The Deep Blue Alibi (39 page)

“Now the little bugger goes bonkers,” Fowles said. “Grabs the speargun, jams a spear in the barrel against the air pressure, but he must not have cocked it right. He’s waving the gun around and I grab it. We tussle, and the damn thing fires. Puts the spear right into his chest. I panic. I get the hell out of there and jump overboard. Tread water till the Cigarette picks me up.”

“If you didn’t intend to shoot Stubbs, you might have a defense.”

“Morally, I’m guilty. I killed Stubbs as surely as if I’d pulled the trigger.”

They both looked toward the oncoming boat, down off its plane, puttering toward them at less than ten knots. A Cigarette Top Gun 38 with a sleek white hull decorated with orange and red flames. One man was visible standing in the cockpit, a rifle propped on top of the wheel.

“That’s the guy who picked you up, right?” Steve said.

“That’d be him.”

“Why’s he got a rifle?”

“To kill me. You, too, probably.”

“Jesus, Fowles! Do you have any weapons?”

“Not even a speargun,” the Brit said with a sad smile.

The sound of rapid-fire gunshots crackled across the water.

Steve ducked lower into his seat. “What now?”

“How much air you have?”

“Maybe fifteen minutes. Less if I’m scared shitless, which I am.”

Gunshots ricocheted off the steel hull of the chariot.

“Crew, prepare to dive!” Fowles ordered, sounding no doubt like his grandfather in a Norwegian fjord.

Steve pulled down his mask and readied his mouthpiece and regulator. “You still haven’t told me. Who is that guy?”

“Name’s Conchy Conklin.”

Fowles bit down on his mouthpiece, opened the ballast tank, and pushed the joystick forward. The chariot took them under just as another gunshot
ping
ed off the rusty old craft.

Forty-six

LIFE IN PAST TENSE

Who the hell is Conchy Conklin? And why does he want to kill me?

Killing Fowles, Steve could understand. The Brit was a poached egg, ready to crack. When he did, he’d implicate Conklin and whoever hired them both. From everything Willis Rask had said, Conklin was a lowlife without the brains to pull off a sophisticated bribery scheme. His boss was the one who wanted Griffin convicted of murder and Oceania buried at sea. But who was his boss? Fowles never said.

As the chariot descended, bullets streaked through the water. Dying with a
whoosh-whoosh
above their heads. Steve felt his heart racing, and he had a case of cotton mouth from the tank air. Then another sound, the rumble of the Cigarette’s props, plowing overhead.

They were at twenty feet and descending at a steep angle. Safe as long as their air held out. But no way to outrun the boat. Or to sneak away. Their bubbles could be followed as surely as Hansel’s trail of bread crumbs.

When they reached the bottom, Fowles put the chariot down hard. The craft bounced twice in the sand, scattering some spiny lobsters. The sounds above them dimmed, the speedboat idling, Conklin waiting for their next move.

But there was no move. Nothing to be done. The chariot was their metal coffin. Wasn’t your whole life supposed to flash before your eyes when you faced death? But no. Steve was thinking they should try something. Anything.

In the front seat, Fowles craned his neck, looking up. Steve tapped him on the shoulder, then gestured with both hands. He pointed toward the boat above, then touched Fowles’ chest and pointed one direction, then touched his own chest and pointed another.

Send the chariot up toward the boat, and you and I swim off in different directions.

Fowles’ eyes seemed to squint behind his mask. Then he shook his head.

Steve checked his air gauge. The needle was at the red line. Maybe five hundred pounds of air. God, had he been sprinting? Just a few minutes left.

Now, images did appear to Steve. Quick ones, flashing by. His mother, dead all these years from a vicious cancer. His father, young, handsome, and prosperous. Bobby the day Steve carried him out of the hellhole where Janice kept him caged. Herbert would have to take care of the boy now.

I can live with that. Or die with it. My old man’s a better grandfather than he ever was a father.

Then Victoria’s face floated by. He smiled and almost laughed, exhaling through his nostrils and momentarily fogging his mask.

She made me laugh. So upright and uptight. From that first day in the jail cells together, she made me laugh.

Realizing that he was thinking in past tense, that his life would soon be discussed by others, if at all, in past tense.

