Mangrove Lightning Page 3

  The only recourse was to stand by and await the Brit’s text.

  Five minutes passed, then ten. Soon Tomlinson refocused on the chain that forbade entry to the trail beyond. Keep driving or explore on foot?

  He locked his van and walked.

  —

  After half a mile, the scent of fresh water lured him down a side trail, where a rock wall lay in shambles. The wall suggested the land had once been owned by monied gentry—an old hunting club, perhaps. On a bushy straightaway, the skeleton of a gun stand proved his paranormal powers had synced with the milieu.

  Excellent.

  Walking meditation is not easily practiced aboard a sailboat. Tomlinson took advantage of the terrain. Measured steps and measured breathing. He also made use of a potent doobie secreted in the pocket of his Hawaiian shirt. Soon, swamp maples; rose-colored leaves caressed the senses. Images of men in antiquated topcoats slipped past his eyes, their shotguns held as casually as umbrellas. A steam whistle howled; beneath his feet, the earth vibrated with the grinding weight of steel on steel. A passing train tugged him out of the past, through a lacy willow curtain, into the present.

  And there it was: Chino Hole. The lake was a limestone sinkhole a hundred yards across, the surface glazed by a June blue sky. No remnants of a dock, no structures of any kind, yet a glowering aura clung to the trees. Dragonflies kited; mockingbirds sang. Tomlinson sensed the tranquility was as misleading as the silence that follows a sustained explosion.

  Dark events . . . violence. Something wicked had been quieted here by the decades and . . . what else?

  Fear. Of course. Fear was always a component. Another more subtle catalyst was also tangible yet difficult to isolate.

  Tomlinson allowed his senses to blur. When he ceased seeking the truth, the truth flowed in, then through him.

  Shame. That was the other component. Communal shame. Emotion is energy; ions resonated and took shape as a dome that encased the lake like a bubble. Trapped within were too many shadows to contemplate at one sitting.

  He returned to the present, re-lit the joint, and let his eyes roam. The lake was a mirror, its radius halved by the reflection of shimmering cypress trees. At the center was a ring of silver-blue sky, despite squall clouds that threatened from the east. Occasionally fish breached the surface; a slow carousel of tail fins that were unmistakable.

  Tarpon. Here, in this landlocked lake, thirty-some miles from saltwater, lived a population of saltwater’s most coveted sporting fish.

  Doc’s gonna love this, Tomlinson thought. Then stiffened when, behind him, a branch snapped. Bushes rustled and crunched with momentary panic. He turned, peering through a fabric of willows. Someone . . . or something . . . had been moving quietly toward him but had stumbled.

  “Hello?” He held up the joint as if it were a white flag. “Always happy to share with friends.”

  A rock displaced a gathering of shells. Low branches parted with the passage of someone, or something, making a careful retreat.

  “Don’t be afraid. Seriously, no one in their right mind’s afraid of me.”

  Low branches paused as if to consider.

  Storm clouds rumbled from the distance. Then into Tomlinson’s head came a whispered, unspoken reply: If you run . . . he will catch you.

  The shock this produced was dizzying. “Geezus, dude. That’s some nasty shit to say to anybody. Why would I run? I’m just standing here smoking a jay, enjoying the fish.” Nervous laughter escaped his lips. “Think those are tarpon?”

  No response.

  “Hey. Who’s gonna catch me? Uh . . . not that I want to meet the guy. It was more of a rhetorical question.”

  He looked at the lake and gauged the distance in case he had to swim for his life. A windy dust devil flew toward him, crossing the water with the velocity of a wasp. Nearby, low limbs parted with the crunch of heavy footsteps. Crows spooked into the blue, an array of raven scars.

  “Okay, okay, you win,” Tomlinson hollered. “I’ll be shoving off now. Sorry if I was trespassing.”

  He started up the path, and made it only a few steps, when a voice, neither male nor female, communicated from inside his skull.

  Run . . . He’ll make you scream.

  “Enough with the bullshit! I’m about to piss my pants as it is.” He spun a slow circle while edging his way toward the path. “Who are you?”

