RARE SCUBA ACCIDENT
DIVE OPERATOR BLAMELESS
Three bland paragraphs reported that Saudi national James P. Lutz had died after an equipment malfunction while diving Glass Window Reef off Dunmore Town. Lutz, age thirty-five, was reported to be an experienced diver, but authorities suspected that poor equipment maintenance, and alcohol, had played a role.
That was eight days ago.
“Never mind,” Ford said, pushing back his chair. “A beer sounds pretty good, all of a sudden. You want yours in a glass? I put a couple in the freezer.”
“How can you be so cheery when I’m so damn bummed after my trip into town?”
“It’s this riveting conversation . . . Hang on . . .”
In the center of the lab was a workstation: a black epoxy table with a sink, faucets, electrical outlets, and a gas cock for a Bunsen burner. Along the east wall, a dozen lighted aquaria were animated by sea creatures. He stopped to clean an intake filter and noticed a strange drawing lying on the bench.
“What’s this?”
Tomlinson had left the drawing there on purpose but said, “I can’t see through walls, man.”
“Since when? It looks like a Chinese symbol. It has to be yours.”
Bare feet slapped the deck, and Tomlinson entered the room. “You haven’t listened to a word I’ve said. When I got here, I told you to take a look at my sketch when you were done at the computer. I just got back from visiting Gracie. Did you hear that part?”
“What’s the symbol mean?”
“You tell me,” Tomlinson said, then remembered he was speaking to a man unsuited for the Rorschach test. “It’s a sketch of the scar tissue left after she was branded. No . . . of my interpretation, because the details haven’t taken shape yet. The burn got infected, so she’s back in the hospital with the bandages off. She’d never seen it before, and the mirror thing was backasswards, so I hit up the nurses for a Sharpie. Rice paper would have been better, but I made do.”
As he studied it, Ford muttered, “Slaten Lambeth did this.”
“Branded her, I dunno, man. Maybe, maybe not.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? The detective I talked to thinks Lambeth did the same thing to at least four girls, mostly around Gainesville. Not with a branding iron, but tattoos. He ought to be shot.”
Tomlinson let his pal cool down by saying, “The symbol, sort of let your eyes blur. What’s the first thing pops into your mind?”
“That I don’t read Chinese.”
“Okay, the second thing. Don’t think; ask yourself, ‘What am I seeing?’”
“A sloppy excuse for a design. A stamp of ownership; something obscene or humiliating, that would be my guess. On two of his victims, he tattooed whore, in Cantonese, on their foreheads. The electric chair would be okay, too.” Ford tossed the sketch on the bench. “You’ve researched it by now. What’s it mean?”
“Again, it’s my interpretation. The blistering’s too bad to actually know for sure.”
“Your best guess, then.”
“We’ll get to that.”
“I don’t doubt we will. You’ve been setting me up for something ever since you got here. Mack wants us to do interviews, is that it? No . . . he wants me to do interviews. Your feelings are hurt, so you came up with some metaphysical gobbledygook so you can refuse honorably if he does happen to ask.”
“Whew! That’s pretty damn close, man. You’re coming around.”
It was an amiable way to postpone the topic until a mellower interlude, which was a couple of beers later. The biologist had his Celestron telescope on the upper deck, focused a few degrees south of the meridian. Saturn was there, Mars nearby, as was a brilliant star, Antares. Too bright for Mars to reveal its red spot, so they were soon done.
“Okay,” Ford said, sitting back. “Here’s what you were going to tell me. It’s about Gracie, right? She’s convinced her forty-year-old boyfriend couldn’t possibly have been the lunatic who held her captive. And he certainly didn’t murder his beloved old Aunt Ivy by burning her alive. Am I close?”
“One of the cops told you.”
“Correct. What I hope is, you don’t encourage Gracie to believe there’s a possibility she’s right.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of, she might be. Did your buddy say anything about Ivy Lambeth having another nephew? There has to be someone else involved. I can’t picture Slaten working construction, or dropping off groceries. That’s what the cops told you, right? She was a shut-in, so her nephew came by every week, the one who dropped the receipt you found.”
