Hook, Line & Sinister by T. Jefferson Parker

Author:T. Jefferson Parker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Countryman Press
Published: 2010-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

I parked in the western edge of the huge parking lot at Everglades National Park and hoisted the canoe off the rooftop and carried it overhead to the dock. I eased it into the canal, lashed it to a cleat, then trip by trip, I transported my gear and rods and tackle. One spinning rod, one fly, a small plastic box of hand-tied lures, and a few jigs. I wasn’t fussy about casting only flies. Whatever the fish were biting was good enough, that was Dad’s philosophy, and it became mine. Better to catch a few with plastic bait than lay down flies all day with no results.

As I went through the drill, I felt a presence shadowing me. More than once I stopped and swung around as if I might find Dad standing close, a huge grin on his face as he sprung yet another of his elaborate practical jokes. But nothing was there. Nothing but the muggy morning air, the cries of gulls, the sulfurous vapors that rose from the stagnant waters near the dock.

By noon I’d paddled several miles across the length of Whitewater Bay. I saw my last motorized skiff by three o’clock. The wind was light from the west, the sky cluttered with wispy, unthreatening clouds. The forecast called for a week of sun, only the remotest chance of rain. I didn’t care one way or the other. Let it rain. Dad and I had been out there once for six solid days of rain. But it hadn’t mattered. The rain just made the trip more memorable. The fishing out there was always good, no matter what.

I glided past the last chickee hut where campers were allowed to pitch tents and build cooking fires. A narrow dock of weathered pine jutted from a nameless mangrove island. Back in April it was to that very dock that I had transported my father’s corpse and laid it out as if this had been his final resting place.

It was a ghastly journey, hauling his rotting body in the small canoe. My father lay at my feet as I paddled, his face destroyed from the pistol blast and the days of rot. There were missing chunks of flesh and long lacerations where scavenging animals had feasted on him.

Ever since that afternoon those images haunted my dreams and waking hours and the vile gas of his decay still gagged me at unexpected moments. The horror of that hour alone with his body had driven me to a despair beyond simple grieving. I couldn’t fathom what he’d done. I couldn’t connect the images of the ravaged and shriveled corpse with the vital, dynamic man I’d revered from my earliest days.

When I found his body in the Lost Lagoon, I had not debated it for a moment. I knew the authorities would be required to thoroughly investigate his death, and their presence in the Lost Lagoon would forever desecrate the place. By relocating his body and washing down the original death scene,

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