Chapter 1
Cannert happened upon the auto court after the better part of a day of driving. The motel, that being what it was now called, was far off the interstates on a secondary Florida state road. It wasn't greatly different from other remodeled auto court motels he'd seen except this one seemed more valiantly kept up and appeared as if it might have been recently repainted.
Martha's only card had come from Lake City, less than two hundred miles away. Cannert knew she liked two-lane roads and clean, cheap, small motels.
Besides, he had a hunch about what he now was seeing, and he'd learned during his sometimes dangerous lifetime to follow and believe in his hunches.
He turned off the car radio and unfolded a Florida state map from the cluttered glove compartment of the Ford. He was fairly close to Jacksonville, but still in Florida, well within half a day's driving range of Lake City.
Beyond the motel, Cannert could both see and smell the Atlantic Ocean. Here, the main body of the ocean lay east of a thin, likely unpopulated barrier island that protected the land. That island made interior land less valuable because land that lay on the ocean was worth far more than bay land.
Not many tourists likely came to this area. It was too far north, too deserted, and in winter too damned cold.
Tourists went where other tourists went. They looked for warm rather than cold.
The motel was a long, low building. When he got closer, he could see signs of age. It was, however, white roofed and not unattractive, the kind of quaint place that might have drawn his wife, Martha.
Cannert counted the units. There were twenty-eight. The unit setup had once been separate, closely bunched cabins. Now they were joined together by clever carpentry.
There was a black on white sign at the entrance: mom's motel. singles $35, doubles $44. Below, in smaller letters: Low Weekly Fishing Rates. A small neon Vacancy sign also glowed dimly.
Cannert thought his vanished Martha would likely have noticed the sign if she'd passed this way. She had gone on to Florida to scout for a couples' retirement spot a month ago while he still lay in the hospital. Cannert now knew it had been a mistake to let her drive to Florida without him. He also believed, on bad days, that she was dead, but sometimes he awoke in the mornings and sensed her alive and lost out there in the fog and smoke.
He believed, at those times, that she was alive, and he remained in love with her.
It also seemed possible she'd left him, given him up as a futile job, but he didn't believe it except in the blackest hours of the nights when nothing was certain.
He remembered Vietnam and the black-clad men who'd come up from their underground hideouts and killed some of his army buddies and the hill people he'd lived among. When the black clads had gone back underground, he'd followed or awaited them and killed many of them, executing every damned one he could catch with gun and mostly knife.
He'd done similar things with other bad men after he came back from Nam.
He was following that pattern now in looking for his Martha. He would hurt no one except those who might have hurt her and those who schemed to hurt him or injure the good world he believed in.
That available list for harm was well populated in Florida.
He parked the Ford in front of the office unit and slowly got out. He liked watchers to think he was less than he was.
From the bay side of the motel there came a sharp fish smell. White gulls wheeled and flashed in the sun.
Two people, a man and a woman, watched him as he entered the office. The man put down his newspaper and Cannert saw the familiar headlines he'd first read yesterday in Jacksonville. Two days ago and miles away, near Live Oak, an unknown, likely demented (according to the newspaper stories) rifleman had conducted target practice on the office of a motel about the size of this one, killing one motel worker and badly wounding another. Cannert supposed that had made many motel managers extra watchful.
That headline had influenced changes in Cannert's travel style because of the cautions, although he'd not been the shooter. He'd changed his check-in approach to that of an itinerant, dedicated fisherman looking for a cheap place to stay while he pursued the wily Florida fish and perhaps played a few holes of golf. He'd discarded both his rifle and shotgun into the waters of a lake. Anyone who searched his car or suitcases would find nothing suspicious but might discover things of value.
"Could I see a room?" he inquired in his best courteous and gentle voice.
The man nodded, relaxing a bit. He was a big, fleshy man, not yet old but no longer young. He was much larger than Cannert, who was visibly aging but still looked wiry.
"You sure can, sir. You'll find our place clean and respectable even if it does have a few years on it. And we have a motel pool if you like to swim." His voice still had traces of the snow of New England in it.
The woman went back to the paperback mystery novel she'd been reading, hiding herself behind its lurid cover. Her eyes had shrewdly estimated Cannert and his possible worth and turned away, unimpressed.