Ford was getting frustrated. “Listen to me. There were only three people in the house that night—Gracie, Ivy Lambeth, and Slaten. You should know, you went inside. They’re all accounted for, now that dental records have confirmed it was the old woman. Those smelting furnaces burn hot. As far as Gracie goes, you’re aware of the Stockholm syndrome. You know what it does to victims. That’s why she feels compelled to remain loyal.”
“Did you tell your cop buddy I went inside?”
“He’s a detective, not a cop, and a pretty good one. He asked, yeah, but of course I didn’t say anything. Fact is, I don’t know what you did other than confirm the place was empty. Why no details? That bothers me.”
Tomlinson had been going over it in his head, what he’d seen and heard in a building that was a lifeless echo chamber of misery.
“I found some stuff I left for the cops to figure out. Ivy’s blond wig, and a page from what I think was Tootsie’s family Bible. Whoever tossed it into the furnace was in a hurry, or more concerned with getting rid of the confession written in the back. Did your cop friend say anything about finding pieces of a burned Bible?”
Ford said, “You’re holding something back. Sooner or later, you’ll let it slip, so you might as well tell me now.”
Tomlinson nodded, and gazed into his beer. “Bones. That’s why I didn’t tell you. Human bones. On the second floor was this god-awful chamber made of old concrete. A wood chamber, I think, to feed the furnace. I found femurs, ribs, and skulls with bits of hair—several, their braids still attached. I think I mentioned Walter Lambeth and what he did to his Chinese slaves.”
“Thanks. I can figure out the rest. You felt some sort of moral obligation, so you gathered them up and hid them, didn’t you? Or buried them, maybe. That’s why you were gone for so long. The police would’ve made it known if they’d found human bones. I thought you went in there hoping to find the stuff stolen from the cabin. Geezus, sometimes I . . . No wonder you didn’t tell me.”
There was another reason Tomlinson had searched the house. He moved toward it, saying, “Put yourself in Gracie’s place. She and Slaten had been sleeping together for more than two months. Mask or no mask, she would’ve known the difference between her first and only lover and a crazed sadist. Not that Slaten isn’t a vicious criminal, but here’s the thing: a leopard can’t change its spots and a man can’t change the shape of his dick.”
“She told you that?”
“I’m trying to help Tootsie, so she trusts me. Slaten talked her into doing some really nasty stuff—it’s family business I can’t go into—but, yeah, that’s what she said. Mr. Bird—she still calls him that—wasn’t circumcised, plus the size thing. Then there’s the way she was branded. Here . . .” He flattened the sketch on the table, and got up to turn on the deck lights. “It took a while, but I found a similar glyph of an oracle bone that dates back to the Shang Dynasty. That was more than two thousand years ago.”
“A photo of an old glyph, you mean. You had to guess because the skin’s not healed yet. You said so yourself.”
“Not a guess; I intuited. I don’t know the exact meaning, not in an academic sense, but I know what it represents.”
“Oracle bones foretell the future, I suppose?”
“And how to control it.
Stick with me here, Doc, try to stay open-minded. The Chinese, whether Buddhist or Taoist, embraced the doctrines of karma—including retribution for past actions. Cyclical existence, too, which they called samsara. The future can be changed with the oracle’s help.”
The biologist wasn’t going to be lured into another mystic maze. He held the sketch to the light. “It looks like a number seven drawn by someone on acid. Before you visited Gracie, you didn’t—”
“Geezus-frogs, give me a little credit, huh? I agree about the drug angle. That’s the only thing that makes me wonder if you and the cops might be right. Slaten almost got her hooked on a synthetic, some junk even I wouldn’t try. It’s called flakka. They used e-cigarettes usually, but I found an opium pipe in the house, so Mr. Bird, whoever he is, was using. And forcing Gracie to share, which is why her memory blanks.”
