Swimming With the Dead (16 page)

“I am not here to cause more trouble for Lydia,” I said.  “But I am going to get at the truth about Michael Duvall’s death.”

“The truth is that he drowned.  It’s apparent to Dunn and everyone else, including Lydia.  Why are you down here opening the whole nasty business up again?”

“His parents have doubts about their son’s death.  Surely, as a parent, you can understand that they want to know what really happened.”

“Yes, I can understand that, but I don’t want my daughter hurt any more than she already has been.”  He was starting to calm down, a combination of my appeal to his parental instincts and the bourbon.  He had downed the first and was signaling the waitress for a refill.

“Your daughter is a strong woman,” I said, “and I think she wants to know the truth.”  Of course, if Stewart had been involved, he would want just the opposite.  It was pretty obvious he loved his daughter.  If she found out that he had killed Michael, she would be devastated, not to mention the fact that he’d be invited for an extended stay in prison.

“I heard you tried to have Michael arrested for dealing drugs,” I said.

“That’s right, and I’d do it again.  I know he and Lydia were smoking ganja.”

“How would you know that?”

“I smelled it when I went to Lydia’s house.  He was there, sitting out on the patio, playing innocent.  Lydia never did anything like that until he came along.” 

Stewart was either naive or lying to himself. 

“Duvall was bad for Lydia in every way.  She got involved with him, and she didn’t have time for her family anymore.  Came around the house less and less.  Gave up the values we taught her all her life.  Missed Sunday services.  The family always goes together.  Until Duvall, Lydia always attended, and she respected her parents.  Do you know she called me a racist?  Me, a black man!”

“Your secretary told me that you and Duvall had a fight.  That he’d left your office bleeding.”

“My secretary talks too much,” he said.  “Duvall and I had an argument and I settled it.  I told him to stay away from Lydia.  He leaned over my desk, swearing at me.  Nobody curses at me.”

“Do you dive, Mr. Stewart?  Or did you have someone else follow Michael out to that wreck and kill him?”  I was pushing him, hoping he’d make a mistake.

“No, I don’t dive, and if you think I had anything to do with his death, think again.  Though I’ll tell you what.  The day he died was one of the happiest in my recent memory.  He would have ruined Lydia.”

“Father, stop it!”  Lydia had just walked in, followed by O’Brien, frustration and embarrassment deepening the color of her mahogany skin.  “I’m so sorry, Hannah.”

“Sorry!” Stewart blustered. “Who the hell does she think she is, coming here and accusing me.  I won’t have it.”

Lydia was silently crying behind him.  I could see him soften when he turned to her.  “Okay, baby.  You know I don’t mean it.”

“I know you mean it, Father, and I know you’ll never believe that Michael was the best thing in my life.  Don’t think for a minute that because he’s gone I’ll settle down here and have five grandchildren for you.  You just never got it.  I was with Michael because we were compatible.  We wanted the same things.  He wasn’t leading me anywhere I wasn’t already going.  Fact is, sometimes I was leading him.”

“Stay out of this,” Stewart said, standing and turning his fury back on me.  I could see he needed a scapegoat.  He couldn’t direct his rage at his daughter. “Get off this island.  Go home and tell his parents Duvall got in over his head.”  A sarcastic grin crossed his face, and he stormed back out the way he had come in.

“Hannah, I am sorry,” Lydia said.

“Hey, don’t worry about it.”  I motioned to the empty chairs at the table.

“Hello, Peter.  What are you two doing here?”  Lydia and Peter?  I was jealous for about a second before my cop antenna came up.  Was there something going on between these two?  Jeez, maybe Michael’s death was all about love and lust.

“Hello, Hannah.  I was out at the docks, ran into Lydia outside, and thought she might need a bit of help with her father.”

“Mother called me,” Lydia said.  “She was worried.  She said my father was furious and on his way over here.  Evidently, Ruby had called to tell him about your visit to his office.  I know you think Father might be involved.  For a while I thought so too.  Though I tried to convince myself otherwise.

“After I talked with you the other day, I decided that I had to confront him.  We talked a long time, and I believe him when he says he was not involved in Michael’s death.  Even though he hated Michael, he assured me that there were lines that he would never cross, murder being one of them.  And I realized that was true.  I’ve watched my dad operate my whole life.  He can be ruthless in business but he maintains a level of ethics that he has defined for himself.”

