Dangerous Depths (26 page)

***

Once I stepped aboard the
Sea Bird
exhaustion took over. I fell into bed and into a deep dreamless
sleep. Sometime in the middle of the night I was awakened by the
sound of Sadie growling. Then she’d raced up the steps. When I got
out on deck, she was on the dock, fur ruffled, barking at something
on shore.

“What is it, Sadie?” She turned and whined at
me, then directed her attention back to shore.

I went below, threw on my sweats and running
shoes, grabbed a flashlight and the .38 and headed down the dock
with Sadie by my side. I couldn’t see or hear anything, but Sadie
seemed determined that something was there and I didn’t think it
was just a mongoose out hunting in the bush. When we got to the
marina parking lot, she stopped and bared her teeth. I flipped off
the light. I didn’t feel like turning into a target.

“It’s okay, girl,” I whispered. I walked
slowly into the lot scanning the deep shadows, trying to see
anything at all. I crept to the front of Calvin’s old pickup, took
a quick look underneath and then stepped around in a crouch, gun
raised. Nothing. Tilda’s car was parked alongside. I was moving
along the passenger side when I heard a sound, a footstep in
gravel. About that time the lights came on in the marina.

“What’s going on?” Calvin hollered from the
doorway.

A shape materialized from the passenger side
of the Rambler and took off into the trees. I went after it, racing
though the bougainvillea and frangipani in the Pickerings’ yard and
out to the highway. By the time I got out there, I heard a car
around the bend laying rubber.

Calvin came up behind me breathless,
brandishing a wrench.

“I heard Sadie barking. Figured there was
trouble,” he said. “Did you see who it was?”

“No, just a black shape.”

Tilda and the girls were standing in the
doorway when we got back. Rebecca had a tight grip on Sadie. I
wasn’t sure who was comforting whom.

Calvin grabbed another flashlight and we took
a look around. The Rambler was the only victim. The passenger door
was wide open. No problem getting into it with only a damned bungee
cord holding it closed. God knows what anyone would want. The only
things inside were still in a heap in the back seat, the black
cocktail dress and red heels I’d worn to distract the guy at the
gravel pit. The intruder clearly had no sense of fashion. I opened
the glove compartment. Everything was intact.

“This be a mess.” Calvin had made his way
around to the back of the car.

I slid out of the front seat and went to see
what Calvin was looking at.

“Looks like he was trying to get into the
trunk.” Calvin shone the light on the lock, now twisted and
misshapen.

I put my key into the lock, held my mouth
just right, and turned. The trunk popped open and we were assaulted
with the unmistakable odor of sea life. The turtle still lay on the
tarp in a melting pile of ice and dirty salt water. The only other
object in the trunk was the evidence kit that I’d shoved to the
back when I’d loaded the turtle.

“Not much in here dat anyone woulda wanted,”
Calvin said, referring to the turtle. “My truck be filled with
tools. If Sadie hadn’t started barking, da guy probably woulda
broken into it and gotten something of value.”

“Maybe, but maybe he was after the
turtle.”

“How would anyone know it was in dar?”

“I wasn’t making it a secret. Everyone down
at the docks this morning saw O’Brien and the crazy American woman
loading the turtle corpse into the trunk.”

“Well, I guess that tortoiseshell would be
worth some money.”

We filled a couple of buckets with ice from
the marina machine, dumped it over the turtle, and slammed the
trunk.

“Don’t think dat fella be back, but I be
leaving da outside light on da resta da night just in case.”

“Thanks, Calvin.”

Sadie and I walked down to the
Sea
Bird
and went back to bed. My dreams were filled with
horror—vivid images of Elyse floating in the sea surrounded by
hundreds of dead turtles and empty turtle shells.

The next morning I sat on the deck of the
Sea Bird
, sipping coffee and shaking off the nightmares. The
sun was just hitting the tops of the palms on the western side of
the cove, tingeing the fronds with a pinkish hue. Sadie and Rebecca
were romping on the beach, the dog’s yips and the child’s laughter
breaking the silent morning. Nomad lay beside me, purring as I
stroked her head.