They talked about that, the possibility she’d been so heavily drugged, she hadn’t recognized her own boyfriend. As Tomlinson explained, the effects varied. After just a few hits, some women experienced a euphoric high that peaked in orgasm. Others ripped their clothes off and jumped from bridges because they felt like their bodies were on fire.
“The same with guys, but with a twist if they overdo it. Did you read about the college kid who busted down a door and beat his neighbor to death? They’d never even met. By the time cops showed up, the kid had chewed off the neighbor’s nose. Cannibalism, man.”
That was enough for Ford. He went inside, after remarking, “I don’t have to try the stuff to believe Gracie didn’t recognize the man who assaulted her.”
That struck a strange guilty chord in Tomlinson. He mulled it over until he understood. He had no right to encourage Gracie’s belief that Slaten wasn’t her attacker because he himself had never experienced a head full of flakka. By all accounts, it was truly wicked shit. Should he try it or pussy out? That was the question. Usually, the rule was simple in these matters: when flummoxed by a behavioral decision, never say no before sunrise.
Not when it came to synthetics.
Wicked. His attention returned to the sketch, which they’d failed to discuss. These tangents aligned after a bit and he realized maybe it was for the best.
Why amuse the biologist with a symbol that resembled a demonic bird?
—
Late Friday afternoon, Mack’s hopes regarding the reluctant heroes got a boost when fishing guide Hannah Smith appeared. A June squall had chased her and a couple of clients across the bay while lightning popped behind them.
Everyone liked Hannah, but it was more than that for Marion Ford. Their relationship had ended, but he still loved her, which surprised Mack almost as much as the fact they’d fallen in love in the first place. The biologist was a taciturn guy. Hard to read, but even months after their breakup he’d stand a little straighter, and his smile broadened, whenever the woman was around.
Mack said to Jeth Nicholes, who worked behind the counter when he wasn’t fishing, “Something tells me we might have a good crowd tonight. Where’d you put those business cards I set aside?”
“Cards the newspaper reporters left here?”
“The TV news, for god’s sake. Nobody reads newspapers anymore. You didn’t cancel that extra keg of beer, did you?”
“You told me to.”
“Call ’em back and re-order, and get another bushel of oysters while you’re at it. Hurry up. I told you to get the smoker going, too, but I don’t smell any smoke.”
Jeth’s stutter had all but disappeared except when under stress. “Take a look out the dah-dah . . . the freakin’ window. The wind’s blowing it the other way.”
It was true, and another source of hope. In June, squalls were a daily event—cloudbursts that drenched the islands but soon dissipated. This storm, though, might last a while. It was pushing a lot of wind. Mack considered the towering clouds, noted their green fluorescence, and hurried outside to the docks, where Hannah was hunched over, tying her skiff.
“Long time no see,” he said. “Looks like a nasty one.”
“What?” She looked up. “Didn’t hear you for the wind. Yeah, I’ve never seen a squall so thick with lightning. It nearly caught us off Woodring Point.”
Good, Mack thought. “You’d be nuts not to wait the storm out, and the timing’s perfect. Tell your clients the first beer’s on me, and the food’s free if you stay for the—” He stopped when Hannah stood to face him. He stared for a moment at the baggy blouse she wore. “What in the world . . . You’re . . . Are you . . . ?”
“In my fourth month.” She smiled. “This kid’s going to grow up breathing saltwater.”
Mack’s eyes drifted down shore to Ford’s stilt house while he stammered, “Uhh . . . good. Great. That’s wonderful news.”
“The best ever,” Hannah said. “And I know what you’re thinking. No, it’s not Doc’s. You don’t know the father.”
“Oh.” Mack’s eyes made a random sweep past a line of expensive yachts.
Hannah noticed. “No one on the island knows him. He’s a good person, though. A fine man—someone I met a while back, and it just . . . well, happened.”
“Oh,” Mack said.
Hannah had an easy way of brushing her hair back that reminded him of Westerns, movies with women who rode roping ponies and could shoot a gun. “Mind keeping an eye on my clients?” she asked, walking off. “It’s about time I had a talk with Doc.”
