Night vision

CHAPTER 27

I was poling the skiff across the Key Largo flats half a mile off the marshy hammocks on a sweltering day that held no hint of a breeze. The surface glistened in the harsh light, and in the shallow water tiny crabs scurried across the bottom, searching for specks of food. Sweat poured down my bare back and stained my canvas shorts. Somewhere under a hat of green palm fronds sat Charlie Riggs, cool as a six-pack in white cotton clam diggers and an aloha shirt festooned with lavender orchids.

"Great day to be alive." Charlie chortled, nearly squirming with joy. "And thanks for the new rod. My goodness, it's a beauty!"

"Just figured it was time you looked like a fisherman."

"Now, if you'll point me in the direction of some Albula vulpes, we can get to work."

Charlie lovingly fondled his new seven-foot, five-ounce graphite rod. It was equipped with an open-face spinning reel, wrapped with two hundred fifty yards of eight-pound test line. He was going to drop some un-weighted shrimp in front of Mister Bonefish, if I could find him. At your service, Jake Lassiter, old salt-fishing guide. I'd been poling and watching for an hour and had nothing to show for it except five pounds of lost water weight. Where were those little monsters with the recessed chins?

Charlie practiced a few casts, easily handling the light rod, holding the tip above his head at one o'clock, then flicking the wrist and releasing the line at eleven o'clock, adjusting the length of the cast by thumb pressure on the reel spool. After a few tries he could drop the bait on a lily pad at forty yards.

"So, Jake, you bring me out here to fish or talk?"

"Both, of course."

"Well, the fish ain't biting half as much as the skeeters, so let's get to it."

On the way down to Key Largo on Useless 1, I had told Charlie about Biggus Dickus and Lieutenant Fox. I showed him the officer's log I had purloined from the closet. He read it silently, committing the important parts to memory. Mostly there were the mundane accountings of infantry in the field. Weather reports, platoon rosters, notes from Command, coordinates of objectives, summaries of missions, arcane military slang and abbreviations, casualty rolls, to-do lists. Occasionally a personal item suffused with unstated meaning: Write Barker's mother.

I turned first to the entry labeled 09 JAN '68. The ink had run and faded. I imagined Fox huddled in the elephant grass in a monsoon, trying to write under the shield of his poncho. Or was it sweat dripping from his forehead as he sought the words? Or tears?

0700-Men tired, stoned. C-rations low.

1100-Rain, rain, go away, Charley back another day.

Open paddies. Men slow, surly.

1330-VC ambush on dike. Gallardi, Boyer, dogwood 6.

Rosen, Williams, Colgan, Miciak, dogwood 8.

1800-Dak Sut. Firefight. 3 VC greased. Zippo approx.

20 hooches. Phuong MIA. Lt. E. Ferguson. Rest in peace.

May the Lord have mercy.

That was it. Ass-backward from the way he tells the story now, when he tells it at all. The incident on the dike happened before they got to Dak Sut. Evan Ferguson was killed in the village, not on the dike. Nick penned a small prayer over his loss. So why the deception? I thumbed through the log. An entry from January 12, three days later. Filed report re Dak Sut. No queries from Command. What should they have asked? I wondered. Maybe Marsha Diamond's questions. She couldn't ask them. But I could.

I drove the pole into the soft sand and tied us fast. I sat on the platform covering the ninety-horsepower Mercury and grabbed a Grolsch from the cooler.

"So what do you think, Charlie?"

He laid the rod across his lap and scanned the water. The skiff drew about nine inches; the water was two feet deep, tops. It's part hunting and part fishing when you're after Mister Bonefish. "What are the possibilities?"

He loves the Socratic method of teaching.

"At least two. First, a conspiracy. Fox has his pal Rodriguez kill a couple of ladies who know too much."

Charlie removed his palm-frond hat and wiped his forehead with a red bandana. "What could have happened in a Vietnamese village that would lead him to commit murder more than twenty years later?"

So many questions, so few answers.

"Don't know, I'm working on it."

"And if he wanted to silence Marsha and his wife, why kill the Rosedahl girl?"

"A distraction," I said. "Makes it look like motiveless crimes tied together by the Compu-Mate membership. Then frame a drunk who can't remember half of what he says or does."

A spotted eagle ray flashed off the bow and beat its wing-like pectoral fins, scurrying through the warm, shallow water. Charlie watched it and scowled. " Aetobatus narinari. " He dug out a fresh shrimp. "So brutal."

"A ray? Unless it whips you with a poison spine, it's-"

"Not the ray. Your scenario. So brutal and risky, allowing the time lapse between Marsha's murder and Priscilla's. What if Priscilla became suspicious, started thinking her husband had killed Marsha?"

"But she wouldn't, Charlie. That's the point. There was nothing to tie Nick in, and once Mary Rosedahl was killed, everyone would think it was just some lunatic with a computer. Just like the royal family slaughtering four other women to cover up the killing of Mary Jane Kelly."

"Then why kill Priscilla at all? Marsha was silenced, and if Priscilla wasn't suspicious…"

"That's what I couldn't figure out. Whatever Priscilla knew, she's known for a long time, and she's been the good wife, silent and true. So I asked myself what's changed, and of course, it's so obvious."

Charlie picked up his rod and thought about it. "Nick left her. No reason to be loyal once he dumped her."

