Death in Paradise (28 page)

Ed pointed to the girl in the picture. "That's Martha, his girlfriend. She's got enough common sense for the two of them." Martha was short and rounded and sturdy. She had a pleasant, friendly face. The Pryzinski men, I thought, liked solid, regular, homey women. "They're getting married in August. Marie is already in a twitter about what she's going to wear." He shifted to the next picture. "And this is Marietta, our daughter."

Marietta was Asian. Tiny and perfect, with waist-length hair. "Your children are adopted," I said.

"We're so lucky!" Marie said. "So many people have trouble getting children these days, and we were given two of the most perfect children in the whole world."

"You get the idea that she likes her kids?" Ed teased.

"I get the idea that you both love them very much," I said. "My sister, Carrie, was adopted."

"Was?" Ed said. "Never mind. Here's a picture of the kids at Marie's fiftieth birthday party." Bless Ed. He was still looking after me, even if I wasn't a helpless ingenue. The picture showed tall, gangly Eric with his arm around his tiny sister. She was holding a paper in her hand and it was evident that they were reading some sort of tribute to their mom. Ed shifted to the next picture, a smiling Marie holding a tissue to her eyes. "They wrote a tribute to the world's best mom." He reached across me and squeezed Marie's hand.

I thought of Andre and his hope that someday we would be surrounded by strong brown girls and mischievous boys. Crazy, wild, insolent, headstrong girls is what he'd actually said. Would we ever be like Ed and Marie, content and comfortable together, showing people pictures of our kids? Going home looked more appealing all the time.

The loudspeaker was blaring again, announcing our impending arrival. We were informed that there might be several boats at the location, to try and stay with our group, not to touch the coral, and a number of other instructions that I ignored, including something about how if a wind came up, the water might get choppy and more easily wash us onto the rocks. When you have trouble with authority, it extends in many directions. I just wanted to slip my sun-heated body into that cool water and paddle about, resting my list-filled, work-obsessed mind. I did not want to listen to boring instructions aimed at morons.

At one end of the boat, a small group was struggling into wet suits and hefting scuba tanks. If Andre had been there, that's where he would have been, joining the ranks of what I thought of as "rubber spacemen." So far, though he'd managed to enlist me in a number of sports, I refused to try one that required me to breathe underwater. I have the land animal's natural aversion to being under water. Besides, given the trouble I have getting clothes to fit, it would probably be impossible to find a wet suit.

I piled up my mask, snorkel, and fins, wove my hair into a braid, and started to take my T-shirt off. It was halfway over my head when I remembered the bruises. Not a good idea. I let it drop again, but when I'd picked up my stuff and straightened up again, heading for the rear of the boat where they were helping us into the water, I saw Ed looking at me thoughtfully. Good old Dr. P. didn't miss much.

Getting into the water with fins is never graceful. Oh, maybe on TV. Those cool scientists on the Discovery Channel and NOVA and National Geographic specials always make it look like a cinch. I expect they spend hours flopping gracelessly into the sea to get one good shot. In any case, I flopped gracelessly off the rear of the boat, pulled down my mask, paused, treading water, while I got my hair out of the way so the mask wouldn't leak, and stuck the tube in my mouth. Watch out, fishes, here I come.

With my breath whooshing in my ears like Darth Vader, I paddled away from the boat, found a relatively unpopulated spot, and hovered there, watching the fish. Way down below, the rubber spacemen were getting up close and personal with some pretty big fish. All the more reason why the surface was fine with me. Someone tapped me on the shoulder and I jumped, losing my snorkel and taking in a mouthful of water.

"Sorry," Laura said. "I wanted to show you the eel." I looked where she was pointing. An eel's head was just visible in a crevice, its mouth opening and closing, opening and closing, filled with about a million teeth. Yessiree, it was a thing of beauty and a joy forever. I was happy to be many feet above it. When I'd seen enough of the eel, I raised my head and looked around.

