Everglades (41 page)

It was my only chance.
Our
only chance.

When I got to the top of the quarry, I turned off the road, onto the ridge, and steered directly toward Lost Lake. It was a couple of hundred yards away. The water color had changed from molten red to molten bronze, and the lake’s surface seesawed before my eyes as the truck’s tires banged over rocks and small trees. Traveling at thirty . . . then forty miles per hour, the steering wheel vibrated and bucked so hard beneath my hands that it was struggle to maintain control.

Did I hear an electrical click from behind me?

Still accelerating, I scrunched down in my seat, expecting to feel a blinding white pain that marked the explosion, and the end of my own life. I was still ducked low, accelerator floored, when one of the front right tires blew.

Stunned, I released the steering wheel momentarily, and the world tilted crazily as the truck careened sideways, then rolled.

Suddenly, water was pouring through the broken window, gushing like a river, filling the cab. Then I was underwater, in a familiar, slow-motion world.

For a few moments, the escalating speed of the truck’s descent toward the bottom of the lake kept me mashed to the roof of the cab. I reached, found the steering wheel. I pulled myself toward the broken window.

I have wide shoulders. For a terrible, claustrophobic moment, I got stuck in the window, but managed to bull my way through. Then I was ascending toward what appeared as a silver lens, thirty or forty feet above . . . slowly ascending, exhaling bubbles, right arm extended toward the surface out of old habit.

When I breached the surface, I sucked in air, filling my lungs. Then I paused, sculling, for a reflective moment. If the water hadn’t shorted the electrical system, the nitrate might still explode.

I looked at my watch: I saw 7:59 P.M. become 8 P.M.

Not likely.

I began to do a relaxed breaststroke toward shore—and got another unexpected shock when several big fins cut the surface ahead of me, then disappeared.

I was still spooked from my recent encounter.

Then I smiled.

No. The tarpon, a prehistoric fish, can supplement its oxygen supply by rolling at the surface and gulping surface air.

Billie Egret was right. Tarpon had returned to Lost Lake. Tarpon had come back to the Everglades.

 

 

People were screaming.

The screams we heard were coming from the direction of the outdoor amphitheater. Men and women yelling, falsetto shrieks, their voices echoing through the shadows of cypress trees.

I’d driven the airboat up onto the manicured grass of Sawgrass, as close to the parking area as I could get.

Sally kept telling us, “I’m okay, I’m okay. There’s no need to hurry.”

But she wasn’t okay. She was faint from dehydration, already starting to cramp. She had a swelling subdural hematoma on her temple, and she was probably in shock, too.

And she kept repeating, “The Lord was with me. I was never afraid. All the things that creep tried to do to me; all the things he said. I was never afraid. The Lord put His hand in mine and never let go.”

It was like a dream, she said, opening her eyes and seeing us. For a moment, she thought she was in heaven.

All good boat captains keep a little bag stowed aboard, well stocked for emergencies. Billy Tiger was a good skipper, and I found his emergency bag in the forward hatch. Along with packages of freeze-dried food, a first-aid kit, candles and bug repellent, I found two half gallons of bottled water, and a military-issue blanket.

Tomlinson tended to Sally, wrapping her in the blanket, helping her hold the half-gallon bottle so she could gulp the water down.

I ran the boat. Our return to Sawgrass was not nearly as fast as our trip out, but I didn’t tarry. We needed to get Sally to the hospital. And I was eager to confront Jerry Singh.

Sally’s physical description of the man who assaulted her, and who also murdered Frank and his landlord, left no doubt that it was Izzy Kline—Bhagwan Shiva’s personal assistant. So I wanted to find Kline. I wanted to find him
tonight.
I wanted to get to him, snatch him, take him to some lonely spot, then eliminate him.

It was irrational. I knew that. Contemplating revenge is always irrational. Besides that, anyone smart enough to simulate an earthquake is smart enough to run far and fast after committing at least two murders and attempting a third.

