Death By Blue Water (A Hayden Kent Mystery Book 1)

by Kait Carson

  “It says these drugs shouldn’t be mixed with alcohol,” Paul said.

  Drawing himself up to his full height he said, “Lieutenant, she wasn’t drinking on this boat. I have no reason to doubt Hayden. I’ve known her for ten years and I’ve never seen her drink more than a glass of wine at dinner, never anything before a dive. She’s dived with me before and I expect she will again. She says she saw a body down there. I believe her.”

  While Cappy justified himself to Paul, Janice’s gaze searched the boat as if seeking something specific. “Can we speak with the diver who accompanied her?”

  A blush colored Cappy’s face visible even under his permanent tan. “No.” He cleared his throat. “She dove alone.”

  Janice’s mouth fell open at the statement. Both she and Paul turned and looked sharply at Hayden. “You were down there alone?” Janice asked. “After a migraine?”

  “Yes, she was down there alone,” Cappy answered for her. “She’s a perfectly competent diver and I was up here watching her the entire time. Look over the side. You can see the wreck from here. I’m a charter captain. I can’t leave the boat to dive with a solo client and charge. That’s the law.”

  “You let an incapacitated woman dive alone on a one hundred and twenty foot wreck.”

  “I’m not—”

  “She’s not incapacitated, all this stuff happened on Friday. Today is Sunday,” Cappy said in a tone Hayden never heard him use before. His voice drowned out her words.

  Paul straightened and walked to where the Captain stood under the Bimini top. The Coast Guard lieutenant towered over the smaller man.

  “That’s a poor policy. Let me see your Captain’s papers, please. I’m going to do a safety check as well.”

  “Wait a minute,” Hayden nearly screamed. “Why are you punishing him because of me?” A tear trailed down her cheek. There was a dead man down there. Had everyone forgotten that?

  Paul leveled an even-tempered look at her. “It’s a safety check. Routine. I’m not punishing anyone.” He beckoned the Ensign who had stayed with the dingy and lifted ten fingers in the air. The man nodded and pulled a clipboard from a drybox tucked under the center seat. “He’ll be over in ten minutes.” He swung his attention away from the Captain and turned to Hayden. “Well, it looks like you will have to tell us all about it. Start at the beginning.” His blue eyes skewered her. “Do you feel able to talk about it?”

  Fighting back her emotions, she nodded and recounted her dive. Janice took notes while the lieutenant listened. Neither one interrupted her. “I knew I couldn’t manage the anchor.” She drew a deep breath and looked directly into Paul’s eyes.

  “Anchor?” Paul demanded in a voice that sounded like steel. “What anchor?” The lieutenant grabbed the pad from the marine officer’s hand and studied her notes. “This wreck has mooring buoys. Two of them.” He gave the pad back and turned his face to the open water.

  Unable to read his expression, Hayden waited for his next question.

  He looked at Janice and led her away a short distance. “Narked?” He asked sotto voce using the common term for nitrogen narcosis, a condition that can cause a diver to act irrationally.

  “Sounds like it to me. Doesn’t that clear as the diver comes up?”

  Paul arched his eyebrows and Janice raised both hands in a gesture of surrender. “I’m not a diver. She told me a grouper showed her the body. She just told us she followed the fish and found the body. Big difference.”

  The muscle in Paul’s jaw worked. “Yeah. In terms of credibility. You’re right, narcosis clears as you come up the water column. There used to be a plastic skeleton in the wheelhouse down there, maybe that’s her body.”

  “Uh, officers, this is a small boat, voices travel. I told you before, I was not narked.” She spaced out the words to emphasize each one. Hayden sat hard on the gunnel of the little boat. “Cappy can vouch for me. I do a lot of diving at depths like the Humboldt. I don’t see things.”

  “You admit you had a migraine Friday. You shouldn’t have a diver certification if you suffer from migraines.” Paul paced the small deck.

  “I know my limits.”

  “Let me see your computer,” the Guardsman demanded.

  “Lieutenant, are we gonna need some guys suited up?” the Ensign called over. “The OD wants to know.”

  “Not yet.” Paul glanced back at Hayden. “This may be a case of mistaken identity.”

