by Kait Carson
“I don’t know. Maybe. Probably if they interviewed Kevin.”
“What happens now?”
“We wait. And you start from the beginning and you go to the police.”
“You said there were witnesses. What did they witness?”
“You don’t remember anything?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s going to be a hard sell. I’ll tell you what. You still have this headache?”
Hayden nodded.
“Okay, at some point you may be asked to surrender. That won’t happen until they have enough evidence to book you.”
Hayden tried to bolt from the room. Grant reached out and grabbed her before she got to the doorway.
“That serves no one,” he hissed at her. “Keep it together. I’m not going to tell you I know how you feel. I don’t. But I will tell you I don’t think you murdered anyone. Maybe it was an accident.”
“Accident? Grant, I don’t even remember seeing this man. When I found his body, I had never seen that face before. Why don’t you believe me? I don’t know what kind of witnesses there are but I don’t know this man.”
“I know, Hayden. I know. But you also tell me you get blackouts with migraines and you tell me you had a migraine on Friday. The day he died. And his sister-in-law is a cop. In fact, she’s the cop who took your statement on the dive boat. You have to share this with the police.”
It was too much for Hayden. Sobbing, she fell into Grant’s arms. A fog seemed suddenly to lift. She still felt the pain but it felt like someone else’s. Peeking around the edges of the hurt, she found a bit of memory. She remembered walking the concrete fingers between the boats at the marina.
She had been in the marina.
Why?
Ten
The five days since Hayden recalled her trip to the marina were filled with anxiety. Work was the only place she felt safe, and scuba diving was the only thing that kept her sane.
From Cappy’s boat, the water color was what she thought of as chamber of commerce blue. Every coral head and reef line below the bow stood out in sharp contrast to the sandy bottom. This was more Lake Atlantic than the Atlantic Ocean. She reminded herself the ocean didn’t reveal everything on the surface. The true mysteries lay below. Even now, a week after the horror that had filled her life, she couldn’t believe she’d been the one who found the body.
The salt tang stung her nostrils. She looked over at the man who drove the boat. “Any regrets? Did you wish I hadn’t called?”
“No, Hayden,” Cappy answered, “you wanting to go out without tanks kind of blew me away though. It’s hard to imagine you without a scuba tank on your back. I knew that wouldn’t last. I’m kind of glad I had a solo trip. You and Bunny dive well together. But you’re right, I did expect you to babysit her.”
Bunny got her certification last year. What she lacked in experience, she made up for with enthusiasm. Nothing frightened her, except barracuda and sharks. But right now Hayden wanted little to do with newbie divers. She’d been glad when Bunny decided to bow out at the last minute claiming an inner ear infection.
Cappy hadn’t wanted to run the trip with just Hayden, and she couldn’t blame him. They were good friends and Cappy did charge her for her diving, but given the cost of fuel, it didn’t pay him to take her out solo. She’d offered to pay double and not dive, but he maintained, and rightly, that she needed to get back under the water, not on top of it. She knew unless she hired him for a guide, he had to stay topside. Hayden wouldn’t consider diving solo right now, not after the last time.
“I’m glad you decided to be my dive buddy today.” Hayden playfully bumped him with her hip as he shut the engine down and walked to the anchor line. Cappy had agreed to serve as a spearfishing guide. He’d suggested they could both use something for the pot. She rarely spear-fished, but he hit everything he aimed his gun at. Her contribution would be calling the fish. Friends called her the fish whisperer. Black grouper followed her over reef and shoal, even into the line of sight of a spear gun.
“Hey Cappy,” Hayden called, “race you to the anchor line.”
“Don’t you dare swim for shore again.” Cappy nearly tangled his arms as he struggled to put his gear on unaided. “The last time you ended up in the channel. I swear, you have the underwater navigation skills of a newt.”
Hayden laughed as she balanced on the gunnels before tipping herself over into a back roll. Popping to the surface, she removed her regulator. “Water’s fine. I can even see the bottom. See you at the anchor.” She doubled her body and flipped head first to the sand some thirty feet below.