Cannert followed the big man down a well-weeded walk. Like some heavy men, the motel man's step was light as a ballet dancer's.
The room Cannert was shown was old but acceptable. Sunlight came through a clean window. The bedspread was faded but immaculate. The towels in the bath were thinning but still serviceable. There was a quiet window air conditioner.
Cannert nodded his approval and followed the fat man back to the office. "I'd like to stay a week if it can be worked out. Maybe longer if the fishing around here's as good as I've heard."
"Try the big pier five miles south. It's called Citadel Beach," the motel man advised amiably. He shrugged. "It's just off the highway and can't be missed. I'm not a fisherman, but I hear others brag on the fishing on that pier."
Cannert looked out the office window. Only a few other cars were parked in front of the joined units, and it was late in the day.
"Looks as if business isn't so good today."
The motel man gave him a penetrating glance. "We make do all right. Times are hard in this part of north Florida, but things hopefully will improve. Most vacationers stay along the interstates or the beach roads farther south, but running this place is a tad better than welfare, and north Florida's climate is easy on our bones what with lots of sweet sun. Took Em and me almost five years to get the damned Maine cold out of our bones." He shook his head and grinned determinedly. "We'll never go back, never give up our place in the warm sun."
"Is your pool salt or fresh?"
"Salt." He appraised Cannert with care. "How about two hundred dollars for a week?"
"Done, and for at least one week." Cannert took out a worn billfold and paid, letting the motel man get a glimpse of the thick sheaf of currency inside.
Cannert had hoped for a registration book so he could check for Martha's name, but he was handed a card instead. He filled it out and signed it "William T. Jones." The man behind the desk inspected the card and raised his eyebrows a fraction.
"Sure are a lot of Jones boys in this hard old world," he said, not smiling.
Cannert nodded. "The T stands for Thurman. The kind of Jones boy you need to watch out for is one who checks in with a painted woman plus a bottle of liquor. I'm alone and will be—all week. The only thing I drink is a bit of Canadian on special occasions." He looked coldly around the spartan office. "Where's the closest and best place to eat?"
"There's a good restaurant near the pier at Citadel Beach." The motel man looked down at the card, and Cannert saw him then look out the office window to check the license plate number written on the card against the plate on the back of the Ford. Cannert smiled to himself. They were the same.
"Thanks," Cannert said shortly.
"Glad to have you staying with us, Mr. Jones," the motel man said appeasingly. He extended a heavy hand. "Name's Ed Bradford. The lady you saw earlier is my wife Emma. We been here eleven years now. Making do in lean times and still hanging on." His smile seemed innocuous.
Cannert smiled also and shook hands. "I understand about being cold. I'm out of Chicago. Retired from construction. There was nothing to do and no one left to keep me in Illinois, so I'm wandering around, doing whatever I want." He nodded. "Golf a little, fish a lot."
"My bet is you'll like the fishing hereabouts," Bradford said, "but there ain't a decent golf course for maybe thirty miles. Not enough business around here to pay for building one or supporting it after it was built. They cost big money to build and maintain." He went back to alertly watching the deserted road out front, a brooding planner of a man.
Cannert left the office. He unloaded his bags and golf clubs from the car, leaving only the fishing gear inside. He then drove to the edge of the small town a few miles away. It was now almost dark, too late to fish. He found the restaurant near the pier and suppered there. Fishing talk came from nearby booths, and he listened. He tipped the waitress the correct amount and played a role he knew well, being and remaining unnoticed.
When he departed, it was into a moonless night. He drove back to the motel. There was only one new tourist car parked in front of a unit. A few children splashed aimlessly in the dimly lit pool.
Five out of twenty-eight rented. Not good.
Cannert entered his room. He drew the shades and checked things over. Someone had carefully gone through his bags. Only a watchful man would have noticed. The plastic-encased roll of one-ounce gold Canadian Maple Leafs and Krugerrands he'd left balanced on one side of a bag was now tilted wrong. Some of his clothes had been carefully lifted, looked under, then smoothed back.
