Dark Water Dive

by Kathy Brandt

  Snyder did the introductions. “Detectives Mahler, Stark, and Worthington.”

  The only one that bothered to get up and offer his hand was Mahler. He was the oldest of the three. Lighter skinned, more Latin influence. He was a compact man, thick, hairy arms, no neck, wavy jet-black hair. He was about my height, five-seven, but carrying fifty or sixty more pounds. He had to weigh in at 175 at least, mostly muscle with a little padding.

  “How is the investigation going?” I asked them.

  “It’s goin’.” Stark’s voice resonated from somewhere deep. He was the biggest of the three, and his head reflected light like highly polished bronze. What he lacked on his head was made up for on his chin, the beard a mass of Brillo. A pair of sunglasses perched precariously on his shiny head. He wore a black tank top, one small gold chain out of proportion around his thick neck, a pair of tan Dockers, and sandals.

  He was the only one of the three who didn’t wear a wedding band. He looked like a well-placed drug dealer, not a cop. I suppose that was the intent. The guy had an icy presence that put me on edge. He was openly hostile, yet distant and uninterested—an attitude I was amazed could be pulled off simultaneously. Stark was a natural.

  “Any leads?” I asked.

  “Couple.” The guy obviously wasn’t interested in sharing. He was crushing a cigarette into an ashtray, twisting it until it was a pile of tobacco, and smirking at me.

  “Be glad to help if I can. Worked that beat for years in Denver.” I should have quit while I was still only slightly behind.

  “We don’t be needin’ any help. Think we some stupid black folk from the sticks? Can’t handle a case like you hotshots in the U.S.?” This was Worthington. He was the antithesis of Stark, a swarthy guy with tightly cropped hair, plaid short-sleeved shirt, brown polyester pants, and wing-tipped shoes. He couldn’t maintain the cool hostility that Stark had perfected. Worthington was ready for combat.

  “Jeez, no I—”

  “Just be stayin’ out of our way,” Worthington said. The two of them walked out without another word.

  “Don’t worry about them,” Mahler said. “They’ll come around. They’re not used to having outsiders in the department.” He seemed to be speaking from experience.

  “What about you?”

  “I’m a down-islander, born in Saint Kitts. That makes me a nonbelonger, but I’ve lived here since I was a child. Takes some time to be accepted in the islands.”

  I guess I couldn’t blame Stark and Worthington. What place did a white American woman have in their office? I hoped Dunn knew what he’d been doing when he’d asked me to join the department. He’d said it would take time for them to accept me but assured me that they would. Now I wasn’t so sure.

  ***

  “I didn’t like you when I met you either,” Dunn said a little later when I mentioned my concern. He was sitting at his desk, buried in paper.

  “Well, thanks a lot,” I said.

  “You were an American nosing around in island affairs. But you’re determined and smart. They will learn to respect you, maybe even like you,” he said. “Now, anything on that missing tourist?”

  “Nothing yet.”

  I planned to call Trish later, in the afternoon. I was sure that Robsen would turn up by then. I could see it now. He’d be in big trouble. He and Trish would not be talking to each other. What a way to ruin a twenty-fifth-anniversary vacation. I wondered how people got past such things. Would she forgive him? Would they cut things short and go home?

  I decided to fill the time pouring over the notices that Snyder had collected to get me up to speed on recent events in the islands. On the top of the stack was a notice about modern-day pirating, for chrissake. Someone, probably Snyder, had drawn a skull and crossbones in the margin.

  As I read the report, I learned that boaters in the southern Caribbean disappear regularly, maybe one every year or two. Officials believe these people are lost at sea, perhaps in a storm or some other mishap that wrecks the boat. Most are not reported missing for weeks, until family or friends began to worry when they were overdue at home or work.

  Sailors in small craft out in the open sea sometimes ram a whale or smash into a huge piece of debris and sink. But officials in the southern islands get suspicious when no signs of wreckage ever appear, not even a life preserver or boat cushions.

  With no better explanation, conjecture turns to piracy. It wasn’t unheard-of for someone to commandeer a boat, take on the identity of the owners, run up their charge cards, and live high for a few months, then abandon the boat in some crowded port.