Laura was paddling about five feet away, but I couldn't see the rest of her family. Laura was a competent little girl, but she was still a child, and some adult or older sibling ought to be staying close to her. Snorkeling was only a benign sport until something went wrong. And when you're out on the water, the things that go wrong happen fast. I wanted to find that complacent, pregnant, polka-dotted princess and whack her upside the head.

The water beyond Laura stirred and the cute college girl surfaced. "Thea," Laura said, "this is my friend Robin. She said I could swim with her."

Robin and I exchanged greetings. "Did you see the eel?" she asked.

"I did. Thanks."

"Did you see the barracuda?"

"No."

"Neither did I," Laura said, "but some people over there said they saw one. Robin says not to worry." She paddled away and I went back to rocking in the waves and watching fish. Up closer to the rocks there were some lovely bright-colored ones. I was happily following a neon blue-and-yellow one when I bumped up against a rock. Picking my head up, I saw that I'd drifted far from the group. So much for following orders. My watch said I still had plenty of time and the fish around here were nice. Still, just to be on the safe side, I moved back toward the rest of the group.

I floated along, just off the edge of the rocks, watching a myriad of different colored fish flitting around among the rocks and coral. About twenty feet away, Laura and Robin lifted their heads at the same time I did, and waved. Molokini Crater was a little crescent of land that created an enormous fishbowl for our viewing pleasure. With my head in the water, I occasionally checked the rocks, but otherwise I wasn't paying attention to the people around me. I was chasing fish. When someone tapped me on the shoulder, I assumed it was Laura again and waved her off. I wasn't feeling sociable. I was enjoying being alone. Laura tapped again, and when I raised my head to ask her to leave me alone, a hand swept across my face, knocking out my snorkel tube and sending the tube and my mask flying.

I saw a black rubber arm, then it wrapped around my neck and I was pulled down into the water. I clawed at the arm, trying to pull it loose. My assailant was strong and flailing underwater, I couldn't get any purchase on anything. I struggled but it was like being in a weightless state. I was strong but I couldn't move my arms or legs through the water with enough force to help myself. If I kicked back, the body behind me merely floated away. If I struck out, by the time the blows landed they were ineffectual.

Around me, big fish circled. I had panicked visions of sharks attacking. But the only shark around here was a human one. I turned, trying to get a glimpse of a face, but my captor turned, too. Like dancers, we moved in harmony, twisting and turning and writhing in a grotesque water ballet. The pressure in my lungs expanded until they felt like they were exploding, so that I fought not only my captor but my own instinctive need to inhale. I tried to claw my way free, breaking my fingernails on the smooth rubber, hacking and digging until I found a space between the glove and the sleeve. I sunk my nails into the skin, clawing, gouging, tearing, trying to cause enough pain to lessen the grip. I wasn't going to let this person kill me without putting up a fight.

I've been scared before. I've wondered if my life was over. I've felt that gut-wrenching fear that turns me cold and sends waves of adrenaline flowing. This was different. The hardest part of being afraid was feeling helpless. I could be scared but hopeful, scared but angry. This was scared and trapped because I couldn't use my environment to help me. Trapped because while I was fighting my attacker, my body was fighting me. Soon the demand for oxygen would be so great I would inhale. My desperate lungs would haul in seawater and I would start to drown.

The wise, experienced survivor in me kept up a steady litany.
Stay calm, relax, look for an opportunity. Try to attract the attention of other divers. Of people on the surface.
But my terrified instinct was to thrash, to fight, to force my way to freedom.
Relax,
I told myself.
Go limp. Pretend to be giving up.
If nothing else, controlling my frightened impulses would lessen the need for oxygen. An agitated person breathes more. I needed to breathe less, much less, not at all. I went limp. Relaxed against the arm, let my body float. It took all my willpower.

