Clinton Tyree had selected Harney not only because of its natural beauty—the lake and the ranchlands, the cypresses and the pines—but also because of its profound political retardation. Harney County had the lowest voter registration per capita of any county in Florida. It was one of the few places to be blacklisted by both the Gallup and Lou Harris pollsters, due to the fact that sixty-three percent of those interviewed could not correctly name a vice-president, any vice-president, of the United States. Four out of five Harney citizens had not bothered to cast ballots during the previous gubernatorial election, mainly because the annual bull-semen auction was scheduled the same day.
This was a town where Clinton Tyree was sure he’d never be recognized, where he could build himself a place and mind his own business and call himself Rajneesh or Buzz, or even Skink, and nobody would bother him.
Skink waited all day to get rid of the body. Once darkness fell, he took the truck and left R. J. Decker in the shack. Decker didn’t ask because he didn’t want to know.
Skink was gone for an hour. When he got back, he was regarbed in full fluorescence. He stalked through the screen door and kicked off his Marine boots. His feet were bare. He had two limp squirrels under one arm, fresh roadkills.
“The Armadillo is still there,” he reported.
Immediately Decker guessed what had happened: Skink had hauled the other body out to Morgan Slough. And he probably had hooked it on the same fish stringer.
“I can’t stay here,” Decker said.
“Suit yourself. Sheriff cars all over the place. There’s a pair of ’em parked out on the Mormon Trail, and they hate it out there, believe me. Could be something’s in the wind.”
Decker sat on the bare wooden floor, his back rubbing against the unvarnished planks of a bookcase. He needed sleep, but every time he closed his eyes he saw Ott Pickney’s corpse. The images were indelible. Three frames, if he’d had a camera.
First: the crest of the skull breaking the surface, Ott’s hair dripping to one side like brown turtle grass.
Then a shot of the bloodless forehead and the wide-open eyes focused somewhere on eternity.
Finally: a full pallid death mask, fastened grotesquely on the stringer with a loop of heavy wire, and suspended from the water by Skink’s tremendous arms, visible in the lower-left-hand corner of the frame.
That was how R. J. Decker was doomed to remember Ott Pickney. It was a curse of the photographic eye never to forget.
“You look like you’re ready to quit,” Skink said.
“Give me another option.”
“Keep going as if nothing happened. Stay on Dickie Lockhart’s ass. There’s a bass tournament this weekend—”
“New Orleans.”
“Yeah, well, let’s go.”
“You and me?”
“And Mr. Nikon. You got a decent tripod, I hope.”
“Sure,” Decker said. “In the car.”
“And a six-hundred-millimeter, at least.”
“Right.” His trusty NFL lens; it could peer up a quarterback’s nostrils.
“So?” Skink said.
“So it’s not worth it,” Decker said.
Skink tore off his shower cap and threw it into a corner. He pulled the rubber band out of his ponytail and shook his long hair free.
“I got some supper,” he said. “I’ll eat all of it if you’re not hungry.”
Decker rubbed his temples. He didn’t feel like food. “I can’t believe they’d kill somebody over a goddamn fish.”
Skink stood up, holding the dead squirrels by their hind legs. “This thing isn’t about fishing.”
“Well, money then,” Decker said.
“That’s only part of it. If we quit, we miss the rest. If we quit, we lose Dickie Lockhart, probably forever. They can’t touch him on the killings, not yet anyway.”
“I know,” Decker said. There wouldn’t be a shred of evidence. Ozzie Rundell would go to the chair before he’d rat on his idol.
Decker asked, “Do you think they know it’s us?”
“Depends,” Skink said. “Depends if the other guy in the pickup saw our faces this morning. Also depends if the Armadillo told ’em about you before he died. If he told ’em who you are, then you’ve got problems.”
“Me? What about you? It was your gun that waxed the guy.”