by Kait Carson
Bile rose to her throat, and she fought the urge to vomit.
The grouper bonged again. Hayden saw it struggling to get into the wheelhouse. For the first time she wondered about the dietary habits of goliath grouper. Did he bong because he wanted at the man, or because she wouldn’t go away? What did those giant fish eat?
She felt like she’d been down there forever.
Even at this depth, Hayden heard the captain rev his engine. Their agreed signal that she return to the boat, immediately. Still staring at the body, she wasn’t sure if Cappy called her because she was at the end of her dive time or because her bubbles stopped moving. Glancing at her gauge, she had her answer. There was very little time left for her to avoid decompression stops. She knew her computer would credit her with a bit more time during her ascent but it was going to be close. Fortunately, her tank held enough air to do a deco stop if it became necessary. Taking one last look at the poor man tied to the anchor, she began a slow, gentle ascent.
Hayden found herself gasping for breath. Looking at her gauge, she realized air wasn’t the problem, but it could be if she didn’t control her breathing. She was hyperventilating and fighting a desire to bolt to the surface. She slowed and told herself two corpses wouldn’t serve any purpose.
At sixty feet, half her deepest depth, she held her position for three minutes giving her body a chance to reabsorb the nitrogen that would be in bubble form in her bloodstream. Nitrox might lessen your chances of the bends, but it didn’t prevent it. She’d been diving a long time and seen too many people get hit to take a risk now.
The captain could see her ascent up the line. The water was clear enough that she knew he could see her hold position. Although he occasionally revved the motor, the sound had less urgency than it had before. At fifteen feet, she held her position again for another three minutes. By this time, her dive computer was content with her mathematically calculated nitrogen count and she could surface without causing it to lock her out and go to a blank screen. She looked up into the face of her friend and dive captain. She feared she might be swimming with the fishes for good if his face, blurred by the moving water, indicated his anger level.
Swimming past the fifteen-foot marker, she gained the ladder of the dive boat. Tossing her fins up to the captain, she mounted the ladder. Cappy’s anger was evident. In all the years she’d been diving with him, this was the first time he didn’t help her up on board. Instead, she pulled herself up the three steps and into the stern of the boat.
“Trying to kill yourself? That’s the last time I let you get off this boat by yourself. What happened? You’re not diving anymore today. Get your own self out of your tank. I thought for sure I’d have to come down after you. What the hell is wrong with you?”
Hayden let him rant and pace the deck in front of her. Fortunately, the sea swells were less than a foot. She stood there in her tank struggling to keep her balance and pay attention to his wrath. Nothing would be worse than ignoring him.
“Cappy,” Hayden said tentatively at the first break in his tirade.
“Don’t. Shut up and listen. I had to haul one dead diver up. I don’t want to make it two.” His hands tugged spasmodically at the hem of his t-shirt. “That’s too much in a lifetime. You had no right to ignore me, you had no right…”
Hayden grabbed his shoulder. “Cappy, there’s a dead guy down there. In the wheelhouse. Under the window.”
Cappy’s face sobered immediately. After a shocked pause, he said, “In the wheelhouse? You sure he’s dead? I’ll go down...”
“Cappy, he’s dead. I’m sure. Call the Coast Guard I guess, or maybe the marine patrol. There’s no point in going down after him, it’s too late. He’s tangled in anchor line. He’s not wearing gear. There’s bloating, and...”
Hayden’s voice trailed off. She couldn’t bring herself to say that his skin was sloughing off and the fish had already eaten his eyeballs.
Two
Unfamiliar with the sensation of seasickness, it surprised Hayden to feel bile rise to her throat. Every time she blinked, the pallid image of the dead man’s face danced in her field of vision. His empty eye sockets gazed in her direction, his hand reached toward her as if asking for help. Most of all, she saw the anchor. It was one of those spiky ones, the kind meant for use on a rocky, not sandy, bottom. She hadn’t touched it, she didn’t venture into the overhead environment, especially not with the huge fish trying to get inside. Besides, she knew the anchor weighed a good twenty pounds. She visualized the placement and wondered how it could have gotten in the middle of the wheelhouse dragging a drowning man behind it.
