath the second story overhang of a small, two story garage-like structure. It was well off the road and hidden by thick vegetation that grew on and around the trunks of the large hickories and water oaks that shaded it. In the dark it looked abandoned.

  Cinder block pillars sunk into the gravel drive supported the overhang. Both stories jutted out slightly into the canal that tunneled through the dense foliage behind. A small screened-in porch above the canal mimicked the overhang above the carport. The floor below comprised a boat house whose walls descended to within six inches of the canal. Green clapboard sheathed the whole. It leaned comfortably against an ancient water oak on the right. It had probably been the chauffeur's quarters on an estate long since subdivided and lost to memory.

  Pickett unbent his long body and pushed himself from the Nova toward the door in front of him. He ran his hand along the top of the door frame, producing a key. He put it to the rusty padlock on the door and, after two tugs, pulled it open. Inside the door Pickett waved his hand around in the dark until he felt a string. He pulled it.

  He stood on a narrow dock that ran round three sides of the room, framing a slip that ran to two drooping wooden doors; if required to, they would open onto the canal. The chain and padlock that held them closed was orange with neglect. Dust and the
refuse of fishermen and drunks littered the decking. Slowly, he shuffled up a narrow stair to the left of the door.

  The one at the top of the stairs was unlocked.

  The upstairs room showed little to indicate that anyone had lived there. It was a long room with a kitchenette and small bath at the carport end, and a bed, small table, and a few chairs next to the porch door. Most of the windows faced the canal.

  Pickett lit a small table lamp next to the bed, then one of his black cigars.

  The cupboards were empty except for a few staples—and another pint of Jim Beam 90-proof. An inch of amber liquid remained in the bottom. The refrigerator yielded a couple of eggs and two potatoes, limp but unspoiled.

  He fried them up in some margarine from the freezer, and washed them down with the whiskey. He tossed the stub of his cigar into the sink, switched out the light, and undressed down to his jockey shorts.

  He lay down on the unmade bed. He breathed deeply several times, his lips pursed, then sighed, placing his hands behind his head, relaxing his mouth and closing his eyes.

  The headlights of a car flashed across the room and as suddenly went out. He sat bolt upright.

  Gravel popped beneath rolling tires; then nothing.

  Pickett crept to the window. The dark form of a sports car crouched behind his Nova.

  The stairs creaked.

  Pickett's eyes moved hurriedly over the table and kitchen counter. He picked up the empty bourbon bottle by the neck and flattened himself against the wall next to the door.

  The creaking stopped.

  Pickett braced himself.

  The tap of knuckle against wood broke the silence. After a moment, another tap; then a voice: “Mister P-p-pickett?”

  “Oh, for Chrissake—” Pickett threw the whiskey bottle into the sink and grabbed up his pants from the foot of the bed. “Who the hell is it?”

  “It's M-m-mark. Mark Ayers. Could I talk to you for a m-m-moment?”

  Pickett threw open the door. Mark jumped.

  “Oh! S-s-sorry to bother you but I have… I wanted to t-t-talk to you.”

  He was dressed as he'd been at the party—except that his tie was hanging loose at his neck, and the tailored grey suit looked as if it had been wrestling alligators. He caught Pickett's eye.