by Tom Lowe
FIFTY-THREE
Nicole Banard thought the moon had a lopsided grin. She stood in the kitchen with her mom, glancing up at the ceiling, a sliver of a crescent moon shining through the skylight. Nicole, a tall blonde with amber eyes, was helping her mother wash and dry dinner dishes. They were talking about Nicole’s career choices as her last year of high school was coming to a close. She was graduating a year ahead of schedule. Nicole had maintained a 4.0 grade-point average all through middle school and high school, taking A.P. classes, extra classes, and attending summer school for two summer semesters to graduate early.
Her mother, mid-forties, petite and pretty said, “Don’t forget to take Toby outside. He’s getting old and his bladder isn’t what it once was.”
Nicole glanced across the kitchen to a ten-year-old golden retriever sitting near the kitchen table. “After I become a vet, I’m hoping to figure out ways to help older dogs like Toby with their bladders.”
“Well, young lady, due to your perseverance and excellent grades, you’ll be attending the University of Florida in the fall on almost a full-ride scholarship. You earned it, kiddo. Your dad and I are so proud of you.”
“It’s going to take a long time to earn a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree.”
“Look how quickly you moved through high school.”
Nicole dried a dish, putting it away in a cupboard. “In college I’ll still need to get a part-time job to pay for other expenses. The money I’ll be making for the scenes I’m going to do in the movie, Atlantis, including a very small speaking role, will be a huge help. I can’t believe the producers are paying me seven-thousand dollars for two days of work.”
“Your dad and I’ve been talking about that. Maybe it’s not a good idea for you to go back to that movie set, regardless of how much they’re paying you. After that girl was found dead south of Miami on Key Biscayne, after that detective called and suggested you be very vigilant, maybe it’s not safe for you or any of the other girls hired by that movie company.”
“Mom, they’ve hired hundreds of girls just like me. They’ve hired lots and lots of guys, too. I don’t know how or why those two girls were killed. Maybe it’s some geeky freak who’s seen way too many superhero movies, and he really thinks he’s the best thing since Aquaman. There are tons of security guys on the movie sets and the parking area is fenced and guarded. The last time I was there, a security guard met me at my car and walked me back to my car a few hours later. Besides, I soooo need the money. If they’re willing to pay me, a nobody, seven-thousand dollars, imagine what they’re paying the A-list actors.”
“Millions, probably.”
“I just hope I don’t get nervous and mess up my line. What if I do it okay and, for some reason, they cut my scene out of the movie? What if they edit out my Oscar worthy performance because they have to shorten the film or something?”
Her mother smiled. “I doubt that would happen. You’re a great swimmer, and you’ve stood in front of the mirror delivering your line a hundred times.”
“Toby hasn’t heard me say it.” She looked at her the dog. “Okay, Toby listen closely.” She cleared her throat. “Atlantis will always be our home—the home of mermaids and mermen.” The golden retriever wagged its tail. “Toby likes it! Maybe I’d better switch my major from vet doc to acting.” She laughed.
“Before you go all Hollywood on us, remember there are a lot of actors with college degrees waiting tables while they await their future. I don’t think you’ll find many veterinarians working in the food and beverage industry.”
Nicole smiled—her blue-hazel eyes radiant in the light from a slow-turning paddle fan above them. “Another perk of working in the movies, at least on the set of Atlantis, is all the cute guys. There are dozens of them trying out for roles as mermen. Speaking of that, I want to get in a practice tonight in the pool. They’re shooting my scenes in two days. I’m excited.”
“Where’s the costume they let you borrow?”
“In my room. After I walk Toby, I’ll change and do a couple of practice laps.”
“Just don’t forget to turn out the pool light when you’re done.”
“Okay.”
