“Have I been there before?” Dick Artemus asked.
“Probably not.”
“What does ‘Shearwater’ mean?”
“It’s the name of a bird,” Lisa June Peterson said.
“Do they live on the island?” asked the governor. “Is that going to be a problem?”
Lisa June Peterson, having already researched the question, reported that shearwaters were migratory seabirds that preferred the Atlantic coastline.
“But there are other kinds of birds on the island,” she added.
“Like what?” Dick Artemus frowned. “Eagles? Don’t tell me there’s goddamn bald eagles on this island, because that means we got a federal scenario.”
“They’re doing the survey this week.”
“Who!”
“A biological survey. Clapley’s people,” Lisa June Peterson said. Robert Clapley was the developer who wanted to rename Toad Island and subdivide it. He had contributed most generously to Dick Artemus’s gubernatorial campaign.
“There’s no votes in bulldozing eagle nests,” the governor remarked gravely. “Can we all agree on that?”
“Mr. Clapley is taking every reasonable precaution.”
“So what else, Lisa? In fifty words or less.” Dick Artemus was famous for his insectine attention span.
His assistant said: “The transportation budget includes funding for a new bridge from the mainland. It passed the Senate, but now Willie Vasquez-Washington is being a prick.”
Willie Vasquez-Washington was vice chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. He and the governor had tangled before.
“What’s he want this time?” Dick Artemus said.
“We’re not sure.”
“You reach out to Palmer?”
“We keep missing each other.”
“And I suppose this thing won’t fly, this Shearwater Island/’ the governor said, “without a brand-new bridge.”
“The one they’ve got is sixty years old and wooden,” Lisa June Peterson said. “It won’t hold a cement truck is what Roothaus says.” Roger Roothaus was president of the engineering firm that wanted the contract for designing the new bridge to Toad Island. He, too, had contributed generously to Dick Artemus’s gubernatorial campaign. In fact, almost everyone who stood to profit from the development of Shearwater Island had donated money to the governor’s election. This, Dick Artemus took for granted.
“So get Palmer to fix the bridge problem,” he said,
“Right.”
“Anything else?”
“Nothing major. We’re anticipating some local opposition,” said Lisa June Peterson.
The governor groaned. “People live on this island? Christ, nobody told me that.”
“Two hundred. Two fifty max.”
“Shit,” said Dick Artemus.
“They’re circulating a petition.”
“I guess that means they’re not golfers.”
“Evidently not,” said Lisa June Peterson.
Dick Artemus rose and pulled on his coat. “I’m late, Lisa June. Would you relate all this to Mr. Stoat?”
“As soon as possible,” she said.
Twilly had spent the day in Gainesville at the University of Florida veterinary college, reputedly one of the best in the country. Many famous nature parks and zoos, including the one at Walt Disney World, sent their dead animals there to be necropsied. Twilly had gone to deliver a red-shouldered hawk that appeared to have been shot. The bird had fallen on a remote patch of beach at a place called Madeira Bay, in Everglades National Park. Twilly had bubble-wrapped the broken body and placed it on dry ice in a cooler. He’d made the drive from Flamingo to Gainesville in less than seven hours. He hoped the bullet had remained in the bird, because the bullet was a key to resolving the crime.
Which wasn’t exactly the same thing as solving it. Knowing the caliber of the weapon would have been useful: something to file away in case the shooter returned to the park and was foolish enough to let himself get stalked, captured and lashed naked for a month to a mangrove tree.
Twilly Spree wasn’t a park ranger or a wildlife biologist or even an amateur birdwatcher. He was an unemployed twenty-six-year-old college dropout with a brief but spectacular history of psychological problems. Not incidentally, he also had inherited millions of dollars.
At the veterinary school, Twilly found a young doctor who agreed to do a postmortem on the hawk, which had in fact succumbed to a single gunshot wound. Unfortunately the slug had passed cleanly through the bird’s breast, leaving no fragments, no clues, only blood-crusted feathers. Twilly thanked the young doctor for trying. He filled out a form for the U.S. government stating where he had found the dead hawk, and under what circumstances. At the bottom of the paper he signed his name as “Thomas Stearns Eliot, Jr.” Then Twilly got in his black pickup truck and drove south. He intended to return directly to the Everglades, where he had been living in a pup tent with a three-legged bobcat.