Dark Water Dive

by Kathy Brandt

  Finally he surfaced and swam back to the Calypso. He was pulling a line behind him, with something bulky attached and floating under the water. He tied the line to the boat, climbed aboard, and grabbed a fresh tank. Then he went back in, untied the rope, swam with it toward shore, and went under. I could see his bubbles breaking along a flat rock that towered out of the water. It looked like Pembrook was swimming back and forth along the rock wall. Then his bubbles disappeared. Where the hell had he gone?

  I waited, baking in the rocks, no shade, sweat burning my eyes and forming pools in my armpits and under my breasts. My pants would have already dried if they hadn’t been saturated with salt. As it was, they were radiating hot moisture into my thighs.

  Almost an hour passed before the bubbles reappeared at the same place they had vanished and moved back toward the Calypso. Pembrook surfaced beside the boat, and yelled at Elizabeth, who had been sunbathing on deck. She stood, naked and unconcerned, and stepped onto the back transom. Pembrook handed her his weight belt, then his tank and his fins, and climbed up the ladder.

  As she leaned over to stow his equipment, he came up behind and grabbed one ample breast in each hand. She stood as he ran his hand down her belly and between her legs. Christ. No wonder Ursala had carried those binoculars with her. Pembrook was stepping out of his wet suit and butt naked when I headed back down to my boat. No point in sitting in the rocks for another hour while they rolled around on the deck.

  It would be dark in two hours. The Pembrooks wouldn’t be going far if Guy hoped to sell the Calypso to Rodriguez and he couldn’t stay where he was at night. It was too rolly and too close to the rocky shore. He’d be heading into a secure harbor or bay. Maybe just around to the other side of Norman, in the Bight or Benures Bay, or over at Peter Island. More than likely, though, he’d be heading back to Cane Garden Bay or into Road Town. He wouldn’t be hard to find if I needed to find him.

  I fired up the Wahoo and went back around to the north side of Norman into the quieter water of Drake Channel. The Bight was filling up with boats, at least fifty already and more coming in for the night.

  The old-timers complain about all the mooring balls that have been installed in the once-pristine anchorage—not to preserve the bottom, which is sand, but to make a killing in fees for mooring rentals. Once, they say, only five or six boats would be anchored in the Bight, and the place was alive with pelicans fishing and goats crying on shore. Now there is no place to anchor and the only cry emanates from a Madonna album blasting from the new restaurant on the beach. Rumor is that the entire island has been bought and a resort will be built on the shore. It’s called progress; that is, destroy the natural environment so people can pay to be more comfortable in a modified version.

  As I passed the Indians, I could see a couple of boats still moored out there; one was the Celebration, the Manettis boat. When I got closer, I waved. The two of them were sitting out on the bow with binoculars, gazing out past Norman Island. When I pulled up to the Wahoo’s slip, James Carmichael was just locking up his dive shop.

  “Good evening to ya, Hannah,” he called, and hurried over to grab my bow line and tie it down.

  “Thanks, James,” I said, throwing him the stern line.

  “Looks like you been swimming in dem clothes,” he said, a smile filling his face.

  “Yeah, well, you know, I forgot my suit,” I said, avoiding the real question. I tied the boat bumpers in place to keep the boat from rubbing up against the slip and stepped ashore.

  “James,” I asked as we walked down the dock, “do you know of any dive site out on the south side of Norman Island?” James had been diving in the islands since he was ten years old. He’d started his business with an air compressor, a few tanks, dive gear, and an old boat. Now Underwater Adventures had facilities on three of the islands and a team of guide divers among the most qualified around. James made sure of it. Still, in difficult conditions, James was the one to have by your side. He’d been right there shoving his regulator in my mouth when I’d run out of air inside a wreck a while back.

  “The south side of Norman?” he asked, a mixture of surprise and anxiety replacing his smile.

  “Yeah, down at the far end past Money Bay.”

  “Jeez, Hannah, that’s Satan’s Cellar. A death dive. Divers go in dar, they never come out.”

