Dark Waters (The Jeff Resnick Mysteries)

by Bartlett, L. L.

  Richard let out a long breath. “He neglected to ask me.”

  “Are you sure they didn’t just leave without you?”

  “I had the life jackets. And neither of them know what they’re doing when it comes to boats — and I should know, because I have no idea, either.”

  The two men looked at each other for a long moment before Richard spoke again. “My friend seems to think the police would pay greater attention if the call to report the theft came from you. The young man driving the boat did not have my permission to take it, and I’m afraid he may have obtained the keys by assaulting my brother.”

  Frank’s expression darkened. “I’d be glad to talk to the police — but I think it should be you who reports it.”

  “Whose jurisdiction is it?”

  “Call 911 and I’m sure they’ll figure it out.”

  Richard nodded, picked up the receiver, and punched in 911. He listened to the dispatcher for a moment and then said, “I’d like to report a stolen boat.”

  I’m sure if I’d tossed out even a tenth of the trash from my car that we tossed over the side of Easy Breezin’ that I’d have been arrested in a heartbeat, but nobody seemed to notice as we jettisoned more and more of the debris that had once been the interior of Richard’s beautiful boat. All that infrastructure gone, and still we hadn’t come across the diamonds Bobby sought.

  Da-Marr had been stationed at the helm, trying to keep the boat heading in a forward position in the middle of the river, but it swerved with the waves, rolling and turning, and I was sure I wasn’t the only one who felt vaguely nauseous.

  We’d dumped all the detritus from the salon and the staterooms without finding anything that resembled hidden treasure and Bobby’s temper was growing shorter by the minute.

  “Do you even know what uncut diamonds look like?” I asked him.

  “Uncut? What does that mean?”

  Holy crap. The kid was clueless. Then again, I’d been just as uneducated on the subject only a few hours before.

  “I haven’t actually seen any, but I was told they don’t look like the rocks in a ring. They can look like pebbles — from clear, to yellow, to gray lumps of stone.”

  “Are you shitting me?” he asked angrily.

  “No.”

  Bobby’s expression darkened with anger. “My God, did we toss anything away that looked like that?”

  “I don’t know what you guys tossed overboard before this afternoon. Do you even remember?”

  “Shit! That fuckhead Da-Marr might have thrown them away in the marina’s Dumpster or over the side. We were looking for sparkling stones.”

  “Google can be your best friend.”

  “And how the hell was I supposed to know Jack might have uncut stones?” Bobby demanded angrily.

  “You made assumptions. You both made assumptions without any basis in fact. Not smart. Not smart at all.”

  Bobby’s lip curled. “Do you want me to kill you where you stand?”

  Sophie’s warning came back to me. Well, she’d said it would seem that the innocent was dangerous. Yeah, approaching the boat had seemed innocent, so I guess she’d been right about that. But she’d been so vague about everything else. One thing was for sure, being inside the boat was too dangerous. I needed to get back out on the back of the boat in the open air if things were to tip in my favor. Oddly enough, Bobby hadn’t seemed too interested in searching the engine room, but if I was going to hide something, it might be there, where it was hard to maneuver and with lots of potential hiding places. Had I gotten that feeling from touching Jack Morrow’s stuff, or from what was left of him on the boat?

  The thing was, Morrow had probably spent the most time either in the master stateroom’s bed, or holding the boat’s steering wheel, which I’d never had a chance to touch. Bobby had no idea that I could connect with the living — and the dead — via that sense, and I wasn’t about to tell him, either. And I was pretty sure that if I was going to find those diamonds, I would have to get to the bridge deck and wrap my fingers around the steering wheel.

  “We should look up top,” I said, keeping my voice even. “If Jack had to make a fast escape, he’d have hidden the stones where they’d be easily accessible.”

  Bobby eyed me coldly. “Why are you cooperating?”

  “Because I don’t want you to kill me.”

  He laughed. “I thought we already settled that.”

  I swallowed.

  Bobby’s lip curled. “Da-Marr’s right. You are a pussy.”

  I said nothing.

  He nodded toward the salon. “Get outside.”

  I hobbled onto the outside deck feeling Bobby’s gaze burning my back as I went.

  It had started to rain — big, cold wet drops that immediately soaked into my denim jacket. The waves were bigger now, too. I looked around at both shores, but didn’t have a clue how far we’d gone along the east side of the island — or how much farther it would be until the point of no return.