Fowles was banging something against the metal hull. Trying to get his attention.

The magnetic slate.

Okay, what?

Fowles wrote something on the slate, showed it to Steve.

“I killed Stubbs.”

Yeah. Yeah. We’ve been through that, Steve thought. You
sort-of
killed Stubbs. You’re morally responsible. What of it? Why now?

Steve shrugged and raised both hands, palms up, showing his confusion.

Fowles scrawled something else and held up the slate.

“Clive A. Fowles.”

I get it now, buddy. A signed confession. To help Griffin. That’s great. But only if someone is alive to haul it into court.

Fowles grabbed Steve by the shoulder and motioned for him to get out of the chariot. When Steve didn’t move, Fowles grabbed his air hose and pulled.

Okay. Okay.

Steve unbuckled and floated out of the chariot. Fowles punched his fist toward the sandy bottom:
“Stay here!”
Then he thrust the slate at Steve and made one final gesture. Raising his right hand above his head, he flashed the V for Victory sign. A second later, he purged the ballast tank and pulled back on the joystick. The chariot flew upward at a sharp angle.

Maybe it was the fatigue or the fear or the oxygen-nitrogen mixture that fogged his brain. Whatever the reason, it took Steve several seconds to figure out exactly what Fowles was doing.

He was attacking Conklin the same way his grandfather had attacked the
Tirpitz.

Gripping the slate, Steve swam after the chariot.

Why? He didn’t know exactly. Except it seemed unmanly to sit on the bottom of the ocean while Clive Fowles chased the Victoria Cross his grandfather had won.

Steve kicked hard but, above him, the chariot rapidly picked up speed, putting distance between them. Without a heavy warhead in the bow, without Steve’s weight, and with its ballast tank blowing, the chariot could burst from the water like a Polaris missile. Except it was headed straight for the hull of the Cigarette.

The chariot’s propeller churned white water, and Steve didn’t have a good view. Still, he knew Fowles was aiming for a spot where the fuel lines came out of the Cigarette’s lightweight aluminum tanks.

He felt the explosion before he heard it.

The shock wave compressed his chest.

The sound pounded at his eardrums with a thunderclap of pain.

He tumbled toward the bottom with terrifying speed.

Arse-over-tits.
That’s what Fowles would have called it if he could have survived the explosion and fireball. That was Steve’s last thought before his head crunched into the sandy bottom, and everything went dark.

Forty-seven

THE DRAMA QUEEN

“How long have you worked for Poseidon?” Victoria asked.

“Twenty-three years,” Charles Traylor said. He was a portly man in his fifties who looked as if he never left the Jacuzzi, much less dived to the bottom of an Atlantic trench. On direct examination, he’d testified that it was “highly unlikely” the Poseidon Mark 3000 speargun, powered by a pneumatic blast of air, could accidentally discharge while being loaded.

“Another two years, you’ll get that nice pension.”

“Not sure I follow your drift.”

“You’re a loyal employee, Mr. Traylor. You run Poseidon’s quality-control department and you’ve certified the Mark 3000 as safe. Wouldn’t you be fired if it proved to be defective?”

“Objection!” Richard Waddle leaned over the prosecution table, palms pressed into the mahogany. “Counsel’s testifying, not interrogating.”

“Sustained,” Judge Feathers said. “Ms. Lord, I give counsel some room to roam on cross, but you’ve just passed the county line.”

“I’m sorry, Your Honor,” Victoria said, though she wasn’t sorry a bit. She’d gotten the point across to the jury.

Victoria held the speargun—state’s exhibit three—in both hands. “In the instruction manual, your company warns that the shaft should be pointed away from the person attempting to load the spear. Obviously, you anticipated a person shooting himself.”

“Oh, the lawyers put that in.”

Those darn lawyers.

“But we’ve never had a lawsuit,” Traylor added hastily.

A lawsuit would have been nice for the defense, Victoria thought. A class action even better.
“Everybody shish-ka-bobbed by the speargun, raise your hands.”
But you have to play the cards you’re dealt.