Cannert turned out the lights and undressed. He smiled in the dark room. His hunch seemed correct and he felt Martha was close. Losing her had angered him and also firmed up his purpose for what was left of his time. Cannert was a man who believed not all of life would be joy and fun. The good times had come and gone, and he no longer expected their return. It was as if his war years had returned to take their place.
He'd had a gift in those war years, and he knew he still owned it.
He hurt some inside, so he took a pain pill and washed it down with a glass of warm, brackish tap water.
He slept. There were shadowy dreams during the night, but no nightmares. Once he came full awake and plotted against the rest of his time. He'd found that it was now easier to hate the world around him than it had been, easier to use that hate to plan what must happen.
He slept some more and dreamed for a thousandth time of the blood and the blackness inside the Nam tunnels and of using his knife again and again without mercy. Later he dreamed also of Chicago and of bad times there. He didn't regret either of those times.
He'd been a bit old for the Vietnam War and was many years older now. But he'd been good at soldiering.
An optimist is a man who sees a half-full glass, a pessimist is one who sees the same glass as half empty.
Cannert knew he was now a pessimist. He could feel his rage rise each day as he read newspaper pages. The world around him was bad. He believed now mostly in children, dogs, and the hope of finding his Martha.
One must cope with the badness. Yet, at the same time, he could not be unfair. Martha would not like that.
After sunrise, he drove again to the fishing pier. He ate scrambled eggs and toast in the restaurant and then fished the day away. He was an indifferent fisherman, but a tourist needed to fit into some recognizable mold. What he caught he threw back when he was certain he wasn't observed.
He skipped lunch, ate an early dinner, then drove back to the motel. Again, there were few tourist cars. Other areas of the crowded state of Florida might be busy and prosperous, but this one, as Ed Bradford had admitted, was not.
Cannert changed into his bathing trunks and walked to the pool. A few children frolicked in the water and were watched carefully by their parents. The world was full of molesters and abusers, and parents knew it.
His bathing trunks covered the scars of two old war wounds that had almost killed him but didn't cover another scar that soon would.
The weather was muggy. Cannert dipped a cautious toe into the pool and found the water was warm as blood.
Ed Bradford came outside the office and joined him, smiling his ingratiating smile.
"How's fishing?" he asked.
"Pretty good," Cannert said. "I caught some good ones, but I gave them away. Would you like some fish if I catch any tomorrow?"
Bradford nodded. "On one condition. This place will be dead by tomorrow night. Sundays always are and you'll likely be the only one left. I imagine we'll close the place down. You bring back some fish and Em will cook them for us. Catch no fish and we'll unfreeze some steak. Maybe we could even have a drink of some of my cupboard Canadian Club first?"
Cannert smiled. "That would be fine. You're kind to a cold country stranger."
"You seem a kindred spirit," Bradford said, still watching him. Cannert saw he'd noticed the red scar that ran down from upper belly to a hiding place with the others in the swim trunks.
"That looks like a bad one."
"Car wreck," Cannert lied. "Slid a car under a semi on the damned Chicago street ice. Lucky to be alive." It was, in truth, the place where they'd last opened him after trying the chemo and radiation treatments. They'd hastily sewed him shut and given him the terminal news. It's spread and six months to a year, sorry about that, Mr. Charlie Cannert.
So maybe spend the days left to you drowsing and waiting to die in the sun?
Cannert nodded to himself. Not without Martha.
In the morning, Cannert again left early. Only one tourist car remained.
He drove for about a mile, found a turnoff spot, and parked his Ford, hiding it behind a billboard. He walked back up the beach toward the motel. A few other walkers were also on the beach, most of them oldsters getting in their healthful walking. A crudely painted sign along the beach said snowbirds walk and had arrows pointing both ways. Cannert had seen and heard the phrase before. It was a derisive one adopted by Floridians to jokingly explain the odd habits of out-of-state visitors who walked or ran the beaches compulsively, trying hard to restore health during a vacation week or two by frenzied exercise.
Walk or run in the hot Florida sun and live a little longer.
From a vantage point behind a hummock of sand, he waited until the final tourist car had departed the motel. He continued to watch. In a while Ed Bradford and his wife exited. They put a sign in the office window and then drove off in a two-year-old well-polished Chevrolet.
