Arlis coughed and touched fingertips to the side of his neck. His jugular vein was throbbing like a snare drum and the resonant pressure inside his skull was beginning to produce the first warning signs of a killer headache. He had suffered headaches often enough in recent weeks to recognize the signs. His head had been hurting, anyway, because of the beating that scum killer Perry had given him, but the pain coming into his head now was different. It was a sharp, accelerating pain, as if glass splinters were circulating through his bloodstream.
One more stroke, the doctor had told Arlis, and he’d spend the rest of his life in a bed with tubes stuck up him front and rear so that he wouldn’t mess himself. Like a vegetable, in other words, or some wounded animal, unable to speak or fend for himself.
A box in a cemetery was a better option, as far as he was concerned.
But not now, not yet. Not before he had found help and returned to rescue Ford. It didn’t matter if Ford was dead or alive, Arlis felt honor-bound to come back for the man. Just as he was honor bound to do his best later to help recover the bodies of the other two, Tomlinson and the boy.
It was his trip. The least he could do was return and help clean up the mess he had caused.
Arlis touched two fingers to his neck again, checking his pulse, and he thought, I’ll rest here for a while. Not long. It’s better than my brain exploding before I find help. I can’t screw this up. Not again.
In his lifetime, Arlis had failed one hell of a lot more often than he had succeeded. Maybe it was that way with most men, he didn’t know—but he doubted that was true. He had owned too many businesses that had gone bust. He had led too many fishing or hunting or salvage expeditions that had gone south for one reason or another. Never in his life, though, had he experienced so much tragedy in the short space of a day—and it was nobody’s fault but his own.
I’m a Jonah, he thought. I’ve always been bad luck. And things ain’t gonna change now that I’m near the end.
The truth of that thought flooded Arlis with weariness. A lifetime of failure was bad enough—but to take the lives of two, maybe three, trusting men with him, as he himself approached his last days, was almost too much to handle.
Quit flogging yourself, take a breather, Arlis told himself. Dying now, with no one around, would only make this nightmare of a day even worse.
As his breathing slowed, yet another hallucination moved through the saw grass, into his ears, because he heard a sudden shrill whistle and then a man’s voice calling again, the jumbled words telling him, “Hey, we’re over . . . Lost our . . . Hello? We need lights . . . Bones . . . something big. Shovel and a rope . . . !”
Arlis replied before he could catch himself. “Who’s there? Where are you?” He spoke softly and then turned his head to listen.
There was no answer.
Arlis felt like a fool. He had suspected it, but now he knew for certain. He was imagining the voices. It had happened to him before, and he felt a descending helplessness, like a prisoner in his own damaged skull.
The first time a blood vessel had burst in Arlis’s brain, something similar had happened. He’d been out fishing for trout in his little green Beck boat, dragging lures on bamboo poles, when he’d felt a searing electric pain inside his head.
Next thing Arlis remembered, he was belly down on the deck of the boat—the boat running free, idling in a tight circle—as a woman’s voice spoke to him, calling, “Arlis Futch, you old fool. Wake up! Wake up before you kill your boat and yourself on some damn oyster bar!”
That had been a hallucination, no question, because the voice he had heard was the voice of a woman who had been dead for several years. A pretty woman Arlis had once loved named Hannah Smith.
Hannah had fished for a living, as good as any man and better than most, and she’d had fine, heavy breasts and a good laugh. That woman had loved him, too, at least a little, even though she was young enough and pretty enough to have just about any man she wanted. But Hannah Smith had too much heart and body hunger to settle for just one man.
Hannah had loved men. She didn’t bother pretending it wasn’t true when she was alive, so Arlis didn’t bother to pretend after she was dead.
There was nothing wrong with that, Arlis had told himself when he and Hannah were alone together. He had forgiven her long ago—not that Hannah had asked for forgiveness—and he had forgiven most of the men, too, which included Marion Ford, who, Hannah didn’t mind saying, was maybe the man she had loved best of all.
Well . . . Arlis had almost forgiven Ford. Sharing Hannah’s bed was one thing, but for a man to win her love was another. Arlis still sometimes felt the narrowing constriction of fear and focus that was jealousy, if he let his mind linger on the subject. But that wasn’t often—and it would be far less now if Ford actually was dead.
Maybe he was. The gunshots Arlis had heard sounded solitary and irrevocable, like an execution.
Chances were, King and Perry had killed the man.
It would come as no surprise, if true. Ford was a good enough man by most ways of measuring, but he had always struck Arlis as being too bookish to be a dependable partner in a down-and-dirty fight. Ford had been okay in a tussle or two around the docks—Arlis had witnessed it—but Doc was an educated man, better with words and numbers than his fists. A smart-talking biologist would be no match for two low-life murderers who were desperate and on the run.
Marion Ford is dead. Arlis whispered the words to see how it felt to say them. If it was true, he would soon have to get used to saying it because almost everyone on the islands knew Doc Ford and liked him.
The words felt worse than he could have imagined because the next thought that came into Arlis’s mind was Doc’s dead, and I ran away and left him there to die alone!
Arlis could admit that he had failed many times over the years, but he had never before abandoned a friend in a tight spot. True, Ford had insisted that he escape if he had the chance—no mistaking the signals the man had given him, nor the words Doc had spoken.
Even so, to run away and allow a partner to be shot to death was a sorry damn thing to do, and Arlis felt the weariness in him begin to change to anger. Running away like a coward wasn’t how he wanted to be remembered, if anyone remembered him at all—which was unlikely—but he himself knew it. And God, of course, knew it, too.
The more he thought about it, the madder he got.
By God, I’ll make it out of here, and nothing’s going to stop me, Arlis thought. I’ll bring the law back to nail those Yankee punks and maybe get in a few shots of my own.
That was exactly what he would do.
Arlis began to feel a little better now that he was angry instead of sad and tired. He wasn’t running away. He was creating some distance so he could come back and take his revenge. This time, though, he would be carrying a revolver, not his old Winchester. If the cops got sloppy, if they didn’t search him, he would pull the thing and shoot down King and Perry both—maybe put a round in Perry’s belly first before finishing him off.
Arlis Futch knew he didn’t have long to live, anyway. A year at most, the doctors had told him.
If he got lucky and shot the two killers, the cops would lock him in jail and probably charge him with murder.
As Arlis leaned against the tree, his heart calming, he thought, So what?
Arlis picked up the tire iron. He saw that the truck was returning to the lake—the bastards had given up their search pretty damn fast, which was fine with him.