Routine took over and she automatically checked the buckle on her weight belt, her computer, air, and time. She checked all of these items on the boat, but it never hurt to be sure everything was in perfect shape after getting wet. A lot of disasters happened because something that seemed to function perfectly on the boat failed under water.
Stopping in the water column, Hayden looked around her. The water temperature neared the upper eighties, almost too hot. Two eagle rays did a mating dance below and to her left. She watched, fascinated as they danced their underwater ballet barely touching wings and then pulling off to circle each other again. One of them, male or female, she didn’t know which, dove down to the bottom, as if challenging the other to follow. It settled down on the sand below and gently fluttered its wings, slowly burrowing into the sand. Eagle rays never rested on the sand. They always floated in the water column. Stingrays behaved this way, covering themselves so only their eyes showed. Hayden watched in fascination. So totally lost in the scene, she nearly spit out her regulator when Cappy touched her arm and pointed in the direction of the anchor line. He took his regulator from his mouth and shouted, “I won. You couldn’t find it.” His words sounding gargled, but they were recognizable.
Hayden removed her regulator in response, and stuck her tongue out at the man.
Two grouper and a lobster later, the pair ascended to the boat.
Hayden grabbed Cappy’s arm as she stood looking over the gunnels before she removed her scuba tank. She pointed downward at something shiny. Cappy answered with a shrug. Slip slide striding to the swim platform, she jackknifed her body down to the bottom. She had plenty of air and the dive was shallow enough she didn’t have to worry about descending again so quickly. Hovering above the sand Hayden looked for the object that had caught her eye. She’d managed to keep it in sight most of the way down but at the very end, the light shifted and whatever she’d seen disappeared.
Shrugging to herself, Hayden turned to begin her ascent to the boat. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a flash. Turning slowly so she didn’t lose sight of it again, she swam in the direction of the flash. She scooped up the shiny object and put it in her BC pocket.
“Girl, are you going to get me in trouble again? What did you find down there? I didn’t see anything. Your track record would indicate what, a gun?” Hayden turned to present her tank encumbered back to Cappy, so he could help her out of her gear.
“Look, I found a bracelet, a charm bracelet. Probably real gold. Gold won’t tarnish underwater. It’s been years since people wore charm bracelets. I had one. My parents gave it to me for my ninth birthday. I hear they’re coming back now. I see them in magazines again, but this looks like the old kind. Lots of disks.”
“Hayden...Look ahead of you.” Cappy’s voice was grim. He pointed over her shoulder at the horizon. “Isn’t that a FWC patrol boat coming to greet us?”
The sea had picked up slightly while they had been underwater. They sat and waited for the patrol boat to approach, neither going to do a second dive until the patrol boat either stopped to talk or passed them. The boat passed by. Cappy pulled the anchor and Hayden fished the bracelet out of her BC pocket. The gold had no encrustation. She looked at each of the discs in turn
.
“Spanish. Not so old. The last one is for a quince.” She said using the Spanish word for fifteen. Spanish girls celebrated their fifteenth birthday the way American girls celebrated Sweet Sixteen. “The date on it is August 15, 2005. Most of the other charms are religious occasions or graduations. Everything’s in Spanish. Someone will be missing this. There’s something engraved on the back of one charm. Looks like a first charm celebrating a birth. I can’t read it though. It’s too small.”
Cappy opened the small cupboard near his pilot console and put the bracelet in. “There, remember to pick it up when we dock. Where to now? I’m thinking a trip back to the Humboldt will do you good.”
Bile rose in Hayden’s throat. “No. I don’t think I want to go back there.”
“Hayden, it’s like riding a horse, and it’s one of your favorite dives.”
Not answering, she picked up the binoculars and walked around the cuddy cabin to the bow. The increasing seas nearly tossed her sideways into the bench seat. Sitting on the remains of the once plush cushion, she lifted the glasses and scanned the horizon.
