Then a glimmer appeared in her eye where there hadn’t been one.
Though a bit disappointed she hadn’t waved and smiled and leapt into his arms with reckless abandonment, he wasn’t surprised.
She’d want to maintain an air of professionalism in her official capacity.
He forced his mind back to the reality of the moment. He’d just as soon avoid the battery of questions awaiting him and his friends and take Dana for that beer. But answering questions is what honest, law-abiding citizens do when they bring a body to the authorities.
Besides, he wanted answers.
Something unusual took place out there in the channel. He intended to find out what happened.
The two sailors stepped forward to accept mooring lines forward and aft. Jack hurried down the ladder and took a position on the stern next to John Doe. Kazuko was positioned on the bow, far away from the body.
When he looked, Dana’s attention appeared to be focused on him.
For the past couple of months, he’d worked and sweated and walked beaches, wanting to forget his past. Now he wanted to remember—to see if the pump in his chest still forced bright red fluid to his brain.
To find out if the end of something that had been good between them could be the beginning of something even more meaningful.
He felt the twin transmissions slip into neutral, then reverse, and tossed his line ashore a second before Kazuko did the same. Lieutenant McMasters and Chief Mores hopped aboard as soon as the boat was secured, followed by the two police officers. Jack greeted them with his open hand extended, mindless of the cutoffs and grimy t-shirt he wore.
“Lieutenant,” he said to McMasters in greeting. He turned a toothy grin on the Master Chief. “Ms. Mores. It’s been a while.”
Her eyes locked on his, and he tried to imagine what she was thinking. Did devilish thoughts fill her mind with high-spirited fun and games?
The ones that ran amuck in his?
She allowed herself a small smile in return. “How was South America?”
His heart accelerated the way it had when she ignited his emotions the night they first met, and during the exhilarating days afterward. She had to know what she was doing to him.
And enjoying every second.
“It wasn’t the trip I thought it would be,” he said.
“Like today’s outing?”
“Yes. But it’s improved significantly.”
CHAPTER 6
Jack heard a passenger jet pass by low overhead. Vacationers arriving for holiday in paradise. He wanted to be done with business. And he wanted that cold beer more than ever . . . and time with Dana.
He’d have to wait a little longer.
Lieutenant McMasters seemed to ignore their exchange. His frown conveyed his displeasure over the circumstances surrounding their meeting. He pointed his finger at the lump under the blanket, and said, “The police will be taking charge of the remains. It’s their case.”
“Figured as much,” Jack said. “But I thought the Coast Guard would be involved as well?”
McMasters shook his head. “As far as an official investigation goes, the case is out of our jurisdiction unless information surfaces that puts the case back in the Coast Guard’s area of responsibility.”
“But you’ll do something?”
“Not much, I’m afraid. We’ll make callouts on channel 16 to see if anyone aboard a boat that passed through the area saw something, but our primary responsibility is to supervise the transfer of the body to the MPD.”
Jack swallowed his disappointment. He’d hoped for more.
They watched the sergeant and patrolman slip on latex gloves, stoop, and fold back the blanket covering the bloated corpse. There was no hint of shock or surprise as they began their cursory examination of the deceased. Almost immediately their gazes settled on the shank and barb of the hook where it had sunk deep into the dead man’s flesh before poking back through the skin.
“I left it in place,” Jack offered. “We snagged the body while fishing.”
The officers refrained from comment and continued their examination. They weren’t doctors, but they were thorough. Jack was glad for that. Even though he already had an idea what they’d find, he watched with interest. And it wasn’t morbid curiosity fueling his attentiveness. He anticipated answers.
“We used a rope to pull him on board.” He pointed at the damage done to the decomposing skin, wanting no misunderstanding on the police’s part. “Those marks on his arms were caused by the line when it tightened around him. Since he was fully dressed, we figured he must have fallen overboard.”
His comment brought a slight nod from the sergeant who dug into the dead man’s rear pocket and removed the wallet. The officer straightened, studying the driver’s license as he rose to his full height. He spent another moment poking through the leather bi-fold’s soggy contents. The money, he left in place. Then he returned the driver’s license to its slot.
“Ichiro Makoto,” he said in a low voice to the patrolman looking on from a foot away. “Detectives will get a copy of the report, but there’s nothing here for them to see. They can follow-up on the case once the autopsy’s done.”
Jack listened, knowing full well the information was not intended for his ears. With that in mind, he did not feel compelled to mention he’d already found the wallet. There was nothing to be gained. And there was always a chance it could complicate matters.
He asked, “What do you think?”
The sergeant turned his gaze on him. “The body will be taken to the morgue for autopsy. We’ll know more then.”
Jack respected the officers for the job they did, but he expected more of an answer than he got.
He deserved better. Robert and Kazuko, too.
“Relatives, friends,” he said. “They’ll be looking for him. Most likely they should be able to shed some light on what happened.”
“Quite possibly,” said the sergeant. “That will be the department’s principal focus. Of course his identity will be verified through fingerprint and or dental comparison before any notification is made. You say there were no other boats in the immediate area or any indication how he ended up in the ocean?”
