Follow the Evidence (A Mac Everett Mystery Book 2) (6 page)

“Between us and Captain Duke,” I
replied.

“The captain called me again a few
minutes ago. He’s not having a good Friday. Do you anticipate litigation in
this case?”

“I don’t know what to expect,” I
replied. “The family of one of the missing girls hired me to see if I could
make sense of what happened. They don’t seem the type to haul you into court,
but you never know.”

“You work for their attorney?” he
asked.

“No sir,” I said. “I work directly
for them. Look, I served a couple tours in Iraq. I left a lot of friends over
there. It’s not my intent to do a hatched job on the Coast Guard. I’m trying to
find out what happened to a missing girl.”

“You understand our hesitance
then,” Swift replied.

“I do,” I said, “No one likes some
civilian looking over their shoulder, questioning their conclusions, but the
facts are murky and my clients want some answers. Together, I hope we can give
them some.”

“The family deserves answers,” the
commander said. “I hope we can give that to them, Mr. Everett. We’ll do what we
can to assist you. It never hurts to have a fresh pair of eyes on a situation.”

I’d won a small victory, but I had
to play until the final whistle.

“I appreciate your cooperation.
I’ll be sure to let my client know how helpful you’ve been. From what I read in
the report, the Coast Guard did more than I’d expect.”

“How so?” my host asked.

“Well, the follow up in the Bahamas
for one. Your man did a first class job tracing the movements of the missing
people before they left Nassau. The information from the harbor master placing
the three people on the boat at the time of departure was good work.”

“The Coast Guard’s Investigative
Service has some good people,” Swift replied.

“There’s a reference to interviews
with a man and a boy, but I didn’t get the connection. There’s the mention of
this boat,
Danny-L
, but I don’t know what that’s about either. It’s not
adding up.”

“The
Danny-L
was a
fifty-four foot aluminum sport fisherman. I’ll get you a copy of that report.
She left Bimini for Cape Canaveral trying to beat the storm. Conditions
deteriorated rapidly and the vessel capsized. Fortunately, the accident
occurred relatively close to shore. The boat was equipped with an EPIRB and one
of the people aboard, a boy, had a personal locator beacon and a water activated
strobe.”

“An EPIRB?” I asked.

“Sorry, that’s an Emergency
Position Indicating Radio Beacon. It’s normally located on the highest section
of a vessel. It activates when immersed in water and transmits on the 406 MHz
distress frequency via satellite. Our ground stations and aircraft can pick up
the signal.”

“Oh,” I said. “That has to help in
a rescue.”

“You bet! Sector Jacksonville was
able to locate the EPIRB and a PLB, a Personal Locator Beacon. The helo crew flew
to the coordinates and spotted a strobe. Both people from the
Danny-L
were recovered.”

“How does that relate to the
Wind
Dancer
?” I asked.

“While the helo was on scene
affecting the rescue of the
Danny-L
crew, they observed the
Wind
Dancer
. The rest is in the report I sent to you. It’s an enigma. Three
people don’t just vanish, but at sea, it happens all the time. People vanish;
things appear out of the mist.”

“Things like a phantom boat?”

“Exactly,” he replied. “I wouldn’t
put much store in that though. Even trained people see things under stress.”

“Can I talk to the helicopter
crew?” I asked.

“The pilot and copilot are on leave
until next week, but Senior Chief Fox and Rescue Swimmer Webber are on post. I
spoke to them this morning. They’ll talk with you. I’ll let them know you’re
here.” Swift picked up the phone and said, “Winter, come in, please. If there’s
nothing else,” Swift said returning his attention to me.

“I don’t want to take any more of
your time Commander. If you could direct me…”

Before I could finish, Yeoman
Winter appeared in the door. “Winter, take Mr. Everett to the Operations
Conference Room and have Senior Chief Fox report there ASAP.” Turning back to
me, he said, “Chief Fox will be here shortly and Petty Officer Martin Webber is
standing ready for you. I arranged for you to use a conference room on the
second floor. We can set up something the end of next week for you to talk to
the flight crew.”

“I appreciate your help commander,”
I said.

