Deadly waters, p.20
Deadly Waters, page 20
She stifles a giggle. He’ll be fine.
23
There are bits of a story swirling through Rebecca’s head; she hasn’t managed to thread them onto a spindle yet. It’s frustrating, but she also knows if she tries to force a story before it’s ready, not only will nothing useful come of it, but she probably won’t be able to go back and rework it into anything better. Unfortunately, it’s also left her too unfocused to try to do anything else just yet.
Restless and irritable, she pokes around the dorm room. Crochet is out; she can’t sit still long enough. She can’t study, can’t read, can’t nap. Can she eat?
No, because they’ve left off grocery shopping too long, and there’s very little in the mini-fridge or the cabinet above it.
Now there’s a thought.
God, she hates when her brain has a squirrel day.
She runs down the list of her suitemates to see if she should invite anyone along or ask them if they need anything. Hafsah is in class, Susanna and Delia are out at one of the rivers for a lab, but she’s not sure about the other three. Rather than texting them, she heads into the bathroom between their suites and stops dead at the sight of Ellie perched across the sides of neighboring sinks, clad in bra and underwear and reading something off her phone.
“Hi?”
“Need something?”
Okay, then. “I was going to head to the store. Need anything or want to come?”
“Oh, thank fuck, yes.”
“Why are you hanging out in the bathroom?” she can’t help but ask, walking up to Ellie’s side. “It’s not noticeably cooler in here.”
“Luz and Keiko are having sex, and the wall is too thin to stay in the room without hearing it,” Ellie replies. “I didn’t want to hear it.”
“Okay, but the bathroom?”
“I also didn’t want to get dressed.”
It’s on the tip of Rebecca’s tongue that she could have just come through and hung out in Rebecca’s room or study space, but she doesn’t say it. Ellie does things Ellie’s way, and that’s fine. “Well, you will need to get dressed if you want to come to Publix. They have rules about that.” She reaches out and gently touches a welt on Ellie’s thigh. “We can get you some oatmeal lotion or something for all those mosquito bites.”
Ellie whines and pushes her head against Rebecca’s shoulder like a cat. “Thank you. They just won’t leave me alone at night. Are we walking or biking?”
“Biking. Bring your cooler bag?”
“Meet you downstairs.”
Leaving the bathroom, Rebecca grabs socks and shoes to put on, then finds her purse, her bike bag, and her grocery bag. All the girls in their suite have one, a gift from Susanna’s mother when they came back from winter break first year. Meant to be worn like a backpack, it has a firm-sided cooler as the base and a sizable bag on top. When Susanna’s mom dropped her off and handed out the bags, she watched her daughter bemusedly as Susanna went on and on about how eco-responsible it was and how it was using so much less plastic and they could reuse it constantly. When she finally ran out of steam, her mother looked around and said she thought it would just be easier than carrying bags the normal way.
Rebecca’s still not sure if she was serious or if she was teasing her daughter.
Outside, she settles into a patch of shade to set up her bike. Perhaps it’s just a leftover something from the pictures she took this morning or the conversation with Det Corby over coffee, but she’s unsettled by the number of girls walking around with small gators painted on their cheeks. Usually that’s just for football season, maybe basketball season. It’s not an everyday sort of thing. She’s heard stories of an enterprising graphic design student with a screen press; she sees the results now, as a group of girls passes her wearing shirts that feature a cartoon alligator framed by text that reads FOR A GOOD MEAL CALL, followed by different names. The names, she notes, are handwritten in Sharpie. Some of the shirts have more than one name.
It makes her think of the conversation with Hafsah, with the assumption—or hope, maybe—that the murderer is genuinely trying to effect a change with their actions. Punish rapists for their actions, make them afraid as everyone else always has to be, maybe even force a shift in how everyone else regards them. She wonders who’s naive enough to think it could work.
