Death on the Mississippi (23 page)

“I am,” Bobby said. “It'll be like hunting rubber ducks in a bathtub.”

“Call the Coast Guard,” she advised. “Let them do it.”

“The Coast Guard would never authorize an underwater search based on our conjectures,” Lyon said. “We'll make the dive, and if we locate the body, the authorities can take it from there.”

“I can't believe that you have picked one spot in the thousands of square miles of water out there, and really expect to find a corpse.”

“It makes sense to me, Mrs. Wentworth,” Bobby said.

“I want you to keep this confidential, Bea,” Lyon said. “Not one word to anyone.”

“Will she keep quiet?” Bobby asked later as they scrambled down the steep path to where the boat was moored.

“Of course not,” Lyon replied. “She doesn't trust me around water more than three feet deep. She's probably on the phone to Rocco right now.”

Bobby, wearing a wetsuit, stood at the midships control console, while Lyon peered at the depth finder's flickering display. They slowly circled Red Deer Island to take their compass bearing, and Lyon lined the azimuth up with a water tower a few miles away on the shore. They would have to estimate by dead reckoning the exact distance to the location they had selected, but the depth finder would pinpoint the spot once the bottom dropped off to the greater depth.

Lyon called the depth readings as they slowly headed toward the distant water tower. Eighteen … fifteen … Mark Twain …”

“Huh?” Bobby looked over at him with a puzzled glance.

“That's twelve feet,” Lyon said as he decided not to offer any detailed explanation of archaic Mississippi riverboat soundings.

“We should be nearly there,” Bobby said.

“I think the bottom is dropping off now,” Lyon answered.

“I'm beginning to wonder, Mr. Wentworth. He might not have been this careful and just dumped the body anywhere.”

“Dalton is always careful. He prides himself in thinking things completely through. He knows that the Sound is getting as crowded as the Long Island Expressway. Scuba divers, fishers, people dropping anchors right and left. I don't think he'd risk an easy discovery. Hold it!”

Bobby immediately put the engine into neutral and the boat began to slowly drift. “You have it?”

Lyon called off the readings. “Forty feet, sixty-two, seventy, ninety-three. Ninety-two. This is it.”

“Okay.” Bobby threw a sea anchor overboard and began to pull on the air tank straps. Lyon helped him with the equipment. “Hand me the flippers, and I'll need the belt weights.”

“Now, remember,” Lyon said. “If you find the body, don't touch it. We'll mark the location with a buoy.”

“I'm not about to touch it.” He finished donning the equipment, adjusted the face mask, and inserted the mouthpiece. He gave Lyon a thumbs-up signal and tumbled backward off the boat and quickly sank out of sight.

Lyon leaned far out over the side to watch the diver's progress. He estimated Bobby's depth to be between twenty to thirty feet when the lamp switched on. The dim glow gave the dark, sinking figure a surrealistic appearance. The light shrank in size and brilliance as the diver's descent continued, until all that could be seen was a small glow deep in the dark waters of the Sound. He leaned back in the boat. All that he could do now was wait. A small coastal freighter moved slowly across the horizon, and a sailboat running before the wind was several miles away. The distant shore was a haze as the day darkened. The clouds were taking on an ominous look, and the waves were cresting in whitecaps as the motorboat pitched alarmingly in the rising sea. Spray began to whip his face. A storm was approaching, and he wondered if small-craft warnings had been posted.

Bobby erupted from the water and grasped the gunnel with both hands. He removed the mouthpiece and pushed the mask up on his forehead. “I need another tank, this one is getting low.”

“Look at the sky,” Lyon said as he gestured toward the darkening clouds. “We had better head in.”

“One more dive. I'm into it now, and tomorrow we'd have to start all over again.”

Lyon saw his determination, and he helped him replace the used air tank with a fresh one. Bobby adjusted his equipment and sank back under the water.

A “V” of white foam broke before the prow of the long speedboat careening toward Lyon. It made broad sweeping maneuvers as it tore toward him at full speed. It swept by fifty yards away, and its wake nearly broached his boat. The boat operator's facial features were indistinct due to his foul-weather gear, but he glanced in Lyon's direction as he put the craft into a tight turn.