Hayden huddled on the gunnels, wrapped her arms around her legs, and hugged tight. She feared losing control if she let go. Her face, reflected in the water, looked calm, but she couldn’t quite figure out what the dive Captain said into the microphone. She heard words, but they sounded strange and had no meaning. It was like listening to an infant babble or being caught in the elevator in a foreign country. Nothing made sense. The harder she tried to understand, the less she could decipher.
She swung her legs to the deck. Then she groped for the stanchion that held the Bimini top over the cabin. Hand over hand she pulled her way to the back of the mate’s chair. When she gripped it, the chair swayed and rocked on its less than solid base. The motion ripped her thoughts back to the present and how easily anyone could fall overboard. As a distraction, Hayden forced herself to remember the stories Cappy told about how he bought the boat years ago for his personal use. In those days, he worked for a dive shop and captained their boat. When the shop closed, he began taking charters and finally started his own business. Fighting back tears that had nothing to do with memories, she thought of the vessel as the little boat that could. To Hayden, and Cappy, it wore its frayed appointments as a badge of courage and survival. Now Hayden drew on the spirit of the boat to see her through.
Looking around at the improvised tank holders and the lack of seating, she felt a wave of affection for the plucky man. He couldn’t take more than four divers. Legally, he should probably take less, but he was Hayden’s favorite. She always had good dives with him. Always saw the best places and the fewest crowds on the dive sites on his boat. Never found a corpse before. Not diving anyway, but driving.
Hayden gulped and raced for the side. Her mind mixing that awful day on the turnpike with the sight she’d just seen underwater. Two years ago, traveling on the Florida Turnpike, Hayden spotted a small, skinny kitten curled up next to a packing box the size of a suitcase. The cat was all alone, no mother or siblings in sight, and it sat there waiting. Hayden stopped to see if she could get the kitten into her car, take it to a vet. As soon as she opened the car door, she’d smelled a hideous smell. She called the police who opened the box. It held the bloated body of a murdered woman. At least, she thought as she wiped her mouth, bodies underwater don’t stink.
The kitten was so small Hayden named him Half-Pint. The name hadn’t stuck. These days he answered to Tiger Cat. He weighed in at a healthy fourteen pounds and resided in her house. She couldn’t wait to get back to him and bury her face in his soft fur.
“Cappy, I’m sorry, I was…” Her fingers played with the zipper on the black dive suit.
“Lost in space. Understandably. Are you all right?” He handed her a towel. “You need to wipe your face down. Get out of that dive skin before you overheat. Do you want a root beer or something? The Coast Guard is on its way.”
She shook her head. No amount of soda would erase the sight from her mind. Draping the towel around her shoulders, she raked both hands through her hair to flatten it back. She hoped she didn’t look as awful as she felt. Turning to lean against the aluminum support for the Bimini top she said, “Have you heard of anyone missing? I don’t know if the poor guy tossed the anchor in and got tangled or if someone tangled him up and dumped him in.”
A look of compassion clouded her friend’s eyes. His face colored under his tan, creating high spots on his cheeks. “Hayden, no one tosses an anchor on the Humboldt. There’s no need and it’s too deep to the bottom. You know that, girl.”
“What if it was dark and they didn’t want to mess with the mooring buoys, what then?” She rolled the black polyester down her hips, revealing a bright yellow and blue tie-dyed one-piece swimsuit beneath. Leaning against the gunnels, she pulled the dive suit inside out and trailed it in the water, washing out the last of the sand. Then she draped it over the mate’s chair where the full-length fabric hung like an empty scarecrow. The flaccid legs waved in the slight breeze, reminding her of the veil of skin that floated from the man’s body. Spots danced in her vision. She struggled against the darkness that threatened to engulf her.