• • •
Two hours later, near ten p.m., Nicole had brought her mermaid costume to the side of her backyard swimming pool. She wore her black bikini, her body lithe and stunning in the dim moonlight. She turned on the swimming pool light, the water sparkling like a watery blue diamond, the sound of crickets under the crooked smile of the moon. Looks like a smiley face in the sky, she thought as she looked up above the tall palm trees and live oaks. The clear night was filled with the twinkle of stars, a slight smell of chlorine mixed with night-blooming jasmine that Nicole’s dad had planted near the pool.
She slipped the mermaid tail over her bikini bottom and eased down into the shallow end of the pool. A dog barked in the distance as a breeze rustled through the palm fronds. Nicole lowered herself under the warm water. Keeping her eyes open, she swam toward the light in the far end of the pool. She remembered how the movie consultant had instructed her and the others auditioning for parts as mermaids to swim like dolphins. “Don’t use your arms or hands,” he had said. “A dolphin gets its speed from its torso down through its tail. Fish swim with a side-to-side motion of their tails. Not so for dolphins. They use up and down motions. You must learn to move your tail using your stomach and leg muscles making up and down S movements through the water – especially underwater.”
Nicole swam in smooth, vertical strokes, making up and down motions with the mermaid tail. She moved through the water like she was flying. It was almost effortless with the snug tail on her body. Nicole felt like she was a real mermaid, gliding through the water, and the pool was her new underwater world. She was in complete command and appreciative she was given the opportunity to use the costume for practice. She reached the bright light in the far end of the pool, did an underwater flip, and propelled herself back to the shallow end.
Nicole came to the surface near the steps. She inhaled the cool night air, a neighbor’s dog barking again. She looked through the sliding glass doors of her home, her dad in his recliner, eyes closed, mouth partially open. Her mother was sitting on the couch next to Toby, watching television, the bluish cast from the TV screen reflecting off her glasses. Nicole used both of her hands to brace herself on the steps of the pool, lifting her legs and moving her feet to flip the mermaid tail against the water, the ripples moving across the surface.
She was looking forward to her role in the movie. It would be a great, one-time experience and the money will help her in college. She leaned her head back, her long blonde hair cascading on the pool’s surface. She looked up at the crescent moon. “Atlantis will always be our home—the home of mermaids and mermen.” She laughed. “How was that Mr. Moon?” Nicole decided to do one more practice run before going inside to shower. She shoved off from the step, took a deep breath and swam toward the light, her thoughts on the lessons she and the other extras had received. A dolphin gets its speed from its torso down through its tail.
Nicole swam almost effortless. The tail propelling her though the water. As she swam for the light, it went out. The pool was completely dark. She lost her sense of direction, her sense of bearing. Maybe the lightbulb blew out, she thought. She slowed, using her hands to feel for the wall. Something broke the surface. A hand grabbed her hair, pulling. Nicole wanted to scream but couldn’t because she was underwater.
A second hand. Strong, the grip on the back of her neck powerful. She was yanked out of the pool as easily as someone would lift up a child. In the complete dark, a man’s hand smothered her face. A stub of one finger across her top lip. She fought, kicking, flailing in his grasp. She felt a sharp pain in her upper arm.
A shot.
The sting of a needle.
Suddenly her body was very warm, her knees weaker. Thoughts jumbled, as if her brain was separating from her body. She felt the sensation of being li
fted in the night air. He draped her over his shoulder and started walking. She fought to lift her head. So hard to do. Mom … Dad … help. Nicole turned her head and looked toward the glass door as her captor carried her away. She could see Toby come to the door. She heard a single bark, then a pitiful whine, as she was taken away into the dark of night.
FIFTY-FOUR
I traveled by moonlight, barefooted, my feet bleeding, ribs cracked, my body weakened by near starvation. The full moon over the Afghanistan mountainous terrain provided me with enough light to follow the rocky goat trails. In approximately fifty miles, I was hoping to find a Delta Force camp outside of Nangarhar Province. One of the few advantages I had over the people who wanted to cut off my head and use it for a soccer ball was the distance I’d managed to put between them and me. After I killed an Afghan warlord with a ballpoint pen through his right eye, I escaped the adobe mud house where they’d held me prisoner for seventeen days.
