Read The Heat Islands: A Doc Ford Novel for Free Online Page B

lately. If all he does around here in a full day is spill some gas, I feel lucky.
    "Jeth tries to explain it was an accident, but Rios chides him about stuttering so badly he can't understand anything; write it down—like a joke—and Jeth snaps. Embarrassed and all in front of his clients, plus the guides have a thing for Rios, anyway. Really loses it, like he's going to deck Rios right there, but Rios grabs a ball bat. Very ugly scene. I guess Jeth decided he'd had enough."
    "Bad karma." said Tomlinson. "That whole place. Two Parrot Bight, has such a bad feel to it, I won't even go there. Sanibel Marina's okay; Jensen's great. But not Parrot Bight. Went once, but never again. Rios was a nasty little predator."
    MacKinley was giving Tomlinson a familiar look, like standing in a zoo, looking through bars.
    Ford was looking at him, too; strong words for Tomlinson.
    Ford said, "Where's Jeth now?"
    MacKinley shrugged. "Stormed off last night in his boat. Haven't seen him since. I guess he called his clients last night and said he wouldn't fish the tournament. They showed up here bright and early, seriously pissed off. Reckon I made ten, twelve calls finding them another guide. I like Jeth, but he'd better not ever put me in a spot like that again. He's been acting very strange lately."
    "Did his clients say what time he called?"
    "Yeah. They said late. They were asleep. They had to get up for the tournament." MacKinley was looking at
    Ford, both of them thinking the same thing. "I don't think Jeth could've killed Rios," MacKinley said. "I really don't see him as a killer, no matter how mad he got."
    "I don't think he could, either. I was just wondering where he is. A little worried, too."
    Tomlinson said, "What? Kill somebody? Kill Rios? No way, not Jeth. I don't even know the man that well, and I can tell you."
    "Karma?" said MacKinley.
    "Exactly. For sure."
    MacKinley said. "Jeth's probably with one of his girlfriends. I've never seen a man the women loved so much. Decent women, too."
    Ford said, "It's just that he picked a bad time to disappear." He looked toward the mouth of the bay, watching a lone boat jolt abruptly, kicking mud in the shallow water—a pilot who didn't know the channel and couldn't read the water.
    From the docks. Ford heard Captain Nels hoot. "Looky there, boys! Over by Green Point. It's Karl Sutter coming to pay us a call. Out there plowing bean rows."
     
    Karl Sutter was talking to himself, saying, "Aw damn, aw damn, aw crapola," thinking: If the idiots around here would just mark the channels a little better....
    He had run his boat through the mouth of Dinkin's Bay, planning to give those assholes Felix and Nels a quick flyby kick in the ego. No plans to stop, just sweep past the marina docks not even looking at them, letting these five big tarpon swinging on their ropes do the talking for him. Then out through the narrow opening in the wall of mangroves it showed on the charts, the one that led out into Pine Island Sound, where he could dump these damn fish, then get home and get to bed.
    Christ, he'd only gotten—what?—three hours' sleep last night? Not much.
    But before he could head for home, he'd have to wait out on the water for another half hour so the sun was completely down and no one would see him. Make sure to take the metal tags off the fish. too. But shit, the water wasn't deep enough to run a boat, not his boat, anyway; not outside the channel in this shitty little bay with its worm-eaten old posts for markers. Plus he couldn't even see the opening that was supposed to be there, so the bastards who made the charts were really to blame; a good lawsuit would serve them just about right, and he had the money to do it now.
    Fuckers!
    Sutter had his big gold Suzuki outboard tilted nearly out of the water, blasting a soup of gray marl twenty feet in the air, his engine screaming like some juiced-up Japanese dirt bike. He cut the wheel this way and that, gunning it, rocking it, spooking