Ten Thousand Islands Read online

  “This latest entry in the Doc Ford series is one of the strongest … A taut story of modern greed and violence. Plenty of great twists … make this one of the most satisfying thrillers in recent memory.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “We can’t think of a better way to spend a summer afternoon than curled up with this book … A wild, dangerous adventure … Breathless action.”

  —The Denver Post

  “A powerful look at Florida’s heart of darkness … A rapid-fire tale that will snare readers like a treble hook … No one around today writes as well about Florida … Rough-edged and violent … One of the best in a series that is as good as anything being written today.”

  —The Tampa Tribune

  “When it comes to Florida, White is positively lyrical … Marvelous description, good plotting, and plenty of action.”

  —The Florida Times-Union

  “No one evokes life along the sultry mangrove coast of Southwest Florida as perfectly … White’s best book yet.”

  —Albuquerque Tribune

  “White … can be counted on to produce the real goods … And although he’s subtle about the atmospherics, when White cranks up the momentum, he tosses in everything.”

  —The Palm Beach Post

  “Fast-paced … This is Key Largo meets Wild Kingdom.”

  —The News and Observer (Raleigh, N.C.)

  “White writes with an obvious knowledge and love of Florida’s west coast, an intimacy made possible only by living here, and one which helps make the book a pleasant summer escape.”

  —Sarasota Herald-Tribune

  “Maintains an edgy sense of adventure … White’s strong sense of place and people keep us wanting to return to Florida’s west coast.”

  —The Times Union (Albany, N.Y.)

  Praise for

  THE MANGROVE COAST

  “Captivating.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “White reels in readers with another effective combination of atmosphere and action.”

  —The Orlando Sentinel

  “[White] seems more than a match for any of Florida’s fictioneers.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “Action-packed and skillfully plotted … a pleasure to read.”

  —The Dallas Morning News

  “Ford fans can count on a literate work that transcends the genre. This is an intelligent, thoughtful novel about loss, the past and relationships by one of the nation’s finest writers. It’s also a first-rate thriller.”

  —The Tampa Tribune

  “Doc’s fans may balk at this intrusion of 1990’s technology, but overall The Mangrove Coast provides pretty much everything else you would expect including a terrific finale. White is a master of the finishing touch.”

  —The Miami Herald

  Praise for

  CAPTIVA

  “A Doc Ford novel has more slick moves than a snake in the mangroves.”

  —Carl Hiaasen

  “Captiva is … packed with finely drawn characters, relevant social issues, superb plotting and an effortless writing style. We’ll drop anything we’re doing to read a new Randy Wayne White book and be glad we did.”

  —The Denver Post

  “One of the more dramatic finales in mystery fiction. White tells one whale of a story.”

  —The Miami Herald

  “An enticing brew of hard-drinking, thick-skulled anglers, plodding detectives, and plotting marina bosses. White knows a thing or two about friendship, love, and honor.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “Edginess is what sets White’s work apart from the rest of the pack … a prickly, enigmatic hero … ambience, compelling characters and straightforward suspense.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “An inventive story … White knows how to build a plot … with touches John D. MacDonald would have appreciated.”

  —Playboy

  “This is a top-shelf thriller written with poetic style and vision. Don’t miss it.”

  —Booklist

  Praise for the novels of Randy Wayne White

  “Randy Wayne White and his Doc Ford join my list of must-reads. It is no small matter when I assert that White is getting pretty darn close to joining Carl Hiaasen and John D. MacDonald as writers synonymous with serious Florida issues and engaging characters.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “White is a wildly inventive storyteller whose witty, off-beat novels come packed with pleasure.”

  —The San Diego Union-Tribune

  “Enough twists to satisfy any hard-boiled but intelligent detective fan.”

  —The Dallas Morning News

  “One of the hottest new writers on the scene.”

  —Library Journal

  “Great action scenes, terrific atmosphere, and a full-bodied hero add up to a pleasure.”

  —Booklist

  “Packed with finely drawn characters, relevant social issues, superb plotting and an effortless writing style…. The best new writer since Carl Hiaasen.”

  —The Denver Post

  “White is the rightful heir to joining John D. MacDonald, Carl Hiaasen, James Hall, Geoffrey Norman…. His precise prose is as fresh and pungent as a salty breeze.”

