by Lee, Rachel
When he did speak, his voice was thick, and he couldn’t even look at her. His gaze fixed itself to the water, his ears heard only the gentle lapping of it against the sides of the boats nearby as the morning breeze ruffled its surface.
“Ever since I can remember, I wanted to go to sea. I can’t explain it. It just always was. I belonged to the sea.”
“Like Jeff,” she said.
“Maybe. The sea is alive. You can feel her presence even on the shore. She has happy days, she has sad days and she has angry days, and she’s very much alive. The connection I feel to her is almost… mystical. Her tides are in my blood. I feel her ebb and flow and her moods as strongly as I feel my own. Without her, Fm half-alive.”
Now he turned and looked at Callie. “Does she exact a price for her tolerance of us? I sometimes think so. Does she actually move events?” He paused. “Damned if I know, Callie. But sometimes I feel she does. Lately I’ve been feeling that I cheated her, and she wants something more from me. Crazy? Maybe. But if you say you feel the sea is after Jeff, I believe it’s possible, because I can feel her still wanting me.”
She caught her breath, then spoke in a hushed voice. “What can we do?”
“Exactly what we’re doing. The sea is a force, Callie, but she’s not a god. She’s also mysterious. Jeff may not be what she’s after here. If she’s after anything at all.”
He shrugged, then gave an uneasy laugh. “There, that’s my craziness for the day.”
She could tell he felt a little embarrassed—or maybe it was uneasy—about what he had just said, but right now she felt incredibly close to him. He had validated a feeling she had been struggling to put into words, a feeling that had been born in her.
Her family had always belonged to the sea, and now she wondered how she had ever thought she would escape its clutches. It would take what it would, when it would, just as it had taken her father. At least Jeff had a fighting chance— if they could learn something.
Two middle-aged men dressed in shorts and tank tops were approaching them along the dock. Lovers, Callie thought. There was something in the way they moved, the way they talked to one another that reminded her of an old, comfortably married couple. They climbed aboard a boat two slips away.
“Let’s go talk to them,” Chase said. Callie followed a few steps behind.
The men were friendly.
“We knew George and Jimbo,” the taller of the two said. “George was a great guy. Jimbo was… well…” He looked at his partner.
“A gay basher,” said the shorter man. “We avoided him.”
The taller one nodded. “Exactly.”
Chase spoke. “I’m not getting a very flattering impression of Jimbo.”
The taller one smiled. “He was probably a great guy, too. In his own circles. Just not… cosmopolitan.”
The shorter one laughed. “Generous, Tom. That’s very generous.”
The taller man shrugged a shoulder. “What’s the point. He had his worldview, and it didn’t fit with ours. But he didn’t bother us unless we got too close, and that’s about the best you can expect from people.”
“Sometimes it is,” agreed Chase. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about the two men they took out with them the day they were killed?”
“Not a thing,” said the taller man. “Did you notice anything, William?”
“Not really. Except I thought it was strange they were going out on a sportfisherman for a dive.”
Chase and Callie exchanged quick looks. “A dive?” Callie said.
“Yeah. At least that’s what I thought. Why else would they be carrying aqualungs aboard? Well, maybe they couldn’t find a dive boat to charter. I guess it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference what you go out in.”
“That depends,” Chase said. “Did you notice anything else about their equipment?”
“No, afraid not. About the only part of diving gear I recognize is the air tanks.”
“So many people want to dive the reefs,” Tom said. “We ought to try it sometime, William.”
“I don’t think so. Snorkeling is as deep as I want to go.”
Chase spoke. “You wouldn’t happen to know who owns that boat?” He pointed to the one that was on the other side of Westerlake’s slip.
“Some stockbroker from Miami,” Tom said. “He owns a house in Old Town and comes out on weekends and holidays.”
“So he wouldn’t have been here that day?”
“I don’t have a clue. Probably not. It was a Wednesday, wasn’t it?”
Chase thanked them, then he and Callie went back to the car.
“What now?” Callie asked. The sun was beginning to get warm, and she could feel it prickle her skin.
“Dive shops,” Chase said. “Somebody filled those cylinders.”
CHAPTER 11
“What good is it going to do to go around to all the dive shops and ask questions?’ Callie asked. “We don’t know who these men were. We don’t know what they looked like. Nobody is going to know who we’re talking about. Why would they remember anyway? They probably fill lots of air tanks for tourists.”
“Probably.” Chase drummed his fingers on the wheel. They were still sitting in the parking place while he thought things over. “Most of the dives people take around here are in thirty feet or less of water.”
“Of course. You have to go oceanside of the reefs to find water deeper than ten meters.”
“Exactly.”
“So?”
“It would be interesting to know what these guys filled their tanks with.”
“I’m not following.”
“It’s simple. If they were diving in the reefs, they probably got the standard compressed air in their tanks. They could get that anywhere around here.”
“But?”
“If they were going to dive much over a hundred thirty feet, and if they expected to be down a while, they’d probably want a heliox mixture. Helium and oxygen.”
“But why?”
“The helium and oxygen mixture prevents the narks.”
“You’re going to have to back up here, Chase. I haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about.”