“Drink this.” Cappy handed her a cup of water from the cooler strapped to the console. “It’ll make you feel better.”
His throat worked as he watched her sip the water. The air felt static with his unspoken words. “What?” Hayden asked. She knew she didn’t want to hear what he had to say, but the tension was getting to her.
“Nobody anchors on the Humboldt. It’s not done and it’s not feasible.” He shifted his weight from leg to leg in time to some inner beat. “I haven’t heard of anyone going missing. So whoever it was, no one missed him yet.” His blue eyes bored into her. “Did he look familiar?”
Hayden trembled and goose bumps rose on her skin. The back of her throat felt dry despite the water. Suddenly she spun and vomited over the side.
“I’m sorry, Hayden,” Cappy said as he poured her another cup of water. “The Coast Guard is going to ask the same thing.”
“It’s all right,” she said. Leaning over the side, she poured the clean water into her cupped palm and scrubbed her face. “Thank God, I have no idea who it is...was. I swallowed a lot of water. I lost my regulator when I saw him.” She felt heat rise to her face as she spoke. “I screamed.”
That’s when Hayden noticed a boat in the distance. It didn’t look like the FWC, what the locals still called the marine patrol, and it didn’t have the markings of the Sheriff’s office or Coast Guard.
“Who’s that?” She pointed. “They look like they’re circling us. Do you recognize it?”
Cappy shielded his face with his hand and looked out over the eastern horizon. “No, they’re probably fishing.”
There wasn’t much room to move in the twenty-three foot boat. And there didn’t seem to be much more to say. Hayden winced as the top popped on Cappy’s root beer; he called it rooty beer. The noise sounded loud enough to be a rifle shot. An ache, reminiscent of Friday’s migraine, blossomed behind her left eye. She got up slowly and walked around the cuddy cabin to the torn padded seat on the bow.
She turned her face to the endless Atlantic horizon.
After a while, she spotted another boat. When it came closer, the distinctive colors and twin engines marked it as belonging to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission. Behind the FWC patrol boat, slicing through the water like a thoroughbred and gaining fast, came the unmistakable silhouette of a Coast Guard boat.
“Will you look at the size of the cutter they sent?” Hayden said, shielding her eyes from the sun. “Jeeze, it’s gonna dwarf us. I sure hope it doesn’t hit or swamp us.”
“They brought out the big guns,” Cappy said. “I guess they wanted to get here pretty quick from Islamorada. They put up that big boat behind Gretchen’s old place.”
“What happened to Station Marathon?” Hayden wanted to keep talking about anything except what she saw below. Guessing where the Coast Guard boat came from was as much a diversion as anything.
“It’s still there; they’re probably out doing an intercept. They mostly have the inflatables and I guess they didn’t know what kind of equipment they’d need so they wanted the real ship. Settle in, this could take a while.”
The grey and green marine patrol boat pulled up alongside Cappy’s little Chris Craft and the officer tossed her line to him. They joined the little dive boat to the larger patrol boat. Twinned together, the two boats looked like a mother whale and her calf.
A tall, dark-haired woman dressed in the grey shorts and shirt of the agency gathered her notebook and citation book. “Permission to board.” At Cappy’s nod, she held out a long-fingered hand to the Captain. “Would you help me, sir?”
Hayden looked at the even-featured face of the uniformed woman and wondered how she liked doing this job. Death on the water. Not something you associate with a tropical paradise. The sea was always deadly. Every sailor knew that. But the dead man below didn’t look to be any more a sailor than she was. Just an unlucky guy in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Three
“Who found the deceased?” The marine officer asked as she swiped her face with the back of her hand.
“I did. Officer…Kirby.” Hayden noted the officer’s name on her nameplate affixed to her chest. “Well, I did after the goliath grouper showed it to me.”
“Is this some kind of joke?” The patrol officer clicked her pen off against the side of her incident pad and looked sternly at Hayden and Cappy.
“No. No. I didn’t mean to sound flip. Do you dive?”
The officer shook her head.
