by Cate Holahan
Tom’s laptop rested on the desk. I settled into the antique captain’s chair beside it and opened the computer. I searched “Bahamas maps.” The third link showed the Bahamas archipelago, broken and scattered into nearly two dozen pebbles. Red lines traversed between the Miami coast and the islands like air traffic control flight patterns. The map belonged to a cruise company. The lines were ship routes.
Grand Bahamas port lay 106 miles off Miami’s sprawling coast, a pinpoint beside a long wavy line of U.S. soil. The Bimini Islands dotted halfway between both landmasses, buoys scattered between the two beaches. I pressed my thumb to the map. The sliver of white on my stubby nail more than covered the distance between the red line and Bimini. I wouldn’t need to swim long from the boat to the smaller islands. Maybe three hours. The Caribbean Sea would be bath temperature this time of year. I could do it. Maybe.
The map made me realize a major hurdle in my plan. White, swirling lines curled around Grand Bahama Island before exiting out to the Atlantic Ocean. They indicated the Gulf Stream current. If I fell between the lines, I’d be carried away, up the U.S. coast and out into the vast blue separating the continents. I’d have to plan my dive precisely as the boat passed Bimini’s east coast, before it crossed the current’s path.
Cruise ships were slow. Michael had told me once that they only traveled about twenty-five miles per hour. It was why he didn’t get seasick on big boats and I couldn’t book him on anything smaller than an ocean liner. Judging from the map, I’d need to jump about an hour after we set sail to miss the current and be within five to ten miles of the nearest island.
The swim had other obstacles not depicted on the map. The return trip would be in the evening. I’d be in the water at dusk, prime shark hunting hour. I’d also have to survive the “fall” over the ship’s railing without debilitating or bloody, predator-attracting injuries.
I searched for “safe fall distance into water.” Links hinted at the answers. At about thirteen stories, the water’s surface became akin to cement. Below that height, odds of survival greatly improved. Extreme-sports enthusiasts regularly dove from about four stories, or forty feet, without suffering a scratch. To be safe, I’d need to make sure my balcony was no more than four flights up.
Footsteps plodded down the stairs. Tom appeared in the open entrance to the room. Hair stuck to the right side of his forehead. “Hey, why are you up?”
I typed in a new search: Cheap cruise fares, ocean view. “Research.”
Tom flew to the computer. He slammed down the top, nearly trapping my hands between the screen and the keyboard. “Are you nuts? Not on my laptop. What if the police search it? They’ll see—What did you even look up?”
“Nothing. A map of the Bahamas. Cruise ships.”
“Babe, we have to be smart.” He tapped two fingers to his temple, an imitation of a gun barrel. “You can’t look up stuff here. Otherwise, the insurance company will think we planned it and won’t pay.”
“Why would insurance adjusters search our computers?”
“Because it’s their job. They’ll have to make sure your fall is an accident. Go to a library a few towns over or something.” Tom pushed the laptop farther back on the desk, out of my reach. “If insurers paid out for every suicide, they’d be bankrupt.”
Suicide. A deliberate fall off a cruise ship was akin to jumping off a bridge, and I was desperate enough to consider it. My lips trembled. Tears built behind my eyes. What had I agreed to?
Tom’s arms draped over my shoulders. His chin touched the top of my head. “I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry. I’m just on edge.” He nuzzled my hair as he whispered. “I know how nerve-racking this is. I wish more than anything that I could be the one to do it. You know that, don’t you?”
I made an affirmative noise into his bicep.
“I won’t let anything happen to you. I promise. We’ll get through this.”
I tried to control myself. Woman up. Tom had been willing to risk his life for the family. I could do the same. With proper planning, I’d be fine.
“Just picture the prize,” Tom said. “Someday soon, we’ll sit on the porch of our beach house, drinking caipirinhas. Your mom will be inside, making rice. Your dad will be running with his granddaughter on the sand, maybe flying a kite that we helped her paint earlier that day. Later, we’ll all go for a family swim.”
