Night Vision (21 page)

As Emily stretched and yawned, I turned my wrist to see the glowing numerals of my Chronofighter watch. It was still early, only 9:30 p.m.

“The house is shaking again,” she joked. “My imagination?”

I leaned to kiss the woman’s cheek, then behind her ear, feeling a welling sensation within my chest that was not unknown to me but so rare and long ago that I was startled. I was also dubious, instantly on alert.

That same thoracic response is probably why sappy poets associate the heart with love. I had just met this woman, knew very little about her. To feel what I was feeling, after only a few hours together, was irrational. Not that love is ever rational.

“It’s Tomlinson,” I said. “Something must be wrong.”

There was.

“Tula sent me a text,” Tomlinson told me as I pushed aside the bedroom curtain, shirtless, buckling my belt.

I noticed that his hand was shaking as he combed fingers through his John Lennon hair. “He’s got her, Doc. Harris Squires, I was right. And the goddamn cops told me they’re already doing everything they could. Those
assholes
!”

Adjusting my glasses, I took his cell phone, saying, “Maybe if you lived in a country where there were no cops, you might have a little more respect.”

Tomlinson began to pace, his ribs showing, now shirtless, wearing red surfer baggies. “If you called downtown, it might be different,” he said. “You know a lot of guys on the force. We’ve got to do something, Doc!”

The text was in English. I sat next to my shortwave radio, turned on the lamp and read, “Safe, in his truck. In God’s hands. 22 miles from Im.”

I said, “I don’t doubt it’s from her, but are you sure? Where did a Guatemalan kid learn how to use a cell phone?”

“It’s the first thing they learn when they get here,” Tomlinson replied, sounding impatient. “That, plus the best food is always at Taco Bell.”

I said, “She didn’t finish the message, so okay . . . yeah, of course it’s from Tula. I remember you saying she had your number in case of emergencies.”

“She sent it from Squires’s phone,” he said, chewing at a strand of hair. “I called and recognized his voice. I didn’t say anything. Do you think I should have? He wouldn’t have let her send me a text, and I was afraid I’d set him off, make him suspicious. So I just hung up. You know, like a wrong number.”

“Did he call back?”

“No . . . Jesus! If he sees that text she sent, I’d hate to even think what a guy like that would do to Tula.”

On a pad of paper, I copied Squires’s number, then spun the swivel chair to face Tomlinson, who was now leaning into the refrigerator, moving stuff, then saying, “Jesus Christ, Doc, don’t you ever go to the store? We’re out of beer again. What a night to be out of beer!”

I said, “Tula was in the middle of writing ‘Immokalee.’ I-M—what else could it be? Twenty-two miles from Immokalee, but she was interrupted.”

Tomlinson used his hip to bang the refrigerator door closed as I added, “Which means she saw a road sign—the distance is precise. Unless Squires told her, which seems unlikely. Why would he tell the girl where she is? She’s only been in Florida for a week, so she couldn’t have guessed the distance from landmarks. But why would he take her to Immokalee?”

Tomlinson replied, “Everyone in Guatemala has a relative living in Immokalee. Or Indiantown. Or maybe the guy has a place down there, who knows? Rednecks have hunting camps sometimes.”

I was trying to project a reason why Squires would drive Tula Choimha to a Guatemalan stronghold. I said, “He could be taking her there to look for her mother, but that makes no sense. I don’t associate acts of family kindness with Harris Squires.”

“The girl’s a thought-shaper,” Tomlinson reminded me. “She can get people to do things they normally wouldn’t. Tula can project ideas in a way that makes people think they came up with it on their own.”

I ignored him, saying, “He might do it if money was somehow involved. Or sex and money—the world’s two most powerful motivators. A thirteen-year-old girl and her mother. There’s no money in that combination. Which leaves—”

I left the sentence unfinished as I returned my attention to the girl’s text to see if there was more to learn from the few words she had written.

Listening, Tomlinson used his heel to shut the fridge. He was carrying a tumbler filled with ice toward a bottle of Patrón tequila on the counter as I continued, “They’ve done some traveling, that’s obvious. Maybe he stopped at a 7-Eleven or something and left his phone in the vehicle. That gave her an opening to use the phone, but Squires interrupted Tula before she could finish the text. And her hands aren’t tied—they’re not taped, anyway. That’s a positive. But why not call you instead of type a message?”

