by Lee, Rachel
Jeff laughed. “It sure didn’t. It seems like there was enough air trapped in the hold to keep it afloat. Or something. It beats me. It should have been gone, but instead it was just sitting there, way too low in the water.”
“Wouldn’t have been long before the waves would have capsized it,” Eric remarked. “If we’d been much later, what with the seas getting higher, it would’ve been too late.”
“And if you’d been aboard her when she capsized,” Tom said sternly, “it would’ve been too late for you.”
Jeff looked abashed, and Eric looked down at his hands.
“Now I know it’s not my place to be telling you what to do,” Tom continued, “but salvage is a very risky business. You two are damn lucky you didn’t go down with that vessel.”
“Amen,” said Chase. “You can justify those risks when someone’s life is at stake, but nobody was aboard that boat. There was no justification to risk your own necks.”
Jeff appeared mutinous, as if he finally wanted to disagree. Chase wouldn’t give him the chance.
“It’s simple, son,” he said firmly. “Whatever your dreams, and however much salvaging that boat meant to you, it all would have been worthless if you’d drowned.”
Jeff turned to Tom. “Would you have salvaged her?”
“I don’t know,” Tom said. His pipe was out, and he took a minute to relight it “I wasn’t there and didn’t see it. But I can tell you this, if that boat was swamped and listing, I never would have boarded her until I’d attached floats so she couldn’t roll over.” He lowered his head and looked at Jeff from beneath bushy brows. A curl of smoke wafted up from his pipe.
Jeff nodded. “Okay. You’re right.”
Chase was surprised at how well the boy was taking this lecture. He’d gotten the impression from Callie that Jeff didn’t listen to anyone. But maybe it was just Callie he didn’t listen to.
Rising, ignoring the whispers in his ears that seemed almost like voices, he went to dig out an ashtray for his guests.
Both boys immediately lit Marlboros, adding their clouds of smoke to Tom’s.
Eric spoke. “You said you’re a deep-sea diver, Mr. Mattingly?”
“Call me Chase. I used to be.” He didn’t really care to discuss it.
But Tom wasn’t going to let him off so easily. “Chase here trained with the Navy SEALs.”
Those words had the predictable effect. Two young men looked at Chase with huge, awed eyes. He felt like an imposter. “I quit years ago,” he said gruffly.
“Yup,” said Tom. “Eight years ago. Then he worked as a salvage diver until recently.”
Chase considered strangling his friend. Tom knew he didn’t want to get into this. But Jeff Carlson was looking at him as if he were a superhero.
“I always wanted to do that,” Jeff said.
“What?” Chase asked gruffly. “Be a SEAL?”
Jeff shook his head. “No, dive. I’ve always wanted to dive, but it’s so expensive.”
Chase was tempted to seriously discourage him from such thoughts, then realized he was just being an old curmudgeon. “It’s not that expensive to take a little training and rent the equipment for a recreational dive.”
“I’ve been saving for my boat.” He suddenly brightened. “Now that I’ve got a boat, maybe I can take some lessons.”
“Maybe,” Chase agreed. It might even teach this kid some thought for consequences. Divers couldn’t afford to be careless, even on relatively shallow dives. Planning and preparation were everything. No winging it, the way this kid was apparently wont to do.
“If we’ve really got a boat,” Eric said. “But Callie’s right, Jeff. If they find drugs or something on that boat, we might never get it.”
“But we salvaged it. The law says it’s ours.”
“Not exactly,” Tom said. “It wasn’t fully sunk, so if the owner claims it, all you get is salvor’s fees. It’ll be a chunk of money, might even be more than the boat is worth.”
“Really?”
“I’ve seen folks try to get out of paying for a salvage job that saved them and their boat by claiming the cost of the salvage was more than the boat was worth. But they usually lose in court.”
“Well, that’s okay,” Jeff said. “I wouldn’t mind getting paid for salvage. Either way, I’m ahead.”
