Tony studied the bent pipes and moved slightly around, until he was above the one that was bent down and had his hands on the two that were bent upward. I’d given him all the details on the murders during the ride out here. Even behind his mask, I saw the look of revulsion in his face, at the same time that I realized what had happened here.
The killer hadn’t hit the woman with the brain coral, he’d forced her head down through the grid and smashed her face on it. Probably more than once, to do the amount of damage that was done. Then, after she’d drowned, he’d used the two pipes for leverage while he raped her lifeless body so hard that the pipe the body was hanging over was bent downward. I shuddered again as we rose a few feet.
I checked my air pressure gauge and, seeing that I was down to nearly twelve hundred pounds, I motioned to Tony that it was time to leave. We finned north, passing under the Revenge, slowly rising to intercept our anchor line. Leveling off at ten feet, we swam to the line and grabbed it, dumping some air from our BCs to hang on the thick braided nylon.
Safety and decompression stops are boring and tedious, but they’re a necessary part of repetitive diving. Hanging there by one hand and looking around, I thought about the gun I’d found. I hadn’t taken the time to inspect it or anything. I didn’t need to; I’d known it was a Colt Cobra when I picked it up.
Could I be wrong about Lawrence? I wondered.
I only knew him as a cab driver, and didn’t really know much about his personal life. I usually went with my gut instinct about people, and Lawrence had helped me out on more than one occasion. My gut had always told me that he was a decent person.
But I don’t believe in coincidences. Usually when two seemingly unrelated events occur and seem to be linked only by the circumstances of their occurrence, there’s some underlying and unseen connection between them.
Lawrence hired Isaksson, of that there was no doubt. Treasure hunting being what it was, I felt pretty confident that only Isaksson, Marshall, and Lawrence knew where they were searching—and now two of the three were dead and the third was being framed for the murder. I was equally certain that both had been killed right here. The cops had determined that James was killed with a Colt Cobra and Lawrence owned one, though he’d said it was stolen. I’d just found the same weapon at the murder scene. These connections seemed to add up to be way more coincidental. And they all pointed to Lawrence as the killer.
Or did they? The wild card in this whole thing was why Lawrence hadn’t reported the theft of his money box and gun, if it had really happened. If it had, then obviously, someone was taking steps to try to make it look as though Lawrence was the killer.
I had to decide what to do about the discovery of the gun. I still believed Lawrence to be innocent, so I should hand the gun over and hope that the facts bore that out. If he really was the killer, I knew I had to turn it over, friend or not. But what about the hair under the girl’s nails? Lawrence definitely hadn’t killed the girl, but he wouldn’t be the first person convicted of something he didn’t do.
In the distance, I heard a buzzing sound, recognizing it immediately as an outboard motor getting closer. I could tell Tony heard it as well, and we both started looking around. Though sound travels a lot further underwater, it’s impossible for the human ear to figure out what direction it’s coming from. We’ve lived on land for so long our brains have adapted to the speed of sound through air. We determine direction by the nanosecond of difference it takes for sound waves to reach both ears. In water, sound travels four times faster than it does in air. Sea creatures’ minds are better adapted to determining direction underwater.
The pitch of the outboard remained high as it neared. Being close to the surface when a boat is approaching under power can be more than a little unnerving. Then I saw the boat, perhaps a hundred feet away. The pitch changed as the boat slowed down. Tony looked at me questioningly, and I checked my watch. I held up my fist, then extended four fingers, telling him we still had four minutes of decompression time before we could safely surface.
The other boat was small, maybe eighteen or nineteen feet. The bottom was covered with barnacles and fine, stringy algae. It obviously hadn’t been out of the water in some time and used infrequently. The boat drifted alongside the Revenge for about a minute, then roared away at top speed.
Curiosity got the best of me. I signaled Tony to stay put and I’d be right back. I let go of the anchor rode and swam back toward the Revenge, passing directly under it, but remaining at ten feet. Below the swim platform, I turned into the current and kicked toward the surface. I just wanted to pop my head up, make sure everything was okay, then drop back down to finish the deco stop.
