Night Vision

SEVEN

As we walked beneath mangrove trees toward my little home and laboratory on Dinkin’s Bay, Sanibel Island, Tomlinson couldn’t help fixating on the subject of Tula Choimha.

It was understandable. The girl had vanished shortly after the ambulance hauled her friend to the hospital and we’d failed to find her even though we had spent more than an hour searching.

“Doc,” he said for the umpteenth time, “I know damn well what happened. How often am I wrong when I feel this strongly about something?”

I replied, “You’re wrong most of the time, but you only remember the times you’re right. Stop worrying about it.”

“How can I stop worrying when every paranormal receptor in my body is telling me that Squires grabbed our girl for some reason? She wouldn’t have just disappeared like that. Not without saying something to me. Damn it, compadre, we should have stayed right there until we found her.”

I said, “Do me a favor. Take a deep breath. Then make a conscious effort to use the left side of your brain for a change. Squires is a jerk, but why would he kidnap a thirteen-year-old girl? There’s no motivation, he has nothing to gain. It would be the stupidest time possible to crap in his own nest. He grabs the girl when cops are swarming all over the place?”

After a few quiet paces, I added, “We’ll check in again tomorrow morning, but we’re done for tonight. We did everything we could.”

True. After being questioned by county deputies, then Florida Wildlife cops, and after refusing interviews with three different reporters, we had spent more than an hour at Red Citrus, hunting for Tula.

This was after I’d insisted that we both take an outdoor shower and then used the rest of the tequila to kill whatever microbes that might have been searching our skin for an entrance.

At the trailer where Tula was staying, we had found some of her extra clothing-boy’s jeans, a shirt-a book titled Joan of Arc: In Her Own Word s, plus a family photo in a cheap frame. The photo showed a six- or seven-year-old Tula, an older brother, her father and mother standing in front of a thatched hut somewhere in the mountains of Guatemala.

Like Tula, the mother wasn’t short and squat like many Guatemalan women-which, to me, suggested aristocratic genetics that dated way, way back. The mother wore traditional Indio dress, a colorful cinta, or head scarf, and a blue robozo, or shawl. The lady had a nice smile in the photo, but there was an odd anxiousness in her expression, too. She was an attractive woman, slim, with cobalt hair and a Mayan nose. Not beautiful but pretty, and looking way too young to have borne two children.

If children had not been in the photo, I would have guessed the mother’s age at less than seventeen.

Tula might have gone away and left her clothing, but she wouldn’t have left the photo. It suggested that the girl was still in the area. I also found it reassuring that the people with whom she was staying were less concerned than Tomlinson. They were among the few who knew that the unusual boy was actually a girl.

“It is something the maiden does at night,” a Mayan woman had told me in Spanish. “She goes to a secret place where no one can find her. She says she goes there to be alone with God. And to speak to angels who come to her at night. Every night the maiden disappears, so tonight is nothing new. Sometimes during the day she disappears, too. We respect her wishes. She is very gifted. Tula is a child of God.”

I found the woman’s phraseology interesting and unusual. The translation, which I provided Tomlinson, was exact. Doncella is Spanish for “maiden.” Hadas referred to woodland spirits that are common in Mayan mythology, the equivalent of Anglo-Saxon faeries or angels.

It is a seldom used word, doncella. In Spanish, “maiden” resonates with a deference that implies purity if not nobility. Again, I was struck by the respect adults demonstrated for the child. It bordered on reverence, which was in keeping with the small shrine the locals had erected outside Tula’s trailer. The shrine consisted of candles and beads placed on a cheap plaster statuette of the Virgin Mary.

“Tula has been in the States just over a week,” Tomlinson had explained to me, “but already word has spread that a child lives here who speaks with God. Tula didn’t have to tell these people anything about herself because she’s a thought-shaper. One look at her, her people knew that she’s special. Word travels fast in the Guatemalan community. Their survival depends on it.”

“In that case,” I’d said, trying to get the man off the subject, “park residents will naturally keep track of her movements. They think she’s special? Then she’ll attract special attention. Someone around here is bound to know where her secret place is.”

But no one did. Finally, Tomlinson and I started going door-todoor, but the neighbors were so suspicious of us, two gringos asking questions, that they probably wouldn’t have told us where the girl was even if they had known.

My guess, though, was, they didn’t know.

Now, two hours later, as Tomlinson and I walked toward my rickety old fish house, we discussed what I was going to make for dinner. It was my way of changing the subject. I was hungry, and it had also been several hours since Tomlinson had had a beer. It was an unusually long period of abstinence for the man, so it was no wonder his nerves were raw.

I was relieved to be home. My house and lab are more than a refuge, although they have provided refuge to many. The property, buildings and docks that constitute Sanibel Biological Supply are a local institution, second home to a trusted family of fishing guides, live-aboards and an occasional female guest.

Of late, though, I’d been going through a period of abstinence as well-not the liquid variety. So I was ready for a few beers myself. It had been one hell of a crazy night, and Tomlinson wasn’t the only one who felt a little raw.

