Brigands Key Page 14

  Kyoko felt a chill. “Within a couple of days, the entire island will be sick or dead. Mortality is holding to ten percent of the illnesses at each plotted point.”

  “It’s not a single-event poisoning.”

  “Correct. We’d see an immediate spike and then a leveling and a drop. This is gaining momentum.”

  “Could be a contamination of food or water supply,” Hammond said. “That would continue to increase as people continued to consume from the supply.”

  “True, the incidence would climb, but not the rate of increase.”

  “Then it still tracks like a highly contagious virus.”

  “Pray that it’s not, Gerald. We’re into a rampant killer we can’t even identify.”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “If it’s viral, it’s a new strain. Good thing we’re on an island, away from the mainland. And in a rural county. If this were a virus and had happened in Tampa or Miami or Orlando, there’d be no stopping it. It’d be all over the world by now. It may be anyway.”

  “What’s your gut instinct, Kyoko?”

  “I don’t know what we’re dealing with, but it’s not a contagion.”

  “I agree. What if we’re wrong?”

  “Then America is in for a nightmare of epic proportions.”

  “What do we do?”

  “I want you to call Mayor Johnson and Chief Sanborn. They need to make people stay indoors, stay home from work, stay out of the stores. Eat only canned foods, drink only bottled water. Anything to slow the spread of disease.”

  “And you?”

  “I’m sending this report with extreme urgency to Atlanta.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  ON the EDGE, with Charley Eff

  I see Steele about an hour ago. She doesn’t look so good, but I don’t have a frame of reference for Midwestern street Goths. Don’t they always look sick?

  But she is sick all right. We talk about what to do in Brigands Key (nothing). And she turns ghost white and leans over and pukes. You okay, I ask. She shakes her head. Her pal, Billy the Splint, looks worried and a little sick himself.

  “We got to get you to the doctor,” I tell her.

  Wouldn’t you know it, Tyler Fulton comes strutting up the sidewalk right then. Him and his asshole friends. He points, laughing. “The Brigands Key vampire got the weird chick!” he says. Struts over and looms right over her. Asshole. Doesn’t care that she’s doubled over on her knees, heaving and puking.

  I give him my hardest look. “You know we got people sick and dying on the island, don’t you?”

  “Spooky freaking vampires, don’t you know.”

  Blood rushes into my face and my heart starts thumping. I shove him away from her. It’s the first time I ever shoved anyone. Ever.

  Tyler laughs and comes back and slugs me. Right in the mouth. I hit the pavement. The world spins. He laughs and gives me a kick for punctuation. “Charley Nutjob Fawcett.”

  In movies, the nerd always knocks the bully for a loop. What bullshit. In life, the bully is still twice your size and twice your strength and still drops you like a sack of dog shit. I hurt. Man, did I hurt. Steele puts her arm around me and helps me up. She’s trembling. Me too. She smiles a kind of weak smile at me. “You were great,” she rasps. “You can call me by my first name now. Callie.”

  I feel great.

  Your Intrepid Correspondent, Charley Eff

  * * *

  Kyoko’s phone beeped. She leaned away from her microscope, rubbed her eyes, tapped the phone screen, put it on speaker, and peered again into her microscope. She already knew who it was. Only two hours had lapsed since she’d sent her findings.

  “Dr. Nakamura, this is Dr. Greer. I read your report. It’s a bit alarming.”

  Alarming? It was terrifying. “Yes, it is.”

  “You remember New Mexico?”

  “Of course.”

  “I don’t want a repeat.”

  “This is an entirely different situation, Paul. New Mexico was a hantavirus.”

  “And this—?”

  “Not a hantavirus. I don’t know what it is.”

  “You’ve had two days and you have no ideas yet?” The disappointment in his voice was patented, vintage Greer.

  “It could be any number of things.”

  “All of them contagious.”

  “All of them deadly. I don't think it’s contagious.”

  Greer let out an exasperated sigh. “That's quite a comfort. But you’re fighting the obvious. Nine deaths, that’s starting to sound like Taos.”

  “Thirteen.”

  “Christ! Your report said nine.”

