Night Vision

ELEVEN

Emily Marston and I were taking a break, curled up naked, spooning on my narrow bed, when I heard Tomlinson trotting up the boardwalk, the distinctive slap of his feet telling me he had something important going on. Why else would he be in such a hurry?

As Emily stretched and yawned, I turned my wrist to see the glowing numerals of my Chronofighter watch. It was still early, only 9:30 p.m.

“The house is shaking again,” she joked. “My imagination?”

I leaned to kiss the woman’s cheek, then behind her ear, feeling a welling sensation within my chest that was not unknown to me but so rare and long ago that I was startled. I was also dubious, instantly on alert.

That same thoracic response is probably why sappy poets associate the heart with love. I had just met this woman, knew very little about her. To feel what I was feeling, after only a few hours together, was irrational. Not that love is ever rational.

“It’s Tomlinson,” I said. “Something must be wrong.”

There was.

“Tula sent me a text,” Tomlinson told me as I pushed aside the bedroom curtain, shirtless, buckling my belt.

I noticed that his hand was shaking as he combed fingers through his John Lennon hair. “He’s got her, Doc. Harris Squires, I was right. And the goddamn cops told me they’re already doing everything they could. Those assholes!”

Adjusting my glasses, I took his cell phone, saying, “Maybe if you lived in a country where there were no cops, you might have a little more respect.”

Tomlinson began to pace, his ribs showing, now shirtless, wearing red surfer baggies. “If you called downtown, it might be different,” he said. “You know a lot of guys on the force. We’ve got to do something, Doc!”

The text was in English. I sat next to my shortwave radio, turned on the lamp and read, “Safe, in his truck. In God’s hands. 22 miles from Im.”

I said, “I don’t doubt it’s from her, but are you sure? Where did a Guatemalan kid learn how to use a cell phone?”

“It’s the first thing they learn when they get here,” Tomlinson replied, sounding impatient. “That, plus the best food is always at Taco Bell.”

I said, “She didn’t finish the message, so okay… yeah, of course it’s from Tula. I remember you saying she had your number in case of emergencies.”

“She sent it from Squires’s phone,” he said, chewing at a strand of hair. “I called and recognized his voice. I didn’t say anything. Do you think I should have? He wouldn’t have let her send me a text, and I was afraid I’d set him off, make him suspicious. So I just hung up. You know, like a wrong number.”

“Did he call back?”

“No… Jesus! If he sees that text she sent, I’d hate to even think what a guy like that would do to Tula.”

On a pad of paper, I copied Squires’s number, then spun the swivel chair to face Tomlinson, who was now leaning into the refrigerator, moving stuff, then saying, “Jesus Christ, Doc, don’t you ever go to the store? We’re out of beer again. What a night to be out of beer!”

I said, “Tula was in the middle of writing ‘Immokalee.’ I-M-what else could it be? Twenty-two miles from Immokalee, but she was interrupted.”

Tomlinson used his hip to bang the refrigerator door closed as I added, “Which means she saw a road sign-the distance is precise. Unless Squires told her, which seems unlikely. Why would he tell the girl where she is? She’s only been in Florida for a week, so she couldn’t have guessed the distance from landmarks. But why would he take her to Immokalee?”

Tomlinson replied, “Everyone in Guatemala has a relative living in Immokalee. Or Indiantown. Or maybe the guy has a place down there, who knows? Rednecks have hunting camps sometimes.”

I was trying to project a reason why Squires would drive Tula Choimha to a Guatemalan stronghold. I said, “He could be taking her there to look for her mother, but that makes no sense. I don’t associate acts of family kindness with Harris Squires.”

“The girl’s a thought-shaper,” Tomlinson reminded me. “She can get people to do things they normally wouldn’t. Tula can project ideas in a way that makes people think they came up with it on their own.”

I ignored him, saying, “He might do it if money was somehow involved. Or sex and money-the world’s two most powerful motivators. A thirteen-year-old girl and her mother. There’s no money in that combination. Which leaves-”

I left the sentence unfinished as I returned my attention to the girl’s text to see if there was more to learn from the few words she had written.

Listening, Tomlinson used his heel to shut the fridge. He was carrying a tumbler filled with ice toward a bottle of Patron tequila on the counter as I continued, “They’ve done some traveling, that’s obvious. Maybe he stopped at a 7-Eleven or something and left his phone in the vehicle. That gave her an opening to use the phone, but Squires interrupted Tula before she could finish the text. And her hands aren’t tied-they’re not taped, anyway. That’s a positive. But why not call you instead of type a message?”

Tomlinson had already figured it out. “Because she couldn’t risk holding the phone to her ear. You’re right, probably a 7-Eleven. Someplace he could keep an eye on her through a window. So she hid the phone in her lap and texted. That would have been safer. And there’s less chance of him checking for texts, then checking recent calls. Tula’s very smart, I already told you.”

“Do you know what kind of truck he drives?” I was leafing through my private phone book, many of the names written in my own form of code. As I picked up the phone to dial a police detective friend of mine, Emily appeared from behind the curtain, combing her auburn hair with a brush, wearing one of my baseball jerseys buttoned down to her thighs.

