“By what?”
“He hasn’t said, but I think he suspects there’s something weird about Jack’s death,” she said, quieting her voice to avoid being overheard by the work-study student stapling papers outside the office.
“Well, we all do,” Trevathan said.
Kate sat up, her back fully against the chair back. “What?”
“Come on, Kate,” Trevathan said quietly. “Jack Lindstrom was a lot of things, but suicidal? That guy took every chance in the book—and the investigation was going to find out a lot more about his past than he let on while he was alive, let me tell you.”
“How do you know?”
“Let’s just say my buddy with the state police was shocked Jack ever got through the hiring process here.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Kate said.
“Jack Lindstrom may very well have been a man with nine lives and being president of this backwater college was merely one of his better ones,” Trevathan said, placing his mug on the desk with his shaking hands. “Damn coffee.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Why are we stopping?” Pilate asked Taters.
Taters threw the anchor over the side. “We’re going fishing,” he said. “Help me get the tackle out.” He opened a compartment on the rear deck, exposing fishing gear.
“But we’re not there yet,” Pilate said, standing on the swaying deck.
“Right,” he said, “and we should avoid getting there anytime too soon, don’t you think?”
“We’ve been zigzagging,” Pilate said. “All we’ve seen are a few fishing charters.”
“Well, yeah, but what kind of boat are you on?”
“You think we were followed?”
“I think,” Taters said, assembling a rod and reel, “that if we were followed, we should look as nonchalant and boring as possible. Therefore, we’re fishing.”
“How long?”
“I think we oughtta be here fishing for at least two or three hours—a six-pack or so. We’ll keep an eye out for anybody who comes near. If anyone shows up with, shall we say, malicious intent, we have some defensive options.”
“The gun?”
“Well, that’s the option of last resort,” he said. “I think the main defensive option is to weigh anchor and blast out of here if anybody starts to get too close.”
“Won’t that look suspicious?”
“Well, maybe, but it may also throw ‘em off our scent. They may decide you don’t know what you have with that chip and that you’re really just out here fishing. Either that, or they’ll start diving below us after we leave and find zilch.” Taters handed Pilate a rod. “Either way, I think it’s a smart way to go.”
“Okay, good thinking,” Pilate said. “But if nobody shows up in the next couple hours, we keep zigzagging to the location, right?”
“Sounds like a plan,” Taters said. “I’m gonna call in and let Jordan know our location.”
“Um, hey—about Jordan…” Pilate said.
“No worries there,” Taters said. “She sleeps with a .38 under her pillow. Her daddy is a deputy sheriff in Oklahoma.”
“Yeah, but still, I think—”
“Just calm down, John,” Taters said. “Nobody’s looking at me—at least not yet—so they got no reason to mess with Jordan. And I assure you that if they do, they’ll regret it.”
“Okay,” Pilate said, gazing at the fishing reel as if it was some kind of complex machinery. “Um, how do I use this thing?”
“See? Easy peasy,” Taters said as Pilate hauled in a small tarpon. “Here. She looks like a baby. Let’s cut her loose.” Taters cut the line and dropped the tarpon back into the sea. “We’re not quite in tarpon season anyway. When that one’s fully grown, she’ll be about five feet long.”
“Shit.” Pilate said, stunned. “It was heavy.”
“Feel like you been lifting weights all day?”
“Yeah, and we’ve only been out here fishing in the enjoyable blazing hot sun for two hours,” Pilate said.
“Worst two hours of your life?”
“Not even close,” Pilate said, opening another Modelo. “I told you about my ex-, right?”
“Exactly.” Taters sat back on his lawn chair. “Only thing is, we don’t have any bolted-on chairs. Did I mention this before? Anyhow, I pulled mine to redo the deck and get them reupholstered. Might look odd, us out here fishing without ‘em.” He looked at the new decking underfoot. “We should be sight fishing a little closer to the shallows. Tackling big fish and sharks isn’t so smart without solid chairs. Sharks are likely to pull you out in the water.”
