The Devil's Deep

by Michael Wallace

  “No, a dive skin is good enough, just to protect you from the prickly stuff. We can buy that. Awesome. Well, let’s take a dive where my uncle drowned, if we can find it.” He paused. “Sorry. I should have asked. God, you must think I’m a total asshole.”

  “Look, Wes. We got off to a weird start. But a girl doesn’t fly to Costa Rica with a guy she thinks is a jerk.”

  Some of it was the setting, no doubt, sitting on the veranda with an ocean breeze and the birds and frogs and other nighttime animals adding to the ambience. Some was no doubt two beers on a nearly empty stomach, but what he really wanted to do was lean over and kiss her. If she hadn’t intimidated him, he’d have moved faster.

  “I don’t want you to think I’m saying…” Becca began. “I mean, I just broke up with my boyfriend and I’m not big on rebound relationships.”

  Wes was already leaning in her direction, but grabbed quickly for his beer. Thank god he hadn’t moved faster.

  “How old are you, anyway?” she asked.

  “Twenty-six. What about you?”

  “Just turned thirty. So there’s another reason.”

  He said, “If I’d just turned thirty and you were twenty-six, would you say the same thing?”

  “Well, no, but…” She looked at him suddenly and began to smile. “I think you were getting ready to put the moves on me.”

  Wes started to sputter a protest, then stopped himself. “Maybe I was,” he said, sounding more defensive than he meant. “You’re here, I’m here. You said I wasn’t a jerk…I mean, it seemed like the thing to do.”

  He didn’t like the way that came out, like he was just screwing around, and sure enough, Becca took it the wrong way. “Come on,” she said, her tone growing irritable. “My boyfriend just dumped me. By phone. A couple of days before I was supposed to fly to California to meet him. Please don’t jerk me around, okay? I’m not in the mood.”

  Wes got up. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. Look, I’m tired and acting stupid. I’m going to go to bed. You might not want to stay up too late. The howlers give an early wake up call.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  He went downstairs, angry with himself for being such an idiot, and angry with Becca for making him pay for it. He checked his watch. Only 9:15. It always felt later out here with no town lights and dark so early. In a couple of days they’d adjust, what with it getting light by six and the birds and monkeys starting up even earlier than that. For now, however, he didn’t feel like sleeping.

  Wes went to the kitchen to throw away his empty beer can, then stepped onto the lower porch without turning on the light. He could hear Becca shifting on the couch above him, even the pages of her book rustling. Light spilled over the edge of the veranda and onto the grass in front of the house. It cast the Land Rover in shadows and turned the trees into dark statues. He froze.

  There was a man standing underneath one of the trees, looking up at the veranda where Becca sat. Wes stood in the darkness and the man hadn’t looked his way.

  The man stared for a long time, then turned and disappeared into the trees, toward the beach. And still Wes stood frozen, heart pounding.

  Chapter Twelve: Alan Pardo leaned over his patient and shined a light into the man’s eyes. First the affected eye, then the clear one. Ann Wistrom had called him to Riverwood, worried about how Chad’s eye continued to seep. Pardo had called it pink eye and prescribed antibiotic drops.

  “Good news is it seems to be affecting just the left eye,” he said, flipping off the light.

  Pardo and Wistrom sat in the nurse station where they’d wheeled Chad, dressed in his nightgown, strapped down. The eye was red, seeping. Must hurt like hell, somewhere deep in that flesh prison where this man lived. Team Smile’s HT—hired to replace Bill Carter’s obnoxious nephew—was a temp, and she helped them lift Chad out of bed, but hadn’t followed them into the nurse station.

  Pardo leaned back in the chair, chewed on his lip and affected a worried tone. “I’d hoped the antibiotic would clear it up. You’ve been giving him the drops?”

  “Of course,” Wistrom said, voice peevish. She’d probably mentally diagnosed Chad’s condition, come up with a treatment plan herself. And now she was just waiting for Pardo to come to the same conclusion. Typical nurse attitude, in other words.

