“To be buried while alive is, beyond question, the most terrific of these extremes which has ever fallen to the lot of mere mortality.”
Edgar Allan Poe, “The Premature Burial”
Chapter 1
Victor Clerk was outraged. He guessed he was outnumbered but couldn’t see because of the covering over his head. While he wanted to toss expletives and more at whoever had forced him from his home, he kept his mouth shut as the powerboat he was riding in skimmed over the water toward what was, for him, an unknown destination.
He remembered most of what had happened. Had it been an hour ago? He had lost track of time. He was talking to the sheriff’s deputy on the phone when two armed men entered his home after blowing up the patio door and some floor-to-ceiling windows on the lower level. The deputy urged Victor to go to the safe room, but Billie—stupid bitch that she was—had locked the secret door to a closet in the main bathroom and kept screaming that she couldn’t figure out how to open it.
Frustrated, he left the bathroom. He didn’t want the intruders anywhere near his safe, which was in the same room where Billie was hiding. He resigned himself to lying in wait for them in the bedroom. He had a knobkerrie—a Zulu fighting stick he bought during a trip to Africa. If he could land a blow to the head of one of the men, he could disarm him and shoot the other. That was the best plan he could devise to protect himself until help arrived.
Where the fuck are the police? he repeated over and over in his head until the armed men burst through the bedroom door and Victor came to the distressing realization that his rescuers were not going to make it in time.
Chapter 2
Monday, July 12, 2021, 2:50 p.m.: Day One
Mark Foxx hadn’t slept well. He never did, but this night was worse. Maybe it was the call from his father. He needed $350 for a new medication, and could Mark help? He had told his dad he’d mail a check that morning, along with the money for August. He had dropped it in the mailbox on his way to work.
Likely, it was the other thing nagging at him. He thought he’d taken care of every detail, but in these situations, you could never be sure. Disaster was a misstep away, especially with this crew of unknowns. They could speak English but rarely talked except to one another. Even then, it was in Russian or Polish. Foxx couldn’t tell the difference.
He parked his 2015 silver Kia hatchback alongside the two-story bridge administration building, started to get out of the car, and realized he’d left his lunch at home. Would someone notice he didn’t have his brown bag with him? Something small like that could throw things off. He reached into the glove box for the energy bars he kept for emergencies. The Florida heat had fused them into a sticky lump. He pried two loose and stuffed them into his jeans pocket. He wasn’t going to have much time to eat, but you never knew when you might need something.
When he started across the walkway to the bridge tender’s house, he saw Cap Collier coming his way, his limp more pronounced than usual. Foxx glanced first to one side, then the other of the swing bridge. No boats were waiting, so it was obvious Cap had taken a chance and departed the house a few minutes early. Cap would think it was no big deal; his replacement was on the way. But to Foxx, it was the kind of sloppy thinking that had gotten guys he had known killed in Afghanistan.
“You watch the game last night?” Cap asked when both men reached the midpoint and exchanged hellos. It was well known among the swing-bridge tenders and tollbooth workers that Cap was obsessed with baseball in general and the Cincinnati Reds in particular.
On Foxx’s first day on the job as a bridge tender six months ago, Cap had told him about meeting his hero, Pete Rose, at the Mirage in Las Vegas in 2006. “Paid seventy-five dollars for an autographed photo. Pete joked with me like we were old friends,” he said with a grin, his brown eyes animated with the memory. “We went to the same high school, you know. After all these years, the guy belongs in the Hall of Fame. But I can’t see it happening. I guess a lotta the sportswriters that vote you in still think the gambling he did was a sin.”
Over time, Foxx had heard various versions of Cap’s encounter with the disgraced Charlie Hustle and always tried to act interested. Cap didn’t appear to have much going on in his life except work and his preoccupation with America’s favorite pastime. What was a few minutes of Foxx’s time and attention if it made Cap feel important?
“Didn’t see it,” Foxx said. “The Reds win?”
“Yeah. I think they’re a contender,” Cap said, pulling a handkerchief out of his back pocket and wiping the sweat off his fleshy neck and face. “I got a good feeling about it.”
Despite the endless retelling of stories, the clichéd observations, and the occasional work slipup, Foxx liked Cap and admired him for his service in Vietnam five decades earlier. They shared the bond of two men who had been in foreign countries, dodging bullets and watching boys their age die for causes that never made sense. Cap received a Purple Heart and a bum knee. Foxx was left with nightmares of burning flesh, the sting of barbed wire around his neck, and the sensation of water filling his mouth and throat. He would awake gasping for air, afraid to close his eyes and face those unholy terrors again.
As he left his friend, Foxx wondered if what was about to happen would supplant the Pete Rose story in Cap’s repertoire of memories.
In the distance, he could see the sailboat with its thirty-foot mast headed in his direction on the Intracoastal Waterway, cutting through the water with the aid of an engine. Behind it were two forty-foot Sea Rays, plodding along so as not to create turbulence or draw attention to themselves in the no-wake zone. He could feel his heartbeat quicken. Everything was on schedule.
Inside the bridge tender’s house, he flipped through papers on the desk—not really seeing what was in them—and checked the small mirror someone had attached to the window casing. Since he had stopped using Just for Men color gel, the black beard he touched up every couple of weeks now had a light-brown undercoat but still hid the white marks on his chin and neck. Unless he shaved, they remained undetectable, like the scars he bore inside.
A voice on the VHF filled the small space, bringing Foxx back to the moment. “Boat approaching from the west, requesting next bridge opening.” It was followed by a prolonged horn blast, a three-second delay, and a final, short blast.
“Bridge opening at 3:00 p.m.,” Foxx responded, then pushed a series of keys on the computer.
Five minutes later, the metal crossbars on either end of the bridge started down, dislodging an osprey roosting on top and halting the vehicles intending to cross the causeway from both directions. Red lights flashed, followed by warning signals. When the crossbars snapped into place, the swing bridge started to move, giving the illusion of a giant metal bird unfolding its wings.
Once it was fully open, Foxx reached into his pocket, pulled out a flash drive, and stuck it into the computer. His fingers traveled across the keyboard again. When he pushed Enter, a series of hieroglyphics flickered on the screen. It went dead, leaving the bridge locked open.
“That should do it,” he said as he removed the flash drive and stuck it in his pocket.
He stepped outside the bridge tender’s house and leaned against the aluminum railing, waving to the people in the sailboat and then to the driver of the first Sea Ray as they passed below him. The other speedboat was idling, hanging back.
Foxx gazed at the water twenty feet below. It was still frothy on the surface from the boat traffic. The turquoise of winter had faded into a murky, almost putrid green from the summer rains. He could see fish swimming near the surface but not the sandy bottom he knew was down there somewhere. Cap and the others had told him with some certainty that the area under the bridge was at least eight feet deep. He wondered why he hadn’t confirmed that figure with the office.
Too late. This is it. Thirty-six years of living a shit life is coming to an end today.
He opened the small gate in the railing and stepped onto the concrete ledge. He took several deep breaths, positioned his feet and arms as he used to when he was on the platform, rose onto his toes, and did a perfect swan dive off the bridge. He entered the warm water with barely a splash. The instant he hit, he thought of his high school diving experiences and wondered what Coach Billingsley would have said about his form.
