Randy White - Night Vision

“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.

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 reporters, 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 Word s, 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.