Turtle Island (7 page)

‘It was just up here, about one hundred yards ahead.’ James
pointed to an undefined point in the road. ‘I marked the spot by
leaving a full bottle of 7up there on the verge.’

Rick stopped by a green plastic 2-litre bottle full of clear
liquid, there was the temptation to open it up and drink down the
whole two litres but it had been baking in the morning sun for
nearly five hours.

Georgina scanned the horizon. A bank ran to her left lined
with hickory trees, to the right more trees. She walked up the
bank, her foot slipping slightly on the damp grass. She steadied
herself, placing her hands on the bank to stabilise her body,
before continuing up the small incline. At the top she asked.
‘What's beyond these woods?’

Leroy shrugged his shoulders.

'Could you get a map, I've got one in my folio in the
car.’

Rick had started to climb the bank, Leroy looked behind him.
The cars were parked on the verge a couple of hundred yards away.
He turned and slowly traipsed away mumbling to himself. ‘Yez boss,
ize goze and gets it for ya.’

‘Hey, Leroy, bring the camera too?’ Rick yelled after the
detective.

Leroy continued walking. ‘Okay, Masser.’ He passed Gillian and
James who stopped at the foot of the bank by the road.

Rick called down to them. ‘And you didn't see which direction
he came from?’

‘He was just standing in the road. But this side as though he
had come from the direction of Turtle Island.’ Gillian offered. ‘He
was that tired, I don't think he would have changed directions once
he got to a road, though I could be wrong.’ She smiled
apologetically.

Leroy came running back down the road with the map in his
hand. ‘You're gonna like this.’ He stopped and caught his breath,
wiping a bead of sweat that trickled down his forehead. ‘About two
miles south.’ He continued between breaths‘ ...is the river.’ Leroy
started to walk up the bank, still talking as he went. ‘And a
further three miles east is where...we... found the first
body.’

‘Do you need us? Can we go now?’ James called up the
bank.

Georgina nodded. ‘Yes, you can go now. Thank you very much,
you’ve been very helpful.’

James and Gillian walked back to their Suburu Jeep, the
fatigue of their adventure catching up with them.

Leroy unfolded the map and pointed to the river. ‘ We found
the John Doe here and Stephen England here.’ His finger then moved
along the river to Turtle Island. ‘But with the information from
the Dace’s, we can assume the tidal flow carried Dalton from
somewhere on the Island. My guess is Stephen England somehow used
the river to escape, it gets quite shallow up here.’

‘Shall we go for a walk gentlemen?’ Georgina strode away in
the direction of the river.

The trees magnified the humidity, and stole the daylight.
Georgina O’Neil was silently thanking her good sense at choosing
comfortable footwear as she walked through the thick forestry.
Leroy hung back behind her, occasionally studying the map but
mostly studying the rhythmic sway of O’Neil’s hips as she walked
with Rick by her side.

The forest was alive with the sounds of indigenous birds and
with the humidity it felt tropical.

‘Leroy?’ Georgina called behind her, feeling his eyes boring
into her as she walked.

‘What?’ Leroy replied puzzled.

‘Stop staring at my ass, you're giving me a
complex.’

Leroy blushed, his dark skin reddening, almost invisibly. ‘You
got eyes in your ass?’

‘Only yours, Leroy, only yours.’

Rick turned to his partner laughing ‘Oh man, you are sorely
em-bar-rased.’ He exaggerated the three syllables of the last word
in a mock West Indian tone.

‘So Rick, what made you want to become a cop?’ Georgina asked
between pushing back low, thick growing branches.

‘I kinda stumbled in to it. There never was a master plan.
Left high school graduated at college and was at a loose end. Then
my dad suggested it. I can honestly say that I had never seriously
considered it until then. Joined the Chicago P.D. became a beat cop
for a few years then for want of a better word, stumbled into
homicide. As I say no great plan...What about you? How does an
intelligent young woman end up working for the Feds?’

