Ghost River

by Jon Coon

  “That doesn’t sound funny.”

  “Everything was funny to him. He thought prison was a joke.”

  “Did you know him well?”

  “No, but he was one of those kids it’s hard not to like. Dumb as a stump and always in trouble, like a cute puppy who won’t stop chewing your best boots.”

  They pulled into the prison parking lot, entered through a reception area, and were escorted to the visitor’s waiting room. A few minutes later a guard came down and informed them Stony was in the infirmary but wanted to see them. A guard led the way.

  “Why?” Gabe asked.

  The guard answered, “You haven’t been here for a while, have you? Lung cancer hit him hard and fast. Not good.”

  The guard was right. Stony was ashen gray and thin as a rail. “Hey, Gabe,” Stony’s hand shook as he reached up to shake Gabe’s hand.

  “Stony, I didn’t know. I’m sorry,” Gabe said.

  “Yeah, me too,” Stony answered and attempted a laugh, which ended in a coughing spasm.

  “This is Carol, Stony.”

  Stony nodded, and Carol shook his unsteady hand.

  “How are Ramona and your daughter? Is it Christina?”

  “You remember. Ramona married six years ago. I don’t blame her. She waited long enough. Wouldn’t have mattered now anyway. I don’t have much longer.”

  “Yeah, her husband’s a plumber, isn’t that right?”

  “Makes good money. He’s taking good care of them.”

  “That’s great. Stony, we’d like to buy the land. There was a fire last week that destroyed the house. I don’t imagine there was insurance?”

  “No one would ensure that place. I’m surprised it didn’t fall in, not burn. I was happy you would visit and check on things once in a while. No one in my family left to do anything with it.”

  Carol said, “We want to make a fair offer, Stony, so how about I get it appraised, and we agree on a price?”

  “Get the appraisals. Best hurry, don’t know how much longer . . . I’d have lost it years ago if Gabe hadn’t offered to pay the taxes.”

  “As quickly as we can,” she promised.

  “Stony, what else can we do?” Gabe asked.

  “When it’s time, could you bury me by the river? I always loved it there. There’s an old family cemetery. Most of the markers were wood, and they’re gone now, but you could put up a stone for me. That would be great. Invite Ramona and Christina, and give them the money. God knows they earned it putting up with me.”

  “I know the spot. It’s a deal,” Gabe said and again shook his hand. He left phone numbers with the staff with instructions to call if there were changes. Back in the truck, Carol was in tears.

  “You didn’t tell me you’ve been paying the taxes,” she said. “When did that start?”

  “A while back. One way or another he’d have lost the place, and I’ve always liked it. I couldn’t afford to buy it, but this way I’ve been able to enjoy it, and he’s had something to look forward to. You know, a place to come home to. I hope that made doing the time easier for him.”

  Carol said, “How sad to die alone like that in prison. It’s heartbreaking. Surely there’s something more we can do?”

  “Like we promised, we can turn that family plot into a real cemetery with a stone marker. Give him something that will last.”

  CHAPTER 29

  0800

  Chattahoochee River Bridge

  Former Navy explosive ordinance disposal diver Nick Doyle joined Gabe after weeks on sick leave. Still sore from his gunshot wound but bored with idle recovery time, Nick was eager to get back in the water. So was Gabe. They arrived at the bridge slightly after dawn Friday morning, and the McFarland crews were already at work.

  Gabe parked the truck, and when they got down to the water they saw huge stacks of old bridge beams dumped along the river bank being cut up for sale as scrap. But the surprise was Wilson Corbitt’s mangled boat, covered in mud, drying in the morning sun. The cabin roof was crushed like an empty soda can.

  “Oops,” Gabe said. “Didn’t see that coming.” Gabe found Billy, McFarland’s lead diver, and asked about the boat.

  “We found it under the bridge wreckage. Had no idea what the bucket had grabbed until we got it to the surface. A McFarland VP got all excited when we called it in. He came out to see it, Tuesday, I think, but he didn’t want to get muddy, so he told us to get it pumped out. We sent for the pumps, but they haven’t shown up yet.”

