Dangerous Depths (11 page)

We strolled arm and arm to the
Sea
Bird
, climbed aboard, and walked to the bow. The ocean was
still, the night silent. O’Brien sat down, hung his feet over the
side, and pulled me down next to him. We could see fish darting
through the water at our feet, light shadows moving through the
dark water. Our shoulders touched and the warmth of O’Brien’s body
radiated into mine.

O’Brien began unbuttoning my shirt, slowly,
one button, then another. Then he slid his fingers down my neck and
over a breast. One thing led to another and soon we were down below
in my bed, our naked bodies pressed against each other, his skin
smooth against mine. God, I loved having O’Brien in my bed.

“What would you think about moving into the
villa with me, Hannah?” O’Brien asked.

Shit. Nothing like putting the brakes on
passion. I loved O’Brien but I didn’t want to live with him. I
liked having my own space, loved living on the
Sea Bird
, and
damn it, I was scared to death of the commitment and where such an
arrangement would lead. He’d end up wanting to get married or the
relationship would fall apart. I liked things just the way they
were.

“Come on, O’Brien. You know how I feel about
my space,” I said, entwining my fingers in his.

“Yeah, I know, Hannah, but for me, if we’re
going to stay in this relationship, I need it to change and
grow.”

“Why can’t we just let it be what it is?” I
was comfortable with things. Seeing O’Brien, spending some nights
on the
Sea Bird
or at his home, making love. I treasured him
as a lover and a friend. Damn, I didn’t want to lose him but I
didn’t want to move in with him either.

“Just think about it, Hannah. I know you’re
scared, but sometimes you just have to take a chance.”

“Let’s talk about it later.”

“Just give it some thought,” he said
again.

“I will.” Maybe it would be nice to share a
bed with him every night, shuffle around in his kitchen in the
morning, make breakfast together. And it might be okay to be able
to come home to someone and complain about my lousy day and get a
little sympathy. Now all I had was Sadie. She was a good listener,
but never gave me the kind of advice O’Brien was so good at.

He was about to continue the discussion when
I rolled over on top of him and smothered any further comment.

An hour later I awoke, my head resting on
O’Brien’s chest, legs entwined. I lay there for a while, happy to
be wrapped in O’Brien’s body, the boat rocking gently. God, I loved
him and these times together. I didn’t want it ruined.

At dawn the next morning, O’Brien and I were
sitting at the end of the dock in Road Town waiting for Tom and
Liam and sipping coffee. O’Brien had not mentioned our conversation
of the night before, but I knew he was still thinking about it and
would not let the subject rest for long. I, however, planned to
avoid it as long as possible.

The day was calm, a glassy morning sea.
Schools of minnows, hundreds of them, periodically broke the
surface, silver blades sparkling in the sun. A bar jack chased
them, leaping in a perfect arc and dropping back into the calm.

“Morning, Hannah, Peter,” Liam and Tom called
as they walked toward us. They’d already pulled on the bottom part
of their wetsuits; the top portion hung at their waists, the arms
of the suits dangling around their legs. They had typical divers’
tans—chests and arms pasty and white; hands, faces, necks, and
ankles bronzed.

Their boat, a thirty-two foot aluminum work
boat that they were leasing from the marina, was at the end of the
dock. Liam led the way, threw his gear into the boat, stepped onto
the side and jumped aboard. He did this as easily as he walked.
Boats and the sea were clearly second nature after more than a
quarter century working on the ocean. O’Brien and I followed. Tom
handed us the gear—fins, snorkels, masks, boxes of field
equipment—and then he climbed aboard.

As Liam headed the boat out of the harbor,
Tom organized the equipment: pens, waterproof markers, tape
measure, tags, tagging pliers, tag gun, scalpel, tweezers, vials,
binoculars, and a ski rope. He explained the procedure for
capturing the turtles as he worked. Tom and I would be the ones in
the water, wearing masks, fins and snorkels. O’Brien would spot and
Liam would maneuver the boat. The ski rope would be attached to the
boat and Tom and I would be pulled slowly through the water,
looking for the turtles.