Tomlinson had already figured it out. “Because she couldn’t risk holding the phone to her ear. You’re right, probably a 7-Eleven. Someplace he could keep an eye on her through a window. So she hid the phone in her lap and texted. That would have been safer. And there’s less chance of him checking for texts, then checking recent calls. Tula’s very smart, I already told you.”

“Do you know what kind of truck he drives?” I was leafing through my private phone book, many of the names written in my own form of code. As I picked up the phone to dial a police detective friend of mine, Emily appeared from behind the curtain, combing her auburn hair with a brush, wearing one of my baseball jerseys buttoned down to her thighs.

“We meet again,” she smiled, looking at Tomlinson. “I was just getting acquainted with your best friend. Your timing could be better, you know. But . . . it also could have been a lot worse.”

Tomlinson stopped chewing at his hair long enough to say, “It looks to me like someone just finished touching all the bases.”

The woman had a nice smile, ironic and tolerant. “A baseball metaphor,” she laughed, tugging at my jersey. “It works, but not entirely accurate. I was counting on extra innings.”

As Emily said it, she moved past me, trailing an index finger along my shoulder. I saw the way Tomlinson’s eyes followed her, focusing first on the abrupt angle between breasts and abdomen created by the baggy baseball jersey, then on her long hiker’s legs, calf muscles flexing.

Clearing my throat, I burned my pal with a look that read
Don’t even think about it.

Emily noticed, which caused her to grin, charmed apparently by our adolescent sparring. Then she rewarded me with a look that read
You’ve got nothing to worry about.

That thoracic glow again. It was in my chest.

 

 

On the telephone,
a detective acquaintance, Leroy Melinski, was telling me, “I’ve got the report up on the screen right now. Thirteen-year-old Tulo Choimha, an undocumented Guatemalan national. He, uh . . . he was reported missing last night, but it didn’t get official until a couple of hours ago when a full AMBER Alert went out. So maybe your beach-bum pal’s pestering did some good. Is he still the strung-out cop hater I remember?”

Looking at Tomlinson as he came through the door with two quart bottles of beer—I’d remembered there was beer stowed on my flats skiff—I said to Melinski, “If anything, he’s worse. I think the man’s personality evaporates as he ages. It’s causing his weirdness to condense right before my very eyes.”

“Personally,” Melinski replied, “I don’t think cop haters are funny. I’d slap the shit out of that hippie prick if he gave me a reason.”

The bitterness in that caused me to raise my eyebrows, and I said, “As entertaining as that sounds, I called to talk about the missing child.”

“The kid,” Melinski said. “I know, I know. But there’s another piece of news first I think you’ll find interesting. Our guys finished dragging that lake this afternoon. Where you shot the alligator?”

As I listened, I signaled Tomlinson to pay attention. “You found more bones?” I asked.

“No, they found a different body. A fresh one. Another female. Latin, probably mid-twenties, but both of her hands were right where they belonged. The only thing missing was the girl’s life. Someone put her in a garbage sack, then used wire and concrete blocks to sink her. Dead two or three days at the most, according to the guys on the scene. Which is a guess, of course, but they’ve seen enough floaters to come close. No obvious injuries, so no telling how she died. We’re still waiting on the medical examiner’s report.”

To Tomlinson and Emily I said, “It’s official, there’s an AMBER Alert out on Tula. And they found another dead girl—unrelated to the bones we found in the gator. They finished dragging this afternoon.”

Tomlinson threw his head back, fists against his temples—a silent scream—while Emily shook her head, smile gone.

To Melinski I said, “That hand belonged to someone. They found nothing else down there that was human?”

“I was told they did a pretty thorough search, but maybe they’ll try again tomorrow. One of the medical examiner’s guys told me the bones you found might be a month old or a year old. Maybe more. But it definitely wasn’t a fresh kill—assuming the victim died. And they’re not sure it’s female, despite the wedding ring. They’re trying to narrow it down. That’s a job for the forensic lab.”

I said, “Which means it’s even more important to find that missing kid. The killer—that’s the guy we think abducted her, Leroy. He’s a steroid freak. With a real nasty temper.”

I had already given him Squires’s name, his number and told him about the text Tomlinson had received. The detective had passed the number along to his staff, and we were awaiting confirmation that the cell phone belonged to Squires.