Duke’s head hurt. The previous night was a blur when he tried to recollect the events after having left the club. He went up the ladder from the salon of his twenty-nine-foot sloop, squeezed his wide shoulders through the narrow hatch, and looked around.
Duke wasn’t a sailor and had no intention of learning. The boat was cheap, and the dock fees were a lot less than renting an apartment. He’d bought it four years ago, and it hadn’t left the dock since then. He didn’t even know if the little motor would start. He ate his meals out so, as with the motor, he didn’t know if the alcohol stove would work or even how to operate it. The boat was connected to shore power, fresh water, and cable TV. He’d installed a little air conditioner in the forward deck hatch that more than cooled the tiny interior. It was a place to sleep and have some privacy away from Harley.
Stepping over to the dock, he went up to the marina office to see if they had any coffee and a boat he could rent. The mid-afternoon sun was already hot, though it was the middle of October.
Twenty minutes later, Duke idled the dirty seventeen-foot center console under the US-1 bridge and followed the channel markers to the man-made cut to Cudjoe Bay. He crossed the bay and turned north into Kemp Channel. Going under Overseas Highway again, he almost brought the boat to a stop. A salvage boat was aground on the right side of the channel, with yellow police tape around the whole deck.
Not seeing anyone, he continued on his way, glancing back nervously at the big boat. He followed Kemp Channel out into Cudjoe Basin, then northwest in Cudjoe Channel, until he finally reached the Gulf waters.
Duke turned due north and accelerated. It wasn’t his first time making this trip, and it wasn’t his first time at the wheel of this particular boat. At least once, sometimes twice a month, Harley had him go out here to see who was snooping around. Most times, he never found anyone. He’d never figured out how Harley knew anyone was out here. It was miles from anywhere.
Ten minutes out, and nearly soaked by the salt spray, he spotted a boat in the distance. It looked like a big offshore fishing boat had anchored up. Duke turned wide, angling away from the boat slightly. When he was nearly abreast of the bigger boat, he turned suddenly and headed straight toward it.
Still a hundred feet away, he saw a blond woman in the back of the boat. She was waving both arms over her head and pointing at the red and white flag on the roof. Duke didn’t know what the flag meant, and didn’t care. This was close to the spot that Harley wanted to keep secret.
Slowing the boat, Duke turned until he was broadside about fifteen feet away from the bigger boat. He looked it over carefully. It was a beauty, as was the girl. She had blond hair pulled back in a big, puffy ponytail and was wearing cut-offs and a work shirt tied below her boobs. Just like the girl in Dukes of Hazzard.
Yeah, Duke thought. Now that’s a hot one. Boat probably cost a ton of money, too.
“Are you nuts?” the woman shouted over the water. “There are divers in the water!”
“You can’t dive here! It’s a sanctuary!” Duke shouted back, realizing the woman was alone on the boat and trying to figure out a way to get her off it. It wasn’t about satisfying a need, just an opportunity that he couldn’t pass up.
“We’re not sport diving, sir,” the woman said, an irritated and suspicious tone in her v
oice. “I’m with—”
“It don’t matter!” Duke yelled, cutting her off and waving his arms. He moved to the front of his boat, where he opened a fish box. “This here is a sanctuary! You’re not allowed to do anything in a sanctuary!”
Duke reached into the fish box and lifted a twelve-gauge shotgun out, racking a shell into the chamber. Duke knew that particular sound always scared the hell out of people, especially girls. Hell, he thought. I’ll just ride over there and take her.
When Duke looked up, long before he had a chance to even raise the shotgun, he realized he’d made a serious mistake, as he was now looking down the barrel of a big gun in the woman’s hands. He froze.
“As I was trying to tell you,” the woman said, “I’m with the sheriff’s department. Now, real slow, extend that shotgun out to your right and lay it on the deck. Don’t think about it, mister. Just do it. I’ll shoot you before you can move an inch.”
