Night Vision

EPILOGUE

On the second Sunday in March, which is when daylight savings adds an hour of light to winter’s darkness, I drove my truck to the West Wind Inn, a mile from Dinkin’s Bay, and was on the beach in time to watch the sunrise.

It was 6:43 a.m. The sun had not yet appeared above the Sanibel Lighthouse, but clouds to the west were fire laced, tinged with pink and edged with turquoise from a sky that melded blue with the green of an old morning sea.

I had just taken possession of a custom surfboard, designed by surf icon Steve Brom and shipped from the Florida Panhandle by YOLO Boards of Santa Rosa Beach.

It was Tomlinson who had discovered the fledgling company, perhaps charmed by the YOLO acronym: You Only Live Once.

As my friend pointed out, the name didn’t mesh with his convictions about reincarnation or life after death, but, as he explained, “You gotta love the kick-ass spirit it represents.”

I was unmoved until I had tried one. The next afternoon, I spoke to Brom and ordered a board specifically for my needs. After discussing what I wanted, I then provided the man with my height and weight.

Amused, the California surf guru had told me, “I don’t expect to see you on the pro circuit anytime soon. But this might be my chance to create a board that even a gorilla could use, maybe even learn to shred.”

Funny guy.

The board-a stand-up paddleboard, by definition-had arrived yesterday, a Saturday, just as I had finished separating a new batch of specimens, sea horses and filefish in one tank, two dozen anemones in another. After I had unboxed the board, I had leaned it against the outside wall of my lab, then trotted down the steps to get a better view from the deck.

There is something iconic about the shape of a surfboard. It gave me pleasure just looking at it. The body was laminated bamboo, rails classically arched, the bottom painted deuce-coupe yellow. The board was more than eleven feet long, the ends symmetrically rounded, and I amused myself by deciding it would have appeared equally at home on Easter Island, guarding a seaward bluff, or sliding down a North Shore wave.

Waves. That’s why I had come to the beach. It’s why I had done only an abbreviated morning workout, then headed straight to the West Wind after checking the weather report.

Sanibel Island isn’t known for its surf, but this morning was different. Wind was blowing low over the Gulf, rolling waves from the southwest, their crests finally peaking as they soldiered toward the beach after a five-hundred-mile journey from the Yucatan, Mexico.

Just beyond the second sandbar, fifty yards from shore, a translucent green beach break was curling with a symmetry so consistent that I realized my hands were shaking a little as I strapped the leash around my ankle, then carried the board to the water.

To my left, to my right, there were early-morning beach strollers and shellers and young honeymooners walking hand in hand. Decade after decade on the islands, the faces differ, but the beaches continue to provide a safe conduit to the infinite, narrow galleries of sand that illustrate relentless change.

The surf line, though, was as empty as the horizon.

Waves were waiting. And so was something else I needed: solitude. I craved it. Craved it so intensely that, since I had rescued the Guatemalan girl eleven days earlier, I had been avoiding people. It is the same when I return from an overseas assignment. I view it as decompression time, a period of slow reacclimatization after surfacing from the depths.

At the gate to my boardwalk, I had hung the NO VISITORS PLEASE sign. I retreated to my lab, ignoring e-mails, refusing phone calls, and I had even skipped Dinkin’s Bay Marina’s traditional Fridaynight party.

I worked out every morning and afternoon, then spent most of the day in my flats skiff or in my little trawler, dragging nets. My only companions were the sea creatures that inhabited my aquaria, my telescope and the marina’s self-important cat, Crunch amp; Des, who spent an unusual amount of time gifting me with an unusual amount of attention.

Two people I made a special effort to avoid were Tomlinson and Emily Marston.

The only person I spoke with daily-almost daily, anyway-and visited whenever I could, was Tula Choimha. I had wrestled with the possibility that interacting with the girl might cause police to be suspicious. As I got to know her better, however, and because I paid close attention to how law enforcement types reacted when I was around, I was soon convinced that the opposite was true.

More important, I was convinced of something more compelling: Tula could be trusted. We never discussed what had happened. The girl was savvy enough to understand that any mention of that night could mean years in jail for me.