  It was a struggle to get up the stairs to the bridge deck. What kind of damage had Bobby inflicted on my knee? A torn tendon or ligament? Crushed cartilage? If I wasn’t going to get off this boat alive, did it even matter?

  Da-Marr still sat in the driver’s seat and looked up from the controls. “This bitch is hard to drive without the engines.”

  “Pussy here thinks the diamonds might be up here. Have you had a chance to look?” Bobby asked.

  “I’ve been trying to steer this sucker while you guys have been diddling around downstairs. And if you’re up here, it means you ain’t found jack shit.”

  Bobby glared at me. “Well, what are you waiting for? Start looking.”

  I turned to the left and opened the small fridge. Of course, there was nothing in it. It had been switched off, so there was no ice in the icemaker, either, which would have been a perfect place to hide cut diamonds — but I was pretty sure we were looking for them in their natural state.

  “The stones might be hidden in back. Take it out of there,” Bobby ordered.

  I tried to pry the fridge from its cabinet, but it was wedged in tight. I yanked and yanked, and it finally budged, flying forward, sending me crashing onto the deck. Bobby laughed at me and it took all my self-control not to punch him in the knee. Of course there was nothing hidden in the gaping hole in the cabinet.

  There wasn’t enough room for the three of us and the fridge. “It’s getting tight in here,” I said.

  Bobby grabbed the fridge and wrestled it to the top of the stairs, then gave it a shove that sent it toppling end over end, making one hell of a racket. He looked over at me. “Get down there and throw it over the side.”

  “I don’t think I can lift it — not with this bum knee.”

  “Da-Marr, go toss it overboard.”

  “You toss it,” Da-Marr challenged.

  “Hey, I gave you an order.”

  “I ain’t gonna get ruptured throwing that hunk a metal around. I got my manhood to protect.”

  “Give me a break,” Bobby groused.

  I scooted over to open the cabinet under the wet bar and found a sponge, some liquid hand soap, and nothing else. I closed the doors. “Why don’t you help Bobby toss that fridge in the drink?” I said to Da-Marr.

  “I don’t take orders from you,” he said, and I wasn’t sure if he was bluffing.

  “Why do you want him to go? Is it because you know where the diamonds are and you think you can get them for yourself?” Bobby asked.

  I let out a breath, unwilling to answer.

  Bobby eyed the boat’s controls. “We should take this whole console apart.”

  Da-Marr turned on him. “Are you crazy? I’m having a hard enough time keeping us goin’ straight. We let the river take this baby and she’ll be spinning or floating backwards, and ain’t that gonna attract a lot of attention?”

  “Well what you do you suggest?” Bobby challenged Da-Marr.

  Da-Marr glanced over at me. “Maybe he’s right. Maybe
I ought to help you toss the fridge in the river. I already looked around the bridge. There ain’t no secret hiding places. Everything’s made of molded plastic.”

  “Fiberglass,” Bobby corrected him.

  Da-Marr’s eyes blazed. “I’m gettin’ sick of you insinuating I ain’t got no education.”

  “Talking like that, you’ve proved it.”

  “I’m going to college in January,” Da-Marr said, his voice almost a growl.

  “Wanna bet?” Bobby said and laughed.

  “Say somethin’ else,” Da-Marr threatened and straightened to his full six-foot plus height.

  Bobby seemed to realize that he might have pushed his partner in crime too far. He backed down. “Come on; help me toss that fridge over the side.”

  Da-Marr glared at him, and Bobby turned for the stairs, hurrying down them. “Try to keep the boat going straight,” Da-Marr told me without rancor.

  I nodded, and moved to stand behind the steering wheel as Da-Marr went down the steps.

  Rain spattered the windshield that overlooked the bow and the river before us. I wrapped my fingers around the wheel. Da-Marr had been right; without power to the rudder — or whatever it was that steered the forty-six foot boat, it was damned hard to keep it going in a straight line. But I had something else to do besides steer the boat. I closed my eyes and tightened my grip, concentrating, straining to sense Jack Morrow, to absorb the secret he’d died to protect.

  A lot of people had stood in my place — more than Da-Marr, more than Richard. How many people had climbed all over the boat before the auction? How many cops and feds had searched it, albeit not with the destructive intensity Bobby and Da-Marr had given the job. Mostly men, but a few women, had held onto the steering wheel, wondering what it would feel like to cruise along the river at twenty knots on a gorgeous sunny day, the wind buffeting them while the diesel engines thrummed down below.

  I had to get past all that crap. Somehow, I had to wade through others’ excitement, trepidation, and discouragement.

