Deep Shadow

by Randy Wayne White

  Tomlinson and I had returned to the lake with an archaeologist from the University of Florida—Dr. Bill Walker—to do a preliminary survey of the cave that he and Will had found. By one p.m., the three of us had cut our way to the mound, unaware of what police were dealing with only a quarter mile away.

  I had assigned myself the uneasy task of standing watch as Dr. Bill lowered a camera into the cave and then used a special low-light lens and a remote shutter control to snap more than a hundred blind photos.

  “I’ll let you know if we have anything,” he had told us, “when I get back to the house and download them on the computer.”

  A quick photo survey was the best we could do, under the circumstances. I wasn’t going down into that damn cave—or into the lake—until the area was secured, and Tomlinson agreed. We had already done enough research to know that, while Komodos usually reproduce sexually, they can also reproduce asexually through a process called parthenogenesis. Unfertilized eggs hatch as an all-male brood, which is evolution’s way of guaranteeing that a lone female Komodo can repopulate a remote island in Indonesia . . . or the remote pasturelands of Florida.

  Judging from the size of the monitor that attacked me, she could have lived near the lake for a long, long time—more than fifty years, I believed. It wasn’t a guess, and I didn’t arrive at the figure simply because two generations of ranchers had made the creature into a family legend. Something that Arlis had told me about Fulgencio Batista had put me on the right track. I asked friends in Cuba to do the research, and it was from them I learned that in December of 1958 two fledgling Komodo monitors had vanished from the Havana zoo. My own research confirmed that the animals can live and reproduce for more than seven decades.

  At least one of the fledglings had survived a plane crash on a December night long ago. Now there was no telling how many Komodos were stalking the area, and I, for one, didn’t relax until we were safely in my truck, headed for Sanibel.

  Because Tomlinson had sailed on that Friday evening, though, he had yet to see Dr. Bill’s photos. I knew that’s why he had come straight to the lab after returning to Dinkin’s Bay.

  I replied to Tomlinson’s question by telling him, “They haven’t caught the big female yet, if that’s what you’re asking. And they haven’t killed her, either, although police could have. They decided that a reptile her size might be of interest to science, so they cordoned off the area until biologists figure out a way to trap her. Or use some kind of tranquilizer gun. Personally, I’m glad she’s still alive. It should make you happy, too. Maybe that will change your attitude about cops a little.”

  Tomlinson shrugged, smiled and said, “I’ve always been against slaying my personal dragons. It’s more interesting to get aboard and enjoy the ride. The view’s better, too.” He sent me a message by holding his quart bottle up to the moon so that I could see that it was empty. I also noticed something else.

  “What happened to my watch?” I asked him as I stood. I had more beer in the fridge, and there was a stack of Dr. Bill’s photos on the kitchen table, too.

  Tomlinson replied, “I gave the Chronofighter to Will, man. I figured I owed him something—the kid saved my life, after all. Besides, I found this really cool surfer dive watch that fits me better. It’s called a Bathys—” He stopped in midsentence, finally realizing what I had just said. “What do you mean, your watch?”

  I stared at the man until he sought refuge in his toes again. “You know about that, too, huh?”

  I said, “I may not have a dazzling intellect, but I don’t miss much, either.”

  “Jesus, Ford,” he whispered, looking up at me. “You’re getting a little too good at this. Not that I don’t think . . . not that I don’t really believe . . . you have a first-rate intellect—”

  “Forget it,” I said, mystified by his reaction. I patted the man’s shoulder, went into the galley and returned with two more quarts of beer, plus a single photograph from the stack on the table. I placed a bottle near Tomlinson’s elbow but held on to the photo until I had asked, “Back there by the fire, when you shot King, you never answered my question. Did you mean to shoot him in the hand? If you did, that was one hell of a shot. Have you ever fired a rifle before in your life?”

  Tomlinson opened his beer and sat back. Then he took several long gulps, as if working up the courage to say, “That’s why I sailed out of here Friday night, Doc. After the police called and told us about King, I just couldn’t stand it, being around people I care about—people who see me as something . . . I don’t know . . . something special. I’m not, Doc. You know that better than anyone. I’m nothing special. I’m an asshole and I’m a fraud.”

  I nodded. “Well, you’re at least half right—in my opinion, anyway.”

  Tomlinson looked at me for a moment and managed to chuckle before he turned away. “And I’m a shitty shot, too. I wasn’t aiming at King’s hand. I wanted to kill the man. I thought I was aiming right at his heart, but I must have flinched or closed my eyes or something because I missed. But I meant to do it. I meant to kill him.”

  I nodded, and gave it more time than was required to reply, “King fired his last round at you, but you still feel guilty? That doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense, pal.”

  “You’re right,” Tomlinson said, missing my point. “Killing another human being never makes any sense. But that’s what I did. And that’s what happened. I killed King just as sure as if I’d hit him in the heart. When we left him alone by the fire, with his hand bleeding, man . . .” Tomlinson cleared his throat, getting emotional. “It was the same as staking out a wounded lamb. I knew that. And I knew there was a lion in the area.”

  I leaned and placed the photo on my friend’s lap. Then I stood to hit the deck lights so Tomlinson could confirm the details for himself. As I walked away, I said, “When Dr. Bill downloaded the photos and saw what he had, he e-mailed the picture you’re holding straight to the police. When they called Friday night? That picture is how they found King. That’s how they knew for sure what happened to him.”

  I added, “But you didn’t kill the man, pal. You’re looking at the proof. It was his decision to run—not yours.”

  I watched Tomlinson study the photo, familiar with what he was seeing because I had examined the image so many times. The photo showed a section of a rock room where roots connected ceiling and floor. In the deep, deep shadows of the room, beneath what looked like a cave petroglyph—a stick man with horns—lay a portion of a human skull, the broken jaw grinning up at the wide-angle lens.

  Next to the skull was my night vision monocular. The camera’s unfiltered photocells had captured something that was invisible to us but not to other predators. The infrared light was still on, throwing a beam that was straight as an arrow and true.