“It looks like someone’s there.”
“Tied on or fishing?”
“Can’t tell. Here.” She handed the binoculars back to the captain through the unzipped cuddy top window.
“I’ll be damned.”
“What?”
“It’s the patrol boat we just saw. Looks tied on too. Wonder who’s on patrol. Shall we go see?”
“No. I’ve had enough of the cops. That’s the last place I want to go.”
“There’s another boat there, Hayden. The patrol boat is bow tied to another boat. Don’t tell me they found another body. Maybe we should go and see what’s going on. If there’s someone else down there—”
“Cappy, no way, no how. I don’t want to be near that place. Not with the cops there.” Hayden swung herself around the cuddy cabin with such force she tumbled overboard. Instinctively she dove down deep to avoid the cutting blades of the propeller on the moving boat. She heard the props cut and saw the boat come around over her head. Her lungs at the bursting point, she surfaced like a cork exhaling all the way. It always amazed her how much air she had left after she thought she had no air.
Hayden sputtered and said, “Did I make my point?”
Eleven
Officer Janice Kirby watched her sister Elena toss roses overboard. She knew having her sister on the boat during duty hours could jeopardize her job. She didn’t care. Her sister came first. No one could find Elena’s husband’s boat and Janice had no other water access except her patrol boat. Richard, Ricardo, whatever name he used, whenever he used it, Janice had no use for him. That had nothing to do with how Janice felt about her sister though. Blood was blood, and bad taste in husbands didn’t change that.
Elena leaned over the side of the boat. She pulled the petals of each rose off one by one and tossed them over. Janice watched her sister and thought about the differences between them. They were both Cuban. Child refugees of the infamous Mariel boatlift. Their father worked for Castro’s government until he became disillusioned and requested exit visas for his family. Janice still had nightmares where she heard her mother’s sobs. The naked fear in her voice and her screams that her husband had signed his own death warrant.
That had ended their good life in Cuba. Janice, five at the time, and her sister just three, were too young to understand why meat disappeared from their table and fear took the place of joy. Before they left Cuba, her father came home one day after searching for work. Elena skipped up the block to meet him. She and Papa were two of a kind. Light-haired and blue-eyed. Elena saw it happen. A man came out from between two houses, then a loud banging noise and fire spat from the muzzle of a gun. The shot killed their father instantly.
Elena raced home, hysterical and covered in her father’s blood. Janice, attracted by the noise, saw her father drop to the sidewalk. Horrified, she ran after the fleeing gunman, hoping to catch and beat him with a garden rake. Janice lost sight of her quarry. She ran to her father and shook him, trying to wake him up. His eyes fluttered open one last time and he whispered he loved her and to take care of her sister.
They never found the killer. Many men paid for a meal by killing enemies of the state. Two days later Janice answered a knock on the door. A government official asked for her mother. Janice could still see her mother, thin and pale dressed from head to toe in black, a mantilla covering her black hair, reach out for documents. The exit visas had come. There were three. Mama, Elena, and Janice. None for Papi. The man told Mama to be at Mariel at daybreak. They left Cuba, never to return.
Janice shook her head to clear the images. She’d fallen in love with the sea on that rough and cramped voyage. She’d vowed as a five-year-old to catch bad guys. She’d made it. Officer Janice Kirby, marine patrol.
“Elena, come on, don’t lean so far over. Richard isn’t down there anymore.” She took her sister’s shaking shoulders between her two hands and tried to draw her to her breast.
Janice wanted to leave. Originally, she’d given in to her sister’s plea that she only wanted to circle the Humboldt and scatter flowers. She never intended to stay here. A small boat was already tied on to the buoy when they arrived and her sister saw it as an opportunity to pray and think. Janice agreed. She hoped if she gave in they’d leave quicker. Now she wanted to get Elena back to the dock before anyone saw the civilian in the patrol boat.
