Micanopy in Shadow (18 page)

“Any progress in the case, Sergeant?”

“We’re pretty sure it’s a copycat murder. A mob killing years ago got a lot of publicity. We think this is a mob killing, too. Hunter was to testify in a case about rackets in this area. That’s all I can tell you.” The Sergeant continued to hurry toward the door and started down the steps.

Brandy followed her. “Did the Losterman folder ever turn up?”

Detective Tennis began unlocking her sedan. She paused, as if trying to make the connection. Then she said, “No, it didn’t.”

Brandy stepped aside. She hadn’t convinced the detectives a folder had ever been there. But why would a hit man take Hunter’s Losterman folder?

* * *

It was already 2:30 when she turned in at Payne’s Prairie. She pulled up to the stone entrance building and handed the $4 fee to a middle-aged female ranger with dark hair, glasses, and a friendly smile.

“I’m Brandy O’Bannon,” she said. “I’m supposed to meet someone here. He said he’d leave word where he’d be.”

The ranger scanned her desk, then thrust a small envelope with Brandy’s name printed on it through the window. “I’m just filling in here while our regular runs an errand,” she said. “You must’ve just missed whoever left the note. It was lying on the desk when I took over.”

Brandy opened the envelope. “You didn’t see who left it? I’ve never met the man.”

The ranger gave Brandy a reassuring nod. “No, but only nature lovers come here. Birders and hikers. We don’t get partiers, like some of the other parks and preserves.”

“He says he’s a birder with long experience.”

“The last few days we’ve had several groups here. Yesterday they spotted the first eastern phoebe.”

Brandy looked up the gray-brown bird the size of a sparrow, and a few pages later found the perky brown and white-streaked sedge wren. She would recognize them.

The ranger reached out the window and handed Brandy two maps of park trails. “You’ll want these. There’s a great deal to see in the Prairie. It’s big.”

Brandy thanked her and pulled her car away from the building for a few minutes to open the note.
“I’LL BE ON AN EARLY SECTION OF CONE’S DIKE TRAIL. TAKE JACKSON’S GAP TRAIL. IT LEADS TO CONE’S DIKE. I’ll LIKELY BE A SHORT DISTANCE BEYOND THE LOCKED GATE AND THE PASS THROUGH. I’LL HAVE BINOCULARS AROUND MY NECK AND A TRIPOD SET UP. SEE YOU ABOUT 3:30 OR 4:00.. ROBERT S.

Brandy dropped the note into her canvas bag with the earlier letter and cell phone and shifted her gaze to the paved road leading into the park. As she began a slow drive toward the visitor’s center, long leaf pines and a scattering of palmettos and turkey oaks grew on either side. The road dipped and curved, the woods became thicker and the ground moister. More water oaks clustered on the left and right, along with magnolias and a few live oaks, one with wild orchids draped in its top branches.

In the parking lot Brandy stepped out of her car, stopped to enjoy the clean smell of pine needles, then followed a paved walkway through lower, wetter ground to the Visitor’s Center. When a dull black vulture flapped up from a cypress tree, she suppressed a shudder.

The sturdy limestone center had a high-pitched roof of dark brown beams that blended, like the rock walls, with the surrounding pine flatwoods. The only other visitors were a young couple in sneakers with backpacks. Brandy wandered among photographs taken in the Preserve—snowy egrets, cranes, a red-winged blackbird, horned deer, wild turkeys, a huge horned owl with slanted ear tufts and great staring eyes, and the menacing snout of an alligator rising from a lake.

Brandy scanned the view beyond the rear deck. To the left of the Center between tree trunks and saw palmettos, the fifty-foot observation tower rose above the edge of the Prairie. She checked her map. She might be able to see Cone’s Dike Trail from its upper platform and, using her own binoculars, spot her quarry first.

She took the winding trail to the tower between thick live oaks, their limbs heavy with vines and Spanish moss. She could smell the musky odor of standing water ahead. Distant sweet gum trees were beginning to turn an autumn red. She climbed wooden steps to each of three levels until she stood under the roof of the highest one, removed the binoculars from her canvas bag, and stared through them at the long flat prairie basin before her. Water stretched across one section of land. Tufted weeds with purple heads, low growing shrubs, and spiky flowers with yellow centers dotted the grass. Far to her right something moved beyond the squat bushes—bulky shapes, the only motion on the yellowish expanse. Cone’s Dike must lay past the farthest view to her right. She sighed, snapped the caps back on the eyepieces, and dropped the binoculars into her bag. Her only recourse was to find Jackson’s Gap Trail, as the note directed, and then Cone’s Dike Trail itself.

