To chance surrendering his catch.
Finally, a dark shape broke the surface fifty feet behind the boat.
The object rose on a swell and hung there.
But just as quickly it disappeared from sight in the trough behind the next wave crest.
He stopped reeling and steadied his gaze on the spot where it would reappear. The tug on the rod told him the object was still there, and he watched it come into view as the wave rolled past.
It took several seconds for his mind to fully comprehend what exactly the form was.
Then it became suddenly clear.
Feeling the weight on the line, he’d envisioned all sorts of things: a section of fisherman’s net; a cluster of coconuts; even a bag of trash thrown overboard by a careless boater.
Certainly not this.
“Is that what I think it is?” asked Robert, leaning on the transom to get a closer look.
Jack lowered the tip of the pole, cranked in the slack on the line, and pulled back on the fiberglass rod with all his strength. Good old Jack Ferrell luck.
Again.
He took another couple of turns on the reel. “Sure as shit isn’t the shark we hoped for.”
Kazuko gasped behind him.
He repeated the process with the fishing pole and pulled against the bulk of the partially submerged carcass. “Back this tub up and let’s get the body aboard before we lose it.”
“Already on it,” Kazuko shouted above the sound of the boat and sea.
He heard the rubber soles of her canvas shoes scuff the deck. Grim determination willed him to hold on.
Several tense seconds passed. Then he felt as much as heard Fast Times’s twin transmissions slip into reverse and the deck vibrate under his feet as the propellers beneath the boat’s stern dug in.
At once the gap between them and the bobbing corpse began to narrow.
The broad transom plowed into a swell like a seawall sending up a sheet of spray that soaked his shirt. Blinking away the salt sting, he kept a strain on the monofilament so as not to chance slipping the hook and cranked in the final few yards of line.
The body rolled in the wave exposing a face that was clearly male.
Lifeless eyes stared back at them.
For two long seconds, he sat transfixed, staring at the remains bobbing in the waves a few feet astern.
“Get ready,” he said to Robert who now held the long-shafted boathook.
Robert didn’t move his gaze from the water. He appeared to be gauging the distance, waiting for the right moment.
Seconds ticked by with agonizing slowness.
Another swell rose and splashed against the transom.
Jack willed the barb of the hook to not pull free of the dead flesh.
CHAPTER 2
All Jack could do was hold on.
“Cut the throttles,” Robert at last hollered over his shoulder. He adjusted his grip on the aluminum shaft, leaned far over the fantail, and snagged the collar of the victim’s sodden shirt as Jack drew the dead man in close to the boat.
They’d never lift the body onboard without a rope.
He stuffed the butt of the fishing rod in the metal pole holder on the side of the fighting chair and scrambled out of the seat. Kazuko met him with a coiled length of braided nylon mooring line held in her outstretched hand. She’d obviously anticipated his thoughts.
“Tie off to that stern cleat.” He nodded in the direction and took the rope from her hand, leaving one end for her. She went to work, and he busied himself fashioning a noose with the other.
“Besides the obvious,” she said. “Don’t you think it’s strange we snagged a body way out here?” She swept her hand toward the ocean. “I mean, there’s not a single boat in sight.”
Jack scanned the surface of the water and contemplated its vastness. He was more concerned with not losing the dead weight hooked on the end of his line. With so many freighters sailing in and out of Hawaii at all hours of the day and night, it was possible a careless or drunken crewman had fallen overboard unnoticed. It could be hours before one of his mates discovered him missing. If so, the ship would be miles away with no idea where to look for the missing man.
“You might want to hurry,” Robert nodded astern. “We need to get this guy out of the water, and fast. It appears we have company.”
Jack turned his attention on the grey-brown dorsal fin slicing an arc through the surface of the water twenty feet aft. A large tiger shark, not the Great White they’d hoped to catch for the aquarium. Drawn by the scent of death, the man-eater wouldn’t circle long. And it would only take seconds for the ten-foot beast to rip the carcass apart.
“Work this loop around the guy’s chest, if you can.” He lassoed the dead man’s head and watched Robert manipulate the noose into place with the boat hook.
The tiger circled closer. Jack watched the predator out of the corner of his eye and pulled the loop tight. The noose held.
“Now or never,” he said.
Robert leaned into the effort with him, and together they hoisted the distended human remains up and over the transom. Jack exhaled and ran his forearm across his sweaty brow, relieved the bloating corpse remained in one piece slumped into a fetal position on the deck.
They both stared.
“Any idea how long he’s been down there?” Kazuko asked.
A similar thought already had his mind working. The body was clothed in dark denim pants and a light colored pullover shirt that could have been stained with oil, or even blood. Both items of clothing appeared to be intact for the most part. No shoes. No toes for that matter. Not surprising. There were other injuries consistent with small fish having fed on tender appendages. But no damage had been done by an ocean predator large enough to inflict massive tissue loss.
Strange . . . or just luck?
He didn’t care which. Another second or two in the water with that shark and it would not have mattered.
