Randy White - Night Vision

I thought I noted some mild sarcasm until the woman slipped her hand beneath my arm and gave a squeeze. I thanked her by placing a hand on her hip and pulling her closer. Truth was, she had a point. Would I back a lady I’d just met? Or remain loyal to an old friend?

I backed Tomlinson, of course. Sort of.

“Here’s what I think,” I said, looking at Tomlinson. “Three gringos driving an expensive car will attract too much attention in Immokalee. In a place that small? Especially at this hour. My Spanish is better than yours, and I speak a little Quiche. Emily’s not dressed for barhopping. And frankly, Tomlinson, you wouldn’t be an asset, either. There are some cowboy types down there in Immokalee who aren’t real fond of hippies.”

I felt a perverse jolt of pleasure at the surprise on the man’s face. I interrupted as he tried to protest, telling him, “You say Emily is in danger tonight? It’s not rational, but I’m not going to argue. Which means she should stay here. Either that or you should follow her home just to make sure she gets back safely. I’m going to Immokalee by myself.”

Tomlinson appeared nonplussed, his expression asking me Is this some sort of test?

In reply, I smiled and said, “If I can’t trust my best friend to look after a lady in danger, then who can I trust?” To emphasize my point, I stood and squeezed his scarecrow shoulder almost hard enough to make him wince.

“But I have to go!” he said. “I’m worried sick about that little girl.”

“Then drive your VW back to Red Citrus and have another look around,” I told him. “Splitting up makes more sense, anyway. We can stay in touch by cell phone. But after Emily is safely home. If I hear something, I’ll call. You do the same.”

Giving me a look of approval, Emily said to Tomlinson, “Sounds like your pal has made up his mind. Any objections to me coming here tomorrow after work? This is an interesting little marina you have. I bet you two have some stories.”

I said, “I’m counting on it,” as Tomlinson took a square of paper from his breast pocket, unfolded it to reveal a pencil-thin joint.

He said, “You’ve gotta love this guy, don’t you? The freaking earth could be wobbling off its axis, anarchy loosed upon the world. But good ol’ Doc will still be trying to do the right thing, in the most rational possible way, wanting the best for all concerned.”

He held the joint so Emily could see it. “In the meantime, us human humans have time for a couple of hits. Care to join me outside for the pause that refreshes?”

I was a little surprised that Emily nodded her head. Tomlinson was baiting me, that was apparent, so I ignored them both.

As I went out the screen door, down the steps toward my shark pen, I was already busy deciding what equipment to take just in case I got lucky and got a lead on the missing girl. The odds were slim, but that was okay. The fact was, it would be a relief to be on the road alone. No more talking, no more debates.

That feeling stayed with me, even after I had kissed Emily good-bye and I was bouncing down Tarpon Bay Road in my old pickup truck, a canvas backpack sitting square and heavy beside me, traffic sparse.

In the bag was a Sig Sauer 9mm semiauto pistol, plus the pocketsized Kahr that is fast becoming my favorite handgun. There was an odd assortment of other gear that I usually carry only when outside the country: gloves, a black watch cap, a handheld GPS, a Randall attack/survival knife and a MUM night vision monocular mounted on a headband.

Just for the hell of it, I had also included the tactical laser light, the Dazer. I hadn’t done enough testing to have confidence it would work on feeding sharks. But the company that made the thing, Laser Energetics, had invested years, and a lot of money, to prove that a small, blinding laser beam could disable a human attacker.

Had Emily been along and gotten a peek into that bag, she might have been shocked.

Or would she?

It was something to think about as I drove across the causeway bridge, the Sanibel Lighthouse strobing to my right, a black fusion of water and stars to my left.

Maybe not, I decided, judging from who her father was… or had once been. The man couldn’t have confided even in his daughter, but it was possible that Emily had been inquisitive as a girl and had done some snooping.

As I passed beneath the tollboth onto a fast four-lane, I checked my watch. It was 10:05 p.m. on this Wednesday night. Tula had been under the steroid freak’s control for at least twelve hours.

It was an unsettling fact.

Unless somehow related, grown men kidnap young girls for only one reason. Once their sexual fantasy is satiated, they usually panic and choose murder as a way to obliterate their lesser crime. The only variable is how many hours before the kidnapper has had enough?

One thing was certain: In twelve hours, the girl had already been victimized.

But was she still alive?

Just beyond a sign that read Immokalee 22 miles, Harris Squires locked the gate to his hunting camp behind him, then banged the truck into four-wheel drive, telling himself, Shoot the girl in the back of the head. Stop thinking. Get it over with.

After what he’d just heard on the radio, about cops finding human bones in the dead alligator’s belly, he had no choice but to do it.

And he would.

It was almost noon on Wednesday. The craziness of the previous night-the alligator, the flashing police lights-seemed like a month ago, which might have had something to do with the pint of Cuervo Gold Squires had killed on the ride. Mixed with Red Bull and a Snickers bar, he should have had a good buzz going. But instead his brain felt raw and skittish.

Beneath his seat, in the hidden compartment, Squires had the. 357 Ruger Blackhawk revolver in a canvas bag that was also packed full of cash money.

The gun was the long-barreled model, chrome with black grips. The cartridges were as thick as his pinkie finger. They were hollow points that would blow the back side out of a watermelon after neatly piercing its rind.

An unsettling image of the girl’s head came into Squires’s mind of how her face would look after the bullet exited. Skin without a shell and lots of blood. But this wasn’t pretend, there was no going back. Fifi may have missed her chance to kill him, but that fat toad had found a way to totally screw up his life.

Squires had felt dizzy as the radio announcer’s voice drilled the details through his skull. Then he’d felt physically sick, a nauseating panic deep in his chest that made him want to jump out of the truck and run screaming into the cypress shadows that lay ahead.

The bones had to belong to the chula Frankie had killed. The one he had bundled into a garbage bag, weighting the body with wire and cement before dragging it to the lake. Squires kept telling himself that, even though he knew there was a chance that the gator had eaten a different dead girl months earlier. The Mexican girl from his sex dream-if the sex dream was real. Which could prove to cops that he was the murderer, not Frankie.

If it had really happened.

It was a dream, Squires told himself now, because that’s what he wanted to believe. I didn’t do anything wrong. Or I would remember dragging a body to Fifi’s pen. The Mexican girl probably ran off while I was asleep.

That made Squires feel a little better. That goddamn Frankie was entirely to blame for this mess. Her with her love for kinky sex, the way she got off on using and abusing Mexican girls. It was some kind of sick power trip… or maybe Frankie’s way of punishing younger, prettier women for the saggy way her own body was aging.

Squires realized that he had never allowed himself to acknowledge just how dangerous the woman was. If he did, then he’d have to admit to himself that the dead chula he had sunk at Red Citrus probably wasn’t the first girl Frankie had killed. There might be at least two others, maybe more.