Instead, we spoke of her brother and her aunts and how eager she was to return to Guatemala. Her mother, though, was never mentioned. I didn’t pry because of something Tula had shared with me that night during our long drive. “My mother is dead,” the girl told me. After several minutes of silence, she explained, “Harris confessed something to me that I can never speak of again. I love them both and I forgive them both. Because I love them, the truth of how my mother died will die with me.”

A safer topic for our daily talks included the hundreds of Central Americans who visited the girl’s hospital daily, waiting patiently and offering prayers, even though they knew they would not be allowed to see the patient they revered.

It required special patience for me to pretend to accept Tula’s explanation. “They’re aware that God has sent them a message through me. My people don’t belong here. No amount of money is worth the homes and families they abandoned. On their cell phones, I know they probably exaggerate what I suffered-some of the crazy stories the nurses have told me! But the fire was real, and so was the evil. God wants me to keep spreading His message. And I will.”

What transpired the night I rescued Tula was on my mind hour after hour, day after day. From it sprouted additional worries and realizations. I had saved the girl. It made me responsible for her in some ways. I also felt a growing affection for Tula that was beyond anything I had anticipated. It matched my admiration for Tula’s intellect, her maturity and her decency.

In the bag I had taken from Squires’s truck, I had counted out more than fifty-three thousand, mostly in hundreds, fifties and twenties. Cash of that amount would invite scrutiny, and I was still investigating the best way to create an account in Tula Choimha’s name.

Responsibility is a petri dish of worry.

But now as I waded into the Gulf, then paddled toward the surf line, my earth-linked worries faded, becoming incrementally smaller with every freeing stroke.

Nine days after the missing Guatemalan girl made headlines by suddenly reappearing at Red Citrus RV Park dazed and injured, she was released from the hospital with the blessings of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, but only after several interrogation sessions plus four days of medical tests and psychological evaluations.

“The child is suffering from shock and what may be posttraumatic amnesia,” a department spokesman was quoted as saying. “But she is a resilient child, very brave, and the information she has provided is so detailed that we believe we have a firm grasp on the facts regarding how she disappeared and the murders she may have witnessed.”

Because of the girl’s age, thankfully, the reports never revealed Tula’s name.

Unlike Tomlinson, who is a New York Times junkie, I avoid newspapers. Reading a litany of human outrages, I believe, is a damn dark way to start what in Florida is usually a consistently bright day. Because I had a personal stake in how the investigation unfolded, however, I spent those ten days paying close attention.

Especially nerve-racking were the afternoons that I knew Tula was being interrogated.

At any moment, day or night, the police could come tapping at my door. Paranoia isn’t irrational when fears are well founded or when guilt is the burden of someone who is truly guilty. It was a new experience for me-while living within the normally safe borders of the United States, anyway-and not pleasant.

Not that I suffered from pangs of guilt. I didn’t. If a shrink somehow learned the truth about my life, if he was provided details of some of the things I have done, he might conclude that I am a sociopath, incapable of remorse or guilt.

The shrink would be wrong. I am sufficiently objective to acknowledge that I am less affected by emotion than most people, yet I suffer guilt and regret on a daily basis just like everyone else. I am aware that too many times I have behaved thoughtlessly, stupidly and childishly. I have hurt people I care about and I have said words that will forever make me wince.

The difference between myself and a sociopath is this: When I executed those five men, I did it while in full control of my emotional and intellectual facilities. I didn’t pull the trigger because I wanted to do it. I killed those men because it was necessary -required, in fact, by the circumstances and the exigencies of their own violent behaviors. Pyromania is to arson what murder is to assassination.

“Strictly business,” Victorino might have explained it, and the man would have been correct for once.

When I replayed the events of that night in my mind, I felt no guilt for the same reason I felt no perverse thrill or any emotional satisfaction. Even so, what had happened was on my mind constantly. So I followed the news reports.

The St. Pete Times referred to the incident as The Immokalee Slayings, which for that excellent newspaper was an understandable hedge because Immokalee was the nearest town and also because three of the seven victims resided within the city limits.

Laziro Victorino, I was not surprised to learn, had chosen upscale locations-a riverfront home in Cape Coral and a condo near Tampa.

“Police believe the homicides are gang related,” one of the stories read. “Mass killings have become commonplace in Mexico, and the ceremonial nature of the Immokalee slayings suggests that gang violence has finally arrived in South Florida. Four victims were shot execution style. The body of a fifth victim was mutilated, although authorities refuse to provide specific details.”

