Deep Shadow (46 page)

“What happened to my watch?” I asked him as I stood. I had more beer in the fridge, and there was a stack of Dr. Bill’s photos on the kitchen table, too.

Tomlinson replied, “I gave the Chronofighter to Will, man. I figured I owed him something—the kid saved my life, after all. Besides, I found this really cool surfer dive watch that fits me better. It’s called a Bathys—” He stopped in midsentence, finally realizing what I had just said. “What do you mean,
your
watch?”

I stared at the man until he sought refuge in his toes again. “You know about that, too, huh?”

I said, “I may not have a dazzling intellect, but I don’t miss much, either.”

“
Jesus,
Ford,” he whispered, looking up at me. “You’re getting a little too good at this. Not that I don’t think . . . not that I don’t really
believe . . .
you have a first-rate intellect—”

“Forget it,” I said, mystified by his reaction. I patted the man’s shoulder, went into the galley and returned with two more quarts of beer, plus a single photograph from the stack on the table. I placed a bottle near Tomlinson’s elbow but held on to the photo until I had asked, “Back there by the fire, when you shot King, you never answered my question. Did you mean to shoot him in the hand? If you did, that was one hell of a shot. Have you ever fired a rifle before in your life?”

Tomlinson opened his beer and sat back. Then he took several long gulps, as if working up the courage to say, “That’s why I sailed out of here Friday night, Doc. After the police called and told us about King, I just couldn’t stand it, being around people I care about—people who see me as something . . . I don’t know . . . something special. I’m not, Doc. You know that better than anyone. I’m nothing special. I’m an asshole and I’m a fraud.”

I nodded. “Well, you’re at least half right—in my opinion, anyway.”

Tomlinson looked at me for a moment and managed to chuckle before he turned away. “And I’m a shitty shot, too. I wasn’t aiming at King’s hand. I wanted to kill the man. I thought I was aiming right at his heart, but I must have flinched or closed my eyes or something because I missed. But I meant to do it. I meant to kill him.”

I nodded, and gave it more time than was required to reply, “King fired his last round at you, but you still feel guilty? That doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense, pal.”

“You’re right,” Tomlinson said, missing my point. “Killing another human being never makes any sense. But that’s what I did. And that’s what happened. I killed King just as sure as if I’d hit him in the heart. When we left him alone by the fire, with his hand bleeding, man . . .” Tomlinson cleared his throat, getting emotional. “It was the same as staking out a wounded lamb. I knew that. And I knew there was a lion in the area.”

I leaned and placed the photo on my friend’s lap. Then I stood to hit the deck lights so Tomlinson could confirm the details for himself. As I walked away, I said, “When Dr. Bill downloaded the photos and saw what he had, he e-mailed the picture you’re holding straight to the police. When they called Friday night? That picture is how they found King. That’s how they knew for sure what happened to him.”

I added, “But you didn’t kill the man, pal. You’re looking at the proof. It was his decision to run—not yours.”

I watched Tomlinson study the photo, familiar with what he was seeing because I had examined the image so many times. The photo showed a section of a rock room where roots connected ceiling and floor. In the deep, deep shadows of the room, beneath what looked like a cave petroglyph—a stick man with horns—lay a portion of a human skull, the broken jaw grinning up at the wide-angle lens.

Next to the skull was my night vision monocular. The camera’s unfiltered photocells had captured something that was invisible to us but not to other predators. The infrared light was still on, throwing a beam that was straight as an arrow and true.