I closed my eyes and saw a lost memory. My mother, hair piled atop her head in a loose bun, leaned over a cast iron pot on the apartment’s gas stove. Rice was her specialty. Tom had heard me lament over countless dinners that my white rice with onions could never compare with her garlic-rich recipe. I could visualize her shouting from the kitchen for the family to come wash their hands while my father, healthy and safe, carried his granddaughter on his shoulders.
Tom read my mind. “Our daughter deserves to have grandparents. She deserves to have us.” His fingers laced and knotted through mine. “This will become our adventure story: what we did to give our daughter a better life. Like your parents’ story.”
My parents had sneaked into the United States beneath a tarp on a flatbed truck and then walked for two days in the desert between armed Mexican drug dealers to give their future child—me—a better life. If they could do that, surely I could brave a several-mile swim to give Sophia a chance at the childhood I’d always dreamed of, surrounded by family without the need to work at fourteen for food and clothes.
“How long until the policy pays, you think?”
Tom’s fingers slipped into my hair and stroked my scalp. “A few months. Maybe half a year.”
“I’ll need to smuggle myself back in then.”
The petting stopped. “You can’t come back without documents.”
“My parents did.”
“And immigration got them.”
“Not for fourteen years. I can’t leave Sophia for six months.”
“I’ll be here.”
I didn’t respond. Though Tom was a father, he wasn’t a caretaker. He didn’t know how to bathe our daughter, brush her hair, put her to bed. I couldn’t just leave her with him, not knowing when I’d be back. Not to mention, what would I do on an island without any papers or money?
“Don’t worry,” he whispered. “It will be okay. It’s only for a little while.”
I heard my mother’s voice, right before they’d been deported the first time. It’s only a little while. But it hadn’t been.
“Let’s go to bed.”
I rose from the desk chair. There was no point arguing with Tom. Come hell or high water, I was coming home.
Part II
Adverse selection
The tendency for persons with a higher probability of loss to seek more insurance than those with less risk.
21
November 27
Ryan rocked in Vivienne’s office chair, anxious for her to cue the video on one of her many computer screens. His former partner had been right about her powers of persuasion. A flash of her badge and a mention of her title on the “financial crimes” unit, and the restaurant manager had volunteered both the security footage and a free meal.
Vivienne clicked a few buttons on her keyboard. A video player took over the center monitor. The image inside was a still of a swanky bar. “You ready?” she asked.
“Action,” he said.
The video lacked sound. Silence thickened the air as Ryan watched Ana and Michael walk toward a back booth. The ghost, and maybe her killer. Ryan could understand the bartender’s initial confusion. Though Ana and Michael didn’t touch, their body language was close, friendly if not amorous. When Michael started kissing Ana’s neck, her head tilted back, giving him greater access, as her hand went to his chest to push him away.
A minute in, Ana’s lack of consent crystallized. She squirmed, moved Michael’s hands from her thighs, pulled down her dress each time he hiked it higher. Whatever she did, her boss came back at her like a mixed-martial-arts fighter, using his weight to pin her beneath
him. Just as it seemed he’d won, Ana landed a shot between his legs that doubled him over.
Vivienne hit the stop button, freezing on an image of Ana headed toward the stairs. She rapped her knuckles against her desk. “Well, that should convince someone at the prosecutor’s office to let me snoop through Mr. Smith’s bank transactions.”
Ryan felt a twinge of jealousy. He missed anonymously wading through records of a suspect’s spending. Whatever info he wanted now, he had to ask for it.
He pressed hard against the chair arm to hoist himself out of the seat. “I’ll leave you to it.”
Vivienne ejected the external hard drive. She glanced at him sideways, a look that could be flirtatious or wary, depending on the mouth. Her lips didn’t offer any clues. “What are you gonna do?”
“I’m going to find out if Ana was really alone when she fell.”