“Tell Ben Tracy to keep in touch,”
Swift said. “Good luck Mr. Everett.”

Yeoman Winter guided me to the
second floor conference room without a word or glimmer of a smile. It was a
challenge to keep up with her brisk pace, but it gave me a great view of her
backside in her tight slacks. We went up a flight of stairs, down a long wide
hall and she stopped in front of a plain wooden door. “Senior Chief Fox will be
here shortly, sir,” she said. “Come back to my office if you need anything
further. I’ll be happy to help you.” She didn’t seem all that happy or helpful
to me. I hadn’t been able to get a friendly word out of her. Maybe she was numb
from all the swabys hitting on her.

I opened the door to a conference
room awash in afternoon sunlight. Light maple paneling opposite a wall of
windows lit the place like a flare on a dark night. I wouldn’t use the room for
an interrogation, but it was fine for what I needed. There was a large wooden
table surrounded by chairs in the center of the room. I pulled one out and
waited.

Interrogation is my specialty. The
Army taught me a lot, but I’d learned to read people as a kid. When I look in
to a person’s eyes, I can sense the truth. It’s in their eyes and the way they
hold their bodies. I’m also good at reading lips. Most people move their lips
when they’re thinking and don’t even know it. That, with body language, micro
facial movements and the sense I can get from a person’s eyes, tell me
everything I need to know. After about ten minutes, there was a sharp knock at
the door.

“Come in,” I said.

Senior Chief John Fox walked in as
if he owned the place.

“I’m Mac Everett,” I said as the
chief came through the door. His face telegraphed his concern.

“Senior Chief Fox,” he replied. He
shook my hand. His grip was firm. “I’m not sure what this is about. You a
lawyer?”

“Hell no,” I said. “I’m a private
investigator looking at the
Wind Dancer
business. I bet you were ordered
to talk to me?”

“Yep and I’ll answer any question
you have except I don’t know nothing,” he snapped.

“I’m sorry it happened that way
Chief.”

“Senior Chief,” he corrected.

“Senior Chief. I made some calls,
ended up with Commander Swift and, well I guess he made some assumptions. If
you don’t have anything to say I guess, we’re through.” Fox jumped to his feet.
“I didn’t realize there was anything to hide,” I said.

Fox, a barrel chested man with a
thick neck and arms like pistons, made the uniform look good. He bowed up at my
comment raising his shoulders and chest while screwing his face into a black
scowl.

“There ain’t nothing to hide,” he
shot back.

“Well, sit down and quit being a
horse’s ass,” I growled. “I’m working for a missing girl’s parents. They want
to understand what happened to her.” Fox deflated a little and regained his
seat.

“I wish to hell I knew what
happened to those people,” Fox complained. “What do you want to know?”

For over an hour, Fox gave me a
play by play of their rescue operation and the discovery of the
Wind Dancer
.
He described the elation of rescuing two people, but the sinking feeling the crew
shared that something bad, bad, and manmade, had happened aboard the sloop
Wind
Dancer
. “Marty Webber got onboard and, well the kid didn’t know what to
think.”

“What about this other boat Webber
had in his report?” I asked.

“Marty is an eagle eye. He spots
things before anyone else sees ‘em, even with binoculars. He’s got a gift. He
spotted that kid’s strobe in the water, maybe ten miles out from our position
in a driving rain storm.”

“Was there another boat?” I
insisted.

“I don’t know. There…there could
have been,” Fox said. “When Marty first spotted the
Wind Dancer
she was
adrift something like three miles from the two people in the water. Marty
spotted the sloop and I put my binoculars on her. She was in bad shape, slashed
sails, listing to port and wallowing in the swell. For instant I thought I saw
something in the distance, but then it was gone.”

“You reported this?”

“Not right away. There were the two
people in the water. We were real busy. When it was all wrapped up I mentioned
it, but by then…”

“By then it was long gone. I get
it. Can you tell me what you thought you saw?” I asked.

Now who was grasping at straws?

“It doesn’t make sense, but I
thought it was a go-fast, you know a cigarette boat. Naw it couldn’t have been
though, not in those seas.”

