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10

Tomlinson was in one of his moods. It rarely happens, but it happens. The joy goes out of him and shadows flood in.

Upon his arrival, I’d counted his foot-slap cadence as he came barefoot up the steps to the lab: three steps to the stairway, seven steps to the upper platform. He’d rapped on the lab’s screen door. “Beer?” Sufficiently at home to offer me a drink from my own refrigerator.

I’d told him, “No thanks. A bottle of water—if you have it.”

He was on a second beer now, his Adam’s apple bobbing like an oscilloscope, graphing flow from a bottle that was already half empty. He lowered the bottle, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, making the sound men make when they’re thirsty and need a drink.

“That’s better,” he said, sounding relieved.

He noticed the tray of sodium hydroxide for the first time, and went to it. “Hey—you cleaned up some more stuff. Jeth’s going to be psyched. The cash monkey is climbing all over the poor boy’s back. He’s broke.”

“I know.”

“Old German coins, huh? Pieces of silver—eighteen pieces short…get it? Sell these bastards, let Caesar choke. Oh…and a cigarette lighter?” There was an odd inflection in his voice. Not surprised…but surprise.

“With engraved initials,” I said. “We should be able to read them in a few days, maybe a few weeks. I’m not sure. Here, I’ll show you how it works.”

The transformer, with its meter and jumper cable clips, was on a shelf above the artifacts. I took a strip of stainless steel, attached an alligator clip, then placed the strip into the tray that held the artifacts. To the other clip, I secured copper wire that had several more clips attached. One by one, I connected the clips to the death’s-head, the eagle, the cigarette lighter, and coins, everything submerged in sodium hydroxide, now connected in series.

I touched a finger to the transformer’s rheostat, watching the meter, as I told Tomlinson, “Different metals have different electrical potentials, high to very low. Stainless steel has a low potential. Silver and bronze, they’re higher. The sodium solution completes the circuit, so electricity flows from the artifacts to the stainless plate, carrying molecules of metal. Tarnished metal.”

Tomlinson said, “Ah.”

“Electrolysis,” I told him. “It’s why we bolt zinc plates to outboard motors, and driveshafts. Zinc has a high electrical potential, so it gives up its molecules—deteriorates—instead of the aluminum. Zinc becomes the sacrificial anode. It’s a term engineers use: a sacrificial pole.”

Tomlinson was listening, but his mind was somewhere else. “Sacrificial pole. I like that. Like yellow leaves on mangrove trees. They absorb salt, and drop off so green leaves can survive. Sacrificial leaves.”

“Similar, I guess. Yeah…I guess it fits.”

“Sacrifice—powerful, man. A dynamic.” Looking at me, he touched a finger to his forehead. “Is that what you were doing when you split your head open? Risking your butt to pay my tab, ol’ buddy. Protecting me?”

I raised my hand to interrupt, but he didn’t stop.

“I know that you got the concussion before the hurricane. Before you got back to Sanibel, but that’s not what you’ve been telling people. You didn’t get hit by something during the storm. You were off on another of your so-called research trips—this is the fourth time you’ve dodged the subject.”

I raised my voice. “Enough. Okay?”

The beer hadn’t buoyed his spirits, and the man wasn’t buoying mine with his serious similes and dark questions. It was true that I’d been injured before the storm. But it was no one’s business but my own. I wasn’t going to tell Tomlinson, even though personal history was involved. Ours. His past, my past; two life forces, in opposition, that had finally intersected. I was dealing with it, but I wasn’t going to discuss it. Not today.

Probably never.

T omlinson was as subdued now as he’d been earlier in the afternoon, on the boat trip from Indian Harbor to Dinkin’s Bay. He’d sat alone on the forward cushion, legs intertwined in full lotus position. Eyes glazed, staring at a gray horizon that melded into gray mangroves.

Violence creates chemical and emotional by-products. Depressants that, hours afterward, permeate the veins with a poison that sometimes scars for years. Tomlinson had felt the poison. He’d sat himself up there in the wind, perhaps thinking it would cleanse him.

I knew better.

He was still feeling the poison now. It was obvious from the way he’d mutter to himself, arguing internally, his attention scattered. Earlier, when he’d tried to apologize to me for his behavior, I’d told him it wasn’t necessary.

He’d replied, “Are you kidding? What I did makes all my so-called spiritual convictions a joke, man. Have you ever seen me lose my temper before?”

“You’ve come close a few times, but…no.”

“I didn’t just lose my temper. I went nuts. Snapped like a dry twig. Like some country club–Republican psycho. Rush Limbaugh on a very nasty acid binge—that’s the way I acted. Doc, I wanted to slap the smirk off that overbearing jerk’s face…no, I wanted to kill him. There, I said it! I wanted to choke him until those sick blue eyes of his bulged like muscat grapes.” Tomlinson touched a finger to his chest, his expression posing a question: Me? Like he still couldn’t believe it. “Hatred, man. I was boiling with it. It came out of nowhere, like something evil slipped into my head when I wasn’t paying attention. That old expression: My blood ran cold. I experienced it, man. A chemical change. Like there was Freon in my veins.”