  Chapter 24

  “Okay, James, let’s hear the rest,” I said. We’d run into O’Brien and just finished dinner at one of the dockside restaurants in Road Town Harbor. I’d ignored O’Brien’s sarcasm when he’d said it was nice to see me. Christ, how long had it been? A couple days maybe. I guess I was a little embarrassed. The last time I’d seen him, I’d been putting the moves on him, then fallen asleep while he cleaned the galley.

  The Calypso was tied up across the way at the Inner Harbor Marina. I’d watched her come in, followed closely by the Manettis’ boat. I was relieved to see they’d made it into the harbor.

  All through dinner, James had avoided any further discussion about Satan’s Cellar.

  “Why you be wantin’ to know about dat place? Need to be stayin’ clear of it.”

  I told O’Brien and James about following Pembrook out there and watching him dive the site.

  “He’d have had to know where it is,” O’Brien said. “No one’s been out there in six years. About the only people who know it exists are the dive shop operators and a few locals. All agreed that the place was strictly off-limits. Dive shops won’t even acknowledge that the place exists. People kept dying out there. We never found the last three divers who went in.

  “James and I were part of the recovery effort. Would have died myself down there searching if James hadn’t come looking for me. I’d gotten turned around and was heading down a side tunnel instead of out to the entrance. That’s when the local dive shops, Dunn, and Island Search and Rescue lobbied to have the place made off-limits. No more diving at the Cellar. Too many divers were risking their lives trying to find others who got lost. We put a warning sign out there at the entrance and covered the opening with mesh netting to keep people out. Neither one of us ever want to go into the place again.”

  “How could a dive be that deadly?”

  “It’s not just a dive; it’s a cave dive. The place where you saw Pembrook’s bubbles disappear is the entrance to a maze of tunnels that wind around under the sea floor for miles. No telling how far. It’s a no-man’s-land, never penetrated farther than about a mile. The dive shops used to take experienced divers in as far as Purgatory Cavern, a place about a thousand feet back in where the tunnel opens up to a cavern above water.

  “How would Pembrook know about it?” I asked.

  “Christ, there are always the stories. Divers bragging about diving the Cellar and living to tell. At least one book talks about the site and includes a map, shows the route to Purgatory and some of the side tunnels. Or he could have heard some bar talk. One of the retired divers bragging about his exploits. A fifty-dollar bill would buy the information.”

  “Why would Pembrook or anyone else want to dive out there?” I was thinking aloud.

  “Stupidity, especially alone and unprepared,” James said. “A lot of divers are hooked on diving caves, though. Some want the thrill and the notoriety. There’s this mentality among cave divers. Machismo. Call to adventure. The search for the undiscovered, the unknown. Others look for artifacts.

  “Some of these guys are determined to set new records—the longest penetration, the deepest cave dive. Records keep expanding—eleven thousand feet into a cave system at depths of three hundred and sixty feet. Crazy. You know about the martini effect?”

  I did. It’s a pretty loosely defined rule of thumb about nitrogen narcosis. Some say that every thirty-five feet of depth is like drinking a martini; some put it at every fifty feet. Some say the effects don’t kick in until you are at one hundred feet. And it varies with every diver and even for an individual diver, depending on his or her physical or mental state tha
t day.

  Underwater the body does not expel all the nitrogen when the diver exhales. As the pressure increases, nitrogen is forced from the lungs into the tissue, including brain tissue. The deeper the dive, the worse it gets. Some divers feel euphoric or drunk; others get paranoid or disoriented; some feel sad. Coordination deteriorates.

  I knew my own body’s reaction at depth. Without even checking my depth gauge, I could always tell when I had reached ninety feet. I start to feel the pressure and breathing becomes difficult. Then the paranoia sets in and I can’t breathe. It feels like a standard panic attack. I’ve learned to work my way through it.

  “Well, diving to three hundred and sixty feet is like drinking seven martinis,” James continued. “And depending on how long the diver is at that depth and how many previous dives he’s done, decompression could be a complicated process involving several stops at various depths that could take hours.”