The kid wasn’t getting it, Chase realized. It wasn’t penetrating Jeff’s mind that he might wait until hell froze over to get either the boat or the payment for salvage. He found himself wondering if he’d been that blindly optimistic at twenty, and seemed to recall that he had been. Why else would he have become a SEAL?
And apparently Jeff wanted to get off this subject before he was forced to face reality, because he turned to Chase, and asked, “Was Hell Week as bad as they say?”
The question startled a laugh out of Chase. “I guess it was. I don’t remember a whole lot of it. You get to a point where you’re so crazy from lack of sleep, fatigue and discomfort that you kind of… well, zone out, I guess would be a way to describe it. That whole week is a fog in my memory.”
Jeff nodded as if he could imagine it. He couldn’t, of course. Nobody could. But Chase didn’t tell him that.
A short while later, the boys said good night and headed back home. Chase watched them walk out the door as if the night didn’t scare them at all, and he wished he could feel like that again.
When he glanced at Tom, he found his old friend staring at him from eyes that saw too much.
“How bad is it?” Tom asked.
Chase pretended not to understand him. “What?”
“The night.”
Chase drew a deep, disgusted breath and looked away.
“Come on, man, you told me about it in the hospital. It’s more than nightmares, isn’t it? Ever since the sun went down you’ve been jumpier than a cat.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Christ, Chase, cut it out! After what we’ve been through together, don’t lie to me.”
If there was any person on this planet he ought to be able to confide in, it was Tom. They’d been places together that most men hadn’t. After the death of Tom’s wife, Chase had been the one who’d held his friend as he wept. But he didn’t want to admit his weakness to the man he admired more than any other.
“It’s the nightmares, isn’t it,” Tom finally said. “They’re not happening just when you’re asleep.”
Chase closed his eyes, the corners of his mouth drawing tightly down with the discomfort of having his vulnerability exposed. Some things he just couldn’t bring himself to say.
“Well, hell.” Tom picked up his pipe and sharply rapped it against the edge of the ashtray, knocking out the dottle. Then with his brown, gnarled hands, he packed it with fresh tobacco and lit it again. “You think you were attacked, don’t you?”
“I couldn’t have been attacked. Bill Evers and I were the only people down there.”
Tom leaned back in his chair, resting his elbow on the table, cradling the bowl of his pipe in his palm as he drew on it. “There are different kinds of attacks.”
Chase nodded slowly, feeling the pressure of the night beyond the walls and windows, feeling it push inward on his house the way the sea had pressed in on him down at nearly two hundred feet, as if it wanted to squeeze the life out of him. “Could be,” he said finally, not believing it.
But it made him feel a little better to know that somebody else was feeling just as paranoid as he was. Maybe he wasn’t that crazy after all.
CHAPTER 4
When the sheriff’s cars pulled up, Callie was standing on a ladder under the eaves of the house, scraping away the peeling paint. She wore a headband, but perspiration was getting into her eyes anyway, making them sting. Even with help from Eric and Jeff, she saw no way she was going to have this painting done before her vacation was over.
All thoughts of her vacation and the paint job vanished, though, when she looked down from her perch and saw three sheriff’s cars an
d the forensics van pull up to the house. She recognized Deputy Markell when he climbed out of the first vehicle. She had known him most of her life, but that didn’t make her feel any easier. This was plainly no social call.
“Morning, Callie,” Markell called up to her. “Can you come down a minute?”
Her heart was hammering so hard now she could hear it, and the dry taste of fear filled her mouth. This was not good. She could read that in the number of cars, in the way the other deputies fanned out around the house, in the arrival of the forensics van. “What’s wrong, Fred?” she called down to Markell. She felt frozen in place, her hands attached to the ladder in a death grip.
“Come on down, Callie,” Fred Markell said again. “I need to talk to you.”