The caffeine was beginning to work, helping
brain cells to fire. I hadn’t had any real sleep in the past week,
and the intensity and physical exertion of yesterday’s dive had
sapped my energy. My chest felt tight from all the compressed air
I’d breathed and my calves were rebelling after the intense finning
I’d done inside the boat as it plunged into the abyss.

When the sun blasted over the horizon and
into my eyes, I hobbled to my feet, every muscle protesting. Nomad
escaped to the shade by the mast and curled up. I knew that when I
came home, she’d still be there, on the other side, following the
shade around the mast. Nomad rarely left the boat unless it was to
follow me out to the sandy shore. As long as she was on the
Sea
Bird
, she felt secure. She considered the boat hers. I was
merely a guest.

I left Sadie playing in the water with
Rebecca and drove into town. Tom and Liam were waiting for me in
the marina parking lot.

“What happened to the trunk?” Liam asked as
he watched me wiggling the key in the lock and popping open the
lid.

I told them about the intruder while I
struggled to get the turtle out and into the cart that they’d
brought up from the dock.

“Maybe someone thought you had something
valuable in the trunk, like a shotgun or pistols. Lots of people
know the Rambler belongs to a police officer,” Tom said, trying to
come up with a reason why someone would want to get into my
car.

“I think the guy was after the turtle. The
question is, why? Maybe you two can figure out what killed it.”

We wheeled the turtle out to Tom and Liam’s
boat and they went to work examining it and making
measurements.

“She’s an adult female, thirty-five inches
long,” Liam said, retracting the tape measure. We hoisted the
turtle onto their scale and Tom recorded the figure on his data
sheet—eighty-six pounds.

They removed a very old tag that they found
still attached to the scutes. Tom cut it off.

“I’m pretty sure this turtle was tagged when
they did the last survey. I can still make out the numbers. Liam,
where’s that report?”

Liam went below and came back up with the
bound manuscript, dog-eared and torn. He opened it to the section
on coding and ran his finger down a row of numbers.

“Yeah, this turtle was tagged right here in
the BVI. Probably been returning to nest for the last fifteen
years. What a shame. She should have had another ten years at
least. Hawksbills can live fifty years or more. Unfortunately, many
don’t make it that long these days.”

They found no apparent wounds, but identified
a couple of old injuries. Tom outlined the scars, one across the
shell—a jagged line that looked like it had cut all the way through
to the flesh.

“Probably a propeller,” Liam said. “This old
girl was lucky to survive that. The scar in the flipper is most
likely from a shark.”

They had collected their instruments from the
hold, placing them in a row on the deck—a scalpel, hemostats,
forceps—then began their dissection. Thirty minutes later, they
knew why the turtle had died: It had bled to death, internal
hemorrhage.

Neither of them had seen anything like
it.

“Why would Billings have this turtle on his
boat?” Tom asked baffled.

“Maybe he saw it washed up on shore and
figured it was worth collecting. He’d know the shell was worth some
money. You said the boat sunk up near the north end of Virgin
Gorda?” Liam asked.

“That’s right. Any guesses why this turtle
bled to death?” I asked them.

“Sure looks like it got into something,” Tom
said. “The question is, what and where did it come from? These
turtles will eat a wide variety of debris—plastic and Styrofoam
pieces, tar balls, plastic pellets. These substances interfere with
metabolism but I’ve never seen this kind of excessive internal
hemorrhage. I suppose it’s possible that it ate something with an
accumulation of toxins in it. But I can’t imagine what.”

“This could be a real problem,” Liam said.
“Where there is one poisoned turtle, there are likely to be more.
Damn, these sea turtles are being hit from every direction.
Sometimes I wonder if there is any chance of saving them.”

“Come on, Liam. Let’s not give up on them
now. Let’s just figure out what happened here,” Tom said.

We agreed that Deb LaPlante should examine
the turtle. She was an expert in the effects of toxins.

I used the phone up at the marina. LaPlante
picked up right away.