  Follow me, the voice demanded.

  “How? I can’t follow what I can’t see.”

  You know. That’s why you’re here.

  “The hell I do. Seriously,” he muttered. He’d been afraid something like this would happen. On the other hand . . . He looked at the smoldering joint in an accusing way. Was it possible he had imagined the voice? A mirage, perhaps, caused by high resin content, low blood sugar, and rumbling thunder?

  For sure. There were many times he’d conjured a bipolar exchange with the creature inside his brain—an evil bastard twin who delighted in mayhem.

  He tugged at his hair to demand contact. “Gemini scum. How’d you like another round of shock therapy? If I go, asshole, you’re stuck for the duration.”

  This seemed to work until the voice reached out to him from a stand of cypress:

  Come. You understand.

  No, Tomlinson didn’t, but he followed anyway, pulled along as if on a conveyor. A path through the trees was sodden with moss, edged by roots the size of pterodactyl beaks. Temperature dropped; tendrils of mist twisted in silence. A couple of times, he called out for directions. Pointless. He was traveling parallel to the cart path, which was a comfort of sorts. The road where he’d parked the van couldn’t be far.

  This was true. He knew it for certain when ahead, among shadows, loomed what appeared to be massive rock formations: the old boxcars he’d seen earlier. Five of the monsters, perhaps more. They lay in a zigzag jumble beneath a cloak of cascading vines. It was if they’d been abandoned after a bad train derailment or jettisoned from the sky.

  Chaos, rust, oil, decay. Scars left from the Industrial Revolution, Tomlinson thought. Good riddance.

  As he drew closer, his eyes began to assemble order. Silver light filtered through the cypress dome. Details emerged. The shambles of a rock wall formed a partial circle. What might have been a fire pit appeared, then a communal sitting area. Overhead, horizontal vines turned out to be wires for battery-powered lights. No, not batteries . . . Beneath a collapsed awning were the remains of a generator.

  People had lived here, he realized. Families. Railroad laborers, the poorest of the poor, had found shelter and a way to survive. Among the ferns was a rusted tin of baby formula . . . the arm off a wooden doll; a wheel with spokes; many broken bottles.

  Tomlinson squatted and held up a shard of embossed glass. The color, purple amethyst, suggested the bottle was very old.

  Won Ton Soy Sauce

  Havana, Cuba

  I’ll be damned. Chinese condiments from the days before Castro. Long before. Weird. Or was it?

  In the shadows, the nearest boxcar squatted on buried axles. Lettering on the side, a faded yellow, showed itself through the vines:

  Sawgrass Clipper

  It wasn’t a boxcar. A boxcar wouldn’t have been named as if it were a sailing yacht—or a double entendre. But a private car might. Yeah . . . ornate brass molding, green with age, confirmed it had been a plush custom coach. Money, big money, had once ruled this area.

  He left the bottle as he’d found it and waded through ferns for a closer look at the area near the coach. Draped above, vestiges of what might have been rags drew his attention. Not rags, really . . . more like pennants strung on wires, but the years had shredded them into streamers. In Tomlinson’s mind, silence was displaced by echoes of human activity. It was like stumbling onto the remains of a birthday party decades after the candles had burned out.

  Or . . . a reli
gious ceremony. The way the pennants were strung reminded him of Tibetan prayer flags he’d seen while hiking through Nepal.

  Prayer flags . . .

  This possibility meshed with the soy sauce bottle he’d found. The links were Buddhism and Asia.

  He felt an electric chill, and focused on the railroad car. It was the size of a semi-trailer, dwarfing him. He was that close. Nostrils flared, he waited, listened, all senses alert.

  A breeze soughed to and fro through ferns and lacy cypress leaves while, overhead, the high tree canopy remained motionless.

  There was no wind despite squall thermals inland. So what had caused the ferns to sway with an airless seesaw sound?

  Breathing. That’s what he heard. Could feel the steady inhale-exhale respirations; a pneumatic rasp amplified by steel walls.

  Something was inside the railroad car, hiding. Waiting.

