The Vision (19 page)

the area. The fish life was rich and varied, as well. Fish in a myriad of colors darted all

around him. He kept close to the bottom, searching the sand for any little ripple or oddity.

He had painstakingly covered about twenty feet of the ocean bed when he felt the first

bump against his right thigh.

He straightened instantly, reaching to his calf for his dive knife.

His first thought was, shark.

He wasn’t frightened by the thought; he’d been in the company of sharks—lemons,

hammerheads, blue, reef tips—on many occasions. This was the ocean; it was where they

lived. They preferred to stay away from divers most of the time. Every once in a while

though, a shark would become curious and get close. Sometimes one would even butt a

diver. But it was true, in his experience, at least, that clanging a knife against a dive tank or simply landing a good punch on the creature’s nose would quickly send it away, even

if it was a pretty big boy.

Or it could be a grouper, which could grow to huge sizes. They could be friendly. In fact,

divers often found a grouper hanging around the same reef on a daily basis; they would

name it, and sometimes tourists would come and pet the damned fish.

But when he looked around, he saw nothing. There was no six-hundred-pound grouper

nearby that could have given him a friendly nudge. And if it had been a shark, it had

disappeared damned fast.

He took his time, surveying his surroundings in all directions. Nothing. He turned back to

his study of the ocean floor. He covered another twenty feet.

And then it came again.

A feeling that he’d been…

Pushed. Shoved.

And that he wasn’t wanted here.

Which was absurd. He was too old, too experienced and too levelheaded to believe

anything so foolish.

But the sense of unease had settled in, just like the itch to get into the water had settled over him earlier. He told himself that he was a rational man. He held still, listening to the sound of his own breath through the regulator.

After a moment, he went on once again.

The next shove came almost immediately. And it was hard. It sent him flying through the

water.

Marshall didn’t pause to think at all. He didn’t even look around. He shot to the surface,

then swam for all he was worth until he reached his boat. Even as he threw his flippers up

on the dive platform and wrenched off his mask, he felt a tug. On his leg. A forceful pull

that threatened to drag him down into the depths…

No, he thought. Not like this.

Another jerk, hard against his ankles…

“God, no!”

There was a screaming, keening sound that seemed to tear across the blue sky, scattering

the powdery clouds…

The sound was him.

There was no one at the tiki bar when Genevieve and Bethany returned from their lunch.

Bethany yawned. “I think I’m going to take a nap,” she said, then looked at Genevieve.

“No, no, I’m not. I’m not going to leave you alone.”

“Bethany, I’m fine. I can’t spend my entire life around other people,” Genevieve told her.

“Yes, but let’s wait until you meet that Adam guy, huh?”

Genevieve, staring down the docks, noticed that Marshall’s boat was gone. She turned to

Bethany, ignoring her friend’s last comment. “Marshall went out.”

“Marshall is impatient,” Bethany said.

“He was the one who said we should take things slow, that this job was going to take

time, and we shouldn’t forget to have lives, so we wouldn’t get sick of the work,”

Genevieve reminded her.

“Maybe he went fishing,” Bethany suggested.

“Alone?” Genevieve asked.

“How do you know he’s alone?”

“Good point. I don’t.”

Bethany yawned again. “Damn it. Go take a nap,” Genevieve told her.

“No, we can do something lazy, like watch a DVD.”

Looking around, Genevieve saw that Victor’s door was ajar. “No,” she said firmly.

“Look.” She set her hands on Bethany’s shoulders, turning her friend so she could see

Victor open the door. “I won’t be alone. I’ll go visit Victor. Quiz him about his latest

conquests. He’ll enjoy that. I’ll be fine. You go and take a nap.”

“How do you know he isn’t entertaining a conquest right now?” Bethany demanded.

“Because his door is open,” Genevieve told her.

“Okay, now you have a good point. But if you need me—”

“If I need you, I swear, I’ll be on your doorstep. Promise.”

