Death By Blue Water (A Hayden Kent Mystery Book 1) (3 page)

Four

Ignoring his dropped jaw and shocked look, she pressed the buttons to flip through the screens on her dive computer. She hoped he wouldn’t pursue the topic with the cops in earshot.

“I’m good to go, Cappy.” She handed him the device. “And by the time the lieutenant gears up and gets back, I’ll be more than good to go. I’m more worried about that cloud over there than I am about getting bent.”

“You blacked out Friday? That’s why you never called me. And you dove one hundred and twenty feet today and never said a word.”

To Hayden his low voice sounded more like a growl. Tears bit her eyes. She’d betrayed one of her best friends. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I feel fine, and you have no idea how much I needed to do this dive. I would never risk…”

“Well, you did.”

The Coast Guard inflatable fired its engine and cast off from the Patrol boat taking the tall lieutenant with it, presumably to get his dive gear. Turning to face away from Officer Kirby who now sat in the marine patrol boat Hayden said, “At least they’re not looking at me like I’m a suspect. Of course, I don’t know how I feel about being taken for crazy either.”

“My money’s on you, kid.” Cappy said. “If you say you saw someone, you saw someone.” A troubled look crossed his face as he reached into the cuddy cabin to turn up the volume on the marine radio. “You’re sure it wasn’t the skeleton?”

“That kind of bothers me. I don’t remember seeing the skeleton. Isn’t it in the room below?”

Cappy shook his head. “You know better, Hayd.”

Misery made her stomach clench. “What if I was narked? It can happen, but you know I can identify it and compensate for it, but if it came from the migraine...” She pressed a thumb and forefinger into her eyes and rubbed them. “Sure wish I could see into the wheelhouse from here.” Sighing, she stood up straight. “If I’m wrong, we’ll be taking mortgages on our houses. That Coast Guard cutter doesn’t come cheap.”

For the second time that day, ocean waters closed over Hayden’s head. This time they felt chilly. She checked her gauge and saw the water temperature was in the eighties. Second dives were usually colder. Pushing up the sleeve of her dive skin, she saw the tiny bumps rising from her flesh. It didn’t help that she felt the lieutenant watching her as they made their descent. He made sure they were side by side and he matched her fin kick to fin kick. It crossed her mind that if he thought she was going to try to make a run for it, she’d have no place to go.

To distract herself she concentrated on the fish life darting in and out of the wreck profile. She couldn’t see the grouper but that didn’t mean he wasn’t there. As often happens on dives, the water looked crystal clear from the topside but obscured horizontally. Visibility had deteriorated since her earlier dive. Hayden wasn’t sure whether to hope the corpse was a figment of nitrogen narcosis as the lieutenant and the officer thought or that she’d find him there. Still wrapped in his anchor line in the wheelhouse. At least that would be vindication. She couldn’t shake the thought that it could be an artifact of the migraine, or the depth triggered some lingering triptan in her system, causing a hallucination. Maybe it caused the blackout too. Maybe something in her system made the drug act differently. Could she have taken more than one, and forgotten that too?

Paul’s hand reached out and touched her shoulder. With a start, she realized they were at the wreck. He wagged his hand back and forth asking for directions. Using hand signals, she indicated the route to take to get to the window she had used. The lieutenant, however, decided to take a more direct route. He went directly to the correct door opening on the stern side and swam into the tiny wheelhouse. Hayden went to her prior post at the window and steeled herself to look down. Knowing what she would see didn’t make it easier.

The corpse and his eyeless face moved from where she saw him the first time.

This time both hands were free and his arms waved back and forth in a frantic motion.

Hayden looked up into Paul’s face and was shocked to see the lieutenant’s eyes crinkle as if he were laughing. She must be narked. She looked at her gauge. They’d only been down five minutes but it was long enough for her. She signaled that she would be ascending. Paul signaled back telling her to wait for him.

Bastard, thought Hayden, he didn’t even ask if I had a problem, just motioned a stay here sign. She watched as he swam to the corpse and observed it closely. From his BC pocket, he removed a small watertight camera and began taking pictures. Apparently unwilling to take the time to swim around the wheelhouse to Hayden’s vantage point, he came over to the window and handed her the camera, indicating she was to take photos from her view. As she lifted the camera a loud bong sounded. The camera slipped from her grasp. She watched in horror as it floated to the deck below. She dove down frantically trying to recover it before it lodged some place that she couldn’t reach. Paul shot out of the window after her and, lithe as an eel, sped past her and grabbed the camera before it fell into one of the smaller holds. He scowled at her and swam past to finish the photos.