  “It was nine when I sent the report.”

  “Kyoko, you’ve got an epidemic!”

  “Yes sir.” Kyoko couldn’t believe the words herself.

  “I’m going to request the island be quarantined.”

  “I advise against that. Sir.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “Turn on the Weather Channel.”

  “Hurricane Celeste? That’s a non-factor. It’s headed toward Mississippi.”

  “A couple of days ago it was Mexico. Then Texas. Yesterday it was Louisiana. Look, people need to get ready to leave.”

  “I was once vice-president at Midwestern Allied Insurance, in an earlier incarnation. Do you know how insurance works?”

  “By playing it safe?”

  “By playing the odds. Right now, the odds say Celeste hits Pascagoula. One in ten says it hits Florida’s Big Bend region. That’s what you put on one side of the ledger. On the other side, there’s a one-hundred percent chance that Brigands Key is in the throes of a deadly contagion. I’m quarantining the island.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You need to back me on this. Play ball and I’ll make a few phone calls into that DC transfer you wanted.”

  That’ll be the day, she thought. “If you say so.”

  “And if you don’t …” Greer was silent, letting the unspoken threat hang in the air.

  “I have to go,” Kyoko finally said.

  “I want an update every three hours, day and night, Dr. Nakamura.”

  Kyoko tapped her cell phone off and tossed it away from her. She sank into her chair, shaking.

  * * *

  Charley sat on the dock, his long knobby legs dangling over the water, idly shooting peanut shells like marbles into the water, where curious sheepshead peeked at and investigated each one.

  The sound of footsteps on the wood dock roused him. “Glad you could make it, Charley,” Sanborn said.

  “Did I have another choice?”

  “Not really. I’m past following the rule book.”

  “That makes me feel so much better.”

  “Relax, kid. You’re on the team now.”

  Charley kind of liked the sound of that, even if it was horseshit. “What’d you want me for?”

  Sanborn pointed at Electric Ladyland, rocking gently against her moorings thirty feet away. “I want you to invite me on board.”

  Charley blinked suspiciously. “Roscoe’s not here.”

  “That’s why I want you to invite me on board.”

  Charley shifted.

  “Come on, kid. You write all that crap about vampires. You know a vampire can’t barge in uninvited. So invite me.”

  “Don’t mock me, Sheriff.”

  “I’m not a sheriff. You going to let me on board or not?”

  “Fine.” Charley stood and strode over to the boat. He paused, thinking. He hadn’t actually set foot on board since the last time he’d seen Roscoe. It was the obvious place to look for his boss, yet he’d avoided it.

  Sanborn seemed to read his mind. “Don’t worry, Charley,” he said. “We won’t find his body here. You’d smell it a hundred feet away.”

  Gross, but sensible. Charley shrugged and stepped aboard.

  Sanborn approached. “Permission to board, Captain?”

  “Why not?” He stepped aside and let Sanborn pass.
“What you looking for?”

  “Hell if I know.”

  The cop pulled on latex gloves, like he was some doctor or something, and tossed a pair to Charley. “Put these on but don’t get the idea you can touch anything. When were you last on the boat?”

  “Wednesday last week. Last time I saw Roscoe.”

  Sanborn went aft and studied the powerful twin engines, a pair of German behemoths. “Nice power plant here. How’d Roscoe afford motors like these?”

  “He didn’t have any girlfriends.”

  “Good point.”

  Sanborn expertly popped the hoods, checked the fuel lines. He knew his way around a boat, Charley decided.

  “Spotless,” Sanborn said. He moved along the starboard side, running his hands over the wood planking, all the way to the bow, down the port side, and back again to the engines. He moved into the small cabin and sat in the pilot’s chair, looking about. He flipped a switch on and off. “Quite an array of electronics here.”

  “The best,” Charley said.

  “Why the best for such a shitty old boat?”

  “Roscoe was like the city kid that drives a two-hundred-dollar car with ten thousand dollars’ worth of gadgets in it.”

  “Male plumage?”

  “Not Roscoe. He was always locking up, hiding his gear. He was sure everyone would rob him blind.”