  The report included a list of missing vessels, the boat name, owner name, description. Seven in all during the past five years. Law enforcement was asked to keep an eye out for these boats, but warned that they would likely be drastically changed—painted and renamed. Maybe gone entirely, lying at the bottom of the sea. I got the feeling no one spent much time looking. It would be like searching for the needle in a haystack with the thousands of coves and inlets in the islands.

  Other police issues included domestic violence, reports of public nuisance, drunkenness, prostitution, and, of course, drugs. There were several sheets of statistics. Evidently drug use in the Caribbean is below international averages. About 3.7 percent of the population uses illicit drugs annually. Makes sense. I mean, who would need to alter their reality in paradise? I knew this was simplistic, and that people here suffered just as they did on the streets of L.A. or New York, but damn, I hoped I’d never again to have to bust ten-year-olds selling on their own private street corner or arrest kids shooting up in alleys.

  But while the Caribbean didn’t have an active drug abuse problem, law enforcement did have other issues to deal with. Heroin, cocaine, and marijuana have been transported through the Caribbean for decades, coming from Latin America and destined for markets in Europe and North America. Huge quantities come from Colombia where drug syndicates refine 80 percent of the world’s cocaine. After the September 11 terrorist attack on the United States, illegal trafficking through the Caribbean increased by some 25 percent because DEA officers were pulled out of drug interdiction and pressed into anti-terrorism patrols. Drug traffickers took good advantage of the opportunity.

  Drugs are moved in boats and airplanes, in baggage, in postal and express parcels, taped around people’s bodies, or sewn in clothing. Snyder’s stack of reports detailed many instances of drug arrests. One woman was caught in the airport in Saint Thomas with four bundles of cocaine wrapped in aluminum foil and taped around her waist. The foil set off the metal detectors. Last month off the coast of Puerto Rico, three thousand pounds of cocaine were found on a boat, hidden in fishing buoys. Another report detailed the interception of 2.75 tons of cocaine on a speed boat headed for a rendezvous with a cohort on an ocean liner bound for the United States. No wonder programs like Miami Vice could run for so many years. The material was endless, the techniques creative.

  I thumbed to the reports about the break-ins on Tortola. Most had occurred on the northeast end of the island. The one at Cappone’s Bay, one in Belmont, two at Apple Bay, several in the hills above Cane Garden Bay—at Arundel, Shannon, Mayaba. Though the robberies were all in the same general location, the character of the crimes was markedly different. Or maybe the perpetrators were getting smarter, more assured, and more violent.

  All but one of the earlier break-ins occurred when the residents were away. The stuff taken in those heists ranged from TVs and VCRs to Gameboys and computers. One victim had lost his high-tech stereo system and every CD he owned, some five hundred.

  Recently some of the incidents had occurred when residents were home, around dinner time. They targeted the wealthiest on the island. The thieves actually rang the bell and when the door opened they pushed their way in, armed, nylon stockings pulled over their faces. They’d locked their victims in bathrooms or garages and taken jewelry and money. They’d been selective, only the good stuff. Surely the detectives had seen the pattern
. I was marking the locations, dates, and MOs on a map when Dunn came in.

  “Come on, Sampson. Some snorkelers found a body out at Sandy Cay. Snyder’s loading the scuba tanks on the boat.”

  Dunn’s insistence that he needed an experienced dive investigator on the force was about to be put to the test. Before I’d been brought in, one of the local rescue divers would have been called in to bring the body up, without any consideration of the crime scene. Any evidence that might have existed would not have been identified. I guess this was progress. A few years ago Dunn would have never even considered such a move, but paradise had changed since then.

  Forty-five minutes later we dropped anchor at Sandy Cay, a tiny lump of land with a few palm trees, fringed with a white beach and surrounded by turquoise water. It is just off Jost Van Dyke, an island about five miles northwest of Tortola. Five or six sailboats were anchored on the southwest side. As we got closer, we could see a bunch of people standing on the beach; no one was in the water.