  —The Tampa Tribune-Times

  TEN

  THOUSAND

  ISLANDS

  TITLES BY RANDY WAYNE WHITE

  Sanibel Flats Everglades

  The Heat Islands Tampa Burn

  The Man Who Invented Florida Dead of Night

  Captiva Dark Light

  North of Havana Hunter’s Moon

  The Mangrove Coast Black Widow

  Ten Thousand Islands Dead Silence

  Shark River Deep Shadow

  Twelve Mile Limit Night Vision

  NONFICTION

  Batfishing in the Rainforest

  The Sharks of Lake Nicaragua

  Last Flight Out

  An American Traveler

  Tarpon Fishing in Mexico and Florida

  (An Introduction)

  Randy Wayne White’s Gulf Coast Cookbook

  (with Carlene Fredericka Brennen)

  Randy Wayne White’s Ultimate Tarpon Book

  FICTION AS RANDY STRIKER

  Key West Connection

  The Deep Six

  Cuban Death-Lift

  The Deadlier Sex

  Assassin’s Shadow

  Everglades Assault

  Grand Cayman Slam

  TEN

  THOUSAND

  ISLANDS

  RANDY WAYNE WHITE

  BERKLEY BOOKS, NEW YORK

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL. England

  Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

  Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), Cnr. Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, cha
racters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  TEN THOUSAND ISLANDS

  A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the Putnam Berkley Group, Inc.

  PRINTING HISTORY

  G. P. Putnam’s Sons hardcover edition / 2000

  Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / June 2001

  Berkley mass-market edition / August 2005

  Copyright © 2000 by Randy Wayne White.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-64010-4

  BERKLEY®

  Berkley Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  BERKLEY is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  The “B” design is a trademark belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  20 19

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  For Renee

  These are the clouds about the fallen sun,

  The majesty that shuts his burning eye.

  —W. B. YEATS

  They (the Calusa) said to me that their forbears had lived under this law from the beginning of time and that they also wanted to live under it, that I should leave them, that they did not want to listen to me.

  —FATHER JUAN ROGEL, MISSIONARY TO FLORIDA, 1567

  Author’s Note

  The gold medallion as described in this novel is real, but the characters have absolutely no relationship in fact or fancy to the good people who suffered the tragedy associated with the medallion’s discovery.

  This much is true: in 1969, on an island off Florida’s Gulf coast, a fourteen-year-old boy was sifting for Indian artifacts when he found human bones. Among the bones were many Spanish glass beads and a small, oddly designed pendant made of gold. On the face of the pendant were etched cryptic designs.

  Picture a metal object about the size of your palm and shaped like a miniature shield. On the upper half of the shield are concentric circles upon a cross. The circles are intersected by three lines. A rifle target as seen through the crosshairs of a scope would be similar.

  Midway down the medallion are two square holes cut through the gold. They are placed in a way to suggest eyes, though that may not have been the intent. Below the holes are a pair of inverted teardrop shapes and several half-rectangles, like doors within doors on the spatulated bottom half. On its back are two perfect and delicate crescent moons, one above the other.

  In Spanish journals from the sixteenth century, a medallion of this design (a chaguala in the literature) is mentioned in association with the chief who ruled southwest Florida’s indigenous people, a powerful and advanced society, the Calusa. It may have been worn on the chief’s forehead or around his neck. No archaeologist doubts that the symbols are significant or that the medallion was once worn by Calusa royalty.

  Some say the medallion resembles an alligator’s skull. Others describe portions of the etchings as a “spider” design or “doors of infinity,” or “roots of a sacred tree.” To this day, medicine men of the Everglades tribes will perform certain ceremonies only on a crescent moon. That may have been true of Calusa shamans as well. No one knows.

  All interpretations of the symbols are conjecture, for the knowledge has been lost. The importance of the symbols, however, cannot be doubted, for they were repeated in carvings over thousands of years of Calusa hegemony. As Tomlinson might say, symbols have energy. Judging from their centuries of dominion, the medallion’s symbols demonstrate that a powerful people once believed it was so.

