Dangerous Depths (23 page)

I maneuvered the
Wahoo
though the
outer ring of boats and tied up alongside Dunn.

“Hannah, I appreciate your coming under the
circumstances. I know you want to stay focused on your
investigation into Elyse’s death, but you’re the only one who can
do this dive.”

“No problem, Chief. Stark filled me in. Does
anyone know what boat it was?”

“No. It wasn’t a sailboat. People who saw it
said it looked like an old fishing boat of some kind, one with a
cabin on deck. Sounds more like a local than a charter craft. Don’t
know what anyone would be doing out here at three in the
morning.”

“Any idea whether anyone was onboard?” I
asked.

“Seems pretty likely. No one was pulled out
of the water. We have retrieved some debris—life preserver, plastic
mug, that kind of thing. Nothing that identifies the boat.”

“Stark said there were reports of another
craft in the area last night.”

“Yes, but descriptions are a bit vague. The
people who saw it were out on the veranda of that house up there.”
Dunn pointed to a white stucco that was spread across the hillside,
surrounded by orange blossoms.

“Let me guess. They weren’t exactly
sober.”

“That’s right. There were six or seven of
them partying up there. They’ve rented the place for a couple of
weeks. Each of them tells it a little differently. The only
consensus is that they saw a fire on the boat and then it slowly
sank beneath the surface. They all saw the other boat, which they
say sped up Drake Channel and disappeared. No navigation
lights.”

“Has anyone gone down yet?” I asked, worried
about the scene. A couple of dive masters from a local dive shop
hovered on a nearby boat and looked like they were dying to get
into the action. I knew they were good, but they didn’t know
anything about crime scenes. It was a problem that Dunn had brought
me onto the force to rectify. He assured me that he’d secured the
scene and that no one had entered the water.

“I guess we better see what’s down there.
What’s the depth?”

“It’s about seventy to eighty feet,” Carr
said. He was sitting in the back of the boat, studying the dive
tables that gave us time limits at various depths and how long we
would be required to remain on the surface between each dive to
avoid decompression stops. “We’ve got plenty of full tanks. I
figure three dives, twenty-five minutes max each. If we watch our
time and depth, we won’t need to decompress on our way back
up.”

“Good.” I believed in avoiding decompression
dives whenever possible. They always meant more risk. I’d done
plenty of them and sometimes thought I was pushing my luck. They
involved ascending to designated depths for specified periods that
are determined using Navy Decompression Tables. If our dives took
us too deep for too long, we’d need to do decompression stops on
our way back up to allow the nitrogen, which would accumulate in
our tissues if we breathed air at depth for extended periods, to
dissipate from our systems before surfacing.

Otherwise we risked the bends, caused by
bubbles forming in the bloodstream. A severe case can cause
paralysis, loss of consciousness, and death. The pain is
excruciating and many divers suffer long-term disability.

I’d known divers who had panicked,
miscalculated, or run out of air and surfaced before they’d had a
chance to complete the necessary stops. They’d been rushed to
recompression chambers. Some recovered, a couple could never dive
again, one was in a wheelchair, one died.

We were close to the edge with these dives
but if we stayed inside the time limits, we’d be fine.

“Okay,” I said. “We’ll get the general
picture on the first dive, check for victims, and evaluate the
overall scene. I’ll take as many photos as I can. Then we’ll
surface and decide what’s next based on what we find.”

I sat next to Carr, pulled on my wetsuit and
booties, attached my BC to the tank, hooked up the hoses, checked
my air (3400 psi), and breathed through the regulator. Everything
was fine. I kept my equipment in top condition. I knew one of the
biggest dangers in diving was equipment failure. Divers got bad
air, their regulators malfunctioned, their gauges failed. There
were plenty of other things that could happen underwater and the
only tie to survival was the tank on your back. I tried to keep the
odds in my favor.

I hefted my equipment to the platform on the
back of the boat, buckled on my weight belt, then sat down and
pulled on my fins. Dunn helped me into my BC and tank while Stark
assisted Carr. I spit in my mask to keep it from fogging, swirled
it in sea water and snugged it into place. I grabbed the underwater
camera and tumbled into the water. Carr was right behind me.