  “He didn’t find anything?” Gabe asked.

  “I don’t think so, ’cause he was pretty angry. Told us not to touch it till he got back.”

  “Did he tell you what he was looking for?” Gabe asked.

  “Yeah, he asked us if we found any bodies. How weird is that?”

  “Billy, who was that VP?”

  “He’s a big shot. I think his name is Bodine, Bo Bodine. That’s it. Why, what’s up?”

  “I’m not sure yet, but Bodine is dead. It happened two nights ago. If there are bones, they’re evidence in a murder case. Nobody touches that boat. Got it?”

  “Sure. Murder?”

  “Afraid so.”

  “Anything else?”

  Gabe was thinking it was going to be a lot easier to recover Wilson Corbitt’s body with the boat on the surface. He wouldn’t have to dig it out of the mud in that squashed cabin in sixty feet deep. “Was that the last time anyone saw Bodine?”

  “No, now that you mention it. The night watch told me Bodine came back that night. He walked out onto the approach span and tossed something into the water. The watch said it looked like a computer, a laptop. Said Bodine had a good arm, got it downriver a good ways.”

  “Thanks, that helps.”

  “No problem, but while you guys have things shut down, my guys are out of a job. Any idea how long?”

  “Hopefully not long at all. My partner and I are going looking for that computer. It would help if we could use your big compressor and long hoses.”

  “Sure, anything you need.”

  Jim got good help from Billy and the McFarland dive crew. Gabe and Nick quickly dressed and prepared to set up a jackstay search pattern on the bottom. Anchors, spools of line, and surface floats with dive flags were unloaded from the dive van and dropped into position. With everything in place, Gabe and Nick went through Jim’s critical scrutiny, got a final okay, and made the short step off the long boat into the tannic, dark water.

  They bobbed back to the surface only long enough to grab the buoy line, do a com check and dump the extra air from the dry suits. Shortly they were both on bottom, flattened against the current, moving up either side of the search line, probing the sandy, muddy bottom for the lost computer.

  Most of the bridge steel was gone. Small pieces, with sharp edges, remained, threatening their rubber dry suits. Caution was required, but they still worked to the end of the line in good time. They moved the fifteen-pound mushroom anchor roughly six feet, keeping the bottom line taut, and worked their way back. Search. Move the anchors. Search. Repeat. Nothing. Repeat again. Still nothing. An hour passed in what felt like ten minutes. Jim called them up, and hot coffee was waiting.

  “You covered a lot of bottom,” Jim said. “Do you think it could be buried?”

  “No, I don’t think a laptop would be heavy enough to sink in. My guess is the current carried it farther downriver beyond the reach of these hoses. But we know it’s not here, and that’s a start,” Gabe answered.

  “Look on the bright side,” Nick offered, “if we keep on looking, it could mean job security for the next two hundred years.”

  Still no pumps and still in the Viking dry suit, Gabe climbed up the stern onto the boat’s rear deck. The boat reeked of river and was a slippery mess of mud, sand, and a foul-smelling level of slime. The roof was flattened enough that Gabe had to crawl through a port side window to get in, and once inside he sank waist deep into an ooze of foul smelling river mud. Nick waited behind hi
m on the rear deck.

  “Room for me down there?”

  “Not yet, it’s tight in here. Just stay put.”

  “You never explained how you knew about this,” Nick said.

  “I didn’t know. But here it is, and we need to have a look. It must have been buried under the old bridge junk for us not to have seen it,” Gabe lied, and he felt terrible about it. However “because a dead guy told me” wasn’t going to cut it.

  As Gabe probed the mud he made contact and felt what he expected to find. The skull was intact and still attached to the skeleton. He gently let it rest and continued probing until he found the other, only inches away. He imagined the terror of the boat being crushed and slammed into the river bottom. The couple holding each other, murdered, lying in cold, black water for years, waiting.

  “Wilson and Nancy,” he said. “Now you can go home.”

  He gently pushed mud back over the bones and through the window asked Nick, “How are we doing for time?”