Because police had found steroid-manufacturing apparatus at Harris Squires’s hunting camp and also a small facility at his Red Citrus double-wide, the news reports implied what police had yet to confirm: The killings had something to do with a turf war over the sale of illegal steroids.

“Such turf wars date back to the days of Prohibition,” one newspaper editorial read. “Illegal drugs spawn murderous behavior. To members of a warring gang, killing an enemy is viewed as a right of passage.”

Six consecutive days the slayings dominated headlines, but the few known facts didn’t vary much. It wasn’t until the ninth day that some enterprising reporter hammered away at an obvious question until some unknown source provided an answer. How exactly did a teenage Guatemalan girl escape the carnage only to be found forty miles away, wandering the shrimp docks near Tomlinson’s rum bar, bayside, Fort Myers Beach?

According to a source familiar with statements made by the abductee, the reporter wrote, the girl was rescued by a person she described as a “Spanish-speaking man who drove a truck.”

Because the man wore a ski mask, the girl was unable to provide a physical description of her rescuer, although she described him as “kind and gentle” in at least two of her statements. In a third statement, the girl told investigators that the man’s truck must have been almost new because it was so quiet that she was able to fall asleep as the masked man drove.

The story continued, Although it cannot be confirmed, at least some investigators believe the man may be a member of one of the warring gangs whose conscience would not allow him to execute a young girl. A Collier County psychologist, often consulted in homicide cases, has suggested the man may be the father of a girl who is of similar age. Police are cross-referencing the information in search of the suspect, although investigators believe that most, if not all, of the warring gang members were killed on the night the incident occurred. The exception, of course, is the man who drove the girl to safety.

A Spanish-speaking masked man. Tula had found a way to effectively distance me from the case by providing her interrogators with very specific truths.

After five days, heartened by the reactions of police and the news report I read, I began to enjoy a tenuous confidence that I had manipulated the crime scene convincingly. After seven days had passed, the only cop who had bothered to contact me was my detective friend, Leroy Melinski. And the only reason he called was to congratulate me on Tula’s rescue.

Well… to congratulate Tomlinson. Not me.

“I’ve got to give your crazy hippie friend credit,” Lee had said. “All night, our guys had been staking out that trailer park, but it’s your pal who happens to find the girl wandering the streets and brings her in. ‘Psychic intuition,’ he told our guys. He claimed that’s how he knew where to find her. The first thing they did, of course, was check his vehicle for weapons and a ski mask. And he also had a very solid alibi-he’d spent the entire evening with a woman biologist that Tomlinson claims you know. So maybe there’s something to that mystic bullshit after all.”

I didn’t comment on Melinski’s reference to Emily, although I was tempted to tell him he was right about the bullshit but wrong about the rest of it.

Tomlinson’s “psychic intuition” had nothing whatsoever to do with him finding Tula.

Truth was, Tomlinson was so drunk and stoned by the time I reached him on his cell phone that I judged him incapable of driving to Red Citrus. Because I couldn’t depend on him, I hung up without mentioning that Tula was with me.

I was disappointed in the guy, of course, but I wasn’t shocked. I was shocked, however, when I dialed Emily Marston as a backup and suddenly I was talking to Tomlinson once again.

For a moment, I was confused. Had I or had I not dialed Emily’s cell phone?

Yes, I had.

“Ms. Marston is temporarily indisposed,” Tomlinson answered formally, unaware he was speaking to me. Because he tried hard to sound sober, he only sounded drunker when he added, “May I help you? Or you can wait for Emily-she’s a pretty quick little spliff roller.”

By then, Tula and I were only twenty minutes from Red Citrus. I had driven the distance with particular care for obvious reasons, and now the girl was asleep, her head in my lap. So as not to wake her, I had to move my right arm gently to get a look at my watch.

1:30 a.m.

My best friend, it turned out, was still guarding the safety of my new lover, Emily, the quick little spliff roller. The temptation was to nail Tomlinson with a very valid question: What in the hell, exactly, was going on?

Instead, I remained calm. I had to because I needed his help. Someone had to be close to Red Citrus, waiting, when I dropped off the girl. Someone I trusted. Not inside the park because cops might still be posted. If police saw the exchange, if they suspected I was the one who had driven Tula to safety, they would search my truck and correctly associate me with the murders I had just committed.

