by Kathy Brandt
A couple of sharks in the eight-foot category were swimming right around the boat and more were gathering around the wreck. Carmichael headed right toward a big reef shark and it immediately turned tail and swam away.
Okay, so maybe the Shark Shields did work, but perhaps it was Carmichael’s human countenance that sent the thing running. I wasn’t about to take any chances and I didn’t want the others to either.
I signaled that we needed to head to the wreck, which was only a dark shadow in the water. We could barely make out the logo on the tail, a palm tree with a setting sun. The plane had completely settled on the bottom now. I snapped off several dozen shots as we swam around the aircraft, close-ups of the engines, tail, wings. Everything seemed intact but then I know nothing about mechanics. I don’t even consider lifting the hood on my old Rambler.
The entire nose section was crushed in. No wonder neither of the pilots had survived. Hitting the water at the speed the plane had been falling out of the sky would have been like slamming into a brick wall at a hundred miles per hour. It seemed amazing that it hadn’t broken apart. The fuselage had accordioned all the way back to the first row, sending metal into the couple seated there.
Exterior photos taken, we swam back to the cabin door. Jimmy was in the lead. About the time he got to within fifteen feet of the opening, a flurry of sharks, clearly desperate to escape what had to be the electrical current admitted from his Shark Shield, found their way out of the aircraft and disappeared. Then one last shark darted through the door, a foot gripped between its teeth—a woman’s foot with a sandal strapped around the ankle, toenails glistening with red polish.
I could see the horror cross Carmichael’s face. Then Mason started upchucking in his regulator. Jimmy hung in there, maintaining his composure. We hovered for a few minutes, waiting for Mason to purge his regulator. I had to hand it to him. He took care it without a problem and signaled he was okay.
Finally, Jimmy and I swam into the gloom. He stayed out of the frame while I took wide-angle photos to capture the context—the entire layout of the plane and the location of the victims. Then I took close-ups of each row of seats, the interior walls and ceiling, and the cockpit.
When I’d finished photographing, Jimmy swam into the cabin with the body bags. They were designed with open mesh panels so that water would flow out as the bodies were brought to the surface. This would be the first time that Jimmy had encountered a body underwater. I’d tried to tell him what to expect, but words rarely painted a complete picture.
Jimmy had sloughed it off at the time, but the kid was way at the other end of the spectrum from emotional zombie. I worried about how he’d handle it.
The first guy was in pretty good shape. No open wounds to draw a flurry of predators. I was sure this was Simon’s father. In the seat pocket across the aisle, I could see an iPod I figured was Simon’s. I wondered what his father had been thinking with his son back in the bathroom and the plane going down.
He was about forty-five, wearing khakis and a plain blue short-sleeved shirt with a pocket protector that still held pens in place. Wire-rimmed glasses were propped on his nose, shattered now, the bows holding them tightly against his face. The guy exuded nerd. Nothing flashy about him and nothing about his appearance that said vacation. I wondered what had brought him and the kid down here.
I was guessing that he had followed directions and grabbed his ankles when the plane started down. I could never figure out why anyone thought that was a good idea. He’d clearly jammed the top of his head into the seat in front of him when the plane hit. His neck had snapped. There was a deep indentation in the seat in front of him where he’d hit.
Jimmy unbuckled the seat belt. We slipped the guy’s feet into the body bag and the rest of the body followed. We zipped it up, then we each took an end, swam to the door, and handed the body off to Carmichael and Mason.
That was the easy part. Next was the couple up at the bulkhead. It was not going to be pretty. I signaled Jimmy and we started forward. The sharks had done their work. The lower limbs were gone. The torsos were still complete, but other smaller, though no less ferocious, scavengers were at work—already a few fish were nibbling around the wounds. They scattered when we unbuckled what was left of the bodies.
Jimmy never flinched. We bagged them and hauled them out of the plane. Carmichael and Mason had already made it back down and took them to the surface. Finally, we pulled the captain out of his seat in the cockpit, got him zipped into a bag, and headed slowly through the turquoise water to the surface. Not far off I could see a coral head, home to a flourishing colony of life. Sea fans swayed in the gentle current, a couple of French angelfish darted around the rocks, and a sergeant major diligently guarded the purple circle of eggs that decorated a rock face.
Just yards from the wreckage was a separate world, one unconcerned with the human drama that had unfolded nearby. It made me feel stupid somehow. Such ridiculous activity. Such fools to be making a world where airplanes fell from the sky and where bodies were hauled from the sea.
Once up top, we inflated our buoyancy control devices, or BCs in diver’s shorthand. The hissing noise brought me back to reality. Carmichael and Mason were on board waiting to assist and pulled the last body into the boat. We swam to the ladder, removed our fins, threw them onto the transom, and climbed aboard.
The coroner had already arrived and was unzipping the first body bag that Carmichael and Mason had brought up. He’d do a quick examination before the effects of exposure to air took hold, though it was pretty apparent the guy had died from impact when the plane had slammed into the water.
“The guy’s neck is broken,” he said without emotion.
“Any ID?” I asked.
