Captiva

appearance. The night he had surprised Hannah and me, he had arrived wild-eyed but well groomed. Dusty blond hair styled neatly. Wearing the carefully pressed travel-adventure khakis of a kind favored by the affluent armchair traveler. The Banana Republic style of outfit that is worn to make a statement. Tullock had a bony, angular face of a type that I associated with country club tennis players: athletic but articulate. With his face and hair, he resembled one of the doctors on the television show M*A*S*H. Hawkeye's second sidekick? Yeah, that was the one.

I wondered what motivated the guy. It was not surprising that he had become obsessive about Hannah Smith. A case could be made that I was also guilty of that. Nor was it surprising that he and others were working behind the scenes, plotting ways to turn the net ban into a personal windfall. Tullock was an ex—state employee, so he knew the ins and outs of the bureaucracy. It was not unusual that he and his cohorts would use that knowledge to their own advantage. What was unusual was that Tullock didn't hesitate to cross dangerous lines. He had told desperate commercial fishermen that they had to riot to get Tallahassee's attention. He had provided Kemper Waits—an unstable man, by all accounts—with a book on how to build a bomb. And it was Tullock, I was certain, who had seeded the rumor that Tomlinson was an informant. But the man was shrewd. Each time, he had tacked on just the right addendum to absolve himself of responsibility. I could hear him giving a deposition, telling some assistant district attorney that the only advice he remembered ever giving anybody was not to riot, not to burn, and not to retaliate. Could also picture the commercial fishermen that he had manipulated sitting there, handcuffed, admitting, yeah, Tullock had told them they shouldn't.

I wondered how that would play with Ron Jackson. I didn't know enough about the law to guess. Suspected that Tullock was operating in the gray fringe areas, and it depended on just how hard the DA's office wanted to go after him—if they went after him. What hard evidence was there, after all? Some black market book on terrorism? If Tullock was shrewd enough to remain safely in the background, pulling all the little puppet strings, then he was shrewd enough to buy a book in a way that was difficult to trace.

I was certain of one thing: Raymond Tullock had some dangerous kinks in his brain. He was fixated on having Hannah. The expression on his face the night he found us together had been grotesque. I could hear Hannah saying that in Tullock's mind, she and the land had become one. Tullock was determined to have them both, and somehow, that determination had grown into an obsession; an irrational craving that had nudged him toward the edge. It would be difficult to prove—perhaps impossible to prove—but I was convinced that Jimmy Darroux had been killed because of that craving . . . and perhaps Tomlinson, too.

When I was off Captiva Pass, I had to begin angling eastward into unprotected water. There was not so much wind now, but it was still gusting briskly out of the northwest. The wind had a bite to it; an Arctic Sea edge. My clothes had the leaden feel of dried salt and dampness. But the sweater and the good S.A.S. field pants were both made of wool, and I had also gotten my foul-weather jacket out of the stern locker and zipped it on. So I was soggy but warm. Surfed along with a following sea, thinking about Tullock, trying to determine the best way to smoke him out. No way was I going to let the bastard remain aloof from all the damage he had done . . . and would continue to do through surrogates. He was one of the behind-the-scenes guys; one of the cool manipulators. Well... I had some experience in that arena myself.

I was his next logical target, of course. Quite literally, he had caught Hannah and me with our pants down. For Tomlinson, Tullock had only required suspicion to act. The question was, how would he come after me?

Tullock wasn't the one-on-one type—he'd had his opportunity that night at the Curlew fish house. And after I told Ron Jackson what I knew, neither the Copper Rim netters nor Kemper Waits would be in a position to do Tullock's dirty work.

That left Tullock powerless against me ... for a while anyway. At least until he found another stooge.