*
Ryan sat in his far less impressive home office, eating leftover takeout from a black plastic bowl with toss-away utensils. He’d spent most of his day trying to chase down the person at the cruise line with access to the keycard data for the Bacons’ stateroom. SunSeaStar Sails’ corporate line had proven about as helpful as Robomaids’ answering service. He’d spoken to several operators, each of whom had put him on hold to endless elevator music. Ultimately, he’d talked with a PR flack who’d promised to get his “questions” to the proper person.
Ryan chewed reheated rice and chided himself for not having demanded the info right away. Given Tom’s alibi, he just hadn’t been thinking murder.
The phone buzzed on the desk like the last gasp of a dying fly. A message on the home screen said he had a new e-mail from a Mr. Scott Groves, ship’s counsel. Ryan braced himself for a canned written statement about the Bahamas Maritime Authority ruling. He opened the message:
Dear Mr. Monahan,
I am writing with regard to your investigation of Ana Bacon’s fall off her stateroom balcony at 7:28 PM on the evening of August 30, as confirmed by ship security cameras. As I am sure you are aware, the Bahamas Maritime Authority found “no evidence of homicide” or ship negligence. Testimony from crew passengers and from Mrs. Bacon’s husband supported the BMA’s findings.
Mr. Bacon was observed on the starboard pool deck by fellow passengers at the time ship’s cameras later verified Mrs. Bacon’s fall. According to Mr. Bacon, his wife had suffered from pregnancy-related nausea and had vomited over the side of the boat earlier that day. Mrs. Bacon had also complained of upset stomach to fellow vacationers. Cruise line investigators believe that her death was accidental, though not in a way that could have been prevented by ship personnel. Posted signs warn passengers to observe caution around railings, and ill vacationers are urged to visit the ship infirmary on the ninth floor.
Ryan drummed his plastic knife against the lid beside his plate. The chances that the e-mail contained anything helpful were decreasing by the sentence. The attorney was wasting words defending against a phantom lawsuit from ISI to recoup paid death benefits.
With regard to your specific request for the recorded entry and exits of the Bacon’s stateroom on the date in question, we can provide the following information based on our electronic keycard system: The door was opened with a room key at 6:25 PM and subsequently locked. The lock engaged at 6:58 PM and again at 8:03 PM, indicating that the door was opened at those times from the inside. The door was opened with a room key at 8:05 PM and subsequently locked. The lock engaged again at 8:30 PM. At 8:45 PM, the door was opened by a ship captain’s master key. It is important to note that keycards can sometimes fail to properly open a door, leading to multiple lock engagements for the same entry attempt.
The cruise line interviewed all passengers near the Bacons. One couple in the adjacent stateroom was at dinner during Mrs. Bacon’s fall and has nothing to add to the investigation. The other neighbor is willing to speak with you, though he has asked that his name not be included in this e-mail, as he is concerned that his information could be forwarded.
We hope this satisfies your requests.
Mr. Groves’s contact numbers were listed in a postscript, along with the telephone number for the nameless neighbor. The number had a New York City area code.
Ryan reread the message’s penultimate section, pitting the timeline against Tom’s prior testimony. Tom and Ana had returned from the day’s beach excursion at 6:25 PM. Then, according to Tom, he’d gotten his wife settled on the balcony and headed to the pool, leaving the room at 6:58 PM. The door locked behind him. Thirty minutes later, Ana fell overboard.
Tom had said he returned around 8:00 PM to an empty stateroom. The cruise line evidently believed that he had attempted to open the door at 8:03 PM but wasn’t successful until 8:05 PM.
Ryan stirred the Thai food on his plate. What if Tom’s key had worked fine? What if he’d opened the door two minutes after his wife’s killer had left?
Ryan chewed a thick piece of tofu that tasted of soy and boiled carrots. He liked the theory, but it had a problem. He couldn’t explain how the killer had gotten inside the Bacons’ stateroom in the first place. The assailant couldn’t have slipped past Tom as he was leaving at 6:58 PM. Surely Mr. Bacon would have mentioned seeing a strange attendant.