"Exactly. Priscilla put up a good front. Even fixed Nick up with Marsha, hoped it would be a quick fling. She had Marsha over for tea and slumber parties. One night Marsha finds the log. Probably she already looked up the clippings about Fox's war record, so she notices the discrepancy. She starts asking Fox about the war, but very casually. She's a little smarter than she seems. He doesn't figure it out at first, gives her the standard bit about the firefight in the village and the chase along the dike. Now she knows there's a story there. Maybe a very big story, bring down the state attorney, win a prize. Maybe she contacts survivors from the platoon, and one of them tips off Nick. And she may have told Priscilla, or Nick thought she did. He had a divorce in the works, plus a bright political future on the line. He couldn't afford to have somebody saying the medals are made of tin."

Charlie was quiet a moment. Then he spotted something, raised the rod, and cast. The excitement must have pumped up his backswing and I felt the rod buzz by my ear. The shrimp plopped thirty feet from where he wanted it, and the fish swam lazily the other way.

"Too big for a bonefish, anyway," Charlie said without regret. "Might be a cobia."

"Theory number two," I said. "Nick's got nothing to do with it. Alex Rodriguez is some kind of freak. Seduces 'em and strangles 'em."

"But you have no proof to support either theory."

"Give me a chance. Now, how about some fishing?"

Charlie was eyeing a sandy spot near a wad of seagrass. The first problem with bonefishing is spotting the little devils. I stood on the platform, watching for their tails. On the flats you sometimes see them waving like flags above the waterline, the fish digging in the sand for shrimp or crabs. Other times you see the mud churned up as they root around. More often you see nothing.

"You might try some chum," Charlie said.

Real purists may disagree, but I see nothing wrong with salting the water. We didn't have all day.

I unlimbered myself, untied the skiff, and poled toward the sandy spot. I opened a bag of live shrimp and started chopping them into shrimpettes. When I had a mess of bite-sized morsels, I tossed them over the side, leaving a trail of hors d'oeuvres for Mister Bonefish. Squinting into the late-morning sun, I poled back a comfortable distance, stuck us into the bottom, and sat back down on the hard platform.

Are we having fun yet? Charlie was watching the water, and I was thinking about the kinks in my back, when he said, "Hullo."

I opened my eyes and saw one of those spooky little devils, maybe eight pounds and all muscle and fight. It was skittish, scoping the territory, wondering why somebody dumped dinner in its living room. The second problem with bonefish is getting them to bite. They're high-strung as thoroughbreds. Drop the bait too far away, they won't notice it. Too close, they'll leave town.

Charlie let fly and landed his shrimp six feet in front of its snout. The fish didn't care. It was feeding on the chum or some microscopic flecks of fish food. Then it waggled over, sniffed around, and bit. And zip! It ran-hell, it flew-the reel singing a metallic song. The fish broke the Olympic record for the hundred meter, then decided to do it again. Charlie let it run out. He didn't have a choice. If your drag isn't perfect, the bonefish will snap your line and be in Mexico before you get your engine started.

When the fish stopped its run, Charlie decided to see what it was made of.

Dynamite.

Charlie started pumping, pulling the rod back, letting up, and reeling in. The fish took about ten seconds of this, said the hell with it, bent the rod double, and ran again. They fought for a while, the fish running, Charlie giving ground, reeling in, letting out. Then the line snagged on something-it could have been a chunk of coral or an old tire-and it broke cleanly, the fish bolting free.

"A fine specimen," Charlie said. He considered something for a moment, then added, "You might try some chum."

"I just did."

"Not here, Jake. For Fox and Rodriguez. See if they bite." Oh.

"If Rodriguez is a psychotic killer," Charlie said, "he'll kill again. If Fox thinks someone else knows enough to ruin him, he'll silence that person. So, Jake, start chumming."

The rains came in the afternoon, but we were dry inside Charlie's old Ford pickup, fighting the endless traffic up the highway from the Keys. He wouldn't let me drive, something about third gear not being up and to the right. The skiff was lashed to a rickety trailer behind us, and we bounced and splashed over the Card Sound Bridge on the way to Miami.

"You should have kept that ten-pounder," I said. "Could have mounted it."

Charlie snorted. "I never mounted a corpse in the morgue. Why would I do it to a poor fish?"

"That poor fish damn near broke your pole in two. Never saw so much fight in something so small."

" Deceptio visus," Charlie said, and not for the first time.

"I've been thinking about the bait," I said.

Charlie kept his eyes on the road and his mouth shut. He liked me to figure out things for myself.

"I need to know more about Biggus Dickus."

"His modus operandi?"

"Right. How he relates to the Compu-Mate women, what he looks for."

Charlie hit the defroster. Our body heat had steamed up the windows. Outside, a storm from the east slashed torrents of rain across the pavement. Lightning had knocked out the traffic lights and darkened the neon sign at the Green Turtle Inn. "You're casting for Rodriguez first."

"If he goes after another woman, it would clear Fox, wouldn't it? Rodriguez would be just another crazed killer, except he wears a badge. If he doesn't bite, then I let Fox know the Vietnam War isn't over yet."

"And if neither leaps at the bait? If your theories prove to be a floccinaucinihilipilification."

"A flossy…what?"

"Sorry. Such an ostentatious, academic word. If your theories prove to be valueless, where are you then?"

"You tell me, Charlie. Where am I if I falsely accuse the state attorney and the chief homicide detective of murder?"

"Poling for bonefish, Jake. Now and forever."