One of her uncles is still texting her at 6:37 every morning, Remember to zigzag! But now his wife texts her at 6:38 with Or just shove the nearest boy in the gator’s direction and saunter away. She knows her aunt well enough to know that it’s still an expression of concern for her safety, couched in the sharp humor that makes her the best to sit beside at weddings, christenings, funerals, and other serious occasions, but it certainly got a strange look from Det Corby when this morning’s repetition arrived.
What would the reactions be if the deaths had nothing to do with alligators? Or if the victims were young women? Or, well, anyone but white men, really. White straight men expect to feel safe in the world, whether they consciously think that way or not. What would the reactions be if the victims weren’t complete and utter assholes?
She remembers the fear that lurked through campus after the first few deaths, the ones that felt like accidents. When everyone thought it was just encroachment, and there were no talks yet of a serial killer or a vigilante or whatever they’re calling the murderer on Twitter. She’s been more interested in what the news is covering than what they’re calling it, and so many competing hashtags have sprung up that it’s impossible to skim them all and have time for anything else.
“All right, bitch, let’s do this!”
She sighs and rolls her eyes. “Really?”
Ellie just grins and mounts her bike. “I’ll buy you a cookie.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
The grocery store isn’t far, thankfully. They don’t see any surprise alligators at the intersections either. This morning Rebecca was actually the one to get the coffee, as Det Corby had to keep the gator in sight until animal control could come get it. They sat on a low section of the brick-and-concrete corner sign, watching and talking and wincing whenever a passing car nearly lost control at the sight of the beast. She’s still grateful that the alligator seemed more interested in hugging the pole—or, more likely, trying to climb the unnatural tree—than in crossing the road, or it could have been a complicated morning.
She knows hitting a deer can royally fuck up a car. She’s pretty happy not knowing what hitting an alligator will do.
When they get to the store, she makes Ellie buy her the cookie right off so she can eat it while they wander the aisles. She doesn’t really have a list in mind. It’s probably not quite as bad as shopping hungry, but it does mean they tend to backtrack as they think of things. It’s the type of chaos that usually pisses Ellie off. Today, however, perhaps in light of Rebecca’s obviously squirrely brain, it cracks her up, and they place bets on how many times they’ll cross the store before they get everything they can think of.
As they draw near the pharmacy for the eighth or ninth time, Rebecca ducks down one of the shorter aisles and grabs a tube of ointment to throw into their cart.
Ellie reads the label and looks up at her. “Will this help with the itches?”
“Between that and some Benadryl, it should help some with the eight million mosquito bites on you,” Rebecca says.
“Oh, like you’ve never been covered in bites.”
“Mosquitoes tend to leave me alone. Apparently I don’t taste good, so no one tries to eat me.”
The words are out of her mouth just as she understands how they can sound, and sure enough, that’s how Ellie takes them, laughing so hard she loses her balance on the cart and falls to the ground. The cart shoots forward, and Rebecca barely manages to grab it before it can crash into the shelves. She blushes at the looks from other shoppers, some of them merely curious, some judgmental and disapproving.
It could be worse, she thinks. They could be standing in front of the condoms and K-Y. Or Det Corby could have heard it. She can still feel the heat in her cheeks and chest, but she leans against the cart and smiles down at Ellie, who’s now wheezing and clutching her side. Even if it’s at her expense, she’s happy to see Ellie enjoying something that doesn’t involve violence.
It’s early evening as they ride back to Sledd, everything tucked neatly away except for one brown plastic bag swaying from Ellie’s handlebar because they couldn’t fit the two bags of chips without crushing them. Each of them also has a two-liter bottle tucked into their shorts, the caps nestled safely under the front joint of their bras to keep them from dropping. They left their bikes chained outside while they were in the store; now they’re both wearing gloves to keep a thin shield between themselves and the painfully hot metal beside the handlebar grips. Welcome to Florida, where you can get second-degree burns opening a door.
Rebecca sends Ellie upstairs with the grocery bags to put the cold things and the sodas away as quickly as possible—there are limits to the miracles the coolers can perform—and crouches down to fold away both bikes. They need to be washed, she thinks absently, trying not to get covered in grass from her bike or dried mud and dust from Ellie’s. One of the car washes might be bicycle friendly; she’ll have to ask around.
