Randy White - Dead Silence

I had tuned out Tomlinson but now looked up from the paper after he banged me on the shoulder, asking, “Are you listening to me? This is serious shit, man.”

I said, “Heller’s dead. Good. I don’t see what that has to do with me.” I folded the paper and carried it to the railing. My shark pen was below: a rectangle of net and wire kept afloat by basketball-sized buoys at each corner.

Sharks are delicate, complex animals. The bull shark, Carcharhinus Leucas, is one of my primary interests as a researcher. Leucas is known by several names worldwide, including Zambezi River shark and Lake Nicaragua shark. It swims hundreds of miles up rivers to feed and possibly reproduce in freshwater lakes. The shark is also responsible for more attacks on humans than great whites or tiger sharks.

Because I had been traveling, the pen was empty. A five-hundred-pound shark is not the invincible killer portrayed in films. The animal requires constant care and is fussy about what it eats in captivity. I no longer take risks with the sharks I use for research. I would rather release a dozen of them than return home after a trip to find one dead.

Through the clear water, I saw a school of mullet daisy-chaining, stirring detritus clouds with their tails. Angel-striped spadefish flashed in slow arcs near pilings. Where water deepened, snook were stacked in shadows, muscled densities orderly as rungs.

Tomlinson was still talking. “That investigator the paper mentions, I met him. He was nosing around the marina last night, asking questions at Sanibel Marina, and Tween Waters, too. Seedy little gumshoe of a guy, you ask me.”

I nodded: Good.

“The county fuzz, that’s who you need to worry about. They showed up last night, the lead detective in an unmarked Chevy. Her name’s Palmer, Detective Palmer, an interesting-looking woman. She’s got the typical hard-ass attitude, but there’s some wisdom in her face. Palmer’s smart. She’s also ambitious.”

I shrugged: Bad?

I was scanning the rest of the story, hoping to see a mention of the watch Heller was wearing, as Tomlinson said, “Detective Palmer was interested in the Cheesehead’s wristwatch,” breaking into my thoughts. It wasn’t the first time he had done something like that.

I played it straight. “What’s his watch have to do with anything?”

“When they found him, Heller was wearing a cheap rubber watch. Not waterproof. They figure it stopped the day he drowned. Like in the movies, you know, the broken watch determines the time of death. The paper says he’s been missing since”-because Tomlinson was reaching, I handed him the newspaper-“Heller was reported missing six days ago. It was also the day the watch stopped. So the date would have been… Saturday, January seventeenth?”

I said, “The detective told you all this?”

“Yeah… I mean, no. Yes, it was the seventeenth. No, Palmer didn’t tell me. I pieced it together from the questions she asked the fishing guides.”

He rattled the paper for emphasis, then stuffed it under the chair. “You flew to New York last Friday, the sixteenth, right, Doc?”

Tomlinson was staring at me now. I stared back. “You know I did. Apparently, I left the day before Heller died. Which means you’re wrong. Police have no reason to come after me.”

“I’m not an expert on watches, but couldn’t a killer click the date ahead, then break the thing on purpose? A really shrewd person, I’m talking about.”

I said, “With saltwater drowning, it’s not easy to pinpoint the time of death. Because fish and crabs and things aren’t fussy about what they eat. A smart killer wouldn’t bother planting a broken watch. And a dumb killer wouldn’t think of it. That makes the watch gambit unlikely.”

Tomlinson got up, nodding. I watched him go into the lab, giving me a look, before he let the screen door swing closed, his expression saying Okay, okay, if that’s the way you want to play it…

I went downstairs to double-check my boat. Heller’s family was pushing police to look for his killer? I had a lot to do.

A few minutes later, I heard a screen door swing closed. Tomlinson came down the steps, wearing faded jeans and a tie-dyed T-shirt that read RELIGION IS A COMPASS, NOT A HARNESS.

He was carrying an antique bag, once called a Gladstone, leather and brass.

I was coiling a water hose. Before leaving for New York, I had double-scrubbed the boat’s deck. An extra shot of water and half a bottle of degreaser couldn’t hurt. DNA can be as stubborn as any stain.

“Going somewhere?” I asked him.

As Tomlinson said, “That’s up to you, man,” the cell phone Barbara Hayes-Sorrento gave me began to buzz. I wiped my hands on a towel and fished the thing from my pocket. The senator had sent a text message.

Tomlinson said, “Doc, there’re a couple things you should know. First is, Detective Palmer told one of the guides Heller hated rubber watches. She was asking around about a gold Rolex. I remember good ol’ Bern wearing a gold Rolex when he showed up at the marina party last week and also the day he slugged you. Loud and gaudy, a watch just like him. Remember that day?”

“If I didn’t, the headaches would remind me,” I said, studying the phone. I was squinting at the menu, trying to figure out how to retrieve Barbara’s message.

“There’s something else. It hasn’t made the news.” Because Tomlinson paused, wanting me look at him, I intentionally did not look away from the phone.

“Heller had a girl aboard his boat that night-the night before you left for New York.”

Now I looked. A shocker. I tried not to show it but the man knew me too well.

“It’s such a bummer, I didn’t even want to tell you,” he said, sounding worried. “There’s a witness, Doc. Nothing we can do about it. You don’t need a compass to know when karma turns south. And sometimes I wish we were all born with an anchor hooked to our ass. A way to stop the negative flow, I’m talking about?”

“A witness to what?” I said, thinking back, trying to picture the interior of Heller’s boat. The place had been a pigsty, but I’d seen no signs of a female guest.

Tomlinson said, “She claims Heller abducted her and was trying to rape her. He’d torn off most of her clothes but stopped when a man knocked at the cabin door. It was late: two a.m. or later. She told police it was a big guy, clean-shaven. He wore his glasses strung around his neck with fishing line.”

“How do you know this?” I had opened Barbara’s message but was now giving Tomlinson my full attention.

“Someone involved in law enforcement told me. That’s all I can say.”

“A reliable source?”

“Better than just reliable. And no more questions, okay?”

“There are a lot of boaters who use fishing line to secure their glasses,” I offered, then realized I was doing what guilty people always do, trying to impeach the facts.

Tomlinson said, “No need to convince me. But I’m worried you might have to try and convince a jury. If you’d spent your life abusing drugs, like a normal person, your skills as a liar would be more highly evolved. As it is, I think your ass is on the line, pal. The witness got a good, long look at the killer, my friend in law enforcement says.”

I didn’t want to risk mentioning that there was no moon that night so I kept it safe, asking, “What did she see exactly?”

“Heller and the guy started fighting, the woman told police. She was in the forward stateroom, they were in the salon. She grabbed what was left of her clothes and climbed out the front hatch to get away. She lay there and listened to the whole thing. Saw some of it.

“She said the fighting stopped after a minute or two. Then, she says, the guy wearing glasses tied up Heller and swam off, towing him like a wagon. Heller kicked and splashed, but the guy kept swimming. He had to have been one hell of a strong swimmer to haul a tub like that mutant.”