Bethany at last gave her a hug, yawned again and started off for her own cottage.

Genevieve turned to head toward Victor’s.

She walked across the sand, then paused on his porch. There seemed to be a lot of

thumping and banging going on inside. As she stood there, debating whether to knock,

the door started to open.

“Victor,” she said.

Then she gasped.

He was standing there with a head in his hands. A mannequin’s head. The hair was stiff

and flattened to the skull. Wide, blue, unseeing eyes stared out at Genevieve.

Her eyes narrowed instantly as she stared at her friend.

Victor appeared stricken. “Genevieve, I’m—”

“You son of a bitch,” she said softly, and started to turn.

“No!” he cried.

He tried to catch hold of her shoulders, but she shook him off. He raced around in front of

her, the offending head still in his hands.

“You don’t understand,” he told her anxiously.

She stopped dead, staring at him coldly. “I don’t understand?” she said coolly. “Right.

Get away from me, you son of a bitch.”

“Genevieve, please, I swear to you. I’m not the one who did it,” he pleaded.

She gritted her teeth, staring at him. She’d known Victor forever, and she wouldn’t have

put the joke past him. And the fact that he had fished the mannequin out of the sea, once

the real body had surfaced, was only common decency.

But he was staring at her with what seemed to be sincere apology and complete honesty.

“I see,” she said smoothly. “The mannequin just appeared in your cottage.”

“I swear to you, it’s the truth. We can go to church and I’ll swear to you right before the

altar, I didn’t do it.”

Was she an idiot to even consider believing him? While he was standing there with a

head in his hands?

“Okay, okay. I thought it would be funny to put a mannequin on your porch. But not to

hurt you. You’re like my best friend forever. I would never hurt you. Ever. I thought it

might smack you back into reality, that’s all. But I didn’t do it. Honest.”

“Then who did?” she asked softly. “And how did it wind up back in your cottage?”

He shook his head. He’d either gotten pretty damn good at acting, she thought, or he was

telling the truth. “I don’t know.”

“Why are you holding the head?”

He flushed, looking away for a moment before turning back to her once again, eyes

steady, cheeks flushed. “I didn’t want to be caught with it. I was dismantling it so I could take it to some Dumpster piece by piece.”

“I see.”

“Genevieve, you can ask at every store on the street. I never went to anyone trying to

borrow or buy a mannequin.”

“I will check on it, you know,” she told him.

“I didn’t do it,” he repeated pleadingly.

Glancing down the beach, Genevieve saw that Alex was out, walking toward the tiki bar.

She hadn’t noticed them arrive, but Liz and Zach were seated there, as well.

“Maybe you’d better hide the evidence then,” she said softly.

He swallowed, following her glance toward the tiki bar, and nodded. “Gen, I swear…”

“All right, I believe you. But if I ever find out you’re lying to me…well, friends don’t do

stuff like this to friends. A joke is one thing—even if it wouldn’t have been funny to me

in the least. Lying about it…”

“I’m telling the truth.”

“Then hide that head. Especially under the circumstances.”

“Yeah.” He headed back toward his cottage, trying to nonchalantly tuck the head under

his arm. He looked back at her. “Are you coming?” he asked hesitantly.

“Yeah,” she told him. And followed.

It looked like a strangely bloodless massacre had taken place inside. Arms lay atop his bed, legs were strewn on the floor. The torso had been tossed on the futon. The white

gown lay crumpled and ruined beside it.

“My God,” Genevieve breathed.

“Hey, it was a mannequin. Not real,” he reminded her.

She shook her head. He had a box of heavy-duty garbage bags by the coffeemaker.

Standing by the door, Genevieve watched as he bagged an arm.

“Are you going to help?” he demanded.

“Victor, you shouldn’t be getting rid of it. We need to find out who did this,” she said.

“Why?” he asked.

“Why? So that we know!”

He shook his head. “If I showed this to anyone, I’d be blamed. You know that.”

“I’m the one the trick was played on. If I’m not mad, what does it matter?”