“We meet again,” she smiled, looking at Tomlinson. “I was just getting acquainted with your best friend. Your timing could be better, you know. But… it also could have been a lot worse.”

Tomlinson stopped chewing at his hair long enough to say, “It looks to me like someone just finished touching all the bases.”

The woman had a nice smile, ironic and tolerant. “A baseball metaphor,” she laughed, tugging at my jersey. “It works, but not entirely accurate. I was counting on extra innings.”

As Emily said it, she moved past me, trailing an index finger along my shoulder. I saw the way Tomlinson’s eyes followed her, focusing first on the abrupt angle between breasts and abdomen created by the baggy baseball jersey, then on her long hiker’s legs, calf muscles flexing.

Clearing my throat, I burned my pal with a look that read Don’t even think about it.

Emily noticed, which caused her to grin, charmed apparently by our adolescent sparring. Then she rewarded me with a look that read You’ve got nothing to worry about.

That thoracic glow again. It was in my chest.

On the telephone, a detective acquaintance, Leroy Melinski, was telling me, “I’ve got the report up on the screen right now. Thirteen-year-old Tulo Choimha, an undocumented Guatemalan national. He, uh… he was reported missing last night, but it didn’t get official until a couple of hours ago when a full AMBER Alert went out. So maybe your beach-bum pal’s pestering did some good. Is he still the strung-out cop hater I remember?”

Looking at Tomlinson as he came through the door with two quart bottles of beer-I’d remembered there was beer stowed on my flats skiff-I said to Melinski, “If anything, he’s worse. I think the man’s personality evaporates as he ages. It’s causing his weirdness to condense right before my very eyes.”

“Personally,” Melinski replied, “I don’t think cop haters are funny. I’d slap the shit out of that hippie prick if he gave me a reason.”

The bitterness in that caused me to raise my eyebrows, and I said, “As entertaining as that sounds, I called to talk about the missing child.”

“The kid,” Melinski said. “I know, I know. But there’s another piece of news first I think you’ll find interesting. Our guys finished dragging that lake this afternoon. Where you shot the alligator?”

As I listened, I signaled Tomlinson to pay attention. “You found more bones?” I asked.

“No, they found a different body. A fresh one. Another female. Latin, probably mid-twenties, but both of her hands were right where they belonged. The only thing missing was the girl’s life. Someone put her in a garbage sack, then used wire and concrete blocks to sink her. Dead two or three days at the most, according to the guys on the scene. Which is a guess, of course, but they’ve seen enough floaters to come close. No obvious injuries, so no telling how she died. We’re still waiting on the medical examiner’s report.”

To Tomlinson and Emily I said, “It’s official, there’s an AMBER Alert out on Tula. And they found another dead girl-unrelated to the bones we found in the gator. They finished dragging this afternoon.”

Tomlinson threw his head back, fists against his temples-a silent scream-while Emily shook her head, smile gone.

To Melinski I said, “That hand belonged to someone. They found nothing else down there that was human?”

“I was told they did a pretty thorough search, but maybe they’ll try again tomorrow. One of the medical examiner’s guys told me the bones you found might be a month old or a year old. Maybe more. But it definitely wasn’t a fresh kill-assuming the victim died. And they’re not sure it’s female, despite the wedding ring. They’re trying to narrow it down. That’s a job for the forensic lab.”

I said, “Which means it’s even more important to find that missing kid. The killer-that’s the guy we think abducted her, Leroy. He’s a steroid freak. With a real nasty temper.”

I had already given him Squires’s name, his number and told him about the text Tomlinson had received. The detective had passed the number along to his staff, and we were awaiting confirmation that the cell phone belonged to Squires.

“You don’t need to convince me about hurrying,” Melinski said. “When a kid goes missing, there’s a forty-eight-hour window. I don’t have to tell you what usually happens if the search goes longer than two days. Problem is, this morning the family the kid lives with told officers that he wandered off by himself all the time but he’d show up. He always did. So it wasn’t considered a priority until this afternoon. No father, no mother to push for a search, which I’d like to say hasn’t happened before. But it has.”

I corrected him. “You must have misheard, Lee, this is a girl we’re looking for. Tula, not Tulo. She’s been pretending to be a boy since she left Guatemala because she’s smart. You know how dangerous that border crossing is. The family she lives with knows the truth. And probably a few others but not many. I’d consider it a personal favor if you called out the cavalry on this one. Like I said, the guy she’s with is a chemistry freak. He goes from cold to hot real fast.”

I could picture the detective reading through the computer files as he replied, “If that’s true, then this whole damn report’s wrong. If the family knew it was a girl, why didn’t they say something? He

… she was reported as a suspected abductee late this afternoon. The AMBER Alert went out at twenty hundred hours. All the missing-child protocols are in effect, but our people have been looking for a damn teenage boy, not a girl.”

“Last time I saw her,” I told him, “she was wearing jeans and a baggy blue T-shirt, so most people couldn’t tell the difference.” Then I gave the man the best physical description I could, pausing to pass along details that Tomlinson provided as he paced back and forth.

