Vargas was unconvinced—mystified, in fact—that an intelligent man would make so many reckless assumptions. He moved closer to the cistern. “Something smells rotten here . . . like rotten eggs. Is it the water?”
Ford made eye contact to acknowledge the subtext. “Sulfur water, old-timers call it. Actually, hydrogen sulfide causes the odor. That alone makes this a good place, don’t you think?” As he spoke, he held up his cell phone and switched off.
Vargas understood. “Personally, I think it’s a terrible choice—no houses around, no security at all. But it’s up to you,” which had an honest ring if someone was listening. He switched off his phone, allowed thirty seconds, then asked, “Are you sure?”
Ford shrugged and waited until they were in the truck to say, “Now I’ll show you the drones.”
He did.
• • •
Like many women, Hannah was prone to blame herself for the misconduct of men who, if she had risked rudeness earlier, might not have behaved like drunks or simpleton fools later in the day.
Vargas Diemer was no simpleton, and he certainly wasn’t drunk the night he’d tried to force his way into the shower. Even so, she felt badly enough about what had happened to divert her attention from her clients and the fish they weren’t catching during the last hour of their charter.
“Captain Hannah? Water’s clear enough, wouldn’t we see snook if they’re around?”
It jolted her into the present. “Yes, sir, we would. That’s why I was about to pull the stake and pole you past those mangroves. See that little point? The bottom drops off; sort of a swale. You can relax until we’re closer, but keep your eyes peeled.”
Hannah hopped up on the poling platform. Two itty-bitty snook later, she turned her skiff toward Dinkin’s Bay, isolated from her clients by engine noise. She punished herself by recalling small things she could have done to prevent the evening with Vargas from spinning out of control. If she had interjected a warning, or worn a different blouse, or refused a second glass of champagne—myriad opportunities to spare the Brazilian a bloody nose.
My lord, she had smacked him a good one. Her knuckles still hurt.
What Marion Ford would have pointed out was that victims wrongly blame themselves. The man was fair that way. Even as her former lover, he would have been fair.
Sitting at the wheel, Hannah imagined how their exchange would go if she told him about it. How his expression would change when he heard certain details—not everything, of course. She wasn’t fool enough to mention Vargas’s hands on her breasts, the way her breathing had stopped while he’d freed the top buttons of her blouse. It was a dizzying moment of suspense beyond the understanding of a man—well, beyond Marion’s understanding anyway.
She had put a stop to it though, by god, and felt blameless about what happened next . . . blameless until she recalled the slightly tipsy words she’d used to close the evening.
If it’s okay, I’ll use the guest shower and change clothes before heading home.
No . . . that was an edited version. What she’d said was Think I’ll hop in the shower first, then something about changing clothes because she traveled by boat. No wonder the Brazilian had heard her words as an invitation.
Oh my lord.
She had to get this matter straightened out.
Hannah tapped the throttle and crossed the shoals off Green Point, doing forty-plus.
What she feared more than guilt was hurting a person she cared about. There was a possibility Marion had heard a more damning version of the story while talking with the Brazilian. She couldn’t allow such gossip to go unchallenged.
Damn that Vargas, with his exotic looks and accent. He was fun and elegant but too smooth to be trusted. No telling what kind of lies he had told about that night, which is why she would never allow herself to be alone with the man again.
Well . . . probably.
That decision could wait. The decision about speaking to the biologist could not. Their romantic relationship was over. She knew it. Ford knew it. But she valued the man’s respect, and only the truth could guarantee whatever future their friendship held.
Yes, by lord, she had to take action.
Hannah secured the skiff, said good-bye to her clients, and walked to the lab, where she rang the bell—a formality befitting life’s zigzag changes.
“Marion,” she said when her ex-lover appeared. “I’ve got something important to say and you’re not going to like it.”