Duke knew he was screwed, and he also knew that Harley would be very angry. The woman’s boat was rocking in the small waves, but not nearly as much as his was, and her gun barrel never wavered from his chest. Slowly, he did what she said and leaned to lay the Remington on the foredeck.
A wave hit Duke’s boat the wrong way and threw him off balance—only slightly, but enough to lose his grip. The shotgun clattered back into the fish box, where the anchor rested haphazardly on top of the life vests and anchor line in the box. One of the anchor’s flukes wedged into the trigger guard and the shotgun went off with a boom, blasting a big hole in the side of his rental boat.
Duke saw the woman duck behind the side of the boat. He moved back to the wheel and jammed the throttle as far as it would go. A shot rang out and Duke instinctively ducked his head. A few seconds later, he was safely out of range and turned to the east and then south, speeding away toward shore. There was no way a boat that big could catch him.
He had to get to the club as fast as possible and tell Harley what happened.
Harley’s gonna know what to do, Duke thought. He always knows what to do.
As soon as my head broke the surface, I knew something was wrong. Devon’s service pistol being swung toward me was a dead giveaway.
“Whoa!” I shouted, raising my hands. “Easy now. What happened?”
“Some idiot came flying up in a boat!” Devon said, bending over and coming up with her holster. She slid her weapon into it and clipped it to her belt. “He fit Doc Fredrick’s description, powerfully built with dark curly hair. He started yelling about this being a sanctuary and waving his arms around like a lunatic. I already had my weapon on him when he brandished a shotgun. When I ordered him to drop it, the shotgun went off and blasted a hole in the side of his boat.”
“Are you okay?” I asked. “Can you see him now?”
“Yeah, I’m all right,” she said, her shoulders lifting as she blew out a long breath. “Just some adrenaline. I got a shot off at him as he sped away, but I don’t think I hit anything but water.” She pointed toward the Contents, just off to the southeast. “He disappeared south, just before that bigger island.”
“He’s gone now,” I said, trying to calm her. “And he’ll play hell getting across the flats that way. We still have a few minutes of decompression time. Will you be okay alone until Tony surfaces?”
“Yeah, but how can I signal you if he comes back?”
“We’ll hear him before you,” I said. Then, realizing she was out of her element here and could use some added security. “See that hatch, right beside the ladder? Open it and you’ll see a panel to the left with a switch marked ‘Diver Recall.’ Flip that on, and we’ll hear it and come up in a few seconds.”
She seemed to be relieved that there was a plan, and nodded. I dumped some air from my BC, quickly descended to ten feet, and swam forward to where Tony was still hanging on the anchor line. I signaled that everything was okay and checked my dive computer. That short surface time had added three minutes to my decompression time. Using basic dive signals, I told Tony to surface alone when his time was up and I’d surface when my own decompression stop was finished. Surfacing before finishing a deco stop is inadvisable at best, but I’d been near the end of the prescribed period and repetitive dive tables are way over on the conservative side.
A minute later, Tony’s dive computer beeped and he nodded at me, signaling he was surfacing. He let go of the anchor line and drifted away toward the Revenge.
Alone with my thoughts, I wondered if the guy who’d come out with the shotgun was in fact the murderer returning to the scene of the crime, or if he was just another Keys whack-job that happened to fit the general description. The odds leaned heavily toward the latter, but I couldn’t discount the former.
Hanging there on the anchor line, with nothing around me but water, I thought about the lady cop. She was a looker, so how come she was unattached? Thinking on it, I realized that most of the cops I knew were single. I guess being a cop is about as conducive to a stable relationship as being a Marine. Unannounced deployments had wrecked my first two marriages. Right now, I wasn’t looking for a relationship, but it had been several months since I’d even been on a date.
My own computer beeped and I checked it, confirming it was now safe for the average diver to surface. I released the anchor line and made my way back to the swim platform.
When I surfaced, Devon was talking animatedly to Tony about what had happened. I tossed my fins through the open transom door, then shrugged my BC off. Tony lifted it out of the water and placed it next to his on the deck of the cockpit.