I could hear Melinski’s fingers tapping at a keyboard as he said, “That’s something to go on, at least. The problem is-and this is a good example-people in these kinds of places, the immigrant trailer parks, they’re scared to death of our guys. So some of the state agencies, the Immigrant Advocacy people, will be sending people around asking questions. Maybe they’re on it now. Christ, I hope so. We have almost no information on the kid.”

I could hear his frustration as he added, “For more than an hour, we’ve been looking for a boy. Who knows, maybe some cop stopped them, then turned her loose, not knowing.”

I said, “But at least you can narrow down the search area. Maybe they’re in Immokalee by now. Or somewhere close.”

Melinski said, “You said she didn’t type out the whole word. She wrote: I-M.”

I replied, “What else could it be? Did anything come up on Squires?”

I listened to Melinski typing as I watched Emily busy herself in my little ship’s galley of a kitchen. She was listening, eyes moving from the teakettle to me, the concern showing on her good-looking face, that jaw and nose, autumn-colored hair swinging loose.

“There are thirteen Harris Squires in this state,” Melinski said after a moment, “but there’s only one whose mother owns trailer parks. A rich kid, from what I’m seeing. A rich mother, anyway. She owns three mobile home parks… a house on the beach… taxes almost thirty grand a year. And four hundred-some acres of undeveloped land in the Everglades east of Naples.”

Immokalee was northeast of Naples about thirty miles. Tomlinson’s remark about rednecks liking hunting camps came into my mind.

“Any houses or cabins on that property?” I asked, thinking a hunting camp would be a good place to disappear with an abducted girl.

“Uhhh, nope… I don’t see anything here. Nothing that’s been permitted, anyway,” he replied, then began to read from Squires’s file.

“He got bumped once for possession of marijuana, no conviction, back when he was a kid. Get this”-Melinski paused, and I could picture his face in front of a computer screen as he read-“‘The informant regarding the minor in question was the minor’s mother, Mrs. Harriet Ray Squires. Mrs. Squires had to be restrained by officers when she confronted said minor the morning after his arrest.’

“Christ, Doc,” Melinski laughed, “the guy’s own mom narced him out. If he’s one of those crazies who only goes for young girls, maybe it’s because his mom was such a hardass. He looks for women he can control.”

I said, “That’s the only thing on his record?”

“No,” the detective said, “but he’s not what I’d call real dirty. Not compared to most of the losers who come through here. There’s a DUI arrest, which his lawyer somehow got tossed out when he was nineteen. Then about five months ago he was banged for speeding-doing a hundred and ten on I-75, Pinellas County. If this is the guy we’re after, he’s got a vehicle that can do that and more. It’s an almost new Ford Roush pickup truck. That’s one of those trickedout specials. Big engines and big tires for guys with egos and-”

I interrupted, “What’s the license number? And the color?” I was leaning over a notepad, making notes.

There was a pause before Melinski let me know how patient he was trying to be, saying, “Doc, come on, now. You know I’m not allowed to do that. Even if I was allowed, I wouldn’t do it because the last thing we want is some civilian playing detective, upsetting people and probably getting his ass into trouble. Meaning you. Frankly, you’ve got a history of it. No offense.”

I said, “It was just a question, Lee.”

“A few months back, you were the suspect in a murder rap, Doc. So excuse me for being careful. I shouldn’t even be talking to you.”

I said, “I called because I want to help, not get in the way.”

“Please tell me you don’t plan on looking for this guy, Doc. There’s an AMBER Alert on the kid, what more do you want? What can you do that a state full of trained professionals can’t?”

I said, “I know… you’re right, but-” then listened to Melinski say, “From what you said, this guy Squires is a bad actor. Driver’s license has him listed at six-six, two forty-five, and he has a concealed weapons permit. No weapons registered to him, but that doesn’t mean diddly-squat. In this state, you can buy freaking grenades if you know who to talk to. Why risk inviting that kind of trouble? What’s this girl to you?”

I was looking at Emily as I told him, “Like you said, the girl has no parents around. No one to act as her advocates. I’ve spent a lot of time in Guatemala. I speak the language and I like the people. So why not? The point is, I don’t give a damn about Squires-arrest him or don’t arrest him, that’s your business. But I care about the girl. If I can help find her by asking around, talking to people in the Guatemalan community, what’s wrong with that?”

Melinski said, “Hang on a second,” sounding impatient. A moment later, he said, “Okay, here it is. The number that sent Tomlinson the text? It’s his phone, Harris Squires’s. As of now, every cop in the state will be looking for that fancy-assed truck of his. And we’ll find him. I can guarantee you that.”

To Tomlinson and Emily I whispered, “It was Squires’s phone,” as Melinski continued, “My next move is to contact our hostage-negotiation guys and ask them how we deal with this. Risk calling Squires and asking him if he’s got the girl? Then try to talk him down, convince him the smartest thing he can do is turn himself in. Or keep everything under the radar until we locate the truck. I’m not the officer in charge of this, but I know who is, and she’ll listen to me.”

I said, “If you have the right kind of person talk to him, someone trained-definitely not the tough-guy type-it could work.”

“But what if it doesn’t?” Melinski asked me, sounding angry or frustrated-a man who had been in a tough business for too long. “Jesus Christ! A thirteen-year-old girl a thousand miles from home. No family to look after her, and some steroid freak jerk grabs her. These Latin American kids, man-oh-man, Doc. The undocumented girls, particularly, they’re the easiest targets in the world-you’re right about that one.

