It was strange how things had changed since he was a kid. Maybe because of the tequila, or maybe because of the guilt the girl had caused him to feel, the realization struck Squires as important. He took a swallow from the bottle and let his mind work on it until he thought,
I’ll be goddamned. What the brat says is true.
Somehow, the world and his life had become mean and dangerous and dirty.
How?
When had it happened?
That was a complicated question that took some time. The man wrestled with the issue as he drove. Had it started when he’d first discovered tequila and weed? Up until then, he’d been kind of a quiet, shy kid.
No ... no, that wasn’t the reason he felt as shitty as he did right now. His life had really taken a turn for the worse when he met Frankie. That was almost four years ago, him being twenty-two at the time, Frankie thirty-eight but still with a body on her. And the woman was a regular hellion when it came to games in bed.
Sex—Frankie was addicted to it, and not plain old regular sex, either. The woman liked it rough, sometimes violent enough that Squires’s nose and lips would be bleeding when they were done—once even his dick, which was having problems enough of its own because of the way steroids affected it.
The woman liked hurting her partners, especially if they were female.
Yes, it was when he’d met Frankie that things had really begun to change. That’s when his life had switched from living a hard-assed guy’s life, hanging out with other bodybuilders, to living a life that was small and mean . . . yes, and dirty, too.
It was strange thinking about stuff like that now while driving to his hunting camp, where, until that instant, Harris Squires had fully intended to punish this noisy little freak by raping her.
But
damn
it. Now all this talk about God was deflating his enthusiasm, not to mention his dick. Worse, it was adding to his gloom. It threatened to bring back the withering guilt that kept welling up about accidentally murdering that Mexican woman.
Trouble was, unlike with the Mexican woman, Squires had no choice about the girl. She was an eyewitness. She had to go.
Because it made him mad thinking about what he had to do, he said to the little brat, “Do you have any idea how crazy you sound? You’re in the United States now,
chula
. In Florida, they’ll throw you in the loony bin for saying crazy crap like that.”
Reaching for his iPhone for some reason, the girl replied, “Where are we going? I know you’re not taking me to the hospital. You can trust me, so why not tell me? It’s always better to tell the truth.”
“Why, because God is watching us?” Squires laughed, pushing the girl’s hand away. The time on his iPhone, he noted, was 10:32 a.m. They still had to get through Immokalee, another hour of driving ahead of them.
“If God really is watching,” Squires told her, sounding both angry and serious, “the dude had better perform one of his miracles pretty damn quick. Or it’s out of my hands,
chula
. Hear what I’m telling you?”
Because of the caring, wounded expression that appeared on the girl’s face, Squires added, “No one can blame me. What happens next, I can’t control. And that is the
truth
.”
NINE
THE NEXT MORNING, I WAS UP BEFORE SUNRISE, 6:30 A.M.,
because I was supposed to meet the necropsy team at eight a.m. sharp. I wanted to get a quick workout in first, though.
Lately, I had been nursing a sore rotator cuff, but was still doing PT twice a day, taking only an occasional Monday off. I knew I’d feel like crap if I didn’t get a sweat going and have a swim. When a man gets into his forties, he has two choices—invite the pain required to maintain his body or surrender himself to the indignity and pain of slow physical decomposition that, in my mind, would be worse than death.
I wanted to make this one fast but tough.
I punished myself with half an hour on a brutal little exercise machine called a VersaClimber. HIT—high-intensity training. Thirty seconds climbing the machine at sprinter’s speed—about a hundred feet per minute—then thirty seconds at a slower pace. Over and over, nonstop, after a five-minute warm-up.
I couldn’t use the pull-up bar, so did a hundred sit-ups, a hundred push-ups, then jogged Tarpon Bay Road to the beach. The swim out to the NO WAKE buoys and back was painful, but it didn’t hurt as much as the mile-and-a-half run home.
When I lumbered, huffing and puffing, down the shell road, Mack, who owns Dinkin’s Bay Marina, was having a meeting with Jeth, Nels and the other fishing guides. So I stuck around long enough to tell them about the dolphins we had seen in the mangroves—I knew they wouldn’t believe Tomlinson—then headed for the shower. Tomlinson himself was already on his way back to Red Citrus.
