Randy White - Night Vision

The reception on my phone was fuzzy, so I said, “You’ve got to be kidding. Say that again.”

Melinski told me, “Harris Squires and the girl stopped at some church, a pretty big one, so there’s confirmation on all this. A couple hundred people listened to her give a speech or a sermon, whatever you call it. Squires got out of his truck to listen, but he didn’t come inside.”

I said, “People on the scene told you this?”

The detective said, “Squires even made nice with some gangbangers who gave him a hard time. Not Latin Kings. Probably MS-13 from Guatemala, who are bloodthirsty little shits. But even they must have been convinced.”

I told him, “This just doesn’t mesh with what I know about Harris Squires,” as Melinski talked over me, saying, “I know, I know, it’s hard to believe, but I’ve heard enough to be convinced. So you can relax, okay? Go back to your test tubes or have a beer. I’m going to bed.”

I said, “Some minister lets a thirteen-year-old girl, a stranger, get up in front of the whole congregation? Why?”

“It happened,” Melinski replied, sounding impatient, “that’s all that matters. I talked to the priest myself. He’s worked in Immokalee for nine years, which means he’s heard every possible combination of bullshit story. According to him, the girl walked in and said she had something important to say, so he let her talk. He described her as happy and relaxed, which is not the way a kidnapped kid acts.”

“The priest,” I said.

“Along with several local women, too. They offered her a place to stay, but the girl refused. Squires may have something to do with the dead body we found, who knows? But the girl’s with him because she wants to be with him. End of story.”

I said, “Harris Squires wouldn’t lift a finger to help anyone-not unless he expected to get something out of it.”

Melinski told me, “We’ll find out more when they get back to the trailer park. The girl told the priest that was their next stop, so we’ve got some uniforms there waiting.”

I had to ask, “Did your hostage-rescue people call his cell?”

“That’s the only part that bothers me,” Melinski told me. “They tried but no answer. Reception’s bad around Immokalee, which could explain it. The priest said, at first, he didn’t like the idea of a Guatemalan girl being with a gringo guy that age. He tried to talk her into staying, but the girl was so sure of what she was doing, he decided it was okay. At least for the hour or so it takes them to get back to the trailer park. Red Citrus? Yeah, Red Citrus. Maybe a little longer because the girl told the priest they might get something to eat first.”

“What time did they leave?” I asked. “I hope you have cops checking the local restaurants.”

Melinski told me, “They pulled out at little before eleven, so they should be at the trailer park in half an hour or so.” With exaggerated tolerance, he then added, “Have you heard anything I said? You can stop worrying. The priest told me some pretty wild stuff about the kid. So, finally, I maybe understand why you’ve taken an interest. You didn’t tell me the Latinos consider her some kind of saint or something.”

“The priest said that?” I asked.

“The guy sounded a little in awe of the girl, in fact. He said there were women crying, people waiting in line to ask the girl’s blessing. ‘God has taken the girl by the hand’-this is the priest talking, not me. But the man was serious. So there’s no need to worry, according to him. The priest’s exact words almost, and more than nine years he’s been working with immigrants.”

I said, “If God took missing girls by the hand, there would be a lot fewer missing girls. Please tell me you’re not buying into this baloney.”

I was relived that Tula and Squires had been spotted. But I was also feeling too restless to allow myself to be convinced. I didn’t admit this to Melinski, of course, and pretended to be satisfied when he promised to call when he got word the girl was safely back at Red Citrus.

After I hung up, I checked the luminous face of my dive watch: 11:25 p.m. I was approaching the intersection of Immokalee Road and what I guessed was Route 846, where Squires owned the four hundred acres. Continue straight and I would take yet another lap through Immokalee, then north to home-or maybe Emily’s place, if I could get her on the phone. Make a right, I would have to drive at least forty miles, round-trip, out of my way-and probably for no reason.

In my mind, though, I suddenly pictured the Mayan girl looking through the window of Squires’s trucking, seeing a sign that read IMMOKALEE 22 MILES, then texting the information to Tomlinson, a man she trusted. The image was so strong that I actually shook my head to get rid of it.

As I neared the intersection, I hesitated, my intellect telling me one thing, my instincts telling me something else. Normally, that’s seldom a cause for indecision-which is why I was a little surprised when I found myself following my intuition. I turned right onto the narrow two-lane that vectored eastward into the Everglades.

Something else my intellect and instincts argued about was whether I should call Tomlinson. If he had gone to Red Citrus, as expected, I should tell him to wait there to make sure Tula arrived.

It only made sense that I call him, but I had settled into a comfortable cocoon of solitude, focused laserlike on finding the girl. For me, that cocoon is a place rarely enjoyed when I’m Florida and I didn’t want to leave it.

It had to do with my shadow life. Solitude is what I enjoy most about it. I travel alone to Third World countries, to Everglades-dark places, and I find people. I then track those people. I become familiar with their schedules, their habits.

For the period of a week-sometimes two, depending on the importance of the assignment-I charted the subtle movements and interactions of a stranger’s life. I did it invisibly, with a laboratory precision that in the end allowed me to segregate that person from his surroundings as effectively as using tweezers to remove a bee, undetected, from its colony.

That was my specialty-my genius, Tomlinson might have called it, had he ever learned the truth. What I do, however, doesn’t demand genius. I have no illusions about my own gifts, other than to acknowledge that, since I was very young, I have had an obsessive need to identify, then define, orderly patterns in what most would dismiss as chaos.

We all have our quirks.

That’s my job when out of the country: to discern order in the chaos. To create a precision target. As creator, I am also tasked with finding the most effective method of displacing that target from his surroundings.

I am good at it.

After wrestling with the decision for a mile, I decided I wasn’t in the mood for a conversation with Tomlinson. Instead, I pulled over long enough to send a text:

Tula and Squires to arrive at Red Citrus by midnight, cops waiting. Let me know. If you’re drinking, stop now. Don’t piss off cops!

After a moment of thought, I added, Is Emily safe? then sent the text with a slow Whoosh! that told me reception was getting worse.

I got out of the truck long enough to urinate, then got back in, but left the dome light on. Out of long habit-or, perhaps, just to reestablish my focus-I took inventory of my equipment bag. First, I popped the magazines of both pistols to make certain they were loaded, although I knew they were.

I am not a gun fancier or collector, but the precision tolerances of fine machinery appeals to the same sensibilities that cause me to linger over a fine microscope. It was true of my Sig Sauer P226 pistol. The Sig was one of the first issued after the Joint Service Small Arms test trials of 1985, and I have trusted my life to it since that time. I had recently purchased a new magazine that held fifteen rounds instead of only ten. I had also added Tritium night sights, which I had yet to try on a range.