  Pardo said, “I think I’ll bump that to something stronger, see if that helps.”

  Not that the antibiotic would do anything, since Pardo had induced the condition himself by dripping dishwashing liquid onto Chad’s eyeball. The beauty was that dishwashing liquid was just corrosive enough that repeated treatments would damage the eye without making someone rush Chad to the emergency room.

  “Of course, it might not be conjunctivitis after all.” He hesitated, as if considering. “Could be scleritis, but that usually affects young women. Still…”

  “That could cause blindness,” she said.

  “Could. Well, scleritis is unlikely, but possible. I should take him to an opthamologist to be sure.” And here he was on shaky footing. Pardo was pretty sure that seeing the inflammation of the sclera, an opthamologist would, indeed, diagnose scleritis. He’d probably prescribe a corticosteroid. And of course, with an ongoing irritant introduced into the eye, the condition would not improve. Chad would go blind in the communicating eye and Pardo would have his paper trail.

  But what if he got an aggressive opthamologist, who ignored that Chad was a non-responsive patient with no family to advocate for him? What if he dug into the causes of the scleritis and, having ruled out disease, decided that the cause must be a household cleaner or other irritant. Could it possibly come back to Pardo? He thought not, but he wasn’t sure. What he did know is that he didn’t want people digging into Chad’s files.

  His pager buzzed. It was the pre-arranged signal from his son. “I’ve got to go. I’ll take another look next time I’m in. Of course, if it gets worse or spreads to the other eye then give me a call and we’ll bump up the priority.”

  “What about the pain?” she asked, still studying Chad, immobile in his chair. “If it’s scleritis, he’ll be suffering. They say scleritis feels like a drill boring through the eyeball.”

  “You can irrigate the eye. Massage the tear ducts. Other than that, I wouldn’t give him any pain pills. He may not feel anything anyway.” He made a note to Chad Lett’s chart, then left the nurse station. He passed a man cleaning the floors in the hall, but didn’t make eye contact.

  James waited in the Mercedes. Pardo climbed in and said, “That wasn’t fifteen minutes. Maybe ten.”

  “They’re in Costa Rica,” James said. “Arrived at the house this afternoon.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes. David called while you were inside. I answered your phone.”

  “Fine, no problem. And he knows he needs to wait for you?”

  “I told him. He didn’t want to wait. Said he could move in tonight, while they slept.” James wore little emotion on his face, but looked out the side window with his intense gaze, as if studying something in the distance. “He might not wait.”

  “He’ll wait.” Pardo’s phone rang as he started up the car and pulled out of the Riverwood parking lot. “That’s probably him right now.”

  James reached for it and looked at the incoming number. “It’s not David.”

  “Let it go to voice. They can page me if it’s an emergency.”

  “Yeah, but check out who’s calling.” James held the phone over the steering wheel.

  He looked at the caller ID and his mouth went dry. Waterbury police. It rang again, then a third time.

  He picked up as he pulled the car over. “Doctor Pardo speaking.”

  “Doctor Pardo?”

  Hadn’t he already said that? “Yes, speaking.”

  “This is Lieutenant Roger Stiles of the Waterbury Village Police, do you have a few minutes to come down to the station?”

  “Tonight? It’s kind of late. What’s this
about?”

  “You’ve been identified as a person of interest in a missing person case.”

  Pardo said, “I don’t follow. I don’t know anyone who has gone missing.”

  “Do you know Rosa Solorio?”

  Any doubts about the call disappeared. He had to be calm and had to avoid giving too much information—or not enough—especially before he knew what the police were working with. “Yes, I know Rosa. Haven’t seen her recently, though. Has something happened to her?”

  The police officer didn’t answer the question. “Good, can you come down to the police station? Now, if possible? Dr. Pardo?” he added after a few seconds of silence.

  “Yes, I’m just leaving work. I can be there in ten minutes.”

  He hung up the phone and turned to James. “That’s not good.”

  “What happened?”

