Dangerous Depths (22 page)

“As you know, Alex is helping me with my
campaign,” Freeman said. “I am so sorry about your friend’s death.
Are there any leads?”

“A few.”

“Do you think that LaPlante knows something
about the murder?” Reidman asked.

“Elyse was supposed to meet LaPlante on
Monday. I thought I’d try to find out why. LaPlante said Elyse was
anxious to show her something. Did Elyse mention anything to you
about it?”

“Probably had some material to include in the
final report. Elyse was very involved in monitoring the rat
eradication project,” Reidman said. “Surely, that had nothing to do
with her death.”

About then Tom walked over balancing a couple
of plates, Liam following with cold beers. Introductions made, we
talked about their turtle survey as they munched on bony bites of
flying fish. I wasn’t eating.

“With your permission, we’d like to survey
Flower,” Liam said to Freeman.

“I’m not too crazy about that idea, fellas.
You won’t find any turtles nesting over there. I’ve lived on that
island off and on for years and there have never been turtles. I’m
just not too keen on having people traipsing around up there. I’m
sure you understand.” Freeman turned to Reidman, effectively
cutting off any further discussion. Liam simply shrugged, but
knowing these two, they wouldn’t let it go for long.

***

I left Tom and Liam on the dock in Road Town
and walked up into town to pick up the Rambler. It was a mess, the
grill twisted and askew, the door held in place by a bungee cord,
but the engine only hesitated once then turned over. The mechanic
gave me a halfhearted apology and told me to bring it back when I
could leave it for a week. I wondered if it was worth it, told him
I’d think about it, and headed up to Elyse’s office. I was hoping
that she’d left whatever it was she’d wanted to show LaPlante
there.

By the time I turned onto Main Street and
pulled up in front of Elyse’s office, the back of my shirt was damp
and salty and sticking to the seat. Beads of sweat stung the
laceration on my head and dripped into my eyes.

I walked around to the back of the building.
I intended to jimmy the door that Reidman had made such a point of
locking. It turned out I didn’t need to—the latch was broken, the
door ajar. And damned if I hadn’t left my gun locked in the glove
box of the Rambler. I grabbed a two-by-four that was lying in a
pile of debris and stepped back to the door, listening. A
Bequia-sweet sang from its perch high in a tree and I heard a
coconut thump to earth from a nearby palm. But there wasn’t a sound
from the other side of the door. I eased it open with my
fingertips, slipped inside, and stood with my back against the
wall.

Elyse’s bike was still propped against the
far wall, her microscope on the table, but test tubes were
scattered and broken all over the floor. I moved quietly toward the
front room, stepping carefully around shards of glass. At the
doorway, I took a quick look around the corner then crept into the
front office but whoever had done this was gone.

I unlocked the front door, ran out, and
scanned the street. The only people on the sidewalk were a couple
of little girls ambling along, backpacks bouncing from their
shoulders.

I intercepted the kids at the corner, trying
not to act too desperate. They were clearly sisters, dressed alike
in shorts with starched and spotless shirts, hair neatly braided in
corn rows. They were trying to be polite as they’d been taught, but
I was scaring them.

“No, ma’am we not be seein’ anyone,” the
oldest said, draping a protective arm around her sister.

I headed back down the sidewalk, retrieved my
evidence kit from the Rambler, and went inside to call Dunn. He was
out but his secretary said she’d send Dickson, the lab guy, right
over.

Elyse’s office was a mess. Drawers had been
pulled out and dumped on the floor. Papers were scattered all over
the place. The specimen refrigerator in the back room had been
ransacked; waxy-looking pellets and broken vials lay on the floor
in a puddle of chemicals. I pulled on a pair of latex gloves,
scooped the liquid and pellets into an evidence vial, and labeled
it.

About then Gilbert Dickson walked in the
front door. He got right to it, dusting every potential surface,
applying the lifting tape, and carefully affixing the tape to a
card. Then he labeled each card with the location from which the
print came.

“Got some good clean prints from Elyse’s
desk, the file cabinet, and that refrigerator handle,” he said.
“I’ll run them through the system. Most of them are probably
Elyse’s but something might come up.”