“There’re two goliath groupers on the wreck. They’ve been around it for years. They’re part of the attraction of doing the dive. One of them was looking into the wheelhouse.” Hayden rolled her shoulders to ease the building knot of tension in her neck. “I swam around the other side and looked too. That’s when I saw…” Her voice broke. “It.”
The throb of the engines of the large Coast Guard vessel pulling up alongside drowned out Kirby’s next question. Hayden shot a worried glance at Cappy. He watched intently as the captain of the vessel adroitly backed the boat well away from the twined boats and stopped the ship dead in the water. Several uniform clad men lowered an inflatable dingy from the deck. Two men clattered down a ladder into the waiting craft. Kirby looked back over her shoulder and seemed to concentrate on the arrival of the Coast Guard, too. A look of distaste flitted over the woman’s features.
The Guardies tied the rubber boat to the adjacent marine patrol boat. This scene was starting to look like Biscayne National Park during the Columbus Regatta. All they needed were a couple of nudes and a drunk or two. The younger of the two guardsmen rose and nimbly crossed the lashed-together boats. He nodded to Officer Kirby.
“Janice, do you have a statement yet?” he asked, his eyes slewing towards her open notepad. The two obviously knew each other. Not surprising, given the small force charged with policing the water.
“Working on it, Paul. Did you want to take over? Not sure if this is a boating accident. You may be better equipped to investigate.”
“Let’s see where it goes.” He shrugged. “Our information is a deceased party on a wreck.” Balancing his rump on the rear transom, he stretched his legs in front of him. His blue-eyed stare traveled from Hayden to Cappy. “Who found the body?”
Hayden fought the impulse to raise her hand. “I did. I was just telling Officer Kirby, a goliath grouper led me to it.”
“Are you familiar with nitrogen narcosis?” he asked.
“I wasn’t narked.”
“Are you feeling well?” Kirby interrupted. “Do you have a history of hallucinations?”
“No, just migraines.”
Janice and Paul looked at each other. Janice scribbled something in her notebook and said, “When was your last one?”
“Friday night.” She shot a quick glance at Cappy. He looked like he’d eaten something sour. “I…”
“How bad was it?” Paul asked.
“Not bad enough to cancel the dive today. I was fine this morning. By mid-morning yesterday, really.”
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“Did you take anything for the pain?” Janice’s face softened with the question. “It can be severe.”
“I don’t remember. I did take a pill to try to prevent it. It didn’t work.” Hayden struggled to keep her voice level as her mind filled with the images she had just seen. The dead man below wasn’t a product of some kind of two-day-old drug hangover. “I’m fine today. By this morning, I felt good enough to want to do this dive,” she whispered.
Janice and Paul exchanged a quick look. “Certain drugs can make a diver more susceptible to narcosis.” Paul’s voice was softer. “What did you take?”
Hayden named a sublingual triptan drug and Paul glanced at Janice again. She gave a slight shake of her head accompanied by a shrug.
“Do you have it with you?”
“Yes. I always carry it.” She fished a small drybox from her dive bag, pulled out a box with a prescription label, and placed it in his outstretched hand. He opened the box and pulled out the drug information pamphlet that was inside. Unfolding the paper, he turned to the side effects section. Then he handed it to Janice who made notes in her pad before she gave it back to Hayden with the medication.
“Did the medication ever cause hallucinations before?”
“No.” Hayden forced out the words. “And it didn’t cause one today.”
Paul arched an eyebrow and glanced at Janice’s notebook.
The patrol officer drew a dark line under her notes. While Hayden watched, the woman printed CAPT in block capitals, and then turned her attention to Cappy.
“Is there alcohol on board?”
Cappy’s face paled. He shot a look at Hayden. It was common knowledge the Coast Guard could charge for the cost of call outs if the reason was deliberately false. If Hayden’s dead body was a product of a hallucination or narcosis, he could be bankrupt.
“No. I don’t drink and I don’t allow alcohol on my boat.”