Once we spotted a turtle, we were to raise a
hand and Liam would stop. Then Tom and I were supposed to go
capture the thing. This all seemed pretty far-fetched. I’ve tried
to follow turtles before, both snorkeling and diving. They were way
too fast for me, not the lumbering beasts one thinks of in the
story of the tortoise and the hare. They flew, their flippers like
wings. We were going for hawksbill, which Tom assured me were much
easier to catch than the greens.

“You need to swim up from behind it with your
arms extended,” he said, demonstrating. “Grab the shell at the top
and the bottom at the same time. You can grab it underneath the
flippers but it could snap at your fingers, and if it’s a big guy,
it could really hurt you. Don’t grab it on the side of the shell
either because it will pull right out of your hands—cutting them as
it does.”

“Jeez, Tom. This sound pretty
impossible.”

“Believe me, it’s not. We’ve done this
before. The best time to catch a turtle is when it’s resting or
feeding. If it sees you, it will swim away. This calls for
patience. We’ll need to follow until he gets tired and comes up for
air.

Liam cut back the engine just off of Ginger
Island. “We haven’t surveyed out here yet but it has been reported
as a feeding area. Elyse said she’s spotted several hawksbill here.
You will definitely see ‘em.”

I pulled on my wetsuit and O’Brien zipped me
in. Tom and I sat on the back platform, designed as a staging area
and a place to heft turtles into the boat. We strapped on light
weights to offset the buoyancy of our wetsuits, enabling us to stay
under the water more easily. Then we pulled on fins, secured our
masks, and jumped in the water.

Tom and I both gazed down into the water,
checking out our surroundings and getting our bearings. We were in
about thirty feet and hovering over coral. A couple of barracudas
had already taken up residence under the boat. Black urchins were
nestled in the cracks of rocks, their sharp pointed spines swaying
in the water. I dove under and went down for a closer look. Tom was
right behind me.

The long antennae of a spiny lobster jutted
out of a crevice; dark red spots and a sharp horn protruded over
each eye. It was a careful but curious critter. Every time we moved
in for a closer look, it inched farther into its hiding place,
crawling out again when we backed up.

When we surfaced, O’Brien threw us each a tow
line. Liam straightened out the boat, took the slack out of the
line, and we began to skim over the water, faces down, breathing
through our snorkels. A movie played out below us; sergeant majors
guarded their eggs, trumpetfish lurked in soft coral, and lavender
moon jellies undulated in the sun’s rays.

We both spotted the hawksbill at the same
time. It was swimming slowly around some coral feeding on sponges
and algae. Tom signaled and the boat stopped. I followed his lead,
staying well behind him. He slipped under the water and finned hard
but with minimal disturbance toward the turtle. By the time the
turtle realized his presence and was about to take off, Tom had a
hold of it firmly by the shell, a deep amber with streaks of reds,
greens, browns.

He signaled that he needed help and I grabbed
the other side of the shell. We guided it to the surface, the
turtle providing much of the power. O’Brien and Liam were waiting
and pulled the turtle onto the platform, careful to avoid injury
either to themselves or the turtle.

By the time Tom and I climbed aboard, Liam
had wrapped the turtle’s head in a wet towel, which he said would
help the turtle stay calm. He had already taken a GPS reading,
measured depth and water temperature, and was recording weather and
sea conditions and other essential data on the form.

O’Brien and I stayed out of the way and
watched as the two moved quickly. They measured the carapace,
length and width, front flipper length, the head, and the underside
of the turtle, what they called the plastron.

This turtle had not been tagged before. They
attached staple tags to both front flippers between the scales,
injected an electromagnetically-coded microchip, called a PIT tag,
into the shoulder muscle, then recorded all the tag numbers on the
sheet. Last, they took a tiny bit of tissue sample for DNA samples,
and then O’Brien and I helped them return the turtle to the water.
The entire process had taken less than fifteen minutes. The turtle
quickly headed beneath the surface and disappeared.

We repeated the entire procedure, capturing
two more turtles and taking the data. We were doing the final run
when we spotted a turtle struggling below the surface. We swam over
to find a green turtle hopelessly tangled in the plastic rings from
a six-pack of soda. Its jaw was held closed in one of the loops,
its front flipper tangled and torn. The green was too weak to
resist us and unable to swim away.