“Just a second let me check.” He reached around to the guy’s back pocket, pulled out a wallet, and handed it to me.
Inside I found a water-soaked driver’s license issued to Lawrence Redding. I pulled a plastic picture holder out of a side compartment and opened it to a smiling family photo of Redding and a petite, slightly overweight blond woman. Simon stood between them.
Chapter 5
Dunn and Stark were at the hospital by the time I got there. I told them that Simon’s father had been on the plane and that we’d pulled his body out. God knows why I thought I should be the one to tell the kid.
He was sitting up in bed fooling around with the TV remote when I went in. His face actually lit up when he saw me. This was not going to be easy. I figured I was about to crush his world.
“Hannah,” he said. “You came.”
“I told you I’d be here.”
“Yeah, but grown-ups tell you stuff like that all the time.”
What was that about? It sounded like the kid had been disappointed a lot in his short life.
“Hey, I always do what I say I’m going to do,” I said, sitting next to him on the bed. “Don’t forget it.”
“Did you find my dad?”
I hesitated, wishing I could tell him his dad was fine. Was there any right way to tell the kid his father was dead? If there was, I didn’t know it.
“Jeez, Simon. I’m so sorry,” I stammered. “Your dad didn’t make it.”
He sat there for a minute flipping madly through the channels, trying to hold it in. Then a tear slipped down his cheek and his face crumbled. I pulled him to me. He buried his head in my chest and sobbed, deep, racking sobs.
A couple of minutes later a nurse came in, checked Simon’s vitals, and handed him a sedative and a glass of water. He took it without question. She told me she’d be at the nurses’ station if I needed anything.
Soon Simon’s sobs turned to whimpers and he lay back on the pillow.
“How old are you, Simon?”
“Nine, but I’ll be ten next month.”
“Any brothers or sisters?”
“Naw, just me. My mom died in a car accident when I was six. It was just my dad and me,” he said, more tears sliding down his face.
“Were you on vacation down here?”
“It was kind of a vacation, but my dad, he’s always real busy with his job. He gives people money, has to check on them all the time.”
“What kind of people?” I asked. Now the kid had my interest. Checking up on people he gave money to could lead to all kinds of trouble. Though there was no reason to believe that the plane crash was anything but accidental, I could never let a weirdness pass without note. This was definitely a weirdness.
“Scientists, mostly, I guess. For their projects,” Simon replied.
“Who did he work for?”
“The Woods Foundation. He asked me to come with him down here with him. He said it would be like a father/son vacation, but we never did anything fun together except for our last day. We rented a motorboat. The rest of the time, all I did was follow him around while he worked.”
“Do you know who he had business with?”
“Some man who’s studying some trees.”
“Trees?” That didn’t sound too sinister.
“Yeah. You know, those mangroves that grow near the water,” he said. He was starting to drift, the drugs taking effect.
“Who should we contact for you, Simon?” I asked.
“I guess you should call my aunt. We never see her much. She and my dad don’t get along.”
“What about grandparents?”
“My grandma and grandpa were in the car with my mom and dad and me. There’s just my other grandma, but she’s in a nursing home. My dad and aunt are always arguing about her.”
He couldn’t keep his eyes open now.
“Okay, Simon. You get some sleep.”
“You know I’m not a baby,” he said.
“Of course you’re not. Why would I think that?”
“Well…” he hesitated.
“What is it?”
“Will you stay here just till I go to sleep?” he asked.
“Sure thing. And I’ll be back in the morning.”
“Promise?”
“I promise,” I said. He was asleep in five minutes.
God, I felt horrible. This kid, so slight under the covers, so alone. I sat stroking his head for another few minutes until I heard yelling out in the hall.
“Hey, keep it down out here for chrissake,” I said, stepping into the hall.
A heavyset guy with horned-rimmed glasses and a belly hanging over his belt was on Dunn’s case and was actually poking a finger in his chest.
“I would appreciate your keeping your hands to yourself,” Dunn said in his typically understated manner, one that the guy couldn’t ignore. He backed away but continued his tirade.
“I just saw my wife and I want an explanation for what happened out there today. She said that your people left her floating in the water out at that plane crash.”
“You want to tell me who you are, sir?” Dunn said.
“I’m Jack Westbrook. U.S. Senator John Quincy Westbrook,” he said, emphasizing the U.S. Senator part.
I stepped in. I hated it when someone from my country was an ass. “Look, Senator, Chief Dunn was not on the scene. I was.”
“So, why did you leave my wife in the water? She said it was teaming with sharks!”
“I made a snap evaluation of the situation. Your wife was safe. She was lucky to be one of the two people who got out of the plane before it went under the water. You have that movie star to thank. I wasn’t about to waste precious time pulling your wife into the police boat. There was a chance I could get the others out of the plane before they drowned. Do you really think I should have done otherwise?”
He blustered and flustered, muttering something about wanting a full investigation, until Dunn interceded.
“Why weren’t you on the plane with your wife?” he asked.
“I had plans to fly out later. I had to take care of some business and make sure my boat was secure,” he said. “I was down at the marina arguing with that SeaSail owner, O’Brien. I told him I wanted my boat hauled over to the hurricane hole for the rest of the hurricane season or I’d pull it out of his fleet. I rushed out to the airport when I heard the plane went down. They said that victims had been transported here.”
