The record keeper a murp.., p.23
The Record Keeper (A Murphy Shepherd Novel), page 23
I couldn’t help but think about those videos of the world-champion cliff divers who, dressed in a Speedo, launch themselves off some high ledge, spin, flip, turn, and then gracefully enter the water a hundred feet below with little to no splash, only to swim gracefully to the edge, climb out, and begin walking up the cliff once again. That wasn’t anything like my descent to the water. I flailed, screamed like a girl, and tried to turn but could not. For the record, water is not a soft surface when encountered from ten stories up. The impact knocked me unconscious and, while I did not realize it at the time, also knocked all the air out of me.
Which, in turn, caused me to sink. Like a rock. In several hundred feet of water.
I don’t remember having conscious thought. Only that a cold darkness surrounded me. Maybe cocoon is a better word. I tried to fight it, but my arms and legs wouldn’t respond. My last physical sensation was pressure on my chest, and when I fought for air, I found none. My last emotional sensation was something akin to heartbreak. And it was piercing.
The last picture to flash across my mind’s eye was Marie. Not because I didn’t love Summer. I did. But because when I’d rescued Marie in the ocean in high school, she’d been floating for hours before I found her. Literally washed out to sea. I wondered how many times in those fearful hours she thought about getting too tired to tread water and being unable to fight any longer. At what point do your arms and legs quit and the water pulls you down? What is that second? The last second.
Whatever the case, I couldn’t fight. The impact had rendered me unable. And now the water pulled me down. I did have one sensation. I was incredibly aware of one thing.
The quiet.
It was like standing in the snow. The whole world was not just muted, but silent. Almost in reverence.
One of the things I loved about my island, before Frank blew up my boat and set everything on fire, was waking to the quiet in the mornings. Before daylight, after the crickets and the frogs quit, there was a momentary pause. Often several minutes. When all the world stood in silence and you wondered if your ears worked at all. It was as if all of creation just stopped and stared in wonder at what was about to happen. That the sun was about to rise. That light would once again pierce the darkness, and the darkness would roll back like a scroll. Many mornings I would walk out of my home and around the chapel and walk to either the beach or the dock. Geography mattered not. I’d stare over a mug of coffee, close my eyes, and listen for it. That singular sound that started the day. Many times I’ve thought it’s the sound of heaven. It must be. Any other description holds no value. If heaven has a frequency, it must be this one. It’s both a lonely echo and a magnificent cry. Made by a singular creature. And while I don’t pretend to understand frequencies, this one travels. I don’t mean it’s loud. I mean it travels. There’s a difference. You have to listen to hear it, and if you’re not paying attention, you’ll miss it. It almost slips by you.
It’s the song of the mourning dove. Calling to its mate. For me it has long been the cry of heaven, and I’ve wondered, more than once, if that is the sound of angels. In my life I’ve taught Bones very few things. While we are friends, he’s the tutor. I’m the student. It has always been this way, but one morning he visited me on my island. And like every other morning, he found me standing on the beach. Coffee. Listening. He stood alongside and asked without asking. Then it sounded. Then again. That quiet coo. That shout-out across the stratosphere. One lover calling to another.
It’s the cry of the human heart. And every one of us knows it.
As the water pulled me down, I had a singular desire. To hear that cry one more time.
Chapter 29
Day 6 Without Bones
I don’t know if I gave in to the water or accepted the fact that I couldn’t do anything about it, but about the time I figured my ticket had been punched, I felt an arm wrap around my neck and someone pull me toward the light. Which was good. About the time my head cleared water, my lungs woke up and remembered how to do what they were meant to do, and I started sucking in air. Camp dragged me into the boat and flipped me on my side, spilling the water out of me. Which also was good. I lay there hacking and sputtering a few minutes as reality slowly returned and Gunner licked my face off.
While I was alive, my situation had not improved all that much. Bones was gone, and unlike the previous six days during which we had some inkling of where he might be, we now had none. Zero. Frank had lifted Bones without a trace. And even if he’d left a trace, it was soon to rest on the ocean floor several hundred feet below.
