Deadly Waters (8 page)

T
he Everglades sheriff's office wasn't located in the town; they had to drive back to the main highway, to the Tamiami Trail intersection. Inside the building they saw two officers in gray uniforms, their shirts open at the neck. One looked up at the Landons and asked, “Can I help you folks?”

Steven cleared his throat. “This sounds strange, I know,” he began, and hesitantly told the story about the man stealing Jack's camera at the Watson Place. By the time he got to the part about the kids finding the boat outside the restaurant, all the Landons, plus Bridger, were chiming in.

“So he had a gun and he told us to get in the boat,” Bridger stated.

“And then Ashley pushed him in the water, and we ran away on the pier and I had my camera—” Jack added excitedly.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa—give me a minute here. Folks, you better sit down,” the sheriff interrupted. He was young and dark-haired with sharp, dark eyes fringed with thick lashes, and a wide black moustache. “Tom, are you hearing all this?” he called to the deputy behind the counter.

“Uh-huh.”

“Get the paperwork started, will you? Looks like we're gonna have to file a report.”

“OK, Carlos.”

The sheriff named Carlos shepherded them to a long bench against the wall, then rolled up a desk chair on wheels and sat facing them. “Now, uh, Mr. and Mrs. Landon,” he began, glancing at a slip of paper to make sure he had their names right, “what I'm hearing sounds pretty serious, so I'm going to have to get the information in an orderly way. I'd like to ask the kids a few questions, and I'm gonna ask you two grownups to let them answer. In other words, Mr. and Mrs. Landon, please refrain from talking, even if you think you have something important to say. You'll have your chance later. Right now I just want to hear from these kids.”

Steven and Olivia agreed.

“OK, let's start again. First things first. Jack—it's Jack, right?”

Jack nodded, watching Carlos intently.

“Let's begin with you. You say you kids were out fishing at the Watson Place?”

“That's right.”

“And what time was that?”

“This morning. We got there about 9:30.”

“OK,” Carlos muttered, writing the time down. “You were fishing, and then what happened?”

“This man came up and stole Jack's camera!” Ashley blurted out.

“That was later,” Jack said. “Probably a quarter after ten.”

“Ten fifteen,” Carlos acknowledged. “The man took it, and then took off in his boat. Why do you think he would do that?”

“'Cause it was an expensive camera,” Ashley babbled. “It was our dad's—he's a professional photographer—and then he gave it to Jack, and then Jack bought a new lens that cost a lot.”

“OK, the motive was robbery. Let's go on. The man who stole the camera said his name was Gordon. Was that his first name or last name?”

Jack shook his head that he didn't know. Bridger muttered, “Probably wasn't his real name anyway.”

“An alias.” Carlos's pen scratched against the paper. “And you said he had a dark beard and sunglasses and a hat pulled down to his nose. Is that right? But the man you say pointed a gun at you on the dock at the marina didn't have a beard. So how could he be the same person?”

“Because he must have had a fake beard when he was at the Watson Place,” Ashley answered confidently. “He took it off before we saw him tonight.”

“A fake beard? Is that right? A fake beard. Hmmmm.”

Jack couldn't be sure, but he thought a tiny flicker of a smile twitched across the sheriff's lips. Then he turned to Jack and Bridger again. “I've got another question for you. Why do you think the boat at the Watson Place and the boat in the marina were the same boat?”

“For one thing, they looked exactly alike, plus both boats had the same registration—at least the beginning numbers. FL 10. That's what Ashley remembered from this morning—FL 10. She couldn't remember the rest, but the boat at the pier had FL 1039—uh, 7—N—something, on it.”

“NK,” Bridger said.

“I was thinking it was NL. But I'm not sure,” Jack admitted.

“NK, or maybe NL.” Carlos made more notes, then leaned backward in the chair, causing it to squeak. “How much did you say that camera was worth?”

“A lot. Why?” Jack asked impatiently.