  “We should probably head back,” Nick answered. “Find anything?”

  “Nothing that can’t wait until tomorrow.” If he told Nick what he’d found he’d lose the chance to talk with Nancy. He’d promised Wilson he would find and care for her. Plus, finding that Pelican case was important, and she knew where it was.

  On deck they walked past the clam bucket. It was the size of a small truck with teeth on both jaws over a foot long. Gabe stopped for a better look.

  “I had a friend in the oil patch, Paul Perry,” Gabe recalled, “who was diving construction on the Mobile tunnel. Crane operator picked him up out of ninety feet in one of those monster clam buckets. Had him about thirty feet in the air when he saw Paul’s legs dangling out the bottom. The operator panicked, opened the bucket and dropped Paul back to the bottom.”

  “Kill him?”

  “You would think, but he had on an old Navy style leather weight belt, that belt, and the trash the bucket picked up, kept him from being cut in half. And this is the amazing part: the bucket was missing one tooth, just one. The tooth that would have severed his spine. He was in the hospital for a while, but he lived to dive another day. Now every time I look at one of those monsters, I think of Paul and get shivers.”

  1900

  Back at the RV, Gabe put burgers on the grill while Carol and Emily fixed salad and beans. By the time they finished eating he had a plan. “Could we have a date tonight?” he asked Carol.

  “Like a real date? You’re going on a real date!” Emily exclaimed.

  “A little different,” he smiled.

  “Sounds exciting. How different?”

  Before he could explain, Bob called. “We’ve got a talker at McFarland. Bodine’s administrative assistant is pretty upset. She’s known him for years and swears he’s the last guy on earth to take his life like that. She says he’d been building files about the bridge scam on a laptop, and now it’s gone.”

  “Billy, the dive supervisor, told me one of their guys saw Bo throw it off the bridge. We’ve started looking, but it’s a big river.”

  “Good luck. I’ll be in touch.” Bob signed off.

  Carol and Emily were finishing the dishes.

  “Okay, now how would you like to go get really dirty for a couple of hours?” he asked with a grin. Carol threw a dish towel at him.

  When they were alone, loading the gear, he told her, “McFarland salvaged the boat, but I don’t think they know about the bodies. We need to get there before they find them.”

  Gabe checked in with the McFarland security guard. “We’re going to be working on the boat,” he told the guard. “It’s important that only I and my team get on it and no one else dives here until we reopen the site. Hope I can count on you to help us.”

  Gabe drove in past the guard shack and parked by the boat. He got out and pulled on his dry suit. Carol was in a wetsuit. After zipping up, they climbed through the window into the cabin.

  Knowing where to look expedited the process, and Gabe quickly relocated the bodies and began uncovering them both. As he rolled away the mud, he could see the full skeletons, spooned together in a final embrace. Carol looked in and sighed, “How sad, look at them. Like those bodies in Pompeii, together forever, petrified in ash. It’s beautiful as well as heartbreaking.”

  Gabe continued scraping away the mud. He raised Wilson’s bony arm, wrapped around Nancy’s torso and holding her hand. As he separated their bony fingers, he whistled and said, “Look at this.” On her slender ring finger was a large diamond engagement ring.

  Carol was holding a dive light and sighed when she saw bony fingers and the ring.

  “What a beautiful ring,” she said. “How sad.”

  Gabe gently removed the ring, handed it to Carol and then recovered the bones in the mud.

  “Are we just going to leave them here?”

  “Just for tonight. Tomorrow night we’re going to put her back in the water and have a chat. It’s time to send her to be with him, but first, we need to know where she put that briefcase.”

  CHAPTER 30

  0800

  The Family Diner

  Back at the diner the next morning, Bob started, “I’ve got the assistant Janna going over the photos, putting names on as many as she can.”

  “Did Bo have a family?”

  “Several. Old Bo liked to party, and that led to sequential wives. Had several kids along the way. Janna said his alimony and child support approached the national debt.”

  “All the more reason to go after every dime, I suppose. Did she know Wilson Corbitt?” Gabe asked.