  “Why the gear then?”

  “He figured he needed the best to succeed.”

  “At what?”

  “Treasure hunting.”

  “He got any gear on board for that kind of thing?”

  Charley hesitated.

  “Come on, kid.”

  Charley pointed. “There’s a locker on the right side of the cabin.”

  Sanborn followed Charley’s finger and found a padlocked latch. “Know where the key is?”

  Charley shook his head.

  Sanborn left the boat, went to his car, returned with a crowbar, and snapped the padlock, latch and all, right out of the splintering wood.

  “Breaking and entering,” Charley said.

  Sanborn shot him a glance and swung open the locker. Inside were several foul-smelling life preservers that may have once been orange. “Nothing,” he said.

  “Look under the life jackets.”

  He tossed the life jackets aside. A stained outdoor carpet lay over the bottom. He lifted the edge up and found another latch. “Clever,” Sanborn murmured. Again, locked. Again, in splinters after Sanborn’s assault with the crowbar.

  Sanborn swung open the door. “Holy smokes,” he said. Inside, surrounded by cables and winches, lay a gleaming tube with a nosecone on one end and four fins on the other. “He has a flippin’ missile!”

  “Side-scan sonar.”

  “Ah. Side-scan sonar. My next guess. What the hell is side-scan sonar?”

  “Like the name says. It’s sonar. You hang it over the side. It scans. You look for stuff on the bottom.”

  Sanborn pulled out a flatter object shaped like a manta ray. “And this?”

  “Magnetometer. Looks for metal on the bottom. Ship hulls, cannons, anchors, whatnot.”

  “He ever use this stuff?”

  “All the time. He was always looking for treasure. Fishing came first; had to get in a full day’s work, but on the way in from a catch, Roscoe would throw one of these overboard and tow it all the way back to the island. He monitored it from the wheel and tracked the position with GPS.”

  “Ever find anything?”

  “Lots. Nothing worth more than a nickel. The Gulf is littered with trash. Dumped barrels, scuttled boats.”

  “Did he use this stuff on your last couple of days with him?”

  “No. Last time, maybe three weeks ago. Why?”

  “This thing, the side-scan sonar. It’s got fresh seaweed stuck in it. Still moist. This has been used in the last week.”

  * * *

  Charley pedaled his bike two blocks and paused, waiting until Sanborn cleared the corner and was lost to sight. He hurried back to the boat and climbed aboard.

  He faked busywork for any onlookers, straightening tackle, wiping down the windows. He worked his way toward the cabin and the compartment that Sanborn had just searched. He opened it, checked it briefly, and located yet another of Roscoe’s hidden cubbyholes, this one devoid of hinges or bolts.

  Charley opened his pocketknife and slid the blade under the edge of a small steel panel and pried it open. Inside, as hoped, was one of Roscoe’s little orange surveyors’ notebooks. Charley pocketed it, snapped the panel back into place, glanced about, and started cleaning again, working his way across the boat.

  Finding the survey book was a piece of cake. Roscoe hadn’t made much effort to keep that out of Charley’s sight, once he’d begun to trust him. Now for the bigger secret.

  Enigmatic Lady Port.

  That was Roscoe’s clue to Charley, meant to suggest his boat, Electric Ladyland. Something was hidden on the boat’s port side.

  Charley started at the port bow and cleaned, slowly. He examined every inch, running a finger along every seam, every joint, working his way aft, inch by painstaking inch.

  Amidships, where the deck met the side, he found something. A faint line, as fine as a human hair, marked a low rectangle in the deck. In all his hours aboard the Ladyland, he’d never spotted it.

  He opened his pocketknife and worked the blade into the joint and pried it up. The wood came loose, revealing a small cavity. Inside was a length of white PVC pipe, an inch and a half in diameter by a foot long. The pipe was sealed on both ends with fitted caps, glued on with a solvent-weld compound. There was no pulling it off.

  Charley stuffed the pipe into his backpack and climbed onto the dock. He hopped on his bike and sped home.

  He bounded up the steps of the trailer, swinging the flimsy door wide against the wall with a loud slap. He rooted around in the tool closet and found a hacksaw and tucked it into his pants. It kind of hurt.