The bartender said he’d heard Kline was going to Europe—probably a red herring. But I didn’t doubt that Kline was leaving for somewhere.

The last time she’d seen him, Sally told us, was late that morning. She said he’d smiled at her and said, “Give my regards to St. Peter,” and slammed the truck door, timers set, engine running.

So he was probably out of the state. Maybe already out of the country.

If anyone knew Kline’s whereabouts, though, it would be the man Tomlinson called the Non-Bhagwan.

I was eager to look into Shiva’s face and make him talk. So I steered a rhumb line toward Sawgrass, running at speed.

I watched the sunset sky fade to bronze, then pearl, as the far horizon absorbed light. To the east, the vanished sun still illuminated the peaks of towering cumulous clouds. A commercial airliner, banking away from Miami International, became an isolated reflector, mirror-bright, connected to a silver contrail. Below, white birds became gray as they glided toward shadowed cypress heads to roost.

Tomlinson was in the seat below me, holding Sally. Every now and then, he’d stroke her blond hair. Her hand would find his, and squeeze.

 

 

Now, back at Sawgrass, I switched off the engine of
Chekika’s Shadow,
swung down out of my seat and helped Tomlinson get a wobbly Sally Carmel on solid ground.

“We’ve got to find something better than this blanket,” she told us. “I can’t let anyone else see me naked.”

After what she’d been through, her modesty was touching.

That’s when all three of us grew silent, our brains trying to translate and identify the strange, distant sounds coming to us through cypress trees.

Terror has a tone; an unmistakable pitch. We were hearing the screams of terrified people.

I said, “It sounds like there’s a riot going on over there.”

Tomlinson waited for a few moments, head cocked, listening, before he replied, “Something’s happened. Something powerful. I can
feel
it, man.”

We could also hear the wail of distant sirens.

As we walked out of the trees, we could see people running. Men and women in their bright robes; some in regular clothes, too. Some seemed to be running aimlessly, as if panicked or crazed. Most, though, were running toward the parking lot where a line of cars had bottlenecked at the exit. Horns blaring, some drivers were cutting cross-country to escape the line and get back to the main road.

One thing was clear—people were fleeing the area out of fear.

Holding Sally between us, we walked against the flow of people toward the amphitheater. We headed that way partly out of curiosity—what was happening?—but mostly because we wanted to find Billie or James. They both had cell phones, and I wanted to notify law enforcement just as soon as possible. Klein might be at an airport right now, waiting to fly out.

I also wanted to call an EMS chopper for Sally. I’d checked her eyes. Her pupils weren’t dilated or fixed, but that didn’t guarantee that she hadn’t suffered a concussion.

As we approached, we could see that the amphitheater had emptied. To the right, though, off in the cluster of trees where I’d first found Tomlinson, the Egret Seminoles had gathered, their colorful shirts and blouses dulled by the fading light. Karlita was with them.

She walked toward us, saying, “I’m sorry, Tomlinson. I know you don’t approve, but we had no choice.”

Behind her, in a somber tone, Billie Egret said to us, “He’s gone. The Everglades took him. It had to be. If you give bad, you get bad in return. If you take, you have to give—and Shiva, he took
souls.
”

None of which made any sense to me until I looked where Billie was now pointing. The amphitheater’s concentric levels of seating remained. But where the stage and acoustic dome had once stood, there was now . . .

I had to stare to be sure, brain scanning for explanation. . . . where the stage and acoustic dome had once stood, there was now a circular lake, water roiled and murky, lots of trash and flotsam on the surface.

Billie told us, “When the first tremors started, the Ashram followers were so excited. I thought they’d won. I thought Shiva had won. But then, after the third tremor, chunks of the dome began to fall. Then the whole stage collapsed and fell, like going down a waterfall. The earth collapsed beneath it. A sinkhole.”

Karlita added, “People were terrified. They panicked. It was frightening to watch.”

His voice subdued, perhaps in awe, Tomlinson asked, “When it happened, was he alone? Was Shiva the only one on stage?”

