Doc - 19 - Chasing Midnight

by Randy Wayne White

  When the deck overhead was fully retracted, and with the room flooding around my knees, I wished the fish good luck, then slammed and sealed the watertight hatch behind me.

  To rescue a foundering vessel and the fish trapped therein, flooding the cargo area wasn’t just an unlikely solution, it was the only solution—and it would work, if I made every second count.

  Counterintuitive. It was something I didn’t have time to explain to Umeko when I grabbed her by the hand and yelled, “Follow me. We’ve got a lot to do.”

  31

  When I was sure the woman was behind me, I went up the companionway steps two at a time and didn’t slow until just before my eyes topped the floor of the salon. My sudden caution was due to a premonition that Abraham Neinabor had freed himself and would use some makeshift weapon to brain me.

  Like most premonitions, though, it was groundless. The triplet was tied where I’d left him, but he had managed to roll onto his side. So he was glowering at me as I rushed to the helm, checked the area around us, then the depth sonar, before levering the engines into gear. I wanted the boat moving but was also aware I had to give the cargo room time to fill before increasing speed.

  Something I should have intuited but didn’t was Umeko’s reaction when she entered the cabin and saw the man who had beaten her. I heard her stop at the top of the stairs and then in a whisper say, “You animal!”

  Instantly, I shifted into neutral and turned around.

  Neinabor was staring at the woman, openmouthed. He had interpreted her expression accurately so was hollering, “Keep her away from me! My shoulder’s broken, keep that bitch away!” as Umeko walked toward him, eyes glassy, as if in a trance. Before she could get to him, though, I intercepted her and pulled her close.

  “You’re better than that,” I said, lips to her temple.

  In my arms, the woman’s body was trembling muscle cordage and heat. “You don’t understand… you don’t know what he did to me. What they did to me.”

  “No. But right now, I need your help—again.” I pulled her closer. “I do know how strong you are.”

  “Some of the things… what he said to me… there was… there was no reason.” She paused, then stiffened. “What happened to the other one? Is he still on the boat—does he have a gun?”

  A rhythmic thumping between the shoulders is supposed to comfort even adults. It reminds our subconscious of the womb and our mother’s heartbeat. “He’s gone,” I told her. “You’re safe now.”

  The woman kept her face buried against me. I don’t think she trusted herself to look at Neinabor, who lay tied on the deck and was now shouting, “What was I supposed to do? Let you interfere? For once, try to put yourself in my shoes!”

  I squeezed the woman tighter when she tried to wrestle away. “Listen to me. This boat’s sinking. We have to run her aground. Then you have a tough decision to make. The man who helped you tonight when the power went out, the man in the white tuxedo—you said he was very kind. He’s waiting for me in a small boat. I’ve got to get off before police show up. I can explain later but my guess is you know why.”

  Umeko’s face tilted upward, her fixation on Neinabor suddenly broken. “Tomlinson?”

  I nodded.

  “I want to go with you. Don’t leave me with him, you can’t.” She pulled away and looked around the room, accessing the situation, maybe, but definitely back in control.

  I waved her toward the helm. “Come on. I’ll show you what we have to do.”

  The yacht had drifted southeast, still in the channel, bow turned so that we faced the casino boat, its lights a violet smear on the water. A few degrees to the right was the bridge. I slid into the captain’s chair, put the boat in gear, but continued to scan the windows until I saw what I’d been hoping to see: the faint sheen of an outboard’s wake and then the storkish silhouette of Tomlinson. He was standing at the Whaler’s console, applying loose cover only a few boat lengths away.

  I flicked my running lights in acknowledgment. He waved—but his body language lacked energy. It wasn’t difficult to guess the reason. If Odus Neinabor was aboard, he wasn’t standing.

  I said nothing to Umeko, though. Instead, I touched my finger to the screen of the GPS and explained, “Just outside the channel, the water shoals to less than three feet. It’s a spoil area created by the dredge. I’m going to build up some speed and run us aground. I’ll warn you just before we hit. I want you on the deck with your feet braced against a forward bulkhead. Got that?”

