Dangerous Depths (13 page)

“Good day, ma’am.” It was not the greeting I
expected. But then it wasn’t Jergens standing behind the
counter.

“How can I be helpin’ you?”

“I am looking for Fred Jergens.”

“He not be here right now. I’m da manager.
You be interested in a charter?”

“No, just hoping to see Jergens. I’m
Detective Sampson, Tortola PD.”

“Oh sure, I be knowin’ who you are. Seen you
in town. I’m William Dobbs.”

“You know, this place isn’t what I expected.
It really looks great.”

“I been fixin’ it up. Workin’ on the boats.
Don’t think Mr. Jergens be too happy ‘bout it though. He chewed me
out when he came in. Said I was wasting his money and spending
behind his back while he was away. He didn’t even notice the boats.
Been doin’ a lota work on ‘em.”

“You’d think he’d appreciate it.”

“Yeah, dat’s what I thought. Business has
been slowly picking up with the improvement. Damned I think he
going to be firing me after all dis work I been doin’.”

“You know when Jergens got back on the
island?”

“Couple of weeks ago, I guess. Been in and
out most days since.”

“How did he know about that catamaran I
chased out of the Dogs?” I asked.

“Yeah, that. Jergens was down on the dock
when the guy came in on Tuesday afternoon, complaining about the
treatment of the local cops. Guess that be you. I been warning the
charterers about anchoring in da coral, but Jergens, well, he
doesn’t care ‘bout dat. Da man’s down here ta make a quick dollar.
He don’t care much ‘bout da islands.”

“You ever see him get into it with Elyse
Henry?”

“Well, sure. Ain’t too many folks on da
island he hasn’t butted heads with. Dat Elyse be one determined
lady. She came down here last week when she be hearing Jergens back
on da island. She warned him to keep his charterers off da reef and
told him she’d asked the Park Service to keep an eye special on any
boats with da BVI Sail logo.”

“How did he react?”

“He be real angry. Told her to stay out of
his business. If his charterers had any problems, he’d know who to
blame. Looked like he be about to grab her when a couple walked in
looking for a boat. He be turning into a real gentleman den. Opened
the door for her and dat was it.”

William walked out with me and was talking to
one of the dockhands when I left. Seemingly Jergens had told his
employees that he didn’t want the faulty gear replaced on any boats
until he gave the okay. It sounded like a lot of it was safety
equipment.

I could hear William’s anger and frustration
as he told the guy to go into town and get the replacements. What
he hadn’t been willing to say about Jergens would probably fill
volumes. Jergens was an unethical jerk.

In terms of Elyse—Jergens clearly had reason
to hate her. I wondered what would have happened if that couple
hadn’t interrupted his threats against her that day in his office.
From what I knew of Jergens, I couldn’t see him letting it go. He’d
have needed to finish the argument.

I took Paraquita Bay Road back to the office.
It was the long way, maybe four miles instead of three but without
the speed bumps that had been installed on Blackburn Highway along
the waterfront to prevent fast-moving vehicles from slaughtering
chickens, goats, and small children that meandered across the
pavement.

I was the only car on the road. I drove
slowly, no one behind me trying to make a mad dash past me on a
curve. My mind refused to drift though. Instead I obsessed about
Elyse and what could have happened on the
Caribbe
. Did it
involve Jillian, or Amos Porter, or was the attempt on Elyse all
about threats to Jergens’s damned charter business?

As I made my way up one twisting turn after
the next, the air cooled to a frosty eighty degrees. Cathedrals of
red towered above, turning everything underneath a warm pink. The
flamboyant trees were littering bloody blossoms across the road. I
could hear a gull calling from somewhere up in the limbs, a
laughing gull by the sound of it.

I drove higher into moist green. Invisible
tree frogs chirped from deep inside the forest. Not quite a
rainforest, as there wasn’t enough moisture, but the terrain was
lush with elephant ear philodendron, tree ferns growing under huge
gumbo-limbo trees, and orchids of every hue. Hummingbirds made
their way from blossom to blossom.