  His mother came out of the bedroom, a worried look on her face. “Oh, Charley. Daddy’s not doing well.”

  He never is, Charley thought. “Get him an aspirin, Ma. I’m kind of busy.”

  “Charley, I’m scared. Your father’s in bad shape. He’s caught the bug that’s going around. I need you to go get Doc Hammond.”

  Charley leaned past her and peered into the bedroom. His father lay on his side, the covers pulled high. His chest rose and fell with long deep breaths. He snored softly.

  An empty whiskey bottle lay on its side on top of the dresser. Sick. Yeah, right.

  “Ma, quit pretending.”

  “This is different, Charley. He’s sick, real sick.”

  “Ma! Not now!” Charley pushed his way past her and into his room. He slammed the door and locked it.

  Outside, his mother started sobbing quietly. Ma, the perennial victim. If the Old Man wasn’t doing it to her, she was doing it to herself. In twenty minutes, the Old Man would be old news and she’d be watching The Beverly Hillbillies.

  He flopped onto his bed, pulled on his MP3 player, and drowned her out with Nirvana. He placed the orange notebook and the pipe on his bed.

  Didn’t they call this “withholding evidence” or “obstructing justice” or something? Sanborn seemed decent enough for Hooterville, but he’d confiscate the notebook and that’d be the end of it. If it wasn’t plain as the nose on his face, all spelled out, Sanborn wouldn’t get it. And Roscoe had intended this for Charley, not Sanborn.

  He flipped through the book. It was some kind of log of the boat’s activities. Strings of numbers filled the pages, Roscoe’s own form of intentionally confusing shorthand.

  In the upper margin of the first page was a number:

  701220-12242

  Below it were two columns of extremely long numbers. Each number in the first column was exactly sixteen digits. Each number in the second was exactly thirteen digits. The number of entries in each column was the same, nine in each.

  Charley tu
rned to the next page. The numbers were all different than those on the first page, but the ordering was the same. He flipped ahead. Each page was ordered in the same way.

  A database.

  The only time Roscoe ever wrote in this book was when he dragged out his magnetometer and side-scan radar for a bit of treasure hunting. This could only be the log of his search results. He had recorded more than two hundred searches over the last couple of years, hoping, always hoping. Each search was different, never on the same path. But the ocean was a big place, and shipwrecks not easy to find. If they were, we’d all be rich.

  Now to crack the code. He returned to the first page and studied the top number, then looked ahead at the top page number of the next page.

  702220-12452

  He flipped ahead another dozen pages. The number always began with “70”. Then it abruptly began with “80” for the next twenty-three pages. Then “90” to the end of the book.

  He returned to the first page.

  The year, maybe? Did “70” mean 2007? The digits simply reversed? Charley turned to the last page and studied the top number.

  906180-1953112

  Charley mentally reversed the first six digits and added spaces to get 08 16 09. August 16, 2009. The last day anyone had seen Roscoe alive. But Roscoe hadn’t dragged either piece of equipment that last day. Why was there an entry?

  He must’ve gone out again. At night.

  Charley went back to the first page. The date was February 21, 2007. That worked with what he knew; Roscoe had bought his equipment, secondhand, two years before. Charley grinned. This was classic Roscoe. The guy simply entered data in backward sequence. No brilliant encryptions, but as secure in Hooterville as if they were in a bank vault.

  Satisfied he was on the right track, Charley studied the second part of the top number over a number of pages. If it were an entry of time, it almost made sense. On every page, the number—in reverse—always began and ended with either “1” or “2.” It began about ninety percent of the time with “2.” It ended in “1” or “2” roughly an equal number of times. From experience, Charley knew that Roscoe almost always alternated his use of each piece of equipment. He checked that knowledge against the number and found that it held up.

  Whenever Roscoe used the search gear, it was almost always at the end of the work day, not in the morning. So the beginning “2” likely meant p.m., “1” for a.m. And the ending 1 or 2 referred to the equipment used. The remaining three digits, read backwards, simply listed the time.