A Hard Death (40 page)

I
t was two days before they let Jenner leave Douglas County. They interrogated him for hours, but the criminalists' reconstruction of the scene and the pathologist's evaluation of the bodies supported Jenner's story; besides, he had no motive to kill either Chip or Maggie. They didn't bother with a polygraph.

They'd have probably kept Jenner dangling were it not for Chip Craine's paranoia. The director of the security company Craine used at Stella Maris contacted the police to tell them the estate had movement-triggered video surveillance. He sat with them in a darkened room and showed them digital video of Maggie Craine arriving; at the front door, she'd hesitated a second, opened her purse, and pulled out her pistol, then put it away before going inside.

At autopsy, the pathologist documented visible gunshot residue on Maggie's hands, as well as blood spatter on her right arm and clothing consistent with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Similar bullets were recovered at both autopsies; Ballistics would eventually confirm that all four bullets, plus a fifth recovered from the bedroom dresser, were fired from the same gun.

And that was that.

 

When Jenner stopped by Port Fontaine General to say good-bye to Deb Putnam, he found her dressed in street clothes, chafing to be sprung. She'd become a celebrity in the Park Ranger world, and had a small retinue of deeply tanned men and women in green uniforms sitting by her bed.

She excused herself to walk with him.

“Well, that was something, right, Jenner?”

He grinned. “Eh. In New York, this kind of thing happens to me all the time.”

She smiled at him. “I hear New York's pretty nice this time of year.”

“Someone's lying to you! The city's a pit in the summer—hot, sweaty, smelly, filled with tourists…” He draped an arm gently around her shoulder. “But, you know, the restaurants have air conditioning, and I know a great place for swordfish. If you don't really care about the planet, that is…”

She laughed, then looked up. He'd walked her to the entrance lobby. She laughed again and punched him softly in the shoulder. “Oh my gosh! I can't believe I'm the one who got shot, yet you make me walk you out!”

They hugged, and he left. An hour later, he was on Pelican Alley, heading for Miami. The dog, chest bandaged, a protective plastic neck cone around his neck, snored in the backseat.

When Jenner had first arrived in Port Fontaine, the region had been parched, but the month had completely reinvented the wetlands. The sedge was vibrant green, and now there was water everywhere, flowing around the hammocks and through the sloughs, turning the Glades back into a drowned world.

He made good time. At the Midpoint gas station, in the middle of the Glades halfway between Port Fontaine and Miami, a big bald man in a Winnebago told him Michael Jackson had died. Jenner turned on his radio, but out there in the wild, there was nothing but static.

Back on the road, the rain started again. His wipers beat the drizzle away, and the sky was silver over the endless green around him.

A
t sunset, they flocked to the edges of the farms where they worked, to the places where the fields gave way to wild marsh. The or ganizers waited three days to let people gather; two old women had come all the way from Chiapas. The atmosphere was viciously festive, fueled as much by tequila as by the testosterone of revenge: many were drunk before the boats even went out on the water.

It was a ragtag little flotilla, roughly fifty men and a few women in a dozen boats, mostly canoes and cheap fishing boats with puny outboards. At about seven p.m., the large airboat from Craine's farm emerged from a slough and took its place at the head of the flotilla.

As the smaller boats drew level, they finally caught sight of the bound men on the airboat. The mood changed palpably, the aggressive excitement faded, replaced by grim purpose. There was little talk now. Some still drank, but the men were mostly silent, thinking about the thing they were about to do, about the cruelty that had brought them all there.

The airboat pilot was unfamiliar with the controls, but was learning quickly. The man sitting next to him navigated, calling the left or right shifts as necessary. He tipped the stick, and the airboat swung into a wide arc to the right.

The two men tied to the front seats were immobile. The younger one was weak; he'd been shot when they caught him, and his wound now stank. When they'd carried him to the boat, he'd begged and wept, but he was quiet now. The older one hadn't spoken a word since he'd been taken, hadn't reacted, no matter what they did to him. Both had bloody bags over their heads, and their necks were tied together by a length of filthy gray rope.

One of the navigators nudged the pilot's leg and pointed. Up ahead, a
large island of mahogany and gumbo-limbo rose from the water like a surfacing whale. In the golden light of the sinking sun, huge black vultures floated over the dense canopy of leaves, sometimes breaking off to drift off over the marsh, but always coming back to settle in the high branches and wait.

I
hate writing acknowledgments, not because I'm an ungrateful bastard but because I always leave out critically important people; if you're one of the people I'm about to leave out, please just go ahead and start working on forgiving me now.

