She glanced down. Lonnie was smoking a cigarette, looking across the darkened midway. A movement caught her eye. Someone in the shadows. A man wearing a hooded sweatshirt. He was standing between the RV's, campers and trailers, someone staring up at her. Even from the distance, she felt there was something wrong with the way the man was looking at her. The fairgrounds suddenly darkened. Courtney looked to the sky as a cloud shadow-danced over the face of the moon, and she thought of her grandmother. Her Irish grandma, someone who spoke Gaelic and Irish cant, was believed by many to be a psychic. She used to say that Courtney’s ability to see things, to get a feeling that something or someone was not right — that something was about to happen, was a gift from a higher power. “It skips a generation, baby girl,” Grandma told her one spring night on the steps of her grandmother's small home in South Boston. “Your mother never got it. Neither did your sister, but you sure did.”
She remembered looking into her grandmother’s sea-green eyes, eyes that smiled with insight and absolute love. “Use your gift wisely, Courtney.” People, mostly from the clan, the Irish travelers — the gypsies, called the old woman a mystic, and they'd consult her for all kinds of things. Some wanted to know about the future. Others wanted to know how to hide their past to protect their future. A few wanted to reach out to dead relatives. Most things, Courtney figured, based on the conversations she overheard between Grandma and her clients, had to do with sex. The lack of it. Too much of it. Men chasin’ it, and women fakin’ it. It’s all crap, really.
Courtney looked down at Lonnie, her seat rocking slightly as she leaned over the safety bar. He waved and started the wheel again. Courtney closed her eyes as she descended, the wind in her face, her thoughts over the horizon. As she rotated closer to the ground, she looked toward the operator’s stand.
The horror hit her in the gut.
Please, God, no. She held her hand to her mouth and screamed, her lower lip trembling. She felt sick. She looked down a second time. Maybe Lonnie would stand up and say he was joking. But she knew the way he was lying in the sawdust he was hurt, maybe killed, his left leg twisted behind him.
Courtney knew that Lonnie Ebert wasn’t going to stand up. And she knew the man in the hooded sweatshirt was the killer.
But she didn’t know why.
2
The image could have been a hallucination. I was that tired, physically and mentally exhausted. I flashed on my high beams. A ground fog was building in the night, and the high beams did nothing to help me see what I believed was a girl walking on the shoulder of the road. Nothing there. Maybe a deer. I stuck my head out the open window of my Jeep driving down County Road 314 through the heart of the Ocala National Forest. Max, my ten-pound dachshund, was curled on the passenger seat, fast asleep. It was near midnight, and I was glad there was no other traffic on what was undoubtedly one of the darkest highways in the nation.
The road twisted through canopies of ancient live oaks, thick branches stretching high over the highway and blocking out what little light was coming from the moon. I'd spent all day sanding and repainting the bottom of Jupiter, my vintage 38-foot Bayliner at Ponce Marina near Daytona Beach. I would have stayed overnight on the boat if it weren't hauled into the yard, propped up with jack-stands and blocks. Tomorrow, Jupiter would take her place back at slip L-17. Now I was heading home to my old house on the St. Johns River.
The image returned, ghostlike through the fog. A young woman, maybe a teenager, definitely walking on the side of the road. She wore jeans and a blue T-shirt, walking slowly, too near the pavement to be safe. Not that it was safe walking down a rural stretch of highway late at night through the heart of a national forest known as much for its body count as its beauty. It was the same forest where convicted serial killer Aileen Wuornos had left some of her victims. And it had a history of murder and bloodshed dating back to the Spaniards slaughter of the native people.
The girl didn’t stop walking when I slowed down and pulled up beside her. Max awoke and stood on her hind legs, bracing to peer out the open window. I asked, “Can I give you a ride to wherever you're going? This is not the safest place in the nation to be taking an evening stroll.”
No response. The girl kept walking, hugging her arms in the humid night air, the chant of cicadas echoing through the dark forest. She swatted a mosquito. I drove slowly, keeping pace with her. “The mosquitoes will eat you alive out here. Look, I'm not trying to do anything but help you.”
Max barked. The girl stopped and turned toward us. She said, “I don't need your help. Please, just go away. Leave me alone, okay?”
She looked at Max and the girl's agitated face softened for a second, a tiny smile at one side of her mouth. She bit her top lip and started walking. I could tell she'd been crying for a while. Eyes swollen, red blotches on her face, hair tangled like she'd been running before walking, running away from something or running to something. Even through the mosquito welts, through the confused and hurt face, she was a pretty young woman. And she was someone who might be zipped into a body bag if she walked this road all night.
The T-shirt had two dark stains across her waist, like she'd wiped blood on her shirt. Something had caused her world to come crashing down, at least from her perspective something bad had happened. Right now the only thing that mattered was her safety. She was somebody's daughter, and she was all alone in a dark and dangerous place where no one should be alone.
I said, “You're hurting Max's feelings.”
She stopped again, looked at us, leaned closer to the window and said, “Excuse me?”
I smiled and Max cocked her head. Then Max did her little half bark. Sort of her way of asking, “What's up?” The girl smiled. It was a natural, beautiful smile. Her eyes, even from the spill light of my dashboard, were mesmerizing. They were wide, the striking look of the irises was even more pronounced because of the dark circles wrapped around the color. They were the shade of golden light through emeralds, and they were very frightened eyes.
She inhaled deeply through her nose, and looked back down the long, dark highway. An owl called out from one of the live oaks, the grunt of bullfrogs coming from the swamp. I could smell smoke from a hunter's camp somewhere in the deep woods. I said, “Please, get in the Jeep. I'll take you into DeLand. It's about twenty miles away. Are you a student at Stetson?”
“I've never been to college. Look, I appreciate your generosity. I can tell you’re a nice guy. But I'm gonna be okay. I just need some space away from people. Your dog's cute.”
“I can understand how you need space, but there are better places to find quiet time. I’m Sean O'Brien. What's your name?”
“Courtney Burke.”
“Nice to meet you Courtney. I live near here in an old house by the river. I've been sanding, painting, and working in a boatyard at Ponce Marina all day. Let me take you into town. There's a Waffle House open all night. Do you need money to catch a bus?”
She rolled her eyes, crossed her arms, and said, “No thanks.” She coughed, reached into her pocket and removed an asthma inhaler — taking a long hit from it.
“Are you okay?”
She nodded, breathing deeply now through her nose, her eyes moist. “Yes.”
“Look, Courtney, I'm too tired to hang out here on a dark road about five miles from where police found a body last month, less than fifty feet off the highway. A runaway teenage girl. She'd been dumped like trash. Now, please, get in the Jeep.”
She leaned closer to the open window and looked at me, studying my face for a long moment, a small gold Celtic cross hanging from her long neck. “You said your name's Sean O'Brien, right?”