He studied the guy’s facial features. Asian, he thought . . . black straight hair. Had the body not been swollen half-again its size by the formation of internal gases the man might have been averaged sized: five foot seven or eight, one hundred fifty or sixty pounds. The discolored skin was further evidence of the early stages of decomposition that causes a drowning victim to rise to the surface.
“Two . . . at the most, three days.” He faced Kazuko. “When someone drowns, they sink and then float to the surface when gases from decomposition build inside the body. That tells me this poor soul was on his way up from the bottom, but not quite there. If he had been, I’d never have snagged him.”
“I’ll get on the radio to the Coast Guard.” Robert started toward the cabin.
Jack stroked the stubble on his chin in thought. There were several logical explanations why the man drowned miles from shore, with no boats or aircraft searching the area.
None of which held much appeal.
He said, “Be sure and mark our location before you do.”
“I planned to.” Robert stopped and held Jack’s gaze. “But you’ve got that look that says it’s not for the Coast Guard’s benefit.”
Jack couldn’t hide the mischievous grin that creased his face.
“Just a feeling I have,” he said.
CHAPTER 3
Jack pulled the wire cutters from the sheath on his belt and stooped next to the inert form sprawled on the deck. The sharp hook had pierced deep into the decomposing flesh a couple of inches below the right collarbone, an inch or so above the nipple. He snipped the steel leader leaving the barb and shank in place for law enforcement officials to see.
Evidence the body had been snagged.
A strange silence settled on the boat and hung there.
Even when Robert throttled up and put them on a course for Maui, the roar of the engines seemed oddly muffled. The ocean was deathly silent around them as though no boat’s bow plowed its rolling swells.
Jack took his time dealing with the corpse. There w
as no rush for a man long dead. He replayed the scene over and over in his mind, making no sense of it. After a moment, he rose to his feet, and returned the cutters to the scabbard strapped to his side.
“Let’s cover him up,” he said to Kazuko.
She hugged herself as though overcome by a sudden chill. “I’ll get a blanket from the cabin.”
When she walked away, he bent and examined the victim’s pockets, not really expecting to find anything that would explain what happened. He was surprised to find a thin leather wallet in the right rear pocket of the man’s tattered jeans. He retrieved it and pawed through the thin bi-fold’s meager contents.
“Find anything?” Kazuko asked, returning with a gray wool blanket.
He stood from his crouch and thumbed a haze of water from the clear plastic insert shielding an ID. “A few dollars and a Hawaiian driver’s license.” He squinted at the name. “Ichiro Makoto, Oahu address.”
“Japanese,” Kazuko said. “At least we know who he is.”
Jack had no interest in the deceased’s money. He spent a couple of heartbeats committing the name to memory and returned the billfold to the man’s ragged pocket. He’d let the authorities find it and make a tentative identification. Until then, he was content with his belief that it was best for them to let the dead man remain John Doe.
“Let’s spread that over him and be done with it,” he said, reaching for one end of the blanket. “I’ve seen enough.”
“Me, too.”
He looked at her with sympathetic eyes. “You okay?”
“Why wouldn’t I be? I’ve seen worse.”
She was right, of course, and he was sorry for that. No one should have to endure the ugliness she had and be strong about it. The way she was trying to be now. Still, he could see the hurt in her eyes. He didn’t press.
He said, “Let’s hurry and get this over with.”
Working together, they unfolded the wool cover and draped it over the body from head to foot. It was easy for Jack to imagine the lump underneath was that of a big fish or a pile of rope. He was no stranger to the sight of death, but he could not dismiss the fact the lifeless form was the bulk of a dead man coughed up by the sea, with no visible explanation for how he got there.
Had he, indeed, been drunk or just careless and fallen overboard from one of the many freighters sailing in and out of Hawaii? And how far had he drifted?
We may never know.
He scanned the horizon, taking in Molokai and Lanai and Maui. The sea burned bright and calm . . . brighter from the reflection off the water. The sun was not quite yet directly overhead. Even so, sweat pasted his Jimmy Buffet t-shirt to his back and chest, the armpits soaked to the waist. The mid-day heat and humidity felt unusually intense for this time of year. It was turning out to be the hottest May on record. To the west, a long line of black storm clouds cast a dark smudge on the skyline. Rain that, with luck, would make landfall. Spring, such as it is at this latitude, was rapidly on its way out. It’d been a pleasant and peaceful few months. But summer approached with a blistering vengeance. He wasn’t quite ready for that kind of heat.
He’d had his fill in Guyana, South America the summer before.
And it wasn’t only the weather.
CHAPTER 4
Jack stared at the roll of the swells in the boat’s wake.
Guyana had taken a toll on him and his friends. He was there doing a job. Robert and Kazuko had joined him on holiday. No one intended to become embroiled in a web of theft, murder, and intrigue.
In the end, they’d narrowly escaped with their lives.
But at what cost?
He wasn’t ready to set up shop on Waikiki selling tropical flowers to tourists, but the prospect had some appeal worth considering.
Especially when I’m staring at a body pulled from the ocean depths.
And that brought to mind delusional tales brought home from the sea. Mythology talks of sirens who drown men on passing ships. Sailors lured overboard by spectral women’s seductive songs. Hawaii had its own calling ghosts: apparitions that usually appear in the form of disembodied female voices who call to a person at their back, exposing them to danger and death.