“Some of these gangbangers,” he continued, “the Mexican coyote types. To them, snatching female illegals is like a sport. Like hunting rabbits or doves-something soft and harmless that can’t bite back. And the sad thing is, hardly anyone even knows this shit takes place every day. Let alone cares.”

To Melinski I said, “I don’t envy you guys the choices you have to make.”

I meant it.

“Doc,” the detective said, “I’ll give you my cell number, if you want. And I’ll call you the moment we get anything new. But I don’t want you nosing around, asking people questions about that girl. And I don’t want you messing with this Harris Squires dude. Give me your word?”

I replied, “I have no interest in finding Squires. I don’t ever want to see the guy again. I’ll promise you that.”

A few minutes later, we were in the lab, discussing ways to help find the girl, which, of course, meant finding Harris Squires. Try as I might, there was no separating the two.

My lab is a wooden room, roofed with crossbeams and tin sheeting. The place smells of ozone and chemicals, creosote and brackish water that I could hear currenting beneath the pine floor as Tomlinson lectured us.

My friend was trying to hurry us along, doing his best to sound rational and reasonable, telling me, “It’s not even ten yet, and it takes less than an hour to drive to Immokalee. Faster, if we knew someone who had a big fancy car. We could be there way before bar closing time. Right on Main Street there’s a good barbecue place, too, that stays open. I wouldn’t suggest it, but they have a salad bar.”

He turned to give Emily a pointed look, obviously aware that her Jag was parked outside the marina’s gate. But if the lady noticed, she didn’t react. She was going through a file I had started years ago, a file on bull sharks that inhabit a freshwater lake one hundred and twenty-seven miles from the sea in Central America.

We had gotten on the subject of sharks earlier in the evening when I was showing the lady a gadget I was testing that might repel attacking sharks. Laser Energetics of Orlando had sent me the thing, a palm-sized tactical light called a Dazer. Its green laser beam was hundreds of times more powerful than a legal laser pointer and could drop a man to the ground with one blinding blast. A test victim had described the pain as “like a screwdriver in the eye,” which is why a special federal license was required to possess it. If the Dazer affected sharks the same way, it might save sailors, pilots and divers who found themselves in a bad spot.

On the file Emily was holding I had written in ink Sharks of Lake Nicaragua.

“You have some fascinating stuff here,” Emily told me, looking at a black-and-white photo of a fisherman I had interviewed a few years back. He was missing a scarred-over chunk from his right thigh. Attacks in Lake Nicaragua are not uncommon. Water is murky, private bathing facilities are rare and backwater bull sharks have the feeding instincts of pit bulls. Males of the species, Carcharinus leucas, have a higher concentration of testosterone in their blood than any animal on earth.

In the background of the photo, tacked to a wall, were several sets of shark jaws. The largest of them was opened wide enough to cut a man in half.

The fisherman I’d interviewed had lost his thigh as a kid and had dedicated his adult life to getting even. The fact that Japanese buyers paid top dollar for shark fins only made his work sweeter-until he and other fishermen had all but depleted the landlocked shark population. The man was dead broke when I met him but still thirsty for revenge. By then, though, a rum bottle provided his only relief.

I know a quite a bit about Central America and the varieties of sharks that thrive there-finned predators and two-legged predators, too. For several years I had lived in the region, traveling between Nicaragua, Guatemala and Masagua during the endless revolutions. I was in the country doing marine research-a fact that I made public to anyone who asked because I was also working undercover on assignment for a clandestine agency composed of a tiny, select membership.

By day, I did collecting trips, wading the tide pools, and I maintained a fastidious little jungle lab. By night, I shifted gears and did a different type of work. I attended village celebrations and embassy functions. I wore a dinner jacket and went to parties thrown by wealthy landowners. I wore fatigues and trained with a counterinsurgency group, the Kaibiles. Less often, I roamed the local countryside on the hunt for gangster “revolutionaries” who, in fact, were little more than paid bullies and assassins.

On those occasions, I carried a weapon for a reason.

I’ve spent my life doing similar work in other Third World countries-Indonesia, Southeast Asia, Africa, Cuba. The study of marine biology has served me well in my travels, both as my primary vocation and as a believable cover. When a stranger inquires about local politics, residents are instantly suspicious, and for good reason. But when a stranger asks about the local fishery-where’s a good place to catch sharks?-he is instantly dismissed as just one more harmless, misguided fisherman.

I’ve never really confided in Tomlinson, but he’s perceptive, so knows more about my background than most. And he probably suspects that I’m still involved in that shadow world of hunter and hunted-which I am. But he doesn’t know the truth and he never will.

No one ever will.

I was looking at Emily, thinking about the complications my sort of life brings to a relationship, as Tomlinson intruded again by saying with exaggerated patience, “I don’t expect your full attention. You both have the same rosy glow, which tells me you’ve had yourselves a really fabulous first date, so congratulations. But have you heard even a single word I’ve said?”

