09-Twelve Mile Limit (22 page)

I checked my air gauge, checked my watch. I tied the weight belts onto a float bag, used my regulator to inflate it, and sent the belts to the surface.

That night, as we sledded and wallowed our way toward Sanibel at an unvarying twelve knots, Amelia and I sat on fly bridge captain’s chairs, high above the black sea, letting the autopilot steer the boat while we chatted and gazed at the star stream above.

Tomlinson, Jeth, Dieter, and his secretary were below. It was late, nearly midnight, so they had probably drifted off to the fore or aft staterooms to bed. Or maybe they were still in the air-conditioned salon playing liar’s poker on the octagonal, teak dining room table. Or watching a video in the teak entertainment center. Wherever they were, whatever they were doing, they were comfortable.

Dieter’s forty-six-foot Grand Banks Classic was a model of useful luxury. Everything was inlaid, beautifully fitted, and multifunctional. The floors were teak parquet, the salon was surrounded by glass with the sides curtained, and there was a sea view forward. The U-shaped galley was on the port side, the steering station with instrument and circuit breaker panels on the starboard side next to the hinged deckhouse door. The staterooms were plush, the heads and shower stalls massive. The interior smelled of fine wood, lacquer, brass, and electronic circuitry. A very nice combination, indeed, if you are a yachting type.

Even so, I preferred to be topside, in the wind, where I could see the stars and smell the open Gulf. The Gulf of Mexico has a more complex mix of odors than other ocean places, perhaps because it is more intimately adjoined to its landward influences.

Even thirty miles offshore, the wind carried trace remnants of the Everglades. There were brief balloonings of denser, warmer air. A hint of mangrove sulphur. A touch of frangipani, sawgrass, and feral jasmine. Out there, beyond the horizon, were shell mound outposts—Chokoloskee, Everglades City, Dismal Key. The wood ash and citreous lime odor of those places clung to the occasional, abraded air molecule, touched the nose briefly, then was gone.

I’d volunteered for the early morning watch. Had been up there alone for nearly an hour when, surprise, surprise, Amelia slid into the chair next to me, bringing two iced cans of Bud Light, a thoughtful gesture. Along with her floated new odors, the good, bedtime girl-odor of shampoo, toothpaste, soap.

“Mind some company? I’m the night-owl type even when I’m home.”

I told her that she was most welcome—very true—but I also sensed that there was something on her mind.

There was. It was a possibility we had all thought about, even talked about briefly, but had never fully and openly discussed because the subject was too terrible.

She began by saying, “I can’t get the image of that shark out of my mind. I’ve never seen a tiger shark, and nothing even close to that big. The way it came gliding in, like a big plane about to land. I know what you told me this afternoon, but you have to admit, that’s what could’ve happened to them. Sharks.”

What I’d told her is what I’d told many people since Janet had disappeared: The possibility of a shark attacking one of the three divers was unlikely but not impossible. A fatal attack, however, was extremely unlikely. Sharks in the Gulf are very good at what they do, and what they do, aside from copulate and give birth, is eat fish. In very murky water, they will sometimes mistake a human hand or leg for something that should have scales, but that is rare. The probability of a shark or sharks attacking all three was so unlikely that it was statistically insignificant.

I’d thrown in some data that I’d gathered in my own work with bull sharks. Worldwide, there are normally between fifty and eighty unprovoked attacks a year, according to the International Shark Attack File, and only a dozen or so of those attacks are fatal.

When you consider the many millions of hours that humans spend in, on, and under salt water, that is a telling statistic.

Records also show that nearly 80 percent of all attacks occurred in shallow water, while divers and snorklers account for only 18 percent of attack victims. Something I didn’t mention was that attacks do seem to be increasing slightly, and laws protecting sharks from certain types of fishing may be increasing their numbers while populations of fish upon which they feed decrease. Didn’t mention it out of pure and simple self-interest: I like sharks.

Water depth was an issue, so I said, “It’s a generalization, but, in my experience, deep water tends to be clearer than shallow water. In shallow water, rain, wind—things like that—drainage, they have an immediate effect on turbidity. That’s not true offshore, so sharks are less likely to make a mistake in deep water. Once again, Gulf sharks are experts at finding and eating fish, not people.”