“I have to agree with Lydia,” Peter said.  “I don’t think Arthur would compromise his value system.”

“Even when his daughter was involved?” I asked.  “I’ve known parents to cross all kinds of boundaries when they thought they were saving their children.”

I told Lydia that I had been down to the
Lucky Lady
and asked her about the lock on the glove box.  She was surprised to hear it had been broken.  Neither she nor O’Brien could shed any light on the diagram of the ship.  Though Lydia didn’t think it unusual for Michael to have such a diagram in his possession, she didn’t know why he would have had it out on his boat. 

Lydia and Peter talked as I ate.  Cold tuna was really not too bad.  They were taking turns telling me about the places in the islands I had to see, their patter turning into a friendly battle about which were the best. 

“The Baths contain the most outstanding boulder formations in the islands,” Peter said.

“Too crowded,” Lydia countered.  “Sandy Cay is much nicer.”

“Every time I go to Sandy Cay someone’s anchor lets loose and a boat runs afoul,” Peter countered.  “A couple of weeks ago I watched a big catamaran crash into another boat anchored nearby.  Guy on the cat didn’t know what to do.  Stood on the bow yelling and waving his arms.  Too many charter companies are letting unskilled helmsmen rent their boats.  Half of them don’t even know how to set an anchor.”

They were both in hysterics, but I could tell there was an underlying sadness about the changes that were occurring in their islands.  Soon Lydia left and I was alone with Peter O’Brien.

“I heard about your dive with the humpback,” I said. “Hard to believe you didn’t remember being out there that day.”

“Of course I remember the dive.  I guess it could have been the same day Mike went out.  How did you discover that?”

“Capy, old guy who hangs out down near the marina, saw you and Constantine go out.  I talked to James Constantine and Richard Head.  They both confirmed it.”     

“You work fast, Hannah.”

“Yeah, well, that’s my job.”

”Seems you’re good at it.  Though I would never have pegged you as a cop.  How did you ever end up in a job like this?” he asked. 

“Anger,” I said. 

I had a degree from the University of Illinois in English, and had been working on a graduate degree in women’s literature at the University of Chicago.  God knows what I would have done with an advanced degree, probably taught.

But I’d gotten sidetracked at Chicago, living in an educational fortress, protected by locked gates from the violence and poverty surrounding it.  Any student who wandered alone outside the campus was thought to have a death wish.  The longer I was there the harder it was to accept.  The people who lived in the neighborhood would never have the opportunity to get the education that was offered behind the nearby gates.  I started enrolling in sociology, psychology, and anthropology courses, searching for understanding about societies and subcultures. 

Then one spring day, I missed my connecting bus back to campus from a trip to the art museum downtown.  It was a warm day, trees greening, daffodils sprouting from window boxes along the concrete street.  What danger could there be on a fine Saturday in May?  I was just a few blocks from campus and decided to walk.  This kind of weather brought people out.  Neighbors sat on stoops talking and smoking.  A boom box blared from a window.  Three little girls drew chalk designs on the sidewalk ahead, their mothers watching from the steps.

I stopped to admire their work.  I hadn’t paid much attention to the teenagers standing in the shadows over on the basketball court.  Suddenly two other boys appeared from the alley next to me.  Before I understood what was happening, gunfire echoed off the buildings and one of the little girls lay at my feet, a yellow piece of chalk still grasped in her tiny fingers. 

The shooting was between rival gang members.  The only ones hurt were the ones that got in the way.  They never caught any of the boys.

“It was all so senseless,” I said.  “A six-year-old child, killed by some seventeen-year-old boy who probably lived down the block.  I ended up getting a graduate degree in criminology.  So, I guess the short answer is that I was converted into a police type.”

“You still angry?” he asked.

“Yeah, I am.” 

O’Brien insisted on walking me to my room.  Again we were standing at my door, but this time he pulled me toward him and I let him.  He had a tenderness that few men could duplicate: giving, confident, and in tune.  We were inside and on the bed before I realized we had stepped over the threshold.  He was slowly unbuttoning my shirt, and I was letting him.  In fact, I was about to start on his.

