She sipped a glass of orange juice and looked across the marina. “This world is so different from your old home on the river. It’s a different kind of quiet there. Which do you prefer, the marina life or the solitude of the river?”
I remembered what Gonzales said about solitude, my stomach tightening as I swallowed the eggs. “Both places have their pluses and minuses. Right now, because you are here, I’d rather be at the marina. If we were on the river, my shack of solitude, I’d rather be there with you.”
She smiled. “That’s sweet. Maybe when this is over, we can take a boat trip. That would be a world I’ve never experienced, one that you might have to pry me away from, assuming I don’t get seasick and become a green-faced pain-in-the-butt for you.”
My phone vibrated on the bar. It was Dave. “Good morning,” I said.
“That term is indeed relative,” his voice deep as his pipes opened.
“What’s the matter?” I almost didn’t want to hear the answer.
“I was watching the daybreak newscast… they’re reporting that the body of a park ranger, Ed Crews, the man you thought went MIA from the forest, was found last night.”
“Where?”
“In the forest. Found by two teenagers on ATVs. Kids will probably have nightmares for life.”
I pushed the plate back and stood. “What’d they find?”
“The corpse was sitting upright, under a tree. The body had been decapitated. The head was stuck on the end of a broken limb.”
I said nothing. Elizabeth’s eyes were wide, her lips growing tighter.
Dave said, “Police say there was a note, a piece of paper stuck in Crews’ mouth. Someone wrote: ‘Heads up, the spineless one will be next.’ Sounds like Pablo Gonzales sent you a personal and very graphic message.”
I held my breath for a long moment. “Want some coffee?”
“Do you have a fresh pot brewed?”
“Yeah, and if your stomach wasn’t turned by the newscast, you might like some of the hearty breakfast Elizabeth made.”
“Twist my arm. I’ll be right over. It’s a beautiful blue-sky morning. Let’s dine on Jupiter’s cockpit.”
“No sign of a fake fishermen or other intruders in our little boat world?”
“Seems to be clear as the sky.”
The three of us sat in deck chairs at the small table in the cockpit. Elizabeth didn’t want to hear any of the details surrounding the discovery of Crews’ body. Dave sipped from a mug of black coffee, a slight breeze tossing his white hair. He said, “I’ve been thinking about what Gonzales told you.”
“And, have you reached a conclusion that us non-sociopaths can relate to?” I asked.
“Perhaps. The overriding theme in Marquez’s novel, A Hundred Years of Solitude, is how man is doomed to repeat his mistakes, even when five years of rain washes away every semblance of indiscretions made in the village of Maconda. Marquez, incorporating a linear style of storytelling with surreal prose, leads us to believe that man is doomed to repeat his atrocities because we’re all wired with some defective, inherited genetic material since the Garden of Eden. He contends that man is destined to recycle the mistakes and imprudence of his forefathers… Paradise Lost.”
“I don’t follow you,” Elizabeth said.
Dave nodded. “I’m just thinking, verbalizing aloud. Blame it on the strong Blue Mountain coffee. I guess my point is this: Gonzales sees no hope, no salvation for the sins of our fathers because most of us are doomed to repeat them. He’s put himself in a self-ordained position to eliminate the repeat offenders from the docket. In other words, he’s got a God complex, maybe similar to Hitler, whereby he feels he’s been chosen to cut the diseased or the weak ones out of humanity’s herd. That would make him the worst kind of psychopath because he would believe all that he does, all he accomplishes, is for the greater good. A killer who can rationalize his deeds because he believes a higher power has chosen him as an elite foot soldier is extremely dangerous.”
I said, “So you think Gonzales believes rendering me in a state of paralysis will stop a repeat of the evils that cycled through a village like Maconda.”
“That’s so sick,” Elizabeth said.
“Indeed,” agreed Dave, “but a psychopath only needs a fantasy cause to create a platform of illusions.”
The sun went behind a cloud.
The crimson light was no bigger than a dime.
The shade of tomato soup as it swept across Jupiter’s transom. It was almost subliminal. It could have been a reflection from any of the dozens of boats bobbing in the moorings. But there is no reflection when the sun goes behind a cloud.
NINETY-FIVE
“Get inside!” I said.
“What?” Dave asked.
“A shooter!” We scrambled as Nick leaned out of the salon door on St. Michael.
I saw the red dot flash for a second across Elizabeth’s breasts. “Get down!” I yelled, flattening Elizabeth to the transom. A silencer suppressed the crack of the rifle, the noise resembling a wooden mallet striking the dock somewhere. A second round sliced through the water between Jupiter and St. Michael just as Nick was closing his salon door, a steaming mug of coffee sloshing over his hand.
“Oh God!” Elizabeth screamed. I grabbed her arm, pulling her to the bulkhead of Jupiter, Max right behind us. Dave crouched low and ran across the cockpit to the salon doors. Elizabeth, Max and I followed. I glanced back at Nick. He was perplexed, hair sticking out, face bloated from a hangover and heavy sleep. He held his now half mug of coffee and looked like he’d just stepped into a bad dream.
“Get down, Nick!” I screamed, reaching for the Glock under my shirt. The next round blew a quarter-sized hole through the glass door next to Nick’s head. He dropped his coffee mug and dove headfirst into the bay.
I pushed Elizabeth into Jupiter’s salon. “Stay down! Go below!” I turned to Dave who was crouching behind the salon wall. “You hit?”
“No.”
“Can you see Nick?”
“No, but I hear him. I think he swam under the dock.”
“The shooter’s using a rifle with a silencer and a laser scope.”
“Where do you think he’s positioned?”
“He has to be elevated enough to shoot over Gibraltar.”
Dave nodded. “The only building that high is Jackson Marine. Their boat storage facility is three floors.”
“The Glock won’t do much good. Your 30.06 is still aboard Jupiter after I cleaned it for you last time I was here.”
“Where?”
“Port closet in the master. Get it for me. I want to keep an eye out there.”
“Your arm’s in a sling!”
“Please, Dave, get it.”
He returned in less than thirty seconds, the rifle in his hands. “Is the scope accurate?” I asked.
“In no wind, you’ll get a one inch drop at the first two hundred yards.”
“Jackson Marine is about two-fifty.” I looked at the surface of the bay, and then at the wind gauge spinning on a sailboat moored about fifty yards in the center of the water. There was a slight ripple on the surface, the breeze about seven miles per hour out of the northwest.
Dave said, “Don’t stand. He might take your head off.”
“What the fuck is goin’ on?” shouted Nick from under the dock.
“Stay down, Nick!” I said. “Stay out of sight. The shooter might still be out there.”
“I’m wrapped around the dock post like a crab. Barnacles and shells are cuttin’ the crap outta my hands. Why’s some asshole blowing a hole through my door?”