  We anchored next to a huge catamaran in about fifteen feet of water, loaded my dive gear into the dinghy, and motored to shore. Snyder expertly maneuvered it onto the beach and we got out without even getting our feet wet. Good thing. Dunn was wearing his black dress shoes, his tie, and jacket. That was Dunn. He was incongruous, stepping out of the dinghy and onto the sand. Everyone else on the beach was in bikinis and swim trunks. But Dunn was not the kind of man one laughed at. He had a presence. Made everyone else feel inappropriately attired.

  The tourists on the beach were all talking at once, one couple in French, everyone else in English. A couple of people were a bit hysterical, and one woman was trying to soothe a little girl of about seven and keep her ten-year-old boy out of the water at the same time.

  “Okay, okay. How about one person do the talking here,” Dunn said, looking at a man in green swim trunks who appeared to be calmer and more reasonable than some of the others.

  “Kid came swimming in yelling that there was a dead man out in the water,” he said, pointing to the boy still trying to wrestle out of his mother’s grip. “Couple of us swam out. It’s a body, all right. Over on the reef, caught in the coral, maybe twenty-five feet down.”

  “Anybody disturb anything out there?” I asked.

  “No, we took a look. Saw the kid was right and swam back to shore. I took my dinghy over to my boat and radioed in.”

  “What about you, kid? You touch anything out there?” I asked. The kid was a brat, alternately whining about going swimming and bragging about how he found the guy.

  “No way,” he said. “I’ve seen those detective shows. Never s’posed to touch the evidence. Can I go with you when you go get him?” The fact that this was a dead man didn’t seem to bother him at all. Typical ten-year-old. Too many video games.

  “’Fraid not. Just do what your mom says and stay out of the water,” I said, maybe a tad too harshly.

  Dunn shot me a look that said “watch yourself, Sampson.” I ignored it.

  I donned my wet suit and attached the buoyancy control vest, or “BC,” to the tank. Once in the water, I would release air from the BC vest so that I could descend. On the bottom I would regulate the air in the vest so that I could hover just above the bottom. Next I hooked my regulator with alternate to the tank and the vest. The alternate is an extra regulator that allows another diver to share air if he or she has equipment failure.

  Snyder helped me into the vest. He opened the air valve on the tank and I breathed through the mouthpiece. I’d done this so many times that I didn’t even think about it, but the mechanics of preparation always calmed me. I’d done hundreds of dives. Before every one, I developed a tiny knot in the pit of my stomach. You’d think by now I’d be used to it. But breathing under water, whether at twenty-five feet or a hundred, was one of the most unnatural things that humans did. This was for animals with gills, for chrissake. And I never knew what I might encounter. I have never lost sight of the dangers. The divers who do are the ones that die.

  I lumbered out and sat in the sand in about three feet of water, pulled on my fins, spit in my mask and rinsed it out to keep it from fogging, snugged it in place, rolled over, and swam out. With a couple of kicks, I was twenty feet from shore, descending as I went. Yellowtail snappers and sergeant majors followed me out.

  Diving in crystal-clear water feels a lot like flying, soaring above the ocean floor. Here the bottom started out sandy. I scared up a flounder that had been camouflaged in the sand. I could see the trails made by several huge conchs that were making their way to God knows where. Soon the sandy bottom gave way to turtle grass, the occasional sea cucumber or starfish, hidden in the stems.

  Another few yards and I was at the coral reef. An orange, yellow, purple, and green tapestry of sponges and algae mingled with the coral. Purple sea fans with striped snails attached to their lacework, swayed in the water. A couple of angelfish swimming through an out-stretched golden Elkhorn coral were chased away by a damselfish.

  I swam around a towering pillar coral and over an octopus hidden in an old conch. Scattered around it were scores of broken shells, the remains of his most recent meal.

  The spell of the underworld was hypnotizing. I’d almost forgotten why I was down there. Until I swam right into the face of the dead man.

  I pushed away, trying to put some distance between me and the corpse in the water next to me. Suddenly this was a lonely place to be—the only human in an expanse of ocean with death alongside. Dunn and the others standing on a sun-drenched beach right now seemed a world away—out of touch, sight, hearing. A body floating in the water was just a damned horrible thing.