  I knew the process. Without these decompression stops along the way, the nitrogen that had built up would not have time to escape. Everyone knew the result. Some divers never recovered fully from a serious case of the bends. Some died.

  “This is diving at the extreme,” James continued. A huge number of these cave divers never make it back up to the surface. The stories are always circulating in the dive community. Just a month or two ago a couple of guys were diving at a site in Florida. Only one had experience with cave and deep diving. The other had never been deeper than a hundred feet and never dived in a cave. They headed into the cave system, planning on a dive of two hundred and seventy. They never came out. It looked like both divers lost consciousness breathing compressed air at depth. Then they just breathed down there unconscious until their tanks were empty and they drowned.

  “What about Satan’s Cellar? How deep does it get?”

  “God knows. The farthest it was penetrated before we closed it down was about thirty-five hundred feet. The deepest section was one-sixty. The entrance is thirty feet down the rock face. Once inside it gradually slopes down. Lots of side tunnels that dead-end. The main tunnel bottoms out at about seventy-five feet, then starts back up to Purgatory Cavern. Used to take divers in there on short dives that didn’t require decompression on the way out. We’d take them in and let them explore the grotto.”

  Pembrook had probably had some experience diving in these conditions. He’d seemed to know what he needed before he went down. That’s why all the line and the extra lights and tanks.

  After James left, O’Brien and I took a walk around the harbor. The water was like glass, lights reflecting from shore and the few inhabited boats in the harbor. Tiny balloon fish gathered in the lights. There were millions of the newly hatched young bobbing in the water.

  “They cause all kinds of havoc when they get caught in a boat’s engine-cooling system, causing overheating,” O’Brien explained.

  I had no sympathy for the complaining boat owners.

  O’Brien bent over and scooped one out of the water. We watched as the little guy inflated in defense, its spines sticking straight out. A good system for keeping predators at bay. Few would want to gulp this round pin cushion. O’Brien placed his cupped hand back in the water and the pin cushion swam away, deflating to its normal size, spines lying flat against its body.

  We walked back toward the marina. O’Brien knew I was put out by his comment earlier. “Look, Hannah, I’m sorry. But is it so bad to want to spend time with you? I enjoy your company. I thought you felt the same.”

  “I do,” I said. “But I need my space. Besides, these murders have taken up a lot of my time.”

  “I thought the murders were solved,” he said.

  “Well, we’ll see.”

  “You sure this isn’t just your way of keeping your distance?” he asked.

  “Come on, O’Brien. Let’s go close the distance,” I said.

  “Not tonight, Hannah. I’ve got an early morning.” He walked me to my car and gave me a quick peck on the cheek. I have to admit I was hurt, but I guess I couldn’t blame him. Since Jake died I had not been in a serious relationship. I kept things casual and dropped anyone who tried to take it further. Damned O’Brien. I was having trouble keeping him away—mostly because I didn’t want to.

  But I liked my freedom. I liked being alone. I liked not answering to someone else, and I hated the damn guilt trips that seemed to develop with a relationship. That’s why O’Brien’s comment had pissed me off so much. But I liked O’Brien, maybe even loved him. Christ, he was one of the most desirable men around, good-looking, rich, for chrissake. But it was the eyes that got to me.

  I went to bed wishing that O’Brien were next to me. As it was, Sadie would have to do.

  “Sweet Sadie,” I said as she curled up on the floor beside the bed.

  I lay awake for a long time thinking about the murders and about Pembrook. What the hell had he been doing out at that cave? I suppose it was possible that he was simply one of those thrill seekers, someone who needed to push the limits to explore caves that had never been explored before. Perhaps it was material for his next book. I doubted any of it. I was sure it was all connected to Robsen’s death and Ursala’s murder. God knows how. What could be in those caves that would lead to murder, and how was Pembrook involved? I needed to dive Satan’s Cellar to find out.

  Chapter 25

  I grabbed a quick cup of coffee and headed over to the office. As I drove past the harbor, I could see the Calypso still in a slip over at Village Cay, as was the Manettis’ boat.

