Looking through the night vision scope was like trying to see through a green marble. I fiddled with the focus without success but did decipher something moving near the highway. I lowered the scope and was about to use my flashlight when another eighteen-wheeler zoomed past and illuminated what I was seeing. It was a person running-a woman, which became apparent when she paused to catch her breath only fifty yards away. I called out, “Are you okay?”
It startled her-and startled Birdy, too, whose attention was elsewhere. “I’m not deaf!” she snapped, and switched on her flashlight. She was kicking at something on the ground.
“I’m going to talk to her,” I said.
“Who?”
“The woman we almost hit,” I said. She was jogging toward us now, attracted by our voices or the light. Didn’t say a word until her last few wobbly strides, but then spoke to us in a rush, saying, “I need to use your phone! You gotta help me.” The accent was Caribbean, a singsong rhythm that didn’t fit her urgency.
Birdy swung the flashlight but was polite enough not to blind the woman. She was pale-skinned, tall, and so emaciated it suggested anorexia or illness. I also got the impression her arms were heavily tattooed, but that might have been an illusion. The harsh lighting had distorted the color of the scrubs she wore. They were prison orange, not yellow. Instantly, Birdy, the amateur archaeologist, became Deputy Liberty Tupplemeyer.
“Mind telling us your name?” Birdy switched off the flashlight to calm matters, but her hardass attitude scared the woman.
“Don’t let ’em take me,” she said. “Even if you’re cops, don’t let them no matter what they say. Please.” Then backed away, taking nervous glances over her shoulder.
She was referring to the clinic, I assumed, or maybe she meant prison, but it didn’t matter. Her pleading tone was heartbreaking. The woman was exhausted, near tears, and out here all alone. I said, “No one’s taking you anywhere until we get this straightened out,” then walked toward her, moving slowly as if approaching a creature that had been wounded.
“You mean it?”
I told her, “I’m not a cop, but I want to help. Why were you screaming?”
The woman was still edging away and worried about someone surprising her from the road, which is where she was looking. She started to explain, “You’d scream, too, if they-” But then her breath caught as if she’d seen something, and she whispered, “Dear god.”
“What did those men do to you?” I asked. “We heard them yelling.” Then I told Birdy, “Call nine-one-one.”
The woman was focused on something in the distance and it took her a moment to react. “Not the police!” she said, then hurried toward me, pleading, “You have a car? Take me with you! At least let me use your phone!”
Birdy tried to get between us, saying, “Back off,” but I handed the woman my phone anyway, which surprised them both. Birdy’s body language showed disapproval but then softened when the woman hurried away to dial. “Poor thing looks half starved,” Birdy said. “If someone hurt her, I’ll have their ass.”
I was trying to eavesdrop when two shadows materialized near the road and floated toward us-two men who had seen our light and were closing the distance. At the same instant, a police car rocketed past, blue lights spinning but no siren, then braked hard at the clinic gate. Birdy saw the car, too.
“Sheriff’s department,” she said. “Good. I wonder if that trucker called.”
I listened to the woman say into the phone, “Answer, damn you,” before I told Birdy, “We’re not going to let those guys touch her. Are they orderlies, you think?”
Birdy turned to look. “Jesus, I didn’t notice. You have any ID on you?”
We were about to be caught trespassing, I realized, which didn’t worry me. Police would consider it a duty, not a crime, to check on the welfare of a pedestrian we’d almost killed, so I continued to eavesdrop, hearing the woman mutter a profanity when she got voice mail. Then she left a message, which I strained to hear, the woman saying, “It’s me! You gotta get me out tonight. Crystal… pick up the phone!”
Crystal? I edged closer, but there was nothing else to hear because a spotlight came on, panned the field briefly, then froze the woman in its beam.
“Brenita!” a man yelled. “When you gonna stop this silliness and come eat your dinner?” His voice mimicked kindness but actually taunted her. The woman, Brenita, stood rigid for a moment, then dropped my phone and ran toward the cypress strand where the pond created an emptiness in the trees.
The man hollered, “I’ve got your meds in my pocket!” talking as if he would reward her with ice cream, but Brenita continued running, so he said, “Shit!” then listened to his partner ask, “Who the hell are those two?” Meaning us. And then a second spotlight blinded us.
I turned my face away, worried that Brenita was unaware of the pond and of the animals that fed there, while Birdy went into full-on cop mode. She hollered back, “After you take that goddamn light out of our eyes, I’ll show you my badge! Then you can explain what you did to that woman-we heard her screaming, assholes!”
The lights went off, and I imagined the men stiffening to attention, before one of them replied, “How were we supposed to know you’re a cop?”
A minute later, I had retrieved my phone and was telling Birdy, “I think that woman knows Crystal Helms. How many felons you’ve heard of named Crystal?” The area code was local, and I was debating on whether to memorize the number or risk sharing my childhood friend’s number with police.
Birdy nodded, interested in the Helms connection, then added a link of her own. “The reason I didn’t see those guys coming was I was looking for more of these.” She switched on her flashlight and pointed it at a large conch shell nested in the earth.
“Look familiar?”
Yes, it did. The tip of the conch had been sawed cleanly, similar to the ceremonial shell horn we had found on Cushing Key.
Birdy had guessed right about where trucks had dumped the earth and artifacts taken from Sulfur Wells.
21
The next morning, from my SUV, I was about to dial what I hoped was Crystal Helms’s number for the third time when Tomlinson called with news. Ford’s retriever would be delivered by a van service around eight that evening, hopefully before sunset.
“Think you can handle the animal?” he asked.
Mindful of his comments to Birdy, I said, “As long as he doesn’t get too attached-I’d hate to hurt anyone’s feelings.”
“Won’t happen,” Tomlinson said. “That dog’s sensitivity chip wasn’t installed, and I sorta wonder about the way his brain’s wired, too. It’s a match made in heaven, now that I think about it. Him and Doc, I mean-not you.”
I had met the dog, who was a stubborn animal, but at least he didn’t yap or hump, and I replied that I was looking forward to spending the next few nights at Dinkin’s Bay. Then asked about Ford, saying, “Any news?”
Tomlinson replied with a Ho ho ho Santa laugh. “Doc never makes contact when he’s traveling. Like a sort of a religious thing with him-he doesn’t want to interrupt the flow of whatever bizarre experience he’s enjoying. Different planes of existence with that dude… or moral boundaries. I’ve never been whacked enough to inquire. Or had the balls.”
“There’s fighting going on in Venezuela,” I told him. “Almost a war, according to the Internet.”
“Perfect. Then our boy’s happy as a pig in clover. Probably shopping for a beach time-share, hoping the kimchi really hits the fan.”