“Yes. He was alone. I wish you had been here to witness the . . .
power
of it.”

We
would
witness it. Worldwide, anyone with a TV could witness what happened that Easter Sunday over and over because Shiva’s film crew had captured it on video. The segment became standard fare for reality-based disaster shows: Jerry Singh—Bhagwan Shiva—in his purple robes, still leading his followers in that metonymic chant.

Boom!

Boom!

Boom!

Then there is a close-up of Singh grinning triumphantly as the camera lens begins to vibrate with one . . . two . . . three earth tremors . . . his followers cheering but still chanting; chanting faster now:

Boom!

The close-up continues as Shiva’s expression changes from joy to a kind of stunned surprise as chunks of stucco begin to fall on him from the acoustic dome. He’d been sitting in full lotus position, but he gets quickly to his feet, perplexed.

Then all color drains from his face—an illustration of fear, then horror, as the rear of the stage collapses. The initial collapse created a momentary, marble incline, water already boiling up to take it.

The last shot shows Shiva clawing desperately, trying to keep from sliding into the pit below. He’s screaming something, but there’s so much peripheral noise, his words are indecipherable.

Above him, the laser hologram of the solar system continues to orbit, unaffected.

Then he is gone; the stage, dome, the prophet of Ashram, all swallowed up by a flooding darkness.

Three days later,
The Miami Herald
reported that a charter captain, his boat loaded with tourist scuba divers, found Shiva’s body floating off Marathon and Molasses Reef, more than a hundred miles south of Sawgrass.

Geologists from the University of Florida provided an explanation. The sinkhole created by the series of explosions had collapsed into an underground river—the Long Key Formation. The river had swept Shiva’s body along beneath sawgrass, swamp, mangrove fringe and all of Florida Bay, before jettisoning him into open sea.

Billie Egret had a more succinct explanation for me:
“Reciprocity.”

chapter thirty-one

Eleven
days later, on Thursday, the first day of May, two FBI agents came to the marina, asking for Tomlinson. They had a warrant to search
No Mas,
and they impounded his computer.

Aboard his sailboat, in the icebox, they found a sandwich bag filled with what appeared to be cannabis.

The agents used the discovery as leverage. They told Tomlinson that they were investigating what may have been an eco-terrorist bombing at Sawgrass in the Everglades. They said they had cause to believe that he might have been a participant. If he cooperated, talked freely, they’d forget they found the marijuana. If he didn’t, he was going to jail
now.

He requested a few minutes alone with me before he decided.

“What’ll happen if they arrest me?”

“Ask a lawyer, not me.”

“But I
am
asking you.”

I said, “If they arrest you, you’ll be taken to the jail in downtown Fort Myers. Tomorrow, you’ll have your first court appearance, where the judge will consider bail—which you won’t get. Not if they have you pegged as an eco-terrorist. Then you’ll go back to jail until your hearing, where you’ll be formally charged. After that, you’ll go back to jail until your trial’s over, which will be a
very
long time. Call an attorney.”

He said, “I think I’ll talk with them. They’ve got to know it was all Izzy Kline.”

I told him, “Call an attorney! That’s exactly what you should do.”

He thought about that for a moment, twisting a lock of hair with his long, nervous fingers. “I don’t know. Jail might be kind of peaceful. It’s getting worse and worse, you know.”

He meant the number of daily visitors the marina now received; devotees of
Tomlinsonism.

Long before the events of Easter Sunday, unknown to any of us, several of Shiva’s own followers—now former followers—had been deeply touched by Tomlinson’s paper. It was they who were now spreading the word, via the Internet, that Tomlinson had been in attendance at the Cypress Ashram that amazing night. That he had personally exposed Bhagwan Shiva for the fraud he was.

It was also Tomlinson’s powerful aura, they suggested, that had catalyzed Shiva’s doom. So, ironically, Tomlinson had won the devotion of a growing number of people who had once followed the only man that I feel he genuinely despised.