  While Paul carried on a discussion with Janice, Hayden removed her regulator from the tank yoke, yanked her BC vest off the used nitrox tank, and dropped it over a fresh tank. She debated giving the lieutenant her rig with the computer, but decided not to risk getting water in the first stage. Instead, she reattached her regulator to the new tank. Then she jerked her thumb at her gear after she secured her tanks with a bungee cord. “It’s on there. Push both green buttons to activate the log screen.”

  She tried to ignore the calculating look in the lieutenant’s eyes. Wondering if her show of temper was a mistake, she walked away from Paul and back to the pilothouse. She shuddered at the unmistakable sound of someone else handling her gear. Without turning around she said, “I saw a body. I saw the face. The face had no eyes. It’s a man, in a swimsuit with an anchor line wrapped around his leg and ankle.”

  “How did you know it’s a man?”

  Hayden paused. She reluctantly focused on the image seared into her mind, the one she knew she’d be seeing every sleepless night from now until she died. “He...he wore swim trunks. His body was bloated already but he was clearly built like a male.”

  “Okay, so there was an anchor line wrapped around him. What about the anchor?”

  “The anchor is in the wheelhouse, too.” She turned to face him. “It’s a rocky bottom anchor.”

  “In the wheelhouse? You’re sure?” Disbelief colored his voice. “A rocky bottom anchor like a grapnel?”

  “That’s an anchor with cupped up spikes. Like the one on my dock.” Cappy interrupted the flow of back and forth. Paul winced. The little man puffed his chest out. “Not a good choice most places, too light.”

  “Thank you, Captain.”

  “S’okay. I don’t think she knows what a grapnel is.”

  Hayden’s toe tapped with impatience. “Why does it matter?” She held out one hand and curled it down and back towards her body and separated her fingers. “Like this. Like a scoopy claw.”

  Paul shot a quick glance to Janice—“Manta anchor.” She nodded in response and made another note.

  Hayden’s hand swept her still wet hair off her face and lingered over her left eye to assess the pain that was building there. Her shoulders hurt with the beginning of sunburn and she had to pee. She could take care of that if she got back into the water. She wondered how much it would hurt to haul the tank on her back. She knew the salt water would sting her raw flesh.

  The lieutenant appeared to study her. She saw speculation in his eyes as he glanced from her to Cappy. “You always let her dive alone?”

  Cappy looked down at his sandal clad feet. “Not usually, but this time, yes. I wasn’t feeling like diving today, so I didn’t bring a boat sitter to cover the regulations. When I saw the conditions, I knew she’d be all right. If I had any doubts, I’d never bring her to this dive. She knows when she can handle a dive and when to abort. She’s a good diver.” He jabbed his finger to emphasize each word.

  Looking from dive captain to diver and then to the marine officer and his ensign, Paul nodded his head. He crossed the length of the boat and looked into Hayden’s face. His blue eyes crinkled in a smile. His mouth stayed pulled into a hard line. His gaze traveled up and down her slender body and then looked at her prepared scuba gear. Nodding, he said, “Okay. I’m going to get my gear. Your computer bears out your story, and you are in the green for another dive. Y
ou can be the guide.”

  He stepped over the side into the marine patrol boat. “Janice,” he said over his shoulder as he continued on to his waiting inflatable, “do you want to wait here for a full report? We’re still inside Florida waters. Y’all will probably end up with jurisdiction.”

  Janice looked up and nodded. Crossing the gunnel, she regained her patrol boat, picked up the console microphone and spoke into it.

  Cappy crossed to Hayden. “Do you want to do this? They can’t make you and you need to watch your surface interval. Narcosis is one thing, the bends is another.”

  Hayden knew the bends referred to decompression illness. Something she risked if she returned underwater without giving her body time to off-gas the nitrogen from her last dive.

  “I’m afraid of something worse than the bends, Cappy.” A shiver shook her body despite the warm summer air. “I blacked out Friday night. I don’t remember a thing. Can you imagine if I told them that?”

  But she didn’t tell Cappy that when she woke up Saturday, it was barely dawn and she was dressed in a wet bathing suit at the Faulkner Marina.