Phone to my ear, I took a slow breath and said, “Tomlinson, if you care anything about our friendship, please don’t say a word. Just listen.”

The instant he tried to respond I stopped him, saying, “I’m warning you, this is serious. And please don’t use my name-or tell Emily it’s me.”

After a reassuring silence, I told him, “I need your help. I’m counting on you.” Because it was true, I added, “You’re the only person I trust with my life.”

During another long pause, I imagined the man’s mind trying to rally. Tomlinson claims that his brain conceals what he calls “a sober lifeguard twin” who comes to his rescue in demanding situations no matter how wasted he happens to be. He claims his ever-sober twin has saved him from suspicious cops and freak storms at sea.

Because of my tone, I suspected that Tomlinson was summoning that lifeguard now.

Finally, he said, “Anything you want. You can count on me.”

As he spoke, I could hear Emily in the background, asking, “Is it for me? Why are you using my phone?” The woman, at least, sounded sober, but I wasn’t going to entrust her with what had to happen next.

As I spoke to Tomlinson, I used short sentences. I kept my directions concise. Lifeguard twin or not, the man still sounded slobbering drunk.

Half an hour later, I sat in my truck in the shadows of the boatyard that adjoins Tomlinson’s rum bar. The bar’s party lights and its underwater lights were still on, but the place was closed.

Twice, cop cars cruised past, probably changing watches at Red Citrus, I guessed. Each time, as my knuckles whitened on the steering wheel, I felt Tula pat my arm, trying to calm me.

When a Yellow Taxi finally appeared, pulling beneath the security light near Hanson’s Shrimp Yards-exactly as I had instructed Tomlinson-I leaned, kissed Tula’s singed hair and told her, “You’re safe now. Tomlinson’s waiting. He won’t ask you any questions. He promised me-and I trust him.”

Then I sat back and watched the girl run toward the security light into my pal’s waiting arms.

Aside from a few accidental meetings at the marina-“awkward” would describe our exchanges-it was the last time I saw the man until that early Sunday morning when I noticed two familiar figures appear from the strand of sea oats that separate the West Wind Inn from the beach.

I was a hundred yards from shore, waiting for a good wave. I watched the figures stop… scan the water… and then both people waved.

It was Tomlinson, looking absurd in a pink sarong. Emily was beside him.

I had been avoiding the couple, it was true. But I waved in reply, anyway, because petty demonstrations of anger are, in my opinion, the equivalent of cancerous little cells that eat away at the quality of a person’s life.

Why not? I was feeling pretty good because I’d already had some fun. Waves had tumbled me and humbled me, confirming, with supreme indifference, that I still had a lot to learn about paddleboard surfing.

My ego is still sufficiently adolescent, though, that I became determined to make my final ride to the beach stylish enough to impress Tomlinson and, more important, Emily.

Maybe I tried too hard. That’s probably what happened. Only a few seconds into the ride, the board nose-dived, then pearled. I went flying.

Because I deserved it, I expected both Emily and my pal to be laughing as I carried the board to the beach. Not derisive laughter. The variety that comforts a friend after he has looked foolish.

Instead, they both appeared oddly serious as I approached. It became more serious-and confusing-when the woman marched toward me, then took my face in her hands. She stared into my eyes for a moment before saying, “This is an intervention! That’s why we’re here.”

More confused, I said, “Huh?”

The woman explained, “An intervention. It’s a sort of last-resort tactic that’s supposed to work on alcoholics and habitual gamblers. So we decided that maybe, just maybe, it would work on someone as obsessively stubborn, bullheaded and downright dumb as you.”

I replied, “ We decided?” moving my head to look at Tomlinson.

The man rolled his eyes and shrugged as if to distance himself from what was happening. “I wouldn’t call Doc dumb,” he said. “The rest of it’s true, yeah. Especially the ‘obsessive-stubborn’ deal. But ‘dumb,’ that’s taking it a little too far.”

I replied, “ Thanks, pal,” and broke away from Emily’s grip long enough to place my board on the sand.

A moment later, though, she was cupping my face in her hands again. There were tears, I noticed, welling in her eyes, so I stood quietly and paid attention.

