When Jake
awoke suddenly several hours later it was if the wind
and rain had been double-clutched into a higher gear
during the night. Even though protected by the plywood
walls of the tree house, the mosquito netting was
flapping wildly about although, thankfully, the two men
remained dry. Darkness would last for at least another
hour or so with the dark cloud cover and daylight would
be reluctant to provide visibility unless the rain
slacked off, which did not appear likely. At least the
early light should enable Jake to find landmarks after
leaving the treehouse and see to follow those signs
around the border of the island until he crossed the
main trail leading back to the southeast. All of this
continued to be obscured by last nights’ darkness and
storm. With a little luck the Lycoming would start and
the bilge pump would soon empty the rainwater out of the
hull so a relatively safe trip back toward Slim’s could
be made. Once there, the logistics of coordinating
truck, trailer and boat could be arranged with a few
telephone calls if the remainder of the return leg to
Clewiston proved impossible due to an inability to
navigate the bad section of cypress trees and swamp
which lay in between.
In the
meantime, Jake awaited some movement from across the
floor where his client lay, apparently still sleeping
soundly but neither snoring nor moving.
“Must have been
totally exhausted”, Jake thought, as he slipped out of
his netting and started down the treehouse stairway in
the darkness. Incredibly, a few embers still remained
from last night’s fire. Jake threw on a couple of logs
and sat down to awaken and wait for the day, obsessed by
the thought of a steaming cup of strong coffee and a
cold glass of fresh Florida orange juice. “Oh well, at
least Slim’s might have a weak machine coffee and a
carton of orange juice from concentrate, maybe”, he
concluded.
After the fire
caught back up and provided some light through the rain
and fog, Jake held his slicker over his head and made
his way through the wind-driven rain to the airboat to
check out how much water had accumulated in the hull. It
wasn’t nearly as bad as he had anticipated since most of
the hull was below deck and the access hatch was
protected by a canvas cover below the seats and engine.
Once started the boat should run fine while the bilge
pump emptied the water from below. Despite this
perfectly sensible plan, the weather not only continued
to be uncooperative but was actually growing worse. Now
the wind maintained a constant gale force and waves were
overcoming the grass and willows and crashing against
the shallow shore, leaving little on the island above
water except the deck below the treehouse. Out of
caution, Jake left the fire and slogged through the mud
and wind in order to secure the boat to a post.
Otherwise, the wind and rising water could easily tear
away their only way to get back across the lake and
swamp. Jake knew of cases when boats of extremely light
weight construction such as his had been overturned in
high winds. Comforting thought.
After securing
the boat and evaluating the weather, Jake concluded they
would be stuck on the island for at least several more
hours even assuming the storm would decide to give them
a break. Under the circumstances there was no reason to
awaken the client and even though it was now almost 5:30
a.m., nothing had happened to give Jake much hope. His
thoughts went to Julie, now well on her way to Jackson,
and Hoover, probably sound asleep in the Okeechobee
cabin with a dry bed, plenty of water and a daily visit
from his rancher neighbor to see that Hoover was
well-fed while Jake was away.
Over an hour
later, a little after 6:30 a.m., some noticeable
daylight began to show itself and still the impossible
storm continued. Even though visibility was improving
slightly the men remained trapped and could only wait.
Nevertheless, Jake decided to awaken the client in order
to at least have someone to share in the discomfort. He
arose from the fire, carefully crossed the slippery deck
and climbed the stairway to the sleeping room. When he
opened the door he expected some sign of life from the
client but even in the dim light could see there had
been no movement since he had left the room almost two
hours earlier.
“Really
strange”, Jake thought as he crossed the room and called
for the man to rise and shine. Nothing. Jake bent over
the sleeping body and shook it. Nothing. He then
gripped the man’s left shoulder and rolled him over,
thinking this would surely awaken him from even the
deepest sleep. As he rolled the big man over on his back
Jake could barely see the client’s face in the darkness
but one thing was certain. He was not asleep. Neither
was he breathing. Both eyes were wide open. The man was
dead as a doornail.
Jake
reflexively jerked his hand away from the corpse and
fell back against the wall. His brain began spinning as
it tried desperately to make some sense of the
situation. He spontaneously knew he had to get away from
this place as soon as he safely could, locate the police
and emergency rescue team and report the death. Jake
could only conclude the man must have had a heart attack
during the night. He hesitated about what to do next and
decided to cover the body with one of the rain slickers
and get back down to the fire. The room had suddenly
become very spooky. Jake tucked the slicker around the
body and was stunned when he felt something cold and
metallic attached to the man’s body, sort of under the
left armpit and angled toward his heart. Jake hurriedly
grabbed his flashlight and shined it on the object which
was buried to its hilt in the dead man’s chest. He
realized it looked like the handle of an icepick or
dagger-type weapon which had been used to stab the man
directly through the heart. Obviously not a suicide nor
the work of an amateur. But since Jake and his client
had been alone on the island since last night, no one
could have possibly come and gone and in the process
stabbed a man sleeping less than 10 feet away on the
second floor of a treehouse in the middle of a
mini-hurricane. Jake’s instant analysis was perfectly
logical but the man was still stone dead and a third
party stranger’s dagger was protruding from his chest.
“Good God”,
Jake thought!
“Someone is on
the island. Must have been here when we arrived. Why was
the client killed and not me? Where’s the killer now?”
Then like one
of the seeming non-stop flashes of lightning it hit Jake
between the eyes,
“How in Hell am
I going to be able to explain this to law enforcement
when even I can’t believe it. The two of us are alone
and trapped on an isolated island in the middle of a
swamp, surrounded by a huge lake in an unrelenting baby
hurricane and one of us turns up dead in the dark of
night. Amazingly, the other guy, me, sees and hears
absolutely nothing. Good luck, Jake.”