‘I always wanted to be a university lecturer but there was too
much competition in the family, I have an elder brother who’s a
university professor. So I looked for another area that would be a
challenge, then a friend of mine went missing...’

‘I'm sorry.’

Georgina continued. ‘We were best buddies for ...oh, I'd say
the best part of six years. Used to sleepover, go camping together,
take holidays, you know that sort of thing. The sort of friend who
only comes along once in a lifetime, even shared a couple of
boyfriends…not at the same time.’

‘Hey, I didn’t say anything.’

Georgina briefly smiled. ‘Then one day she didn't turn up for
work. At first I guessed she was taking time of ill. A week passed
and no word, then the rumours started, finally the police showed
up. Her body was found in a dumper truck. She had been raped and
strangled. They never caught her killer...I guess I'm trying to
redress the balance.’

They walked on in silence for a minute before Georgina turned
and asked Leroy. ‘Leroy, what made you join the force?’

Leroy jogged along a couple of steps to catch up, slipping
slightly on the grass. 'Me, I was a big fan of Shaft. Never saw him
walking through this shit though.’

The dark moment was broken.

Her hand was clasped tightly around his. Doctors passed by
every now and then, popping their heads through the door opening to
check Stephen England's progress. Cara Morton had been awake ever
since Stephen was brought in. She sat by his side talking to him,
unable to comprehend why somebody would want to do this to her
fiancée; unable to understand how someone could do
this...period.

The doctors had operated on his mouth and were going to have
to carry out more surgery on his bowel and large intestine, but for
the time being, they kept him under heavy sedation to let his body
recover from the shock of his ordeal.

By the time she had arrived at the hospital, Stephen was
already in surgery. Cara looked at his face, his mouth a mass of
stitches, bruised and swollen beyond recognition. His right arm was
bandaged from the elbow to the wrist. He was lying on a support
frame to relieve the pressure on his back and buttocks. Dr Martinez
told her that ‘Stephen must have had great strength of will to
survive his ordeal.’

England was being intravenously hydrated and fed; various
monitors were keeping his condition in check via bleeping
tell-tales and electronic graphs. He slept and he dreamt. In his
dreams he had still not escaped. In a corner of his mind he never
would. But for now the effect of his drug-induced coma held him
prisoner, his eyes darted wildly under their lids, moving left and
right. The read outs on the monitors became a little more animated,
scribbling informative lines on graphs. A nurse entered with a
doctor and adjusted the drug feed in to Stephen's system, clouding
his mind even further, sending away the demons. He started to
settle again, Cara looked imploringly at the doctor.

The trees opened out into a small open expanse of grassland
and the river ran sublimely past. The gentle sound of water moving
within a peaceful environment. Georgina O’Neil stopped by the bank
watching the current flowing toward Turtle Island.

‘The river splits about five kilometres downstream and circles
Turtle Island. If England came this way at night, during the storm,
injured as he was, then I'm a member of his fan club.’ Leroy said
as he emerged from the woodland.

‘How deep is the river at this point?’ Georgina asked turning
toward Rick.

‘Deeper now than last night. Tidal flow and the storm will
have swollen the level by four or five feet. I'd guess that it
would have been knee to waist high last night, maybe deeper at
points.’

Leroy opened the map and followed the river toward the Island.
‘It could even have been lower, storm drains are pinpointed at
various places near the Island to take the overflow and stop the
Island flooding.’

‘Can we get some boats to circumnavigate the Island?’ Georgina
asked

‘Yeah sure, Ned Freeman runs tours of the Island by boat. I'm
sure we could give him a call and get him down here.’ Rick sat down
on the bank. He pulled out a small cell phone from his inside
jacket pocket, pressed a button and waited while the connection was
made. ‘Yeah, hi, it's Detective Montoya. Look we're out at the
river, bout five kilometres from Turtle Island heading out toward
Cape Gardeau. Could you give Ned Freeman a call and get him down
here to give us one of his tours?…Okay’ Rick closed the
phone.

