Randy White - Night Vision

His reference to crazy dolphin stories was an unusual thing for someone like Tomlinson to say, but he was spot-on. Bottlenose dolphins are the unwitting darlings of every misinformed crackpot who has ever yearned for a mystical link between humans and the sea. That includes more than a few misguided biologists who have credited the animals with everything from paranormal powers to the ability to heal children stricken by disease.

Dolphins-and these were dolphins, not porpoises-are brilliantly adaptable pack animals. Intelligent, true, but they are still pack animals, which includes all the ugly mob behavior that the term implies: assault, gang rape, occasionally the attempted genocide of competing species.

Dolphins are brilliantly adapted for survival-and they survive relentlessly, as all successful species do.

I waved for Tomlinson to follow me toward the house as I answered, “In Indonesia, I heard stories, maybe Malaysia, too, from people who claimed to know people who said they’d seen dolphins foraging in the mangroves, feeding on crabs. But it’s never been documented-not that I know of, anyway. I just figured it was part of the dolphin mythology. You know, the sort of stories that date back to mermaids-bull dolphins sneaking ashore to have intercourse with virgins. That sort of baloney.”

I left the man there and went up the steps, two at a time, to fetch flashlights. Mentally, I was assembling a list of dolphin experts I could call, pleased not only because of what we had just seen but because it had taken Tomlinson’s mind off the Guatemalan girl.

When my pal is fixated on a subject, he becomes repetitive and tiresome. I had invited him to dinner earlier in the day, so there was no getting out of it, and I didn’t want to have to endure his brooding theories about what had happened to Tula Choimha.

I believed that he was underestimating the girl. She had managed to travel solo, with very little money, from the mountains of Guatemala to Florida on her own with no problems-none I was aware of, anyway. The territory she had crossed included some of the most dangerous country on earth-particularly the migrant trails of Mexico, where outlaws and warring gangs prey on travelers. Robbery and rape are commonplace.

The fact that Tula had negotiated the trip successfully, and alone, said a lot about her character. But it said more about her instincts. The girl was street-savvy. I thought it unlikely that she would have allowed herself to be victimized in the markedly safer environment of a Florida trailer park, Harris Squires or no Harris Squires.

Inside the house, I grabbed two potent little Fenix LED flashlights, hesitated, then decided, what the hell, first I would change into clean shorts and a shirt. The dolphins wouldn’t be coming back, so there was no hurry now.

I leaned outside and told Tomlinson he should do the same. In the lab, I found a 500-milliliter bottle of reagent-grade propyl alcohol. I tossed my clothes outside, doused myself good, ears included, then placed the jug on the deck for Tomlinson to use.

As I changed, I checked my phone messages. One was from a state biologist whose name I had heard, but I’d never met. Her name was Emily Marston.

Emily-common nicknames included Emma, Milly and Em. Probably because it had been a month since I’d had a serious date, I wondered if any fit.

“Dr. Ford, in the morning I’m leading the necropsy on the alligator that was killed tonight. Since we’re working at the park station on Sanibel and since you were involved, I thought you might like to join us. But only if you’re interested personally. This is not an official request.”

I found the woman’s voice attractive, and her last sentence an alluring addendum that was, at once, both welcoming and dismissive.

Yes, I was interested.

I made note of the lady’s name, her number, the time of the necropsy, then went out the door after slipping a little Kodak pointand-shoot camera into my pocket.

As I did, my mind returned briefly to Tomlinson’s assertion that the bodybuilder Harris Squires was responsible for the Guatemalan girl’s disappearance. Was there even a small possibility that he was right?

I’m a careful man-particularly when a child is involved and when my own conscience is on the line. I gave it some more thought.

“Every paranormal receptor in my body is convinced that the guy grabbed her,” Tomlinson had told me, or something close to that. It summarized his entire argument. Everyone else at the trailer park had told us that she disappeared at night all the time. If they weren’t worried, why should we be? But just in case, while I was at the necropsy tomorrow morning, I decided I’d make sure Tomlinson went back to the trailer park to dig around.

When Harris Squires told Tula, “Your friend, Carlson, must be in a lot of pain because he wants you to come to the hospital,” she knew he was lying, but the voice in her head told her to get into Squires’s big, rumbling truck anyway and go with him.

This was early the next morning, several hours after the EMTs had refused to let Tula ride in the ambulance, and after many more hours that she had spent in hiding.

The girl knew it was unwise to linger near the lake, inviting questions from the police. So she had wandered off to her tree to speak with the owls, but the owls were not calling, possibly because of all the noise and flashing lights.

Even so, she waited, sitting alone in the high limbs of the banyan, where she could observe the actions of her second patron, Tomlinson, and his friend, the large man with eyeglasses, who was speaking with police.

Tula focused on Tomlinson, who was talking to Squires. She sensed her patron ’s good heart and godliness, and also that he was angry about something. He was angry at the landlord, perhaps, who had used God’s name to blaspheme them even though they had saved his life.

Yes… the man was angry at Squires. Tula had watched Tomlinson walk toward the huge landlord, and, for a moment, she thought he might strike him. Instead, the two men exchanged loud words that weren’t always loud enough for her to hear, but she heard enough. Tula knew they were talking about her and she listened carefully.

Soon, she felt ashamed because she realized that the landlord was telling the patron about seeing her naked in the bathtub. The girl felt her face become hot, and she felt like sobbing.

No man had ever seen Tula naked before, and very few women. Sitting in the tree, she had vowed to herself that it would never happen again. Ever. Not as long as she lived-unless, of course, the voice in her head, the Maiden’s voice, told her that she should marry. But that seemed unlikely, and, even then, Tula would not want it to happen.

The Maiden had gone to her death a virgin. Tula knew this was true, just as she knew every detail of the saint’s life because, at the convent, Sister Lionza had given her books about Joan of Arc. Tula had read those books so many times that she knew them by heart.

Her favorite book was a simple volume that included only words that the Maiden had written in her own warrior’s hand or had spoken before witnesses. Tula loved the book so much that it was one of the few things she had brought with her from the mountains of Guatemala. Its entries spanned the saint’s childhood, included her lionhearted testimony at her trial and, finally, her last words as flames consumed her body:

Jesus! Jesus!

There was no intrusive scholarship in the book. No third-party guessing about what the Maiden had thought or felt.

That small book was pure, like the Maiden herself. Tula carried it everywhere and had read it so often that her own patterns of speech now naturally imitated the passionate rhythms of the girl who had been chosen by God.