I looked up at the starry sky from a damp crevice, watching clouds near the moon, plotting my escape route through the dusky mountains. The cool air smelled of wild thyme, moss and goat dung. I waited for a cloud to creep over the moon, casting the jagged hills and valleys into semi-darkness. Then I’d jog through the sharp rocks, under the fir trees, around boulders the size of military tanks, through deep crevices, stopping every hundred yards or so to listen.
The men following me, all descendants from Afghan warriors who’ve lived in this land for thousands of years, were excellent trackers. They were a breed of fighting warriors who’d beaten their adversaries in ground and mountain warfare for generations. They possessed uncanny skills in using the land as a camouflage, able to almost disappear in the rocks or under the sand itself.
I thought about that as I stepped into the cold waters of a mountain stream, following the moving water downhill, hiding my bloody tracks, my feet becoming numb from water that was generated by melting snow in the higher elevations. I sloshed through the shallow stream for more than two miles, not knowing if the band of soldiers was near me or if I’d managed to lose them. I came to a still area of water, the stream now a river, becoming much wider, the water resembling the surface of a dark lake. I stood near the rocky shore in water up to my hips.
I caught my breath, ribs throbbing in pain, my left eye almost swollen closed from one of the last beatings they’d given me. Two men, the smell of dried mud on their feet and woodsmoke in their clothes, laughed as they took turns with bare fists. It was times like that when I had to use every fiber of my being to transfer the pain to a place deep inside my mind, to refrain from any emotional sign of weakness. Nothing visible beyond the bloody damage inflicted to my body.
I cupped my sore hands and brought the cold water to my face, feeling the chill and sting in the open cuts and bruises. I rinsed blood out of my mouth. Felt the loose teeth. In the bright moonlight, I looked at my reflection on the surface of the water. I didn’t recognize my own face, the face of a pummeled boxer who somehow managed to find the grit to stay on his feet for fifteen rounds.
Suddenly, my image dissolved, melting on the surface, turning into the face of Savannah Nelson drifting near the reflection of the moon. I stared at it, unable to take my eyes off her face, as if I was looking at a mysterious woman in a Renaissance painting, not sure if she was smiling or had a slight frown on her face. But her eyes seemed to follow me, to summon me. I knew I needed to leave, the warriors somewhere out there on my trail. But I couldn’t pull myself away from her eyes. The moon began retreating from Savannah’s reflection, obliterating her face, only her hair visible in the outline. I stared at the strange image like I was staring into the face of Medusa, almost incapable of looking away, powerless to speak. I closed my eyes, my heart hammering, my aching body seemingly turning to stone and becoming one with the dark metamorphic rocks of the Afghan mountains.
I forced my eyes open, staring up at the full moon through the plexiglass hatch above my bed in the master berth on Jupiter. My pulse throbbed, a film of sweat on my face, T-shirt damp. I looked at Wynona sleeping next to me, the sheet over her shoulders, her leg and right hip exposed in the creamy moonlight. Max lay between us, next to Wynona’s left arm. Max opened her eyes, simply looking at me as if she wanted to ask me if I was okay. I reached over and rubbed her cheek, then I brought one finger to my lips. “Shhh,” I whispered. Max tilted her head, then rested her chin back on the sheet.
I quietly got out of bed, trying hard not to wake Wynona. I almost made it to the door of the berth when she asked, “Are you okay?”
I stopped and turned. She sat further up, her brown shoulders exposed, dark hair cascading over her breasts. “I’m all right. Didn’t mean to wake you.”
“Blame it on the bright moon.” She smiled, stroking Max. “I did hear you talking in your sleep earlier in the night. But I fell right back to sleep.”
“What’d I say?”
“I could only make out a couple of words.” She pulled a strand of hair behind one ear. “Something about water … following the water.”
I said nothing.
“You’re having those nightmares again, aren’t you? The things you experienced in the Middle East … in the wars.”