The goliath grouper, missing when they first swam down to the wreck, now had his head in the wheelhouse door again. He seemed upset at the human intrusion and he bonged as they reached the window. For a brief, disoriented, moment, Hayden thought he was trying to tell them something. Maybe how the man got here. She stared at the anchor again and tried to imagine how it might have gotten in the middle of the wheelhouse. She could understand the distance between anchor and body, but not how it lodged in the wheelhouse. Hayden shook her head. It didn’t make sense. The anchor should fall to the sand. There was no way it could bounce in from the rail and drag the man. She shuddered, thinking of the horror of his last moments. Unable to free himself, and unable to breathe. She glanced at the roof of the wheelhouse. Much to her amazement, there was a large hole.

She looked down again. The way the body was snugged up under the window seemed odd. Almost as if he was placed there. Was it possible someone swam the man and anchor down? Or had the anchor crashed through the roof of the wheelhouse dragging the man behind it? The current could have rolled the victim under the window.

Hayden drew a deep breath and choked. Somehow water had encroached into her regulator. She tried again, breathing more shallowly this time. More water entered her mouth, she tasted the salty brine and spit it back into her regulator. Confused at the problem, Hayden breathed a prayer of thanks that the rules had changed to require every diver have two regulators. She grabbed for her reserve and switched it for the one in her mouth. Before she took a breath, a light tap on her shoulder startled her. Hayden spun on fins to find Paul hovering behind her. He flashed her a questioning okay sign.

Before she responded, Hayden again tried a shallow breath. True to her training, she’d been softly exhaling the entire time she dealt with the regulator problem. Her lungs felt flat now and she badly needed a breath. Carefully inhaling, water again filled her mouth. She drew her hand back and forth across the front of her neck indicating no air.

Paul reacted immediately. Grabbing and purging his second regulator, he pulled hers from her mouth and shoved his in its place. Grateful, she gulped in a deep breath and held up her defective regulator for inspection.

Unable to find a problem, she looked up to see Paul motioning her to the surface. He hadn’t attempted to recover or move the body. Now, with her tethered to him, there was no way he’d want to risk using the additional air if he intended to bring the body up with him. Hayden shook her head. She must be more rattled than she thought. Of course he wasn’t going to drag a dead man up. They must have a protocol for this.

Remembering the skeleton, and that she hadn’t seen it, Hayden indicated she wanted to take a last look at the body. Through his facemask Paul’s eyes widened in question. Taking the risk that he wouldn’t abandon her, she knifed her body downward and turned back for the wheelhouse. Trapped by their mutual life support system, she felt Paul’s body as he swam alongside her.

Gently she pulled both of them into the window. The skeleton lay beneath the body.

She wasn’t nuts. Or narked.

Paul wrapped an arm around Hayden and swam to the ascent line. He grabbed on with one hand and took her elbow in his other. Now they would have to ascend face to face. Hayden, following her usual procedures on this dive, managed to take a final look around. She checked her gauge to be sure she didn’t have any decompression obligations. Then she checked his to ascertain their mutual air supply. He wasn’t an air hog. That was good.

They began to rise with the exhaust bubbles. Slowly and safely.

Remembering the hole in the ceiling of the tiny wheelhouse, Hayden was surprised she’d never noticed it before. True, she’d never gone into the wheelhouse on any dive she’d done on the Humboldt, but she’d certainly hung on the ascent line often enough looking the wreck over. Curious, she removed the regulator from her mouth briefly so she could comfortably turn her head and look down at the wheelhouse. Between the corals and spiny clams covering the top of the wheelhouse and the lack of bright lighting, the opening was completely obscured from view. Heaving a mental sigh of relief, she replaced the regulator and motioned to Paul that she was ready to continue up the line.

They finished their safety stop at the fifteen-foot mark and when Paul indicated his intention to surface, Hayden nodded. His diving competence showed. He handled himself well underwater, especially in an emergency. He seemed to have gotten over his disbelief that she had done the initial dive alone.

Climbing back on Cappy’s boat Paul helped her take her tank and buoyancy vest off. Together, he and Cappy inspected the defective rig.