That’s when it hit me: it wasn’t sunk. Not yet. Sitting up, I hollered, “Camp, put me back on the California.”
He looked at me like I’d lost my mind.
I pointed. “Right now.”
“You almost died.”
“Bones’ll die if you don’t get me back on that boat.”
The California had turned almost forty-five degrees, with its bow totally submerged and its comms room and pool deck the only two remaining visible parts still above the waterline.
Camp spun us around, throttled up, and came alongside the comms room. He hollered above the roar of the engines, “If you’re in there when it goes down, the suck will take you down with it.”
I nodded. Get off before it goes under. Check.
I stood on the bow, timed my jump, and launched myself at the door of the comms room, landing on what was once a secondary control panel that mirrored the controls in the bridge. Most of the floor where Bones had been lying was underwater, or would be soon. The only thing I could still see were the walls that supported the door. The same walls that you’d try to hold on to if someone were dragging you out of the room and you didn’t want to go with them. The reason I’d come back was because of what I’d seen there. Which was the same thing I saw in the hospital when Frank had first taken Bones. Something on the wall. An imprint smeared in blood.
Below me, the boat was moving. Coming apart. I didn’t have long. I snapped a picture with my phone, and then a second closer up. That’s when I saw it. The tablet mounted to the wall. It hadn’t been there when I first left Bones. If so, I’d have hit it with my head when I left. That meant Frank had left it when he took Bones. Left it just for me. As I stared at it, the screen flickered on and I saw Frank’s face. I was looking at Frank as Frank was looking at me. Live and in person.
Frank was no longer in the helicopter. His surroundings were plush camel leather, high-back reclining seats, and small tinted windows. He was in his jet. One of them. He spoke without introduction, as if he knew me. “Well done.” He nodded. “Really. Swimming through that hatch with that kid tattooed to your back was impressive. And it took some strength. I’d like to think I could’ve done it, but”—he shook his head—“I’m older now.” He angled the phone down. Bones on the carpet. Either unconscious or pretending to be. “I want something and you’re going to find it for me. And bring it to me.” He half smiled. “I’ll be in touch.”
The screen went black. I didn’t have time to think of something cool, menacing, or tough to say because he was gone just as quickly as he’d appeared. But if I’d had time, I would have told him I was coming for him. That I was going to tear down his playhouse and that his meeting with God would happen on my terms and sooner than he thought. Lastly, I’d have told him that if he hurt my friend Bones, then our meeting would be painful for him.
The ship moved beneath me. A life measured in seconds now and not minutes. Climbing onto what was once the roof of the superyacht, I clung to a useless antennae, fought the waves, and steadied myself as Camp moved in close, proving that he was equally as good a captain as me. I tested my footing, felt the boat sliding, timed my jump, and then launched myself as far as I was able, landing on the bow of the demon boat as Hotel California disappeared, torpedoing downward, leaving froth and bubble in its wake.
How did I lose him? Again? Why did I leave him alone? Why didn’t I realize Frank would never let me take him? Gunner, too, felt his loss. He stayed close by, pressing his chest to my leg.
By the time we arrived on land, Summer, along with local officials, had established a triage using teams of Child Protective Services, law enforcement, and medical staff. Unable to sit still, I returned alone to the house at Amelia.
As a kid, I’d spent a lot of time on my island digging and trying to unearth history. Truth was, I wasn’t the only one. Feral hogs were a problem in our part of the world, and they seemed to travel in groups of thirty or forty. They’d forage into an area, destroy it by uprooting everything in sight, and then move on, having laid waste to the landscape. My island was no different. Hogs came and went, hopping from one island to the next. No matter what anyone tells you, they’re excellent swimmers. In high school Marie and I had increased our digging efforts to find megalodon teeth and Indian ruins. We spent every waking second pretending to be Indiana Jones brushing our way through an archaeological dig. Unearthing fragments of history and dreaming about the stories behind them.