“Should we move closer?”
Taters eyed the horizon. “I dunno. Haven’t seen anybody come anywhere near since we dropped anchor. We may be all right.”
“You think we’re on our own out here?”
“Could be,” he said, adjusting his straw hat. “Why don’t we give it another hour, just to be sure?”
Pilate sighed and reached for the sunscreen. His skin was burned and wind whipped, but he couldn’t argue that there were far less agreeable places to be at that moment; in Lamaze classes with his ex-wife and getting his throat slit in a bar bathroom came to mind.
“What do you think it is?” Taters said, touching the Modelo bottle to his cheek, enjoying the coolness of the condensation on his skin.
“I really have no idea,” Pilate said. “Maybe a new wreck discovery—something as valuable as the Atocha—or maybe drugs. Those would be my best guesses.”
“Drugs is a possibility,” he said. “Unusual out here, but who knows? One thing’s for sure.”
“What’s that?”
“Your coordinates would have to be in significantly deeper water than around here, or there’d be no need to go to the trouble of a secret map.”
“True, unless it’s camouflaged.”
Taters grunted his assent.
“My hot little friend with the handcuffs said a guy was murdered on his yacht a couple weeks ago near a place called Dugger’s.”
“You mean Duggan’s. Duggan’s Key,” Taters corrected him.
“Right. Anyway, she said pirates killed him, threw his body overboard, and stripped his boat.”
Taters nodded. “Yeah, I read about that. He had a pretty spiffy boat, too, one of them showy numbers. Attracted the wrong sort of attention I guess. It’s unusual for that kind of thing to happen, but anything’s possible out here.” He gestured at the open sea. “I read a few years ago about a guy who was found dead out here on his sailboat. He was just lolling around on deck, and he was dead for a few days before somebody figured it out. Autopsy said heart attack. Truth is, we’re pretty alone out here.”
“Comforting,” Pilate said.
“Hell, that’s what it’s all about, man! Getting away from everybody,” he said. “That guy died doing what he loved—sailing. He died of natural causes, at the helm. As for pirates or sea thugs, well, you just gotta keep your wits about you and stay out of trouble, and you’ll be okay.”
“True, but we’re not exactly keeping out of trouble.”
“No, we’re not, are we?” Taters looked at Pilate, then at the deck, then the open sea. “I’m going below to make a sandwich. You want one?”
“Yeah. You got any Miracle Whip?”
Taters made a face. “No. I only use real mayo—the kind God intended.”
“What are you, a Yankee?”
“You remember I told you there are sharks around here, right?”
“Yeah.”
“You might want to lay off the insults,” Taters warned before he hopped into the galley below in three quick steps, “or you might just meet them face to face!” he yelled from below.
“You know, they think the Marquesas were formed millions of years ago by a meteor,” Taters said, tracing his finger along the chart. “Most islands are formed by volcanic eruptions and activity, but this area probably got its strange circular pattern from a meteor impact.”<
br />
“Interesting,” Pilate said.
“Talk about X marking the spot!” Taters moved his finger. “Okay, here’s where your coordinates will take us, just past Duggan’s Key. If we take it slow and easy, we can make our way up.”
“Well, there’s been nobody around except that one boat about a half-hour ago,” Pilate said.
The small flats fishing boat they’d seen was manned by two older guys with prominent, protruding beer bellies, puttering back toward the Marquesas Key area.
“They figured they were out too far,” Taters said.
“You don’t think they were after us, do you?”
“Not in that boat they weren’t,” he said.
After nearly four hours out with only one close sighting of another boat, they decided it was safe to make way for the coordinates.
“How long, you think?”
“Twenty minutes, I s’pose,” Taters said, gunning the throttle.