With both bikes put away in their bags, she straightens up and reaches for her purse to get her ID out. The faint call of her name stops her. Turning around, she doesn’t immediately see anyone. That’s not unusual, though. She’s fairly tall and carrottopped, so people tend to see her before she sees them.
After a crowd on the sidewalk passes, she sees Det Corby walking toward her, but it was definitely not his voice she heard, unless someone messed with his jockstrap. Then she sees a female sheriff’s deputy behind him, one arm across Delia’s back, Susanna on Delia’s other side. Both Susanna and Delia look spooked as hell.
Rebecca grabs the bike bags and runs toward her friends. “Are you okay? What happened?”
As soon as she’s close enough, Delia bursts into tears and throws herself against Rebecca, hugging her for dear life. “I didn’t sign up for this!” she wails into Rebecca’s chest. “If I’d wanted to touch dead people, I would have gone premed! I just wanted to get a water sample to check for tannins! I didn’t want to find a dead body!”
“Part of a dead body,” Susanna says helpfully.
With another wail, Delia trails off into sobs that quickly spread a wet patch across the front of Rebecca’s shirt. Shooting Susanna a stern look, Rebecca eases the bike bags down so she doesn’t disrupt Delia, then gently wraps her arms around her friend and sways her back and forth in wordless comfort. She glances between Det Corby and the deputy. “Am I allowed to ask for clarification?”
“Delia braced herself between a handful of cypress knees so she could get a water sample from between them,” Susanna tells her without waiting for the officers to answer. “Her hand bumped into something. She thought it was just vegetation, but when she pulled her hand away, it bobbed up to the surface. It was a leg. Part of a leg. Like, from the knee down. Ish.”
Susanna looks like she’s about to shake apart. She’s carrying her own bags as well as Delia’s, backpacks and sacks of lab equipment to bring back samples, but Rebecca holds out one arm anyway, and Susanna crashes into the two of them, burrowing her face into Delia’s hair. Susanna’s been strong this far for Delia’s sake; it doesn’t mean she was any less shocked by the event.
She looks up at the detectives, feeling queasy. “Have you, um . . . found more?” she asks.
Det Corby wobbles one hand. No, not Det Corby, she thinks—Detective Corby. If there was a body, he’s on duty now. “More? Yes. All of it? Not so much. We’ll be trawling the river for a while.”
Rebecca closes her eyes. “Well. That makes it official: we are not tubing down the Ichetucknee for my birthday this year.”
Delia and Susanna both nod and cling more tightly. Given everything else going on, no one in the suite had gotten on top of their usual plans. They missed their usual fall back-to-school trip because it had been scheduled for the weekend after Kacey was attacked. They always timed their spring trip to celebrate both Rebecca’s birthday and the end of the semester, but this year . . . they could wait, she thought. They could reschedule to sometime after alligator-courting season.
“This was the Santa Fe, away from where the Ichetucknee flows in, so you should be fine. But, ah . . .” He hesitates, which is enough to make her open her eyes and look at him. “It wouldn’t be the worst thing if you went to one of the springs instead.”
“Because they’re colder?”
“Right.”
“I am not going anywhere near water ever again in my life,” Delia mutters, muffled by the shirt.
That’s probably fair. Extreme, certainly, and unlikely to stick, but fair.
She wonders if they found the right parts to identify the person, the way they struggled with the Lake Alice body, but she doesn’t ask. Besides the problem of it being macabre to ask, they can’t tell her who it is even if they think they know. They need to verify identity, then notify the family. One thought overrides the rest: What happens to the investigation if it’s one of the names on the wall? Or on a shirt or one of the offering clusters? She frowns, trying to spin that out into something more coherent.
“Finals start next week,” Susanna says quietly. “Most of the school will be gone after that.”