13
What Ford told Hannah, the two of them standing on the deck watching the squall approach, was, “I’ve read that the average lightning bolt is an inch wide and five miles long. It’s a strange statistic to remember, I know. But I’m trying to decide whether to try one of the new grounding systems for boats. About half the experts say it’s a good idea.”
Hannah was interested in all things nautical. “The others?”
“Some say a grounded system actually attracts lightning. Others think it doesn’t matter either way. More sailboats get hit, for obvious reasons, but the odds go up for powerboats if it’s a cat hull or multi-hull. Not a clue why. Could be there’s a correlation between bottom mass and reduced conductivity.”
Science, useful maritime trivia, provided a refuge after she’d told him about her child.
Three times he had asked, “Are you sure?”
Twice she had replied, “Yes,” and finally, “Please, don’t ask again. I can’t say I’m disappointed, but I will say I would’ve been just as happy if it was yours.”
Then they were inside in the lab, which smelled of fish, formaldehyde, disinfectant, books, and barnacles that grew at water level on pilings below the pine floor. The house swayed in the wind. Rain hammered the tin roof.
“I should get back to my clients.”
“In this?”
“I don’t mind getting wet.”
Ford had been tempted to respond, That’s obvious, which would have ended their relationship quickly—and permanently. He was not immune to bitterness, but dismissed destructive behavior as he might ignore a virus. “Not with all this lightning,” he’d said. “How about you call the marina and give your clients an update while I make some tea.”
Hannah, with her Deep South roots, had fun with it, asking, “Sweet tea? Don’t tell me you finally learned how. That settles it, Doc. I’m not letting our friendship go, no matter what you say.”
“Hot tea, I meant. The guy, the child’s father, he won’t mind me being in the picture?”
The child’s father was dead. Hannah wasn’t ready to share the truth about that, or who the man was, or how it had happened. “We’re not a couple, which I knew going in. Fact is, I don’t want to be a couple with anyone. Not now. I should make that clear, too.”
The common bond of fly-fishing became another refuge. She asked about the video he’d sent, referring to the place as that “little tarpon pond.” “Do you think anyone’s
ever fished it?”
“Not in a long time. There’s an old house nearby, and people who lived there were . . . well, not particularly friendly. I’ll be there for a while starting next week, so we’d have the place to ourselves, if you’re serious.”
Hannah was always serious when it came to fly-fishing. The subject carried them through the squall into a post-rain twilight. She’d left with vague driving directions to Chino Hole after warning him about snakes, particularly Burmese pythons.
Ford had warned her, “Don’t mention fishing with me to Tomlinson, okay? He’s got this weird thing about you visiting that area. It has to do with old-time Florida, some crime committed way back, and he’s linked it for some reason with . . . Well, you know how he is.”
That was Friday.
Today was Monday.
Ford turned left off Route 29 and stopped in front of what had been home to Walter Lambeth and his troubled progeny. Police had released the place as a crime scene. The yellow tape was gone, replaced by a barrage of No Trespassing signs posted by the federal government.
Ford was surprised. A large parcel of land, including the pond, had officially passed into government hands as of today. But how had the feds taken control of the house so fast? Ivy Lambeth had died less than two weeks ago, and her nephew, Slaten, although in jail without bond, was very much alive. Hadn’t the family had the same deal as Tootsie Barlow?
Wondering about that caused him to wonder about the old fishing guide. Barlow had returned to the Keys because he’d come to associate the cabin with bad luck—and no wonder after all that had happened. Ford didn’t know the whole litany of events, but the robbery and news about Gracie had pushed the old man near the edge. The final nudge was something that Gracie had confessed to her uncle while still in the hospital.
Tomlinson, who’d left for Key Largo this morning, had been unable to reveal details shared in confidence.
Ford got out and took another look at the steam engine boiler. Hidden in the weeds lay a massive cast-iron pot and a length of tubing shaped like a swan’s neck. All components related to a moonshine still. Mangrove Lightning, the Florida version made with sugarcane.
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