Ryan set down his plastic utensils. He could think of only one plausible scenario that put a killer in the room with Ana: Tom hadn’t returned to the room. Mr. Bacon had lied about seeing his wife sleeping on the balcony. He knew the policy wouldn’t pay if it looked as though Ana had jumped, so he’d put his wife on the balcony, recovering from nausea, to add credibility to his accident theory. Maybe part of him even feared that Ana had killed herself and he’d wanted to cover it up.
But Ana hadn’t committed suicide because, at two minutes to seven, she’d opened the door for her murderer.
22
August 23
A finger pressed to disembodied lips on a large white sign. The words for “quiet” in a dozen languages were scattered around like the spray from a firecracker. The library had at least seven posters urging patrons to keep silent. No one listened. Two women behind the checkout desk discussed their families at a volume intended for the hard of hearing. An elderly man shouted into a cell phone. A vacuum ran in a back room. Two kids played hide-and-seek amid the bookcases while their mom read loudly enough to entertain an entire classroom.
Sophia sat at a long desk of computers, coloring book open to the letter R. The monitor in front of her reflected a serious face.
“R. Ruh. Ruh,” I said, opening up a web page.
“Ruh,” she repeated.
“Color the pictures on the page that begin with the letter R.”
I moved my cursor to the search bar and typed in the address supplied by my mother that morning, after I’d sworn that the info was only for a friend’s nanny: www.RTT.com. An acronym, she’d explained, for Return Trips Travel Inc. Times had changed. The smugglers had become incorporated.
Sophia tugged on my arm. She pointed to a rabbit in her notebook. Her cheeks puffed from the force of her smile. I beamed back at her. “Right. Rabbit starts with R. Can you fill it in with a color beginning with R?”
She scanned the five fat magic markers beside the keyboard. Her fingers rested briefly on the purple before shaking her head vigorously. She grabbed the red. “Red. Ruh. Ruh.”
A picture of the globe loaded. Red lines arched across the image to the United States’ seaboard cities. Bold black text ran across the screen: Come to the Land of the Free. Financing Available. One-Ways Starting at $5,000. Many Trips Available. Employment Opportunities. Aztec Guided Tours, Canadian Wilderness Retreats, Miami Sailing, Caribbean Cruise Passages.
The listed five-thousand-dollar amount had to be the initial required payment. My breath quickened. I’d been unable to get a grand for my parents. How would I possibly scrounge up several thousand dollars?
Sophia’s hand moved back and forth across her coloring page. Red zigzags spilled over the rabbit’s thick outline. I w
ould have to teach her to color inside the lines. One thing at a time. First letter sounds. We would work on marker control later. If there was a later . . .
I pushed the thought from my mind and tousled her dark hair. “Red rabbit is right.”
Sophia moved on to a rhino, trying, in vain, to stay within the thick black borders. The point of her tongue protruded above her lower lip in concentration. My diligent little girl. How could I leave her?
The web page had a phone number. I borrowed a blue marker from Sophia’s pencil case and printed it on the inside of my wrist. As I did, I made a mental tally of all the cash sources I could tap. My last work check would arrive in the mail soon, two weeks’ pay, or two thousand dollars, after taxes. Unemployment would pay something, though surely not three thousand dollars. Where could I get more? Would the coyotes let me pay less upfront and work off a larger amount?
My daughter finished the rhino. She scanned the remaining animals and then pressed the marker’s felt tip to a picture down in the corner. A mouse.
“That one doesn’t get colored, baby. Only R animals, like ruh-rabbit.”
Red zigzags, less controlled than the ones filling in the rhino, scrawled across the animal’s pointy nose and whiskers.
“No, Soph. That’s M. Muh-muh-mouse. Like Mommy.”
She continued to scribble over the animal’s fat body. “It’s all R.”
“Not mouse.”
“Look.”
A long, hairless tail protruded from the animal’s oversized backside. Whiskers stretched nearly to its knees. I hadn’t recognized a rat.
*
Sophia skipped on the Newark sidewalk, all the while rotating a lollipop stick in her mouth. The library kept them in a dish by the checkout counter. I couldn’t fail to give her one after she’d waited for me to finish researching something without any entertaining pictures.
