Legally Dead (7 page)

Venturi cursed. It was too dangerous for the dog. There were pythons and alligators out here—and somebody with a gun.

He called the dog again, then picked up his own gun and went after him.

Venturi found the dog at a small campsite, barking furiously at something in the serene woodland lake. A man floated facedown in the water, his unbuttoned white shirt billowing around him as he drifted farther from shore.

There was no one else in sight.

Venturi cursed, stripped off his own shirt, yanked off his boots, and waded into the tea-colored lake. When his footing dropped off into deep water, he swam out to the man, trying to avoid the reeds, vines, and aquatic grasses reaching like tentacles to entangle an unwary swimmer.

The man never moved as Venturi came up behind him. He turned him over in the water, wrapped one arm around his neck and under the armpit, then saw blood on his arm, swirling in the water, everywhere. The man's throat was cut.

Gators roamed the lake. Venturi knew the creatures normally fed at night but were hungry now. The drought had shrunk their hunting habitat during mating season, forcing them to forage farther and hunt longer for food and sex. He had seen them here before. He saw one now.

An alligator at least twelve feet long had been sunning itself on the muddy shore just a moment ago. Now it slid swiftly into the water about a hundred feet away.

Scout was also in the lake, gamely dog-paddling behind him. Venturi tightened his grip on the man and shouted at Scout to get out of the water: “Go! Go! Go!” He swam as hard as he could, using a sidestroke, hip pressed against the man's back to keep him above the surface so he could breathe, if he had any breath left in him.

Behind him, a muffled splash signaled the entrance of a second, slightly smaller gator that came from nowhere, gliding smoothly toward them at a thirty-degree angle.

“Go!” he shouted, desperation in his voice. The dog, a few feet away, was swimming toward him. Suddenly obedient, Scout turned, and began paddling back toward shore with Venturi right behind him.

As his feet touched the mucky shallows he caught the stranger under the arms to drag him toward solid ground. Scout was already ashore, at the water's edge, barking fiercely at the gators.

Making it out of the lake didn't mean they were safe. Surprisingly fast on dry land, gators often attack, then drag their prey into the water. They kill pets, wildlife, and people who venture too close to lakes and canal banks.

He knew he couldn't outrun them. Struggling to gain purchase on dry land, he slipped in the mud. The man, a dead weight, nearly fell from his arms. The gators were just a few feet behind. Venturi saw their flat reptilian eyes and their upper teeth. The stranger might be dead already. Should he save him, or the dog? If the man was still alive, he had made his own choice, put himself in this position. At least Scout was alive. So far. A barking thirty-five-pound mutt would have no chance at all against a hungry four-hundred-and-fifty-pound alligator.

He rolled the man up and out of the water, then ran for his gun, tucked into one of his boots twenty-five feet away. Then he saw something better. A heavy piece of wood, a four-foot-long branch from an Australian pine. Venturi disliked shooting an animal. He hated to kill these prehistoric-looking reptiles unless he had no choice—humans were the intruders here after all. And gunshots might attract a forest ranger or a deputy on patrol. He did not feel comfortable identifying himself to law enforcement at the moment.

The first, bigger gator splashed out of the water and paused for a millisecond, as though deciding whether to go for the motionless body on the ground or the furiously barking dog, an annoying moving target. He went for the dog.

Venturi advanced, swung with all his might, smashed the clublike weapon across the gator's snout, and let it go. The startled creature hissed, then splintered the thick branch between his teeth with a loud crunch.

The second gator paused, giving Venturi time to drag the stranger to his boat. “Let's go! Let's go!” he called to the still-barking dog. Scout scrambled into the boat with them, shaking water off his coat, panting, and glancing indignantly over his shoulder.

If the dog didn't realize it before, he knew it now—he wasn't in New Hampshire anymore.