  Four

  Ignoring his dropped jaw and shocked look, she pressed the buttons to flip through the screens on her dive computer. She hoped he wouldn’t pursue the topic with the cops in earshot.

  “I’m good to go, Cappy.” She handed him the device. “And by the time the lieutenant gears up and gets back, I’ll be more than good to go. I’m more worried about that cloud over there than I am about getting bent.”

  “You blacked out Friday? That’s why you never called me. And you dove one hundred and twenty feet today and never said a word.”

  To Hayden his low voice sounded more like a growl. Tears bit her eyes. She’d betrayed one of her best friends. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I feel fine, and you have no idea how much I needed to do this dive. I would never risk…”

  “Well, you did.”

  The Coast Guard inflatable fired its engine and cast off from the Patrol boat taking the tall lieutenant with it, presumably to get his dive gear. Turning to face away from Officer Kirby who now sat in the marine patrol boat Hayden said, “At least they’re not looking at me like I’m a suspect. Of course, I don’t know how I feel about being taken for crazy either.”

  “My money’s on you, kid.” Cappy said. “If you say you saw someone, you saw someone.” A troubled look crossed his face as he reached into the cuddy cabin to turn up the volume on the marine radio. “You’re sure it wasn’t the skeleton?”

  “That kind of bothers me. I don’t remember seeing the skeleton. Isn’t it in the room below?”

  Cappy shook his head. “You know better, Hayd.”

  Misery made her stomach clench. “What if I was narked? It can happen, but you know I can identify it and compensate for it, but if it came from the migraine...” She pressed a thumb and forefinger into her eyes and rubbed them. “Sure wish I could see into the wheelhouse from here.” Sighing, she stood up straight. “If I’m wrong, we’ll be taking mortgages on our houses. That Coast Guard cutter doesn’t come cheap.”

  For the second time that day, ocean waters closed over Hayden’s head. This time they felt chilly. She checked her gauge and saw the water temperature was in the eighties. Second dives were usually colder. Pushing up the sleeve of her dive skin, she saw the tiny bumps rising from her flesh. It didn’t help that she felt the lieutenant watching her as they made their descent. He made sure they were side by side and he matched her fin kick to fin kick. It crossed her mind that if he thought she was going to try to make a run for it, she’d have no place to go.

  To distract herself she concentrated on the fish life darting in and out of the wreck profile. She couldn’t see the grouper but that didn’t mean he wasn’t there. As often happens on dives, the water looked crystal clear from the topside but obscured horizontally. Visibility had deteriorated since her earlier dive. Hayden wasn’t sure whether to hope the corpse was a figment of nitrogen narcosis as the lieutenant and the officer thought or that she’d find him there. Still wrapped in his anchor line in the wheelhouse. At least that would be vindication. She couldn’t shake the thought that it could be an artifact of the migraine, or the depth triggered some lingering triptan in her system, causing a hallucination. Maybe it caused the blackout too. Maybe something in her system made the drug act differently. Could she have taken more than one, and forgotten that too?

  Paul’s hand reached out and touched her shoulder. With a start, she realized they were at the wreck. He wagged his hand back and forth asking for directions. Using hand signals, she indicated the route to take to get to the window she had used. The lieutenant, however, decided to take a more direct route. He went directly to the correct door opening on the stern side and swam into the tiny wheelhouse. Hayden went to her prior post at the window and steeled herself to look down. Knowing what she would see didn’t make it easier.

  The corpse and his eyeless face moved from where she saw him the first time.

  This time both hands were free and his arms waved back and forth in a frantic motion.

  Hayden looked up into Paul’s face and was shocked to see the lieutenant’s eyes crinkle as if he were laughing. She must be narked. She looked at her gauge. They’d only been down five minutes but it was long enough for her. She signaled that she would be ascending. Paul signaled back telling her to wait for him.

