The sheriff and a dozen men stopped. They turned and looked toward us.
“Snake bite!” shouted Rodriguez.
“Holy shit…” said the sheriff, shaking his head and running toward Rodriguez. The officers and Detective Sandberg followed.
“It’s a cottonmouth moccasin,” said Sandberg, looking at the dying snake.
The sheriff motioned to one of his men. “Bobby, call for an air-vac chopper with paramedics who know their shit about snake poison.”
Bo Watson said, “I have a snakebite kit in the truck. I’ll call my son.”
Rodriguez sat down on a fallen log and rested his leg. I used my pocketknife to cut through his jeans. Two puncture holes in his leg oozed blood. I used my belt to tie off the circulation. “Look at me.” His frightened eyes attempted to find mine. “Try to keep you heart rate slow… stay calm as you can. You will be okay, understand?”
Rodriguez nodded. I said, “My Jeep is fifty yards to the west. Somebody can take it and get this man to a clearing so the chopper can land.”
“Where’re you going?” asked Sheriff Clayton.
I lifted the rifle from the stump where Rodriguez had set it down. “I’m going with you. I was a shooter — a sniper in the Special Forces.”
“You’re not a sworn officer.”
“Used to be. You can deputize me, Sheriff. Sounds like the dogs have come to an impasse. My guess is they’re at the river’s edge. We’d better move.”
Palmer was now almost half way across the river. He swam using a sidestroke. He looked behind him and saw the dogs at the shore, one dog stepping in the river and running back to the bank. Then Palmer looked towards the opposite shore.
He stopped swimming.
An alligator, wide as a kayak, slipped down from sunning on the bank and started toward Palmer. A smaller alligator, at least seven feet long, followed the larger one.
Palmer looked toward the dogs. The cops were there now. He saw the wink of the sun against handcuffs, badges and guns. He could see his life back at San Quentin. No damn choice, he thought. Gotta swim toward the cops or get ripped apart by gators.
Palmer turned around and swam with all the strength he had left. His arms ached. His head pounded. He churned the water. Arms moving in powerful strokes. Legs kicking. He swallowed a mouthful of river water. He glanced back over his right shoulder and could see the alligators coming closer. Ma Barker’s money must be cursed. Gotta be something wicked about it. SWIM!
“He’s coming back this way!” said the sheriff.
Bo Watson said, “And look at what the hell’s following him. No man, I don’t care what he’s done, deserves to be eaten alive.” He hushed the dogs. All of the deputies and Detective Sandberg stood on the embankment, no one sure what to do.
The sheriff said, “Let’s call in the chopper. Have ‘em hover over that guy. Might scare the damn gators off.”
“No time,” I said, climbing the highest outcropping of rock. “I’ll try for the gators.” I opened the two metal stands that supported the rifle, stretched out and reclined flat on my stomach. I fit the stock against my shoulder, loaded a bullet into the chamber and sighted the man through the scope. I looked at the river’s surface for a sign of wind direction. Looked up at a cypress tree. Wind from the northeast — three miles an hour.
“That’s a shot of over a hundred yards,” said Detective Sandberg.
The sheriff said, “Radio for a boat outta Hontoon Marina to get up here fast as possible.”
“The big gator’s twenty feet away from the subject!” one deputy shouted.
“The other gator’s gaining fast!” another man said.
The dogs whined, the drone of the chopper coming.
Palmer looked toward the shore. Never gonna make it. Too tired.
He saw the flash of sunlight reflecting from something a man held sprawled on an embankment.
A man with a rifle.
Must be a scope on the gun reflecting light. Too tired to think straight.
Palmer swam and prayed that the man was aiming for the gators swimming closer to his kicking legs.
I blocked everything out. Heard nothing. Focused all though the scope. I saw the panic on the man’s face, the fatigue in his sloppy strokes, the twin V ripples caused by the approaching gators. At this angle, I’d have to shoot left of the man’s head, four inches over his moving shoulder, to hit the largest gator coming up behind him.
Focus. Hold the breathing. I moved the glass away from the man’s head and found the closest alligator. It pushed its tail harder. Quickly gaining on the fledging man. Less than ten feet away. I had one chance. One shot each. I sighted the crosshairs, positioned them right between the wide, knobby eyes of the biggest gator. I squeezed the trigger. I moved the glass to the second animal and squeezed the trigger. Both gators went down, heads exploding, leaving a trail of blood and brain matter.
“Hot damn!” shouted the sheriff. “You hit both of ‘em in less than three seconds. Where the hell did you learn to shoot like that?”
FORTY-FIVE
When the man was about twenty feet from shore, two deputies waded out into the river and waited for him. The man swam a final stoke and tried to stand. His legs gave way and he fell, face-down in the water. The deputies fished him out, like lifting a man who’d been baptized in a river. They held him by his upper arms and carried him the rest of the way to the shore. As they cuffed him, he collapsed in the mud, shaking and spitting water that he’d swallowed.
He lay on his side, breathing hard as the sheriff approached. Bo Watson held the dogs back at a safe distance. I came down from the embankment and watched. “Read him his rights, Barry,” the sheriff said. After rights were read, the sheriff grunted. “What’s your name?”
“Luke Palmer,” the man said, through a hoarse whisper.
“Mr. Palmer, you’re one lucky fella. You came seconds from being ripped apart by two big gators in the middle of the river. Nobody would have ever found your body unless they looked for your smallest, indigestible bones in gator shit up on the bank somewhere. That man over there, Mr. O’Brien, saved you life.”
Palmer said nothing. He looked at me and then at the sheriff.
The sheriff glanced across the river then down at Palmer. “So since we saved your life, I’d say you owe us one, big time. Now why don’t you go on and tell us how you happened to kill those college kids. I know things happen, things come up and people act accordingly. Maybe there were extenuating circumstances in their deaths, self-defense. We’d like to hear it, like to hear it from your point-of-view.”
Palmer sat up on his knees. He slowly stood. “I didn’t kill nobody.”
“We have a water jug found near the bodies. We have some of your clothing here on the bank. Looks like dried blood to me. And we have that spear thing you’ve apparently been toting. They’ll tell us the rest of the story.”
Palmer said nothing, his breathing still heavy. Detective Sandberg stepped up to Palmer. “The St. Johns River has a way of settling debts. Like the sheriff said, you’re a lucky man. I remember driving across the State Road 44 Bridge, which crosses this very river not too far from here. From top of that bridge, about a month ago, saw a deer trying to swim across. Made it half way before a gator took him under.”
Palmer slowly looked up, his dark eyes locking on the detective’s face.
“I only mention this because you buried the deer on top of those kids. Why’d you do it? Thought it’d hide the smell of decomposing human bodies, huh? Did you kill Mark first and then rape Molly before killing her?”