There are fewer and fewer houses like mine in Florida. The place is an old commercial fish house built over the water on stilts. The lower level is all dockage and deck. The upper level is wooden platform, about eight feet above the water. Two small cottages sit at the center under one tin roof, and the platform extends out, creating a broad porch on all four sides.

I use one of the cottages as my laboratory and office. The other cottage is my living quarters, complete with a small yacht-sized kitchen and very un-yacht-like wood-burning stove that is a good thing to have on windy winter nights.

When we got to the first flight of steps, I paused to turn on underwater lights I had installed near my shark pen. Underwater lights, to me, are more entertaining than any high-tech entertainment system in the world. The drama that takes place between sea bottom and surface is real. It is uncompromising. There is no predicting what you might see.

Tonight turned out to be a stellar example. Even Tomlinson went silent when I flipped the switch, and the black water beneath the house blossomed into a luminous translucent gel.

Simultaneously, a school of mullet exploded on the light’s periphery, and we watched the fish go greyhounding into darkness.

Beneath my feet, under the dock, spadefish the size of plates grazed on barnacles that pulsed in feathered ivory colonies like flowers, raking in microscopic protein. There were gray snappers and blackbanded sheepsheads, circling the pilings.

In a sand pocket beyond, I noticed meticulous shadowed bars-a small regiment of snook, their noses marking the direction of tidal flow. I also saw a lone redfish, with copper-blue scales, dozing next to a piling, while, above, dime-sized blue crabs created furious wakes as they sprinted across a universe of water, oblivious to the danger below.

“Doc… you see that? Over there-see it? There’s something moving.”

For some reason, Tomlinson whispered the question, and I followed his gaze into shadows of mangrove trees at the shore’s edge. My friend’s tone communicated curiosity, not danger, so I took my time.

I removed my glasses and cleaned them before replying, “I don’t see anything.” But then I said, “Wait,” and began walking toward shore because I saw what had captured the man’s interest.

There was something lying on the sand between mangrove trees and the water. It was a man-sized shape, gray and glistening in the ambient light. Then another shape took form, this one animated and suddenly making a lot of noise as it crashed through foliage.

The shapes were alive, I realized. They were animals of some type.

Red mangroves are also called walking trees because their trunks are balanced on rooted tendrils that create a jumble of rubbery hoops growing from swamp. Whatever the animal was, it was having trouble getting through the roots to the water.

Tomlinson whispered, as if in awe, “My God, Doc-this can’t be happening!” Apparently, he had figured out what was in the mangroves, but I still had no clue.

I jogged down the boardwalk as my brain worked hard to cross-reference what I saw with anything I had ever seen before.

Nothing matched.

At first, I thought we’d surprised two stray dogs, from the way one of the creatures tried to lunge over the roots. But no… the shapes were too big to be dogs.

Feral hogs? A couple of panthers, maybe?

No…

For a moment, I wondered if I was seeing two large alligators. They often strayed into brackish water, and we occasionally even find them Gulf-side, off the Sanibel beach.

Wrong again. Gators don’t lunge like greyhounds. And they don’t make the clicking, whistling noises I was hearing now.

It was one of the rare times in my life when I wasn’t carrying some kind of flashlight, which I regretted, because the creatures began to take form as I got closer. When my dock lights had first surprised them, one of the creatures had been on the bank, several feet from the water. The other had been in the mangroves, many yards beyond.

I watched, transfixed, as first one, then the other animal, finally wiggled its way back into the shallows. Soon, the crash of foliage was replaced by a wild, rhythmic splashing as both creatures hobbyhorsed toward deeper water.

Visibility wasn’t good in the March darkness, but I could see well enough now to finally know what we were looking at. Particularly telling were the fluked tails and the distinctive pointed rostrums of the two animals.

From the deck, I heard Tomlinson whoop, “Wowie-zowie, dude!” then laughed as he called, “This is wild, man! Have you ever seen anything like that in your life?”

No, I had not.

I had stopped running because I wanted to concentrate on what was happening. I watched intensely, aware that it was one of those rare moments when I knew that, later, I would want to recall each detail, every nuance of movement, in the scene that was unfolding.

The two creatures we had surprised were mammals. But they weren’t land mammals. They were members of the family Delphinidae, genus Tursiops. They were pure creatures of the sea-at least, I had thought so until this instant.

I watched until the pair of animals had made it to deeper water, where they submerged… reappeared… then vanished beneath a star-streaked sky.

After a moment, I walked in a sort of pleasant daze to the house, where Tomlinson stood, grinning. He held out an arm so we could bang fists and said in a soft voice, “Bottlenose dolphins. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it for myself. Completely out of the water, feeding on dry land.”

I was smiling, too. There are few things more energizing than the discovery of something profound in a place that is so familiar, you think all its secrets have been revealed.

Tomlinson was feeling it, too. “My God,” he said, his head pivoting from the mangroves to the bay. “How could anyone ever get tired of living on the water? This place is magic, man, it’s just pureassed magic. Dolphins foraging beneath the trees while Sanibel Island sleeps. The freaking wonder of it all. Wow!”

