Duma Key(196)

The doors were the kind that slide open on tracks, but these would never slide again; they were rusted in place eight feet apart, and had been for decades. Gray-green Spanish Moss dangled down like a curtain, obscuring the top of the gap between the doors.

"What we're looking f-" I began, and that was when the heron came flapping out with its blue eyes blazing, its long neck stretched forward, and its yellow beak snapping. It was getting itself into flight as soon as it cleared the doors, and I had no doubt that its target was my eyes. Then the Desert Eagle roared, and the bird's mad blue glare disappeared along with the rest of its head, in a fine spray of blood. It hit me, light as a bundle of wires wrapped around a hollow core, then dropped at my feet. At the same instant I heard a high, silver scream of fury in my head.

It wasn't just me, either. Wireman winced. Jack dropped the handles of the picnic basket and jammed the heels of his hands against his ears. Then it was gone.

"One dead heron," Wireman said, his voice not quite steady. He prodded the bundle of feathers, then flipped it off my boots. "For God's sake, don't tell Fish and Wildlife. Shooting one of these'd probably cost me fifty grand and five years in jail."

"How did you know?" I asked.

He shrugged. "What does it matter? You told me to shoot it if I saw it. You Lone Ranger, me Tonto."

"But you had the gun out."

"I had what Nan Melda might have called 'an intuition' when she was putting on her Mama's silver bracelets," Wireman said, unsmiling. "Something's keeping an eye on us, all right, leave it at that. And after what happened to your daughter, I'd say we're owed a little help. But we have to do our part."

"Just keep your shootin iron handy while we do it," I said.

"Oh, you can count on that."

"And Jack? Can you figure out how to load the speargun?"

No problem there. We were a go for speargun.

iii

The interior of the barn was dark, and not just because the ridge of land between us and the Gulf cut off the direct light of the setting sun. There was still plenty of light in the sky, and there were plenty of cracks and chinks in the slate roof, but the vines had overgrown them. What light did enter from above was green and deep and untrustworthy.

The outbuilding's central area was empty save for an ancient tractor sitting wheelless on the massive stumps of its axles, but in one of the equipment stalls, the light of our powerful flashlight picked out a few rusty, left-over tools and a wooden ladder leaning against the back wall. It was filthy and depressingly short. Jack tried climbing it while Wireman trained the light on him. He bounced up and down on the second rung, and we heard a warning creak.

"Stop bouncing on it and set it out by the door," I said. "It's a ladder, not a trampoline."

"I dunno," he said. "Florida's not the ideal climate for preserving wooden ladders."

"Beggars can't be choosers," Wireman said.

Jack picked it up, grimacing at the dust and dead insects that showered down from the six filthy steps. "Easy for you to say. You won't be the one climbing on it, not at your weight."

"I'm the marksman of the group, ni o, " Wireman said. "Each to his own job." He was striving for airy, but he sounded strained and looked tired. "Where are the rest of the ceramic keglets, Edgar? Because I'm not seeing them."

"Maybe in back," I said.

I was right. There were perhaps ten of the ceramic Table Whiskey "keglets" at the very back of the outbuilding. I say perhaps because it was hard to tell. They had been smashed to bits.

iv

Surrounding the bigger chunks of white ceramic, and mixed in with them, were glittering heaps and sprays of glass. To the right of this pile were two old-fashioned wooden handcarts, both overturned. To the left, leaning against the wall, was a sledgehammer with a rusty business-end and patches of moss growing up the handle.

"Someone had a container-smashing party," Wireman said. "Who do you think? Em?"

"Maybe," I said. "Probably."

For the first time I started to wonder if she was going to beat us after all. We had some daylight left, but less than I had expected and far less than I was comfortable with. And now... in what were we going to drown her china simulacrum? A f**king Evian water bottle? It wasn't a bad idea, in a way they were plastic, and according to the environmentalists, the damned things are going to last forever but a china figure would never fit through the hole in the top.

"So what's the fallback position?" Wireman asked. "The gas tank of that old John Deere? Will that do?"

The thought of trying to drown Perse in the old tractor's gas tank made me cold all over. It was probably nothing but rusty lace. "No. I don't think that will work."

He must have heard something close to panic in my voice, because he gripped my arm. "Take it easy. We'll think of something."

"Sure, but what?"

"We'll take her back up to Heron's Roost, that's all. There'll be something there."

But in my mind's eye I kept seeing how the storms had dealt with the mansion that had once dominated this end of Duma Key, turning it into little more than a fa ade. Then I wondered how many containers we actually would find there, especially with just forty minutes or so before dark came and the Perse sent a landing-party to end our meddling. God, to have forgotten such an elementary item as a water-tight container!