After the dishes were done, he found a local AM station on the shortwave. The news guy didn't say anything about the body of Hollins being found. Maybe the woman at Everglades County Sheriff 's Department thought he was kidding, a crank. No way of telling. But the idea of Rafe still out there, still hanging in the darkness, was oddly unsettling, and Ford decided to do some work to put it out of his mind.
* * *
Tomlinson came clattering out of the darkness in the tiny painter skiff he kept tethered behind the Morgan sailboat, the boat that had been his home since his arrival in Dinkin's Bay two months earlier—and probably years before that.
He tied up at the dock beside Ford's skiff and flat-bottomed trawl boat, stepped out waving with one hand, pulling his shoulder-length hair back into a ponytail with the other, calling "Hey, Doc, hey, man, what's happening?" Then he climbed onto the stairs, into the light, saying "Sittin' out there all alone, listening to that party going on—" Tomlinson, tall and bony, blond with a black beard, shrugged. "Really got to be kind of a bummer, you know? Thought I'd stop by."
Looking at Tomlinson was like stepping into the past and seeing a child of the Sixties with that look in the eyes, still hearing music, an old hand at psychedelic visions, a man about Ford's age who had weathered badly but had visited God often enough not to care. Tomlinson had taken to stopping by the stilt house off and on in the evenings, sometimes bringing a book to read while Ford worked; other times talking away, and Ford didn't mind. He liked Tomlinson and was glad for the company.
Ford had just removed Jeth Nicholes's shark from the ice. It lay on the outside cleaning table beneath the light of the twin overhead bulbs, its three-foot body in rigid curvature. Ford said, "How's it going, Tomlinson?"
Tomlinson said, "Are you kidding? How's it going? You've got to be kidding." He made a face, showing he was not as serious as he sounded, saying "You been listening to the music they're playing over at the marina? How could you miss it, loud as hell, man. Damn people at that party are deaf or something. Going to ruin their damn inner ears playing it that loud. There's been research done on that stuff."
Ford said, "I've got some beer up in the refrigerator, you want to go get it?"
"What?"
Grinning, Ford spoke louder. "I said I've got some beer."
Tomlinson said, "Oh," reaching his hand out, touching the shark with one finger. "My God, they're playing Twisted Sister. They're playing Van Halen. They're playing Prince, man. Rot their damn brains, listening to junk like that. These kids today, huh?" Tomlinson shuddered. "What kind of beer?"
"I didn't even look in the sack."
"A cold beer'd be nice right now."
"Make sure you get the refrigerator closed tight. The door's got a bad seal."
Tomlinson stopped at the top of the stairs and looked down into the shark pen. The floodlight made the water the color of strong tea, and, beneath the surface, three black torpedo shapes cruised slowly into the light, following the perimeter of the pen. Tomlinson said, "Why they always swim that way, man, that direction? Every time I come here, those three big sharks are always swimming the same way, the same speed. It's weird, like they're police dogs or something."
Ford looked up from the cleaning table briefly. "I don't know why. Sharks in captivity almost always swim clockwise. In Florida, anyway. Not in Africa, though. It was different in Africa. They swam counterclockwise. Someone somewhere probably knows why, but I don't."
"You think if I fell in there, all three of them would nail me? Eat me up?"
Ford said, "If you fell in, the noise would probably scare them so bad they'd bust through the wire, so don't, okay? It's hard enough just getting them to eat fish."
Tomlinson returned with two bottles as Ford took up the scalpel and made a long cut, opening the small bull shark's belly. He penned back the skin as the huge gray liver slid out, spilling over the edge of the cleaning table as if trying to escape. He pushed the liver away and found the larger of the fish's two stomachs and snipped it open with scissors, front to back. Inside was a litter of catfish spines and bits of shell and crab carapace. Tomlinson said, "He was hungry, huh?"
"Could be. This is its cardiac stomach, the one they can expel through their mouths, inside out, if they want to get rid of something they can't digest."
"Then why's it still have all that gravelly junk in it? They can't digest that kind of stuff, can they?"
"Some of it probably. But I'm not sure."
Tomlinson finished his beer quickly and now opened Ford's bottle. "You want this?"
"No. Go ahead."
"Sharks are your thing, huh? You told me that's what you've been studying, what your work's all about."
"Now it is. For a long time my main interest was biolumi-nescence. Phosphorescence. You know how sea water sparkles?"
"Yeah, man. Boat leaves a bright trail at night. I love it. Like green fire."
"Only it's cold light caused by tiny organisms that light up when they're disturbed. I got interested in a little crustacean called an ostracod. It gives off a pale-blue light; very pretty. Put a bunch of ostracods in a tube of water, shake it, and they give off enough light to read by. The Japanese used to collect them and dry them. During the war, Japanese officers would take a little ostracod powder in their palm, moisten it, and read dispatches in dark-out situations."
"Dormitory chemistry," said Tomlinson. "I used to be good at that."
The skin around Ford's eyes crinkled when he smiled. "From ostracods I went into the single-celled bioluminescent organisms, things called armored flagellates. That was my main interest for a while. Then I went to fish. Tarpon. The tarpon is one of the most popular gamefish in the world, yet hardly anything is known about its life history."
"But now it's sharks."
"Temporarily, anyway. Just bull sharks. I don't know that much about them yet. No one does, really. I got interested when I was in Africa. Second to Australia, there used to be more shark attacks off the coast of Durban, South Africa, than any other spot in the world. The Durban businesspeople have spent a lot of money enclosing the public beaches with nets. The shark responsible for most of the attacks is the Zambezi shark. It's called that because it goes up the Zambezi River into fresh water." Ford tapped the fish he was working on. "This is the Zambezi shark. Our bull shark. The same species. Then I was in Central America. In Lake Nicaragua and in a Masaguan lake they call Ojo de Dios, God's Eye, there's a freshwater shark that is extremely aggressive. Attacks on people are so common that the natives won't even bathe in the lakes. The Maya considered the shark a deity; some still do. Used it in their glyphs, their carvings. They still refer to the sharks as El Dictamen, The Judgment. You'll see an occasional boat on the lake, but that's it. Natives consider swimming out of the question. "
"And those are bull sharks, too? All the same fish, right?" Tomlinson was combing his fingers through his hair, getting into it.
"Right. So I'm interested in the bull shark for a couple of reasons. Why is it more prone to enter and live in fresh water? Why's it so aggressive off South Africa and in Central America, but not here? It's one of our most common sharks, but this area has had only four recorded shark attacks in the last hundred years, none fatal. Those attacks may have involved bull sharks, no one knows. Even so, with all the people who swim here, the chance of shark attack is statistically insignificant. Why?"