  The woman nodded while, behind us, Abraham hollered, “Hey—what about me?”

  I was pleased she didn’t bother to turn. It demonstrated a stubborn refusal to be bullied that told me Umeko was going to be okay. It might take weeks, or months or even years. But she would make it.

  I nudged the throttles forward—tap-tap-tap—and felt the yacht’s front end lift… and continue to lift as water poured toward the stern. When the hull had settled, I tapped the throttles again, and the bow lifted enough so that, through the pilot window, it looked like we were motoring into a haze of stars and distant lightning.

  Umeko turned toward me, startled. “We are sinking.”

  “Yeah—but not in deep water. I want the hull so flooded the next high tide won’t set it adrift. Even then, with diesels this size, we should be able to plow until it’s shallow enough I can step off and walk to Tomlinson’s boat. A tug can drag her off later when the damage is fixed.”

  From her expression, I knew she was deciding whether to stay and deal with the police or leave with me. I tapped the throttles again, alert for the slow, gelatinous response that would tell me the hull couldn’t float any more weight.

  It was time.

  I told the lady, “Go to the salon, look out the back window and tell me what you see. Then grab something and hang on tight.”

  Above me was a bank of toggle switches that controlled the outboard lights. When the woman was braced against the aft bulkhead, peering out, I illuminated the deck with spotlights, then pressed the throttles forward another two inches. Beneath us, the roaring torque of the diesels caused the hull to shudder, the windows to vibrate, as we gained speed, bow lifting. For a spooky moment, I thought the yacht was going to tumble over backward like a rearing horse.

  Standing to keep my balance, I hollered, “What’s happening back there?”

  I’m not a particularly sensitive person, but I did feel an emotional jolt when Umeko made a whooping sound of surprise, then called, “There’s water pouring out of the back of the boat, a waterfall almost. And, Doc… Doc! There are fish… I’m serious. Like they’re swimming downstream—I can see their tails moving. Dozens… no… there are hundreds of… my God…”

  I could feel the woman’s eyes on my back as she turned to look at me. “Those are sturgeon! You’re releasing Viktor Kazlov’s hybrid sturgeon!”

  No… actually, they were her sturgeon. But that could wait. Because I whispered, she didn’t hear me when I replied, “Please don’t tell the Florida FWC.” A moment later, though, I made sure she heard my warning call to get down on the deck because we had left the channel and were headed for the shoals.

  I killed our lights, then began to throttle down slowly… slowly. I didn’t bother to watch the sonar because I knew how abruptly the depth would change. The first jolt of our propellers touching bottom would tell me what to do. Seconds later, when it happened—THUD-THUD—I pulled the throttles back to dead idle… waited for our wake to balloon beneath us… then jammed the throttles forward full bore, feeling the hull lift as it slammed aground, then continued, careening wildly to starboard, hearing the friction scream of metal on metal as the diesels tractored us another twenty yards, gradually slowing, then teetering to a stop.

  When the yacht had settled immobile, angled steep as an incline, I switched off the engines and flicked on the cabin light. The silence was so abrupt that I felt the sensation of air molecules around my ears communicating the heat of the engines, Abraham Neina
bor’s groans and the outboard clatter of Tomlinson in the Whaler approaching off our stern.

  Then Umeko’s voice: “Are you okay, Doc? My God, we hit hard.” She was on her feet, experimenting with her balance on the sloping deck.

  I had wedged both pistols and my Randall knife between the cushions of the chair. After I retrieved them, and as I unloaded the Smith & Wesson, I told her, “If you’re staying here, we need to talk. But not in front of—” I gestured toward the triplet.

  Before she could respond, I stopped her, saying, “Give it some thought before you decide.” Then I knelt and cut Neinabor’s hands and ankles free.

  He didn’t expect that. It scared him and also made him suspicious. Then he was even more frightened when he saw that I was holding the Ruger in my right hand, the Smith in my left. Not aiming, just letting them rest in my hands.

  “Hey! Don’t do anything crazy—don’t shoot me.” The man began crabbing away as I stood over him. “I won’t tell the police what you did to my brother. I… I promise.”