“Strangely, not a one. Not in the immediate vicinity, anyway. But the victim has been underwater at least a couple of days. He’d have drifted some distance with the current.”
The sergeant looked at McMasters.
The police officer’s silent question drew a shrug from the lieutenant. “There’s a high likelihood he would have in this situation.”
Jack took notice of the nameplate pinned to the sergeant’s uniform. “Sergeant Kahala, you mention an autopsy. How soon do you expect to have the results back from that?”
“Doctor Mailo is on island, so perhaps as early as tomorrow. Depends on his caseload.”
“Is there any way we can find out what happened?” Jack nodded at Robert and Kazuko. “These are my friends, Robert Foster and his lovely wife Kazuko. This is their boat. I can honestly say we’re more than a little interested, considering we pulled him from the ocean.”
Kahala focused on Kazuko. “I hope this ordeal wasn’t too upsetting for you?”
“We’ve had better days,” she answered.
“I’m sure you have.” Redirecting his attention on Jack, he added, “You’re not family so it’s doubtful you’ll be given any information. But you can try talking to the detective who gets assigned the case.”
“No promises, huh?”
“Sorry.”
Jack, and everyone else crowding the aft deck, stepped back to provide the removal team room to board with a stretcher. He was more than happy to see the body and the blanket leave the boat. He was sure his two friends felt the same way. But he would like to know how Ichiro Makoto drowned miles from shore.
A question that may never be answered.
Not for his benefit, anyway.
But that didn’t mean he intended to give up.
CHAPT
ER 7
The aft deck rocked in the bow wave of a passing boat exiting the harbor in violation of the no-wake zone, but Jack took little notice. Dana smiled back at him from the parking area where she stood with Sergeant Kahala, Lieutenant McMasters, and the others.
She hadn’t lost her power to excite.
“Lady’s certainly nice to look at,” Robert said from a few feet away.
Jack found it difficult to turn to his friend, even though Dana had walked inside the Coast Guard building and was no longer in view. They’d only dated a few wonderful, passionate weeks. But the short-term affair had been torrid enough to cause sparks to fly on both their parts. Her promotion and transfer to Alaska, and his ensuing assignment in Guyana, had brought an end to their romance. He hadn’t known she was back on Maui.
“She’s much more than that,” he said.
“I suppose you’ll want to spend time getting reacquainted?”
An understatement.
He reveled in the wave of arousal that rippled through his body. The night he and Dana met remained clear in his mind. It was at a fundraiser for the Maui aquarium. The air was unusually hot and still for Maalaea Harbor. She stood by herself in the relative dimness of the hammerhead shark exhibit staring seaward at the broad expanse of moonlit ocean. The soft glow from the overhead lights glistened in her black hair and on the sultry bronze of her velvety skin. A breeze came up enough to gently rustle the nearby palms, and she kept lifting her hair off the stiff white collar of her Coast Guard dress uniform trying to catch what little coolness the bit of evening wind offered.
Back then, she lived in a rented condo on South Kihei Road. At the time, he spent a portion of his days and all of his nights on his sixty-foot catamaran, Pono, anchored off Sugar Beach. It wasn’t the cheap booze and it wasn’t an onset of loneliness from having recently spent a couple of carefree weeks with a lovely vineyard owner from California, Dana was simply the most beautiful woman he’d met.
She’d come to the party with a girlfriend who bumped into a guy she knew. They’d hit it off and wandered away from the crowd leaving her to mingle. Dana was easy to talk to, and he guessed he was too. A shared fondness for the sea, he was sure, had a lot to do with it.
Eventually, they had enough of the evening and he drove her home between the fields of sugar cane lining the road on each side, the breeze gently swaying the stalks. The air coming through the open windows was heavy with moisture. The waning moon hung low over the water casting a shimmering silver path leading out to sea. When they got to her place, the moonlight shined down on them through the palms, bathing the yard in dancing shadows and cool pale luminescence. The moon and the stars did not make it easy, but he left her at the door with a promise they would have dinner together the following night. Two days later, they made love aboard his boat.
The memory ignited a fire of desire too long denied. “You asked me if I’ll want to spend time getting reacquainted. If she’s willing, I most certainly will.”
“From the look she gave you, I’d say she’s willing.”
“I might not have told you, but we had strong feelings for one another.”
“You told me enough. I figured the rest out on my own.”
“You didn’t tell Kazuko?”
“She probably figured it out, too. But she didn’t hear it from me.”
Jack chuckled. “I’d no doubt have heard about it if she had.”
Robert nodded. “That’d be my guess. But then there’s no telling what’s floating around in that Oriental mind of hers.”
“I suppose it wouldn’t matter if she did.”
“Is it her you’re worried about, or you?”
Jack held Robert’s gaze. “You’re making a point. What is it?”