An hour later, I was standing over the remains of the alligator I had killed. The thing was stretched out, belly-up, on a tarp beside dissecting trays, a lab scale, and an assembly of knives, jars and a single stainless-bladed saw.
It was not something I felt good about, looking down at the dead gator. This inanimate mass only hours before had been a tribute to the genius of natural selection and the animal’s own survival skills. The rounds I’d fired had put an end to a life that had probably spanned sixty years.
Emily Marston’s team consisted of herself, a sullen man who didn’t offer his name and a graduate student from Florida Gulf Coast University who was assigned to document the necropsy on video.
The sullen man, I soon decided, had been romantically involved with the woman biologist, but the relationship had ended recently and unpleasantly.
It wasn’t a guess and it wasn’t intuition.
The situation was easily read in the tension between the two, the curt questions, the man’s surly tone and the woman’s defensive body language.
Judging from his age, the man might have been one of Marston’s professors a few years back. In the field sciences, it’s not unusual for female students to bond with male teachers—ironic that the romantic habits of scientists often mimic the behavior of the animals they study, but it is true.
Emily Marston certainly wasn’t icy to me. She was warm and deferential. The way her eyes sought to communicate with mine caused me to wonder if her invitation to the necropsy had been more than professional courtesy. We probably had a few mutual, peripheral friends, but we’d never met. I wondered why.
“Dr. Ford, I’ve read so many of your papers—some of them a couple of times,” Marston had said, greeting me as I’d stepped from my truck. “I guess you’d call me ... well, a sort of fan. Except now you’ll just think I’m an even bigger nerd than I am.”
She was a large woman, late twenties, with an angular Midwestern face that suggested the automotive crossroads of Michigan—part German with a touch of Pole and Irish, I guessed. She struck me as the librarian type: a woman who camouflaged her body beneath baggy, masculine clothing that only served to emphasize a busty, long-legged femininity.
Right away, I was interested in the woman physically. I couldn’t help myself. I prefer the closet beauties, the private, introspective types who share their physical gifts only with a few. But I also reminded myself that, by Dinkin’s Bay standards, I had been abstinent for a long, long time. And seducing women who are on the rebound from a relationship is a repugnant behavior employed only by the lowest form of predatory male.
Even so, I noticed that incidental physical contact between us was more than occasional. It seemed accidental, though it seldom is. Shoulder bumps shoulder, elbow brushes breast. It is the oldest form of human cipher, the secret language of females and males, a language that no one acknowledges but every man and woman on earth employs and understands.
Like now as I stood next to Marston, who had changed into rubber boots, gloves, safety goggles, coveralls and a heavy lab apron that she pretended to be having trouble tying.
“Do you mind,” she asked, touching fingertips to my arm before turning her back to me.
“Sure, happy to help,” I said, and tied the thing, aware of the nasty look her former lover was giving us.
When I was done, I managed to make the situation worse by letting my hand linger on the woman’s shoulder as I told the little group, “This my first necropsy. For an alligator, anyway. You know Frank Mazzotti, the saltwater croc expert? I almost had the chance to watch him work, but I had to leave the country for some reason. I really appreciate the invitation.”
“Well,” the woman replied, sounding a tad breathless, “it’s always nice to be the first at something in a person’s life. Paul”—she looked at the sullen man—“did you read his paper on filtering species in brackish water environments? It was in the
Journal of Aquatic Sciences
, wasn’t it, Dr. Ford? Really an excellent piece. Your writing style reminds me of the late Archie Carr, the turtle master. Formal, very orderly, but readable. No bullshit academic flourishes when clear, concise sentences will do the job.”
I told the woman I wasn’t in Carr’s league and meant it. Then added, “Let’s make a deal. Call me Ford. Or just plain Doc—which is a nickname. It has nothing to do with what I do. Having a degree, I mean.”
I tried not to sound like a self-satisfied jerk, but I bungled that, too.