  “Tell them everything,” I said. “I hope you do. If you want to give me credit for releasing all those sturgeon—alive—that’s great.”

  Because Neinabor actually was intelligent, he was confused for only a moment. “Really. You got them out of those tanks? But when? How? I mean… that’s what I was doing—trying to save animals those leeches have been destroying before it’s too late.”

  Aware that Umeko was trying not to notice I wore surgical gloves, I knelt, now holding both weapons by the barrel. “Go below and check for yourself.”

  The twin’s crazy eyes were desperate for the refuge of a new fantasy—or a different form of martyrdom—but he wasn’t convinced. “You’re letting me go? I don’t get it.”

  I spun the Ruger, then the Smith, within the triplet’s reach and told him, “If it makes you feel safer, take these with you.”

  Meaning the gun that Tomlinson had used to kill Abdul Armanie and the gun that had probably put an end to Vladimir’s life.

  When Umeko and I were outside, wading through knee-deep water toward the Whaler and home, I didn’t explain to her why I had left a homicidal maniac with empty pistols—even though I knew I could trust her. It’s because of the way she responded after I warned, “If you leave in the boat with us, it means you’ll have to lie to the authorities. Several lies—and convincingly, too.”

  “Are you kidding?” the Chinese aquaculturist told me, no hint of smile in her voice. “It’s what I’ve been paid to do my entire adult life.”

  EPILOGUE

  It wasn’t until weeks later, at South Seas Plantation on Captiva Island, that I finally confirmed the truth about Tomlinson, the unlikely killer. Two hours before the revelation, though, at Dinkin’s Bay, I was summarizing for a lady friend something I’d written in my lab journal the previous night:

  When people of value tell me they could never live in Florida because they’d miss The Seasons, I point out that the peninsula cycles through solstices and equinoxes in the breadth of a single summer day.

  In July, at sunrise, wind off the Tortugas makes landfall with a penetrating March chill. By 2 p.m. the heat is equatorial; nimbus clouds thermal skyward. At late afternoon, the world stills beneath an autumnal overcast. Odors linger, temperature plummets. Then a blizzard of rain booms through the palms; an electric gale that chases the sane indoors to await the drizzling thaw of sunset.

  I was explaining this to the lady because we had just escaped a storm after a day on my boat. We’d spent the morning near the Estero River, close enough to Big Carlos Pass to confirm that after three weeks waiting for a full moon the Dragos had finally been plugged and hauled for repairs. No diesel spill reported, which was significant because the media had focused full attention on anything associated with Vanderbilt Island and the murderous events that June night.

  That’s one reason we didn’t stray too close to the shoal where the yacht had been grounded nor the beach where the body of Odus Neinabor had been found. I’m not superstitious, but the maxim about “criminals always returning” was enough to keep me at a distance. Not that I felt any guilt. Abraham Neinabor, under his legal name Genesis, would carry enough of that into the courtroom for both of us. No—all three of us, because I had to include Tomlinson.

  I still couldn’t get my mind around the fact he had shot Abdul Armanie even though I had seen it happen. And the man hadn’t said anything to convince me otherwise. Not that I had asked—even discussing the subject was dangerous. The police had their killers—the twins from California—and that was enough.

  Another reason we didn’t venture closer to the Gulf was that I’d brought along mask and fins. I knew it was unlikely I would find any of Kazlov’s sturgeon in the maple red water at the river’s mouth. And I didn’t. But someday, some fisherman would—and who knew how it would impact the caviar industry twenty or thirty years from now?

  Until then, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement had impounded Kazlov’s possessions, presumably his computer, hard drives and anything else that might have rendered some clarity to the night in which two eco-fanatics had murdered four people despite the objections of their intended accomplices.

  The fate of those accomplices, a jury would also have to decide.

  It was a topic that had devoured my time and attention for too long, and I was tired of it. There is nothing like salt water to sluice away the weight of a land-based existence, which is why I had asked the lady to join me on the boat. So we had explored, I had snorkeled, and she had seemed to enjoy her first fly-casting lesson.

