Everglades Read Online Free PDF Page A

ears.
    The path to my wooden walkway channels through limbs and roots, a dark, green tunnel that is a shady conduit walled by swamp.
    I was close enough to the boardwalk path so as not to be seen without some effort, but close enough to be aware of anyone approaching or leaving the boardwalk.
    If the stalker attempted to leave, I would see and intercept him.
    Which meant he was still there, down there in the mangroves, watching my house from the water. Had to be.
     
     
    So why couldn’t I find him?
    Mangrove roots are like fibrous, shin-high hoops, half planted in the muck. I stepped over one after another, holding on to limbs for balance, moving steadily toward the approximate area where I’d last seen the man.
    I used all the little tricks. Made sure I placed each careful boot-step on a shell or piece of broken branch so I wouldn’t sink into the bog. Waited for small gusts of wind to cover what little sound I did make. Paused every few seconds to listen for noise of movement ahead of me, or behind.
    Big golden orb spiders thrive in the shade of mangroves, and there wasn’t enough light to see or avoid their webs, so I bulled through several insect traps, spider-silk sticking to my face like threads of cotton candy. When I felt a spider crawling on me, I stopped, carefully removed it and released it on a limb.
    The whole while, I kept my eyes fixed in the direction where mangroves ended and water began.
    Soon, I could see patches of silver and blue through the gloom of leaves. Then I could see the sandy area next to the buttonwood trees where the man had been standing.
    He wasn’t there now.
    Odd. Where’d he gone?
    I stopped, waited, ears straining to hear, eyes straining to see.
    Nothing.
    There was no way he could have left via the trail without my seeing him. The only possibilities were that he had waded down the shoreline, or that he was now better hidden in the mangroves, off to my left or right.
    Moving even more slowly, I worked my way to the big buttonwood at the water’s edge. The rain had quit now, though leaves still dripped.
    From where I stood, I had an uninterrupted view of my house and the seascape beyond. Could see the top edge of a pumpkin moon, one day before full, a gaseous bubble rising out of the mangrove horizon. Could see Sally through the windows, very busy doing something in the kitchen.
    It was the sort of scene that, if I had the talent, I’d want to capture on canvas. I stood in the shadows for another few moments before stepping out onto the sand.
    That’s where the man had been standing, no doubt about that. The area was stamped with big shoe prints, pointy-toed, flat-bottomed shoes, Vibram heels sunk deep. He was a big guy. Size fourteen or fifteen shoes that carried a lot of weight.
    There was an open Copenhagen can there, too. It was tossed down among the roots, silver lid missing, still nearly full.
    A guy that big and sloppy should have been easy to track. Coming from the direction of the path, his bootprints were easy to read. But they ended by the tree where I now stood.
    Each and every morning, I check the tide tables, which also give solar and lunar information. It has been a lifelong habit, and I do it automatically. So I knew that, on this day, the eleventh of April, low tide was at 7:47 P.M.—balanced, astronomically, between moonrise at 7:45 P.M. and sunset at 7:51. So the bay had nearly emptied, and would soon be refilling.
    I stepped out into the shallow water, looking carefully.
    Nope. No tracks out there, either. Which meant he hadn’t waded down the shoreline. Where the hell had he gone? It was as if he’d vaporized, disappeared into the darkening sky.
    Then it came to me. Where he’d gone. Where he had to be.
     
     
    A wise British physician once wrote that, when baffled by a problem, and all probabilities have been eliminated, the remaining possibility—however unlikely— must be the solution.
    Only one possibility remained, and that probability now entered