We descended slowly. Every few feet, I
pinched my nose and blew to equalize the pressure in my ears. Carr
was doing the same. Visibility was about twenty feet, with a slight
current. The deeper we got, the darker it became. At fifty feet, I
could see the outline of the wreck. The boat was completely intact
and lying on its side at the edge of a precipice that dropped into
nothingness. There was no indication from this vantage point that
there had been a fire.

I stopped and shot photos. Then we continued
to the bottom. I checked my depth gauge: seventy-six feet. Both
Carr and I spent a second adjusting the air in our BCs, just enough
so that we were hovering above the bottom. Then we headed for the
wreck, our lights on. As we moved in, I shot pictures from every
angle, making sure to place the boat in its context. Then we moved
in closer. We would not touch anything on this first dive, just get
an idea of what we were up against. Carr knew that he should stay
behind me and follow my lead.

The thing about being under the water is that
your world becomes multidimensional. Up, down, behind, ahead. You
think you’re completely aware of your surroundings and then
suddenly something appears out of the blue. That’s what happened
now. I felt something brush against my fin and was sure that it was
Carr. It wasn’t. A hammerhead, followed by two more, swam right
above me, circling. Logic told me they were not going to bother me,
but no matter how much logic I drew on in these times, the
fight-or-flight response coursed through me. It was all I could do
to talk myself through it. Seconds later and with a few slight
flicks of their tails, they disappeared into the deep.

We swam along the port side to the forward
section of the boat. I could see the name on the side—
Lila
B.
The cabin windows arched around the wheel house. I made my
way across the bow and around the exterior, straining to see
inside, my face mask inches from the glass, tilting my flashlight
back and forth through the glass and into the gloom. Things floated
inside: paper, pencils, a Styrofoam cup. Fish were nibbling on
something that looked like a sandwich.

I could see the wooden spindled wheel, a
compass attached to the helm, and behind it a swiveling stool that
was bolted into the floor. Someone was sitting in it, ragged arms
dangling from the chair. I couldn’t see the face. I banged my mask
against the window, trying to get a better look. I almost expected
the guy to move, react to the clatter. Nothing. I inched along the
window, peering into the water-filled room, trying for a better
vantage point. With a new perspective, I realized that it was an
illusion conjured from nerves—no man, just a jacket that was
knotted though the back of the stool.

I kept moving along the glass, trying to pick
out signs that anyone was aboard the boat. I had my mask glued to
the last window on the starboard side, focusing my light on the
interior side of the door, when a face drifted into the window.
This time the man was real—grinning at me, eyes open, teeth barred.
I lurched backward, the weight of my tanks pulling me down onto the
bow of the boat.

Jeez, that was not cool.
Very
professional, Sampson
. By the time Carr swam to my side, I was
sitting on my knees on the bow. I gave him the okay and signaled
him to follow. The face was still there, peering out of the window.
I recognized the guy from somewhere.

I nodded to Carr and we continued to swim
around the other side of the boat, both of us examining the hull as
I continued to shoot photos. Toward the back section of the hull,
Carr shone his light over several holes, all charred. It looked as
if the fire must have started in the hold and burned through
quickly. I moved in close and shot pictures from every angle. Then
I swam up to the deck, continuing to photograph.

I checked my watch and found that we’d
already been down for twenty-five minutes. We needed to surface. I
signaled to Carr and we headed up.

When we surfaced I saw that the crowd of
boats had dispersed but O’Brien had come out with James Carmichael,
the owner of Underwater Adventures. Carmichael was a top-notch
diver and one to have by your side in extreme conditions. He and
O’Brien would be good backups if we needed them.

I sat on the side of the
Wahoo
,
resting and swigging water. The day was brilliant, cumulus drifting
in a deep blue sky. The reef at the entrance to North Sound
reflected teal, turquoise, and crystalline as the water shallowed
to the shore. Out here, though, the water was deep indigo.

