by Kathy Brandt
I was swimming over yet another boulder when I saw it: The characteristic greenish-white glow. I knew what it was—light reflecting on skin. His eyes open and empty, glared at me through the viscous liquid, as if blaming me for his fate. Blood still seeped from the hole in his chest, tingeing the water pink. I gave the line three sharp tugs, indicating that I had found the body. Again White would tie off the line and take a compass reading, pinpointing the location. I tied the line around a nearby rock and radioed Crown.
“Victim is dead. I’ve tied off the line. Will do a preliminary search of the area.”
“What’s your air?”
I checked my gauge. “Twelve hundred psi”
“Okay, two minutes; then you’re out,” Crown commanded.
Three feet from the body was a handgun. The killer probably believed that neither the body nor the gun would ever be found. But even if Earl hadn’t seen the whole thing, the body would have eventually surfaced when body gases accumulated. Sometimes it was just a matter of days. It all depended on the condition of the victim, such as body mass and the last meal, and on water temperature and depth.
I left the scene untouched and swam back to shore. By the time I got there, the second dive team had arrived, along with several cops and an ambulance crew. Earl was in the middle of it all, telling his story to whomever would listen.
Crown was filling in the second team, and a fresh diver was already suited up. He headed into the water with the underwater camera to begin documenting the scene. Once he finished, a team would recover the victim and any evidence. It would all be done by the book, carefully recorded, evidence painstakingly preserved so that it could be used if the case came to trial. I was more than willing to leave it in my colleagues’ capable hands. My job was done and I had a plane to catch.
***
By the time I got back to my apartment, Mack was there, sitting on the stoop with Sadie, my golden retriever.
“Jesus, Sampson, where the hell you been? You’ve got less than an hour to make your plane.”
“On a dive,” I said, “thanks to your drinking contest with Lopez. He would have been upchucking in his regulator.”
Next to Sadie, Mack was probably the best friend I’d ever had. He was my partner in Homicide. The only time we didn’t work together was when I went out on a dive recovery. In landlocked Denver, that involved maybe one call every couple of months. There was no way Mack would have ever strapped an air tank on his back.
Mack helped me load one overstuffed suitcase and Sadie into his car and we headed for the airport.
“I’m telling you, Sampson,” Mack said, one hand on the wheel, one in a bag of chips, as he drove out to DIA, “this move to the islands is not going to cut it. Ain’t no such thing as paradise, and a damn good thing. You’ll be bored stiff.”
“I want out of this rat race, Mack. I’m sick of the phone ringing at two in the morning, of seeing kids bleeding on the sidewalk or sitting in alleys shooting up. Life’s too short.”
“Evil is just the other side of the coin,” he said. “Can’t have good without the bad. Kind of an essential part of the whole.”
Mack was a damned philosopher. But I knew his point of view kept him going. He’d been in the department for twenty-eight years, seen it all and accepted it. Not me. I needed out. We argued about it all the time. He’d been angry when I said I was quitting, but he hadn’t been surprised.
“You’re kidding yourself if you think you can escape,” he said. “You only escape when you’re dead. Besides, you love the chase. You’ll be happy in that back-to-simplicity dream of yours for about a week and then you’ll be climbing the walls.”
He dropped me off at Departures. “I give you a month, Sampson. Then you’ll be back here after your old job.”
“Wrong,” I said. “You and Sue need to come down for a visit.” I could just see Mack lounging on the beach in Bermuda shorts. I gave him a hug, which he returned in his quick, awkward manner. I knew he’d miss me. I left him standing at the curb, hands in the pockets of his Rockies jacket, shaking his head.
Chapter 2
Mack had been right about my need to escape. But I wasn’t just running away. I was running to something—looking for some joy. Of course, I’d never say anything like that to Mack, but I was tired of being so caught up in the job that I’d never taken the time to actually live. I was still angry about Jake’s death. I blamed myself, and I’d started to lose focus.
