The Girl Beneath the Sea (Underwater Investigation Unit)

by Andrew Mayne

  “Something? What does that mean?”

  “The money’s still missing.”

  “It was already missing. That’s why Bonaventure went free.”

  “I’m not talking about the feds looking for it. I’m talking about the cartel. Now they’re going ballistic.”

  “What does Stacey have to do with all this?”

  “Maybe she overheard something. Have you talked to her father?”

  “No. I can’t even get a text through.”

  Karl lowers his head. “That means they already got him.”

  “Got him? Like he’s dead?”

  “That’s probably why they went after Stacey. They thought she knew something.”

  “And she came looking for me.”

  He nods. “Catfish . . . you need to take Jackie and get out of here. If these people think you have anything to do with this . . .” His voice trails off, and his eyes drift toward the small window near the top of the wall. “Damn it.”

  “I can’t just run.”

  “Do it for Jackie. Forget your McPherson pride.”

  My anxiety starts to build. “These people have private jets and attorneys around the world. Where would I go? What would I do?”

  He makes a violent shrug as he thinks about my predicament. “And you can’t go to the cops.”

  “What? It’s not like we have your reputation,” I reply.

  He shakes his head. “You don’t understand. The Mendez cartel is deep. The reason Bonaventure got away was because he was tipped off.”

  “Someone in law enforcement?”

  “Someone? A lot of someones. Assholes like George Solar and all the other crooks.”

  I don’t mention that I saw Solar yesterday. I’m still hoping I can get some useful intel out of my uncle.

  “So, you think Winston is dead.”

  “Definitely.”

  “Anybody else I could talk to?”

  “They would have gotten to everyone by now,” he replies.

  “That’s not good enough. I need a name. Someone who knows Winston.”

  He thinks about this for a moment. “Raul Tiago.”

  “Who is that?”

  “Peruvian kid. He worked for Winston. I think he and Stacey were . . . um, seeing each other. Chances are he’s dead or back in Peru. If not, maybe him.”

  That’s the thinnest of leads. I came here hoping for a simple answer, and now it turns out things are far more complicated and dire than I realized.

  I’ve gone from worrying about a lone psychopath coming after me to an entire cartel with thousands of hired guns and cops.

  I should have stayed underwater.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  LIGHTHOUSE

  After an awkward goodbye with my uncle, I go back to my car and check for messages. The Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office still hasn’t asked me to come in and make a statement. That’s either sloppy or odd.

  I could call them, but that would be asking for trouble. I’m also at the point where I think I might need an attorney if they want to question me. I’ve heard too many whispers about me already to believe I’ll be given a fair shake.

  It doesn’t matter if I had nothing to do with Stacey’s murder other than discovering her body. A good prosecutor will find something to hang a case on. Did I have my dive tanks properly stored in my truck? Have I been keeping proper track of my personal versus professional tank refills? Did I use a federally funded magnetometer for personal purposes? Did I keep all the appropriate records? The list goes on.

  I need a moment of normalcy and decide to text Jackie.

  How’s it going?

  A minute later she replies.

  VG gonna drop by house with Dad and get some clothes ltr k?

  Okay. I’ll be home in a couple of hours. Love you.

  Love you more.

  Those three little words make me relax and feel a little glow inside. In telling me that she’s picking up some clothes, Jackie’s made it clear she knows I need a few more days and Run is on board with this.

  We make a good team, for a fractured family unit that was never really a whole family.

  If only Run . . .

  Stop it.

  I check my email and see that Nadine Baltimore, my supervising professor, has asked for a checkup on the canal site she asked me to take a look at.

  Clearly, she hasn’t been following the news. Nadine spends most of her time in the lab separating pieces of linen from dredged-up mud and very little time paying attention to anything that happened in the last couple of centuries.

  I decide to give her a call.

  “Hey, Sloan,” she says in a monotone manner. She probably has her earbuds in as she stares into a microscope at a specimen.

  “What are you looking at?”

  “Could be a baby’s leg or a parrot thigh bone.”

  “Really?”

  “Of course not. The parrot bone would be smaller and more porous. But that’s what it looks like on first glance.”

  Nadine has an odd habit of giving you her stream-of-consciousness thinking when you ask her a less-than-direct question.

  “Find anything in the canal?” she asks.

  “Yeah. A body.”

  “Really?” she replies with an excited change of tone.

  “Um. A recent one.”

  “Classic? Postclassic?”

  “This week.”

  “What?” she replies.

  “The person was killed and dumped while I was in the water.”

  “Oh my god. At my canal spot?”

  “Yeah. Long story short, it’s a murder scene.”

  “Well, that’s inconvenient. Did you find anything before you found the body? Why are you laughing?”

  God bless Nadine. She’s not going to let something like a tragic murder and ensuing homicide investigation get in the way of science. I think this is why I called her in the first place.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Oh. Will you be able to go back and have a look? It’s a really interesting area. From the aerial photos, it looks like the bend on that stretch was only recently connected to the canal and was a pond for a long time before that. I’ll bet anything that just below the muck there’s a clay layer that’ll yield something.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Thank you. Anything else?”