The sun was less than an hour away from entertaining the crowd at Mallory Square when the pair arrived at the coordinates, a placid sea of blue-green, not nearly as shallow as the spot where they’d spent the afternoon fishing. They passed the sandy, arid sliver of emptiness that was Duggan’s Key on a heading for the exact location set by the coordinates.
“Not much to recommend to vacationers here,” Pilate noted. “The Duggan’s Key brochure wouldn’t have much to say.”
“Nope. Just a dry spot in all this pretty blue wet.”
A few moments later, they arrived at their unmarked destination.
“Well, here’s X,” Taters said, lightly rapping his knuckles on the GPS.
Pilate looked overboard, straining to see anything of note other than seagulls strafing the water.
“See anything?” Taters said, idling the engines.
“Nope,” Pilate said. He picked up the binoculars and conducted a 360-degree scan of the horizon. “Nothing topside either.”
Taters keyed off the engines and walked aft, taking the binoculars from Pilate. He also scanned the horizon and saw nothing.
“Well, how deep do you think it is?” Pilate said.
“Probably between twenty and thirty feet,” Taters said, chewing his lower lip. “Let me check my Humminbird.” Taters checked the depth finder and came back. “It’s about twenty-three feet—deep enough that if we find something substantial, we’re gonna need SCUBA gear to get it out.”
“I’ve snorkeled quite a bit, but I’m not trained on SCUBA,” Pilate said.
“Don’t matter anyway, does it?” Taters said. “We’re gonna do our best to see what it is, then go to the cops, right?”
“Right,” Pilate said. “But what if it’s a shipwreck?”
“Then we’ll go to the proper authorities and declare it,” Taters said. “Split the booty, me hearty!”
Pilate rolled his eyes. “Okay. I’m going to go have a look around. You keep an eye out for trouble.”
“You got it,” Taters said, handing Pilate a mask and snorkel. “I’ll give you the fins when you get in the water.”
Pilate slipped out of his t-shirt and took the mask and snorkel.
Taters glanced at the shotgun pellet scars on Pilate’s shoulder. “That musta hurt,” he said.
“You should see the other guy,” Pilate said as he adjusted the strap and climbed down the ladder Taters had placed over the side. The Gulf water felt fantastic after a day under the bleaching sun. Pilate removed the facemask and snorkel and dipped it in the water. He spat in his facemask and put it on the crown of his head.
“Here.” Taters handed him the fins, one at a time.
Pilate put them on in turn, adjusted the fit, and kicked back from the TenFortyEZ. “This feels great,” he said.
“I’m sure,” Taters said, leaning over the side. “You might want to get a move on.”
“Okay,” Pilate said. “I’ll just take a few practice dives to see if I can get my lungs acclimated.” Pilate breathed in and out, blowing water from the snorkel, paddling just below the surface. As he looked downward into the deep, the fading sunlight illuminated a projection of rock—probably coral—at least fifteen or twenty feet from the surface. He couldn’t make out much more than that.
“Well, John, I guess you better dive,” Simon said.
Wondered when you were gonna surface, Pilate thought to himself as he took in a lungful of air and dived for the coral.
“You’re really going to wish you didn’t indulge in the ciggies, I suspect.”
No kidding.
He swam from the warm surface waters through the shockingly cold waters only ten feet or so below. Pilate made it down to what he estimated to be ten feet above the coral before his natural buoyancy and below-average lungs were dragging him back to the surface. Pilate fought the urge to resurface a few seconds longer, continuing to strain to see what was on the bottom.
“I don’t see anything,” Simon said.
Pilate exhaled slowly and allowed his body to rise to the surface. He broke it and breathed in greedy gulps.
“Anything?” Taters said, shouting from the boat anchored thirty feet away.
“Cold down there,” Pilate said, treading water. “I keep forgetting it’s still winter here.”
“What did you see?”
“Big hunk of rock, probably about thirty feet in diameter, but it’s really tough to make out the details.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” he said. “We may have no idea what we’re looking at without the SCUBA gear. “
“I’m going to try again,” Pilate said. “Stay tuned.” He dived under again, making his body into a torpedo, kicking the fins furiously.
