Randy White - Everglades

She was a woman with waist-length blond hair, dressed in white crinoline. Her face was luminous and comforting, a woman so beautiful that seeing her caused me to linger upon detail: lighted portions of chin and cheek, strong nose creating shadow, perceptive eyes unaware and uncaring of her own beauty.

Her voice was a kindred chord as she said, “I have waited so long for you, my dear. So many, many years. Now, once again, you’ve come back to me…” chapter twenty-seven

Tomlinson said, “The way these people are behaving, it’s more like a rock concert for fascists. Or a magic show. I’d say a kind of Grateful Dead deal, but that’d be an insult to Jerry. They’re giving me the creeps, man.”

He meant the several hundred Church of Ashram members who were moving along the boardwalk, filing toward the outdoor amphitheater, Cypress Ashram, on this Easter Sunday late afternoon. They were men and women of various ages, but there did seem to be a strange, almost mechanical, similarity in the way they moved, the way they behaved.

Many wore robes: orange or white or green. There were far fewer orange robes than green, and fewer green than white, so the colors were suggestive of rank. Others were dressed in neatly pressed slacks or skirts, hair trimmed short. They traveled in tight groups, sometimes creating human chains by holding on to each other’s waists-slow conga lines-or walking in step, calling odd phrases back and forth as if in some cheerful competition:

“We’re running Thetan Three over here.”

“We’re running Thetan Four over here!”

“Bhagwan Shiva’s version of Scientology,” Tomlinson told me when I asked. “Don’t worry about it.”

Frisbees were popular, too. The church must have designed its own. Each plastic disc was a black-and-white yin-yang symbol stamped with CAMI, the church’s initials. The air was filled with their slow, arching ascents. Prayer wheels, I heard one person call them.

The Archangels were maintaining high visibility. Shiva’s security people, dressed in black, weight-lifter types, male and female, were cruising in their golf carts, letting their authority be seen.

So far, I hadn’t seen any guards that I recognized.

Not that I would have minded.

I was in that kind of mood.

I’d talked to Detective Podraza twice during the day. They’d found no sign of Sally, no witnesses, no clue to where she might be, despite press conferences and expanding media coverage. They were, however, accumulating some crime-scene evidence. He’d also told me that he’d spoken to the Sanibel police. They’d vouched for me, so his manner, though still professional, was slightly friendlier.

“The security camera at the front gate shows Frank and Sally’s cars leaving, then both cars coming back,” he said.

I said, “They came by boat. Whoever shot Frank and the old guy, they were smart enough to come by water. Unless you’ve got something else on the security cameras.”

Podraza said, “That’s a possibility we’re considering.”

I didn’t expect him to provide any other details, and he didn’t.

I added, “I’m no expert, but I’ve read that a kidnap victim’s first twenty-four hours are critical.”

“I’ll tell you the same thing I told Mrs. Minster’s cousin, Belinda. If the lady was our own sister, mother-name it-we couldn’t be working this case any harder. A double homicide and a kidnapping. That’s about as bad as it gets. And you’re right-the longer she’s gone, the less chance of finding her alive.”

When I said that, if she was already dead, her body was probably out in Biscayne Bay, Podraza replied, “We have boats looking. And you’re right again. In an abduction-murder, getting rid of the body is always the biggest problem, because it’s evidence found on the body that usually nails them.”

What he wanted to know was why I’d guessed that both victims had been shot with a. 22 caliber.

I told him the truth: Like my suspicions about Izzy, it was a hunch. Something about the way the guy looked, the way he handled himself. Israeli intelligence, the Mossad, uses the. 22 Beretta as its signature weapon of assassination. Only a sociopath would put two innocent men in the trunk of a car and execute them, and the Mossad signature was the sort of touch a sociopath might try to imitate.

Podraza said, “I’ll be honest. The first time we talked, I got the impression you might be a kind of kook. But the Sanibel police chief told me that if you had some suggestions, I’d be smart to listen. So I did try to find out about the guy.

“I contacted the church’s main office. But cult religions, law enforcement, we don’t get along. Family members are always asking us to help get their sons and daughters out. I didn’t expect the church to be cooperative, and they weren’t. There’s no way I can check the guy out if I don’t even have his last name.”

I told Podraza, “Izzy’s last name. I can come up with that. I’ll call you tonight.”

I’d looked out the window of my lab, and saw that Tomlinson’s dinghy was tethered to the stern of No Mas. I got on the VHF radio, hailed him, and we switched channels. He’d told me earlier that he was going to Sawgrass to view what he called “Shiva’s Easter sunset carnival show.”

He sounded shocked when I said I wanted to go along.

“I thought we were going separately because all you wanted to do is see the tarpon. That you were going way earlier.”

I replied, “My interests have broadened.”

On the drive down, he told me that Billie Egret, Ginny Egret, James Tiger, her aunts and uncles were also attending the Cypress Ashram, all as Shiva’s special guests. Them, plus some members from Tomlinson’s secret group of Cassadaga psychics, who weren’t invited but were going anyway. He said they would be sprinkled among the crowd.

“We have no choice. Something big’s going on, so we’ve decided to do another spiritual intervention. The Non-Bhagwan has Billie’s people conned. They’re almost convinced they should go into partnership with him. All of them except Billie. She’s still standing strong, but she needs our help. She’ll be really glad you’re there.”

I had a different kind of help in mind.

That morning, during my run with Dewey, I’d nearly collapsed from exhaustion. But I’d completed the three miles-and at her brutal pace. The swim didn’t go much better. I stopped twice to vomit salt water.

But I finished the swim, too.

I was tired; still had a trace of hangover shakes. For the first time in months, though, I felt focused, energized by purpose.

So now it was 6:30 P.M. The parking lot adjoining Sawgrass’s outdoor amphitheater was jammed, and we were being swept along by the crowd. Tomlinson had come for his reasons. I’d come for my own. I was going to find Izzy.

Once I found him, if I got the slightest whiff of suspicion that he was involved with Frank’s death and Sally’s disappearance, I would devise a way to separate him from the group, isolate him, and I would then do whatever was required to make him talk.

It was something I was good at.

Why had it taken me so many years to admit it?

As we walked along, Tomlinson said, “We’re plenty early. Billie told me the main show’s supposed to start a little before sunset. That’s at eight, right?”

He knew that, every morning of my life, I check the tide tables.

I said, “Around eight, yeah. Seven-fifty-seven, to be precise.”

Actually, the show had already started. The Cypress Ashram had become a mini-stadium. The stepped levels of seating were already half full, and more people were rivering in, trying to get as close as they could to the stage.

The stage was attached to an acoustic dome that looked like a giant clamshell. The first time I’d seen it, the theater had seemed to consist of nothing more than tile, wood and stucco, built at the edge of a cypress pond. What was not readily evident was that the structure was a technological marvel, loaded with computers, lights and sophisticated electronic equipment.