“I was telling Doc that a lot of weird, bad things have been happening to me lately. Maybe you know something about it, maybe you don’t, but I’ve got to ask. How long have you been following me?”
He said, “’Bout two weeks. I guess maybe a little more since the company called. Asked if I’d take the case.”
“Everglades Home and Life?”
“Yes. Your husband’s insurance company.”
“Did you ever break into my house? Someone’s been coming in when I’m gone, going through my personal things.”
DeAntoni’s face demonstrated concern. “It wasn’t me. My right hand on the Bible. I’ve got no reason. You don’t have a security system?”
“Yes. Supposedly, a very good one. So whoever’s breaking in is no amateur. That’s why I’m asking.”
DeAntoni said, “Do they steal stuff?”
Sally said, “No. They leave everything exactly the way they found it.”
“Then how do you know someone’s getting into your house?”
“That’s the same question the police asked me. I’m… I’m not sure. It’s more of a feeling I have. An awareness. Almost like an odor-I can tell that someone’s been going through my things. My files, even my clothing. Plus, all the weird bad luck I’ve been having. It’s being done intentionally.”
She told us it began shortly after her husband vanished. She’d get into her car and the battery would be dead. Or the battery cable loose. Or a tire flat. “A brand-new BMW,” she said. “What are the chances?”
It was always when she was out. Never at home.
“It’s as if someone wanted to make sure I’d be delayed coming back,” she said.
Someone had been getting into her computer, too. She’d checked the records of her Internet provider and found that a person had been signing on under her password from an outside computer, and also from her own personal computer. She’d changed passwords several times, but wasn’t certain if her e-mail was still being monitored.
“Something else bad happened to my… to a pet I had. A dog,” she said, her voice beginning to crack. “But I… I don’t want to talk about that now. Maybe later.” She turned to me, regaining her composure. “That’s all I wanted to ask Frank. Should I trust him?”
I said, “Yeah. I think you can.”
Sally told us she couldn’t call the International Church of Ashram Meditation by its official name because she didn’t consider it a church. Pagan idolatry. That’s what the minister at her church called it. The Reverend Wilson.
An example: Bhagwan Shiva taught his followers that, once they were formally accepted, the morality of the outside world no longer applied to them. Everyone on the inside was a chosen person. Everyone on the outside was part of a spiritually dead society, so what outsiders thought-even family members-didn’t matter.
“That’s a guy I need to talk to,” DeAntoni said. “Shiva. I’ve asked his secretary for an appointment a half dozen times. Even did it in writing. So I may have to try walking into their Palm Beach compound, see what happens.”
Sally said, “You won’t get far. My husband used to talk about how good the security is. Family members on the outside are always trying to snatch their loved ones, because that’s the only way to get them deprogrammed. So Shiva has his own little group of enforcers, like guards. Archangels, that’s what he calls them. They dress in black. They’re scary-looking, their whole attitude. Men and women both. The ones I saw, they carry nightsticks, and those little guns that shoot electrical darts. What do you call them-?”
Listening to every word, DeAntoni said,“Tasers.”
“Tasers, yes, I think. And his personal staff, his Archangels, they swagger around like they can’t wait to use them.”
“Talk about one crappy religion. How nice is that? People get in, they can’t get out.”
Sally said, “Once you reach a certain level-they’ve got a hierarchy of secret levels-once you get so high in the organization, yes, I don’t think you can just one day say, hey, I’m out of here. I don’t think they’ll let you leave.”
“How high did Geoff get?”
“About as high as a member can get. Over a period of slightly more than three years, he went to the top. Probably because he had so much personal interaction with Shiva-their business dealings. He was proud of himself, all his church promotions. He was such a goal-oriented person, so obsessive, that he had to excel at everything.”
Frank asked, “Your husband and this religious guy, would you consider them friends?”
“No. I don’t think Shiva has friends. He’s set himself up like a God, so everyone else is beneath him. Besides, Geoff began to realize that Shiva wasn’t all that he pretended to be. I know they had at least a couple of blowups.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because he told me. A few months before Geoff disappeared, he told me he was going to ask Shiva for some kind of resettlement. It had to do with all the money and property we’d given the Ashram. Geoff was about as mad as I’ve ever seen him.”
I asked her, “Did Shiva agree?”
“Yes. My husband said he had no choice. I don’t know what he meant by that.”
It took her a few minutes to explain that she didn’t know all the details, but the resettlement had something to do with a property the Church of Ashram owned on the northeastern edge of the Everglades.
“They’re trying to put in housing, hotels and at least three casinos. The casinos have to be built on Indian land for some reason, but that’s part of the plan because the church’s acreage butts up against reservation property. Even so, I know they were having permitting problems. Geoff told me that.”
I asked her, “Why would Florida Indians allow anyone to build on their land? That makes no sense.”
“Not their property, really. Shiva’s property. He’d sell the Indians his acreage for some ridiculously low price. A dollar, or whatever it takes to be legal. There’s a federal law that says an Indian tribe can incorporate purchased property as part of their tax-free reservation. In return, they’d let Shiva build his development and casinos. He’d pay them a percentage of the gross. That’s what he’s trying to get them to do.”
She added, “But the incorporated tribes-the Seminole Tribe of Florida and the Miccosukee Tribe-weren’t interested. That’s the last I heard. Geoff told me Shiva was going crazy trying to get them to go along with his idea. Money, political pressure, everything. He even started dressing like an Indian, trying to kiss up. It didn’t help. Nothing helped. But, the last time I spoke with Geoff, he said Shiva had an out. A way of making it work.”
“Did he give you any details?”
“No.”
I sat for a moment, thinking about it before I said, “Your husband. The deal he struck with Shiva. He was to get a piece of the casino development?”
“Yes. A big piece. Enough for him and Shiva to patch up their differences. But then Geoff disappeared.”
DeAntoni told her about the photograph.
Hands folded in her lap, the lady shuddered, staring off toward the mangrove circle that creates Dinkin’s Bay.
A bright night. Jupiter was like an illuminated ice shard in the April dusk. To the northwest was a dome of foggy light floating on a rim of gray: the stadium lights of Sanibel Elementary School. A Little League game was going on there, or maybe one of the beer-bash softball games.
DeAntoni said, “You don’t have to look at it. You already been through a lot. And I’m not the kind’a guy who’d upset a woman for all the fuh… fuh…”
He paused, flustered, trying to edit himself in midsen tence. “For all the, uhhh, freakin’ tea in China. So if you don’t want to see the picture, you want me to drop the subject, you just tell me, and it’s mum’s the word.”
Touched by his deferential manner-this huge, burly man behaving like a respectful adolescent-she smiled, reached and patted the back of his hairy hand. “You’re very thoughtful. If I’d known what kind of man you were, that you were just doing your job, I’d have felt safer, actually.”