Cannert waited until they were out of sight and then walked to the motel. The beach was now deserted because the temperature had climbed upward with the sun. He checked the guest rooms and the office as he walked, but there was no one left. The sign on the office door read gone to church. closed all day and night sunday.
The office door was locked, but Cannert found a window he could open. Making sure he was unseen by any solitary beach walker, he entered and searched through the office. The safe was locked, but he had no interest in stealing money. He wanted, most of all, to see the registration cards of those who'd come before him, but his search failed to turn up anything interesting.
He did find several things. In the kitchen, hidden behind the salt and flour, was a medicine bottle half full of a colorless liquid. Cannert unscrewed the top and sniffed. The odor was unfamiliar, not acid, but instead heavily alkaloid. About two ounces of sluggish liquid was left. He was unsure about the contents but believed it possibly was an unmarked poison. He emptied the bottle into a toilet and flushed it away. He then washed the bottle carefully, making sure not to get anything from inside it on his hands. He found a bottle of clear Karo, sniffed it, and put two ounces or so of it into the bottle. The liquid Karo sloshed about in much the same fashion as the previous contents.
He put the revised bottle back in its hiding place and prowled some more. He found a .38-caliber Colt revolver in a drawer. It was old and had some rust, but was loaded with fresh-appearing ammunition. Cannert left the weapon loaded but knocked the firing pin off with a hammer he found in the office. He took the firing pin with him when he departed and dropped it in the deep sand near where he'd parked his car. He kicked sand over it.
The beach walk was deserted. The sun sent the heat straight down at a walker, hot enough now to burn the unwary.
The exercise of walking in the heat and the excitement of breaking and entering had tired Cannert so that he felt faint. He took a strong pill and rested. He got out his vial of sleeping pills and broke up a dozen of them. He took the remainder and put them in his shirt pocket, then ground the broken bits into fine powder with a coin. He put the resulting powder back into the vial. All the time he was doing the grinding, he kept watch from his hiding place. When he saw Ed and Emma go by in their bright Chevrolet, he waited until they passed. Then he pulled his Ford out and returned to the fishing pier.
He wondered if he'd figured out the possibilities they might have planned for him and believed he had. If not, life was a gamble he was already losing day by day.
Fishing was good at the pier. He caught three fat fish and hooked them on the stringer inside his bucket.
Once, during the afternoon when his stomach was quiet, he got a ham and cheese sandwich from the restaurant and drove again back to the pull-off place near the motel. He ate the sandwich and then walked the sand dunes back to his hummock so he could check things out again.
The sun was now a round ball of molten gold. The Bradford car was parked near the office. Out front the neon No Vacancy sign showed.
He saw nothing, but he sensed and therefore knew they were inside waiting for him.
He returned to his car and drove once more to the fishing pier. Other fishermen around him talked fine weather and fishing luck, but he ignored them and waited patiently for the afternoon to pass. When it came time to return to the motel, he filled the Ford with gas and also filled an emergency five-gallon can he kept in the trunk.
Martha, maybe I've found you.
The church sign had been removed from the office door when he returned, but the No Vacancy sign by the road still glowed. Cannert parked his car near the office and waved at Ed Bradford, who sat perspiring, wearing rumpled khaki pants beside the saltwater pool.
Emma came out, smiling, and Cannert reflected that it was the first time he'd seen her smile. She took the fish he'd cleaned before he left the pier, nodded her approval, and vanished back into the building.
Ed Bradford pointed at a bottle of Canadian Club and a bucket of ice.
"Build yourself a Canadian," he ordered affably. "There's water for mix, or I can get you a 7-Up or a cola from the soft drink machine."
"Water's better."
"Sit here up close. Tell me more about yourself. Tell me just how cold it gets in damn Chicago and I'll compare it to damn icy Maine." Bradford smiled engagingly at both his Florida world and Cannert.
Cannert mixed a light drink and took a chair by the pool. He rambled for a time. It was a story he'd told before. Some of it was true. There was no one for him now, no wife, no child to speak of, no surviving brothers or sisters. He admitted to Bradford the truth about the red scar. He detailed the long, pain-filled treatments and said he was now waiting out the time to see if they'd stopped the alien thing that grew and spread itself inside.