“Thank you so much, lieutenant,” Hayden began. She searched for words to express how she felt. This man saved her life. She knew that.

Paul waved her thanks off. When she persisted in trying to thank him as he went over the air hoses millimeter by millimeter, he finally said, “It’s my job. Really, no big deal.”

He tapped at the each of the hoses with the point of a pen. “Right there,” he said. “Both the air hoses are nicked, or starting to rot. You can’t see it until you bend them. Are both these hoses the same age?”

When Hayden nodded, he continued, “You should check them before every dive. Don’t rely on an annual inspection. It’s a good thing you weren’t alone this time.”

Hayden couldn’t think of a thing to say in her defense. Instead, she hid her embarrassment by drying her face and hair with a towel.

Paul stalked off and sat down on the captain’s chair under the Bimini top. He pulled a clipboard out of the dry bag he’d brought with him and began to write. Finally, he handed her a hastily written report of what they’d seen underwater. Unaffected by seasickness and always able to read on a boat, Hayden skimmed the words and made a few edits.

Paul had written the dead man was lying in a closed cabin. She corrected the statement to indicate the cabin had an opening in the roof. She was so tired it didn’t occur to her he should have seen it when he did his inspection. After all, he had been in the cabin and photographed every inch. Signing her name to the corrected version, she handed the report back to the coast guardsman. He snatched it from her, apparently irate that she’d corrected his work. Glancing up, she decided she hadn’t read him right. His face showed no anger or irritation. In fact, she thought she detected sympathy. Good looking though he was, Hayden realized she was having a hard time getting a reading on this man.

Janice sat on her boat. She hadn’t said a word about the events underwater. Hadn’t even asked about what they found. Hayden noted she still looked uncomfortable. Her face had an even more sickly color than before. Hayden speculated that most of Janice’s job consisted of sitting on an unmoving boat in a pitching sea. Today the seas seemed relatively flat. She must have something else going on. Maybe she was pregnant. Or maybe she had an odd skin tone. Hayden looked closer and saw the telltale sheen of sweat on the woman’s face. No, she decided, she was either seasick or sick.

Glancing over at his Ensign, Paul signaled his intention to return to the cutter. “We can reach you at this number?” His blue eyes bored into Hayden as he asked the question.

Hayden felt small next to his height. This man had just saved her life, had the best looks she’d seen in a long time, and could dive. It was a shame about the circumstances that caused their meeting. Still, he could be married, involved, or gay for all she knew. “Yes. Let me give you my work phone too. I’m a paralegal at Huffman Koons and if you need me, you can reach me there. Officer Kirby, do you need more contact information for me?”

Kirby shook her head. “I’ll get it from Paul. That will let you get on your way. You must be beat. If you feel the least bit of discomfort, get to the hospital. You’ve had quite a day. I’m waiting for the recovery team.”

Hayden smiled her thanks at the first indication that anyone considered her anything but a crazy woman with a made up story. Her heart went out to the ill woman who now had a longer wait ahead of her on the water.

Cappy offered to secure the patrol boat so it didn’t drift off the wreck site. Janice smiled her agreement. Paul looked from dive charter captain to marine officer and gruffly said, “No, I’ll do it and unhook you at the same time. No need for you to get wet and your diver has had enough.” He crossed the gunnels to the tied on Patrol Boat and tied on a secure line.

Paul turned and faced Hayden and Cappy. “Do not ever let this woman, or anyone, dive alone. Especially not on a wreck of this depth. Today could have been a double tragedy.” Then Paul stepped off the boat and dropped into the water. Seconds later, he resurfaced, returned to the Patrol boat and untied the line to free the tiny dive boat.

“Nice guy,” Hayden said to Cappy once she was confident the roar of the dive charter’s engine covered their voices.

“Yeah, for a water patrol rat, not too bad. At least he wasn’t causing me trouble.”

“How did the safety inspection go?”

“Didn’t have one. The ensign never boarded.”

He wrapped an arm around Hayden. “What happened with your regulator? It would have killed me to lose my favorite diver.” Cappy’s voice was gruff.

Trembling uncontrollably, she managed a shrug. Hayden’s tears mixed with the salt water on her face as the emotion of the day caught up with her.

And in the back corner of her mind, a new question formed.

What caused the malfunction of a freshly inspected regulator?