I bet he’d threatened every airline official at the airport in the process. The guy was obviously a blowhard who thought he deserved some sort of consideration the rest of the population didn’t.
“Was your wife traveling alone?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “Our sailing companions, the Rileys, were with her.” It was written all over his face. He hadn’t even inquired about them and he was embarrassed at the diplomatic snafu. He’d been too busy complaining to think about his friends.
I realized they were the couple in the front of the aircraft. The coroner had pulled a license out of the mangled pocket of the man. It had been issued to William Riley III.
“Are they around sixty? Woman blond, guy almost completely gray?” I asked.
“Yes. Are they here in the hospital?”
“I’m afraid they didn’t make it,” I said.
“What?” he said, shocked. “You just told me you left my wife floating in shark-infested water to save the people on that plane. Now you tell me you didn’t.”
“That’s exactly what I’m telling you,” I said. I was ready to take my turn poking him in the chest. Anticipating my reaction, Dunn took my arm and held me back.
“Look, Senator,” I said, taking a deep breath, “we saved some, we lost some. Unfortunately, the Rileys died on impact.”
“Jeezus, you know who they were? His family is one of the oldest and wealthiest on the East Coast—right up there with the Rockefellers. He heads a Fortune Five Hundred company. What do you mean, dead?”
“Sorry,” I said. “I wasn’t considering net worth when I was down there rescuing people.” What an ass. I’d pissed him off, though.
“Don’t speak to me in that manner, miss.”
“It’s ‘Detective,’” I said. “Detective Hannah Sampson.”
Dunn stepped in before things escalated. “We’d like you to identify the bodies,” he said. “We’ll need to start notifying next of kin.”
“Hell, I can do that. Where are they?”
“They should already be in the morgue downstairs. Let me warn you though. There was substantial injury to their lower torsos,” Dunn said.
“Christ, I’ve seen dead people before. Let’s go,” he said, not a speck of regret or sorrow at the loss of his friends visible in his expression. In fact, he looked smug and somehow satisfied. I wondered how much this guy really cared about the Rileys. Maybe he was glad that they were dead. Maybe had something to gain. It was another item for my weirdness list.
“Detective Sampson will take you down there,” Dunn said.
I was about to object, but then I decided I might learn something more about his relationship to the Rileys and the crash by watching him.
“Let’s go.”
We waited for the elevator in dead silence, me still angry, he just oblivious. The antagonistic exchange we’d had in the hallway was probably just run of the mill for him, the kind of confrontation he engaged in every day in Washington before they all went out to one of those three-martini lunches. I know I’m a bit hostile. I just don’t like politicians.
Finally the elevator arrived and we stepped in. I pushed the button for the basement and we stood side by side, staring at our reflections in the elevator door. I looked less than official. I’d showered quickly at the marina after the dive and pulled on a pair of shorts, an orange tank top, and an old pair of Birkenstocks that were in my duffel bag. Sunglasses dangled from a rope around my neck.
My dark hair was sun-streaked and wild. I was deeply tanned in spite of the fact that I was keeping several sunscreen companies in business. There wasn’t much to be done about it. By the time I turned fifty, I’d look like a raisin. Even in the reflection in the elevator door I could tell that my dark eyes were haunted by today’s dead.
We
stbrook was giving me the once-over though he was trying not to be obvious. I was doing the same—sizing him up. He was close to six-two and overweight by about forty pounds. He exuded confidence and money. He too was wearing shorts but with a white golf shirt. Unlike mine, his shorts were ironed and perfectly creased. His white hair was coifed, his nails manicured, and he was deeply tanned. His cologne was overpowering in the confined space.
“So, how long have you been with the police department down here?” he asked, breaking the silence.
“Almost two years now.” I’d quit my job in Denver Homicide to take the position as a detective and the only underwater investigator for what I thought would be the quiet Tortola PD. Even in paradise though, there was trouble.
“You’re American. This is an odd place to end up. Seems like an end-of-the-road kind of place.”
“You could look at it that way. I don’t.”
“You’d be able to make a name for yourself in the States. There can’t be too many experts in underwater investigation around, especially any as good-looking as you are.”
I could not believe the man who had accused me of leaving his wife as shark bait was now flirting. “I’m happy just where I am,” I said.
“Sorry if I was rude upstairs. Can I make it up to you? Buy you dinner?”
“Maybe when your wife is up to it,” I said. There was no way I’d be caught alone in a restaurant with this guy. He knew what I was saying and changed the subject.
“What was it like down there in that airplane? It must have been some intense diving.”
“Yeah.” I knew he wanted the gory details, but I wasn’t about to elaborate.
“Did you see anything that makes you think this wasn’t an accident?” he asked.
“Nope, but we’ll be diving out there again in the morning.”
“More than likely it was an equipment failure. One thing’s for sure,” he said, a note of derision in his manner. “No terrorist would bother to sabotage one of these island puddle jumpers. Not much of a political statement.”