“I still find it hard to fathom,” I said. “The systematic abuse—the torture, no other word for it—heaped on those boys by the very people who were supposed to put them back on the right path.”
“I’m telling you,” Vickery repeated. “This world’s one big crime scene. I hate it that we dragged you into such a messy corner of it.”
“Me, too,” Angie agreed. “I really thought all you’d be doing was taking a quick look at a skull. Instead, you got backbreaking work, deadly snakes, and a beating that could have killed you—would have killed you—if Delozier, aka Skeeter, hadn’t shown up. I’m so sorry.”
I thought back over everything that had happened since I’d first stepped off the plane in Tallahassee. I was stunned to realize that only thirteen days had passed.
Despite the pain I felt, and knew I’d continue to feel for days, I found myself smiling. “Don’t be sorry,” I said. “I’m not. Most interesting two weeks I ever had.”
Vickery studied the end of his cigar, looking hesitant—almost shy, even. “So here’s another possibility, if you’d be interested in extending your Florida vacation by a few more days,” he said. “Mind you, I understand if you want to get the hell out of Dodge as fast as possible. But I’ve got a little place down on the Ochlockonee River, right on the bay. It’s about the only thing I’ve been able to hang on to through my divorces, except for my bad habits. Nothing fancy—just a fishing shack, really, which I guess is why I’ve been able to hang on to it. But the view’s pretty, and there’s a dock with a ladder, and the salt water’d be good for those welts you’ve got. There’s good mojo at that little place. I don’t get down there very often these days, but every time I do, I wonder why the hell I waited so long, you know?”
“I’d better head on home to Knoxville,” I said. “But thanks for the offer. Can I have a rain check?”
“Anytime.”
Chapter 30
Three miles south of a sleepy panhandle crossroads—a place that someone with high hopes or a strong streak of irony had named Panacea—I turned right at a blinking caution light, at the foot of a mile-long bridge across the wide mouth of the Ochlockonee River.
I had waved good-bye and driven away from Stu and Angie with every intention of heading north to Tennessee, but then I’d done a quick mental inventory of the things I needed to get back to, and I’d started to wonder how urgent those things were, really. They were important things, sure: I had a job I loved, truly, and a son and daughter-in-law and grandsons I adored; I had colleagues I liked and respected. But they weren’t urgent things; they’d still be waiting for me a few days from now. Making a quick U-turn in the parking garage of Tallahassee Memorial Hospital, I’d rolled down the window and tooted the horn to catch Stu’s attention as he walked toward his car. “On second thought, Stu,” I said, “a couple days in a fishing shack on the Ochlockonee sounds really nice.”
And so it was that I’d headed south instead of north. Thirty miles south of Tallahassee, three miles south of Panacea, and two miles west of the turnoff at the Ochlockonee bridge—two miles along the back road to Sopchoppy, a town whose name I found myself repeating out loud, just for the fun of saying it—I turned left onto Surf Road, a sandy dirt lane that led to the shore of the bay, then doglegged to the right, along the water. After a handful of houses and a hundred yards, the road dwindled to a pair of tire tracks, and in another hundred yards the tracks dwindled to furrows of bent grass, and in another fifty the furrows ended in front of a cottage tucked amid the pines, palms, and fern-laden live oaks. The board-and-batten siding was a faded pink, trimmed with turquoise shutters and a rusty tin roof. A screened-in porch stretched across the entire front of the house. Inside the screen, a woven hammock angled invitingly across one corner of the porch. The door at the center of the porch bore a sign that appeared to be a hot dog surfing on breaking waves. WELCOME TO THE SEA SAUSAGE, read a sign over the door.
At the base of the weathered wooden front steps was a broken concrete sidewalk. It stretched toward the water for perhaps twenty feet and then ended, or, rather, seemed to dissolve into the sandy grass, and something about that fading away of pavement and order appealed to me, so I parked there in the transition, between the end of the sidewalk and the start of the dock.