It seemed to work. The arm around my neck slackened. Instantly I forced my head forward and down, against the hand, the wrist, the weakest part of the hold. I broke free, jerked the bastard's regulator out, and began swimming frantically toward the surface. I wasn't fast enough. Two hands grabbed me and pressed me down, down, down, forcing me face first against the sand, and held me there. I struggled to turn, to rise, to escape again. I managed to twist my head sideways. There was a dark shape on the surface. Was it swimming toward us? Frantically, I waved my arms and legs, hoping to attract attention. My whole being a silent, desperate scream for help, all the while fighting my own urgent need to breathe.

I lost the battle. My assailant suddenly struck me in the side with a heavy object, and I instinctively reacted by taking a breath. Choking, gagging, coughing out the water, but when I opened my mouth, more water poured in. I was swallowing it, gasping, gasping. Trying not to take another breath. I flailed around like a fish on a line, pinioned there, my face against a rock, trying to twist, to turn, to get to that close but unreachable surface.

My life did not flash before my eyes. I was too damned busy fighting Mr. Death to think about what came next. I got a hand around and clawed at the arm and wrist again. Clawed hard enough to get between the sleeve of the wet suit and the glove and sink my nails right into the skin. I did enough damage to draw some blood, I could see tendrils of it floating past my eye. Oh, God. Someone. Notice! There were at least a hundred people in this little fishbowl with me, yet I was drowning and no one noticed. If I'd been an eel they would have gathered in a group. But I was only human. No cute black-and-white speckles, just black-and-blue spots. No gills. Oh, damn. What I wouldn't have given for gills.

I kept struggling to turn, to get loose. Digging a knee into the sand, I tried to get a foot up under me but the damned fins kept folding and bending and slipping. Gasp. Gasp. Cough. My lungs hurt. They hurt when I didn't breathe and they hurt when I did breathe. The black shadow was spreading. It wasn't just overhead now. It was all around me. Surrounding me. Gathering me in.

I was tired. So tired. Tired of fighting. Tired of the struggle. Tired of wrestling with the pressing hands. Relax. That's what I wanted to do. Just relax and let go. Just take in that water. Join it. Become one with it. I didn't want to fight anymore.

Poor Bernstein. Poor Nihilani. Bright optimists who hadn't thought my back worth watching. I hadn't thought it needed watching either. Andre would skin them alive. A small revenge for the loss of those brown-haired girls and boys, a lifetime of love and happiness. I knew just how he'd feel. I'd been there myself. Lost a loved one. Been down in the blackness of a grief that won't let up. Known what it was like to spend three months sleeping with an old shirt because it still smelled faintly of David. When Suzanne had taken it and washed it, I was inconsolable. Shattered. I cried like a baby.

Do not go gentle into that good night. I had tried my best not to go. I didn't even know who had done this to me, so I didn't know who to come back and haunt. If I could come back. My last thought, as the ocean took me and I fell down into the endless black of eternity, was about my mother. How a second child of hers would die with a breach unmended, with anger unresolved, leaving only Michael out of the big family she'd planned to have.

 

 

 

Chapter 20

 

It felt like someone had reamed out my lungs with a file. I'd coughed until my back and chest and stomach ached with the effort, until my cough had grown weak and feeble. My throat had been singed with a hot poker. Rhinos had been dancing on my stomach. Heavy, sharp-hoofed, ponderous. I was god-awful ghastly sick and wondering whether I would have been better off dead. At least when you're dead you don't have to wake up again and suffer. I would have moaned but I had no voice, not even a whisper. I was lying on my side, curled up in a fetal position. I had utterly collapsed. I was one with the puddle on the deck beneath my body. Shivering despite the blazing sun.

Once I opened my eyes but there were people around. Nosy, staring people assaulting me with their ugly curiosity. People looking, talking, pointing as if my ordeal, my terror, was entertainment for them. I imagined them telling it when they got home—We saw sea turtles, dozens of kinds of fish, and a woman who almost drowned. Want to see my pictures? I went back inside my head where there was less confusion. Not that things were much better there. I kept feeling the rough fabric of that wet suit against my throat, the press of hands on my shoulders, the exploding agony in my lungs. I stirred restlessly, trying to get away from those thoughts.