This last tale was a lie. The answer was known.
They sipped their drinks companionably and watched the sun fall from the sky. Finally, Emma came out to the pool.
"Dinner in a few minutes," she said, smiling again at Cannert. "Do you drink coffee, Mr. Jones? I'm afraid I forgot to get tea last time at the market."
"Coffee's fine—black, sweet, and strong," Cannert said.
His answer brought a smile.
Bradford kept adding to Cannert's drink, but Cannert was careful to sip. He spilled liquid into the sand when Bradford wasn't watching, then added more water.
When the sun was almost down, they moved into the rooms behind the office. A kitchen table bore lighted candles. There was a festive bottle of wine.
"Let me open that for you," Cannert said jovially, seizing the opportunity. "Wine tastes better if it breathes a little."
He observed them smiling at each other. He took the wine bottle and corkscrew to a corner and managed to dump his vial of powdered pills into the wine.
"I love wine but can't drink it these days," he said. "It burns me." He held up his drink glass. "I would take one more light Canadian and water if you would be so kind."
Ed Bradford fixed him a fresh one. It was dark brown with whiskey, and Cannert fought and controlled his stomach when he sipped it. He excused himself, used the toilet, and poured half the drink away, replacing it with water from the bathroom tap.
They ate companionably. The Bradfords toasted their wineglasses with his tiny sips of Canadian.
"No business at all tonight?" Cannert asked with interest.
"Sometimes, on Sundays, I just shut her down. All I seem to get on Sundays are problems. Besides, it's church day for me and Em, a day we like to share with each other. And also it's God's day of rest."
The meal was Cannert's fish. Emma had doused them with lemon and then baked them. They were good. On the side there were individual crisp green salads and tiny potatoes.
"New potatoes," Emma boasted. "And the salad fixings are fresh. No canned stuff. Me and Ed like to eat good."
Cannert nodded approval. "You people know how to live, and I do appreciate your kindness to me." He watched sharply, but the food seemed to be served and shared haphazardly and so was not suspect.
Em brought him his coffee—hot, black, sugary, and strong. Cannert sipped it, then added sugar. The coffee already tasted strongly of syrup and the sugar made it sweeter, but he drank it.
"Tastes strong," he said appreciatively.
They nodded. Cannert could sense them waiting.
In a short while, he could see they were growing sleepy, and it was time.
"My wife vanished down here in Florida. I miss her a lot, way too much to just easily lose her," he said conversationally.
"A wife?" Ed asked. "I thought your wife was dead."
"No. She came down here to find a place for us when I was in the hospital. Maybe she might have stopped here? She'd have been traveling alone under the name of Martha Cannert. Large woman, but handsome, gray hair, driving a four-door blue Plymouth with lots of miles?"
"She might have stayed here, but I don't remember her. And I thought your name was Jones." Bradford stirred uneasily. He tried to rise but had problems. "What's wrong here?" he asked. "What's wrong with me, Em?"
"I put something in the wine," Cannert said softly to both of them.
The two of them looked dumbly at each other, almost ignoring Cannert.
Ed Bradford finally shook his head and made it ponderously to his feet. He staggered to the drawer that held the gun. He dug it out and aimed it in Cannert's direction. He closed one eye and clicked the gun twice.
"I knocked the firing pin off your revolver."
The motel man reversed the gun and came toward him, but Cannert, quick and cat agile, easily eluded him.
"It's only a sleeping powder," he told the two of them soothingly. "I need to find out about my Martha. I think she maybe stopped here and you got rid of her? That's what you had in mind for me, isn't it?"
"Still do," Ed Bradford muttered. "We'll wake up. You won't."
Cannert bent over, acting out inner pain. "Something inside does hurt bad."
"It's poison," Emma whispered triumphantly, her eyes gone yellow. "I put it in your coffee. A drop or two is all it takes to kill. You haven't got long left."
"And my Martha?" Cannert pleaded.