He paused, both of us listening to the distinctive Puffffft! as the dolphins exhaled in synch, out of sight now but their images still clear in my mind.

Tomlinson asked me, “Have you ever in your life heard about something like this happening? Not me. Never ever. And I know a lot of devoted druggies who see crazy shit all the time.”

Tomlinson was so excited that he was talking too fast, thinking too fast, and I wanted to slow everything down.

I replied, “Hold on a second, I’m trying to think this through. We don’t know for sure they were feeding. That’s an assumption.” My mind was working on the problem, delighted by the challenge.

Tomlinson tried to interrupt, but I shushed him with a wave of my hand.

I said, “Granted, it’s the first explanation that came into my mind-that they came ashore to feed. But we need to take a look in the mangroves. A close look. And photograph the entire scene, too. If they were feeding, they might have left something behind. I’ll get a flashlight.”

Tomlinson repeated himself, saying, “In all the literature, in all the crazy dolphin stories I’ve heard, this is a first. What about you?”

His reference to crazy dolphin stories was an unusual thing for someone like Tomlinson to say, but he was spot-on. Bottlenose dolphins are the unwitting darlings of every misinformed crackpot who has ever yearned for a mystical link between humans and the sea. That includes more than a few misguided biologists who have credited the animals with everything from paranormal powers to the ability to heal children stricken by disease.

Dolphins-and these were dolphins, not porpoises-are brilliantly adaptable pack animals. Intelligent, true, but they are still pack animals, which includes all the ugly mob behavior that the term implies: assault, gang rape, occasionally the attempted genocide of competing species.

Dolphins are brilliantly adapted for survival-and they survive relentlessly, as all successful species do.

I waved for Tomlinson to follow me toward the house as I answered, “In Indonesia, I heard stories, maybe Malaysia, too, from people who claimed to know people who said they’d seen dolphins foraging in the mangroves, feeding on crabs. But it’s never been documented-not that I know of, anyway. I just figured it was part of the dolphin mythology. You know, the sort of stories that date back to mermaids-bull dolphins sneaking ashore to have intercourse with virgins. That sort of baloney.”

I left the man there and went up the steps, two at a time, to fetch flashlights. Mentally, I was assembling a list of dolphin experts I could call, pleased not only because of what we had just seen but because it had taken Tomlinson’s mind off the Guatemalan girl.

When my pal is fixated on a subject, he becomes repetitive and tiresome. I had invited him to dinner earlier in the day, so there was no getting out of it, and I didn’t want to have to endure his brooding theories about what had happened to Tula Choimha.

I believed that he was underestimating the girl. She had managed to travel solo, with very little money, from the mountains of Guatemala to Florida on her own with no problems-none I was aware of, anyway. The territory she had crossed included some of the most dangerous country on earth-particularly the migrant trails of Mexico, where outlaws and warring gangs prey on travelers. Robbery and rape are commonplace.

The fact that Tula had negotiated the trip successfully, and alone, said a lot about her character. But it said more about her instincts. The girl was street-savvy. I thought it unlikely that she would have allowed herself to be victimized in the markedly safer environment of a Florida trailer park, Harris Squires or no Harris Squires.

Inside the house, I grabbed two potent little Fenix LED flashlights, hesitated, then decided, what the hell, first I would change into clean shorts and a shirt. The dolphins wouldn’t be coming back, so there was no hurry now.

I leaned outside and told Tomlinson he should do the same. In the lab, I found a 500-milliliter bottle of reagent-grade propyl alcohol. I tossed my clothes outside, doused myself good, ears included, then placed the jug on the deck for Tomlinson to use.

As I changed, I checked my phone messages. One was from a state biologist whose name I had heard, but I’d never met. Her name was Emily Marston.

Emily-common nicknames included Emma, Milly and Em. Probably because it had been a month since I’d had a serious date, I wondered if any fit.

“Dr. Ford, in the morning I’m leading the necropsy on the alligator that was killed tonight. Since we’re working at the park station on Sanibel and since you were involved, I thought you might like to join us. But only if you’re interested personally. This is not an official request.”

I found the woman’s voice attractive, and her last sentence an alluring addendum that was, at once, both welcoming and dismissive.

Yes, I was interested.

I made note of the lady’s name, her number, the time of the necropsy, then went out the door after slipping a little Kodak pointand-shoot camera into my pocket.

As I did, my mind returned briefly to Tomlinson’s assertion that the bodybuilder Harris Squires was responsible for the Guatemalan girl’s disappearance. Was there even a small possibility that he was right?

I’m a careful man-particularly when a child is involved and when my own conscience is on the line. I gave it some more thought.

“Every paranormal receptor in my body is convinced that the guy grabbed her,” Tomlinson had told me, or something close to that. It summarized his entire argument. Everyone else at the trailer park had told us that she disappeared at night all the time. If they weren’t worried, why should we be? But just in case, while I was at the necropsy tomorrow morning, I decided I’d make sure Tomlinson went back to the trailer park to dig around.