Night Vision

by Randy Wayne White

  Squires felt himself getting mad, which he knew wasn’t smart, but he couldn’t help himself from cutting her off, saying, “Miz Specter, we’ve all got problems. All I know is, I need some ice. I save a man’s life, now you’re talking to me like I’m some kind of criminal. I don’t want to get tough about it, but you’re on my private property. And if I need medical attention—a bag of ice, I’m saying—then I should be able to—”

  The male cop interrupted, sounding like a wiseass, telling him, “You own a trailer park and you’re a bodybuilder. That’s a handy combination.”

  What the hell did that mean?

  Squires was telling himself, Stay cool, don’t let the prick make you mad, as he corrected the guy, saying, “I own three mobile home parks, not trailer parks. A trailer’s something you use to haul stuff, not live in. We offer manufactured homes and RV sites. It’s what I do in my spare time.”

  “You’re the owner?” the cop asked. “I called the address in, and it came back a women named Harriet Ray Squires owns this place.”

  “Same thing,” Squires replied. “But we’re trying to get out of the business, which you can probably understand, seeing the type of shit we have to put up with. Three acres of back-bay waterfront, only a couple miles from Fort Myers Beach. That’ll be some serious money once we clear these units off and sell the place.”

  The cop wasn’t done badgering him, though. “So you work for mom when you’re not earning a living doing the muscle shows. What steroids are you stacking?” The cop said it, trying to sound like he knew something about the subject.

  The cop continued, “The show you’re training for is in June?”

  “Mr. South Florida,” Squires replied.

  The cop said, “Four months away from a show, you’re still on your bulking cycle, right? Let me guess, you’re doing about a thousand milligrams of testosterone mixed with, what, D-bol? Primo? I hear anavar is big with you guys once you start cutting.”

  What Squires wanted to do was tell this know-it-all asshole, Primo is for pussies, which was true, in his opinion, even if it was one of Arnold’s favorite steroids.

  Instead, he calmed himself with a familiar lie, saying, “I tried that crap a few years back, but the side effects scared the hell out of me. Plus, they do urine tests now. Steroids are illegal. Or maybe that’s just for us professional athletes. I’ve got no reason to follow it. But, to me, the crap’s not worth the risk. I’ve heard it gave some guys brain cancer. If you’ve got the right genetics, who needs the shit?”

  “A health nut,” the cop said, proving he really was a prick, but then the woman took over by silencing the man a look.

  “Back to that problem I mentioned,” she said to Squires. “Someone robbed Dr. Ford and Dr. Tomlinson. They took almost two thousand dollars from their billfolds. Cash.”

  That quick, Squires felt like he could breathe again. Hell, he’d almost forgotten that he’d hidden their damn money in his double-wide. Even if the cops had searched him and found the cash in his pocket, it was no big deal. Not compared to a murder rap, anyway, or running a steroids operation.

  Squires asked what he thought was a smart question: “Did the guys leave the billfolds in their vehicle? That’s not very smart, you ask me. Not around here.”

  When the woman replied, “No, they tossed them on the ground before they went into the water,” Squires let them see that he was thinking about it.

  “I don’t want to sound like a racist,” he said after a few seconds, “but I’ve got a lot of Mexican tenants. And the way they are around any kind of valuable property, especially cash money, that’s just a fact of life. The little bastards will steal you blind, give ’em a chance. There’s something else to think about, too. Or maybe I shouldn’t say anything, because I’m not one to stick my nose into other people’s business. I hate people like that.”

  The woman said, “Oh?”

  Squires made a show of it, giving it some more thought, before saying, “It has to do with that hippie-looking dude, Dr. whatever his name is. Think about it, that’s all I’m saying. A guy who looks the way he looks, carrying that much cash.”

  “Tomlinson,” the woman said. “He and Dr. Ford are from Sanibel Island. You’ve never met them before?”

  “The Tomlinson dude, no, but I’ve seen him cruising my park plenty of times. About once a month he shows up. Like I said, I don’t know the guy, so I’m not making any charges here, but that’s another fact of life. The drug dealer types come through my park all the time. They know that the—”

  Squires caught himself. He’d almost said the illegals.

  “—they know that the migrant workers who live here sometimes have grass and peyote to sell. They bring it with them from Mexico when they cross the border. Maybe the guy, Tomlinson, is a drug dealer. Why don’t you search their vehicle? You might find something that would surprise you.”

  That didn’t play too well, but Squires didn’t care. The cops didn’t know about the dead girl’s body in the lake. And they didn’t know about his steroids kitchen only a block away.

  Not yet, anyway.

  Harris Squires was looking through the squad car window, seeing the tow truck lower Fifi onto the bed of a truck, its big tires flattening beneath her weight. The vehicle was about the same size as the stake truck he and his buddies had used to bring Fifi to Red Citrus.

  Seeing the gator, he couldn’t help but worry about what the Wildlife cops might find in the animal’s belly. Squires was also thinking, I’ve got to get my hands on that little Bible-freak girl before she goes blabbing to the law.

  Half an hour later, when the cops had released him, after he’d showered and iced his bad hamstring, Squires opened a fresh pint of tequila and began to make the rounds.

  The little brat wasn’t at the trailer where she usually stayed. But that was okay. The girl had left behind her only clean shirt, a ratty little book and a framed photo of what was probably her Mexican family.

  She couldn’t have gone far.

  The bodybuilder took a moment to study the photo. His eyes moved from the girl—who looked about eight or so when the shot was taken—to what must have been the girl’s mother, who was wearing an Indian-looking shawl over her head. The angular noses were similar, the line of their jaws.

  Why the hell did they both look so familiar?

  Hell ... all Mexicans looked the same, Squires decided. The important thing was to find that damn girl.

  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 reporte
rs, 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 Words, 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!”