That’s how I’d ended up lying on a sidewalk with a bullet in my shoulder a year ago. Next to me, a kid lay bleeding. Mack had taken him down. The boy was all of fifteen. That brush with death and senselessness had completed the shift. I didn’t want to wake up at fifty-five or sixty, and realize that I’d never lived any life that was meaningful—that I’d missed the moments of my life, the now. I’d started meditating, reading books about Buddhism, stuff by Joseph Campbell.
I figured that the British Virgin Islands was the perfect place to run to. Unlike the U.S. Virgins, the BVI is relatively undeveloped. The population tops out at about sixteen thousand residents. You won’t find any high-rise hotels littering the beaches. Mostly small resorts and operations run by locals—little hideaways nestled in the trees. The biggest draw is the sailing. Somewhere around 400,000 sailors come to the islands every year to navigate these pristine waters. The diving is unlike any I’d ever done in Denver, the water warm, clear, and rich with life.
I’d been down two months earlier, in January, on a case. The Denver police commissioner’s son had died diving in one of the wrecks. John Dunn, the police chief on Tortola, had determined the death accidental. I’d found out otherwise. Dunn was a good sport about it, though. Didn’t hold a grudge. Had actually offered me a job. Said he needed a detective who was trained in underwater investigation and thought an American woman would be a good addition to his team. With all the tourists in the islands, mostly sailors, he could use someone whom they might relate to more easily. I wasn’t sure whether this was an insult or a compliment, and I didn’t bother to tell him that tact was not my strong suit.
I’d sold all my furniture, given the TV and microwave to my sister. In a last symbolic gesture, I’d flattened my cell phone in the trash compactor. All I’d brought with me was my Smith & Wesson, a few clothes, my dive gear, and Sadie. Sadie was a gift from my overprotective father, who thought she’d make a good watch dog. But she’s just not the type.
I worried about her now below in the plane’s luggage compartment. The vet had given her a tranquilizer. She was probably in better shape than I was at the moment. I hate flying. Right now I was in a window seat, next to a guy who weighed about 350 pounds. I’d been sitting with my elbows crunched into my ribs for hours. At least Sadie had the luxury of her own cage.
By the time we landed at the airport in San Juan, I felt like a pretzel. I got off and stretched. With two hours to kill before the puddle jumper to Tortola, I took a long, fast walk through the terminal, trying to get my heart rate up, my blood flowing, and loosen the growing knot of tension that was building in my stomach. The farther I got from Denver, the more I questioned whether my decision to leave Mack and the dive team wasn’t one big mistake.
The airport was crowded with people speaking rapid-fire Spanish. Long lines snaked in a maze of confusion, hundreds held hostage as security personnel searched an endless stream of baggage before allowing it to be tagged for flight. I narrowly avoided trampling a toddler who had managed to escape his mother’s grip while she struggled with another kid and a pile of luggage. I decided to seek refuge back at the gate.
Down on the concourse, I stopped at a snack bar and spent $10.62 for a cold hot dog and a Diet Pepsi, then found a quiet corner at the gate and pulled out the books I’d been collecting about the Caribbean. I’d read through all of them at least once—a couple of histories of the islands, complex accounts of exploitation, colonization, settlement, the killing off of entire races, the evolution of political institutions, social forms,
and economics, stories of slavery and piracy.
I also had a complete series on the identification of sea creatures. What was it about the human need to name things? Somehow a name made things real, allowed one to categorize. I wanted to know what I saw when I encountered it a hundred feet below the ocean’s surface, especially if it was something that might bite, sting, or consume me whole.
But at the moment all I wanted was distraction from the tension that had turned to fire in the pit of my stomach. I opened one of the guides to the section on jellyfish, as varied and strange as their names: moon, cannonball, cassiopea. I’d narrowly missed swimming right into the translucent float of a Portuguese-Man-of-War, one of the most toxic of jellyfish, when I’d dived in the islands just two months ago. It had looked like a pinkish plastic bag until I’d gotten close enough to see the cluster of tentacles hanging from its float.
By the time the flight was called, I’d moved on to the section about tunicates. I zipped the books back in my-carry on and boarded the flight.