She repeated herself. “But it could have happened.”

I took a sip of beer, rocking back in my chair, and said, “Okay, it’s a possibility, sure. You’re asking me to shift from what is probable to what might have happened, which is something I try to avoid, frankly. You know that as an attorney … what’s the legal term you folks use? Speculation. Plus, I don’t see the point in a useless emotional exercises.”

“I wish I could stop thinking about it. Maybe it’s because I was out there with them. Because it could have happened to me. Or maybe it’s like Tomlinson told me. We were up here last night talking, drinking some wine. He was telling me about you, what kind of person you are. You’ve got a lot of admirers, Doc. But one thing he said was that you find the sensitivity of others surprising because it’s a weakness that you refuse to recognize in yourself. Only he didn’t say weakness. He used another word. A … frailty, that was the word. A frailty that you refuse to recognize in yourself.”

I smiled. “You’re insisting. Okay, sharks. Let me attempt to be sensitive then.”

I said, “Let’s take your question and think it through aloud, though neither one of us is going to like it. Let’s see… three people adrift at night, their legs hanging down, kicking in a hundred feet of water, and one or more sharks head for the surface, drawn in by the vibrations.

“No matter how big they are, sharks tend to be skittish, easily spooked. So they take their time. Maybe even do a couple of bump and runs. Finally, one shark makes a mistake, hits what it thinks is a fish. If that happened, the best-case scenario—and the most likely scenario—is that the attacking shark would immediately realize that it’d made a mistake and would bolt. The other sharks would have followed. That’s what usually happens when shark bites man. Remember a few years back, near Daytona, when they had all those minor injuries, sharks biting surfers? The numbers were way higher than normal, but no one was badly hurt. Same thing. One chomp and they were gone.”

“And the worst-case scenario?”

I’d been looking northward, through the darkness, at a distant, flashing halo of light that reflected off clouds. Probably Cook Key light near Marco Island—not long ago, I’d spent part of a terrible night there. Not a good memory to linger over. Now I turned and looked at Amelia. “Are you sure you want to hear?”

She nodded. “Sorry, but yeah. Facts are about the only thing we attorneys allow ourselves to trust.”

“All right. One shark makes a mistake, rolls, takes a bite of a foot or an arm, and the other sharks react. There’s blood in the water, then a blood trail forms. One by one, the sharks arch their backs in a feeding display, and the frenzy is on.

“For Janet and your two friends, it would have been the horror of all horrors. Worse than any nightmare. One of them gets hit, screams and keeps screaming. The other two try to help, but there’s nothing they can do. They have to float along beside the victim and wait, knowing that something is beneath them, feeding.

“If they were attacked by sharks, the trauma would have been to their legs, maybe their arms. They would have bled to death, and probably pretty quickly. Massive blood loss, shock, then a sleepy unconsciousness. Thing is, their inflated BCDs would still be afloat, probably with their heads and torsos intact. There would have been plenty left for the Coast Guard to find. Or us. Or some random boater during the last month.”

Amelia sat a little straighter. “Jesus Christ, Doc, no wonder you didn’t want to talk about it.” She made a shuddering, guttural sound. “What a terrible thing to imagine.”

“I know, I know—but remember, what I just described almost certainly did not happen. You weren’t satisfied with the answer I gave you this afternoon, and you weren’t satisfied with the same answer a few minutes ago. It told me you either wanted to be reassured or that you genuinely wanted to explore the most extreme possibilities. I haven’t known you for long, but I know you well enough to respect your intellect and your character. So I told you the truth. An extreme and unlikely truth. My version of it, anyway.”

“Character,” she said, with a hint of self-contempt. “Don’t be too sure about that one. Believe me, I don’t have any more character than the next person.”

I remembered Tomlinson saying that what Amelia had told us was “mostly” true. I don’t believe that he’s a mind reader, but I have come to trust his judgment. Was she offering to share some secret with me, a detail yet to be confided?

I said, “Anything else you want to discuss?” then waited several beats for her to answer before I added, “The first day we met, you asked if you could confide in me. I didn’t know you then. I do now. So the answer is yes. A blanket, unconditional yes. Whatever you want to tell me, any damn private thing you want to say.”

