Dangerous Depths (10 page)

“Okay, got it!” O’Brien yelled, and lowered
himself down to the deck.

“Hannah,” he said, smiling like a kid just
off a roller coaster. “Just let me wash up and I’ll be ready to
go.”

We were quiet on our way to the hospital.
That was one of the other things I loved about O’Brien: He was
comfortable with silence. He didn’t need to fill the emptiness with
words and neither did I. Right now I was lost in worry about Elyse
and O’Brien knew it. He left me to ruminate until we pulled into
the hospital lot. Then he wrapped his arms around me.

“Elyse is a strong woman,” he said. “She’ll
pull through.”

Love you, O’Brien
I found myself
thinking. I didn’t dare tell him though—too risky. “I hope you’re
right,” I said instead.

The hospital was eerily silent. Our footsteps
echoed down the hollow hallway. Elyse’s room was dark, a few
renegade rays of light filtering through the closed blinds. She was
still unconscious. Almost forty-eight hours and nothing at all had
changed. Hall had told us it wasn’t unusual, that sometimes it just
took time.

We sat for a while talking to her, hoping for
some sort of recognition, but there was nothing. Not even a twitch.
She looked like a china doll under the covers, thick lashes resting
on her cheeks.

“Come on, Hannah,” O’Brien said almost an
hour later, “let’s go.” He took my arm and guided me out.

I’d tried to cover the fear and suppress the
tears behind a tight jaw. But O’Brien knew the signs. I needed to
leave before I fell apart.

It was six o’clock by the time we walked out
the front door. Snyder was on his way in. He carried a couple of
textbooks and a bag from which the aroma of what I’d guess was jerk
chicken emanated.

“Hey, Jimmy, thanks for coming.” Snyder and I
had agreed to take turns sleeping at the hospital. He knew that I
was worried about Elyse’s safety. I was afraid that whoever had
tried to kill her might come back to finish the job. He’d insisted
on helping out for a few days. In spite of his protests, I’d
promised I’d find a way to repay him. We’d agreed not to tell
Dunn.

“No problem,” Snyder said. “Dis be da perfect
place for me to work on my studies.”

“I can’t believe you’ve got Snyder camping
out at the hospital. Do you really think that’s necessary?” O’Brien
asked as he pushed open the hospital door.

“Yes.” That’s all I was going to say. I was
tired of justifying myself. And I didn’t want to talk about Elyse.
I mean, what was there to say?

“How did you like Neville and Sylvia
Freeman?” O’Brien asked, changing the subject as we drove up toward
Tom and Liam’s.

“They seem nice enough.” I’d hardly given
them a thought since we’d had dinner together last night.

“Nice? Come on, Hannah, what does that
mean?”

“Well, it’s pretty obvious Neville plays
around.”

“How would you know that?”

“Hey, I’m a cop, remember?”

“Probably has more to do with your gender,”
O’Brien said.

“Maybe. The signals from Neville Freeman were
loud and clear. And his wife saw them too.”

“Well, his personal life has nothing to do
with his politics as far as I concerned. Besides, I think he’s just
what the islands need. His family has been here for hundreds of
years and he’s committed to the people. He wants to focus on
effective ways to manage growth and protect the environment, wants
improvements in education, more pay for teachers, better resources
for kids.”

Education was one of O’Brien’s causes. He’d
done a lot for the schools on Tortola and managed to help several
kids go on to college. Of course, he was right to believe that an
educated population spilled over into all other aspects of island
life, and these kids would be tomorrow’s leaders.

“Well, I’m sure Freeman will make a great
chief minister. You’re a good judge of character.”

“That’s right,” he said. “After all, I’m with
you, right?”

***

Liam and Tom’s place was a rental nestled in
the hills above Road Town. It was a typically Caribbean cottage
with a whitewashed exterior, lime green shutters, and purple
awnings. I could hear a gecko’s distinctive clicking coming from
under one of the eves. Green-throated hummingbirds were buzzing
around a hibiscus bush near the porch and zooming past the two men
lounging there with their feet propped on the table near a pitcher
of margaritas.