Emily looked up from the folder, her expression empathetic. “I know you’re worried about the girl. I don’t even know her and I’m worried. But I’m going to follow Doc’s lead on this. Something tells me he’s got better instincts than most when it comes to these things.”

She looked at me as she added, “Trust me, I understand what it’s like to have a family member go missing.”

Tomlinson gave her a curious, questioning look, as if trying to decipher the implications. Then he got back to business, saying, “Okay, I agree with Doc. If every cop in Florida is looking for Tula, what good can we possibly do? It’s a valid point. But here’s another fact that’s valid: Cops aren’t welcome in immigrant communities. How many times have we talked about this? Why not at least go to Immokalee and have a look around? An hour in a car together-a four-beer drive, depending on traffic, and traffic shouldn’t be bad on a Wednesday night that far inland. Hell, it could be fun.”

Emily was studying my face, her expression now asking me What do you think?

She had dressed, but looked less formal in her white slacks, copper blouse, because her jacket was still hanging in my bedroom closet. I hoped it would stay there for the rest of the night-along with the woman-if we could manage to get rid of Tomlinson.

The trouble was, Tomlinson was right. Guatemalans would probably talk to us, but they would vanish the moment police appeared. If Squires had indeed taken Tula to Immokalee, someone would have noticed a big gringo with an Indio child. Why he would risk doing something so stupid, I had no idea. But if he had, the locals might trust us with the truth, which we could then pass along to police.

I said to Tomlinson, “It’s been a while since I’ve been to Immokalee, but I remember it being farther than an hour.”

Tomlinson was sitting at my desk computer. He’d been doing a lot of typing and printing as I showed the lady around the lab, enjoying her reaction to rows of aquaria that contained sea anemones, snappers, filefish, sea horses, scallops with iridescent blue eyes and dozens of other brackish-water creatures that I had collected from the grass flats around Dinkin’s Bay.

“Immokalee seems like a long way to you because your truck’s so slow,” Tomlinson replied, not looking up from the keyboard.

“Have you ridden with this guy yet?” he asked Emily. “Like an old lady, he drives-no offense to old ladies, don’t get me wrong. I love women of all ages. But top speed in that old Chevy of his, it might be sixty. Not that he’s ever pushed it that hard. I keep telling him to buy a new vehicle, but he’s too cheap. In that truck of his, he’s right. It would take us forever.”

I asked Emily, “Have you ever been there?” meaning Immokalee.

I got the impression she had, but the lady shrugged, open to fresh information.

“It’s inland, southeast of Sanibel-saw grass and cattle country. Tomatoes, citrus and peppers, too-all crops picked by hand. It’s only forty-some miles, but you have to take back roads because it’s off the tourist path. The town’s not big, maybe twenty thousand people, and the population is mostly Hispanic.”

I looked at Tomlinson, expecting him to correct me, as I added, “Back in the nineteen eighties, a Mexican crew chief brought in a truckload of Kanjobal Maya from Guatemala to work in Immokalee’s tomato fields and another place, Indiantown, which is north. That began the connection. Now those two towns have become sort of the Mayan capitals of Florida. That’s where all the Maya head when they’re looking for family. Or if they get into trouble.”

Tomlinson did correct me, saying, “It was nineteen eighty-two, I’ve got it right here on the screen. Now half the population of Indiantown is Mayan. This article doesn’t say how many Guatemalans live in Immokalee, but the Latin population is almost eighty percent, which means there has to be ten or fifteen thousand Indios in Immokalee-which makes it bigger than most of the cities in Guatemala.

He continued, “I don’t blame those people for not wanting to be documented. They’re mostly political refugees, on the run from their government because they did something or said something to piss off the big shots in Guatemala City. Their government still uses firing squads, don’t they, Doc?”

The man said it in an accusatory way as if I were somehow responsible.

“Up against the wall, asshole,” he added, shaking his head, “which is typical of a bunch of right-wing Nazis.”

Right wing, left wing, it made no difference in Central America

… nor anywhere else, for that matter, because the power hungry all gravitate toward the same dangerous interstice on the political wheel.

Even so, I said nothing as Tomlinson continued paraphrasing from what he was reading on the computer.

“In the seventies, Guatemalan exiles tried building a little village just across the border in Mexico. But their own army had a bad habit of sneaking across and shooting the Indigena on sight. Finally, Guatemalan military wiped out the whole village.

“Florida was a whole ocean away, and the really desperate refugees decided this was a safer choice. Now about thirty thousand Maya live in south Florida, which historically makes for a very nice symmetry, when you think about it.”

I saw that Emily had missed the connection, so I explained, “He’s talking about the original inhabitants of Southwest Florida. It was a major civilization. They were contemporaries of the Maya, a people called the Calusa.”

I suspected that the woman knew Florida history, but she listened intently as Tomlinson told her, “The Calusa and the Maya had too much in common for it to be accidental-in my opinion, anyway. The Calusa built shell pyramids and courtyards. They were led by ancestral kings, not chiefs-just like the Maya. They were here thousands of years before the Seminole.”