It felt good to be alone on this tropical
road. I was pissed when I heard a car roaring up behind me. I
slowed, hoping it would pass quickly and leave me to my solitude,
damned if the guy didn’t lay on his horn.

“Shit!”

I glanced in the rearview mirror. It was a
Jeep Cherokee; the tinted windshield prevented a view of the
interior. The driver was right on my tail. I slowed further and
waved him around. He got right up on my bumper, then darted into
the other lane. I recognized the driver—damned Jergens. He gave me
the finger, cut right in front of me, and disappeared. What the
hell was he doing driving up this road? Coincidence? I doubted it.
He’d probably seen me leaving his charter company and followed. All
for the chance to give me the finger and cut me off?

At the top of the island, I hit Ridge Road
and a spectacular view of the north side of the island. I pulled
off onto the gravel, got out, and walked to the overlook. Edgy, I
kept an eye out for Jergens.

Josiah’s Bay lay at the foot of the valley.
Surf broke on the point, sending gleaming sprays of water high in
the air and down, like diamonds scattering on the rocks. A few sea
grape trees tangled along the water’s edge; otherwise the beach was
empty for miles. Out to sea, the water rippled jade, turquoise,
aqua, and then turned deep and black.

I spotted Jergens’s Cherokee though the
trees, making its way down the winding road toward Road Town.
Evidently he’d gotten his thrills for the day. I took a last long
look at the view and then climbed into the Rambler and headed back
down the steep road into to town.

At first, I thought that the wobble in the
steering wheel was due to the idiosyncracies of the road. I kept
going, the momentum of the steep grade carrying me down. As my
speed increased, I touched the brakes.

Big mistake. The moment they caught the car
veered out of control. I held on, a white-knuckled,
finger-stiffening grasp around the wheel, trying to keep the
Rambler pointed downhill and on the pavement, but the damn thing
was swerving like crazy. I let up on the brake and downshifted,
gears protesting.

The car continued on its course downhill,
veering from one side of the pavement to the other. One tire hit
gravel and the car began sliding and heading for a deep ditch. When
I pulled on the emergency brake, the entire right side of the car
lifted off the ground, and threatened to roll. If it did, I’d be
crushed under the damned cloth top. Back in 1965, no one was too
concerned about putting roll bars in convertibles. Shit.

I released the brake, and the tires bounced
back to earth. A sharp pop, then another near the front tire and
the Rambler swerved back to the center of the road. The car kept
swerving, picking up momentum, and was now headed toward an abrupt
curve in the road; one side a rock wall, the other dropped over the
edge. I’d never make the turn. The damn car was headed right toward
the steep drop-off that ended about 100 feet down in the trees. All
I could do was react.

I swung the wheel hard to the right, hoping
to slow my momentum and try to turn the car toward the other side
of the road. Somehow, hitting a rock surface seemed a better choice
than flying off the side of the world.

The car, however, refused to change its
deadly course, still skidding toward the drop-off. Christ. I held
on, teeth clenched. The car stuttered across the pavement, started
slowing slightly, then hit the edge of the road and gravel. I
slammed on the brakes, jamming my foot to the floor and grinding
the transmission into second gear. Then I closed my eyes and
prayed. I felt the car teeter on the left side for instant before
dropping back onto all fours.

When I forced my eyes open I saw that the car
had come to an abrupt halt just a couple feet from the edge. I
pulled the emergency brake, fear still coursing through me.

Before I realized I’d even opened the car
door, I was standing by the Rambler, my legs shaking, my breath
coming in short gasps. Another few feet and I would have been
tangled down below in the trees. I stumbled to a nearby rock and
sat, head in hands, and waited for equilibrium to return. I was
drenched in sweat, clothes plastered against my skin. Finally, I
regained some control over my body and walked back to the car.

It was still running, engine idling. When I
got around to the other side, I understood what the sharp popping
had been. The right front wheel was held in place by three lug nuts
that had worked their way all the way to the end of the threads.
The other two had completely sheared off.