Summer of my junior year we discovered an area of mounds along the marsh with a large collection of discarded shells. Akin to a three-hundred-year-old trash heap. So we sank in a shovel and spent the summer removing layer after layer. Digging to China. In many ways it became the motherload of arrowheads and shards of pottery. We were some four feet down when we returned one morning to find that the hogs had returned during the night and destroyed our dig. It looked like a bomb had gone off. Everything we’d uncovered had been chomped, chewed, or rooted by the pigs.
A sow can reproduce three times a year and birth eight or more piglets each time, proving to me that they’re just overgrown rats. So I traveled inland to an archery store, bought a compound bow, and began shooting. With the hogs continuing to eviscerate my island, I built platforms in several trees, and since hogs eat mainly at night, I started sleeping up there. If I didn’t hate mosquitoes before then, I did after.
One night under a full moon, the sounder group returned. I picked out the largest body among all of them, drew my bow, set my pin just behind her shoulder, and let the arrow fly. I heard a squeal, and then about forty pigs vacated my island rapidly.
I crawled down at daylight, recovered my arrow, which, judging by the red paint covering the shaft, had passed completely through her, and began tracking. Looking for blood. It wasn’t difficult to find.
A drop here. Three drops there. More there. I walked from blood sign to blood sign. In a few places it looked like she stopped and stood, indicated by blood on both sides of the trail. I walked slowly, listening and watching. At the time I had no idea I’d later follow this same pattern as I hunted men.
The sow had run a giant circle and eventually returned to water, but that’s where I lost the trail. The water’s edge. So I backtracked, studied the trail again, and realized I’d lost it. Which made no sense. It was so strong a trail just a few feet ago, how could I lose it?
For several minutes I stood studying where she’d come from and where I thought she was going—but that’s where I made my mistake. A past blood trail had no bearing on where a wounded and dying pig would run. None whatsoever. Her path was illogical. Instinct driven. Erratic. And unplanned. That meant I could not impose my conclusions. I simply had to follow the sign. So I turned around, found the sign, and retraced my steps.
The process was valuable as I learned to follow sign and hold off assigning assumptions to the red drops splattered below me. The path returned me to the water, but where I assumed she’d entered the water, she had not. Given that she weighed several hundred pounds, her footprints weren’t tough to follow beneath the surface of the water. But that was the key. Shifting my search from blood to footprint. Obviously she’d continued to bleed, but she did so in the water, where the blood dissipated and disappeared. Once I made the adjustment, I followed her around the edge of the marsh to another game trail where she exited the water and returned inland. Once again I picked up blood. Slowly, I followed. Drop to drop. The process was painstaking as I searched for minute specks of blood on leaves, dirt, the sides of grass. For whatever reason she began to bleed less. I would later learn that pigs clot rapidly. After three hours of looking, I found that the trail had gone cold and all the blood had dried up. She’d stopped. I had no explanation for this.
Finally, I sat beneath an oak tree, laid my bow across my lap, and tried to think like a pig. Where would I go if I was wounded? I had no answer, but as a human I thought I’d return to water. Especially if I was wounded and thirsty.
So I turned back toward the water. And that’s where I found her. Laid up beneath a palmetto bush. We ate bacon and pork chops for the remainder of the summer.
Staring at the hastily erected triage, and at Summer who had quickly checked into “mother mode,” I found myself parked beneath a giant, sprawling oak. I was spent. I’d been running on fumes for six days, hadn’t slept in over four, and could barely keep my eyes open. I don’t know if it was my thought of Bones, Bones’s voice himself, the memory of that pig, or the delusion of sleep deprivation—but somehow I knew I needed to return to the water.
So I did.
I borrowed a car and drove to the Amelia house. Turns out it was once owned by some famous reclusive writer who paid a premium for privacy, so the driveway was long, fence high, and house massive. The front door was ajar when I arrived, and everything inside was as I’d last seen it. In disarray.