He studied the woman long enough to confirm she was interested before confiding, “Some nights, I anchor off one of the islands near here-Useppa Island-where the shell mounds look like small mountains. I smoke a doobie or two, and those pyramids come alive, man. People march around the mounds in wooden masks, carrying torches. Cooking fires burn, babies cry-real live vignettes. Teenagers screwing in the bushes, old men taking dumps knee-deep in water-scenes like that. When the wind’s just right, I can hear hard men talking war. It’s a very heavy connection for me. The Calusa are still here, man, when moonlight chimes the right notes.”

Emily was smiling, charmed by Tomlinson’s childlike sincerity. No surprise there. I had seen that smile on the faces of hundreds of women, maybe thousands, in the last ten years.

My pal continued, “Archaeologists may call them by a different name, but the Calusa were Maya. They were oceangoing people who got around. It’s sad but kinda funny now that the Mayan people are considered illegal immigrants even though they’ve been on this peninsula five thousand years longer than anyone else.”

Tomlinson looked up from the computer screen, done with his monologue, and glanced at his watch, eager to get going, a familiar stoned smile on his face. It had been fifteen minutes since I had told Detective Leroy Melinski that I would not search for Harris Squires, but now we were planning to do just that.

But then something unexpected happened. I watched my pal focus on Emily, studying her face, and then the smile faded as he looked at something that had just appeared on the computer screen. Whatever it was troubled him.

After a moment, the man motioned toward me as he said to Emily, “You’re serious about this guy, aren’t you.”

It was a statement, not a question.

Confused, then amused, Emily replied, “What a strange thing to say. I’m not in the habit of picking up strangers at alligator necropsies. Maybe the average girl does, but not me. I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t interested.”

Tomlinson’s expression changed, a look that was all too familiar. I call it his Sorcerer’s face. His eyelids drooped, his eyes appeared glazed by what he was seeing, the details he was absorbing, his attention focused laserlike on Emily Marston.

“What I’m saying is, you’ve been interested in Doc for a while. In your head… in your brain, there’s a whole little room devoted to Dr. Marion Ford, isn’t there? That is unusual.”

Emily’s smile hardened, a defensive posture, but she continued listening.

Tomlinson’s eyes were almost closed now as he said, “You’ve done a lot of thinking about this guy. I can sense the vibes, it’s becoming very clear. But it took you a while to find a way to meet him. A proper way to meet him, I mean. Someone told you about Doc a long time ago, maybe. Someone who was… who was important to you.”

He took a breath, his eyes open now as he asked, “Am I right?”

Emily turned to me. “Does he guess weights and birthdays, too?” She laughed the words, but her discomfort was visible.

I understood why. After we had made love for the second time, I had taken her out in my flats skiff, a twenty-one-foot boat. We had drifted from Woodring Point almost to the marina, lying on the deck, looking up the late-sunset sky. I’d learned a lot about the woman by the time we’d returned to my stilt house an hour later and made love yet again.

As I knew, Emily was uncomfortable because what Tomlinson had just said was all too close to the truth. She had heard about me a couple of years before from her own father, whom she adored.

Had Emily told me her maiden name, I would have made the connection much earlier.

The highly regarded amateur ornithologist who could afford to travel to Third World places had mentioned my name several times to his daughter-usually when she was dating some guy her father didn’t deem worthy.

I could admit to Emily that I knew that man, but that was as far as I could go. She willingly shared her secret, I could not.

I became even more uncomfortable when she told me that her father had disappeared thirteen months ago. I had met the man only twice-under circumstances that are still classified-so I knew without doubt that bird-watching was to him what marine biology is to me. It was an effective cover story for the dangerous intelligence work he did.

From past experience, I also suspected that Emily’s father was dead. If I ever disappear from Dinkin’s Bay, the same will be true of me.

It was a strange situation to be in. In a way, I knew things about Emily’s father that she would never know. She described him as “sweet, sensitive and generous.”

I didn’t doubt that was true, but I also knew the guy had to have a dark side or he would not have survived as long as he had in the business. I covered my discomfort with a silence that communicated an interest in the woman’s past. My interest was genuine.

Now Tomlinson had pried into our private conversation with yet another of his uncanny guesses. What irritates me is that he always does it in a way that gives the impression he possesses supernatural powers, which, of course, he does not.

It took me a couple of years, but I finally figured out how he does what he does, although I may never understand how he does it so well. Tomlinson is extraordinarily perceptive. He has a genius for reading nuances of speech, body language and facial expressions. He then ties all those tiny bits of datum together to make plausible and often accurate projections.

It requires an intellect of the first magnitude, yet it is still a magician’s trick.

I said, “Knock it off, Tomlinson. She has to work tomorrow. We can take my truck or your VW. Either way, we’ve got a long drive. If we’re going, let’s go.”

Emily stood, neatening papers to return to my Sharks of Lake Nicaragua file. “We’ll take my car,” she said. “He’s right, my Jaguar’s fast. As in, scary fast. I’ll call my office in the morning. I can take a personal day if we don’t make it back tonight. Is there a hotel near this place we’re going?”

I said, “Yes. Sort of,” remembering a Bates Motel-looking place at the edge of town called Sawgrass Motor Court. I felt like I should offer her another chance to beg off but didn’t want to risk it. Instead I said, “Immokalee’s only an hour, maybe forty minutes, in a decent vehicle. Don’t worry about it, we’ll be back here before one-thirty in the morning. Probably earlier.”