“You don’t need to convince me about hurrying,” Melinski said. “When a kid goes missing, there’s a forty-eight-hour window. I don’t have to tell you what usually happens if the search goes longer than two days. Problem is, this morning the family the kid lives with told officers that he wandered off by himself all the time but he’d show up. He always did. So it wasn’t considered a priority until this afternoon. No father, no mother to push for a search, which I’d like to say hasn’t happened before. But it has.”

I corrected him. “You must have misheard, Lee, this is a girl we’re looking for. Tula, not Tulo. She’s been pretending to be a boy since she left Guatemala because she’s smart. You know how dangerous that border crossing is. The family she lives with knows the truth. And probably a few others but not many. I’d consider it a personal favor if you called out the cavalry on this one. Like I said, the guy she’s with is a chemistry freak. He goes from cold to hot real fast.”

I could picture the detective reading through the computer files as he replied, “If that’s true, then this whole damn report’s wrong. If the family knew it was a girl, why didn’t they say something? He ...
she
was reported as a suspected abductee late this afternoon. The AMBER Alert went out at twenty hundred hours. All the missing-child protocols are in effect, but our people have been looking for a damn teenage boy, not a girl.”

“Last time I saw her,” I told him, “she was wearing jeans and a baggy blue T-shirt, so most people couldn’t tell the difference.” Then I gave the man the best physical description I could, pausing to pass along details that Tomlinson provided as he paced back and forth.

I could hear Melinski’s fingers tapping at a keyboard as he said, “That’s something to go on, at least. The problem is—and this is a good example—people in these kinds of places, the immigrant trailer parks, they’re scared to death of our guys. So some of the state agencies, the Immigrant Advocacy people, will be sending people around asking questions. Maybe they’re on it now. Christ, I hope so. We have almost no information on the kid.”

I could hear his frustration as he added, “For more than an hour, we’ve been looking for a boy. Who knows, maybe some cop stopped them, then turned her loose, not knowing.”

I said, “But at least you can narrow down the search area. Maybe they’re in Immokalee by now. Or somewhere close.”

Melinski said, “You said she didn’t type out the whole word. She wrote: I-M.”

I replied, “What else could it be? Did anything come up on Squires?”

I listened to Melinski typing as I watched Emily busy herself in my little ship’s galley of a kitchen. She was listening, eyes moving from the teakettle to me, the concern showing on her good-looking face, that jaw and nose, autumn-colored hair swinging loose.

“There are thirteen Harris Squires in this state,” Melinski said after a moment, “but there’s only one whose mother owns trailer parks. A rich kid, from what I’m seeing. A rich mother, anyway. She owns three mobile home parks ... a house on the beach ... taxes almost thirty grand a year. And four hundred-some acres of undeveloped land in the Everglades east of Naples.”

Immokalee was northeast of Naples about thirty miles. Tomlinson’s remark about rednecks liking hunting camps came into my mind.

“Any houses or cabins on that property?” I asked, thinking a hunting camp would be a good place to disappear with an abducted girl.

“Uhhh , nope ... I don’t see anything here. Nothing that’s been permitted, anyway,” he replied, then began to read from Squires’s file.

“He got bumped once for possession of marijuana, no conviction, back when he was a kid. Get this”—Melinski paused, and I could picture his face in front of a computer screen as he read—“‘The informant regarding the minor in question was the minor’s mother, Mrs. Harriet Ray Squires. Mrs. Squires had to be restrained by officers when she confronted said minor the morning after his arrest.’

“Christ, Doc,” Melinski laughed, “the guy’s own mom narced him out. If he’s one of those crazies who only goes for young girls, maybe it’s because his mom was such a hardass. He looks for women he can control.”

I said, “That’s the only thing on his record?”

“No,” the detective said, “but he’s not what I’d call real dirty. Not compared to most of the losers who come through here. There’s a DUI arrest, which his lawyer somehow got tossed out when he was nineteen. Then about five months ago he was banged for speeding—doing a hundred and ten on I-75, Pinellas County. If this is the guy we’re after, he’s got a vehicle that can do that and more. It’s an almost new Ford Roush pickup truck. That’s one of those trickedout specials. Big engines and big tires for guys with egos and—”