The courtroom door squeaked open, and her mother swept in. The Queen had disappeared two days earlier, her final words chillier than the frozen margarita she’d been drinking at the time. Lunch at a Mexican restaurant near the courthouse. Victoria had been working on her order of proof at a secluded table when her mother breezed over, carrying her slushy drink. Barely past noon, but the drink wasn’t her first of the day. Skipping pleasantries, The Queen berated Victoria for being “bitchy and judgmental and no damn fun,” saying it’s no wonder she couldn’t hold a man.

“Do you ever consider my happiness?”
Irene demanded.

“I didn’t think it was necessary, Mother, with you spending full time on the job.”

“You’re a little icy for my taste, darling. Comes from your father’s side.”

“If only he were here to defend himself.”

“I’m entitled to happiness, too.”
Her mother pirouetted toward the door, the hem of her pink cotton Cynthia Steffe bubble skirt swirling around her hips.

The Drama Queen.

“Good luck in court, dear,”
her mother tossed over her shoulder.
“Even if you don’t care about my happiness, please win for your uncle Grif.”

Happiness
seeming to be the topic of the day.

Her mother’s Manolo Blahnik sandals
click-clack
ed on the tile floor as she exited.

Now the sandals were back. Well, different sandals. The Blahniks—open-toed, ribbon-tied, T-strapped— had been a present from Victoria, courtesy of Steve’s larcenous client who’d hijacked a cargo container of the Italian beauties. Today’s sandals weren’t Blahniks and must be new. At least, Victoria hadn’t seen them before. Snakeskin with silver buckles, side cutouts, and three-inch heels.

Where did you go, Mother? And why are you and your reptilian shoes back?

Angry at her for leaving, and for coming back, too.

There was something about those snakeskin sandals, she thought. What was it? Gorgeous, really, with vivid red-and-yellow stripes on a black background.

Red-and-yellow stripes! A coral snake.
My
coral snake.

“Anything else, Ms. Lord?” Judge Feathers asked.

Dammit. Stay focused.

“Just one more question, Your Honor.”

“Good. Unless it’s the old plumbing I hear, I think some stomachs are growling in the jury box.”

Victoria gestured with the speargun. “Mr. Traylor. Just because no one sued doesn’t mean no one’s been impaled while loading the Mark 3000, isn’t that correct?”

“Objection,” Waddle said.

“On what grounds?” the judge asked.

“The question has a double negative. Maybe a triple.”

“Overruled. I think the jury got it.”

“I wouldn’t know if anyone’s ever been injured,” Traylor said.

Avoiding the word “impaled” and the gory image that conveyed.

“So you can’t rule out that, on some occasion, the Mark 3000 has fired while being loaded?

Breaking the promise to ask only one question.

“I can’t rule it out.”

“No further questions, Your Honor.”

“Then let’s eat lunch,” the judge said.

“I need to tell you about Grif and me,” The Queen said.

“I’m in trial,” Victoria said. “Give me a continuance, okay?”

The Queen persisted and persuaded her to take a walk. Ten minutes later, they were on the docks, passing a row of fishing boats, when Irene said: “I’m in love with Grif.”

“Congratulations.”

“But I wasn’t when your father was alive.”

“So you told me. You only did Grif the first time the other night. What else is so important it can’t wait?”

“Yesterday, I drove up to Miami and went to the bank. My safe-deposit box. I took out your father’s suicide note.”

Victoria stopped short next to a stack of wooden slatted lobster traps. “Now! After all these years, you have to do this now? Why?”

“I can’t stand your hating me.”

“Please, Mother. I can’t deal with this now.”

A fisherman hosing down his deck looked over at them. Not often did two well-dressed women bark at each other in front of his trawler.

“I know the pressure you’re under, Princess, and God knows I want you to win, but—”

“You don’t know anything! I don’t want to see the note.”

“You don’t have a choice.”

“I’m not twelve years old anymore, Mother. I make my own decisions.”

The Queen reached into her burnt-orange leather handbag. Victoria started walking away as soon as she saw what came out of the bag. An old-fashioned manila envelope with a string tie.

The Queen hurried after her in those damn snakeskin sandals. “I adored your father. I never cheated on him. Grif and I were just friends. Bridge partners. We enjoyed the same things. Sinatra. French movies. Post-modern art.”