When Hannah left, Ford watched until she was safely in her boat and gone, then went for his second run of the day. He carried a towel, a small flashlight, and forty bucks in his socks. On Wednesdays during season, the pool bar at West Wind stayed open until seven, an hour after sunset.
He felt pretty good, albeit perplexed by the conflicts of conscience endured by women, particularly strong women, but seldom by scalp hunters like the Brazilian.
Ford probed a few times for anger hiding inside his lizard brain and decided, None. Well . . . no more than usual.
It was the sort of lie he often told himself. Self-control required self-deceit.
When he got to the beach, he picked up the pace for another mile, then turned through sea oats to the West Wind, where pool water steamed, it was so warm. A swim and two beers sustained him on the jog home.
His positive attitude vanished when he entered the lab. Julian had paid another robotic visit. On the computer screen was a crime scene photo of KAT. Full color; a woman’s face deflated by impact, one dull eye open, a hand thrust out on bloody brown Mexican tile. The photographer had used a flash. Where shadows of palms and a slouching cop pooled, a gathering of incisor teeth glistened.
Ford stared for a while, hoping this was another digital trick. KAT’s articulate bone structure had become a gruesome jigsaw puzzle—a misplaced nose, jaws askew like broken scissors. Her skin had imploded into a shattered space that had once been a woman, alive, beautiful.
Near her hips on the tile, like animal tracks, were three bloody palm prints. KAT had done some crawling before she died.
He took a resolute breath and switched off the computer. She tried to kill me, he told himself.
No, she would have given orders to have him killed. That, at least, was true. At his best, and worst, he was an objective man, and accuracy always trumped rationalization.
Atop the printer was a thin stack of paper. Only because he’d loaded the damn thing was it less of a surprise. There were more photos of KAT. Hoping Winslow Shepherd might be included—or to prove his own detachment—he leafed through them one by one until he got to what he realized were KAT’s autopsy photos, stolen from the coroner’s hard drive. Dozens of them, through every stage of the process.
Enough.
It was a balmy December eve, but Ford used a photo to start a fire in the woodstove anyway. When he thrust the last clutch in, one photo drifted up with the flames and Kat’s dead eyes, minus the top of her skull, stared out at him while her face melted.
Ford slammed the stove door, yet KAT’s image remained.
That’s when it hit him, the truth of what he had done, yet his reaction was to stand calmly and think it through.
Julian had been correct about assassinations in foreign lands. He’d accurately referenced techniques that had been used: choke holds and broken necks, and the rare bullet. But the victims weren’t victims. They were active combatants; always strong and capable, and always men.
Until now.
KAT would have had me killed, he reminded himself.
That was accurate as well.
There was something else: a missing truth he had shared with Julian of all people. On the balcony, if Shepherd hadn’t been such a damn coward, if he hadn’t grabbed KAT as a shield, neither of them would have fallen. Ford had tested the rail with his own weight. When the bolts he’d loosened gave way, it would ha
ve scared the hell out of them. That was the plan: scare them into talking.
Afterward, depending on what was said, he might have taken them for a boat ride. He might have used two bullets.
But Shepherd had panicked. The railing could not support the weight of two people, so KAT had suffered longer than necessary.
Exercise was Ford’s way of jettisoning stress, but that source was tapped out. The next-best option was to lose himself in work, so he returned to the lab, plucked a lab apron off the hook—and only then realized the photo of KAT was still frozen on the computer screen.
He averted his eyes, wondering, Didn’t I switch off the power? Yes . . . damn right. Unless . . . I’m imagining . . .
He yanked the plug from the wall, yet KAT’s face continued to chide him from the screen. Impossible. What was happening?
In that micro-moment of uncertainty, Ford experienced his first and only glimpse into the mind-set of those who are dragged by fear into insanity.
Then the uncertainty was gone. The glowing screen was another trick. It was Julian’s way of proving his dominance over cyberspace and all who relied on it.