  For the first time in many minutes, he attempted communication, backing away as he did. “Hey, man, what . . . who are you?”

  A wordless rumble told him, Open the door. Set us free.

  Tomlinson didn’t speak, for there was no need. He only had to imagine his reply, which was, Never.

  Repeating the word like a mantra, he walked backwards and sidestepped his way to the cart path but kept his eyes on the rock formation of railroad cars.

  Not until his van was in sight did he run.

  3

  Ford told the woman, glancing at her scarf and sunglasses, “If you’re going with me, you need different clothes. Shoes for walking on coral, and short pants, and a hat to keep the sun off.” A moment later, he added, “Hang on.”

  The Range Rover was nimble; a small SUV, underpowered, but it had four-wheel drive. They drifted through a gate, downhill through an expanse of litter and weeds, past a goat staked in the shade of a mango tree. A half mile beyond was a road where a lake of slurry green leaked sewage into the Caribbean. To the west, a Delta jet was banking to land at Pindling International. But Ford wasn’t headed west.

  “Wait a minute. This isn’t the way to the airport,” the woman said.

  “We’re not going there. I’m not anyway, but they’ll assume that’s where we’re headed. Yeah—” Ford consulted the mirror. “We lost the van crossing that ditch. Any idea who might want to follow you?”

  “Me?” She slung her hair back and ran a finger along her lips. “Damn all . . . think I’ve chipped a tooth. Before you kill us both, let’s get this sorted out. If not the airport, where?”

  “There’s a place at the bottom of the hill.”

  “The ocean? You’re mad.”

  Ford said, “Those trees below the limestone cliff—mangroves; that swampy area. They used to run whiskey out of there during Prohibition.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I have friends. They said locals avoid the place because it was a quarantine station for lepers. We can hide the car there. Or you can leave me and take the car. I wouldn’t advise it, though. There can’t be many blue Range Rovers in the island rental fleet. You really don’t know why you’re being followed?”

  The woman twisted around in her seat. “You’re right, they’re gone. I have to give you high marks for that, I suppose. Perhaps they wanted to rob us.”

  Ford said, “I don’t think you’re safe here.” He looked over. “Mind telling me why? Or, at least your name.”

  They made solid eye contact for the first time. Regal genetics. That came into the biologist’s mind while the woman thought: Intelligent, middle-class . . . not what I expected.

  “Would I be safer with you?” She was looking at him, but a different sort of look. “Your friend called you Doc. Are you really a doctor? No more rubbish about Jimmy Lutz. I’m not a fool.”

  Ford wondered how she knew so much, but said, “I’m a marine biologist. It’s a nickname.”

  “A biologist. How lovely.” She didn’t believe him but didn’t pursue it. “Well, Doc, you do seem competent in a dodgy sort of way. I don’t fancy speaking to police. Hmm . . . perhaps you’re right.”

  “About Cuba?”

  “Sounds quite nice, actually. Adventurous. That’s what this holiday was supposed to be about—to hell with the world. That sort of thing. I didn’t want to meet anyone I know. Or who knows of me.”

  “It’ll be smoother once we get on the road,” Ford replied. “Text your flight information to my friend. But only if you’re not flying out on one of the main carriers.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa! That makes no sense. I thought you said—”

  “I’m not taking a commercial flight. You shouldn’t, either. Booking seats on two airlines is a way of throwing off the police. Or anyone else who wants to get their hands on you.”

  “Why do you keep saying that? A man with three passports, a bloody pistol, who’s driving a stolen rental to boot. I’m inclined to think they’re after you.”

  He said, “If you’re right, we’re in more trouble than you realize.”

  “Come again?”

  Ford didn’t respond.

  “More trouble? What, exactly, is that supposed to mean?” She sat back and reconsidered. “Wait . . . I’d prefer not to know. Send the hounds down a blind trail; clever of you. Very clever, I suppose, booking two airlines. Well, if it’s adventure I was after, then, by god—” A rut bounced her head against the roof. “Ouch! Do be more careful. These caps cost a small fortune.”