“I'm just trying to get at a motive.” Carlos raised his thick black eyebrows. “What do you think this Gordon was going to do with you two? Seems like an awful lot of risk, just for a camera. Even if it was expensive.”

Something was wrong here, Jack could tell. It wasn't what Carlos was saying, but the way that he said it that made Jack think the sheriff wasn't convinced by their story. Jack shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Up to that moment, he hadn't realized how farfetched the whole thing really sounded.

“Let me clarify. A man wearing a fake beard brings his boat all the way over to the dock you're fishing on, and then steals your camera. Then, later on, you find the boat and take your camera back. But before you can escape, this Gordon catches you, only this time his beard is gone. He threatens you with a gun and tells you to get in his boat. Do I have it right so far?”

The kids nodded.

The sheriff crossed his arms, looked at Jack, Bridger and Ashley, one after the other, and said, “Before we go any further, you need to be sure you're telling me the absolute truth. No making up anything.”

“You can believe what they're telling you. My children are trustworthy,” Steven declared, an edge to his voice.

“I'm sure you believe they are,” Carlos agreed, his eyes never moving off Jack's. “I just want them to understand something. They're starting up a police procedure here with their story, and it's real important that they be completely truthful.” He paused, uncrossed his arms, and leaned forward to look intently at the three of them, one after the other. “I want you all to think about that for a minute. Only the truth, right? Now, is there anything else you want to tell me?”

“Everything we've told you is the truth,” Bridger snapped.

Sheriff Carlos sighed. “All right. Let's get back to the man with the gun. Now, it was dark, right? How could you be sure he was holding a gun?”

Shrugging, Bridger answered, “I've seen plenty of guns. I know what they look like.”

“Then the girl—your name's Ashley, isn't it? Then Ashley pushed him into the water. How did you manage to push a full-grown man into the water like that?”

“I caught him off-balance. Hey—a dog can push somebody over if it jumps on them from behind, you know? You can knock anyone off-balance if they don't know you're going to do it and they don't see you coming. Besides, I'm stronger than I look!” When Carlos gave a half-smile, Ashley cried, “Stand up and turn around and I'll show you—”

Grinning now, Carlos said, “That won't be necessary.”

Jack studied the scuff marks on the pale tile floor. He felt pretty sure that Carlos didn't believe them. Their story did seem bizarre, he realized. Still, he wasn't used to having his word doubted.

Bridger must have been thinking the same thing. As Sheriff Carlos squeaked backward in his chair again, Bridger frowned and told him, “Look, I don't care how weird this sounds, we're telling you the truth.”

“Right. But I'm wondering if you might have mistaken some of what you saw. For example, when you were at the marina, it was dark. Could it be possible that this Gordon fellow just pointed at you with his finger, like this”—Carlos cocked his hand—“and because you were scared, you thought it was a gun?”

The two boys shook their heads vehemently. “No,” they said in unison.

Blowing a stream of air between his lips, Carlos told them, “The reason I'm hung up on this is I can't figure out why a camera would be worth that kind of risk.

You say it's valuable, but is it that expensive? Worth kidnapping for?”

“I don't know, sir,” Bridger said, his voice low. “He said he thought we knew something, but that if he was wrong, then that was too bad.”

“Did you see him do anything illegal?” Carlos asked, leaning forward again. “When he approached you at the Watson Place, did you see anything unusual in his boat? Anything that might have made him nervous? When he came up to the dock, did you take his picture?”

“No, I was fishing.” Jack studied the ceiling, replaying the scene in his mind, but he came up blank. Nothing about Gordon had seemed strange that morning, nothing in his boat out of place.

“You're not giving me much to go on,” Carlos said, rising to his feet. “We'll need to keep the camera until we bring in this guy and investigate the facts.”

“What!” Jack cried.

“I'm sorry, Jack, it's evidence. I'll run these boat registration numbers, see if we can dig up anything. That's the best we can do for now. In the meantime, I'm going to need your folks to sign some papers, and then I'll send an officer down to the marina to look for that boat.”

“It's not there,” Steven said stiffly. “I already checked before we came here. The slip's empty.”

