Ford stood thinking for a moment, considering the scene before him. Was it murder, or was it suicide?
On the corpse's left foot was a pale leather boat shoe, no sock. His right foot was bare, the matching shoe on the ground four feet in front of him and to the left—his feet weren't tied and he had done some kicking. A man intent on hanging himself wouldn't tie his own legs, and that was a vote for suicide. His hands weren't tied either, hanging limp beside the distended belly, and that made it look even more like suicide. Rafe had been six two, two twenty-five, maybe; a big man. There was no way he could have been forced into a noose and up onto the chunk of log that lay nearby if his hands were free, unless he was already unconscious. But if he was unconscious, could he have kicked a shoe off? Ford didn't know. Besides, the shoe might have been placed—weren't some murderers supposed to be clever?
Ford stood on his toes and studied the face more closely. The vultures had made it impossible to tell if his friend had been beaten. Ford touched the bloated right hand for a moment, turned it and looked for rope burns on the underside of the wrist. There were none. On the left wrist was a Seiko dive watch, the lens shattered and green hands stopped at 2:18. A.M. or P.M.? Probably P.M. the previous day, judging from the condition of the body. Only a few hours after Ford spoke with him on the phone. The heat and the vultures had had plenty of time to do their work.
Ford lifted the watch bracelet and studied the pale wrist skin beneath, then moved around to the back of the body and considered the noose. The knot attached to the tree limb was one of those overtied messes that formed a kind of loop so the running end could pass over the limb and through. The noose was formed by the same kind of bad slipknot, and it had cut into the corpse's neck, judging from the dried blood. These weren't Rafe's kind of knots, no way. He'd spent too many days on the water, working boats. The bad knots were a strong vote for murder; to Ford, in fact, they seemed conclusive. Rafe had made it clear he believed someone was after him.
Ford walked quickly away, took a breath. He looked back for a moment, used his shirt to clean his glasses, then began a slow search of the area. He didn't know what he was looking for—footprints maybe—but the ground was like mulch and didn't hold any. He poked his head into the cabin and waited for his eyes to adjust. The cabin was a mess, as if it had been ransacked. There were canned goods scattered, some clothes in a heap, a half bottle of Southern Comfort right in the doorway, six cans of Copenhagen snuff torn out of a cellophane tube, a snapshot of a little brown-haired boy with the words Jake Age 5 written on the back. Ford almost picked up the photograph, then caught himself. He wrapped his right hand in a towel and held the photograph to the light. The child had Rafe's cleft chin, the same high cheeks, and dark, dark eyes: a bright, innocent face, open to the world. He considered putting the photograph back as he had found it, but stuck it in his pocket instead. Still using the towel, he opened the Southern Comfort and poured a quarter of the bottle over the vulture bite, letting the alcohol sting.
Outside, he stared at the dark doorway for a time, then remembered one more place he might look. When he and Rafe built the cabin, they had found need of a place they could hide things they didn't want stolen, or didn't want to leave in plain view of their guests—high school girls, mostly. It took him a while to find it, a huge old gumbo limbo tree halfway down the back side of the mound with a hole near the base of the trunk. Ford got down on his knees, fished around inside, and pulled out a package of something—a cellophane mess, black with eighteen years of humidity, TROJAN CONDOMS barely legible on the cover. Ford threw the package into the bushes, then reached in again. This time he touched something geometric, metallic, and retrieved a small fireproof box. He snapped the latches and flipped open the lid. Inside was a blue spiral-bound address book, two one-hundred-dollar bills, a large empty plastic sack, and something in a cloth bag. Ford pulled the drawstrings and dumped the contents out of the bag. He sat, staring. There were several pieces of intricately carved jade, tiny parrots and pre-Columbian god figures with bleak, drilled eyes. There were also two bright-green gemstones among the jade. The stones were large, each about the size of a robin's egg, roughly cut, multifaceted, pulsing with light in the dusty sun rays that filtered through the tree canopy.
Emeralds.
As he returned the stones and the notebook to the box, the plastic sack caught his attention. It wasn't completely empty. Gathered in one corner were small beige flakes of something; something that looked like dried leaves. Ford dipped his finger in, aware of a familiar smell; a smell similiar to that of old leather. He stood quietly for a time, thinking, then put everything back into the metal box, latched it, and carried it slowly back up the mound.
The wind had turned the body so that it now faced the cabin. The vultures were back at work, and it was when Ford averted his eyes that he noticed the note for the first time: a piece of paper tacked to the avocado tree, hanging there like some kind of public notice. Ford stood looking at the note without touching it. Finally he took a few steps closer, reading: It is nobodys fault. I just can't take it no more. Rafe Hollins
Ford rocked back and forth on his heels, back and forth, staring. Finally he ripped the note away, carried it out into the sunlight, and read it again. Then he folded it carefully and put it in his pocket.
Damn.
He stood on the high mound looking at the bay. The bay glittered in a grid of harsh afternoon light. It would be dark within two hours, and it was a forty-five-minute boat trip back to Sanibel Island. Ford stood thinking hard, hating his own indecision, then turned suddenly.
In the boat he found old three-strand nylon rope. He carried the rope back up the mound and used it to tie the bloated hands and legs. Finally he forced the shoe back onto the corpse's swollen foot.
TWO
The last thing Ford did was jot down the registration numbers of the trihull boat tied to the mangroves. He also made a fast trip around the perimeter of the island, kicking grass and mud the whole way, making sure there wasn't a second boat still hidden somewhere.
There was not.
On the trip back he stopped at a bayside restaurant that had a phone booth and started to dial the sheriff's department in Fort Myers, but then remembered that Sandy Key and Tequesta Bank were in Everglades County, just across the line. He got the number of the local sheriff's department from the front of the book. He told the woman who answered: "A man named Rafe Hollins has been murdered. You can find his body on Tequesta Bank," and immediately hung up. At a 7-Eleven he bought a quart of beer—Coors in a bottle—then got in his boat and headed straight out into the Gulf, needing air. The sun grew huge at dusk, pale as a Japanese moon, and Sanibel Island materialized on the horizon as a thin black line on the gray flexure of sea.
It was nearly dark by the time he got to Lighthouse Point, and he ran beneath the causeway and turned south into Dinkin's Bay. At the mouth of the bay was a strand of beach where there were coconut palms and secluded piling homes. Jessica McClure lived alone in the last house, an old clapboard place with a tin roof that was built on a point among the gumbo limbo and casuarina pines. In his first weeks on Sanibel, he'd had occasional glimpses of Jessica standing at her easel on the dock: a striking figure in faded jeans and T-shirt, a tall, lithe woman with a private, introspective expression but a friendly wave. They finally met one morning when Ford was wading the sandbar across the channel from her house, digging beak-throwers more than a foot long with chitinous beaks and pairs of wicked-looking black teeth. Jessica had watched from the dock for a time, then climbed into her little wooden skiff and puttered over. She had waved again as she got out of the boat, strode to his side, and peered into one of the collecting buckets.