It was dark now. The signal from the Tampa station had faded, the music a dull murmur of static drowned out by the surf’s whisper.
And then, a plaintive meow.
Louis sat up, looking to the screen door. Issy’s black form was just visible outside. He rose and held the door open. The cat came onto the porch, pausing to look up at Katy.
“You have a cat?” she said.
“I told you I did.”
Issy came to her, arching her back against Katy’s leg. Katy set her beer bottle down and bent low, running her hand over the cat’s sides.
“What’s her name?”
“Issy.”
The cat suddenly bounded off into the cottage.
“Well, I think it’s time for me to go,” Katy said.
When she awkwardly tried to extricate herself from the lounge, Louis rose quickly and helped her to her feet. He reached inside the door and slapped the porch light switch. When Katy headed toward her truck, he followed.
She paused at her truck’s door, turning toward him.
“I thought you were bullshitting me about having a cat,” she said.
“I’m not much of a bullshitter.”
Her face, reflected in the porch light, was unreadable. She got in the truck but turned to him, elbow on the open window.
“Look,” she said. “I spent all day thinking about this. I still don’t think a Seminole would harm a panther but I am willing to let this investigation go where it needs to go. I want to find Grace and I want you to stay on the case. Do you want to?”
“Yes,” Louis said. “Call me in the morning and we’ll talk about our next move.”
She gave him a nod and started the truck.
“Your cat is really thin,” she said.
“I know.”
“How old is she?”
“I don’t know.” Louis hesitated. “I’m worried she dying.”
“Old cats get thyroid disease,” Katy said. “She’ll probably be okay with meds. Have her tested, okay?”
Before Katy could leave, Louis put a hand on the open window.
“Can I ask you something personal?” he said.
“Sure.”
“What clan do you belong to?”
She hesitated. “Snake.”
“Not my first guess,” he said.
She gave him an odd smile and jammed the truck into drive, pulling out of the yard.
Louis watched until the tail lights disappeared down Captiva Drive then went back into the cottage. Issy was waiting by her empty bowl in the kitchen. He poured a bag of Tender Vittles into her bowl and sat at the counter, watching her as she ate.
When she was finished, he picked her up, grabbed a fresh beer and went back to the porch. There he sat, watching the silver curtain of rain move in from Gulf and stroking Issy’s thinning fur.
CHAPTER NINE
The thing was lying in the middle of the road.
At first Louis thought it was a big log but after he slowly moved the Jeep ahead, he hit the brakes hard.
Alligator. It was a damn alligator.
It was at least twelve feet long and it was sprawled straight across the width of the dirt road.
Louis inched closer until the fat tires were almost touching the thing. It didn’t move.
Louis stood up in the seat and scanned the sides of the road but the brush was too thick and soggy so there was no way to turn around. And by his calculations he had left the paved road at least five miles back so he wasn’t about to go back all that way in reverse.
He had been out here for almost two hours already, driving around in circles in the open vehicle. He had a headache from the sun baking his head and his kidneys felt like they were going to fall out from all the jostling. He wasn’t sure he was even on the right road.
He looked back at the gator and laid hard on the horn.
The thing still didn’t budge. Didn’t even move a slitted eye in his direction.
Fuck!
He looked in the back for something he could throw. Nothing but a big empty Coleman cooler. He had a water bottle but he wasn’t about to sacrifice that. There was probably a jack and crowbar somewhere but he’d be damned if he was going to get out and look. He glanced down at the holster on the passenger seat. With one eye on the gator, he slipped out the Glock, pointed it at the dirt and fired.
The alligator gave a loud hiss and slithered off into the brush.
Louis holstered the Glock, sat back down behind the wheel and continued down the rutted dirt road.
This trip had seemed like a good idea this morning when he went into the station to pick up the four-wheel drive Mobley had promised him.
The cop manning the desk in the garage was named Sergeant Sweet, but he had given Louis the same sour look all the cops had been giving him. The rogue PI, riding his way into the department on an EEOC horse. That’s what they all thought. Sweet asked Louis if he was “working the panther thing.”
When Louis said he was, the sergeant said his ten-year-old daughter had started a petition in her class to get the Florida panther named the state animal and she was sad about the one that had gone missing.
“Find the damn cat,” the sergeant said. “I don’t want to have to tell my kid the thing is dead.”
Then he handed over the keys to a souped-up Jeep that had been commandeered from a drug raid and told Louis that he should check out “the weirdos out in the swamp camps.”
There were hundreds of hunting camps on private land in the Everglades, the sergeant explained. After the federal government created the preserves in the seventies, the camps were grandfathered in and a handful still existed, handed down from one generation to the next.
Most were down south of I-75 but there was one just a few miles from where Grace had disappeared, the sergeant said. It was called Hell’s Hammock.
Be careful, he added, they’re all mouth-breathers who love their guns and hate the government. And that includes anyone wearing a badge.
Louis hadn’t told anyone else where he was going. He hadn’t even called Katy.
It wasn’t just the fact that the swamp camp men were bound to be hostile to a strange black man let alone a woman ranger. He was shutting her out for now because this was his world — going after dirt bags in a possibly dangerous situation. She didn’t belong here.
He would tell her later. His plan right now was simple: just quietly look around and check these guys out.
If he could find them.
Sergeant Sweet wasn’t sure exactly where Hell’s Hammock was. The directions were vague, just landmarks mainly. About halfway across I-75, he was supposed to watch for a gravel service road just past the first rest stop. Louis had found the road but deep into a jungle of palmetto palms it began to narrow. The brush created a tunnel so thick and close Louis had to shift in the seat toward the middle to keep from getting scraped.
The road forked and dead-ended a couple times, forcing Louis to back up and look for landmarks he had missed. The sergeant had said to watch for an American flag tied to a tree and turn left, but the only thing hanging from trees out here was Spanish moss.
Damn. Another dead-end. And this one looked like he wasn’t even going to be able to back out. He glanced down at the police radio on the seat but the signal had died miles ago.
He downshifted and eased the Jeep forward. There was a patch of sunlight ahead. And a tatter of a faded old flag hanging limp from a tree.
After a left turn, the thicket opened into a small clearing. He went another twenty yards then stopped, taking stock. There were three buildings, crudely made from plywood and topped with tin roofs. The largest of the three had small windows covered with shutters and a sagging porch. The other two buildings were small, probably a storage shed and an outhouse. There were no vehicles of any kind to be seen.