“You believe me, but who else will? Not your new Romeo, that’s for certain!”

“But, Victor—”

“Are you going to help or not?”

“No. You’re my friend, Victor, and I believe you. So it’s important to find out who did

this.”

Again, he stubbornly shook his head. “It was a prank. It was put in here afterward just so

I’d be blamed. We need to make it disappear. Whoever did it will eventually start to get

nervous and want to know what happened. He—or she—will start asking questions.”

Genevieve folded her arms across her chest. “She? What woman could have done this?

Not Bethany, I can assure you.”

“I put that in for political correctness,” he said indignantly. “But what do we really know

about Lizzie or her husband?”

“Oh, please!”

“Okay, so forget the she. And Zach. I don’t think he’d have done this. They don’t seem to

have a sense of humor.”

“Right, because this was so funny.”

“Will you please just help me, before someone else shows up?”

She stared at Victor. Was she a fool to believe him? “All right. But like I said, if I ever

find that you did this…”

“You won’t,” he said flatly.

“Okay, once the body parts are bagged, what next?”

“Then we take a little walk and start to get rid of them. I’ll even buy you a drink along

the way.”

“What a deal,” she murmured. She was surprised to feel queasy when she picked up a

disconnected leg.

It wasn’t real, she thought to herself.

Then again, were ghosts?

Jay got Thor started on the computer, showing him how to run the program. There hadn’t

been a problem. Jay’s superiors seemed to believe that Thor had government connections,

and that as head of the current salvage project, Thor should have access to information

regarding criminal activity in the area.

Thor wasn’t exactly sure why, but he found himself looking back over the last twenty

years.

Some of the files contained crimes that had spanned both Miami-Dade and Monroe

counties. The frequency of violent crime in the big city was frightening; but heading

south, into Jimmy Buffett-ville, violence decreased. Live and let live. But there were still a number of murders on the books, most of them solved. Husbands who had killed wives.

Wives who had killed husbands. Drug deals gone bad. Accidental killings. There were

also files that contained crimes that hadn’t been solved, or where the solutions were

questionable. A two-year-old, drowned in a swimming pool. The child had suffered from

severe birth defects. Had the agonized mother decided death was better than life? The

police had been suspicious, but they had found no proof, and she had never gone to trial,

with the death officially ruled accidental.

After a while, Jay excused himself, explaining he had paperwork to do.

After Jay left, Thor began to wonder what he was doing, just what he was looking for.

He moved on to missing persons reports.

Many of the missing had been found. Children were not always abducted; sometimes,

they were runaways, and the Keys were a nice place to run away to. Warm weather, easy

work, tourists willing to give handouts. Dina Massey, a blue-eyed blond sixteen-year-old

from Ohio had made it down on a bus. After two months of panhandling, she had been

questioned by a police officer. She had broken down, eager to go home but afraid of how

her father would react. A picture showed tearful parents who had come for her, forgiving

all. Donald Leto, of Fort Lauderdale, hadn’t been so lucky. He, too, had run away. He,

too, had been sent home. A notation at the bottom of the file noted that he had died back

in Fort Lauderdale, a victim of vehicular homicide.

His father had been driving the car that killed him.

Thor decided he was looking for victims over twenty-one.

Right before he switched screens, however, he found a missing persons case that hadn’t

been solved. The bulletin had been sent from Miami. The girl in the picture, Maria Rico,

was a beautiful blonde. She had disappeared just the year before. Friends suspected that

either her abusive stepfather had killed her—though police had found no evidence to

support such a scenario—or that she had run south. A “friend” she had met on the

Internet had suggested he could give her a haven from her abusive stepfather if she

afforded him the opportunity.

No one knew the identity of the friend. And she hadn’t been seen in Key West, though

her photo had been plastered across the island.

Thor stared at the girl’s picture. She had been seventeen at the time of her disappearance.

Every inch a woman. He wondered why no one had suspected the woman found on the