Tom opened a small knife he had attached to
his wrist. I held on to the animal as he cut the plastic first from
off the flipper, then from around the beak. The minute he’d freed
it, it snapped hard. Tom was prepared though. He’d already moved
his hand away.

“Okay,” he shouted. “Let her go.”

The turtle splashed and floundered for a
minute, then dove. We watched it head to the bottom and swim out of
sight. Then we swam back to the boat and climbed aboard.

“How could that happen?” I wheezed,
breathless from the anger that seethed in my chest.

“It’s not unusual for turtles to get caught
that way,” Liam said. They feed on jellyfish. Plastic rings,
grocery bags—they all look like jellyfish to a turtle.”

“It should be okay,” Tom said.

“Why didn’t we tag it?”

“Too stressed,” Tom said. “It needs to be
left alone. We’ll find it again in a week or two.”

Liam started the engine and turned the boat
back to Road Harbor. All four of us were huddled up front,
protected from spray behind the windshield.

“Did Elyse go out with you on any of these
trips?” I asked as we headed into the channel.

“Just one time, last week. She was really
worried about whether we knew what we were doing and whether our
techniques were hazardous to the turtles. She wanted to see how it
was done.”

“When was that?’

“Let’s see. Must have been Saturday morning,”
he responded.

“Did you convince her that everything was
okay.”

“Sure, we did the same thing we did today.
Anything about it worry you?” Liam asked.

“Well, as a matter of fact, yes. I mean all
the stapling, injecting, cutting.”

“It’s completely harmless. The key is to do
it correctly.”

It was true that nothing Tom and Liam had
done seemed to have been harmful. They had been extremely gentle
and clearly had a lot of experience handling the turtles. I knew
the study was important for the ultimate survival of the species,
but still, it seemed such an invasion.

When we pulled into the dock, Edmund Carr was
loading up the search and rescue boat and getting ready to go out
with one of the other volunteers. They were mobilized when there
was a distress call. Carr had been on the team since I’d known
him.

“Hi, Ed. Is there a problem?”

“Nothing serious. A kid stranded on some
rocks over at the Indians. He swam out there and couldn’t get back.
His folks can’t get to him with the current. What were you doing
out so early?”

“We went out to help Liam and Tom and learn a
little about their surveying,” O’Brien said. “The rescue team ought
to get involved, Ed. The guys could report sightings.”

It was a great idea and typical
O’Brien—always looking for ways for islanders to get involved and
pull together, no matter the cause.

Tom agreed. “We could really use the help,”
he said. “We have a lot of area to cover, and we need to check out
all the viable nesting grounds over on Peter, Norman, Cooper,
Flower.”

“You’ll need permission to go onto some of
those beaches,” Carr warned. “Several of them are private. Flower
Island is posted no trespassing.”

“Surely the Freemans won’t object,” O’Brien
said.

“Maybe, maybe not. But I know Freeman doesn’t
like anyone going ashore on Flower,” Carr said.

Stark was waiting for me when I got to the
office. Today he wore a black T-shirt that stretched tight across
his abs and chest. I wondered if he did it on purpose or was simply
unable to find shirts large enough. I was pretty sure it was
purposeful. Stark usually looked like he’d just as soon tear your
head off as say hello.

He filled me in on what he and Mahler had
learned about the boat thefts over at Cane Garden Bay and Soper’s
Hole. No one had noticed anyone suspicious—no kids cruising the
harbor in a dinghy, no one who didn’t belong, just the usual
charterers and fishermen. Snyder had already told him what we had
found out at North Sound yesterday.

Stark had asked Jimmy to find out who owned
the
Libation
, the grocery boat. If it was registered with
the Financial Services Commission, Snyder would find the name,
address, and schedule of their route around the islands. If not,
he’d end up spending the day down at the docks quizzing everyone
who came in or out. One way or another, I knew Snyder would have
what we needed by the end of the day.

Then we’d talk to them. No one gets to stay a
stranger in the islands for long. We needed to learn who these
people were and what they might know about the robberies.