“You should leave the police work to us, Mr. Landon. Write down the phone number where you're staying, and we'll keep in touch. I'm sorry we can't do more for you folks. We'll take this as far as we can.”

“But—how long before I can have my camera back?” Jack asked.

“Oh, a day or two. It would help if you had some proof of ownership, like a sales slip or something. That would speed things up.”

“All that stuff's back in Jackson Hole!” Jack protested.

“Sorry, fella. I have to go by the book.”

Dejected, the kids walked out of the sheriff's station, Olivia and Steven behind them. “Don't worry, Jack,” Olivia said. “As soon as we straighten this out, we'll get your camera back.”

“It's not that,” Jack said, and Ashley echoed, “Yeah, it's not that. What makes me mad is that they didn't believe us, at least all the way. I thought they'd call in the FBI and helicopters and stuff.”

“I could tell just by looking at him that he didn't think it really happened the way we said it did,” Bridger told them.

“It might have been the bit about the fake beard,” Steven mentioned. “I think that's when you lost them, Ashley. It sounds too unbelievable.”

“Oh, great!” Her chin slumped down into the neck of her T-shirt as she scuffled to the parking lot.

In the car on the way back, nobody said much, not even after they arrived at the motel. They had adjoining rooms with a doorway in between: Steven, Olivia, and Ashley in one room, and Jack and Bridger in the other. Only, for now, Jack had pulled Ashley into his own room, thinking it best to let his parents have some time to themselves—he knew they wanted to talk about what had happened. Through the half-open door, he could hear his father's voice, soothing and low.

“Olivia, it's OK. The kids are safe. That's all that really matters. I promise I won't let them out of my sight for a minute the whole rest of the trip.” Springs on a bed squeaked, and he guessed his father was sitting next to his mom, circling his arm around her like he always did when she was upset. “You've got to take your mind off it. We've done everything we can. The rest is up to the police.”

“How can I think about anything else? That man pulled a gun on my son!”

“Or maybe the officer's right, and they just thought they saw a weapon. Either way, we know for sure the man was a thief, so at the very least I'm glad he got a dunking. Our little Ashley's turned out to be quite a spitfire.”

Ashley'd been sitting on Jack's bed, reading a motel magazine about things to do in Florida. When she heard her father call her a spitfire, she looked up and grinned.

Bridger grinned back, and gave her a thumbs-up.

“You know, you didn't tell me how it went out in the field today,” Steven was saying.

“Don't ask me to talk about manatees—”

“Sweetheart, you've got to. That's why they brought you here. There's nothing more we can do about our phantom camera thief, not tonight, but you can help out with the manatees. What happened today, after I left you?”

Olivia hesitated, then began to speak slowly, as though searching for words. “They…they found a male, near death and too sick to eat. I went and examined him.”

“Do you know what's wrong with him?”

“No, and the biologists at the Natural Resources Center are just as baffled as I am. It's so strange, Steven. Water pollution levels check out fine, the food source is thriving, temperature's OK. It isn't anything obvious like red tide, which wiped out so many of them a few years back. This one's a real mystery.”

Their voices rose and fell, and after a while Jack heard the tension melt from his mother's voice as she went over all the material she'd collected on the manatees' strange illness. Every once in a while, Steven asked another leading question, and Olivia would shuffle papers before coming up with a reply.

Bridger had been pretending not to listen, doodling with a pen on the little notepad next to the phone in the room. He had an odd look on his face, a bit puzzled over what he was hearing. It must be because he wasn't used to conversation between a husband and his wife. Bridger'd been motherless since he was five, living in a male world full of danger and daring, never experiencing life with two parents or being part of a family.

Steven kept talking to Olivia about her problems—if only someone could come up with a solution for Jack's problem! He'd been so excited to have his camera in his hands again, and now it was gone once more.

A little later, Steven walked into the boys' room, saying, “Here are your pictures, son.” He dropped the envelope onto Jack's bed. “Come on, Ashley. Time to get some sleep.”