The rush of spearing through the layer of cold water was short lived as the current pulled him away from the shadowy bottom. Pilate kicked against it and descended further down, the rays of sunlight diminishing, further obscuring his view of the ocean bed.
“John, your lungs must be killing you—not to mention every other part of your body.”
Not now, Simon. I’m busy.
Each kick of his finned feet felt as if he were adding lead weights to his ankles. He looked around the rocky bed and saw nothing but fish, seaweed, and shadows.
As bubbles escaped the snorkel, and his lungs began to burn as if they were being baked in an oven, he had no choice but to let the current take him up.
“Well, we can sit out here tonight,” Taters said, “or go back in and try again tomorrow with the SCUBA equipment.” He looked over his shoulder at the sunset. “Too dark to dive now.”
“Why? You have lights, right?”
“Yeah, but I’m not sure if you want to be up here standing guard while I’m down there incommunicado, fumbling around with a flashlight.”
“Shit.”
“I know, but we have the coordinates and can come back in the morning,” Taters said. “You can even bunk onboard tonight if you need a place—or if you need to be sure I won’t go out without you.” He laughed and winked.
“All right. Thanks.” Pilate said. “I need to get back and make some calls anyway.”
Taters slapped him on the back. “Atta boy.”
Even though he couldn’t get a signal to make a call or check the incoming ones, Pilate had managed to charge his cell on the TenFortyEZ. As soon as they were in sight of the harbor at Key West, voicemail message notifiers started pinging. “Shit. Three messages,” Pilate said. “I’m gonna go below and listen, down where it’s a little quieter.”
One message was from Samantha; she’d made a decision about what they had discussed, and she wanted him to call her back.
“Screw that,” Simon said. “Wait…you already did.”
The other message was from his old boss at Cross College: “John, Trevathan here. I hate these things. Anyway, listen, you need to give Kate a call. And let me know what’s going on with you. And um, well, call me too. I need to tell you some stuff. Oh and don’t be an asshole. Call Kate. I think I already said that—the part about c
alling Kate. The asshole thing is a bonus.”
Pilate shook his head, propping his feet on the galley sink cabinet.
The third message was from a number he didn’t recognize, somewhere in the 941 area code. It was a man’s voice, breathy and distorted, as if he were speaking through a kid’s Dixie cup phone line Scotch-taped to a pay phone. The message lasted five seconds, but Pilate couldn’t make out what was being said. After replaying it several times, he was able to make out two ominous words: “Dead end.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Pilate helped Taters unload trash from the boat, and Taters promptly invited him to dinner, an invitation to which Pilate demurred.
“Gotta get some more of that handcuff action, huh?” he said.
“Something like that,” Pilate said. “Thanks for letting me stay on the boat though.”
“No worries,” he said. “Just keep that .45 handy once you button up for the night.”
“Will do.”
Taters ambled into the night, eager for Jordan’s loving arms and a little TV before bed.
Pilate walked from the marina over to the Wharf Bar. He took a seat in a cheap plastic chair and ordered some conch chowder, water, and a shot of tequila. It was quiet, with only a couple dozen people finishing their dinner and enjoying the mellow sounds of an acoustic guitarist. Pilate wolfed down his food, then ordered another shot and a Corona back. He took out his cell and called Kate.
She answered tersely, “Hello, John.”
“Hi, babe,” he said.
“Where are you?”
“Key West,” he said. “Where else?”
“I’m not laughing. John, I’m worried about you,” she said.
“Why? What’s going on that’s worrying you?” He tried to sound nonchalant, and the tequila was helping him get through—albeit barely.
“John, I know you’ve got something whirling around that head of yours,” she said, “and whatever it is, it isn’t good. I think I’m losing you.”
“Wait! Hold on just a minute, Kate. What the hell does that mean? Losing me?” He sat up in his chair.
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