Rebecca glances at Detective Corby, who nods grimly. Everyone’s been so focused on what happens after courting season is done, no one’s been asking what happens to an investigation when both your victim pool and suspect pool scatter for the summer. What will that mean for Detective Corby?
“Come on, you two,” she tells her suitemates. “Let’s get you upstairs and cleaned up. Ellie just put away brand-new ice cream, and we’ll lock the hall doors so no one can get in to bother you with questions once the news gets around.”
The deputy clears her throat, her dark-blonde hair scraped back into a severe bun. “Miss—”
“We won’t spread it around,” Rebecca says immediately. “But it was a class trip. They drove out with someone. And . . . I mean. Everyone’s really invested in what’s going on.”
“We don’t know for sure yet that it’s connected to the ongoing situation.”
Delia snorts.
Detective Corby grimaces. “A toddler died this afternoon in Broward County,” he says, voice soft. “Every county is on notice to share information about alligator-related incidents.”
“What happened?” she asks, trying not to picture any of her baby cousins in place of this other child.
“Her grandmother left her in the backyard in a kiddie pool for a few minutes while she went inside to get them a snack and something to drink. Next thing she knows, the child is screaming. She raced back with a shotgun that didn’t do much but piss the gator off. A neighbor saw what was happening and called 911. The girl died en route; the grandmother is in critical condition. She’s lost the one leg for sure, might yet lose the other.”
Delia starts crying again. Right, she found a leg. Rebecca rubs circles into her friend’s back and resolves to hug all the youngest cousins at least three times each as soon as she gets home. She can’t even imagine losing any of them.
“We can’t assume,” Detective Corby finishes awkwardly.
Rebecca nods. “Do you need anything more from them?”
“Not at the moment. We wanted to make sure they got safely home.”
“And you’re off back to the river.” To look for the missing parts, she doesn’t say, and search for evidence. How do you even start with something like that, when you have everything upriver to worry about? Downriver, too, really; there’s no reason to expect that the alligators wouldn’t move things about.
He shrugs, fidgeting with his tie.
“Put some sunscreen on.”
He gives her an astonished look that slowly shifts to a reluctant smile. “Take care of them, Rebecca.”
“I will.” She gives her suitemates a squeeze and returns the smile. “Thank you for bringing them back. Both of you.”
The deputy glances between the girls and Detective Corby but gives a friendly nod that doesn’t say much of what she’s thinking. No one in the suite has been questioned about the alligator incidents, Rebecca reminds herself, and he isn’t the detective on Mountebanks’s case; there’s no reason for the deputy to make a report of unprofessionalism.
Taking a deep breath, Rebecca pulls away from Delia so she can grab the bike bags and rearrange her support of her friend. Susanna sticks to Delia’s other side. “Let’s get you two inside.”
24
It takes hours to truly settle Delia and Susanna, and Rebecca’s pretty sure the only reason they ultimately manage it is because the two girls finally have no energy left to freak out. Hafsah, Luz, and Keiko are still in the room with them, a massive puppy pile on a bed too small to hold five grown women. They kicked Ellie out in under half an hour when her good mood, made even brighter by the news of another gator bait, led her to rattle off long lists of possible identities; both Keiko and Delia started crying. Rebecca hasn’t seen Ellie since.
For her part, Rebecca still has a story swirling through her mind. She slides a notebook between her laptop and camera and takes them out to the third-floor lounge, where she can spread out and possibly talk to herself without waking her traumatized and finally sleeping friends. The coffee table pushes aside easily, and a search of the couches turns up a grand total of two throw pillows to put under her. It’s not necessarily comfortable, but it’s enough.
The laptop dings when it recognizes the plugged-in camera, bringing up the day’s pictures. She scrolls through them slowly, reading each note on what she can only think of as the altar anymore. To a vengeful god? Or a healing one? One of the pictures grabs her attention, and she zooms in carefully, letting the image settle. What is it about this one? Why does it feel familiar? She pulls her knees up to her chest, clasping her hands at her ankles, and studies it.