"Maybe we got her, too. We do people now and then. Maybe there was someone like her. We favor single travelers, but you can't always find just one alone when there's a need." Emma gave him a sleepy look that seemed apologetic. "We have to do it to survive, you know. We can't fail again. We can't go back up where it's cold and where we have relatives who believe we're well-off. Therefore we can't lose this place. We've got to make it work. Times are hard. So, now and then, we do someone or more than one. Someone like you. The Mister will pray over you nice after you're gone and we'll bury you down deep under the sand. We'll sell your car or call the junk man to get it. The Mister"—she nodded at her dozing husband—"knows about that. He used to be in the used car business up north."
"Martha wore half-glasses and liked bright clothes. Her Plymouth had Illinois plates." He thought for a moment. "It would have been a month or so ago."
Emma started to snore. Cannert moved quckly from her to Ed and shook him. The fat man's eyes opened.
"Did you and your wife kill my Martha?" he asked.
"We'll wake up," Bradford repeated. "You . . . won't."
Cannert alternately searched the office and tried to shake one of the Bradfords back to consciousness. The only result he obtained from either Bradford was moans and mumbles and threshings about.
He found nothing in the office to convince him Martha had been or not been a guest at Mom's Motel. He did find some guest cards in a file in the back of a drawer in the desk. He went through them. The cards had gaps in their consecutive numbers, and he theorized they'd destroyed the cards of those they'd killed. Going back two years, he figured eight missing numbers. Eight or more dead. None seemed to be dated close to the time Martha had disappeared.
In anger, he scattered the cards on the floor. He then destroyed his own card. He tore it to tiny bits and flushed it.
He eyed the sleepers. He could leave and it was pretty certain they'd say not a single word. But they'd soon kill again for new potatoes, fresh salad fixings, and, next year or the year thereafter, a brand-new Chevrolet to drive to Sunday church.
He waited until he'd not heard a single passing car on the road outside for a long time. He then loaded his car and drove it to the dark front of the office. He washed and toweled all the places he might have touched inside his own room or in the Bradfords' office and quarters.
Maybe someone would remember him, and the police would come looking. But there were tons of old men and women wandering the cities and roads in Florida. Besides, it seemed possible that police were already looking for him.
He went back into the office one final time. Ed Bradford now snored loudly, but Emma's breathing had grown shallow. He tried again to awaken them but without success.
He knelt and recited for them a well-remembered prayer from his boyhood, then another he remembered from his soldiering days in Vietnam, one that had been taught him by the holy man of the hill folks.
"Sorry," he said to the office walls. "Sleep you both well in hell."
He doused the office and the rooms back of it with the contents of the emergency can of gasoline he'd purchased earlier.
From outside the front door of the office he listened to the night and the road. Nothing coming.
He tossed in a match and dodged back from the sudden blast of heat and flame.
He drove to the highway. Behind him he could see fire already breaking out from under the eaves on the pool side of the office. There was a bright explosion as some windows popped out.
He drove slowly north and pulled off the road about a mile away. By the time he heard distant fire engines, the flames were crackling high in the sky. The motel had been old.
He started his car again and drove sedately on.
He reminded himself to read newspapers for a few days to see if there was any news about a suspicious motel fire. Even if there was no story, he'd lay quiet for a while. Newspapers and the careful reading of them were useful for his quiet times. The papers were full of both bad things that happened to good folks and stories about the bad people who caused those things.
Those bad people entered pleas of not guilty, made bond, and then, many times, did additional evil things. So did child molesters and abusers.
It was a filthy world. It also was the only world he had for the time he had left.
So he must occupy himself.
At a major crossroad he made his decison on which direction to drive.
He found a chain motel, slick, neoned, and air conditioned, near Jacksonville. Inside he took a pill and slept with only his dreams for company in the cold and antiseptic room. The nightmares came softly on this night, with known and unknown dead faces, a few Floridian, many North Vietnamese, plus a number of others. He tried without success to make the faces vanish. At the same time he liked seeing them. The holy man from the hill people had taught him how to live with vanished faces and even how to honor them.
In his dream, he touched them with his fingertip with its drop of blood as he'd been taught.
He awoke fully refreshed when it was morning.
Copyright © 2008 by the estate of Joe L. Hensley. All rights reserved.