Brandy backtracked past the Visitor’s Center to a fork in the path, looked over a fence at Chacala Pond posted “No Trespassing,” followed a barbed wire fence beside the quarter mile dirt trail of Jackson’s Gap, and crunched over leaves and pine needles until it connected with Cone’s Dike. A brown rabbit bounded up from the grasses and darted away. Only three other hikers passed, all walking toward the parking lot. She checked her watch: 3:15. Hustling now, she hurried along through woods with a pasture on the right and around a downward curve, almost tripping over gnarled roots that erupted underfoot all along the path. On her left stood more oaks, cabbage palms, and palmettos.

The note had referred to a heavy gate to keep cattle out. She found it now, marked by a magnolia tree and a towering live oak. Its limbs stretched across the trail, thick with hanging vines. Saplings thrust up beside the trunk. By winding through the cattle guard, she passed through the gate. Maple saplings, bright with red leaves, grew in the woods beside the trail. Crushed asphalt crackled underfoot, giving off a faint odor. A small deer flashed between the trees and was gone.

To build the dike, engineers had hollowed out narrow canals on either side of the path and recent rains had filled them. From the ditch to her left came the sharp scent of camphor shrubs and the slight aroma of dried fennel. As the path widened, prairie marsh spread beyond the bushes to the right. Several broad expanses of sand separated the asphalt trail from the watery ditch. When Brandy gazed at the sand closely, she could make out hoof prints. But Robert Steadly was watching for birds, not deer.

She began to look about for him in earnest. At last, she located a narrow place in the right hand ditch, managed to step across it, and peered beyond a cluster of high shrubbery. Ahead of her stood a tripod, the long cylinder of a spotting scope attached. She didn’t see its owner, but he must be nearby. A broad stretch of water lay about fifty yards before her, and she recognized the graceful trunk of a sweet gum tree leaning near it, the ground around it littered with rust-colored burrs.

Using the binoculars, she scanned the closest area of prairie beyond the lake. She spotted several gray-backed birds with yellow bibs and white streaks above their eyes and watched them light on the branches of a solitary pine. She checked her
Peterson’s
and identified the yellow-throated warbler, common on the Prairie in the fall.

Distracted, Brandy heard no suspicious sound, no sloshing in wet weeds, no sudden intake of another’s breath. She was standing next to a dense wax myrtle tree, head down, examining the page of warblers, when she felt the blow—a sudden, crushing pain on the back of her head. Her vision dimmed. Numb with the pain, she crumpled against the tree and slid downward.

A grip of steel halted her slide. Hot, labored breath gusted against her ear. She panicked, feebly lashed out. Could not. A suffocating band pulled against her neck, tightened. Her hands and arms failed her; her fingers wouldn’t clutch the strap around her throat. Forks of light streaked under her closed eyelids. She felt a bolt of pure terror.

She couldn’t breathe. She would die.

Shuffling sounds, gruntings. For an instant the neck pain lessened. A deep voice: “Son of a bitch! Get!” A loud thud, a roar. The choking ceased. Brandy went limp and felt herself tumble into wet stubble.

The strangling band dropped away. A stumble, then a squishing noise. Again steel fingers gripped her, dragged her, stiff grass stung her legs. She opened an eye a slit, tried to free herself, twisted, rolled, wrenched her aching arms. Suddenly an agonizing pain stabbed her left shoulder. She screamed, but the tugging went on. Her vision blurred, but seemed to undulate with bulky phantoms. The iron hands pushed against the back of her head, ground into the wound there, forced her face down. Gritty water washed up her nostrils, burned her eyes. She gulped for air—the side ditch! She panicked again, writhed in the fierce grasp, moaned, inhaled stale water—thought of Ada.