“Or we could stay at my cottage,” she offered. “It’s not Sanibel-but what is? You’ll like it, though. It’s an old Florida Cracker house”-she was looking around my lab-“sort of like this. All yellow pine. Wood so hard, you can still smell the turpentine sap when you drill. I have two bedrooms, and it’s close to the Interstate-on the river, near Alva.”

Tomlinson was standing at the printer now, waiting for something to finish. His eagerness to get on the road, all as his nervous energy, was suddenly gone.

He handed me several printouts. One was a map of Immokalee, churches and restaurants marked. Another was a Google Earth satellite photo. It took me a moment to realize it was the four hundred acres that Melinski had mentioned. According to tax records, it was owned by Harris Squires’s mother.

I was using a magnifying glass on the satellite shot, seeing what might have been an RV hidden in the trees, as Tomlinson said, “Doc, can I talk to you for a minute? Alone.”

I replied, “If it has something to do with Emily, go ahead and say it.” Then I had to wonder why my normally talkative pal suddenly went very quiet.

It took several seconds before Tomlinson finally said to Emily, “I don’t want to upset you, but I get premonitions sometimes. That’s why I was asking you about Doc. I wanted to see if your karmas are connected.”

Emily said, “Our karmas?” as if she didn’t understand but was willing to listen.

“I’m a psychic sensitive,” Tomlinson told her, pouring himself another shot of Patron. “An empathetic, too. In fact-and this is something I don’t share this with many people-I was employed by our own damn government as an expert on what they called remote viewing. I’d have never done it if I’d known who was paying me. Ask the good doctor if you don’t believe me.”

I nodded a confirmation. While still in college, Tomlinson had worked for the CIA during a time in history when the Soviets and the U.S. had recruited people who, after completing a very bizarre military test, were believed to have paranormal powers. The CIA called the project Operation Stargate. Stargate was fully funded by Congress until 1995, when wiser heads prevailed.

Tomlinson was looking at the woman, his voice soft, as he continued, “I just found something that gives me a very bad feeling about Emily making this trip. For Doc and me, it doesn’t matter. We’ve lived and died a dozen times. But you… you’re fresh, you’re new. I’ve got a feeling something bad’s going to happen tonight if you go to Immokalee. It’s because of your karmic linkage with Doc and me.”

“Are you stoned?” Emily asked him, serious.

“I was,” he replied, giving it some thought. “ Cannabis interruptus -the girl’s disappearance has completely screwed up my schedule. On a lunar scale, I’d say I’m closer to the Sea of Crises than the Sea of Tranquillity. We can share a spliff if you want-but later. Right now, I’d like you to take a look at this.”

Emily’s expression asked me Is he for real? as she reached for a photo he was handing her, something he’d just printed from the Internet. I intercepted the thing and took a look. It was a pen-andink drawing from the time of the Spanish Inquisition. A Mayan pyramid in the background. In the foreground, a woman, tied to a ladder, was being tilted toward a roaring fire by Conquistadors.

I passed the drawing to Emily as I asked, “What does this have to do with her, for Christ’s sake? You’re getting her upset for no reason.”

“Look at the face,” Tomlinson replied, voice calm now but concerned. “I don’t know why it caught my eye, but it did. There’s a connection. I’m not sure what, but I don’t think Emily should go with us.”

“You think this woman looks like me?” Emily asked. “I’m flattered, I guess. We’re both dressed in white, is that what you’re saying? If it wasn’t for the gown, she could be a nice-looking boy.”

After a moment, she added, “Our cheekbones, I guess, are similar, and… she has a sort of plain face, like mine. But don’t most women have plain faces? And the hair’s completely different.”

The image of the adolescent girl, Tula Choimha, came into my mind. I wondered why Tomlinson didn’t make the association, it was so obvious. But why lend credence to a preposterous assertion by asking a pointless question?

Emily handed the drawing back to me as she said to Tomlinson, “It’s sweet of you, but, come on, be serious. I don’t believe in this sort of thing. If you don’t want me tagging along, just say so. All of that pseudoscience nonsense-precognition, astrology, clairvoyance, numerology. Sorry, I’ve never been able to take that sort of thing seriously.”

The woman put her hand on my shoulder. “Doc, talk some sense into him, would you?”

Tomlinson replied, “It’s called tempting fate when we ignore our own instincts.”

He turned to me. “I really don’t think she should go, man. Something bad’s going to happen. I can feel it. If you want, stay here with her, I’ll go to Immokalee on my own. It has something to do with fire, I think.”

He took the drawing from my hands, giving it serious thought. “That’s what came into my mind when I saw this. Fire… and pain. Something terrible. Why risk it?”

I felt ridiculous, caught in the middle. Emily was waiting for me to agree with her-we were both scientists, after all. Tomlinson, my pal, was asking me to respect his instincts.

To me, it was more than that. Intellectually, I knew there could be no rational linkage between a random drawing and what might or might not happen to Emily on this very real Wednesday night in March.

Logically, it was absurd. Emotionally, though, I couldn’t let go of the fact-and it is a fact-that Tomlinson’s intuition, although often wrong, is also more than occasionally right.