Ducking underwater, I levered myself up onto the swim platform, swung a leg up and stood. I glanced toward the sun, now sinking closer to the western horizon. “Less than an hour of usable daylight. I think we’re done here today.”
“Did you find anything?” Devon asked.
“I think so,” Tony replied. “We might have found the where and how of the girl’s murder. There was a substance lodged in some coral that might be skin tissue, and Jesse found a tooth.”
“You’re kidding!” Devon exclaimed, shoving Tony with both hands in excitement. She looked at the water all around us. “What are the odds of finding a tooth in the ocean?”
“Finding the dive site narrowed those odds a lot,” I said, bending over my dive gear and opening the inside pocket. “Then it’s just a systematic search. I also found the gun that probably killed James.”
“Can I see that?” Devon asked, extending a hand for the evidence bag. I handed it to her and she peered at the gun through the clear window, moving it around until she could see the serial number. “This is the gun that’s registered to your friend, Mister Lovett.”
“Be that as it may,” I said. “There’s no way Lawrence had anything to do with what happened here.”
“And what do you base that opinion on?”
“Twenty years of measuring not just the abilities, but also the morals and convictions of men I trained for combat,” I replied. “And before you ask: yeah, my skills at it are crazy good.”
“Your opinion is noted,” Devon said. “And it happens to be aligned with my own judgment of the man. But this evidence could convict him anyway.” She stepped closer, appraising me with those sparkling brown eyes. “You could just as easily have buried this in the sand and nobody would have known.”
“I’d know.” I shook my head as I dried off with a towel. “That’d be like doubting myself. I know he didn’t do it and I trust that your investigation of the evidence will bear that out.”
“You sound like Ben,” Devon said. “You’d have probably made a pretty decent cop. I’m a good judge of people, too.”
Tony lifted the two larger evidence bags out of the goodie bag he’d carried. “This is an underwater digital camera.”
“Probably what they were using to survey the site with,” I said. “Be worth looking at the images. They might be time stamped.”
“Want me to refill the empties?” Tony asked.
�
��That’s up to the detective,” I said, grinning and not breaking eye contact. “We can come back here tomorrow, or just spend the night out here and dive again early in the morning.”
“I don’t have a cell signal out here,” Devon said. “And I need to get this evidence to the lab rats.” She didn’t break eye contact, either. In fact, those big brown orbs positively danced with mischief. “Besides, your friend Julie didn’t loan me any extra clothes. Not even PJs.”
“You could probably find something to fit in the guest cabin,” I offered. “No pajamas, though.”
Devon smiled. “So, women’s clothes really do fall off on this boat?”
Way off to the south, I heard an outboard and looked over her shoulder, toward the sound. “No,” I replied absently, scanning the horizon. “A lot of clients forget stuff. Any clothes left behind, I wash and put away in case they come back.”
From behind Sawyer Key, a white center console with a blue T-top appeared. When it turned toward us, a blue light on the roof came on.
“Probably best to get this evidence to the lab as soon as possible, anyway,” Devon said.
“I thought you didn’t have a signal,” I said, nodding toward the approaching police boat. “How’d you call for backup?”
Devon turned and looked. “I didn’t call anyone.”
The blue light on the approaching boat stopped flashing as it got closer. I recognized Marty and waved him to the port side, where I put two fenders over.
Marty tied off quickly and nodded to Devon. “Detective Evans, surprised to see you out here.”
“What are you doing out this far, Marty?” I asked.
“You know each other?” Devon asked.
“Deputy Phillips is dating my daughter,” I said. “Come aboard, Marty.”
He stepped over the gunwale, scratched Finn behind an ear, and shook hands with the three of us. “Good to see you again, Agent Jacobs,” Marty said to Tony. Then he turned to me and said, “I spent a little time looking at the charts this morning. After Rusty explained where he thought the two murder victims had been diving, I calculated wind and current and it looked like he was probably right. So, I just came out after my shift was over to have a look around. Spotted the Revenge on radar, from back in the channel.”
Fallen Hero: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 10) Page 17