“I was just on my way to a meeting with the
staff, but I’d really like to take a look at it,” she said. “It
could be any number of things, but I can tell a lot by examining
it. Look, I’ll be back at my lab by two. Can you bring the turtle
up then?”

I told her we’d be there.

With time to kill I wanted to check out the
area where the
Lila B
had gone down. While I maneuvered the
boat out of the harbor Tom and Liam wrapped the turtle with stuff
that looked a lot like shrink-wrap, then covered it with more ice
and a tarp. They’d insisted on coming along to talk to LaPlante
about the turtle.

A half hour later I cut the engine and let
the boat drift over the spot where the
Lila B
lay. It was
just around the point from the far end of Virgin Gorda.

I could see the white house from which the
witnesses had seen the boat on fire. It was nestled in green shrubs
and blossoms. The people on that veranda would have had a ringside
view. Farther around the point was Flower Island, Freeman’s little
paradise, then another bay and the inlet through Eustatia Sound and
into North Sound.

I headed over to the white house and we tied
up the boat up at the dock. A long set of wooden steps led to the
house. Tom and Liam stayed behind, poking around on shore while I
started up the steps to see if anyone was home. When I got to the
top, the entire territory spread out in the distance.

Down on the shore, I could see Tom peering
under a rock, nudging something with a stick. Liam had waded into
the water and was investigating the underside of the dock.
Fascinating stuff for these two. I’m sure they’d be content to
spend an entire day studying that little part of the world. Hell,
maybe they’d find something that would explain what that turtle had
gotten into.

At the house, a man in his early thirties,
barefoot and shirtless, answered the door. I told him I was with
the Tortola Police Department and followed him to the veranda,
where the rest of the houseguests were lounging in various stages
of dress. Some had turned a brilliant red and had retreated to the
shade of the awning.

The man who had answered the door explained
that the group was composed of four couples escaping children,
work, and the cold. They’d been on the island a week now.

“I know that you’ve already spoken with one
of my colleagues, but I’d like to go over it with you again just to
make sure.”

“Well, like we told the police officer, we
were out here late, listening to music, dancing. We’d all had
plenty to drink. Julie’s the one that saw the spark.” By now those
who had been sprawled in the sun had gathered under the awning to
listen in.

“At first, I wasn’t sure what it was,” Julie
chimed in. “There was another boat pulled alongside. Then the spark
turned into a flame. We were all thinking the other boat was there
to help. But then it sped away, leaving the boat to burn.”

By the time the group figured out who to
call, the boat was sinking. No one had gotten a good look at the
other boat. All they knew was that it was low in the water and
fast. They all agreed there were two people, the driver and
another, both big enough to be men.

“Did you see anyone on the boat that sank?” I
asked.

“Never saw anyone on it at all. In fact, we
thought maybe once the fire started, the guy was rescued by the one
in the other boat. Of course, we heard different later. The divers
pulled up a body. Nasty job,” he said, shaking his head.

“Yeah.” I didn’t admit to being the one who’d
had to do it. “Had you seen the boat around before?”

“As a matter of fact, I’d seen it a couple of
times this past week when I was out walking,” the woman named Julie
said. I had the feeling that Julie was the one most aware of her
surroundings. She paid attention.

“Really? When?”

“Three or four times since we’ve been here. I
think he came up the channel from Tortola.”

Seemingly Billings had been in the area all
week with the
Lila B
.

“Did you notice where he went or what he was
doing?” I asked.

“Well, every time I saw him he was kind of
drifting in the inlet there. I thought he was probably fishing.
There are those buoys bobbing out there that mark the fish
traps.”

I knew what she meant. The local fishermen
tied anything that would float, mostly empty plastic bottles, to
the lines that went to the bottom where they’d place their
traps.

“Did you ever see him pulling the traps
up?”

“No, I never did. A couple of times, I was
out on the point with my binoculars. I’d seen him sitting on the
deck of his boat with a pair of binoculars of his own directed at
the shore.”

“Do you remember seeing him Friday afternoon
before the boat caught fire?’ I asked.