“Damn drunken boaters,” Lyon mumbled aloud as he turned his attention back to the air bubbles breaking to the surface next to the boat. The approaching engine roar registered subliminally at first, but he turned as the sound steadily increased in volume. The powerful speedboat was heading directly toward him.

“Hey!” Lyon yelled. “Watch it!” The other craft was on a direct collision course. He knew the operator saw him, but he not only didn't change course, he seemed to slightly correct his approach to aim more directly at the middle of Lyon's boat. It was too late for any course change to matter. They were going to collide.

Lyon dove over the stern transom.

The cigarette boat's size and momentum carried it directly across the smaller boat without slowing its speed. The splintering crunch of the collision sprayed pieces of debris and Lyon instinctively ducked underwater. When he surfaced, there was no trace remaining of his boat. A hundred yards away, the cigarette boat was again making another turn.

Its operator had reduced speed and seemed to be correcting his trajectory to aim directly at him. If he was not killed by the knife-edged prow of the boat, the powerful inboard engines would suck him toward their blades and cut him to pieces.

He began to swim with the knowledge that the oncoming boat could easily compensate for his slow movements and kill him.

The pressure on his right ankle was firm and unrelenting. He tried to kick free, but the grip on his foot tightened. His forward momentum was lost as his body was pulled deeper into the water until he was standing upright. He flailed his arms to keep afloat. The speedboat would momentarily be upon him.

Lyon took a last deep breath as the pull on his lower body was more than his arms could counteract. His head slipped underwater as he was dragged down.

Bobby Douglas was killing him.

His theories were incorrect. His carefully constructed scenario of the crimes was wrong. Bobby and Dalton were still partners. Dalton, on the surface in the powerful boat, was attacking him in one way, while his cohort below was lethal in another.

His breath was gone. In seconds he would involuntarily gasp and drowning would be almost immediate.

Bobby's face was parallel to his. The diver's hands cupped his head as he brought his masked face closer to Lyon's. One hand slowly removed the mouthpiece. Air bubbles escaped into the water and churned toward the surface as Bobby pushed the mouthpiece into Lyon's mouth.

Lyon took a deep breath. Cool oxygen filled his lungs and the panic began to subside. He pushed the mouthpiece back to Bobby.

The dark hull on the surface above them continued making circles over their location. They could feel the rush of agitated water from the boat's powerful engines as they shared the oxygen from the tank on Bobby's back.

They continued their strange, limbolike submerged floating as they shared oxygen and waited.

17

They broke to the surface together. Both men gasped and drew great gulps of air into their lungs. Bobby shucked off the harness of the empty oxygen tank while Lyon kicked off his shoes. They tred water momentarily to orient themselves in the rising swells. “Over that way.” Lyon pointed toward a blinking red aircraft warning light on the distant water tower.

“I found him down there,” Bobby said. “I don't know if it's the guy you're looking for, but there's a man on the bottom whose feet are wired to cement blocks.”

“Good work,” Lyon said. “Now, let's go home.” They began to swim toward the shore in long, easy strokes that conserved as much energy as possible. Bobby, protected from the cool water by the wetsuit and swimming more efficiently because of the flippers, tended to pull ahead. He would slow and wait for Lyon to pull abreast before continuing.

“It'll be easier if you use the flippers. I've played enough tennis to be able to swim forever,” Bobby said before the top of his head exploded.

Bobby Douglas slipped underwater surrounded by a widening pool of red. Another burst from the automatic rifle tripped across the surface spewing small geysers that passed inches away from Lyon.

A thickening surface mist had kept them from seeing the silent motorboat as it drifted nearby. Dalton stood in the stern with the assault rifle as he jammed a fresh magazine into the weapon. The boat began to drift closer as Lyon tred water. Dalton worked a live round into the chamber and waited for the distance to close even further. “Find it, Lyon?” he called.

“He's down there.”

Dalton's laugh was the same as it had always been. “Too bad.” He slowly brought the assault rifle to his shoulder and took careful aim.