“Hello, Hannah, Peter. So glad to see you,”
Liam said, as he sat up and poured two more glasses of the frothy
stuff. He handed them our way as we settled into the two other
chairs on the porch.

Both men were in their late sixties and
retired from teaching at a small college in Florida. They’d spent
most of the last thirty-five years on or near the water, conducting
one research study or another. I’d met them just over a month ago,
the day they arrived in the islands. They’d been down at the docks
outfitting the boat. We’d hit it off right away.

“Looks like you could use that drink,” Liam
said. He was athletic, broad-chested and compact, hair barely
flecked with grey.

“Thanks Liam,” I guess my worry showed.

“How’s Elyse?” Tom asked. He was the more
serious of the two men. His hair was completely white, his
shoulders narrow, just a hint of stomach protruding over the waist
of his shorts, bare feet attached to spindly legs.

“She’s the same,” I said.

We sat on the porch and watched the sun sink
behind the hill. Tree frogs began their songs behind the house.
Every once in a while Tom went in to stir or chop, refusing any
offers of help.

“The kitchen is his domain,” Liam said.
“There’s hell to pay if you step inside his boundaries. I learned
that years ago. Even his wife left the cooking to Tom.”

“Is she in the States?” I asked, sure that
she wasn’t. I’d seen the lingering pain in Tom’s eyes the first day
we met. I hadn’t been about to pry—until now.

“No, Tom’s wife died. It’s been ten years.
She had breast cancer. Fought a long hard battle. I know she stayed
alive as long as she did for Tom and their kids. Finally she just
couldn’t do it anymore. Tom never got over her.”

“Are you married?” I asked Liam.

“Divorced. Tom and I have been colleagues
since our teaching days in Florida. We were both ready to retire
and after his wife died, we decided to collaborate and have taken
every opportunity to conduct research all over the world. Tom never
does seem to be able to get far enough away from home and all the
memories.”

“Soup’s on,” Tom said through the screen
door.

Dinner was spinach lasagna, salad, and
homemade bread—not a speck of meat or seafood on the entire
table.

“Tom’s a vegetarian,” Liam explained.

“It’s not so much an ethical concern about
killing animals,” Tom said. “It’s more about the whole picture, the
exploitation of our earth. We humans seem to believe that we are
the dominant species and have more right to what’s here. Instead,
we need to be thinking of ourselves as stewards. But we are eating
up this earth in every way, decimating rainforests for farming and
grazing, logging trees to build more structures, overfishing some
species to the point of extinction, raising mass quantities of beef
and poultry to feed our increasing population.”

“What does that have to do with being a
vegetarian?” I asked.

“It has to do with effective use of land. It
takes huge amounts of grain to feed the cattle that we eat. Right
now the world produces some two billion tons of grain every year.
In India that amount would feed ten million people, who eat mostly
grain and little meat. But in the U.S. most of the grain goes to
livestock and poultry. Our earth’s capacity to support the human
species is reaching its limit. The competition for water alone is
enormous. Either the industrialized world needs to change its
eating habits or find a way to increase the yield on productive
land. Better yet, of course, we need to stop population
growth.”

“Tom gets a bit upset about these things,”
Liam said. “I agree with him, but I keep trying to tell him he’s
got to take a different tack with people. We both know that much of
it is about economics. There just aren’t enough people on this
earth willing to sacrifice for ethical reasons. Especially if the
financial bottom line is threatened by reform.”

“Enough,” Tom said, clearing plates and
returning from the kitchen with steaming mugs of coffee. Talk
turned to their turtle surveying as Tom thumbed through the report
I’d brought from Elyse’s office.

“This is the old survey,” Tom explained.
“We’ve come down to do what we can to update it. Our work is very
preliminary. We’ll collect some data on where the turtles are
feeding and nesting. If the funding comes through, a bigger team
will be down next year.”

“How did you get connected with Elyse?”

“Some of the money for the project will come
through the nonprofit she works for, Society of Ocean
Conservation,” Liam explained. “They put us in touch with her and
she’s been our liaison down here. She did the background research,
collected all the old articles and research on turtles in the BVI
at the environmental library in Road Town. Of course, she’s
familiar enough with the territorial waters to direct us to the
places where turtles have been sighted or have reportedly nested.
Before we got down here, she did some preliminary marking of sites
on the map to help us determine where we should begin.”