  “Yeah, dashing young Brit. A real charmer. He and Bo were great pals, but then something happened. I didn’t get the rest, but I think she knows.”

  “Finish your grits. Let’s go find out.”

  In her early sixties, Janna was thoughtful, helpful, and angry at the loss of her boss of forty-one years. She had been with him longer than any of his wives, had cared for his kids, and was eager to prove he’d not taken his own life.

  After introductions, Gabe asked about Wilson Corbitt.

  “Janna, what was it that caused the fall-out between Wilson and Bo?”

  “It was Nancy, Bo’s daughter from his first marriage. She was only nineteen. I’ve got her picture. Yes, here it is,” she pulled the photo of a perky, dark-haired, smiling young woman from the stack. “She got pregnant. Wilson was the daddy. He was ten years older. Bo was furious, she was a daddy’s girl, and he loved her. When she and Wilson disappeared, he never spoke of her again. I think Bo was heartbroken she would leave without a word.”

  “Any idea what happened to her?” Bob asked. Gabe became suddenly distracted, looking at the photo and thinking how much she looked like Cas.

  “At first, we thought she had just gone back to England with him. But after weeks, then months, well . . . Wilson gave her a beautiful ring. Must have cost a fortune. She waited until her dad was out of town to show it to me. She was so happy. Just a couple days later they were gone.”

  “Janna, would you still recognize that ring?”

  “I don’t think Bo knew,” Gabe said to Bob as they walked out of the building. “At least at first. He probably thought they eloped. But if they were that close she would have called him or something. He must have suspected the worst. What an awful thing to live with.”

  “How are we doing on finding the guys who blew the bridge?”

  “Explosive Services has been out of business for years, but it looks like those guys build careers out of starting new companies. Have an accident, start a new company. New title, same actors, same script. It’s going to take a while to find them.”

  Carol was late getting back to the RV. She had bags of Chinese food and a trunk full of surprises. They ate at the picnic table under the awning, and as they finished Carol said with impatience, “Well, aren’t you going to ask me what I did today?

  “I’m afraid to ask,” he replied.

  “How did you know where the bodies
were?” she asked abandoning her first line of questioning.

  “Hey, cops know things. And I’m really good—”

  “That has yet to be established. Nonsense. You had help.”

  “Of course. The old engineer in the truck told me. He was in on the bridge scam.”

  “She was just a baby,” Carol said sadly.

  “Not too young to be pregnant,” he noted.

  “Who’s pregnant?” Emily asked from the RV steps. She had a Coke and settled onto the table’s bench seat.

  “The dead girl in the boat,” Carol answered.

  “Oh. Okay.” Emily answered.

  “How would you feel about a new brother or sister?” Carol asked her.

  “Now?”

  “No, that was hypothetical. You know we’re not sleeping together,” Carol rebuffed.

  “Yeah, it might be fun. Having a little brother or sister, I mean.” She giggled as if she were the only one in on her joke.

  “And you?” she turned to Gabe.

  “I agree with Emily. It might be fun.” He narrowed his gaze at Carol, and she smiled. “So what did you do today?”

  “I got three appraisers coming this week. I hired a moving company to clean out the house and put our stuff in storage. I signed the real estate agreement, and we went shopping. Wait here. We’ll be right back.” Emily was laughing and covering her mouth. They walked to an adjacent empty lot and returned in the shiny new yellow Mustang convertible. Carol popped the trunk, which was full of new dive gear: a red and black Viking drysuit, Aga mask, bailout bottle, and regulator, harness, weights and technical diving backplate with a tec wing.

  “Wow,” Gabe said. “That’s serious gear.”

  “If you keep inviting me on these romantic dives I want my own equipment. I don’t like borrowing, especially suits. They always have a suspicious smell. This stuff fits, and the best part is this: have a look.” From the bottom of the pile she pulled a black bag labeled Fourth Element. “I’m not ever going to be cold, never again. This is the underwear used on polar expedition dives. Warm as toast. That’s me. Warm and ready for anything.”