But damn.  In the light of day, this would seem like a big, embarrassing mistake.  It always did. 

“I can’t do this,” I said.

He understood immediately.  Smiling, he slowly started buttoning my shirt.  It took all my will to let him do it.

“You know,” he said as he stood at the door.  “I’d like to take you sailing.  You have to experience these islands from a sailboat.  Let’s go out this weekend.” 

“I’d like that, but I’m flying over to Saint Martin in the morning,” I said, trying hard not to regret the fact that we would not be sharing my room tonight.

“I’ve got a boat that needs to be delivered over to our Saint Martin base.  A couple of my crew were going to take her.  Why don’t we do it?  It’s an overnight sail.  We can leave in the morning, do a little diving, and head out at sunset.  I’ll give you some sailing lessons on the way.  If you bring that diagram, I’ll have a look at it.  And I promise, nothing but sailing unless it’s okay with you.”

“Sounds okay,” I said.  I knew it was a bad idea.  Maybe he hadn’t been at the
Chikuzen
that morning, but the more time that I spent with O’Brien, the more reasons I had to suspect him.  With Michael out of the way, his business would be secure and he’d have an open field with Lydia.  Now he wanted to look at the diagram.  What was I thinking?  Problem is I wasn’t.  I hoped I wouldn’t regret it.

Chapter 15

I was stretched out on a blanket.  The last warm rays of sun had just found their way beneath a distant cloud.  The sky was streaked with fuchsia, gold, purple, orange.  The breeze was warm against my tanned and naked body.  A nearby picnic basket held the remains of Gruyere, summer sausage, French bread, berries, mangoes, grapes.  A half-full bottle of Merlot lay in the sand along with two wineglasses.  I turned on my side and gazed into eyes the color of a Colorado sky.

I knew it was a dream.  I kept working on it, and the guy finally removed his swimsuit and snuggled in next to me.  Our bodies tangled, silky against each other.  He slowly glided his hand up my body, over my hip, and up to my breast.  Then he moved on top of me, heavy, delicious, smothering. . . .

Smothering.  I couldn’t breathe.  I felt like I was buried in sand.  He was pushing something thick and soft into my face.  Suddenly the dream had turned to nightmare.

I awakened to the heavy thickness pressing against my nostrils.  Someone was on me, pushing a pillow into my face.  Someone big.  It was not the handsome guy from the beach.  It was not Peter O’Brien either.   

I realized that in a matter of seconds I would lose consciousness.  Darkness already penetrated the edges of my brain.  Do something, Sampson.  Do it now! 

I was scratching ineffectively at the intruder with the one hand I had managed to free from beneath the covers.  I couldn’t reach anything vital, nothing that deterred him from his goal, which seemed to be to end my life. 

I reached for the nightstand, grasping for anything that I might find to hurt the guy.  My fingers found a pen.  Somehow I managed to grab it and bring it down hard into the mass of flesh on top of me.  It was enough.  He loosened his grip, and I brought my knee up hard into his groin.  Contact.  We were both momentarily out of commission.  While he was doubled over in pain, I was sucking in oxygen.

About the time the dark edges faded from my vision, he had come to his senses and was on his way out the door.  The nerve of this guy to invade the best dream I’d had in months.  I was pissed.  I was also in my underwear.  I threw on the sweats and T-shirt I’d left on the chair and was just seconds behind him.  No shoes, but my Smith & Wesson in hand.

He was heading for the docks.  I caught sight of him briefly before he disappeared into the marina.  Wrong choice.  He was going right down a dead end.  I’d be able to corner him at the end of the dock.

The marina was deserted, the boats dark.  It had to be two or three in the morning.  The only sound came from the water lapping against the shore.  I moved carefully down the narrow boards, stepping silently in bare feet.  It was dark, the moon obscured by heavy cloud cover.

A barely audible splash sounded just under my feet.  I stopped, heard it again right below me under the dock.  I waited, gun drawn, scanning the water for a shadow.  Five, ten seconds passed—another splash and movement.  He had somehow made his way under the dock.  I tensed, alert to every sound, waiting for him to make a mistake.  Finally a movement, and then a pelican glided out from under the wooden slats and took off into the night sky.  Christ, I’d almost shot it.