She nodded jerkily, put the scraper in the pocket of her canvas apron, and climbed down the ladder, acutely aware of the way the wooden rungs creaked beneath her feet, of the way the ladder swayed slightly under her weight. The ground seemed awfully far away.
But not far enough. All too soon she was standing on it, facing Fred, feeling as if every cell in her brain was scurrying in a different direction trying to find some plausible, unthreatening reason for three police cars and a forensics van to be in her yard.
“Callie,” Fred said, “it’s about Jeff.”
Just then, two officers came around the corner of the house escorting Jeff. His hands were cuffed behind his back.
“Jeff!” Callie cried out his name disbelievingly and started toward him, but Fred’s hand on her arm stopped her.
“Don’t do that, Callie.”
She whirled on Fred. “What the hell is going on here? My brother didn’t do anything! He’s been with me!”
“He’s been charged with grand theft and murder.”
“Theft? Murder!” Shock stunned her brain. She turned and started toward Jeff again, but this time Fred gripped her elbow with enough firmness to hurt.
“No, Callie,” he said sharply. “No. Don’t interfere or you’ll get arrested.”
His grip on her elbow held her there while she watched in horror as her brother was put into a police car and driven away. This had to be a nightmare. This had to be. There was no way this could be real….
“Callie.” Fred’s voice seemed to come from a great distance, from down a long tunnel. “Callie, I have a search warrant for the house and boat.”
She faced him, stunned almost past comprehension. “Warrant?”
He handed her some papers. “We have to search the house and the boat, Callie.”
“For what? For God’s sake, for what?”
“For items belonging to the two men who owned the boat Jeff salvaged. For weapons. For bloodstains.”
“Weapons…” This time it was she who grabbed Fred’s elbow. “Fred… For the love of God, tell me what’s going on here!”
Fred shook his head. “Your brother and Eric Block have been charged with theft and murder. If you want to know more, talk to the State Attorney, or get a lawyer. Right now, we’ve got a search warrant to execute. You can watch if you want, but stay out of the way.”
She went inside to do precisely that, but she noticed that Fred Markell followed her, as if he didn’t want her out of his sight. She dialed Shirley Kidder’s number and once she explained what was happening, she was put through to the lawyer immediately.
“Hi, Callie,” Shirley said. “Jeff’s in trouble again?”
“Arrested for murder and grand theft, and they’re searching my house right now.”
“I can’t do anything about Jeff until the arraignment. That’ll happen tomorrow or the next day. And I can’t do anything about the search warrant in time to stop them, Callie. You’ll just have to let them go ahead. If there’s anything wrong with the warrant, we can get anything they find thrown out of court. Other than that… just let them do it. I’d come out there except I have to be in court in twenty minutes. And there isn’t anything I can do by being there anyway. Call me back later this afternoon and we’ll get together to hash this out.”
Callie’s heart sank even further.
It was a nightmare. She could hardly believe she was awake. She kept wanting to pinch herself and make it all go away.
But it didn’t go away. The sun rose higher, the August day grew hotter, and she watched her life get turned inside out and upside down. Finally, she couldn’t stand to watch any longer as strange men poked into every nook and cranny of her life, even into her dresser drawers, handling her undergarments. She hurried outside, feeling as if she was going to throw up, and stared out toward the mouth of the inlet. She couldn’t even bear to look toward the Lily, where the forensics team was hard at work. Her whole life had suddenly spun out of control, had become a kaleidoscope of fractured images her mind was afraid to identify.
“What’s going on?”
Chase’s voice startled her, and she whirled around with a soft cry. She hadn’t see him in the week since Jeff and Eric had salvaged the boat. He looked bigger and more powerful than she remembered, like an anchor in the midst of her storm.
“I don’t know,” she told him, her voice stretched thin with tension. “God, I don’t know. They came and arrested Jeff for theft and murder and now they’re tearing the house and boat apart, but no one will tell me anything!”
“Theft and murder? What the hell for?”
“I don’t know! It must have been that boat he salvaged.”