“Do me a favor, Gill,” I said, as I handed
him the baggie with the gunk I’d collected off the floor for
analysis.

“Sure, Hannah, anything for you,” he said. If
I didn’t know better, I’d say he was flirting.

“Some of the prints you found on the stuff
Carr and I collected when we dove the
Caribbe
weren’t
Elyse’s and didn’t match anything in the database. How about
comparing them to the prints you just lifted in here?”

“No problem. I’ll let you know as soon as I
have something,” he said, closing his kit. “See you back at the
office.”

After he left, I wandered aimlessly around
Elyse’s office trying to think. Whoever had broken in had been
looking for something. But what? Could it possibly have to do with
Elyse’s call to LaPlante or the project on the cay? Was the
intruder looking for whatever Elyse had wanted to show LaPlante?
What the hell could that be? The dots were just not connecting.

I knelt and picked up a photo that had been
tossed on the floor, the frame broken. It was Elyse and me standing
on the
Caribbe
in dive gear. O’Brien had taken it. I pulled
the photo out of the frame, slipped it in my pocket, and headed
back to the office.

Stark was at his desk when I got back. He
gave me a quick smile.

“How you holding up, Hannah?” he asked.

“I’m okay,” I lied.

“Right,” he said, and left it at that. He was
as unwilling to talk about Elyse as I.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“I was out in the
Wahoo
all morning
with Snyder checking on the recent thefts on those boats. My
nervous system can’t take much more,” he said. “It’s bad enough
being out on the water with you, much less with Snyder. He’s a
damned speed demon. You know he almost ran the
Wahoo
into a
dive boat that was pulling out of the harbor at Cooper? Kid’s a
maniac.”

“It will build your character, Stark.
Besides, I hate to admit it but Snyder knows what he’s doing behind
the wheel. If his testosterone levels ever drop from ‘raging’ to
just ‘normal,’ maybe he’ll learn to slow down.”

“Except that I might not survive that long.
Kid probably needs a good lay. Maybe I ought to fix him up with one
of the ladies down at the Doubloon.”

“Don’t be corrupting him, Stark.”

“Hey, I consider it part of his education,”
he said with a grin.

“Anything new turn up over at Cooper
Island?”

“Same story as the others. The boats were
broken into while people were on shore at the restaurant. A couple
of people saw the
Libation
in the area. Snyder tracked down
the record of ownership—Lynn and Geoff Moore. When I sat down to
analyze the pattern of the robberies, things started to fall into
place. The
Libation
was in every one of those anchorages on
the days the thefts occurred. Chief wants us to hang back and keep
an eye on them. Mahler and Snyder are on it. As soon as they have
something concrete, they’ll bring them in for questioning.”

“Wait—there is one other thing.” I realized
I’d never told Stark about seeing Jergens at the Doubloon yesterday
afternoon. I’d been too distracted by everything else that had
happened. I explained that Jergens had been with the couple that
ran the
Libation
and that Mona thought they were involved in
some sort of business dealings.

“If Jergens is connected to these thefts,
Mahler and Snyder will run him down. Chief has reassigned me to
help with your investigation into Elyse’s murder. What do you have
so far?”

I went through it all with Stark—my initial
suspicions about Jillian, her prints on the Ambien bottle, her
early denial that she’d been on Elyse’s boat that night, and Amos
Porter, whom Elyse had been hassling over the run-off into the bay.
But I’d written them both off and Stark agreed.

My money was still on Jergens. All along I’d
been thinking that the explosion had to do with Elyse confronting
Jergens about his failure to protect the reef. Was there something
more involved than a simple matter of revenge on Jergens’s
part?

“Do you see this as enough motive for the
kind of violence we’re talking about?” I asked Stark.

“Maybe. We know that Jergens is ruthless,”
Stark said.

“Yeah, but it was a huge risk to go into that
hospital room after Elyse. Would he do that for simple revenge?
There has to be something bigger at stake. Maybe Elyse found out
about the thefts on the boats and Jergens’s involvement,” I
said.

“We still don’t know that he is involved,”
Stark said. “A conversation in the Doubloon doesn’t prove
much.”

I told Stark about my meeting with LaPlante
and that Elyse had arranged to meet her about something she’d
found, more than likely that afternoon when she’d been up near
Virgin Gorda.