The Coast Guard cutter that curved out of the mist had the familiar vertical red stripe near its bow, and a crewman on the forward deck manned a .50-caliber machine gun. “We are going to board you,” an official voice announced over the cutter's loud-speaker system.

As Dalton automatically turned to look at the cutter, Lyon dove. His hands clutched for water as he pulled himself deeper and deeper underwater. The Klasnikov clattered above him. Bullets churned the water by his side but passed harmlessly.

Lyon felt the vibrations of the speedboat's powerful engines as the dark shape above him began to move rapidly away.

His head popped out of the water and he found himself framed in a circle of light from the cutter's searchlight. Two frogmen plunged from the deck. They landed with a splash in the penumbra of the light. One sailor stroked toward Lyon, the other toward Bobby Douglas, who floated ten yards to the right.

The diver encircled Lyon's body below the shoulders with the flotation device and then looked at his face. “Jeez! I know you. I pulled you out of the water a couple of days ago.”

Lyon nodded. “Thanks again.”

“It's a drill,” the diver yelled over to his companion. “This guy's a plant 'cause I pulled him out a couple of days ago. It's only a drill.”

“Drill, hell, you dork,” the other frogman yelled. “My guy's head is missing.”

Lyon was winched up to the deck of the cutter where Rocco Herbert waited. “The captain says no one is dumb enough to fall in twice in a row. I told him he didn't know you.”

Lyon pointed to the body that was slowly being pulled aboard. “Dalton killed him.”

“Was that Douglas?”

“Yes. Can we please go get Dalton?”

When the frogmen were aboard, the cutter began to move in the direction of the motorboat, which was barely visible in the distance. “He's going for the resort,” Rocco yelled over the loud throb of the ship's engines. “He's a lot faster than we are, but Norbie's already out there with a bunch of his guys.”

They watched silently as two crewmen carefully placed Bobby's body in a rubber body bag and zippered it shut. After the corpse was stowed below, Rocco and Lyon worked their way to the bow. The cutter heeled at a jaunty angle as it ran at full speed, but it was still unable to close the distance between them and the rapidly moving cigarette boat. Rocco raised his binoculars as they rounded the point for the final approach to the resort. Dalton was still far ahead and on a direct heading for the resort's small beach. Rocco handed the glasses to Lyon with a single comment. “Look.”

Pan was running down the walk from her cottage. She waved her arms frantically at the approaching boat. Her mouth was open in what to them was a silent scream. Troopers poured from the main building at the top of the walk and began to rush in a skirmisher's line toward the beach.

Dalton veered his boat until it ran parallel to the resort beach a few yards from shore. They heard the distant chug of his automatic weapon, and Pan's forward momentum froze as she crumpled over the seawall in a rag-doll flail of limbs.

“Even Willey Lynch won't get him out of that one,” Rocco said as Dalton's boat swerved around the point toward open water.

The sailor at the mounted .50-caliber machine gun behind them rearmed his weapon. He swiveled it in the direction of Dalton. “I can waste that sucker!” he yelled.

Rocco pushed the weapon barrel aside. “The bastard's not getting away. We'll get him.”

The cutter changed the direction of its pursuit as its dual searchlights crisscrossed each other in an attempt to frame the speedboat in their beams. “Where in the hell is he going?” the sailor behind them yelled.

“Toward the mouth of the Connecticut River,” Rocco said. “He knows we can bracket him in the open sea, his only chance is to land and run for it.”

“Doesn't Middleburg have a police boat?” Lyon asked.

“Sure does,” Rocco said.

“Why don't you radio ahead and have them start on their way downstream?”

“Damn good idea.” Rocco hurried to the bridge. He was back in minutes. “The Middleburg boat is on its way, and the state police helicopter also. We're going to corner the bastard.”

They were nearly to Murphysville when they saw the lights of the Middleburg boat as it made its way downriver. The police helicopter made its first pass over the escaping boat and the distance between the three vessels began to narrow as Dalton was forced to throttle back.

An icy knot began to form in Lyon's stomach. He had a vast sense of impending doom as he calculated Dalton's next probable move. He could only hope that Bea, out of a sense of immense curiosity, was either on the patio or at one of the windows so that she could see what was transpiring on the river and take actions to protect herself.