  “You get a chance to look at the paper I wrote?”

  “Yes. Your spelling is atrocious, and your references were mismatched.”

  “Oh . . .”

  “I submitted it to the Journal of Underwater Archaeology.”

  “Wait? What?”

  “I cleaned up the errors. Other than that, it was good. A little dry, but good.”

  I’m confused. “You submitted it? Coauthored?”

  It’s pretty common for professors to slap their name on their grad students’ work to increase their publication count.

  “No. Of course not. I was looking at the academic calendar and realized that you needed to have a paper published this semester. I decided to go ahead and submit it.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It’ll run. I know the reviewer who’s handling it. They’re looking for something like this. So, congratulations.”

  That’s Nadine for you. One moment she’s a thousand years away, aloof to your worldly problems, then at three a.m. she remembers something and saves your ass. Part of my education is being paid for by an obscure scholarship she discovered that was funded by a philanthropist who made his fortune selling dive gear to the navy.

  “You’re the best,” I reply.

  “Then get me some sediment. The boys over in the genomics lab say they’ve got a multichannel sequencer they want to test out on something unusual.”

  That sounds more like a musical instrument to me than a piece of scientific equipment, but I don’t admit my ignorance.

  “Wonderful.”

  After we hang up, I momentarily contemplate sneaking back into the crim
e scene to get Nadine those samples, then think better of it.

  I make it back to the harbor an hour after sunset. When I turn the corner on the dock, I see the light is on in the bow cabin, Jackie’s room. She must’ve just arrived.

  A smile comes to my face.

  She’ll love the news about my paper getting published. Run won’t know if this is on par with having your Little League photo in the local newspaper or the Nobel Prize, but he’ll suggest we all go out to dinner and celebrate.

  I wish I could accept, but the less time I’m around them right now, the safer it is for Jackie.

  I set foot on my boat, and my brain tells me something is wrong. I just can’t quite figure out what that is.

  The cabin door is wide open, and the only light is coming from Jackie’s room.

  “Jackie?”

  No answer.

  She could be listening to her phone with her earbuds in.

  “Babe?”

  I move past our galley, down the tiny hallway that leads to the bathroom on the left and my cabin on the right.

  When I push the door to Jackie’s cabin open, I spot a man dressed in black kneeling on the floor next to her bed.

  And he isn’t Run.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  QUARTERDECK

  Survival or maternal instincts kick in—take your pick. The man begins to stand, his right hand going behind his back. Before he can draw, I give him a side kick to the exposed ribs, slamming him back against the narrow bed.

  The narrow empty bed . . .

  My hand reaches for my own gun, tucked into the waist of my jeans. As I raise it, the man glances over my shoulder.

  I duck, but not quickly enough to avoid a partial blow to the back of my neck that sends a shock down my spine and makes me see stars.

  I wheel around, gun extended toward my unseen attacker.

  Another man, this one a tall white guy with receding hair, is blocking the small passage. He lands a right hook to my jaw. My knees buckle, and I feel the gun being pried from my hands by the first man.

  BANG.

  I fire a round before he twists the barrel back so far that I have to let go or break a finger.

  “Fuck!” he curses over the ringing in my ears.

  I hope I hit him, but I’m afraid I only singed him.

  “Get down!” says his partner, grabbing at my hair.

  I throw a punch with my left, straight at his balls. He turns, avoiding the worst of the blow, but he’s unbalanced and has to brace himself on the door frame.

  I surge past him, trying to squeeze through the small space between his body and the wall. The other man grabs at my calf, sharp fingernails clawing into the muscle.

  I kick back, hit something, and push forward.

  “Jackie!” I scream, my first words since seeing the man at her bed.

  There’s no answer. I grab the door to the head and slam it open, blocking the tall man for a moment.

  The bathroom is empty.

  A long arm reaches through the space between the door and the wall and grabs my neck.

  I kick the door backward, breaking the hinge and stopping him for a moment.

  “Jackie?” I yell as I pull open the door to my cabin. Even though it’s dark, it only takes me a second to see that she’s not inside.

  There are a half dozen places she could hide, but I’m praying she’s not on the boat.

  I take two steps up the small stairs that connect to the galley and living room, making my way to the cabin door.

  As I reach the last step, a hand grabs my foot and pulls me back.

  “Just kill the bitch already.”

  Ice runs through my veins. I have seconds.

  My fingers grasp the edge of a cabinet as they try to pull me back down the steps. My grip slips on the slick varnish and drops until it finds a brass handle.

  I yank the drawer open, hoping I can grasp the inside and pull myself away from them and make it off the boat.

  Hands grab both my legs and attempt to yank me down the steps. I hold on to the drawer, but it rips free, the contents spilling onto the deck.

  I want to scream but stop myself. You don’t scream underwater. You handle the situation.

  “Get her gun and grab a pillow,” one man says to the other.

  One pair of hands lets go. The other is still pulling me back.