Leroy sat next to Rick and looked up at O’Neil. ‘So what do
you expect to find?’ Leroy asked the F.B.I agent.

‘I don't know.’ Georgina studied the lush green countryside.
The woods were some one hundred yards from the riverbank with the
land between wild and overgrown. ‘I just want to get a feel of the
place.’ She continued. She walked along the riverbank, absorbed by
her surround, trying to imagine Stephen England’s escape. Hot air
rose from the ground, bringing drifting scents of damp earth,
grasses and wild flowers to her nose. Georgina pushed back her
short hair, some of it matting and sticking against the sweat on
her forehead. The water looked cool and inviting. The sound of
Rick's phone buzzing broke her concentration. Rick flipped the
phone open.

‘Yeah...Make sure Ned's stocked up with plenty of cool
drinks...No. Any word from the hospital...Call us if...yeah, Okay.’
Rick closed the phone. ‘Ned's on his way.’

After one hour there were two thousand hits, after four hours
it was twenty thousand. He watched with relish…now he had their
attention, soon the world would know his name. He stood and
stretched his arms above his head. He felt restless,
caged.

The shop door rang constantly. Gary Clarkson was right,
Christmas had come early. Many of them people he had never seen
before, all of them had a hunger in their eyes. They were all after
the same thing. They were the sort of people who slowed down at an
accident in the hope of seeing tragedy unfurled and splattered
across the freeway. The blood-hungry, seeking ghouls whose thirst
and desire for death would not be quenched until they had
experienced it firsthand. Gary didn’t mind, he’d take their money,
hell, he’d take anyone’s money. Photographers, journalists,
tourists, body hoppers, ambulance chasers, they were all fair game.
There was even a contingent of priests, nearly stripped him out of
wine. The door ran again. An old lady took her time entering. She
looked frail but it was obvious when you came within earshot that
she was far from delicate. Clarkson looked up from behind the
sanctity of his counter.

‘Afternoon Martha.’

‘Good afternoon, Gary. Is your mother ready?’

‘She’s not going today. Says she worried about this here
murderer that’s been all over the papers.’

‘Nonsense.’ The old lady brushed past Gary without hesitation
and walked through the back of the store to the living quarters. ‘I
lived through the war in Europe, ain’t gonna let no murderer come
between me and my daily swim.’

During the week the old ladies always took the afternoon bus
to the mainland for an afternoon filled with swimming, saunas and
shopping. Within minutes Martha was brushing Gary aside, making way
for his mother. He watched their backs disappearing out of the
shop.

‘Have a good time ladies.’ They were gone before he had
finished the sentence.

Rick, Georgina and Leroy sat on the riverbank watching Ned
Freeman's boat, ‘The Ingénue’ move majestically, almost silently
toward them. The boat was an old converted fishing vessel about
twenty-five feet long powered by a Cummins diesel engine. The
maximum river speed barely tested the boat’s engine. Ned dressed
the part to please the punters’, silver side-burns ran down his
ruddy weather beaten face from his ears to his cheeks, the sort of
lamb chop side burn that Elvis would have been proud of. His
fisherman’s hat covered the disappearing but matching silver thatch
underneath. Blue eyes sparkled beneath the rim of his cap, eyes
that had seen more life than most. Nobody knew his age, nor would
he tell if anyone asked, but he had been around as long as most
folk cared to remember.

The boat pulled alongside the bank, chugging to a slow,
seasoned, halt. Ned's dog, Nemo, barked a greeting to the
detectives. The small, wiry, Jack Russell scampered around the
boat, his paws slipping on the wooden surface. Ned stretched his
arm out and pulled Rick, Leroy and Georgina on board, his grip
still powerful and firm.

‘Hi, Ned.’ Rick had been on Ned's boat many times, taking Ray
and Jo-Lynn out on Sunday excursions and the odd holiday. He bent
down and stroked Nemo who gathered excitedly at his legs. ‘Hello
boy.’

‘So, who do we have here?’ Ned asked.