“That’s not theft.”
“I know that. But I don’t know what else it could be!”
He nodded, his eyes narrow slits against the glare off the water. “I don’t suppose they’d tell me anything either.”
“Why should they? They won’t tell me, and it’s my house and my brother!”
Feeling as if she might shatter into a million pieces, she wrapped her arms tightly around herself and turned so that she couldn’t watch what was happening at the house and boat. She had forgotten she was still clutching the warrant until it crumpled against her upper arm.
Chase reached for it. “Can I?”
She shrugged and let him have it. She hadn’t even finished reading it yet. Every time she had tried, the typewritten legalese had made a cacophony of unintelligible syllables.
She focused on the splinters of light shooting off the waves in the inlet, feeling the pain of them stab her eyes, and preferring it to the pain piercing her heart. Beside her she heard Chase flip the pages of the warrant, one after another. Time passed. Seagulls cried overhead, and the waves lapped against the shore as they had for eternity and would for eternity, but nothing in her life would ever be the same again.
“It’s the sea,” she heard herself say. “It’s the goddamn sea. It’s not going to be happy until it’s taken everything in the world from me.” Crazy thoughts, but apt on such an insane day.
“Christ.” Chase whispered the word, and handed her the warrant. “They found human bloodstains on the boat your brother salvaged. They found a tarp stuck in an equipment locker that was covered with human blood and gore. The owner of the boat and his crewman have been missing since that day. They were last seen sailing out that morning on that boat with two clients. They’re looking for personal items that belonged to the two missing sailors, for bloodstains on your brother’s boat, for possible murder weapons, and for a large-caliber handgun that could have been used to shoot holes in the hull.”
Callie’s hand flew to her mouth and covered it, as if she were trying to hold something in. The waves continued to roll in, the sun continued to shine… and the iciness of death seemed to settle over her. Her brain stilled, growing utterly silent.
Finally, she said into her hand, her voice broken and small, “He didn’t do it.”
“No, of course he didn’t.”
Slowly, hardly daring to believe her ears, she looked up at him. His eyes, as dark as tropical thunderheads, looked steadily back at her.
“He didn’t do it,” Chase said again.
Somebody in this world-gon
e-mad believed her, believed in Jeff. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world to turn to him for comfort, and like the most natural thing in the world when his arms closed around her.
They stood like that for a long time. Why not? There was nothing either of them could do or say right now. The tide eventually rose until it lapped around their feet, washing away the sand from beneath them so that they sank lower. Callie found herself wishing she could just sink all the way and never be seen again.
“Callie?”
She turned her head, with Chase’s arms still around her, and looked at Fred Markell.
“We’re done, Callie. We’re going to have to seal the Lily for a few days, until we’re sure we’ve got everything we need, but the house is yours again.”
She opened her mouth to thank him, then realized the last thing on earth she wanted to do was thank Fred Markell for anything.
“Did you take anything from her house?” Chase asked.
Fred shook his head. “I don’t believe so. I’ll check with the others, though.” He started to walk away, but Chase stopped him.
“What should we do now?”
Fred looked back. “Unless you want him to be represented by a public defender, get the kid a lawyer. This afternoon if you can. He’s going to need representation at his hearing in the morning.”
Callie closed her eyes for a moment, then broke away from Chase and marched back toward the house, heedless of the way her sneakers squished.
“What are you going to do?” he called after her.
“Go see my lawyer.”
On the veranda, she kicked away her sneakers, then walked into the house, ignoring the sand that still clung to her. What did it matter anyway? The cops had messed everything up. Oh, they hadn’t torn it up badly, but everything was out of place, nothing was as neat as it had been. The house felt violated, and she hated Fred for that.
“Do you know somebody to call?”
She hadn’t heard Chase follow her into the house. He must move as silently as a cat despite his limp, she thought irritably. “I already called,” she said.
“You need somebody who can defend a murder case.”