I pulled the lug wrench out of the trunk and
tightened the remaining nuts down hard, then checked the other
wheels. The bolts on the left front were also loose. What the hell?
I admit that I am not one of those meticulous people who do things
like rotate the wheels at the appropriate time. And I had not
thought about replacing them since I bought the car a year ago. But
I found it hard to believe that the damned nuts had worked their
way loose at the same time. Anyone could have tampered with
them—Jergens included. The Rambler had been out in the lot behind
his charter company for a good half an hour while I’d talked with
William. Jergens may have been following me to enjoy the effects of
his handiwork, then thought better of being so close to the scene
of my death.

***

By the time I got to the police department,
the adrenaline rush had worn off. I headed for the bathroom,
splashed cold water on my face, went to my office, and dropped into
my chair. Finally, I noticed the manila folder sitting on the desk.
I starred at it for a minute, then realized it was the lab reports
from the stuff I’d collected from Elyse’s boat.

“I told Snyder to leave that report in your
office.” Dunn had come up behind me, his mass filling the doorway.
“I thought I’d told you that we would not be investigating.”

“Sorry, Chief, I forgot that I sent that
stuff to the lab.” I was lying and Dunn knew me well enough to know
it.

“Take a look at it and file it, Hannah. I’ve
already taken a quick look. There’s nothing there that indicates
foul play. No accelerant in the charred wood and not one print on
that stove knob that you and Carr retrieved from the sand. One
clear print was lifted from the wine bottle—not Elyse’s, but no
matches in the database. Could be anyone’s, including whoever sold
the wine.”

“Well, I’m sure that Elyse did not wipe her
own fingerprints off that stove,” I argued.

“You know as well as I do how hard it can be
to get prints from objects that are submerged, especially in salt
water—even more unlikely given the fact that knob had been blown at
least forty feet through the water.”

“Maybe, but it was pretty much undamaged and
in the water less than what, six hours? It seems amazing that there
were no prints at all.”

“Hannah, you’ve been retrieving evidence
underwater long enough to know better. You know how unpredictable
the sea is when it comes to evidence. You need to keep an objective
mind instead of looking for anything that would prove this was a
murder attempt.”

I knew that Dunn was right about the prints.
But the fact that no accelerants were present didn’t prove anything
except that whoever turned the gas on figured, rightfully so, that
the propane leak would have been enough to do the job. I wasn’t
about to give up just because nothing had turned up yet.

“I’m telling you again, Hannah, I want you to
drop it,” Dunn said, turning to leave. “I don’t want to hear from
Reidman or anyone else that you are still snooping around on this.
And I want a report on my desk by the end of the day on where you
are with these boat thefts.”

I’d been about to tell him about my near
death experience on the road, but realized it would just get me in
more trouble—maybe cost me my job. Dunn would want the whole story.
I’d have to tell him I considered Jergens a suspect in a case he
just told me to drop and that I paid a visit to Jergens’s charter
company on Dunn’s time. Until I was sure the lug nuts didn’t come
loose from my own neglect or some juvenile delinquent on a lark,
I’d keep the incident to myself. When he was gone, I closed my door
and opened the report.

There wasn’t much more in it than he’d said.
I was working hard to swallow my frustration when Gilbert Dickson
knocked on the door. Dickson ran the one-man evidence analysis lab
in the office and was an expert with fingerprints. He was a small
guy, with a snowy complexion, probably because he spent so much
time looking into a microscope. But he was good at what he did, and
damned if he didn’t ride a Harley.

“Just got a match on a set of prints. That
bottle that you found floating in the water, the one labeled
Ambien? The prints belong to a Jillian Ingram. They were in the
database because of an arrest over at Saint Thomas a month
ago.”

“Jillian?”

“Know her?” he asked, handing me the
report.

“Yeah,” I said. “Hey, thanks, Gill.”

“No problem.” He walked out the door
whistling something from
Easy Rider
.

I could think of only one way that Jillian’s
prints could have gotten on that bottle: She had handled it. She
could have easily slipped those pills to Elyse if she’d been there
that night. The big question was why she would do it. Maybe she’d
simply intended to steal them. I needed to talk to the kid.

Dunn didn’t see me leave. To hell with his
damned report.