Once again, I was tempted to say, I know the feeling, but didn’t.

He felt hatred, and poisonous regret. Oddly, I didn’t. Maybe I should’ve. I’d been bloodied by an oversized bully. My friends had seen me slapped, kicked, and humiliated. But I didn’t feel scarred by what he’d done to me. The poison wasn’t there.

A concussion can cause unexplained highs and lows—maybe that had something to do with it. Or maybe it was because I’d been beaten by better men than him. I’d wrestled in high school, won a couple of titles at state. In a national tournament, had even made it to the quarterfinals, which is when the seeded stars from Iowa, Pennsylvania, and New York began to appear.

Wrestling’s a sport, but it’s also a sort of monkish apprenticeship. The learning curve is trial by fire, and Heller’s ugly face wasn’t the first to hang over mine in victory.

Jeth, though, had felt the humiliation I didn’t feel. On the boat, he’d said, “Hell, next time you meet that jelly-assed bastard?” His bark of laughter was as forced as his words. “He won’t have a chance.”

I had replied, “If I’m lucky, there’ll never be a next time,” but didn’t mean it. I’d told him that mild lie because it was unwise to tell him the truth: There would be a next time. I would make certain it happened.

When Heller had kicked me—is that when I’d decided? No…it was when I’d realized he wanted the police to shoot Javier. That kind of murderous indifference could only be assigned to a sociopath. It required a second, and more private, meeting.

I’m a professional. I have been beaten by better men. But I have also disposed of better men than Bern Heller.

I swam back out of my thoughts. Something in Tomlinson’s tone had caught my attention. “I have someone who’d like to talk to you,” he was saying. “A lady friend, she’s got a place off the beach.”

He was on his third beer, still sitting on a lab stool, watching me work. Finally, he was getting to it.

“Oh? And when would this be?”

“Tonight, if you don’t have plans.”

I said, “Have we met?”, knowing we hadn’t, picturing the woman in a sequin gown dancing on the balcony.

“Not in this karma. But on a previous lap or two, yes. I’d bet money.”

I smiled.

“It has to do with Jeth’s wreck. She’s interested. I told her what he found…I hope that’s okay.”

The crew at Indian Harbor Marina had seen the artifacts, as well as half a dozen deputies. By tomorrow, people would be talking about the diamond swastika from Key West to Tampa.

“Perfectly fine. Your girlfriend, why’s she interested?”

“No, not a girlfriend. I’m open about my girlfriends…not in an ungentlemanly way, of course. Neither of us are that damn crass. But her, well…she’s different. You probably noticed I haven’t said much.”

“We’re discreet,” I said agreeably.

It was true. Morally, Tomlinson has the sensibilities of a Zen Buddhist monk—which he is—but he’s also as randy as a rabbit. He loves women. Loves them without apology, without device. His girlfriends know he’s not monogamous, and they don’t seem to care. The only guy I’ve ever met who can pull that off.

One of them tried to explain it to me. “When it comes to sex, most men are hunters. They plot, use camouflage, set up traps to get what they want. Not Tomlinson. He gives sex. Makes it a present. You receive his absolute, complete attention, so you feel like the most beautiful, desirable woman on earth. With him, sex isn’t a biological function, it’s ceremony. He’s fun.”

Sounding serious now, not fun, Tomlinson told me, “The lady you’re going to meet, she’s a woman.” Meaning, not a girl.

Once again, I asked why she was interested in the wreck.

Shaking his head, he replied, “She wants to tell you herself. There’s personal history involved, I’m sure. Hers. Maybe hers and yours. Even for me, this lady’s a tough one to read.”

There it was again: personal history. I smiled. The only time Tomlinson says he can’t read someone is when he doesn’t want to tell you what he thinks they’re thinking.

“This isn’t the first time she’s asked to meet you.” He paused. “She’s extraordinary, man, trust me. One of the most beautiful women I’ve met in…well, name a time. Forever.”

That was an odd way to put it.

I made a gesture of consent.

“Around nine? She’s a night person. I told her it would have to be after sunset anyway, because we do drinks at the marina. And Doc? She’s…classy. The way she dresses, especially—”

I caught his meaning. “I will try to remember to remove my lab coat, and rubber gloves, and wear clothing that doesn’t smell of fish. Are shorts okay? The way my face looks, she’s not going to notice anyway.”

“Shorts, well…”

“Slacks and a jacket, then.”

Tomlinson was silent for a moment. He had been staring at the tray of sodium hydroxide for a while. The liquid’s surface convexity magnified the objects slightly. “The cigarette lighter,” he said, “it’s not in great shape.”

“No. It may be silver coated, but it’s cheap ferrous metal beneath.”

“Someone cared enough about it to have it engraved. Any guess what the first initial is?”

I said, “Too early to tell. Speaking of initials, you didn’t tell me her name. Your lady friend.”

Tomlinson replied, “Mildred. I love that name—old, for an old soul. Mildred Engle. But she goes by her middle name, Chestra. Chessie, if she likes you.”