  Everyone who’s held the medallion has puzzled over those symbols. The boy who found it was no different. Years later, his mother would tell me: “D—read everything he could about the history of the Calusa, and he liked to hunt for artifacts. It was uncanny the way he could find things. Like the medallion—he was digging in a place no one would think to look.”

  Archaeologists who later authenticated the boy’s discovery were also impressed.

  The late Dr. B. Calvin Jones of the Florida Bureau of Archaeology wrote to me, “D—was a bright young man and had a natural gift for understanding what lay beneath the earth. To this issue, he was the most gifted child that I’ve ever met. Yes, he did make a major discovery, one I think marks the burial site of Chief Carlos and his subordinates.”

  In conversation, another archaeologist told me, “The child had a genius for finding things.”

  According to his mother, though, the boy was troubled by his discovery. “He seemed to grow increasingly nervous as the weeks passed,” she said. “I know that he was having nightmares and he seemed to become obsessed with thoughts of Indians. It bothered him that he’d dug up a grave.”

  The mother also had nightmares. In one, she and her son were standing in water that was neck-deep. The boy had the medallion in his hand. He dropped it. In the dream, the mother begged him not to go after it, but he laughed and disappeared beneath the water.

  Three days later, the boy was found dead, hanging from a very low tree branch—perhaps a fatal attempt to “experience unconsciousness” as his mother believes.

  This is also true: shortly after her son’s death, the mother was contacted by a stranger who offered to hold a seance in which she might speak to her son from the grave. Nearly crazed with grief, the mother agreed.

  At the seance, by candlelight, the dead boy “spoke” through a series of raps on the table. He told his mother to give the gold medallion to the man who’d organized the seance.

  The mother did what her beloved son instructed.

  This novel is fiction, entirely fiction, created in the mind of the author, although some of the events herein are based on actual events. For instance, looters actually did transport a backhoe to a deserted island to hunt for treasure. They decimated an important archaeological site, yet found nothing.

  It is sad but not surprising. Florida is a transient state in which too many rootless people care nothing for the past nor this state’s future. Florida is a vacation destination or a retirement place, as temporary as time spent in a bus station.

  Like a bus station, Florida attracts con men and predators.

  It always has. Florida always will.

  Randy White

  Pineland, Florida

  Acknowledgments

  The islands of Sanibel, Captiva, Marco and Key Largo are real places, and, I hope, faithfully described, but they are all used fictitiously in this novel. The same is true of certain actual businesses, marinas, bars and other places frequented by Doc Ford and his friend Tomlinson. In all other respects, this novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The author would like to thank Commander Larry Simmons, formerly of SEAL Team 1; Captain Peter Hull, Dr. Ken Leber, Dr. John Miller, J. Robert Long, Dr. Richard Pierce, all of Mote Marine Laboratories; Mr. Troy Deal, Sybil Bailey and especially Renee T. Humbert for her assistance. I would also like to thank Dr. Bill Marqua
rdt, Dr. Robin C. Brown and Corbett Torrence for their expertise on Calusa archaeology; Amy Massey, Capt. John Martinez, Jack Webb of Key Largo, and all the Mandalites; Dr. Thaddeus Kostrubala, who provided invaluable scientific fabric as well as case histories to support the premise that there are politicians who lie without remorse, there are human anomalies who prey on women and, sometimes, they are one and the same.

  These people provided valuable guidance and information. All errors, exaggerations, omissions or fictionalizations are entirely the responsibility of the author. An example: the Calusa king, Carlos, and the man who betrayed his people, Filipe, actually existed, as did Father Juan Rogel and Juan Lopez de Velasco. They are accurately quoted or paraphrased. Salvador and Tocayo are fictional characters, although their lives parallel those of Carlos and Filipe, even to some translated passages from letters written by priests who lived among them.

  Table of Contents

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  There’s something sinister about the sound of a big man trying to sneak through mangroves. On the foggiest night of the year, standing alone on the porch outside my lab, I heard the crack of a branch, then silence. Heard the rustle of leaves. Then I strained to hear through a longer silence that implied observation and careful breathing.

  The platform that supports my house and laboratory is built on stilts over the water, thirty yards from land, Dinkin’s Bay, Sanibel Island, Florida. The only way on or off is by a rickety boardwalk. Someone was working his way toward that boardwalk, getting closer.