“What do you hope to accomplish with new
data?” O’Brien asked.

“You’d be amazed at how little is actually
known about sea turtles,” Tom said. “We have about thirty years of
data, when many of these turtles live to over one hundred. Huge
gaps exist in understanding their life history. For example, we
know very little about what occurs to the hatchlings from the time
they reach the water till the time they reappear as juveniles in
the feeding grounds near shore. That’s a period of almost ten
years.”

“We want to learn more about longevity,
whether they return to the same beaches year after year, how
serious the decline in numbers is. The more we know, the better we
can protect them. Can you imagine the loss if these ancient
creatures become extinct? Their ancestors go back more than 200
million years, to the age of the dinosaurs.”

Tom went to get more coffee while Liam
continued. “If we can get accurate documentation, we can push for
changes in laws. We can also look for potential violations. Right
now, it is illegal to take turtle eggs, and turtles may not be
disturbed while nesting nor can they be caught within a hundred
meters of the shore. It is also illegal to take any green turtle
that is less than twenty-four inches and any hawksbill that is
under fifteen inches. But the larger turtles can still be harvested
from December first to March thirty-first.”

I told them about the nesting turtle that
Elyse and I had seen last week. “We planned to monitor the nest,
maybe give an assist when the eggs hatch by keeping predators at
bay as the young make their way to the beach.”

“Excellent idea,” Tom said, pouring the
coffee. “We’d like to help.”

“You know,” I said, “I see a hawksbill poke
its head above the surface almost every day when I’m sitting on my
boat in the morning with my coffee. It’s hard to believe their
populations are so threatened.”

“You’re probably seeing the same turtle, one
that is feeding in the turtle grass in your harbor. I’m sure you’ve
seen the hawksbill that’s been hanging out in the hull of the
Rhone
too. But you rarely see more than one, right? Maybe
you don’t see even that. Years of exploitation have had a huge
impact on the sea turtle populations in the BVI. The leatherback is
on the verge of being completely eradicated.”

“Why do people want to hunt turtles, knowing
that their numbers are so limited?” I asked.

“Hannah still wants to believe that people
here are better than those she encountered in Denver,” O’Brien
said. “The simple truth is that a lot of people just don’t care.
Right now there are five or six restaurants on the island with
turtle on the menu. Actually, turtle meat is excellent. And many
argue that hunting turtles is part of the culture, tied with
tradition.”

“And that’s just a part of it,” Tom said. “A
lot of illegal trading goes on in the Caribbean. Hawksbill, or
tortoiseshell, is sold all over the world, for jewelry, hair
ornaments, and decorations. The shells sell for about two hundred
and twenty-five dollars a kilogram. Green turtles and leatherbacks
are sold for oil, cosmetics, leather, perfume. A seven hundred and
fifty milliliter bottle of leatherback oil can sell for two hundred
and fifty dollars and one leatherback can yield five to ten
gallons.”

“Just as serious is the destruction of their
habitat, mostly because of development,” Liam said.

“Why don’t you two come out with us tomorrow
morning?” Tom asked. “We could use the help. The couple that
usually handles the boat is over in Saint Thomas all week. We leave
at six A.M. We’ll have you back at nine at the latest.”

“Love to,” I said, without hesitation. I knew
the chances of Dunn getting in before nine were remote, and I could
use a morning out in the ocean looking at the wildlife instead of
searching for evidence in diesel-filled water. Besides, I wanted to
know everything that Elyse had been involved in during the weeks
before the explosion that left her fighting for her life.

***

As usual, Sadie was waiting for me on the
deck, lying on the bow, when O’Brien and I got back to the
Sea
Bird
. She heard us coming the minute we stepped onto the dock
and raced to greet us, yelping with excitement.

“Hey, Sadie.” O’Brien knelt and scratched
behind her ears. Then he stood and pulled me to him. The kiss was
long and passionate. O’Brien was one of the most tender and loving
men I’d ever known.