I described the scene to Dunn and Stark—the
body in the cabin and the charred holes in the hull.

“Not much question about why the boat went
down. Looks like the fire was extremely hot and burned holes
through the hull before it could be consumed by flames. The boat
would have filled with water fast,” I said, taking a long swallow
from my water bottle.

“What about the body? Did you recognize the
guy?” Stark asked.

“I’ve seen him somewhere, maybe at the
fund-raiser.”

I turned to O’Brien who was sitting at the
wheel of the
Wahoo
.

“What was that guy’s name at the fund-raiser,
O’Brien? The one that Freeman had hauled out of there. The
caretaker that he fired.”

O’Brien thought about it for a minute before
speaking. “Freeman mentioned his name once. I’m pretty sure it’s
Billings—Theodore Billings.”

“Looked a lot like the guy who was glaring at
me through the window down there,” I said, the horrible grin still
vivid in my mind.

“Could you see any injuries?” Dunn asked.

“Nothing apparent.” I knew Dunn dreaded
having another murder on his hands.

I looked at my watch. Carr and I had been
sitting up top for almost an hour, drinking water and munching on
cookies—a safe margin of surface time to allow our bodies to dispel
the nitrogen in our tissues and keep our nitrogen absorption within
the limits for no decompression.

“Guess we’d better get down there and find
out.” I stood, and stretched. I can’t say I was looking forward to
going back in. I was tense on the first dive and now I had one of
those feelings. I knew every diver in the world feels this way from
time to time: jinxed, maybe pushing his luck. Some divers were
smart enough to call it a day and head to shore. Others always
pushed the limits. For me, there was rarely a choice, like today.
We needed to bring that body up.

I gathered a couple of evidence containers
and the yellow underwater body bag from the hold of the
Wahoo
. O’Brien helped Carr heft the fresh tanks from Carr’s
boat and ready our equipment for the second dive.

Carr and I went over our dive plan. This time
we would descend directly to the boat and enter the wheelhouse.
Once I’d taken interior photos, we’d bag the body and bring it up.
I’d done it all before—dozens of times.

We suited up, stepped off the side into the
water, and headed back down. Once at the boat, I again took the
lead, swimming to the cabin door. There were no apparent intrusion
marks on the door, nothing to indicate forced entry. Still I took
photos from several angles before Carr pried the door open with a
crowbar, avoiding any contact with the door handle. Before going
inside, I took wide-angle shots of the interior. It was pretty hard
to tell whether there had been any violence inside since everything
that could float, did.

The body was still up against the window,
held in place by the shirt, which had gotten tangled in the window
latch. The corpse wore dark brown pants stained with grease, work
boots, and a yellow bandana tied around its neck.

I moved in for close-ups, competing with a
few fish that thought Billings would make a good lunch. The body
had a huge gash in the back of the head and a wound in its side. It
looked like Billings had put up a fight before the final blow to
his head.

Fortunately, only a few saltwater shrimp had
found the wounds as yet. They are voracious feeders. Given time
they would be joined by others—crabs, lobsters, and thousands of
sea lice, small whitish brown creatures which you’d never know were
in the water until they congregate
en masse
on a dead body.
Their first point of attack is the wound. Eventually these
scavengers can obliterate tissue and other important evidence.

Recovery in those circumstances required a
lot of experience and a strong psyche. I’d once done a recovery
with a novice team member who had been on the verge of panic when
we encountered a victim blanketed in sea lice. When we moved the
body, they swarmed in a cloud around us. When a couple swam under
his neoprene hood, the guy freaked out and headed for the surface.
Fortunately, we’d only been diving at thirty feet, shallow enough
that he’d not gotten into trouble with a fast ascent.

Right now, the few scavengers that were
feeding on this victim had done little damage, and they scattered
when I lifted the head and enclosed it in a plastic bag. Carr
handed me a couple more bags, one for each of the hands. Given the
apparent struggle with the assailant, there was a good chance that
the coroner would find something under the nails. That done, we
zipped the body into a bag and took it to the surface.