Well, dependence was easily severed. The computer was bulky, years out of date. He scooped it from the desk and let the screen door slam behind him. Deck lights were off. Moonlight glazed the mangroves and tinted the shallows where he dropped the computer over the railing. Satisfying, the splash the damn thing made.
He stood there with a pleased expression, even though he’d have to wade in and dispose of the wreckage properly come morning.
“Doc—it’s Ava. Ava Lindstrom. Are you okay?”
Outside the gate, hand on the bell lanyard, stood the vet from Sarasota. She’d brought the dog. “I tried calling, but . . . Maybe I chose a bad time.”
“Couldn’t be better,” Ford said.
He invented a lie about the computer while he followed the woman and the dog up the stairs.
• • •
Talk about a life in opposition: ten minutes ago, he’d been leafing through autopsy photos of a woman he’d killed before escaping through the jungles of Belize. Now he was thumbing through Ava’s doctoral dissertation, saying, “I can make tea, if you’d like. It’s a little warm for a fire, but tea, something herbal, might be nice. Or a blanket?”
They were in what qualified as a sitting room because there were two chairs, a reading lamp near the shortwave radio, and shelves of books. The bedroom, separated only by a curtain, was to the left. The galley, with a sink and propane stove, was a wider space but part of the same room.
“I’ll make it myself, if that’s okay,” she said. “I like futzing around in a strange kitchen. How people eat says a lot about who they are.”
“A vet and a social scientist,” Ford said not as a joke, but she laughed anyway; a pleasant sound on a night so still, he could hear dew dripping from the eves and faraway snatches of music.
She got up, straightened her blouse, made a funnel with her hands, and pulled her hair back. Ford watched her walk to the galley, noted the slim lines and curvatures, and got a glimpse of her lower back when she reached to open a cupboard. No tattoo, thank god—but why should he care? This wasn’t a social call.
He returned to the dissertation, which was titled Behavioral and Phenotypic Diversity in Canis familiaris When Genetically Engineered.
Interesting.
As he read, the dog got up, went halfway to the galley, then did an about-face and plopped down on his feet. Not near them, on them.
“Geezus,” he said. “Do you mind?”
The dog banged his head on the floor, already asleep.
Ava was too busy filling the kettle to notice. An innocent question seemed a good way to draw her attention. “How was the party?”
“You don’t need to make small talk with me, Doc,” she said from the sink. “Go ahead and read.”
He did, and was surprised when he got to the third paragraph of the abstract:
Dogs, as we know them, are the product of centuries of reckless genetic experiments resulting in structural maladies and diseases that are “breed” specific. This will be discussed in the body of this work.
For fifteen thousand years, man has aspired to create the “perfect” dog. Ironically, now that we possess the genetic technology to create a better, if not perfect, dog, we must first wade through millennia of man-made mistakes.
Ford gave a low whistle. “This is impressive. Is that your main interest—research—or was it opening a clinic?”
Her reply was undecipherable over the whistling teakettle, so Ford let it go until she returned, carrying two steaming mugs.
“It was quiet,” she said, which threw him until he realized she was answering his question about the party. “I think people are a little too hungover from the fifteenth day of Christmas to really enjoy the sixteenth. Is it always like this? Hard to imagine they’ve got ten more days of having too much fun.”
“I’m surprised they let you escape,” Ford said. The mug was hot—mint and chamomile tea, which he wasn’t wild about, but said, “Smells good. How many people were there?”
She sat opposite him in an upholstered chair he’d bought at the Goodwill on Palm Ridge and centered her tea on a footstool. “If you’re asking where Tomlinson is, he was with those two nice women on that funny old boat. Them and three girls from a local college. I forget the name. He didn’t seem to notice when I left.”
Ford turned a page and said, “Ah.”
“Ah yourself. I didn’t stalk off because I was jealous. Tomlinson and I are friends. That’s the extent of it—well, except for three nights ago. Sometimes, not often, I do something so out of character, it shocks even me. But that’s okay. I’m trying to learn to go easier on myself.” The woman had a good smile; sat there, watching, to see how he handled that.