  The Range Rover negotiated another ditch, then headed west onto a sandy lane, the slurry pond close enough to see terns diving among the ruins of a building that had collapsed into the sea.

  “Gillian,” she said. “Or Gilly. But not Jill.”

  It was her attempt at an introduction. Ford glanced over while she rummaged through her purse. “What’re you looking for?”

  She took out an oversized phone, lowered her window, and started taking pictures. “For my scrapbook, but don’t fret. I’m aware that criminals and security types don’t fancy photos.”

  “Put that away.”

  “It’s scenery I’m after. Not secrets.” Rapid-fire, she snapped several shots, some through the windshield: the slurry pond where the collapsed structure might serve as a landmark. Then hunkered in her seat and tapped at the screen.

  “You’re not emailing those?”

  “My mother,” she replied. “If I don’t post something, the poor dear will worry I’ve gone off on a toot—or done myself in. A few cheery pix for the mum, don’t you know. Greetings from the leper colony. Like that.” Her breezy manner hinted at a private darkness.

  It was Ford’s turn to wonder: Who are you?

  —

  He left the woman alone and walked to the water. The slurry pond stunk even here on Nassau’s ragged windward edge. Above the mangroves, an embankment angled to a ledge where there was a sandy lane. It was a handy spot to tumble trash off trucks. Thirty feet below, a refrigerator rusted in a tide pool that bristled with sea urchins. Slabs of coral, once the walls of a building, lay in the shallows with a vague resemblance to Stonehenge.

  The day before, he’d hidden a small Zodiac inflatable in the mangroves, the motor chained to a tree. As he readied the boat, he wondered, What’s taking her so long?

  Sunset was 8:20 p.m. It would be full dark by 9:15. That gave him only a few hours of daylight. Or them, if she didn’t change her mind.

  She might. It was a very small rubber boat. Or he might. She hadn’t staged the massage incident, but the “scenic” photos were troubling.

  “Oy! Oh . . . hell.” The woman’s voice reached him through the bushes. “Doc? Could you have a look at this? Shit . . . do hurry.”

  Gillian—perhaps her real name—was braced against the car, wrestling with a boot. The other boot, a sock, and a pair of jogging shoes were on the ground nearby. Not that he noticed immediately. She had changed into the red bik
ini top from earlier; her body lush, right there to see, long legs tan in gray hiking shorts.

  “Now what?”

  “I don’t much care for your tone,” she said, grimacing. “I stepped on something and it bloody well hurts. Do you have a first-aid kit?”

  “Something went through the sole of your boot?”

  “Of course not.” She hopped, one-legged, to the hatch of the Range Rover and took a seat. “I was trying to put the damn thing on and lost my balance.” She gazed beyond him to the water. “Where’s the boat? You said you had a boat waiting.”

  “That is the boat.”

  “That’s . . . You can’t be serious.”

  “Give me your foot.”

  She was a woman who enjoyed pedicures. When she leaned down, glossy pink nails were only slightly darker than the cuneiform apex of her breasts. The swimsuit material was flimsy. One rosy half-moon peeked out as she watched him probe with his thumbs. Not intentionally exposing herself—Ford was alert for feigned seduction. She was in pain. No faking that. “Careful,” she told him. “Like my foot’s on fire.”

  “Could be a couple of sea urchin spines,” he said. “The place is littered with the damn things. Or thorns . . . I don’t know, an old stingray spine maybe. But that doesn’t explain the burning sensation. At least it’s bleeding a little. That’s good. How do you feel?”

  “Oh, just lovely, thanks.” She winced; pushed her suitcase aside to make more room. “They’re deadly poisonous, I suppose. A perfect fit with my trip so far.”

  Ford’s fingers moved to her ankle. No swelling, but her skin was warm to the touch. A varicose welt appeared to be spreading toward the calf. That didn’t make sense, either. “Don’t put any weight on it. I’ll be right back.”

  “Is that bad? Hey—where are you going?”

  Her phone was on the passenger seat. He swiped it open while pretending to go through his bag. The screen lock had yet to engage. This was unexpected luck, or so he believed until he tried to open recent messages, then recent calls.