The man sprawled in the bottom of the boat coughed, then snorted. He was bleeding but still alive. Venturi checked his airway, found it clear, then turned his head to one side. A surprising amount of water gushed from his nose and mouth.

He appeared to be in his forties, medium height, and slender, at about 145 pounds. His hands, though bruised and scratched, were soft and pale, not those of a laborer. He looked like someone who worked indoors at a sedentary job.

Venturi had no doubt that he had interrupted a suicide attempt. The man's wrists were slashed, as well. The cuts were not hesitation marks, but he had done it wrong and the wounds were superficial. He had also stabbed himself in the chest, but his breastbone had apparently deflected the knife thrust. The throat wound was bloody, but if the blade had penetrated his carotid artery he'd already be dead. The head wound bled freely, as head wounds do, but the bullet had only grazed his scalp. Venturi decided this was the most inept suicide attempt he'd ever seen. Yet it was no cry for help or bid for attention. The man was serious. Dead serious. He never intended to be found.

Who is he?
Venturi wondered. Few suicides travel deep into the wilds to dispose of their own bodies, which was exactly what this man had done. Bleeding from self-inflicted injuries, he had plunged into an alligator-infested lake. He clearly intended to disappear without a trace and would have succeeded, had Venturi not stumbled upon the scene.

Keeping an eye on the gators just offshore, Venturi checked the campsite. There had been a small fire at the center. Papers had been burned, and the fire stirred until all had been incinerated and reduced to ash. Even the FBI lab would find it impossible to resurrect evidence from it.

The clues were few. He was a Marlboro man. He'd left a Bic lighter and two of the brand's flip-top boxes, one empty, the other half full. He was neat. The empty pack held a small pen knife and a pair of fingernail clippers.

It appeared as though he had been there for hours, maybe days, trying to find the strength to complete his plan.

He had left two untouched sandwiches, both American cheese on white bread wrapped in plastic, and a half pint of blended whiskey. The bottle was empty, the final toast consumed.

It must have been to bolster his courage. It was not enough to anesthetize him.

Venturi found the man's shoes, a bent steak knife, and the gun, a small-caliber two-shot Derringer in the shallows at the lake's edge. The gun was empty. No trace of anyone else.

He went back to the boat.

The moaning stranger struggled to sit up, making his wounds bleed more. His hair was dark brown, his eyes light brown. He looked oddly familiar.

Venturi opened his first-aid kit and began to check the man's injuries. The first shot was probably a test to see if the gun worked. When he fired the second, his hand must have been shaking.

Venturi wrapped a Curlex compression dressing around the man's left wrist, tight enough to stop the bleeding but not enough to cut off circulation. The patient tried to jerk his arm away.

“No! Don't do that. Let me die,” he pleaded in English.

“You'll be all right,” Venturi assured him. “I'll take you to the hospital. They'll fix you up, then you can talk to a shrink.”

“No way!” Tears mingled with the water glistening on his face and dripping from his hair.

“Way,” Venturi said firmly. “What's your problem?”

“I'm having a bad day.”

“Better than no day at all. You just came damn close to being gator food. Not a good way to go, man. Life can always get better. Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary situation.”

The man seemed about to laugh but winced instead, as Venturi cleaned his scalp wound with a Betadine-soaked swab. “My life is over,” he blurted, “dead in the water. The way I should be. No hospital. I can't go there. Word will get out. The vultures will be all over me.”

Venturi gazed at him curiously. “You mean the press?”

The man nodded, gasping. “Please,” he said, despair in his voice, “just go away. Leave me here.”

“That's not an option.”

He struggled feebly to hurl himself out of the boat. Venturi easily restrained him, held him down with one hand, and warned him to stop or he'd be handcuffed.

“You're a cop?”

“Nope. But that doesn't mean I don't have handcuffs.”

The man maintained a defeated silence nearly all the way back to Venturi's place. He sat hunched over across from Scout, who watched him, his expression grave.

“I had a dog like that once,” the man mumbled, his voice breaking.