Robert sighed. “You rush to the rescue of damsels in distress and end up having a meaningful, but short-lived relationship with them. They love you and you love them in your own way. What they invariably don’t understand is it’s not an isolated occurrence that brought you and them together. That you aren’t happy without the exhilaration of adventure and could never settle down to an uneventful life in a house in the suburbs. You spend long periods at sea doing research and that’s the way it has to be. Without it, you’d drift apart in a relationship that was doomed from the start.”
“What do you do, sit around thinking up this crap?”
Robert shook his head in disbelief and turned his gaze toward shore. “Just saying. That’s all.”
Jack huffed. “And saying . . . and saying . . . and saying.”
Robert arched a brow at him. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
“Okay, you’re wrong.” He couldn’t allow himself to concede his shortcomings. “About Dana, anyway. It’s not that way with her. We’re as close to being kindred spirits as two people can get.”
“Yet you let her slip from your life as easily as all the other women you’ve had relations with.”
Jack chewed his bottom lip. Robert was right, right about everything he’d said. There was no denying that. And he wouldn’t try.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “We’re both here. Times are different.”
“Are they?”
Jack didn’t answer.
“You certainly don’t like talking about it, do you?” Robert said.
“Doesn’t change a thing.”
“Sorry I brought it up.”
“You and I have been friends for a lot of years. We’ve talked the subject to death.” He clapped Robert on the shoulder. “Let’s just say I’m optimistic.”
CHAPTER 8
Jack stared into the mirror in his hotel room, examining the new scar parting the thick mat of black hair covering his tanned chest. A souvenir from his trip to South America. It had been his idea to layover at Lahaina’s Pioneer Inn while the police department concluded their inquiry into the drowning. The news he’d received during a phone call to the detective the afternoon before was less than satisfying.
Thinking back, he didn’t know why he and his friends had chosen to fish the Kaloi Channel. Providence, he guessed. Otherwise, Ichiro Makoto’s body would have ended up in that shark’s belly.
Another minute and he would have, anyway.
Since that conversation, he’d had time to think the situation through and didn’t quite accept the detective’s explanation that Makoto had disappeared while fishing alone in his boat. How he’d arrived at that conclusion didn’t matter. What mattered was that with no signs of foul play, the case was closed.
Officially . . .
He slipped on an Aloha shirt, buttoned it over his cutoffs, and joined Robert and Kazuko downstairs for breakfast.
“Am I late?” he asked, taking his place beside them at the table.
“We’re early,” Robert said. “I needed a cup of coffee.”
Jack smiled. “I guess I did keep you two up kinda late.”
Kazuko’s lips curled into a mischievous grin. “And I kept him up a while after that.”
Robert’s cheeks reddened. He asked Jack, “What did you decide to do?”
“I’ve got some time off,” he said. “I think I’ll do some checking on my own.”
“Looking for what?”
“I don’t know . . . answers.”
“We talked this to death last night.”
Jack signaled the server and held up his empty cup. “I know I was lucky to get the information I got. The detective made that clear. But I still don’t buy that ‘disappeared while fishing alone’ story.”
“You go out on your boat alone all the time. What’s odd about our dead guy doing it?”
“Nothing. Only where is his boat?”
“Capsized, of course.”
“And you believe that?”
“It happens.”
“In rough seas or if he hit something, yes. For a week now, the ocean has been as flat as I have ever seen it.”
“I’ll buy that. But what do you hope to gain?”
Their server filled Jack’s
mug and topped off his friends’ cups. He took a sip, and said, “Nothing . . . maybe something. On the boat the other day you said I had that look, and I said it was just a feeling I had. Nothing’s changed.”
“We know how you are.” Concern showed in the tone of Kazuko’s voice. “I’m sure Robert agrees with me, it would be better for you to accept what the detective told you and be done with it.”
“You also said you know how I am. Then you know there’s not a chance in hell of me doing that.”
Kazuko scoffed. “We go through this every time, right before you get yourself into trouble. I hoped you might listen to us for once.”
“I listen to everything you and Robert say to me.” He gently gripped her hand in a gesture of affection between two close friends. “I just don’t always abide by your wisdom.”
She leaned close. “There’s a reason we came back here when we did, Jack.”
He feigned ignorance. “You mean other than my work and that your home is on Oahu?”
“Think about it.” She obviously wasn’t backing off. “If we hadn’t left Key West when we did, we’d most likely be dodging some drug lord’s bullets and risking our lives diving on Salazar’s yacht in shark-infested water to salvage gold that was probably long gone before we got there.”
She was right, of course. And he knew it all too well.
But he didn’t want her to know that.
She’d never let him forget it.
Doing his best to seem innocent, he said, “Robert’s comment that he refused to join me in any of my future wild exploits had something to do with our leaving.”
“And there’s a reason he said that.”
Jack couldn’t deny they’d all come close to dying on the Mazaruni River. But he and the others involved found the source of the toxins poisoning one of Guyana’s major waterways and brought a stop to the deadly pollution. Otherwise, the loss of aquatic and human life in the area could have been staggering.
“What can I do to speed this up?” Robert’s gaze fixed on Jack. “The sooner we put this to rest, the better.”
Shipwreck Page 3