I knew Bones had been here. As with the pig, this was one of the last places I saw blood. And if he’d been here, he’d have left me a signal. I just needed to find it. Gunner and I roamed the house, room to room, staring quietly at each, leaning heavily on Gunner’s nose. I tried to look at each room through Bones’s eyes, wondering if anything was out of place. Unnaturally. Did any one thing look like it had been set alone, apart from other things? Had a lamp been left on when it should be off? Had a chair or table been set at an odd angle from other furniture in the room? Had a blind been left half open, and if so, what was revealed through the window?
We spent four hours walking through the house, finally ending in the kitchen. The pantry was empty. Cleaned out. As was the fridge. There was no evidence that anyone had ever been here. The stove and ovens were clean. Unused. Maybe never used. And the dishwasher was empty and in like-new condition. The only thing in the kitchen that had been used was a single burner on the stove, as evidenced by the water kettle still sitting on it. The kettle was cold and mostly empty, but next to it stood a French press with the press fully depressed and grounds lying in the bottom. Someone had used it. Probably today. Behind me stood a granite-topped island with barstools. Two were pulled out. A cup of coffee in front of each. One empty. The other half full. Some sort of coastal birds had been painted on the mugs. Next to the half-full cup sat an orange.
I had no idea if Frank had poured his brother a cup of coffee in this kitchen and, if so, who sat where, but I wouldn’t put it past him. He was crazy. Let’s talk about the good old days. I studied the mugs. The position. Then the chairs. I moved around the room, but nothing made sense. Finally, I leaned against the wall and stared out over the ocean, which was calm. Gunner lay on the floor in front of me. Head up, paws crossed. Smelling.
Light flickered, and something akin to a blue haze caught my attention. I turned and found Frank standing in the kitchen. Eight feet away. I drew my Sig and was in the process of squeezing the trigger when it struck me that looking at Frank was like looking at him through glass. Or a screen. Gunner stood in front of me, and the hair on his back stood on end as he, too, stared at Frank. Growling. Frank was not armed, just smiling smugly, so I stepped closer. Then closer still. Finally, I pressed my muzzle to Frank’s chest—but his chest wasn’t there.
That’s when he spoke to me. He looked down at the muzzle, then at me, but he didn’t move. “You like my sleight of hand?” He shook his head. “I’ve always loved Star Wars. I own a company in Israel, and they perfected this hologram technology a few years back. It’s how I conduct business around the world without having to actually be there.” One hand came up, and he pressed the end of his finger into the muzzle of my pistol. “Safer too. Although you would not believe the number of people who do not share your restraint.” The realness of the image was astonishing. Any further distance, and I would be unable to tell he was actually a projection.
Frank smiled, walked across the kitchen, and sat at the table. He gestured to a chair. “Please.”
Set into the ceiling were projectors I’d not seen. They were made to look like recessed lights, so if you weren’t looking for them, or if you weren’t trained to see them, you wouldn’t. Given the cost of such technology and his comfort with “sitting” in his surroundings in a room in which he was not actually sitting, I gathered Frank had conducted many meetings here, causing me to wonder how much flesh had been bought and sold right here. I walked around behind him and stared down. Looking down on his head, exposing the weakness of the technology. He was nearly identical in size and shape to Bones. Maybe thinner. Not as much muscle. But wiry. Unlike Bones, all his hair was silver-white. And there was something about his movements. Nothing was wasted. Each was practiced. Measured. And had been for a long time.
“David, I’ve been watching you for some time. My brother trained you well. You have a remarkable skill set.”
I moved around in front of him, conscious that his prolonged interaction with me might simply be a head-fake to occupy my attention while some team of goons snuck in behind me and shot me in the leg. I also did not miss his use of the name “David.” I scanned my six, listened, and then completed my circle around the kitchen, still studying the mugs, the orange, and him.
Frank gestured to the coffee. “The beans are from Nicaragua. I own the farm. They’re quite good.”