  After a moment, my panic subsided. I shifted into automatic and did my job, carefully observing around me, gathering preliminary impressions without disturbing the scene.

  The guy was wearing shorts and a T-shirt that had a chart of the BVI on it, with a long-sleeved plaid shirt, unbuttoned, over it. The T-shirt was pulled up on one side, revealing the chest, gashed by coral. The wounds were being nibbled on by fish. His right arm was bent at the elbow, the back of his hand over his mouth as if he were trying to stifle a scream or bite back pain. His left arm was outstretched, swaying in the current. On his finger a gold wedding band reflected rippled light. He wore tennis shoes without socks. One foot was wedged between two coral heads, the ankle worn to bone. A rope with the dinghy anchor attached was wrapped around his other ankle, but it had not been heavy enough to hold him in the place he’d been dumped. Instead, he’d drifted with the current into the reef. It might have just as easily missed this little cay. Once past Jost Van Dyke it was open ocean all the way to Florida. He’d have simply disappeared. There were few places better than the ocean for dumping a body. Bad luck for whoever dumped him that he’d gotten caught in the coral.

  There was a small hole in his forehead. This was clearly no drowning. He’d been dead when he went into the water. I had a feeling that Allen Robsen was no longer missing.

  Chapter 8

  I left the body where it was and swam back to shore. I needed my underwater camera, an evidence bag, and a body bag. I would photograph the scene, then search the surrounding area for anything that might provide a clue. I’d once found a shotgun lying about ten feet from a victim. Amazing how stupid people can be. Traced the gun easily to the owner and that was that. Guess he thought we’d never find either the body or the gun.

  I figured we probably wouldn’t be that lucky this time. But there was no telling what might turn up. I’d want the boat right up top. Not cool to bring a body to shore, especially among a bunch of people on vacation. The kid would be disappointed.

  Dunn helped me out of my BC and tank as I gave him the rundown.

  “It looks like Allen Robsen,” I said. “From Trish Robsen’s description, I’d say it’s him out there.”

  “Okay,” Dunn said. “Let’s get the body up.”

  We motored the dinghy back out to the police boat. I grabbed the camera and a net bag,
attached a fresh tank to my BC, and rolled backward off the boat into the water. Dunn had radioed the coroner. He would be out, bringing another diver to help me retrieve the body.

  The victim was visible from the surface in the crystal water. I started down, releasing air from my BC as I descended. When I was about ten feet from the body, I began photographing the scene, moving in closer with the wide-angle lens to place the body in context. Then I photographed the body from every angle and took close-ups of the wounds. No telling what kind of damage might occur once the body was bagged and hauled into the boat and then to the coroner’s. I wanted accurate documentation.

  I noted the depth, thirty-three feet, and water temperature, eighty-two degrees. I’d get coordinates from the GPS on the boat.

  That done, I began to slowly check out the surrounding area. The sea floor dropped off gently to the deep ocean floor. I could see some big fish swimming out there, a barracuda, an amberjack, a couple of permits.

  I moved in for a closer look at the immediate area, shining my light in crevices and under coral ledges. I scared an eel that quickly retreated into his hole. A trumpetfish, long and skinny, hovered vertically nearby, camouflaged among branching soft coral waiting for lunch to swim by. The reef was alive with fish—blue tangs, French angels, parrotfish, squirrelfish, and spotted drums.

  I didn’t really expect to find much among the sea life. I was pretty sure that the body had drifted in. Anything that was dumped with it could wash up anywhere or more than likely sink into oblivion.

  I worked in circles, moving farther and farther out from the body. At first I thought the brown spot in the sand was a rock, but as I moved closer I could see that the shape was too regular. It was a wallet. Must have washed out of the victim’s pocket. Unless, of course it had fallen off a boat or some swimmer had jumped in, forgetting to remove it from his pocket.

  I picked it up and opened it. A driver’s license with a photo of a smiling Allen Robsen. I placed the wallet in my evidence bag, finished the sweep, and headed back to examine the body.