But cornered animals lay still. So did she. She let her body go limp, her head sink. She would surely die. Again she heard a loud grunting. Something heavy trampled the wet marsh grass. Abruptly, the pressure against her head lessened. The pain stopped. At last, footsteps, more rapid, sloshed away.

Brandy twisted her face barely above the surface and drew a shallow breath. A massive form loomed above her—a shaggy shape with huge head and dangling beard. Moist pressure prodded her chest. Fiery, foul-smelling breath scalded her cheek. She stared up at the glistening black eyes of her nightmare.

Brandy lost consciousness.

TWELVE
 

John stood on the porch, an unread newspaper dangling from his fingers. He hunched his shoulders and frowned down at Cholokka Boulevard. Twilight had crept over the boulevard and living room lights winked on all along the street. Long ago the stores went dark. Above the cedars and oaks, clouds shredded a quarter moon. The stars, usually bright over a town with few city lights, were hidden. He checked his watch again—8:15 P.M. If the park closed at 7:00, the drive home should take no more than thirty minutes. At 6 he had fed himself and Brad and put the toddler in bed at 7:00. He had waited ever since. Where was she? He dropped the forgotten paper. She had no judgment about these things, no sense of caution.

Back in the living room, he picked up the phone and dialed Hope. As soon as she answered, he asked, “Heard from Brandy?”

As he listened, the lines in his forehead deepened. “Sure, she might have followed a lead somewhere, but she’d call. She carries her cell. She always calls.”

Hope’s voice echoed his own anxiety. “Maybe she got into trouble because of me!”

John tried to control his anger. “Did either of you bother to check out this Robert Steadly?” He listened again, then added, “I
know
he doesn’t live in Micanopy, but other members of his family do. What’s the name of the Steadly woman Brandy interviewed? The one married into the Stark family?”

“I think she said ‘Cora Mae Stark.’ Want me to call her?”

Carrying the phone, John stepped out again onto the porch and looked down. The street was empty. “I’ll call her,” he said abruptly. “I don’t give a tinker’s damn if he wanted the note kept quiet. Brandy went to meet him, and now we don’t know where she is.”

He checked the phone book, dialed, and let the phone ring six times. At last Cora Mae’s thin voice murmured—probably not to him—“Blamed phone. Don’t know why I keep the fool thing.”

He began talking rapidly. “My wife is Brandy O’Bannon. She talked to you yesterday. Last night she had a note from a ‘Robert Steadly.’ He asked her to meet him. Said he had a connection with a family my wife is interested in. The Starks, I think. I need to know how to get in touch with Robert Steadly.”

Cora Mae snorted, “This some kinda crank call?”

John raised his voice an octave but kept it patient. “Late today Brandy went to meet this man at Paynes Prairie. He was supposed to be bird watching. She hasn’t come home. Is he a member of your family?”

“I reckon you better check that whopper with your wife, young man. There ain’t no Robert Steadly—not in Micanopy and no place else I ever heard of.”

John gripped the phone. “You’re sure?”

“I reckon I know my own family. Ain’t no one by that name. I’d see what your wife is up to, fella.”

John thanked her and banged down the receiver. “Damn!” He hated being right about this. He’d warned her. He glanced again at his watch—8:40. No one would still be in the Rangers’ Office. He was debating what to do next when the phone rang.

He snatched it up, ready to tear into Brandy for her thoughtlessness. A calm male voice stopped him. “Alachua County Sheriff’s Office. Mr. Able? You and your wife own a light blue Pius, Florida license number X21KHF?”

John’s hand shook. “Yes. Was there an accident?”

The soothing voice continued. “Fact is, we don’t know, sir. The car was found in the parking lot at Paynes Prairie after the park closed. Can you tell us about it?”

John felt weak—glad he wasn’t hearing about a fatal car crash—but faint with worry. He carried the phone to the couch and steadied himself with the other hand as he eased himself down. “My wife was to meet a man there about 4:00 this afternoon. I haven’t heard from her since. I just found out he gave her a phony name.”

The quiet voice at the other end of the line had authority. “We’ll notify the Park Manager right now. Don’t worry, sir. They’ll send rangers out to search. You got an idea where she was to meet this guy?”

Silently, John cursed. “He was to leave her a note at the entrance. It would tell her where. He was supposed to be a birder.”