  “Somehow they’ve tied me to Rosa’s disappearance. Can’t think how or why. I’m going to drop you off. Go to the Rolodex on my office desk. Call Steven Pinkerton, my lawyer. Use your cell phone, not the house phone. I don’t want him coming down or getting involved in any way at this point, but I need to be sure he’s available. Can you do that before you leave?”

  “Of course.”

  Pardo turned the key in the ignition. A trickle of doubt worried at him. He had visions suddenly of the leftist police officers who’d stopped him in El Salvador just a few kilometers from the Honduran border. He’d spent three days in a filthy, rat-infested hole of a jail. Spent ten thousand dollars to bribe his way out, but not before they’d hung him upside down, beaten the soles of his feet, then shoved their batons up his anus. Thank god he was in America.

  #

  Wes locked the door of the porch as he entered the house. How safe were they really, in the middle of nowhere? Javier Lopez and his family lived only fifty or sixty yards away, but beyond that, there wasn’t another house within a half mile. Anyone could get in here, and though he told himself it had probably been Javier he’d seen, he couldn’t shake the worry that someone had known they were coming to Costa Rica. What if his uncle hadn’t believed Wes’s story about going back to Massachusetts and sent someone to follow him.

  He pulled down the shutters in the kitchen and the bathroom on the main floor, and then locked the door and went upstairs. Becca’s room had a wonderful view toward the golfo, together with a view of the best tree for visiting birds and monkeys, which was why Javier had made it up for her. But that tree would also give access to an intruder; better would have been the empty room on the other side of the hall. Since Wes didn’t want to alarm her, he went into her room and dropped the shutters.

  “What are you doing?” Becca called from the veranda. There was a tree there, too; he’d wait until she went to bed and then lock the door to the veranda.

  “Need to shut your window or the monkeys will come in.”

  “While I’m asleep? I thought you said they’d come into the house while we were out.” She came off the veranda and down the hall just as he was leaving her room. She looked at his face. “Wes, are you alright? What’s going on?”

  And so he told her about the man he’d seen in the yard.

  “Why didn’t you just tell me that in the first place?”

  “Cause it’s probably nothing. And I didn’t want to freak you out.”

  “But you sound freaked out.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “Over nothing. This has to be the safest place in the world. That guy was probably Javier. It’s not even ten o’clock. Maybe he just came to get—I don’t know—his tools that he left out.”

  “You going to shut your window too, or just mine?” Becca asked.

  “Don’t need to. There’s no tree outside my window. You want to change rooms? There’s a nice breeze coming in through the open window.”

  “I’ll be fine,” she said. The tension drained from her voice. “It’s not hot. Besides, I can just wait until you’re asleep and then open my window again.” She smiled as she said it.

  Nevertheless, an hour later, when they were each in their respective beds, Wes had brought up a knife from the kitchen which he tucked beneath the mattress and the box springs and he could hear Becca moving around in her bed long after she should have been asleep. He had his ipod; normally, he’d play one of his mellow playlists to help him relax when he was in a new bed. Instead, he sat listening to insects and frogs and wondering about every rustle in the bushes below. They made him nervous at first, but they were probably coatis, peccaries, and the like. There wouldn’t be animals foraging across the property if someone was lurking down there.

  Wes was just drifting off to sleep when a noise in his room startled him awake. He groped for the knife.

  “It’s just me,” Becca’s voice said from the darkness. The floorboards creaked under her feet.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m a little scared. It’s so dark and there’s so much noise out there, and with that man you saw and no lock on my bedroom door…” Her voice trailed off. “I know it sounds silly.”

  “Not so silly that you didn’t scare the crap out of me coming into the room like that,” he admitted. “Do you want to switch rooms? The one on the other side of the hall from yours has a lock.”

  “No, I want to climb in bed with you,” she said. “Is that okay?”

  “Sure. Yeah, of course.”

  Together, they fumbled around trying to find the zipper for the mosquito net that surrounded the bed. At last, Wes reached over his shoulder and flipped on the reading lamp on the headboard. He found the zipper, unzipped it, and Becca climbed in beside him.