Now I felt like an even bigger ass as I let the woman pat my shoulder while she continued speaking to Paul. “In the article, he referenced a necropsy on a manatee that had died during a severe red tide. Wasn’t that at Dinkin’s Bay where you live, Doc? He was the first to make the association between dinoflagellates and toxicity in sea-dwelling mammals.”
“How nice for Dr. Ford,” Paul said, ignoring me—not that I blamed the guy. I really didn’t, although he was pushing the limits when he added, “And let’s not forget that we also have Dr. Ford to thank for providing us with a dead alligator to work on this morning. Very, very thoughtful of you to kill such a beautiful animal. What did the police report say?”
The man looked at a clipboard, before reading, “‘The alligator was subdued by four shots at point-blank range from a nine-millimeter Kahr handgun.’
“Subdued,” the man continued, sarcasm creeping into his voice. “I guess that’s police jargon for slaughtered.”
He looked up from the clipboard and spoke to the graduate student. “I’ve never understood why some men feel inadequate unless they’re carrying a gun. I’m not talking about you, of course, Dr. Ford,” he added, his sarcasm undisguised. “It’s the rednecks and hicks I’m referring to. The right-wing bumper-sticker types. I’m unfamiliar with handguns. Is a Kahr one of those famous pistols that heroes use in the movies? Maybe you’re carrying it now concealed somewhere in your pants. I bet Emily would love to see it.”
I had been watching the woman’s face color, but the guy had finally crossed the line. She snapped, “Paul! Enough! Stop what you’re doing right now! Dr. Ford’s my guest, and I won’t allow you to—”
The man cut her off, saying, “Your days of telling me what I can and can’t do are over, Milly dear. The courts took care of that, remember? It was your decision, not mine. And, frankly, I couldn’t be happier. Didn’t we come here to work? I have other things to do.”
Which, from Marston, earned the man a chilly “Don’t we all have better things to do, Paul? You’re the one who insisted on coming along.”
“I volunteered to help. And, of course”—for the first time the man looked directly at me—“I wanted to see why you were so determined to meet the famous Dr. Marion Ford. I thought maybe I’d understand once I saw him. But, sorry, I just don’t get what the fuss is all about.”
I had taken a step back to remove myself from the conversation. Long ago, I learned not to participate in quarrels between lovers—particularly if I happened to be one of the lovers. So I stood there, feeling embarrassed for both people, as they argued, Drs. Paul and Emily, two intelligent people who had once been in love.
It went on for a while. The barbs they exchanged exhibited a practiced familiarity that proved these two people had become expert at hurting each other. But it ended abruptly when the woman finally called a truce, saying, “Paul ... Paul, I’m sorry, Paul! I was wrong to let you come. It was mean of me. It was thoughtless, and I’m sorry. I truly am.”
The man, Paul Marston, Ph.D., I would learn later, responded by throwing his apron and clipboard on the ground as he said, “Yes, your behavior has been very mean and thoughtless. For once we agree. And how refreshing to have you finally admit it, for a change.”
Then the man turned, strode to his Subaru and drove away.
“Damn it,” Emily said when he was gone. “I’m so sorry you two had to witness that. Paul isn’t like that. Not really. And neither am I. But we signed our divorce papers less than two weeks ago, so it’s an emotional time. I’d hoped we could continue our professional relationship, but clearly . . .”
The woman allowed silence to trail off.
The grad student, who had pretended to be busy organizing her camera gear, spoke for the first time, saying, “I think they both behaved like jerks, Dr. Marston. What is it about men?”
It took me a moment to realize that the girl had included me. What the hell had I done besides allow myself to be used as a foil? Even so, I decided it was time to try to reverse the dark momentum on this pretty spring morning.
“There’s a lesson for ladies everywhere,” I said to them both. “The male of the species is equipped with a prick for reasons that exceed the demands of basic human reproduction.” I looked at Marston. “If you come up with an explanation, I’d like to be among the first to hear it.”
I was hoping to see a pair of smiles. It took the grad student a moment—maybe we both shared the same physical awareness of Emily Marston.
Finally, though, the girl gave in.
Fifteen minutes later,
I was saying to Emily, “I’m particularly interested in seeing what’s in the animal’s stomach.”