Venturi nodded. “You were lucky.”

“He's all wet. Did he pull me out of the water?”

“No. He's not Lassie.” Venturi smiled at the private joke. “He was too busy barking at the gators that were about to drag you under.”

“You should have let 'em.” His voice sounded hollow. “My life is broken and can't be fixed.”

“Anything can be fixed,” Venturi lied, acutely aware of so many things that never can be fixed, like the lost girls in New Hampshire. “You wanted by the law?”

“No.” The man reacted with umbrage at the suggestion. “I've never been arrested. I wish it was that simple. Then I could surrender, do time, and it would end.”

“What's your name?” Venturi couldn't shake the nagging feeling that he'd seen this man before.

“When this gets out…” The thin voice trailed off. “A lot of people would be happy to hear I was dead,” he said after a moment. “I didn't want to give them the satisfaction.”

Venturi had planned to drop the man off at a hospital emergency room without becoming involved. But if he did, what would stop the guy from boarding an elevator to the roof and jumping?

He couldn't let that happen after all the trouble he'd gone to to keep him alive. And he was curious.

The man seemed lucid and was in no danger of dying, but they were both in sticky, dirty, unpleasantly wet clothes. He docked the boat, helped the man up the bank, and took him into the house instead.

The man's shirt and jeans were way too big, not even close to his correct size. His shoes were also too big by several sizes. Yet he did not appear to be homeless. He sounded educated, had good teeth, and seemed to be healthy.

The man showered. He had no tattoos or old scars that Venturi could see, but scores of mosquito, spider, and red ant bites had increased his torment. Venturi gave him some of his clean clothes that were also too long and too large on the smaller man.

Venturi checked the pockets of the man's oversized garments, found nothing, and tossed them into the washing machine. He'd gone into the Glades to think, hoping to sort out his future. Quiet time close to nature had always comforted him. Instead, he'd encountered gunshots, blood in the water, and jeopardy.

What the hell is this?
Venturi wondered. The man could be a serial killer who couldn't live with himself and decided to disappear, leaving his fate an unsolved mystery. Half a dozen possible scenarios crossed his mind. He wanted the real story.

He poured the man a shot of bourbon and heated some of the bright yellow homemade chicken soup from a quart bottle Luz had sent home with him the night before. Danny swore the rich broth cured colds and hangovers faster than aspirin or Advil.

They sat across from each other at the rough-hewn wooden table.

“Okay,” Venturi said calmly, as the man scratched his multiple mosquito bites between sips of soup. “What's up?”

“I used to work for NASA,” he said, resigned. He paused as though expecting a response. When none came, he continued. “When I was four years old I told everybody I was going to be an astronaut when I grew up. By high school I knew it was impossible. I could never pass the physical—a heart murmur, allergies, and so on—so I focused on the next best thing. I studied computer sciences and electrical, mechanical, and aeronautical engineering and actually wound up working for NASA. The next best thing to that childhood dream was to support the astronauts and their missions.”

In a sudden flash of revelation, Venturi knew exactly who the man was and where he had seen him: on television, and in newspapers and magazines.

The man caught his look of recognition.

“That's right.” He nodded. “It was me. I'm the one who killed the astronauts. That's what they say. The whole world believes it. Even my wife believed it. My kids, too. I lost my job, my reputation, my family and friends.

“The press convicted me in the court of public opinion and will never stop hounding me. Ever.”

Venturi remembered the two veteran astronauts killed in a freak accident and the man blamed and accused of trying to cover up his mistake, or worse. The two, part of the crew on a mission to the space station, died during a routine repair procedure.

A 125-foot mechanical arm, attached to the shuttle and stored along the hinge line of the payload bay doors, malfunctioned and swung wildly, severing the tether of the astronaut working on it. Then it slammed into the second spacewalker, knocking off his helmet, splitting his space suit, killing him instantly.