  The fax had come from Mack, the back of the book jacket from Pembrook’s book. It talked about Pembrook’s background. He was a former journalist, and his love of the outdoors had led to the nature writing. When his publisher had perceived a niche for the nature guide to the islands, Pembrook had taken it on with enthusiasm. The fact that he was already an expert sailor and knew how to dive made it a natural fit.

  The important part was at the bottom—the author photo. This was not the Guy Pembrook that I knew. I can’t say I was that surprised.

  So who was the man on the Calypso? What was he doing with the yacht? And where the hell was the real Guy Pembrook?

  Before charging over to the Calypso and accusing Pembrook of piracy, I thought it wise to do some checking with people in the States who might know the Pembrooks. I started with the publisher, no easy task on a Saturday. I was finally connected with an overworked editor and managed to convince her that I was a police officer. She gave me Pembrook’s editor’s home number. He picked up on about the tenth ring, and I spent fifteen minutes explaining who I was and that I was calling from the islands. The connection was static filled, making graceful communication impossible. I found myself yelling.

  “Have you heard from the Pembrooks?”

  “No, why are you asking? Is there a problem?”

  “Just doing some checking about their boat papers,” I lied. “When did you talk to them last?”

  “Guy was due to check in about a week ago, but he hasn’t called or e-mailed. I didn’t think much about it, though. He often gets so involved that he loses track of the days. Sometimes he is too remote to check in on time.”

  “When were they due back to the States?”

  “Anytime from last week to next month. His schedule was pretty flexible. But I was to get a draft of his manuscript by the first of next month.”

  “I’d like to talk to the family. Do you have a number?”

  “We don’t normally give that information out,” he said.

  “Look, I’m a police officer, and I need to talk to someone who may have been in touch with the Pembrooks.”

  Finally, after I’d done a lot of whining and cajoling, he gave me a phone number for the daughter, an Ellen Musiak in Des Moines, Iowa. When I called, a harried voice answered.

  “Ellen Musiak? This is Detective Hannah Sampson.” I could hear kids screaming and a dog barking in the background.

  “Just a minute,” she said. “Susan, you and Danny t
ake the dog and go outside! I’m sorry,” she said. “Who’s calling?”

  “Hannah Sampson. I’m with the British Virgin Islands Police Department.”

  “Oh, God, it’s my mother.” Fear filled the phone line.

  “Look, there’s nothing to be alarmed about. I’m just doing some checking on the boat. Looks like they want to sell her. I was asked to make sure everything was on the up and up for the buyer,” I lied.

  “Sell the Calypso? Well, I suppose they could decide to do that.”

  “When did you talk with them last?”

  “Well, my mother e-mails me a couple of times a week, tells me everything they’ve been doing, all about the ports they’ve been to, the people they’ve met.”

  “She didn’t mention selling the boat?”

  “No. But it’s been strange. She hasn’t been her newsy self. I thought that maybe they had just been too busy. In fact, she’d been out of touch for almost a week a while back. I had e-mailed and e-mailed without a response. I was really getting worried. Finally, she wrote back. She said the radio that provides the connection for the Internet had been out. I couldn’t understand why she hadn’t telephoned. She knew I’d worry. I finally got an e-mail last week saying they were in Tortola.”

  “What did she say?”

  “Well, it was weird, hardly anything. It didn’t seem like her. She didn’t ask about the kids or anything.”

  “When are they due to return?”

  “They were supposed to have been back by now. I asked them about it in my last e-mail, but haven’t heard back. Funny, a guy from the publisher called looking for them too. Said he was supposed to meet them in Miami over a week ago. I told him they were still down in the BVI. Why all these questions? What’s going on?”

  “As I said, I’m just checking about the boat sale.”

  “I don’t believe that. Have you seen my mother?”

  “Not recently.” More like not at all. I knew that the woman on the Calypso was not Ellen Musiak’s mother. The Elizabeth Pembrook I knew was not the mother of a woman with two children, and definitely not a grandmother.