“Dogs have thirty-nine pairs of chromosomes,” Ford replied. “That’s more than primates, as I recollect. I’ve got his folder in the lab, the DNA results are there,” speaking about the dog, who was tangled in his feet again. “They link him to at least five different breeds, but mostly Chesapeake. Hang on, I’ll find it.”
“Not until we get something straight. Let me ask you something.”
Ford sat back, thinking, Now what?
“Why didn’t you offer me a beer instead of tea? I’ll tell you why. This afternoon, at that beach place the owner is buying, Tomlinson and I had a long talk. We were in one of the cottages; I saw you drive up and whatever you think was going on wasn’t. Anyway, he somehow knew I . . . well, that I had some problems as a kid. Who doesn’t? But that was a long time ago, so, as I told him, that doesn’t mean I’m fragile or damaged goods, or can or can’t choose what I want to drink—or smoke, for that matter. It’s something I wanted you to know.”
“There’s only one thing I can say,” he replied. “Do you want a beer?”
“No, but you do. So stop pretending you’re enjoying that damn tea, dump it in the sink, and come back with what you actually want. And bring the DNA results, while you’re at it. Oh—something else.”
He was moving by then. “Yeah?”
“I don’t believe your story about dropping the computer. Why’d you really throw it in the water?”
“If this is one those total honesty conversations, no offense, Ava, but we don’t know each other well enough.”
“I was just asking.”
“Okay. Well, I got pissed off. Someone hacked into my system and I was tired of it. He’s an Internet pro who’s way out of my league, so I took the layman’s approach. That’s all I’m going to tell you.”
Ava’s expression read Intriguing, but she said, “Fair enough,” and sipped her tea.
After that, things were more comfortable. They spent an hour going through the data and talked about the previous owner, a geneticist from Atlanta who’d used test t
ubes and breeding stock to raise retrievers. The woman vet saying, “He got a lot of things right, if you like a dog who can’t bark, who’s loyal; who would drown trying to retrieve a car if it went into the water but, otherwise, isn’t very bright. Not bright in the way some shepherds and collies, a few other breeds, are. But much smarter than, say, an Afghan. Have you ever met an Afghan?”
Ford asked, “Loyal to someone he thinks saved his life? That’s another oddity, his behavior after he nearly drowned. Let’s try something.”
He stood, tapped his left thigh, and said, “Heel.”
The dog vaulted from sleep to his side, braced him into the galley, turned in step, then performed the other basics while Ava watched—Back . . . Down . . . Up . . . Sit . . . then a two-minute Stay. Ears perked; yellow eyes gleamed until he heard the release command—Okay—and was soon asleep again by the chair.
Ford said, “I don’t believe in the mouse-and-lion story, but the way he bonded with Figueroa, I’ve got to wonder.”
“Not so odd,” Ava said. “What do you mean mouse-and-lion?”
“The kid’s story; maybe it was an elephant. A mouse pulls a thorn from the foot of whatever it was—a lion, I’m pretty sure—and the lion is instantly loyal.”
He explained how he and Tomlinson had found the dog starving in the Everglades, the decomposed head of a Burmese python, its teeth buried in the dog’s neck.
“I made notes about the scars,” Ava said. “I had no idea he’d survived something like that.” She was hunkered down, elbows on knees, totally into it. “You saved Pete, then Figueroa saved him. I get it. So maybe that explains some of his behavior.”
Ford didn’t bother to comment on the name. He’d slipped off his boat shoes, bare feet now on the sleeping dog’s ribs. “If it does, the only reason he’s here is because you put him on a leash. But where’s the leash?”
“I didn’t. That’s what I meant. What you don’t know is that Figueroa hit Pete with a broom not half an hour ago. He followed me, I didn’t make him come.”
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