  Bastard, thought Hayden, he didn’t even ask if I had a problem, just motioned a stay here sign. She watched as he swam to the corpse and observed it closely. From his BC pocket, he removed a small watertight camera and began taking pictures. Apparently unwilling to take the time to swim around the wheelhouse to Hayden’s vantage point, he came over to the window and handed her the camera, indicating she was to take photos from her view. As she lifted the camera a loud bong sounded. The camera slipped from her grasp. She watched in horror as it floated to the deck below. She dove down frantically trying to recover it before it lodged some place that she couldn’t reach. Paul shot out of the window after her and, lithe as an eel, sped past her and grabbed the camera before it fell into one of the smaller holds. He scowled at her and swam past to finish the photos.

  The goliath grouper, missing when they first swam down to the wreck, now had his head in the wheelhouse door again. He seemed upset at the human intrusion and he bonged as they reached the window. For a brief, disoriented, moment, Hayden thought he was trying to tell them something. Maybe how the man got here. She stared at the anchor again and tried to imagine how it might have gotten in the middle of the wheelhouse. She could understand the distance between anchor and body, but not how it lodged in the wheelhouse. Hayden shook her head. It didn’t make sense. The anchor should fall to the sand. There was no way it could bounce in from the rail and drag the man. She shuddered, thinking of the horror of his last moments. Unable to free himself, and unable to breathe. She glanced at the roof of the wheelhouse. Much to her amazement, there was a large hole.

  She looked down again. The way the body was snugged up under the window seemed odd. Almost as if he was placed there. Was it possible someone swam the man and anchor down? Or had the anchor crashed through the roof of the wheelhouse dragging the man behind it? The current could have rolled the victim under the window.

  Hayden drew a deep breath and choked. Somehow water had encroached into her regulator. She tried again, breathing more shallowly this time. More water entered her mouth, she tasted the salty brine and spit it back into her regulator. Confused at the problem, Hayden breathed a prayer of thanks that the rules had changed to require every diver have two regulators. She grabbed for her reserve and switched it for the one in her mouth. Before she took a breath, a light tap on her shoulder startled her. Hayden spun on fins to find Paul hovering behind her. He flashed her a questioning okay sign.

  Before she responded, Hayden again tried a shallow bre
ath. True to her training, she’d been softly exhaling the entire time she dealt with the regulator problem. Her lungs felt flat now and she badly needed a breath. Carefully inhaling, water again filled her mouth. She drew her hand back and forth across the front of her neck indicating no air.

  Paul reacted immediately. Grabbing and purging his second regulator, he pulled hers from her mouth and shoved his in its place. Grateful, she gulped in a deep breath and held up her defective regulator for inspection.

  Unable to find a problem, she looked up to see Paul motioning her to the surface. He hadn’t attempted to recover or move the body. Now, with her tethered to him, there was no way he’d want to risk using the additional air if he intended to bring the body up with him. Hayden shook her head. She must be more rattled than she thought. Of course he wasn’t going to drag a dead man up. They must have a protocol for this.

  Remembering the skeleton, and that she hadn’t seen it, Hayden indicated she wanted to take a last look at the body. Through his facemask Paul’s eyes widened in question. Taking the risk that he wouldn’t abandon her, she knifed her body downward and turned back for the wheelhouse. Trapped by their mutual life support system, she felt Paul’s body as he swam alongside her.

  Gently she pulled both of them into the window. The skeleton lay beneath the body.

  She wasn’t nuts. Or narked.

  Paul wrapped an arm around Hayden and swam to the ascent line. He grabbed on with one hand and took her elbow in his other. Now they would have to ascend face to face. Hayden, following her usual procedures on this dive, managed to take a final look around. She checked her gauge to be sure she didn’t have any decompression obligations. Then she checked his to ascertain their mutual air supply. He wasn’t an air hog. That was good.

  They began to rise with the exhaust bubbles. Slowly and safely.

  Remembering the hole in the ceiling of the tiny wheelhouse, Hayden was surprised she’d never noticed it before. True, she’d never gone into the wheelhouse on any dive she’d done on the Humboldt, but she’d certainly hung on the ascent line often enough looking the wreck over. Curious, she removed the regulator from her mouth briefly so she could comfortably turn her head and look down at the wheelhouse. Between the corals and spiny clams covering the top of the wheelhouse and the lack of bright lighting, the opening was completely obscured from view. Heaving a mental sigh of relief, she replaced the regulator and motioned to Paul that she was ready to continue up the line.