“You think whoever ransacked Elyse’s office
was looking for whatever it was Elyse found?” Stark asked.

“I do. But what the hell was it and did he
find it? And how does it connect to Jergens or the boat thefts?
None of it makes any sense. My gut says it has nothing to do with
the damned thefts, but if not, then what the hell would Elyse have
found up at Virgin Gorda?”

“We’re spinning our wheels here. Let’s put it
to rest until tomorrow. Get some sleep and see what Dickson comes
up with on the stuff he’s analyzing from Elyse’s office,” Stark
said. “We need to get some perspective on all this.”

I knew by “we” he meant me, and he was right.
Ever since the explosion on Elyse’s boat, I’d let anger rule logic.
Now I had a killer headache and the grief was getting the best of
me.

It was barely light when I heard clambering
on the deck of the
Sea Bird
and the boat started rocking.
Sadie dashed up top to find out who was here to visit.

“Sampson! You down there? Hey Sadie.” Then a
bunch of expletives peppered the air. It was Stark. He never failed
to hit his head on the hatch every time he came down the steps into
the cabin.

“Stark, what are you doing here? Did Dickson
find something in Elyse’s office?” I felt my heart rate jump a
notch.

“No, it’s not about Elyse,” he said.

I lay back on the pillow, disappointed and
pulled the covers over my head. “Come on, Stark, I’m still in bed,
for chrissake.”

“I can see that,” he said. He was standing at
my cabin door rubbing his head. “I’ll put the coffee on while you
get dressed.”

“I don’t want to get dressed. I want to
sleep.” I’d slept badly, awakened by nightmares about Elyse. By the
time I’d gotten back to sleep, it was almost three a.m. and now
Stark was on my case to get up.

“Come on, Hannah, we need your help.”

I reached over my head and slammed my cabin
door shut, then slid out of bed and pulled on a pair of shorts and
a tank.

Stark was banging around in the galley when I
stumbled into the salon.

“Coffee’s ready,” he said, holding a couple
of mugs and a thermos. “Let’s go.”

“Go? How about filling me in first?”

“We can talk on the way. I’ve already fed
your critters. You need to grab your dive gear, camera, anything
else you need.”

I packed my gear, knowing full well that
diving today was nuts. In the past 48 hours, I’d been beaten,
gotten drunk, and lost my best friend. Not to mention the three
hours of sleep I’d managed last night. It was a cocktail for
disaster. But Dunn wouldn’t have asked if there was anyone else
qualified. I threw my bag over my shoulder, followed Stark to my
car, and tossed him the keys.

He talked as I tried to get some caffeine in
my blood stream. Evidently a boat had been reported on fire and
sinking sometime around three in the morning up at the north end of
Virgin Gorda. Someone on shore had seen it going down and called
the police station in Spanish Town. By the time a rescue boat
arrived, the craft had disappeared under the water.

“They’ve been out searching for bodies,”
Stark said. “No sign of anyone.”

“Why does Dunn think he needs me? Sounds like
this was an accident, and not a police matter.”

“The folks who reported it saw a motorboat
speeding away from the scene right after they saw flames and smoke
coming from the boat.”

“Did you call Carr?”

“Yeah, he’s already out there. Don’t know how
he got wind of it so fast. Guess the fire department radioed BVI
Search and Rescue.”

Stark helped me load all the gear into the
Wahoo
but he wasn’t happy about stepping into the boat
himself.

“Come on, Stark. At least Snyder’s not
driving,” I said, gunning the engine.

“Some comfort,” he said, strapping on a life
jacket.

We had no problem finding the scene. A huddle
of boats already bobbed out there in the water. The fireboat from
Virgin Gorda was just pulling away, heading back to shore. I
spotted Dunn, his huge black frame silhouetted against the morning
sky. The man was unmistakable; no one else held himself the way
Dunn did.

Several people were standing around on their
boats, smoking and drinking coffee. No one was doing much except
staring into the water at nothing. Other boaters were beginning to
gather around the edges. It’s the same on the water as on the
roads—onlookers wanting to get a glimpse of blood and gore. Dunn
picked up the loudspeaker mike and warned them away.