A False Dawn Read Free

so.”
    “You ever use a bow?”
    “I’ve got an old Pearson.  Haven’t shot an arrow in years.   Today’s arrows are a little more refined.”
    “When a warrior spent time sharpening one of these, he wanted to make sure he got a good shot.”   
    He carefully laid the black arrowhead in the knapsack with the others and then rubbed a calloused hand across Max’s head.
    “You live around here?” I asked.
    “I live on the river near DeLand.”  He studied my dock for a long moment.  “Noticed some of your pilings could use replacing.  I’ve set plenty of docks.”
    “I’ll remember that.  Did you walk in the river from DeLand?”
    Joe Billie removed his hat and used his thumb to wipe the sweat from his brow.  “I tied my canoe about a half mile upriver.”
    “Can I give you a lift back to your canoe?”
    “If I walk back, my clothes will dry.”  As he started to leave, he paused, looked from my home to the river, squinting from sunlight through the live oaks.  “Protect what’s left of this place.”
    He retrieved his things and walked barefoot up the path that leads from my home to the dock.  He turned left, going toward the largest part of the mound, stopped and dropped to one knee.  He touched the mound with the palms of both hands and slowly raised his face to the sky.  After a few seconds he stood, ducked beneath Spanish moss hanging from a low limb on a live oak, and vanished.
    I decided to follow him.  I wanted to see if he arrived in a canoe or by car.  Was he casing my home?  Maybe the ex-cop in me was too guarded.  Screw it.  Something was coalescing in my gut, something about Joe Billie making me suspicious.  
    I left Max in the kitchen, put a shirt on, slipped the Glock under my belt, locked the house and started my Jeep.  

 
THREE
     
    As I rounded a bend in the road, I knew I’d see him.  I’d try to drive slow enough to see if he hauled the canoe in a pickup truck.  Maybe see a license plate.          He was nowhere to be seen.  I remembered an oyster shell road that led from the county road down to the river.  The jaunt to the river was less than a hundred yards.  I pulled next to the river and got out of my Jeep.  No Joe Billie.  No canoe.  Nothing.
    I looked closely at the spur road.  Since last night’s rain, there were no tracks, no impressions from a car or truck anywhere in the damp mud, shell, and gravel.  How did a barefoot man beat me walking a half mile to his canoe?
    I watched the river for a moment.  An invisible curtain of wind came up river, rippling its surface like someone playing piano keys across the water.  A mob of gnats gathered in mass near the shore.  The air was building in heat and humidity.  I felt a drop of sweat roll down my spine.  There was the hint of rain in the air.
    As I started towards the Jeep, I heard a noise in the thick trees.  A crashing sound of attacking wings, primeval aggression.  There was a shrill protest from a bird and then silence.  A bright red feather floated to the ground less than ten feet from me.  A great horned owl, yellow eyes unblinking, stared down at me.  The owl had captured and killed a cardinal.  The twitching, dying body of the redbird was trapped in the owl’s talons.  I knew these big birds occasionally hunted in the daylight but I never expected to witness it. 
    I watched a smaller feather from the dead cardinal float on an air current towards the river.  It was then that I saw the sliver of lemon yellow that looked strangely out of place.  Maybe it was a piece of trash that had washed up in the current.  But trash doesn’t move by itself.  As I walked closer, the sliver of yellow became the blouse of a woman who was either dead or near death.
    The woman had been severely beaten.  Her left eye swollen shut.  I knelt down and reached for a hand that lay across her stomach.  Her pulse was weak.  She was young.  Maybe eighteen.  Lower lip split.  A wound in