“Okay. Let’s go get some breakfast, and I’ll explain. I need time to think about what tack to take with this anyway.”
She was more relieved than she wanted to admit that they weren’t going to go around to shops asking for two men they couldn’t name and couldn’t describe. Without more information it would be a big waste of time.
They found a small restaurant near the harbor that served breakfast with a view. Chase sat looking out the window, watching the boats putting out for the day.
After they ordered, he spoke. “What don’t you understand? Nitrogen narcosis?”
“I’ve heard of it, but I don’t really understand it.”
“I’m not sure anybody really does, to tell you the truth.” He flashed her a smile. “They know something about it, but not everything. There are a lot of assumptions made in this area.”
“Okay. I can live with that.”
“Not much choice.” His smile broadened a shade. “Nitrogen narcosis, also known as the rapture of the deep or narks, is the effect of the nitrogen in our blood on our central nervous system when the pressure increases. You do know that the pressure increases as we go deeper in the water, because of the weight of the water above us?”
She nodded.
“Okay. The air we breathe on land is mostly nitrogen, about eighty percent, actually. That stuff is in our blood all the time. For some reason, and this really isn’t understood, nitrogen has an anaesthetic effect on us when the pressure increases. It starts to interfere with the functioning of the central nervous system. For a diver this means you might start to get dizzy or euphoric, or even extremely paranoid. If you’re on the alert for it, and recognize it, you can usually deal with it, though.”
“That’s what happened to you?”
“It seems to be. I got wildly para
noid, started hallucinating. Classic narks. I’ve never had a case that bad before.”
“And that was from the compressed air in your tank?”
“Actually, I was on heliox. Helium and oxygen. The helium’s an inert gas, too, but it’s less likely to cause the narks.” He was frowning, and shook his head, as if dismissing a thought. “So maybe it wasn’t narcosis. Maybe the docs are right, and I had some kind of stroke. Anyway, something must have been seriously out of whack in my body that day, because I went over the edge. Full-blown hallucinations. I’ve never done that before. Never.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t remember. I do know they pulled me up too fast because I was trying to pull my helmet off, and that’s why I got the bends so bad.”
Callie saw the flicker of agonized self-doubt in his face. “What went wrong?”
“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “Narks. Bends. Everything. I don’t know. But I sure as hell must’ve done something wrong.”
Impulsively, she reached across the table and squeezed his hand. “Maybe you didn’t do anything wrong at all.”
He averted his face. “I must have,” he repeated. “Because everything else was right.”
She was surprised to feel herself aching for him. Self-doubt could be a destroyer. Not knowing how to reassure him, she decided to shift the focus of the conversation. “What are the bends, anyway?”
He shook himself visibly, and looked at her again. “Gas bubbles. You have air dissolved in your blood and tissues all the time, you know. When you dive, those bubbles get compressed by the pressure, becoming small, small enough to get into places they couldn’t ordinarily fit, like the brain and the joints. Now when oxygen and carbon dioxide bubbles get into your tissue, the body can take care of them. And even with nitrogen or helium there’s no problem while you’re down there, because the bubbles stay small enough to pass in and out of tissues without hurting anything. But when you come back up too fast, they expand before they can get back out into your bloodstream. I’ve seen divers with bubbles visible under their skin.
“Anyway, you have to ascend slowly enough that the body can reabsorb the gases into the bloodstream before the bubbles get stuck and expand enough to do damage. We’re talking serious damage, Callie—ruptured tissues, blood clots. We pulled a diver up one time, he was coughing up blood because the bubbles were tearing his lungs open. I was lucky. It just messed up my hip joint and some of my spinal nerves.”
She had the worst urge to hug him. “Will it ever get better?”
“Who knows? Most likely not, though.” He leaned back to let the waiter serve them fresh-squeezed orange juice. “Did you know high-altitude pilots can get the bends? They reduce the likelihood by putting them on pure oxygen.”
“I never would have imagined that.” Callie thought over what he’d told her. “So you think these two divers might have been diving the same place where you were hurt?”
He sighed. “I don’t know. It crossed my mind. The coincidences are starting to get deep.”
Something in Callie rebelled. “We don’t have any more than coincidence, Chase. And it’s not much of a coincidence. There are an awful lot of boats on those waters out there. To try to draw a link between the sunken boat you investigated and the boat Jeff found is really stretching it.”
“Until you think about ten million dollars’ worth of uncut diamonds, two men who were killed in the vicinity of the first wreck, and two divers who have disappeared in the same area.”
“But we don’t know that they did! Maybe those men got off the boat somewhere else. Maybe they were just out there to dive the reefs and they got left out there by the murderers. Maybe George Westerlake and his partner were smuggling drugs. God knows these waters are full of drug runners even now.” Although it wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been back in the seventies.
Chase’s gaze settled on her, his stormy gray eyes measuring. On his earlobe, the diamond winked. All he needed, Callie suddenly thought, was a cutlass, and to let his dark hair grow.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Wrong?”
“I thought you agreed with me this was worth checking out.”