“We both know what you’ve been thinking about Tomlinson and me, and you’re wrong,” the woman said. “I’ve called you more than a dozen times. I sent you e-mails, trying to explain. I came to the marina twice, but each time you were off somewhere doing God knows what on your boat. It’s been more than ten days, damn it!”

Emily’s hands dropped to her sides and formed fists to illustrate her frustration. “I thought you cared about me, Doc! I wanted to talk with. No… I needed to talk with you! The night you called my cell phone, the night Tomlinson answered, why didn’t you at least have the courtesy to explain to me that you were in trouble? If you’d told me you the truth, that you were in trouble and needed help, I would have been there for you, damn it!”

I tried to remain expressionless as slowly, very slowly, I shifted my attention to Tomlinson. My throat was tight as I asked the man, “You told her about what happened that night?”

Even when he’s stoned, Tomlinson has wise old eyes, a prophet’s eyes, some say. He stared back at me now, though, with clear eyes, his gaze steady. “I didn’t tell her the specifics,” he replied. “Just enough so she would understand.”

I said, “Well, discretion has never been your strong suit,” not caring now if Emily realized that I was suddenly furious.

Sounding unflappable, Tomlinson continued, “I figured it would be okay. So I explained that your truck broke down in Immokalee and a couple of the rednecks were giving you a hard time. But I didn’t mention the cops-or the drunken waitress at the barbecue place.”

Emily said, “What drunken waitress?” as I studied the man’s face in surprise, wondering how any human being could lie so effortlessly.

I exhaled a slow breath, very relieved. “It was an ugly scene,” I told Emily. “There was no reason to get you involved.”

I expected the lie to calm the woman. Instead, it made her madder. Emily put her hands on her hips and leaned toward me, saying, “No, the truth is, you thought your buddy and I had something going on that night. Didn’t you? Just because he answered my phone at one-thirty in the morning. That we both got stoned and jumped in the sack or something-like I’m some sort of easy tramp. That’s why you didn’t want me to help you. That’s why you’ve been avoiding both of us. Tell the truth, Doc.”

Glancing at Tomlinson, I did tell the truth. “It wouldn’t be the first time that it’s happened,” I said.

Smiling, Tomlinson was walking toward us. “I explained that to her, Doc,” he said. “I’m a sinner, God knows it, and now Emily knows it. But what you need to understand is that my premonition of fire almost came true. That’s why I was still there at Emily’s house. Trust me, she couldn’t get rid of me fast enough.”

The woman was protesting, “That’s not exactly true,” as Tomlinson continued, “Remember that old drawing I showed you, the woman falling into a wall of flames? I followed Emily back to her place just like you told me. Just as I was pulling away, she came running out, saying maybe she smelled smoke.”

To Emily I said, “Is he serious?”

The woman replied, “I told you about the house I own, out near Alva. It’s built of old Florida pine. It took us a while to figure it out, but one of my electrical breakers was bad, just starting to spark. If we’d gotten there a few minutes later, the whole place would have gone off like a bomb.”

“There’s nothing more calming than a bud of Captiva-grown weed,” Tomlinson added. “That’s what we were doing when you called. I was already shit-faced, of course, but her”-Tomlinson nodded his chin toward the woman-“she was as about as loose as a nun at a Viagra convention. Because I was there after midnight, though, I don’t blame Doc for assuming the worst. Later, I tried to explain to her why you don’t trust me and probably never will.”

To survive the awkward silence that followed, Tomlinson looked around, saw the waves, then focused on my new surfboard. “Very cool,” he said. “An eleven-six? Really sweet rockers.”

I was staring at the man, tempted to ask if he remembered what I’d said to him eleven nights earlier about trusting him with my life. Not actually say the words but just jog his memory in case he’d been too sloshed to remember.

Instead, I put my arm around Emily. It seemed a wiser, safer choice. As Tomlinson leaned to study the YOLO graphics, I touched my lips to the woman’s cheek, then suggested that we walk back to my stilt house, where I could apologize in private.

“But what about your new surfboard?” she asked, trying to look over her shoulder as we walked toward the sea oats that fringed the beach.

I replied, “Don’t worry, Tomlinson has it. Sooner or later, he would’ve taken it, anyway.”