Carly whined, as nine-year-olds will automatically do. Then, maybe after thinking about the picture-taking, which she did love, and the fascination of gators, which were at least different and possibly exciting, she did something that nine-year-olds don’t normally do: acquiesced.
With Elsa’s help, they put together a picnic lunch of salteñas, chips and homemade salsa, and Nick filled a cooler with juice boxes. When they packed the car, Nick tried to coax Carly into the front beside him but was met with a clear statement: “Mom never lets us sit in the front. She says we’re not big enough yet, and the air bag would kill us.”
Nick did not say what immediately came into his head: The air bags didn’t help your mom or your sister, so what goddamn difference does it make? Instead he looked into her face to see if she realized what she’d said and then just nodded and put the cooler and a carton of Goldfish in the back seat with her.
Within thirty minutes they’d escaped urban South Florida and were heading west on what was once called Alligator Alley, a name that caused Carly to stare out the side window for at least twenty minutes before getting bored and voicing her opinion that they shouldn’t name a highway for alligators if you can’t see them lying alongside the road. Nick was going to tell her they’d changed the name to Interstate 75 but decided to keep his mouth shut.
He did try to keep up a conversation about the Everglades, directing her attention to the acres of brown-tipped saw grass that rolled out on the northern side of the freeway and stretched to the horizon. He tried to liken the sight to Kansas wheat fields, spread out and swirling in the winds, but realized his daughter had never been to Kansas. He tried to get her to imagine how the water they could see in the canal alongside was just as deep way out in the grass. “Like an ocean with the stalks poking up from the bottom over every inch.”
“So how come the grass is brown at the top, Dad? I mean, jeez, shouldn’t it be green if it’s growing in water?”
He was never surprised by the logic of a child. Pretty damned simple, Dad, if you quit overanalyzing it. It was one of those things his daughters had taught him.
“Right now the tops are brown because the saw grass is blooming, sweetheart. It’s the blooms that are brown.”
All he got from the back seat was an “Uh-huh,” like she’d accept it even if it was stupid for a plant to have brown blooms. Every few miles, Nick would make some kind of observation, loud enough for Carly to hear, but when he glanced back, her eyes were on a book she’d brought, or the blue GameBoy she and her sister always fought over until they bought a second one. The red one had belonged only to Carly. He noticed that after the accident, she played only with the blue one.
Finally, he gave up the act and let the sound of the car’s spinning machinery and whir of rubber on concrete and rush of wind on glass and metal dominate the space. But silence only took his head where he’d sworn not to go.
What was the federal officer doing sniffing around and supposedly looking at similar shootings? Similar to what? The idea of this being a sniper job was getting hard to argue against. The cold precision of that single shot was pretty damned convincing. And both Hargrave and Nick now believed the shooter had climbed up the fire ladder and had prepared the shot, maybe even beforehand. Did the guy have a list of other shootings with the same tag? Professional-type jobs. Preparation. The use of SWAT-style clothing. Did the shooter intentionally wear the clothes to throw off witnesses, make anyone who saw him dismiss him as official? Pretty ballsy. Or stupid.
“Dad?”
Nick was thinking ballsy at this point.
“Daaad?”
His eyes snapped up to the rearview mirror to search for his daughter’s expression. It was annoyed, again, at his wayward concentration.
“Yeah, sweetie. You OK?”
“When are we going to get there?”
The inevitable kid question. He looked alongside the freeway for a mile marker.
“Only a couple more minutes and then we go south, honey. We’re going to go right along the edge of the wildlife preserve, so I want you to look for the panther-crossing signs, OK?”
“Really?”
“Yeah, just like when you see pedestrian crossings or those deer-crossing signs