Forty minutes later, the small plane landed smoothly on Beef Island and taxied to the terminal. The attendant opened the door, and I breathed in the Caribbean—moist, ocean filled, tinged with blossoms. I felt the tension in my body ease a bit with the scented recollection of the place.
But everything about the airport had been transformed since I’d left just a couple of months ago. The ramshackle terminal, where chickens had scampered under foot and goats had grazed, was gone. Now, the Terrence B. Lettsome International Airport stood in its place, a small but modern gray block, surrounded by concrete walks and parking lots. It was remarkable only in its sterility; not a goat or chicken in sight, a little piece of island paradise destroyed. I’m sure that wasn’t the perspective of the officials who had pushed for a new airport. They would have argued that it brought the islands into the twenty-first century, providing a modern facility for the increased traffic to the region.
At least they had not built jetways. I walked across the tarmac with a herd of forty others, some locals but the majority I guessed to be sailors. They wore boat shoes, T-shirts with sailboats, caps with sailing logos, huge-brimmed canvas hats, their faces pale and tense, shorts neatly creased. An identical group was boarding a flight nearby, faces tanned, smiles tinged with regret, shorts wrinkled, T-shirts dirty, hats stained.
The sun glared off the hot cement. A breeze rustled through palm leaves, and I could hear the surf breaking off the rocks beyond the runway. It was a glorious March day.
Still I worried. When Dunn had offered me the job, it had seemed like a real opportunity. I’d jumped at the chance to escape all the urban violence and find a simpler way to live, away from the frenzied existence I’d so easily gotten caught up in. Besides, the diving I would do for the police force was completely unlike the black water diving I’d been doing. Here the water was another world, an amazingly serene and orderly place. And, of course, there was O’Brien.
But Denver had been home and Mack someone I’d depended on. He’d always been there to watch my back. I thought about what he’d said: Ain’t no such thing as paradise. I knew he was right, that I was looking for something that didn’t exist. But I’d been sure things would be better here. Now doubt was creeping in. I would miss the connections of home. Here, I was a foreigner.
Damned if the sign at immigrations didn’t reinforced my foreign status. I was directed to the one labeled “Non-belongers,” and informed that those who were born in the BVI or whose parents were born here could be in the “Belongers” line. Like the sign said, I did not belong. Maybe I’d romanticized the whole place, made it more than it was because I’d needed to. Before I could change my mind, though, the stern-faced official stamped my passport and waved me through.
I could hear Sadie barking as the luggage carousel started to turn and her crate came into view.
“Sweet Sadie. It’s okay, girl.” She whined and wagged her tail, ecstatic to realize that I had not deserted her.
When I hefted the cage from the conveyer belt and released her, she almost knocked me over. I knelt, wrapped my arms around her, whispered in her ear, waiting for her to calm. She stuck by my side as I made my way through customs. Her majesty’s royal customs agent hardly gave my luggage or the stack of papers I’d collected to get Sadie into the country a second look.
“Welcome to our beautiful islands!” he said, a wide grin filling his face.
Inside the terminal, I noticed that the woman who once sold postcards, plastic place mats, and native dolls from her concession stand in the old terminal had pulled up stakes, probably unable to afford the higher rent.
When I’d waited for my flight home a couple months ago, I’d spoken to the shop owner’s mother, an eccentric old woman who hung out in the waiting area while her daughter worked the store. She’d been close to a hundred, her skin raisined. She was decked out in a turquoise dress with gold buttons and a matching straw hat. I’d heard her entire family history, the story of generations making a life on a tiny island, harvesting salt from the salt pond for the queen. I wondered where she was now, whether she’d found another place and others who would listen to her stories.
Sadie pulled on her leash as we headed out the doors into the sunlight. I spied Peter O’Brien right away, leaning against a SeaSail van talking with a local black man in a flowered shirt. O’Brien wore tan shorts and boat shoes, no socks. He looked up, saw me, and smiled, that open, boyish smile.
“Hannah. I’m so glad you’re back.” He wrapped tan, lean arms around me and pulled me in. Okay, maybe things would be okay.
I’d met O’Brien during my investigation in January. He’d been a suspect. I’d fallen for him long before I’d ruled him out as a murderer.