“They’re only dreams. And dreams can’t hurt you.”
“They’re nightmares, Sean. And the only reason you keep having them is because some people hurt you and those men that you cared about so much. I think you have PTSD.”
“As long as it doesn’t have me, I can survive it. Sleep isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be.” I smiled, turning to leave.
“Are you going for one of your midnight walks?”
I looked at the white numbers from the digital clock on my side of the bed. 4:31 a.m. “It’s after four-thirty. The flybridge has a nice view this time of the morning.”
“Can Max and I join you?”
“Always.”
“Do want some coffee?”
“No, just you and Max.”
She got out of bed, pulling up jeans over her panties and reaching for a black sweatshirt with a replica of the Ponce Lighthouse on it. Wynona looked across the cabin at me, the moonlight falling softly across one side of her face, her eyes tender. “The things that wake you up, that keep you up … I hope you will share more of them with me when we go topside,.”
FIFTY-FIVE
With the moon now more in the western sky, we watched a soft pink glow begin to appear in the east over the Atlantic. All three of us sat across from the captain’s chair in Jupiter’s flybridge, on the long seat that forms a near half circle. Max wedged in between Wynona and me, her chin resting on my thigh, watching me. The flybridge windows were open, the somber and sleeping boat community all around us.
The morning at the marina was cool, the occasional wink from the lighthouse in the distance, a mile beyond the tall mast of sailboats. I could smell the promise of rain somewhere over the ocean. A slight mist rose from the marina water, diffusing the lights along the docks, giving them the look of flickering oil streetlamps in a French impressionist painting. Wynona squeezed my hand and asked, “The bad dreams … are you having the same one over and over again?”
“No, they’re most often in bits and pieces, fragments really of some of the horror I’d seen in the Middle East. And to be fair, I get jagged pieces of dreams from some of the more gruesome crime scenes I’d worked in Miami. Sometimes they mingle, which can be a bit disorienting.”
Wynona smiled, eyes shifting from the marina lights to me. “I can relate. Well, at least your subconscious doesn’t play geographic favorites. The dream that woke you up this morning, how much of it do you remember?”
“I remember the feelings I had more than I can remember the flashbacks of actual events, at least for the most part.”
“Okay, tell me what those parts were and how you felt.”
“I’d escaped from a Taliban encampment, a real adobe house of horrors. It was late at night.” I told her what happened and then added. “I c
ame to where the stream turned into a river—a very still, dark water river. By the light of a full moon, I could see my reflection on the surface. But I couldn’t recognize my face. Then the image altered into the face of Savannah Nelson, floating right on the water. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her image until the refection of the moon drifted, eliminating her face, only her hair remaining … looking like it was cascading over both sides of the moon. I felt as if she was trying to tell me something.”
Wynona was quiet, the sound of boat lines groaning in the receding tide. She said, “Perhaps, in the dream, there is something prophetic. Considering the deaths of the two girls in the mermaid costumes, and the fact that Savannah and more girls like her are playing parts of mermaids in the movie, your experience in law enforcement is tossing up red flags. Your subconscious, in this respect, is no different than your conscious mind. You’ve expressed your concern that the perp won’t stop killing until he’s caught.”
“There’s something else, too.”
“What’s that?”
“Rex Nelson, Savannah’s dad.”
“What about him?”
“He asked me to help him … or to ostensibly help Savannah. Rex wants to hire me as a PI to do an investigation for him and his daughter. He wants me to find the perp because he believes Savannah could be in harm’s way. I tried to assure him that the police investigation was in more than capable hands, but he wasn’t convinced. He’s a proud man, someone who doesn’t ask for favors. He almost begged me to take the case. That’s not easy for him to do.”
“And now you’re having mixed feelings for not helping, right?”
“Yeah.”
“If part of the reason you turned Rex down is me … please reconsider for him and for me. The last thing I want is to stand in the way of what you do so well for people. You try hard to right the wrongs. I don’t want my presence in your life to stop or in any way curtail that.”