  I claw at the carpet, my fingers grasping at the first aid kit, fishing hooks, and other random items from the drawer.

  I touch something wooden. Sense memory and recognition flood my head.

  It’s the haft of a fileting knife.

  The man behind me gives me another strong tug, trying to pull me into the hallway.

  I let him drag me down the stairs, unsheathing the knife as he tries to improve his grip.

  Twisting and slashing, I cut into the space where I assume his head would be.

  “FUCK!” he roars as blood spatters on me.

  I see his thigh in the dim light and stab into it, then twist and rip.

  “FUUUCK!” His scream ends with a whimper as he falls back into the other man.

  I scramble on knees, gain my feet, and shoot up the stairs.

  BANG. Someone fires, the noise even louder than the first gunshot.

  I make it out the door and onto the deck. There’s a loud scramble from behind as one of the pair continues his pursuit.

  The long dock stretches in front of me. While it appears like the safe path, it’s not. They’d have a clear shot and could drop me before I make it to land.

  I dive over the edge. Don’t even look. Just throw myself into the water, hands first, and swim.

  A barnacle-covered dock pole scrapes my back as I slide past it.

  When I feel the upswell of the water on the bottom, I open my eyes and see the silhouettes of the other boats in the moonlight.

  I swim for the farthest one, Permanent Vacation, a fifty-foot Gulfstar sailboat that belongs to a man named Ed Acosta, a retired Pennsylvania schoolteacher and full-time pothead.

  He keeps his boat anchored in the bay, away from the docks. I swim hard for it in hopes of keeping my pursuers as far back as possible.

  I spend a half minute swimming and go all the way under the big boat’s keel to the small platform on the back.

  I try to make as little noise as possible when I emerge.

  “Ed?” I whisper as I slide onto the deck.

  I can smell the scent of his weed. The interior is glowing from a television set.

  “Ed . . . ?”

  “Hello?”

  His shaved head pokes out from his cabin. “Sloan? Rent due?”

  “No. Call 911.”

  “You hurt?” He starts to walk toward me.

  “No. Stay down!” I scan the dock for my boat and see it rocking as someone steps onto the deck. “Call 911!”

  “I don’t have a phone.”

  I spot the outline of a man scanning the other boats from the deck of mine.

  I duck and gesture for Ed to do the same.

  “Seriously. Get down, now! Then radio it in.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  SHORELINE

  From Ed’s boat I make a frantic call to Run, telling him to stay clear of the harbor. He knows from the tone of my voice not to ask any questions. There’s been a lot of that lately.

  After that I call Captain Mercer at Fort Lauderdale while still keeping my head down low so I can’t be seen.

  “Two men were on my boat. Armed. May still be there,” I say curtly.

  “You okay?” he asks.

  “Yes. I’m on another boat.”

  “We’ve got units on the way. I’ll be over in a couple. Can you give me a description?”

  I spurt out a few details mechanically, hardly even processing what I’m saying. Poor Ed, who only wanted to spend the evening getting high, is crouched at the base of the stairs with his radio microphone in his hand, watching me, waiting to see what happens next.

  When I peek back over
the edge, my boat is rocking again. My assailants probably just stepped off.

  I have a momentary panic attack, afraid that they might decide to take another marina resident hostage, then remember that I’m the only one currently moored to my pier.

  A bright light splashes over me and blinds me as it bounces off the white deck. I squint up at the police helicopter and point at my boat.

  The spotlight turns to my craft, and the chopper begins a search pattern.

  Red and blue lights appear in the parking lot, followed by the deafening roar of one of Fort Lauderdale’s marine-unit boats as it pulls up behind us.

  I wave my arms in the air, letting them know I’m here. The boat pulls up alongside, and the spotlight tilts away.

  I recognize the driver as Becky Vendable. I don’t know her well, but we’ve spoken a few times.

  “You okay?” she shouts.

  I give her a thumbs-up.

  She speaks into the radio attached to her vest, then nods to me. “Patrol units are looking for a car that just left the area.”

  She nods to two police officers running down the dock toward my boat. One of them stops and aims his light at the deck. I can’t hear what he says or see what he’s looking at, but he only spends a moment before moving ahead.

  The officers reach the edge of my boat’s pier and kneel behind a dock locker.

  Over the din of the helicopter and boats, I can’t make out their words, but they seem to be hailing my boat and telling whoever’s in there to surrender.

  This goes on for what feels like a million years until four more police officers join them on the dock and provide cover.

  I glance over and see that Becky Vendable has a shotgun resting on the console, trained on the bow of my boat. Hmm. That won’t be too useful at that range, especially with her own officers in between, but I keep my mouth shut.

  A few minutes later, a police officer emerges from belowdecks and gives the all-clear sign.

  “McPherson, hop aboard,” shouts Vendable.

  I step into her boat.

  Vendable takes us to an empty slip two piers over. I help her tie off, then climb up to the deck. At least six more patrol cars are in the parking lot. The helicopter veers off, probably in pursuit of the vehicle they spotted leaving.