As I took the drawing from Tomlinson’s hands, saying, “Let me see that again,” Emily gave me an incredulous look that said You can’t be serious?

I looked at the thing, paying no attention to the details because I was carrying on an argument in my head. Debating Tomlinson in the comfort of the lab, or sitting over beers aboard his sailboat, is one thing. But human certitude is an indulgence that can be enjoyed only in a cozy and safe environment.

It irritated me to have to admit it to myself, but, wrong or right, Tomlinson had asked a reasonable question: Why risk it?

As I placed the drawing on the dissecting table, Emily said to Tomlinson, “We’re not being fair to Doc. I can almost see his mind working. Choose between his best friend or agree with a woman he’s just met? That’s not something he’d do to us, so I’ll make it simple. I withdraw. I’ll see you guys tomorrow evening for drinks, if you want. You can fill me in.”

I thought I noted some mild sarcasm until the woman slipped her hand beneath my arm and gave a squeeze. I thanked her by placing a hand on her hip and pulling her closer. Truth was, she had a point. Would I back a lady I’d just met? Or remain loyal to an old friend?

I backed Tomlinson, of course. Sort of.

“Here’s what I think,” I said, looking at Tomlinson. “Three gringos driving an expensive car will attract too much attention in Immokalee. In a place that small? Especially at this hour. My Spanish is better than yours, and I speak a little Quiche. Emily’s not dressed for barhopping. And frankly, Tomlinson, you wouldn’t be an asset, either. There are some cowboy types down there in Immokalee who aren’t real fond of hippies.”

I felt a perverse jolt of pleasure at the surprise on the man’s face. I interrupted as he tried to protest, telling him, “You say Emily is in danger tonight? It’s not rational, but I’m not going to argue. Which means she should stay here. Either that or you should follow her home just to make sure she gets back safely. I’m going to Immokalee by myself.”

Tomlinson appeared nonplussed, his expression asking me Is this some sort of test?

In reply, I smiled and said, “If I can’t trust my best friend to look after a lady in danger, then who can I trust?” To emphasize my point, I stood and squeezed his scarecrow shoulder almost hard enough to make him wince.

“But I have to go!” he said. “I’m worried sick about that little girl.”

“Then drive your VW back to Red Citrus and have another look around,” I told him. “Splitting up makes more sense, anyway. We can stay in touch by cell phone. But after Emily is safely home. If I hear something, I’ll call. You do the same.”

Giving me a look of approval, Emily said to Tomlinson, “Sounds like your pal has made up his mind. Any objections to me coming here tomorrow after work? This is an interesting little marina you have. I bet you two have some stories.”

I said, “I’m counting on it,” as Tomlinson took a square of paper from his breast pocket, unfolded it to reveal a pencil-thin joint.

He said, “You’ve gotta love this guy, don’t you? The freaking earth could be wobbling off its axis, anarchy loosed upon the world. But good ol’ Doc will still be trying to do the right thing, in the most rational possible way, wanting the best for all concerned.”

He held the joint so Emily could see it. “In the meantime, us human humans have time for a couple of hits. Care to join me outside for the pause that refreshes?”

I was a little surprised that Emily nodded her head. Tomlinson was baiting me, that was apparent, so I ignored them both.

As I went out the screen door, down the steps toward my shark pen, I was already busy deciding what equipment to take just in case I got lucky and got a lead on the missing girl. The odds were slim, but that was okay. The fact was, it would be a relief to be on the road alone. No more talking, no more debates.

That feeling stayed with me, even after I had kissed Emily good-bye and I was bouncing down Tarpon Bay Road in my old pickup truck, a canvas backpack sitting square and heavy beside me, traffic sparse.

In the bag was a Sig Sauer 9mm semiauto pistol, plus the pocketsized Kahr that is fast becoming my favorite handgun. There was an odd assortment of other gear that I usually carry only when outside the country: gloves, a black watch cap, a handheld GPS, a Randall attack/survival knife and a MUM night vision monocular mounted on a headband.

Just for the hell of it, I had also included the tactical laser light, the Dazer. I hadn’t done enough testing to have confidence it would work on feeding sharks. But the company that made the thing, Laser Energetics, had invested years, and a lot of money, to prove that a small, blinding laser beam could disable a human attacker.

Had Emily been along and gotten a peek into that bag, she might have been shocked.

Or would she?

It was something to think about as I drove across the causeway bridge, the Sanibel Lighthouse strobing to my right, a black fusion of water and stars to my left.

Maybe not, I decided, judging from who her father was… or had once been. The man couldn’t have confided even in his daughter, but it was possible that Emily had been inquisitive as a girl and had done some snooping.

As I passed beneath the tollboth onto a fast four-lane, I checked my watch. It was 10:05 p.m. on this Wednesday night. Tula had been under the steroid freak’s control for at least twelve hours.

It was an unsettling fact.

Unless somehow related, grown men kidnap young girls for only one reason. Once their sexual fantasy is satiated, they usually panic and choose murder as a way to obliterate their lesser crime. The only variable is how many hours before the kidnapper has had enough?

One thing was certain: In twelve hours, the girl had already been victimized.

But was she still alive?