O’Brien owns SeaSail, one of the largest sailboat charter companies in the BVI. He’d come to the BVI with his parents when he was a kid. They’d started the company with one small boat. Now SeaSail is worth a bundle.
O’Brien is more at ease at the helm of a sailboat than anywhere else. He always looks like he’s just come off the sea, hair windblown, dark, and wild, white smile wrinkles embedded in his tan.
We loaded my luggage and Sadie into the van and headed toward Road Town. O’Brien had found a place for me to live—a thirty-seven-foot Island Packet, outfitted as a live-aboard. I’d been skeptical. I’d never considered living on a damned boat. I was accustomed to having something more solid under my feet. This sounded small and rocky. The people who owned her had returned to California after living on her for a year. Evidently, a year had been about eleven months too long. They were back in their six-thousand-square-foot house on the coast and sailing their twenty-six-foot Cape Dory on weekends. My rent would pay for their docking and storage fees and a little more. It was docked just minutes east of Road Town, the only real city in the BVI and the capital.
“You’ll love it,” O’Brien said as he gunned the van and passed a slow-moving truck. O’Brien drove like every other islander—fast, honking at livestock in the road, waving at friends, and swerving around the tardy.
“The Pickerings are wonderful. The marina is their dream. It’s small, only about twenty boats, all long-term boat owners who store their boat with them. Some live-aboards. The place was really run-down but they’ve worked hard to fix it up. Bought it when they were married, with a small loan from their parents. Tilda runs the little store, stocks groceries and marine supplies. Calvin tends the boats.”
“This is it.” O’Brien pulled into a dirt lot, scattering chickens and ruffling the feathers of one stubborn-looking rooster.
The cove was protected on three sides by land lined with coconut palms and sea grapes. It opened to the sea, the water turquoise glass that lapped up to the white sand. A couple of piers jutted from the beach into the bay, each lined with boats, one of which would be mine.
Two children ran to greet us. “Peta, Peta,” they called in unison. O’Brien grabbed the youngest, a petite girl of about three, and swung her up into his arms
.
“Do it again! Again!” She giggled, as O’Brien swung her skyward. He knelt and hugged the other child, who stood back a bit, older and quieter. Her hair was braided in tight corn rows fixed on the end with colorful beads.
“Rebecca, Daisy, this is the lady I told you about, Hannah.”
The little one, Daisy, reached her tiny arms up to me. When I picked her up, she hugged me hard around the neck. Jeez, she already had me. Rebecca held back, standing behind O’Brien an arm around his leg.
“Hello, Rebecca,” I said. She smiled and buried her face in the hem of O’Brien’s shorts.
About then Sadie, at the end of her patience, barked from the van, upset that she was being ignored. When I opened the door she ran to Rebecca and gave her a wet slurp on the cheek. That was it. Shy Rebecca had found a friend.
“Hey, dar, Peter.” A man and woman emerged from the marina office, a freshly painted wooden structure in tones of violet, lime, and yellow.
“Tilda, Calvin, this is Hannah Sampson.”
“Good day to ya, Hannah. Welcome to Pickerings Landing,” Calvin said, his island accent strong. He offered his hand, which felt rough and calloused in mine. He was a handsome man of about thirty, dressed in oil-stained khakis and a T-shirt, his skin the color of eggplant. His wife, Tilda, was a bit younger, slim, an exotic beauty.
“We’ve been expecting you,” Tilda said, taking my hand. Like Calvin’s, her palm was hardened by work. “Boat is all ready. She’s on Dock A.”
We followed Tilda out to the end of the pier.
“We put the live-aboards out here where there’s more breeze, quieter, nice view of the open water.”
“Sea Bird” was etched in script on the side of the boat.
O’Brien could hardly wait to show me around. He’d been thrilled when he’d found the Sea Bird. But then, O’Brien could think of few things better than a damned boat.
“These boats have a Full Foil Keel, really strong, and great windward performance,” O’Brien said. “The hull design makes them fast, maneuverable, and comfortable when under way.”