  She wore a green camisole and a matching pair of bikini panties. And then the light was off and she was lying up next to him. She’d brought her own pillow, but she put her arm around him as she snuggled down.

  Oh, god, Wes thought as he felt her breasts push against him and her legs against his, her breath against his neck and her hair falling against his bare chest. What now?

  “Sorry about earlier,” she said. “It’s a tough time for me and I got snippy. I know you didn’t mean anything.”

  “It’s okay,” he said.

  “I wasn’t always like this, you know.”

  “Like what?” he asked.

  “I mean, how you see me at work.”

  “You’re capable and dedicated. There’s nothing wrong with doing your job and doing it well. And the residents love you.”

  “But the staff doesn’t. I don’t have any friends at work. I used to,” she added. “I met my ex-boyfriend at Riverwood. Andrew was working as an HT while he was going to UVM. He was the brother of another girl—Alicia—who quit just after Saul made me QMRP. Alicia and I were best friends. The job was actually fun back then.”

  “What happened?” Wes asked.

  Becca pulled away and propped herself on one elbow. “Everything was cool when I was just another HT. But I got my degree—finally!—and got a promotion. My friends thought, ‘awesome, now we can screw off, cause Becca’s the boss.’ Or something. I don’t know. Wasn’t so awesome when I had to call at 6:00 in the morning asking why the hell they weren’t at work. Andrew found another job while he finished school. Saved our relationship. For a few years, anyway.”

  “What about your friend?”

  “Alicia?” She sighed and lay back down again. “Let’s just say that it sucks having to fire your best friend. And she’s not usually your best friend afterward.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Water under the bridge. These days, I keep a friendly distance from my coworkers. Which begs the question of what I’m doing here with you.”

  “Because you don’t think of me as your coworker,” Wes answered.

  “Maybe not.”

  They lapsed into silence. Whatever Becca had been thinking when she’d climbed into bed, it was gone now. She rolled onto her stomach and a few minutes later her breathing evened out and she became still and quiet.

  Wes knew he’d lie awake all nig
ht so long as her body was touching his. So he eased to the far side of the bed, turned onto his side and listened to the sounds of night. And finally, fell asleep.

  #

  Lieutenant Roger Stiles didn’t seem hostile or suspicious, but Dr. Pardo knew this might be an act. The officer offered him coffee or a soda and had him sit across the desk. Pardo declined, but accepted a cup of water from the cooler. It was late at night, but Stiles scooped up several files spread out as if he’d been working. He set his own coffee directly on the desk, ringed with the evidence of many coffees past. His right hand worked at a stress ball.

  Dr. Pardo took a sip of water. “So what’s this about, officer?” He spoke slowly enough that he could concentrate on minimizing his Spanish accent. It had a tendency to trip him up when he was nervous.

  Stiles said, “Tell me how you know Rosa Solorio.”

  It was a dangerous question. Suppose Stiles already knew just how well Pardo knew Rosa. That he’d helped her come from Costa Rica. That he’d given her money. That he’d slept with her. Admitting too little would move him from person of interest to prime suspect.

  Or maybe Stiles knew nothing. Maybe he was asking around just to get Bill Carter’s pesky nephew out of his hair. So happened that Alan Pardo was a doctor and a Spanish-speaker to boot. He might know what was going on in the heads of these illegal immigrants and be respected enough to give a reliable, level-headed opinion.

  Suddenly grateful for the water, he took another sip. “Good girl,” he said. “Worked several years at Riverwood. Costa Rican.” He paused, as if collecting his thoughts. “Not quite sure why she quit like that.”

  “Like what, do you mean?”

  “From what I understand,” Pardo said, “she just walked off in the middle of a shift.”

  “Strange.”

  He gave a deliberate shrug. “It happens. It’s a high stress job and low pay. But Rosa was a good worker. Didn’t seem like her.”

  “Can you think of anything that might have set her off? Money problems? A boyfriend? Fight with a coworker?”