Free Black River by Tom Lowe Page B

eyes and took a deep breath, slowly releasing the air in her lungs. She whispered. “Focus. I’ve dealt with my share of freaks before…he’s just one more in the lineup. Now it’s time to get the hell out of my life.”
    Kim walked into her kitchen, tossed the rose and note on the table, picked up her phone and dialed Sean O’Brien. It went immediately to his voice-mail. At the beep, she said, “Sean, hey, it’s Kim. During the night, I received a special delivery. One single rose with a creepy note delivered to my mailbox. I don’t know for sure who did it. But I have an idea, and it could be related to the Civil War, just like that painting you’re trying to find for the old man. Honest to God, I hate to say this…but deep inside me, my gut is telling me that, somehow, they could be related. Please call me as soon as you get this.”

T he first thing O’Brien noticed was the inconspicuous, the silence. Joe Billie sat in the rear of the canoe, paddling so quietly that O’Brien looked back twice to see how he did it. Even in the aluminum canoe, Billie made no noise. No sound of the paddle against the canoe. No sound of the oar pushing against the river current. O’Brien wasn’t concerned about a stealth approach, dipping his paddle in the dark water, pulling straight back—the twirling whirlpools of water burping up a slight whoosh sound.
    They paddled for more than an hour up the St. Johns, the river becoming wider each mile. Max sat in the center of the canoe, her eyes following the flight of ospreys diving for fish. She watched as an alligator, half the length of the canoe, swam unhurried across the river. The big alligator’s eyes, nostrils, and part of its thick back breaking the dark surface. Max uttered a low growl when an emerald-green dragonfly alighted on one edge of the canoe.
    Joe Billie stopped paddling for a moment. He lifted his wide-brim hat off his head and ran one hand through his long, dark hair. The air was still, humidly rising like an invisible steam from the river and black water creeks that merged and joined the river’s passage to the sea. Billie smiled at Max and said, “That dragonfly is the best hunter out here. Much better than the gator.”
    “How so?” O’Brien asked.
    “The dragonfly has four wings. Each can move independently. It can fly in any direction, including upside down. The dragonfly attacks its prey frombehind, in midflight. The insect it catches never is aware it was stalked until the dragonfly begins tearing the insect’s face off.”
    O’Brien squinted in the sun. “Let’s be glad they aren’t four feet long.”
    Billie grinned, putting his hat back on his head. “Ever notice how many women wear dragonfly jewelry?”
    “I’ve seen a few wear them as lapel pins.”
    “Those aren’t so bad, but when a woman wears dragonfly earrings, that’s when I try not to think how tasty an earlobe might be to a real dragonfly.”
    O’Brien laughed.
    At that moment, the dragonfly rotated its large saucer eyes and flew across the river, less than three feet directly above the alligator. One predator leaving a slight wake. The other leaving no trail. O’Brien said, “You have to wonder who’s been here the longest, the gator or the dragonfly. Both, no doubt, have a lineage to the dinosaurs.”
    Billie used his paddle to point. “See that jetty, the bluff with the big cypress tree?”
    “I see it.”
    “I believe that’s where the woman in the picture stood.”
    O’Brien slipped the photograph from the folder. He held it up and studied the shoreline. “Let’s take a look. We can walk around the area and look back over the river. That’ll give us—or at least me, a better perspective.”
    Billie dipped his paddle back into the water. O’Brien did the same. Both men were quiet the ten minutes it took them to cross the river. When the bow of the canoe slid under cypress limbs and nudged onto the riverbank, O’Brien jumped to the shore and pulled the