He felt a tinge of superstitious uneasiness.
Because at least one superstition was true.
One instance involving Hawaiian Callers happened in 1954. Five classmates from Farrington High School on Oahu were walking on Sandy Beach one night when one of the friends who had lagged behind, screamed. The others turned in time to see him floating through the air as he was carried out to sea. It all happened very fast. As they ran back to their friend, a wave crashed over him and he came up waving his arms and screaming.
When safely back ashore, he claimed a wahine jumped out of the water, hit him on the head with a club, lifted him up, and pulled him into the ocean. The others who had witnessed the phenomenon reassured him there was no woman; that he was levitating into the water. To this day, he insists a young Hawaiian woman rose from the sea and tried to drown him.
Jack was at loss for an explanation. He wouldn’t even speculate. For now, sirens or Hawaii’s supernatural Name Callers would suffice.
At least until they knew more.
He settled into the fighting chair, planted the soles of his stained and scuffed canvas deck shoes on the footrest, leaned against the back support, and stared at the lifeless lump under the blanket. There appeared to be no end to what he now called Jack Ferrell dumb luck . . . or a myriad of unique challenges intent on testing his resolve to remain among the living.
Especially here in the islands.
Oblivious to the drone of the boat’s twin diesel engines, his thoughts wandered over each exploit, slipping from event to event before the episodes dissolved into a haze of memories. But one refused to give way. A lifetime ago he’d moved to Maui believing love in the arms of a rich, drop-dead gorgeous blonde was the answer to his dreams.
A wild misconception.
Fortunately, he learned that lesson before it was too late. But not before he became entangled in a nasty business arrangement with her father that ended in a violent breakup.
The good part was the not-so-pleasant diversion had circuitously led him to the discovery of a 1941 West Point class ring, which in turn led him to the ring’s original owner, Charles William McIntyre. It was McIntyre who led him to Katie, the elderly veteran’s twenty-seven-year-old granddaughter.
A godsend, it turned out.
She opened his eyes to what was truly important in life. Her urgings inspired him to return to college in pursuit of his career in Marine Biology. The aspiration he’d set aside to take on the unforeseen responsibilities of an oldest son when a father could no longer provide for his family.
But it hadn’t been completely one-sided. He’d rescued her from herself as much as she had him. Doubt and self-pity over the murder of her mother and the arrest of her father for the crime had threatened to rob her of the happy life she deserved.
Each doing for the other person what they couldn’t do for themselves.
That’s how he viewed their tumultuous relationship when he looked back on it. No other explanation fit. And that was when the seemingly endless streak of Jack Ferrell dumb luck began. Since then, he’d stumbled into one dangerous adventure after another—his friends included.
He felt a pang of regret, his conscience catching up with him.
Katie was the real deal. The two of them should have figured out a way to make what they had going between them last. But their separate lives kept getting in the way, mostly him being at sea for long periods of time.
The guilt was a burden he carried with him.
Even now.
And with little chance that would change in the future.
He’d heard it said that there are three sorts of people: those who are alive, those who are dead, and those who are at sea.
His mistress had always been, and would always be the romance of the sea. He understood that, now. He
also knew that if he was going to have any chance at lasting love, it would be in the soft embrace of a woman who shared that passion along with an unremitting hunger for adventure.
CHAPTER 5
Jack climbed the ladder to fly-bridge and joined Robert topside while he navigated Fast Times toward to the dock at Maalaea Harbor on Maui. In the distance, four uniformed members of the Coast Guard stood on the wharf, waiting.
No smiles, only solemn expressions for the dead.
He felt overwhelming loneliness come on in spite of the presence of his two close friends and the throng of people milling about on shore. The great morning on the water had proved to be anything but. And the somber ride in gave him plenty of time to think. His relationship with women being a large part of that. It seemed ladies who shared his type of love for the sea and the high adventure brought along with it were few and far between.
Or perhaps he was the problem.
Anxious to be done with the ugly business that lay ahead, he wanted to walk into the nearest bar in search of a cold beer and a vivacious, young, vacationing receptionist eager to have her feminine wiles fall prey to the seductive allure of the tropics. Then he noticed Master Chief Dana Mores standing next to Lieutenant Charles McMasters.
There seemed to be no limit to the day’s surprises.
The two seamen with Dana and McMasters, he didn’t know—though that was about to change. Nor did he recognize the two uniformed Maui police officers. A matter of protocol, he was sure.
Each of them ready to do their job.
His gaze settled on Dana, neatly pressed and pleasantly trim, raven haired and beautiful as ever. The Coast Guard clothing did little to disguise her long limbs and sweeping curves. Her body was too lushly proportioned even for the bulky blouse of her uniform to conceal. At the moment, the men gathered next to her were of no consequence. The body under the tarp, either.
Only the woman in front of him.
Just seeing her buoyed his spirits. For a long moment, he searched her stoic expression for the slightest hint of warmhearted recollection. He saw none . . . only a mask of professionalism.
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