"Oh God, no...."
He saw that she'd spilled the Coke, and that she didn't even know it.
"God, I'm so sorry," she was saying. "I swear, I didn't-will she be all right?"
Jim Tile offered a handful of paper napkins. Edie tried to sop the soda off her lap. Her hands were shaky.
"I didn't know," she said, more than once. She recalled the engraving on the mother's wedding band, the one that Snapper had stolen. "Cynthia" was the name on the ring, the mother of the trooper's girlfriend.
Now Edie felt close to the crime. Now she felt truly sick.
Jim Tile said, "The doctors think she'll be OK."
All Edie could do was nod; she was tapped out. The trooper turned up the volume of the police radio. When they reached the mainland, he stopped at a boarded-up McDonald's. The hurricane had blown out the doors and windows.
A teal-blue compact was parked under a naked palm tree. A man in a green Day-Glo rain poncho was sitting on the hood; from the sharp creases, it appeared that his poncho was brand-new. The man hopped down when he saw the Highway Patrol car.
"Who's that?" Edie asked.
"Watch out for broken glass," Jim Tile said.
"You're leaving me here?"
"Yes, ma'am."
When Edie Marsh got out, the man got in. The trooper told him to shut the door and fasten his seat belt. Edie didn't back away from the car; she just stood there, crossing her arms in a halfhearted sulk. The effect was impaired by the slashing rain, which caused her to blink and squint, and by the stormy wind, which made her hair thrash like a pom-pom.
Through the weather she shouted at Jim Tile: "What am I supposed to do now?"
"Count your blessings," he said. Then he made a U-turn and headed back toward Key Largo.
Bonnie gave Augustine a nervous kiss before she left camp with Skink. Her husband was on his way. They were to meet at the road.
Alone, Augustine tried to read, huddled in the old ambulance to keep the pages dry. But he couldn't concentrate. His imagination was inventing dialogue for Bonnie and Max's reunion. In his head there were two versions of the script; one for a sad good-bye, one for I'm-sorry-let's-try-again.
Part of him expected not to see Bonnie again, expected her to change her mind and fly back to New York. Augustine had accustomed himself to such letdowns.
On the other hand, none of his three ex-fiancees would have lasted so long in the deep woods without a tantrum or a scene. Bonnie Lamb was very different from the others. Augustine hoped she was different enough not to run away.
Despite his emotional distress, Augustine kept a watch on Snapper, still zonked from the monkey tran-quilizer. It wouldn't be long before the dumb cracker woke up blathering. Except for the cheap pinstripe suit, he reminded Augustine of the empty-eyed types his father used to hire as boat crew.
Another thing that got him thinking about his old man was the lousy weather. Augustine recalled a gray September afternoon when his father had dumped sixty bales overboard in the mistaken belief that an oncoming vessel was a Coast Guard patrol, when in fact it was a Hatteras full of hard-drinking surgeons on their way to Cat Cay. The marijuana bobbed on seven-foot swells in the Gulf Stream while Augustine's father frantically recruited friends, neighbors, cousins, dock rats and Augustine himself for the salvage. Using boat hooks and fish gaffs, they retrieved all but four bales, which were snatched up by the agile crew of a passing Greek tanker. Later that night, when the load was safe and drying in a warehouse, Augustine's father threw a party for his helpers. Everybody got stoned except Augustine, who was only twelve years old at the time. Already he knew he wasn't cut out for his old man's fishing business.
Augustine climbed out of the ambulance and stretched. A redtailed hawk hunted in tight circles above the campsite. Augustine walked over to the place where Snapper slept. The governor had left the hurricane money lying in the suitcase, reeking of urine. Augustine nudged Snapper with his shoe. Nothing. He grasped The Club and turned the man's head back and forth. He was as limp as a rag doll. The motion caused a slight stir and a sleepy gargle, but the eyelids remained closed. Augustine lifted one of Snapper's hands and pinched a thumbnail, very hard. The guy didn't flinch.
Dreamland, thought Augustine. No need to tie him up.
He found the sight and sound of Lester Maddox Parsons particularly depressing when married to the fear that Bonnie Lamb wasn't coming back. Sharing camp with a shitbird criminal had no appeal. The smell of fast-moving rain, the high coasting of the hawk, the cool green embrace of the hardwoods-all spoiled by Snapper's sour presence.
Augustine couldn't wait there anymore. It was worse than being alone.
Jim Tile said, "Where's the young man?"
"Library," said Skink.
They were in the trooper's car, near the trail upon which Skink had led Bonnie to the road. She and her husband were sitting side by side on one of the metal rails that ran the perimeter of Crocodile Lakes. The police car was parked seventy-five yards away; it was the best that Jim Tile and Skink could offer for privacy. Even from that distance, in the rain, Max Lamb was highly visible in the neon poncho.
"His old man's in prison." Skink was still talking about Augustine. "You'll love this: She says he was conceived in a hurricane."
"Which one?"
"Donna."
Jim Tile smiled. "That's something."
"Thirty-two years later: another storm, another beginning. The boy's star-crossed, don't you think?"
The trooper chuckled. "I think you're full of it." There was affection in the remark. "What's the story with the father?"
"Smuggler," Skink said, "and not a talented one."
Jim Tile considered that for a moment. "Well, I like the young man. He's all right."
"Yes, he is."
The trooper put on the windshield wipers. They could see-by the movement of the poncho-that Bonnie's husband was up and pacing.
"Him I don't envy," Jim Tile said.
Skink shrugged. He hadn't completely forgiven Max Lamb for bringing his Handycam to Miami. He said, "Lemme see where you got shot."
The trooper unbuttoned his shirt and peeled away the bandage. Even with the vest to stop it, the slug had raised a plum-colored bruise on Jim Tile's sternum. The governor whistled and said, "You and Brenda need a vacation."
"They say maybe ten days she'll be out of the hospital."
"Take her to the islands," Skink suggested.
"She's never been to the West. She loves horses."
"The mountains, then. Wyoming." The trooper said, "She'd go for that."
"Anywhere, Jim. Away from this place is the main thing."
"Yeah." He turned off the wipers. The heavy rain gathered like syrup on the windshield. They did not speak of Snapper.
"Which one is it?" Max Lamb asked.
He hoped it was the kidnapper, the wilder one. That would bolster his theory that his wife had lost her mind; a weather-related version of the Stockholm Syndrome. That would make it easier to accept, easier to explain to his friends and parents. Bonnie had been mesmerized by a drug-crazed hermit. Manson minus the Family.
Bonnie said, "Max, the problem is me."
When she knew it wasn't, not entirely. She'd watched him, after stepping from the police car, jump at the sight of a puny marsh rabbit as if it were a hundred-pound timber wolf.
Now he was saying, "Bonnie, you've been brainwashed."