I took some pleasure in that. I'd already stuck Tullock pretty good— the man didn't even know it. Then Hannah would stick him again when she broke the news about her fish farm. But I wanted to nail him in a way that hurt, really hurt, and I needed some time to do that. Time was something I would have. Tullock might be obsessive, but his each and every act was, at least, logical. Again, that was to my advantage. Logic dictated that he wait a good safe period before risking an attack on me. Too many dead men in too short a period and the full mass of state law enforcement would come snooping around his litde island.

I took pleasure in that, too; the pure reasonableness of it.

I was still musing over ways to trap Tullock as I ran through the old Mail Boat Channel—a couple of markers made of broken limbs and Clorox botdes—and happened to notice a fast mullet skiff angling down on me. It was a green plywood boat slapping along, throwing high spray. One person aboard dressed in a full yellow rain suit. Watched the boat jump a sandbar, coming closer. . . saw the driver morion for me to stop. . . and realized it was Hannah.

What the hell was she doing out here?

I levered the throttle back; waited.

Hannah was idling toward me, her skiff rolling and bucking as waves slid beneath the hull. She had to holler to make herself heard. Couldn't understand her, at first. Then: 'Ford! Have you been home yet? Don't go home!'

I began to reply, but did not. There was something strange about the look of her face. . . .

'I've been trying to find you all night! I called and kept calling!'

She had the rain hood up. I was squinting, trying to see her clearly. My damn contact lenses. . . .

'They told me at the hospital you didn't come back last night. So then I decided . . . Ford? Ford! Are you hearing me okay?'

She was close enough now. What I was hoping would turn out to be only a shadow or a grease mark was not a shadow or a grease mark. Her left eye was swollen nearly shut, her cheek a blush of eggplant purple.

I whispered a groaning sound before I yelled, 'What happened to your face?'

Her boat was alongside mine now; we had to jockey our engines to keep the boats from slamming into each other. She touched her fingers experimentally to her cheek. It was as if she had forgotten that she was injured ... or as if she had not had time to look in the mirror. Said, 'It don't even hurt. It's somethin' we don't need to worry about right now—'

'Did somebody hit you?'

'Would you listen for a second—'

'Who hit you?' I shouted. 'Was it Raymond? Goddamn it, I warned you about that guy—'

'That's what I'm tryin' to tell you!' There was a frenetic quality to her tone that demanded I shut up and let her speak. I did. She called, 'Yesterday I started thinking about Raymond. Went down and talked to Arlis. He agreed. What you said about Raymond started makin' sense once we fit all the little pieces together. Then last night, after I got back from the hospital, it was pretty late and Raymond, he just opened the door and walked right into my house. It made me so mad that I... I probably shouldn't have, but I asked him about it. About what happened to Tommy . . . and Jimmy. Then I told him about my fish farm, too.'

I looked at her; could see in her expression—her poor face—that she knew how foolish that had been. I said, 'I don't care what you said, he had no right to hit you—'

'That's not why he hit me. He hit me 'cause I refused to stop seeing you. Then he hit me again because I wouldn't take off to Asia with him. He had my ticket, all the papers, everything all set to go. The midnight flight to Los Angeles. It was like he'd gone crazy. Started rummaging around my house, taking photographs of me, stuff off the mantlepiece, jamming it all into a briefcase. Like he was stealin' little pieces of me to take along. But that's not what I'm talking about, Ford.'

'You called the police. Tell me you called the police.'

'Yeah, but I called them because I was worried. Listen to what I'm telling you! I think Raymond musta knocked me out or something. I woke up on the floor and I had this terrible ... I don't know . . .feeling. It had to do with the last thing I remember him sayin' to me. What he said was something about 'after your boyfriend gets home . . .' Or, 'Don't expect your boyfriend to call after he gets home.' Something like that.'

I nodded agreeably. Hannah didn't seem to be tracking well. Tullock had probably given her a slight concussion. Why was that happening lately to all the people I cared about? I wished the wind weren't rolling our boats around so badly. I wanted to take her into my arms and hold her . . . wanted to apologize to her for my