  Then the storm came. We’d raced its lightning rim back to Dinkin’s Bay and the safety of my stilthouse and lab. Up until then, the lady and I had behaved as friends, by mutual agreement. Nothing more. Ever. And we meant it.

  Storms, though, are transitional. I’ve never read a research paper on the subject but it is possible the human nervous system can be excited by an ionic pelting of electrons and raindrops. And when your clothes are soaked and you’ve chugged a glass of beer over ice, one thing certainly can lead to another.

  And it did.

  Now the lady’s bra hung catawampus on my bedpost, each grapefruit-sized cup promising a geography of warmth and weight that my happy hands had liberated—and were still exploring. Apparently, though, I’d put our second coupling at risk by opening my damn mouth about why Florida is a great place to live no matter the season.

  “You really tell people that, Doc? The thing about the solstices and autumn skies? I’ve never really thought of you as… Well, I’ll put it this way—if you have a feminine side, I’ve never seen it.”

  I replied, “Feminine what?” because my focus was elsewhere, so she had to repeat the question.

  After a battle with my conscience, I told her, “Nope. I made it up last night after working late in the lab. Lately, I’ve become a terrible liar. I hear myself saying things so outrageous it makes me cringe. I think it’s the people I hang out with. One person, anyway.”

  The lady said, “Huh?” and tried to sit up, but I pulled her back. “Not you. Don’t worry.” Then I disappeared beneath the bedsheet to continue my explorations.

  A minute later, though, I realized I hadn’t ruined the mood by talking. Physiologies are different, and some of us need more time to recover than others.

  I heard: “Ooohh. I’m still sort of, you know… sensitive. It’s just the way I am after I—you know.”

  I was learning. The lady’s “you know” was unlike any in my experience. If there’s such a thing as a grand mal seizure with a happy ending, it was this woman’s “you know.”

  So I smiled and said, “I see!” Then told her, “Let’s take a break. I’ve got more caviar, fresh from Mote Marine Labs. And mangoes in the fridge—a ripe Julie and a Nam Doc Mai. Mack and Jeth just made a mango run to Pine Island.”

  “I like those guys,” the lady nodded, reaching for her bra, then hip-canting naked toward the door. “Everyone at the marina is so friendly an
d… normal.”

  I was thinking, Why disappoint her with the truth? which is when the day’s mood was irrevocably changed.

  Outside, I heard clang-clang—the ship’s bell I’d hung because I’m tired of being surprised by visitors. Then, from the kitchen, I heard the lady say, “Oh no. It’s him again.”

  She could have meant any one of the three investigators, from various agencies, who had stopped by almost daily for the last three weeks. So I slipped into khaki shorts, a blue chambray shirt and was still hopping into my boat shoes when I exited to take a look.

  I’d thought I was done with their questions. Two investigators had insinuated they were finished—probably exhausted from hearing the same repetitive answers from four primary witnesses: Tomlinson, me, Darius Talas and Umeko Tao-Lien. And an unlikely fifth had, apparently, corroborated some of what we claimed: the billionaire widow, Sakura Lien. Then the woman had vanished at the first opportunity rather than risk more questioning—Switzerland, some said, although I now knew for a fact it was not true.

  As Umeko had pointed out, Europe would have been a wiser choice than China, where, tannin beauty or not, Sakura might have been shot or beaten to death for murdering one of the country’s most illustrious (and cruelest) businessmen.

  When I got to the kitchen, though, I was relieved to discover it wasn’t another cop who had clanged the bell.

  “Tomlinson,” the lady told me as she hurried past to get into her clothes. “Why don’t you just adopt him and be done with it?”

  “He won’t answer to a dog whistle, and they don’t make shock collars his size,” I replied, not surprised by her attitude. The lady had been smitten by my pal not so long ago. But then he had gotten stoned or drunk, or both, and had slipped his hand down her bikini on the pretense of helping her up onto a surfboard. It was outrageous, she thought, for a guy to hit on a girl his best friend had brought to the beach.