Sobs wracked the younger woman’s body. Her face was a mask of pain and horror. She hated the sea, never came out, and never wanted to go out on it.
“Richard loved the sea, Janice. It was his mistress.” She tipped her head forward, hiding her face behind a curtain of light blonde hair. “I was with him that night. I…I wanted to show him I loved him.” Her tearful blue eyes looked into her sister’s black ones, seeking something Janice wasn’t sure she could give her.
Something inside Janice died at Elena’s words. Knowing her sister had no knowledge of how to run a boat, she asked, “How did you get home?”
Confusion crossed her sister’s face. “What do you mean? Richard brought me. We fought. I wanted to come home. It was too dark on the water. We fought.” A deep flush mottled her fair completion. “Then…no, that’s not important. He took me home and dropped me at the dock. Then he left again, very fast. Too fast to be safe in the canal.”
“Did he say anything to you that night, before he left? Anything that might help us find out who killed him?”
“Yes,” Elena’s voice was more wail than speech. “Yes, he said he hated me. I would never see him again. I never did, I never saw him. I hated him too. I hated him and wanted him dead. Oh, Janice, I wanted him dead. Did I do this?”
“What are you saying? Are you saying you went out with him again? That you killed him?” Janice’s heart clenched, and she gathered the younger woman in a tight hug. “You are my sister, you can tell me anything. I’ll help you.”
“We went out, I told you that. We went out. Fishing that night, we both went fishing. I hate the water. You know. He beat me. Again. On the water, he beat me. I must have lost consciousness. He said awful things. Then we came back. He left me on the dock. What he said, awful. No man should talk to his wife that way.”
Janice could hardly understand her sister’s words between her sobs. She felt as if she were running through Jell-O. A buzzing noise filled her ears. Her head felt like it had hollow spaces. Her sister had just confessed to murder. That couldn’t be. She missed something.
Years of police training kicked in. “Then what happened?” Janice handed her sister a fist full of tissues.
“I don’t know. I was on the dock the next thing I knew. Behind our house. Alone and bloody, my head hurt. I remember being on the boat. I remember him hitting me. Everything went red. I remember red. Then—” her voice rose to
a wail. “I remember nothing. Janice, Janice, tell me I didn’t kill him. Janice, I couldn’t kill anyone.”
“I know Elenasita, I know. I am your big sister. I’ll help you.” Janice held the sobbing woman to her chest. The sobs that wracked the other woman’s body penetrated deeply into her soul. “I’ll help you,” she whispered into her hair. Their father’s hair.
“I won’t,” interrupted another voice. A man’s voice.
Janice looked up to see Paul, still clad in his dive gear, standing on the stern of the boat ahead of them.
Twelve
The look of horror on Janice’s face amused Paul. Being in control and having the upper hand amused him. He liked Janice, thought she was competent at her job, but she was taking a major risk being out here with a civilian in her patrol boat. He knew they’d both understand she owed him something now.
He’d come to dive the Humboldt again hoping the current hadn’t washed out whatever clues might still exist. The calm clear water was ideal for a solo dive. The depth didn’t bother him. As a public service diver, he’d handled conditions far worse than a typical dive to the deepest Humboldt depth. The buoy line looked like a strand of spun silver from the surface. When he broke the water he could see the entire Humboldt beneath him. The ship appeared to be twenty feet below the surface, not one hundred and twenty. When he reached the fifteen-foot marker, he turned and gave the line a hard tug to test the hook that connected his boat to the buoy. Leaving a boat alone on the surface could leave him stranded. He wanted to stack the deck in his favor as much as possible. It stayed secure.
He continued down from the marker. The inability to see the hole cut in the top of the wheelhouse caught his eye first. So, Hayden might have been telling the truth. If he hadn’t known the location, he wouldn’t have realized a hole existed unless he either swam over the top of the structure or went inside. The empty space blended into the overall structure and it looked like some kind of marine growth. He’d dived this wreck a dozen times before and never noticed the access. He understood how Hayden had missed it too.