First off, thanks to my friends and colleagues at the New York City Medical Examiner's office—I couldn't ask for a smarter, more supportive or better-looking bunch of pathologists to work with. A similar shout-out to the many fine men and women of the New York Police Department with whom we work on a daily basis; I recently heard a lecturer tell an audience of mystery fans that cops almost never use the F-word—thank you all for proving him epically wrong, time and again.

On the topic of the F-word, my thanks to Jesse Sheidlower for seeing fit to cite me several times in the new edition of his encyclopedic work on the subject,
The F-Word
. While impeccably polite in decent company, I'm drawn to the profane, and am proud of the legitimization provided by Mr. Sheidlower and his cronies at the Oxford University Press. (Readers of my first novel,
Precious Blood
, are already slightly familiar with Mr. Sheidlower; a prominent lexicographer, he was the inspiration for the Simon Lescure character.)

My thanks also to my friends in the District Attorney's Office of New York County, particularly the Sex Crimes/Special Victims folks, who insist that one sees even the most lovely of neighborhoods as open cesspools where horrifically violent crime is always just about to strike. Those people are also my only openly Republican friends, and thus allow me to claim fairness and impartiality during arguments about politics.

Speaking of Sex Crimes, I'd like to thank Linda Fairstein for her
kind support of junior novelists—me in particular, but she's tireless in helping all beginners out, even those who weren't forensic pathologists working with her back when she was running the division. And speaking of crime fiction writers, Patricia Cornwell has been more than generous with her advice and insight.

Who else, who else? Lots of important people. Research assistance came from Anya McCoy, a Florida-based friend from natural perfumery circles. Ira Stone, DVM, gave me great feedback about emergency management of canine injuries. Mike Caffrey hooked me up with an insider's perspective on EMS work. Brian Womble stopped listening to the Butthole Surfers long enough to share his vast knowledge of South Florida flora and fauna, including the two-legged kind. Lacey Burke, a sommelier at Eataly in Manhattan, was an amazing source of wine and lingerie gift advice.

In Florida, special thanks to the Major Crimes unit of the Collier County Sheriff's Office, and a particular thank-you to Lieutenant Rob Maxfield, director of the Collier County Crime Lab. And most of all among Florida peeps, my thanks to Rob, Stephen, and David Coburn for putting up with me, and letting me drag them into the Glades and through the mangrove swamps. And to their wife/mom Marta, who has been my best buddy way back since we trained together in Miami, as well as being the Chief Medical Examiner for Collier County.

In New York, I have been sustained by a variety of individuals and organizations. My core providers have been the Village branch of ‘wichcraft, Momofuku Milk Bar, the East 10th Street branch of Spice, Stand Burger, and, most importantly, Alfred Portale's restaurant, the Gotham Bar and Grill, where I've dined pretty much weekly since I first moved into the East Village in the early 1990s. Like all regulars there, I'm treated like family, except without the arguing; it makes me suspect that bickering at holiday family meals could be eliminated by having everyone pay to attend.

Speaking of family, mine have been great, too, almost embarrassingly proud of me, which is its own kind of burden, really—the sense of unworthiness is crushing. Thank you, all of you, particularly the ones who're still speaking to me.

Thanks to the people who make it all possible: in the UK, Oliver Johnson has been infinitely patient, diplomatic and funny, and a sharp reader. Back in the US, Claire Wachtel, Heather Drucker, and Elizabeth Perrella at HarperCollins have looked after me wonderfully, and I both couldn't and wouldn't take a step forward without consulting my brilliant agent, Sarah Burnes of the Gernert Company. Other Gernert All-stars include Courtney Gatewood (née Hammer) and Stephanie Cabot.

Jill Bresler and Jennifer Cassetty have worked hard at holding me together. And I've been blessed with an excess of great friends, all of whom have looked out for me—Cricket, Mame, Alafair, Lisa, Whitney, Barbara, Jim, Jen, Sophie, Pauline, Shahla, Christine, Jane, and so many more people—thank you (shades of the B-52's song “52 Girls”—not you, Jim Heckler). And special thanks to Kate, who left me a little scorched around the edges, but better for the experience. Probably.

I'm stopping there—if you've read all the way to the end just to see your name in print, and didn't find it, I'm sorry! Look me up in person and I'll apologize. Offer me a bribe, and I'll include you in the acknowledgments section in the next Jenner book; next time, I'm hoping to stretch it to chapter length.

Jacket photograph © H. David Seawell/CORBIS

Jacket design by Vaughn Andrews