Trusting Viktor (A Cleo Cooper Mystery) (25 page)

Twenty-Six

Next thing I knew
I was being loaded into a friggin’ helicopter. Great. I was really safe now. My eyes were stinging and burning. I closed them and let darkness overtake me.

When I opened them again, everything was blurry, but I was pretty sure I was in a hospital. Blinking, trying to bring my surroundings into focus, one thing was certain: every part of my body hurt. I tried to raise one arm. It was in a temporary cast. My head pounded. Good grief. I shut my eyes again and let sleep overtake me.

The next time I felt like opening them, I thought better of it. I mean, what would I find this time? Would my legs be in casts, too? After a few minutes of listening to hospital sounds, wondering what was making that damn beeping noise, curiosity got the better of me. At least this time the room came into focus and so did the person sitting on the edge of my bed looking at me, his face etched in sorrow.

“Bud,” I croaked.

Tears sprang to his eyes and ran down his cheeks. He bit his lip and sniffed. And right then I knew. I knew with the clarity only a cerebral lightning strike can bring, that I’d played this scene before.

I stared at him and he stared back at me, tenderly cradling my hand in his, just like he had that night on the ship. Then he let out a shaky sigh, stood, and, being careful not to disturb the IV needle in my arm—the source of the obnoxious beeping no doubt—laid my hand on the bed.

“I’ll go get a doctor or nurse … or somebody,” he muttered and left, wiping his face with the palms of his hands.

Warmth from where he had been sitting radiated through my hand, the IV beeped, and my mind flew back to the night I’d been attacked on the
Magellan
. The first time. I remembered how I’d awoken in my bunk with Bud leaning over me, crying. He’d rescued me from a fate worse than death—maybe from death itself, too. Bad memories and bad questions made me squirm, bringing on a fresh jolt of pain. I resolved to lay still … but I couldn’t stop thinking: Didn’t that mean I was back to my original fear that Bud was Hunter’s killer?

I supposed someone else could have come along after I fainted, smashed in the back of Hunter’s head, pushed him overboard, and left me lying where Bud found me later. Maybe one or both of the twins, since orange material similar to their jumpsuits was found twisted into Hunter’s watchband, and since their dad believed Hunter had been trying to steal the treasure out from under him. He’d implied as much at the nursing home. Then it dawned on me: it had been four in the morning. Why would the twins be in their work clothes? That was a definite plausibility gap.

Back to Bud as the killer, then. If he’d done the deed and then pretended to have come looking for me and found me knocked out cold as a cod on the ROV pad, obviously the victim of an attack, wouldn’t it have made his story more believable if he’d caused an uproar? Demanded justice for me? Of course it would. And if he did just happen along and found me unconscious, Hunter already overboard, wouldn’t he still have been furious and insisted on finding the culprit? Of course he would. Wouldn’t he?

My headed pounded with all my deliberations, but I couldn’t stop my brain. It was like Tulip when she picked up a scent. What about the cylinder—the reason I was lying in this miserable place in this sorry state in the first place—what happened to it?

And where was Viktor? Thinking of him made my blood boil, but not with lust anymore. I might have been pulverized to within an inch of losing my life, but I knew betrayal when I experienced it and I wondered: how long had it taken him to decide to steal the cylinder and leave me with nothing? Was it immediately upon my confiding in him that night in my driveway when he’d saved me from the twins, or had it taken a few days for him to succumb to greed? Okay, so he’d also repeatedly saved my life, but apparently that came with the territory if you were spending time with me.

I’d thought his saving me meant he’d switched his loyalty to me, that I could trust him, that we’d sort of become partners. The more I pondered my last hours on—and under—the
Magellan
, the more convinced I was that he’d never been loyal to me. Common sense told me Duchamp had had more to offer.

My thoughts were interrupted when Bud bustled back into the room with a wizened little doctor who somewhat resembled the gnawed end of a pencil. He explained my injuries: contusions, abrasions, lacerations—a few requiring stitches—a broken arm, two sprained ankles, and a concussion. Then he hustled out like he was late for something. Next came a nurse who went over my medications: painkillers, antibiotics to prevent infections, and more meds to prevent blood clots from the deep bruising. Before leaving, she disconnected the IV and asked a few stupid questions. “Would you like to watch television?” Hell no. “Would you like to up your pain medication?” Hell yes.