“It is. I’m not saying it isn’t. But I’m leery of clutching at straws, and I feel that’s what we’re doing. If we knew anything about these divers—”
“Hold that thought,” he interrupted her. “You just gave me an idea. I’ll be right back.”
She watched him get up and cross the restaurant. He spoke to a waiter, then disappeared around a corner. Call of nature, she decided. Although it would have been politer if he hadn’t interrupted her.
Turning her attention to the harbor beyond the window, she hardly noticed that the waiter brought their breakfasts. Sometimes she wished she lived as far from the sea as it was possible to get, maybe in the upper Midwest, where she heard the only waves were those die wind sent rolling across endless acres of wheat and corn.
But part of her knew she wouldn’t be happy there. Much as she hated the sea, she loved it, too. And she resented the hell out of that.
The harbor was peaceful this morning, boats rocking gently on the swells caused by the wake of other boats. Picture-postcard perfect. Some part of her wished she could let go of the tension inside her, the feelings and fears that had been born with her father’s death, and just relax into the beauty she saw.
But some essential trust in her had been destroyed with her father. She no longer trusted the sea, and she no longer trusted men. And Chase was probably no different, she thought. He was as changeable as the sea, and probably no more reliable. And like most men, he’d be out of here when he was no longer getting what he wanted, when he no longer needed anything from her. Or when the going got too tough.
This last thought, crossing her mind with such bitterness, astonished her. She didn’t think her father had abandoned her because things got too tough, did she? Mel, yes, but her father?
Feeling almost frightened by the direction of her thoughts, she was glad to see Chase making his way back to her.
“Great timing,” he said as he slid into the seat across from her. “The eggs are probably cold.”
“He just brought them.”
“Well, I’ve got good news, maybe.”
“What’s that?”
“Pearl Rushman has agreed to see us.”
“Pearl Rushman?”
“Jimbo Rushman’s wife. She says she dated your daddy years ago. So she’s going to talk to us about the men who chartered the Island Dream.”
Pearl Rushman lived on Big Coppitt Key, off a narrow road that wound past battered mobile homes and small cinder block houses. The money that was gradually reshaping the Keys hadn’t reached this enclave yet. Pearl’s house was down near the water, her small yard scattered with hubcaps, car parts, and other trash. Beside it rested a boat so old it looked as if it was ready to crumble.
Inside, though, the house was meticulously tidy. Callie guessed the yard had been Jimbo’s doing.
Pearl was a pleasant-looking woman of fifty, with steel gray hair cut short and dark eyes that peered from behind thick glasses. Her skin was tanned and weathered, and her hands showed a lot of hard work and arthritic joints.
She invited them in and offered them iced tea. They sat in a living room furnished with pieces that were probably older than the house by far.
“They’re my things,” she said when Callie mentioned them. “Handed down.” She pointed to a small table. “That there is about a hundred and fifty years old. Abel Rushman made it with his own two hands when he settled here back in 1842.” A smile creased the corners of her eyes. “But you know all about that, don’t you, Callie? Your family goes back about that far, too, don’t it?”
“Nearly. My people came here right after the Civil War.”
Pearl began to rock her chair gently. “Not many of us left, us old Conchs. When life gets hard here, it gets too hard. The hurricanes blew us into the sea, the pinea
pple trade died, the sponge trade died—it’s always something dying. I told Jimbo not to get so upset about the net ban. It’s the way of things, I told him. We’ll just find another way to survive. We did, too. At least until he got hisself killed.”
She said it with such surprising calm that Callie felt almost startled. She searched the woman’s face, wondering if she were suffering some kind of dissociation or severe denial, but saw nothing in those dark eyes except resignation.
Chase spoke. “I don’t think he wanted to get himself killed, Mrs. Rushman.”
She snorted. “You don’t know my Jimbo. Now take your father, Callie. There was a good man. If your momma hadn’t turned his eye, I’d’a dragged him to the altar with me. But Jimbo…” She shook her head. “If there was trouble on that boat, my money says he was part of it.”
“But…” Callie hardly knew what to say. She’d come here in dread, expecting this woman to say horrible things about Jeff.
“Your brother, you mean?” Pearl nodded her head. “I don’t think he killed my Jimbo or George. Natalie Wester-lake thinks those boys done it, but I know better. The Carlson family don’t go ‘round killing nobody. They was always better than that, and the twig don’t fall far from the tree. I always knew Jimbo was gonna get hisself killed. That man couldn’t keep his nose outta what was none of his bidness. Never could. And some folks’ bidness in these parts ain’t healthy to go pokin’ your nose into. That’s what I told them deputies when they come askin’ questions. That Carlson boy didn’t do nothin’.”
Callie wanted to jump up and hug Pearl, but all she could do was say, in a voice husky with emotion, “Thank you.”
“No need to thank me.” Pearl shook her head. “I say it like I see it. Always have, always will. Jimbo got hisself into somethin’, and that’s all there is to it.”
Chase spoke. “Do you know anything about the two men who chartered the boat that day from Jimbo and George?”
“I know they paid cash the day before, and they paid extra because they wanted to go out past the reef. Deep-sea fishing I thought, but Jimbo said they was a couple of crazy divers.”