“Why not,” I asked. My brainpower
on boats was limited to the bathtub.

“Those things can be forty or fifty
footers with big horsepower. They can cut through heavy seas, but it was bad
out there.” Fox replied. Watching the movement of his eyes, I could see he was
thinking, evaluating a fleeting glimpse of something that might not have been
there.

“Why do you say it was…?”

“Could have been,” he corrected.

“OK, why could it have been a
cigarette boat?”

“Well it was more an impression of
how the object moved in the water. It was on plane and cutting through…wait,
I’m not sure I even saw it.”

“This thing you didn’t see, what
color was it?” I asked. “Where was it going?”

“Hard to say, it blended with
water. It was going near 90 degrees from the sloop.”

“Would a boat like that show up on
your radar?”

“No sir, the go-fasts are tough to
detect on radar except on flat calm seas or at close range. They‘ve got a low
profile; they’re fast, and seaworthy. I guess one could have been out there.
Wait, you’ve almost got me believing I saw…”

“Believing that you saw something
Senior Chief, maybe you did or maybe you didn’t. I guess I’ll have to find
out.”

I asked Fox to keep our talk on the
down low. We agreed there was no sense getting the brass fired up over what
could be a mirage. Our time together had eliminated Fox’s suspicions about me
and he’d recalled some vague, but potentially important details. It had been a
productive interview. I hoped eagle eye Webber would be as helpful.

When Fox left me with a handshake
and a smile, I promised to keep him in the loop. I made some notes while I
waited for Petty Officer/Rescue Swimmer Marty Webber. I couldn’t shake the
feeling there was much more to this case than the official report had
concluded. The question was could I prove it?

About twenty minutes later, there
was a knock at the door. I got up, opened the door, and came face to face with
a six foot two inch buff blond surfer dude. “I’m Mac Everett,” I said offering
my hand.

“Petty Officer Martin Webber,
reporting as ordered,” he said. He didn’t take my hand.

“Stand easy Petty Officer,” I said.
“I’m retired army, but relax. Come on in.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have a seat. May I call you Marty?
You talk to Senior Chief Fox?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did Senior Chief Fox tell you it’s
OK to talk to me? Don’t say yes sir again or so help me I’ll land in the brig
or whatever the coasties call the slammer for beating the crap out of ya’.” The
kid was about to piss me off.

“You could try, sir.”

He was right. He had about twenty
years and thirty pounds on me.

“Yeah, I guess I would have to try
at that. Can you help me out?”

“What do you want to know, sir,” he
said.

“Tell me about that day, the day
you found the
Wind Dancer
.”

Webber rehashed the rescue of the
guy and kid from the
Danny-L
. I’ve seen stuff about Coast Guard rescues
on TV, but hearing it from a guy who did it, well I was in awe.

“I sent the kid up first while I
held on to the unconscious adult male,” Webber said. “I put the adult in the
basket and Senior Chief Fox took over. When the basket was clear of the water,
I headed for the sailboat. The swim was a workout, but the vessel was much
closer than when we first spotted her,” he said.

Typical of the military types I’d
lived and worked with all those years, Webber understated the difficulty and
his own contribution and gave credit to his crew.

“It was about a twenty minute swim.
I thought about having the helo pick me up and drop me closer, but that would
have taken too much time. When I got to the sloop, I was able to catch her swim
platform on the down roll,” Webber continued. “There was no one on deck. I went
below.”

“What was your impression?”

“It was weird, sir. Nobody was
home. The investigators say passengers must have gone overboard, but…”

“You don’t believe that, do you,
Marty?”

He hesitated pursed his lips then
continued. “No.”

“What else did you see?”

“There were a couple cuts in the
seat cushions. They could have been from a knife. There was a broken bulkhead
door and the seacock was open. Water was flowing along the lower deck.

I’d read about this mysterious
thing call a seacock in the Coast Guard report. I’d done a Google search and
found it was a valve used to drain water from a boat when it’s hauled out of
the water. Opening it with the boat in the water sounded like it could cause a
seriously bad day.

“You closed the seacock?”

“Yes sir,” he replied. “It was
clogged with debris, but I closed it.”