Bud rose stiffly from a corner recliner and returned to my bedside. “There’s a police detective named Pierce in the hall waiting to see you.”

Despite the pain killers, I perked up. “How long’s he been here?” I asked. “For that matter, how long have
I
been here and where, in fact, is here?”

“Here is Carteret General. Amazingly, your injuries weren’t life-threatening, so I managed to convince everyone who wanted to have you flown to Duke that I knew you best and you wouldn’t want ridiculous measures taken when all that was needed was some serious bandages and lots of bed rest. Now, with the emergency stuff done, I’ll take care of the bed rest. I’ve made arrangements to take you home soon as they discharge you later this afternoon.”

“This afternoon? Last time I looked, it was night.”

“We got you here around nine last night. It’s now a little after four … p.m. The detective guy has been prowling around out there like an hungry cheetah. He’s very insistent about talking to you. You want to see him?”

“Damn right. Precious time is wasting,” I said, trying to push myself up straighter in bed. “Ouch! Ouch!”

“Here, let me help,” Bud said, reaching for me.

“No! Go get Pierce! Oh, and Bud, what about the kids?”

“I’ve called them—”

“Finally, Ms. Cooper, you’re awake.” Here came Pierce. “Hope you don’t mind my barging in, but I heard voices and—”

“Listen, I’ve got a lot to tell you. Bud, you need to hear this too. The man who pushed me overboard and his buddies have a thirteen-hour jump on you—”

“Pushed you overboard!” Bud’s face twisted in anger. “I thought you fell!”

“Bud, please. Have I ever just fallen off a boat?”

“Well, no, but—”

“If you’ll just be patient, I’ll tell you what happened.”

Despite the fact that from time to time my brain would fog up—apparently banging one’s head repeatedly on the steel hull of a ship doesn’t do good things for it—soon the two of them knew everything about my saga of almost finding the Amber Room, starting with meeting young Viktor Kozlov three weeks and a lifetime ago. (Well, I did leave out the part about my unwitting fall from grace into Viktor’s bed. But seriously, who wouldn’t?)

I looked at Bud and my gut squeezed. His expression was stony, but his eyes told a different story. Suddenly I realized how much I must have hurt him by confiding in Viktor instead of him. Pierce’s expression stayed steady on furious.

He said, “Remember our interview just this last weekend? You said you didn’t know of anything of great value hidden in a cylinder on the ship. Something Hunter might’ve been looking for. That was a boldfaced lie, huh?”

“No, it wasn’t,” I shot back. “You said on the
Magellan
. At the time, the cylinder was on
U-498
, two thousand feet below it.”

“You might think you can split hairs with me, Ms. Cooper, but I’d like to point out that if you had voiced your suspicions regarding Mr. Duchamp sooner, it would have saved you from being keel-hauled the way you were.”

“The hell!” I fumed. “You’re the one who screwed up and let him get away—
after
he pulled a gun on you, I might add. If anyone is to blame for my nearly ending up as chum, it’s—”

“Knock it off, you two,” ordered Bud. “What’s done is done. Cleo, you should count your lucky stars that … friend of yours, Viktor, did double-cross you and was under the ship stealing the booty at the precise moment you needed him and that Duchamp used the alarm as a distraction so he could leave the ship unnoticed.”

Pierce now jumped in. “How do you think Viktor got under the ship? And do you think he knew Duchamp was intending to get rid of you?”

I heaved a sigh and blinked away the heavy cloak of exhaustion that was threatening to drape over my brain again and said, “Here’s how I think things went down. Viktor knew Duchamp had ‘left’ your custody because I told him not long after you told me. At that point, we all but had the cylinder. Soon as I left the ROV van to go back to the logging lab, I think he called Duchamp, told him he’d found the cylinder and that he’d need diving equipment—a small twenty-minute tank of air, a mask, and some fins—to retrieve it. Duchamp probably brought it with him in a small duffel in the chopper and stashed it where Viktor told him. Likely near one of the personnel escape lines. They’re stowed at various locations along the rail and can be lowered in seconds.”

“Wouldn’t someone have seen him going overboard?” Pierce wanted to know.