Her reaction surprised me. She cupped her hand around my leg, then leaned and placed her head against my shoulder. “I can see why Janet loved you and all your crazy friends. What you’ve done for me, all the effort you’ve put in. I don’t deserve it, Doc. I really don’t.”

The tone of self-contempt again.

Not much doubt now. There was something she wanted to tell me. I said slowly, delicately, “That night more than four weeks ago, big seas, no moon, the four of you adrift. Out here, not far from where we are right now. Each of you had a responsibility to yourselves to find a way to survive. Not to the group. To yourselves.”

In the darkness, the glow of running lights, I heard her issue a weary sigh.

I added, “There’re a couple of old navy expressions that are supposedly based on some archaic military law: When your ship’s in trouble, use one hand for yourself, one hand for your ship. After that, it’s every man for himself.” I waited again through another long silence before reminding her. “Your ship, Amelia, was gone.”

She replied softly, “I wish they bottled people like you and Tomlinson. I really do. And I wish I could make myself believe that what you just said is true.”

Two days later, Friday, December 12, a package arrived at the marina office via private courier, a sturdy box in brown paper wrapping, heavily taped, with no return address.

I knew that it had to be from Bernie Yeager.

I carried the package home and into my lab and placed it on my stainless-steel dissecting table, which runs the length of the north wall. To my right, beneath the east windows, on a similar table, was the row of working, bubbling aquaria, octopi and fish therein, and more glass aquaria above them on shelves. To my left, along the east wall, near the door, were more tanks, all heavily lidded because they contained the mysterious, disappearing stone crabs and calico crabs.

A quick glance told me that the lids were still in place, my population of crabs undiminished.

In the center of the room, I’d installed a university-style science workstation: an island of oaken drawers and cupboards beneath a black epoxy resin table, complete with a sink, two faucets, electrical outlets, and double gas cocks for attaching Bunsen burners or a butane torch.

Now, from the top drawer, I selected a 5 1/2-inch Mayo dissecting scissors, placed it atop the autoclave, then touched the play button on my wall phone recording machine as I returned my attention to the package.

The recorder is a recent concession to an increasingly integrated, digitized world, and to the growing demands of my small business, Sanibel Biological Supply.

I had more than a dozen messages. I listened to them as I carefully opened the package.

Ransom had bought a little cracker house out on Woodring’s Point. Her toilet was plugged. Could I equip Tomlinson with a plunger, toilet paper, a six-pack of beer, today’s paper, and send him out on my skiff, ASAP?

I smiled. My cousin has the same duplicitous streak as her father. She wouldn’t come right out and say she was lonely, that she wanted the man’s company. She had to attach her private wishes to other needs.

From Colorado College, Colorado Springs, I had an order for two dozen whelk or conch shells, sectioned, cleaned, and bleached. From Davenport Central High in Iowa, I had an order for a hundred live fiddler crabs—what in the hell were they going to do with a hundred live land crabs?

I stopped to jot down the details of several more orders before I heard the voice of Amelia Gardner say: “Hello, Dr. Marion Ford, my new friend and old pal. Greetings from the fifth floor of the Criminal Justice Building, Sarasota, which is a heck of a change from where we were a couple of nights ago, so I’m walking around in kind of a daze. If I sit still too long, the floor starts moving—seriously. Hey, Doc, I want to thank you again for what you and Tomlinson are doing, so maybe you’ll let a nice single lady buy you guys dinner this weekend to celebrate. Or … or just you, if the Stork can’t make it.”

The way Tomlinson looks, the way he behaves, invites nicknames of endearment. Aboard Das Stasi, Amelia had christened him Stork.

What we had to celebrate was the completion of our investigation into the sinking of the Seminole Wind. Behind me, atop the steel military-surplus office desk, stacked neatly next to my black manual typewriter, was the rough draft—twenty-three pages of facts, figures, interviews, and conclusions.

Tomlinson had spent the morning with me, pacing as he dictated from his notes, gesturing wildly when he got excited, while I hunched over the typewriter, banging away with two fingers. We both agreed that the false theories, the nasty rumors that Amelia found so hurtful, could not be addressed directly. The written word has power. To detail those rumors on paper was to give them fresh life, a life of their own. The best way to debunk the rumors was to reveal the facts, simply and concisely. There was no need for advocacy. The data spoke for themselves.