Snowbird's Blood - Hardcover

JOE L. HENSLEY is author of numerous crime novels, many featuring Dan Robak. He lives in Madison, Indiana.

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 ...