“Not if he chose carefully, probably somewhere near the bow. He could have easily found a blind spot behind some of the tons of equipment and supplies stacked there. Besides, it only takes a few minutes to throw the line over and hustle down. It is for emergencies, after all.”

“But how did he get to shore with only what was left on a twenty-minute tank?” Bud asked.

“He didn’t have to. Remember, from the time I told him his old boss and apparent benefactor had escaped, Viktor and the twins had over two hours to throw together a plan. Duchamp left the
Magellan
, flew somewhere, and waited for them. You thought he’d picked up his boat in Morehead and taken it to Louisiana, right?”

“Yeah, the Coast Guard did stop the boat. There were three guys on it. Duchamp had hired them to take it to his home in Louisiana.”

“So, they didn’t have a boat,” Bud said, playing devil’s advocate. “Plus, it takes over four hours to reach the
Magellan
by boat.”

“If you leave from Morehead or Beaufort it does, but it’s only forty-five miles to the ship from Oregon Inlet. Departing from there, depending on wind and tides, it would only take a little over an hour with an offshore excursion boat. You can rent them from several places up there and they can easily run forty to fifty miles an hour. The twins waited, lights off, at agreed-upon coordinates outside the area the drillship’s patrol boat covers. He swam to them, they picked him up, went ashore, and met up with Duchamp. The big question: Where did they go from there?”

Pierce said, “I see what you mean. It wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to put that together—”

“Mom!” Henri and Will gasped in unison upon busting into my room. “Oh my God, Mom, your face!” Henri wailed.

My face?

“Henri!” Bud cautioned. “What did I tell you?”

“Oh,” she sobbed, both hands over her mouth.

“Somebody get me a mirror, right now!” I demanded.

“I’m outta here,” Pierce said, pulling the door back open. Then, he stopped, turned to me, and said, “I forgot to tell you that I looked into matching the material we found twisted in the vic’s watchband with the jumpsuits worn by Voyager’s crew.”

“Yeah?” I said, now less interested in all the recent skullduggery and more concerned about my face.

“Yeah, and it wasn’t a match. Not even close. But I shouldn’t have bothered.”

“Huh?” I said. “Why not?”

“Because it was four in the morning. Why would the twins be wearing their work duds? ROV crews only work during the day.”

I didn’t say a word about this already occurring to me. “Then why did Duchamp threaten me saying if I wasn’t careful I could end up just like Hunter? He had to have known Hunter was dead because he replaced him with Viktor
before
the body washed up on shore,” I said. Henri was still staring at me, stupefied. “Mirror!” I shouted. She gulped and nodded.

“The fact that he got someone replaced on a job just means he obviously had connections at Voyager. Doesn’t necessarily prove he knew the guy was dead, only that he could get a friend a job pretty damn quick.”

I held out my hand to Henri.

“Right,” Pierce said, picking up on the hint and taking one step closer to the hall. “Keep in mind, we’re still going to pick up Duchamp in the matter of drawing a gun on me and pushing you overboard. But there were no witnesses to that; we only have your statement. You
are
going to press charges this time, right?”

Henri handed me a compact. I heard Pierce say, “Uh, we’ll talk later.” Taking a deep breath, I opened the compact, held it up, and stifled a scream.

I looked like Frankenstein. See-through steri-strips covered large blue stitches holding together a 4-inch gash running along my hairline from my widow’s peak to my right temple. My hair was caked in dried blood, the first 3 inches of it being spiked up like a punk rocker while the rest hung in limp strands. Purple circles were forming under my eyes even as I stared in abject horror at myself. Quietly, I closed the compact, handed it back to Henri, and turned my face to the wall.

“Mom,” Will said. “I don’t understand. What did he mean about pressing charges ‘this time’? Were you attacked
before
this? You’ve been attacked more than once in a couple of weeks?”

“Not now,” Bud said. “Mom needs her rest.”

“Come on,” Henri said glumly. “We’ll wait for them at Seahaven. Oh, and before we go, Mom’s friend left this at her house.”

I turned back over to face them. “What? What friend? Left what?”

“Your … friend. You know? Viktor. I went straight to the house after Dad called and told me to pack some of your clothes and to wait there until you were ready to see us. I called Will and—”