  I thought about the Rolex.

  I thought about the Lexus’s steering wheel, and the sensations I’d felt.

  I opened my eyes. It wasn’t working.

  Maybe I was going about this the wrong way.

  I concentrated on what I’d seen — or thought I’d seen — while in Morrow’s office. The sparkling flashes of light. It didn’t make sense. Somehow, I knew the diamonds he’d hidden were uncut, so why had I seen the glint from polished cuts?

  I pondered that thought for a long moment.

  Morrow had bought the stones for cash. He’d seen them as an investment. Was the flash of light what he anticipated the stones would look like when cut and sold on the open market? Would he have known how to get the work done and how to unload the stones without drawing attention to himself?

  Then again, why not draw attention to himself? He’d been a successful businessman before his downfall. Why shouldn’t he have planned to sell the stones at a great profit — that’s what he’d been famous for; turning a little money into a lot. Of course, it had all been a sham, but perhaps at one point even he believed his own hype.

  It wasn’t an image that filled me — more a feeling of what I’d already surmised. The stones were in the engine room somewhere. Yeah, somewhere.

  “What the fuck?” Da-Marr yelled from below, his angry voice shattering my deliberation.

  I abandoned the wheel to look out through the zip-up plastic cover that enclosed the back end of the bridge deck to see Da-Marr and Bobby wrestling on the deck below. Cursing, I hurried to reach the steps, slick with rain, and nearly tumbled down to the deck below.

  “You’re crazy!” Da-Marr shouted.

  They were both on their feet. Da-Marr, clutching at his neck, while Bobby stood behind him with a piece of rope, pulling it taut.

  Too horrified to move, it took the sounds of Da-Marr coughing and choking to finally penetrate the fog around my mind before I pounced on Bobby.

  I launched at the bastard. “Get your hands off him!”

  Bobby hadn’t expected me to help Da-Marr. Startled, he fell to one side, and in that instant Da-Marr turned, knocking Bobby off-balance. He stumbled backward and fell over the back end of the boat.

  Except for the sound of the wind and the river, all was quiet.

  Still clutching his throat, Da-Marr stared at me, and then it seemed like we both slogged through cement to reach the rail. I searched the choppy water, but couldn’t see any sign of Bobby. I turned to face Da-Marr.

  “What happened?”

  The poor kid was actually shaking. “I don’t know. We picked up the fridge and tossed it over the side and I turned to watch it sink, and then the next thing I knew the guy came at me with a rope. He tried to kill me!” he cried incredulously.

  I looked back to the water and saw Bobby’s head bobbing in the water. It had only been seconds, but already we had traveled too far away to save him — we had nothing to toss him — not a rope, not a life jacket — nothing. Bobby had destroyed or gotten rid of every piece of safety equipment on the boat.

  “Oh, man,” Da-Marr breathed, “what an asshole.” Then he turned to me, his face still filled with fear. “Look ahead.”

  I craned my neck to look around the starboard side. Up ahead were the supports for the Grand Island Bridge.

  “Holy shit,” I mouthed.

  “What the fuck we gonna do now?” De-Marr demanded.

  “We’ve got a couple of options. First, we could jump overboard — ”

  “I told you — I can’t swim,” he shouted.

  “Or we could try to crash the boat into the supports. It may or may not sink.”

  “Tell me you’ve got some kinda better idea than that,” he said on the verge of panic.

  “Sorry. If only we had some fuel in the tank, we could head back to the marina.”

  “Fuel? Hey, we still got something.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I turned the motor off when I figured Bobby was a crazy ass lunatic.”

  “But I saw the fuel indicator. It was on empty.”

  Da-Marr smiled. “Hey, when I drive my dad’s car the indicator says empty but I can always get a couple of miles out of it before it runs dry.”

  “You better hope you’re right about this sucker.”

  “What about those diamonds?” he asked.

  “What about them?” I asked.

  “You know where they are.”

  Should I be honest with the kid? Our lives were on the line — maybe I should.

  “I think so.”

  “Then go get ’em.”

  “And what do we do with them? You know we can’t keep them. A lot of people lost their life savings and deserve to get even a nickel on the dollar.”

  Da-Marr frowned. “Shit, I guess I knew I was never gonna see a penny from them.”

  “Just so we’re clear on that,” I said, and studied his eyes. I wasn’t at all sure I could trust him on that.

  “Sure,” he said almost casually, and I wondered if I might be the next thing tossed overboard.

  “I think they’re in the engine room. I’ll have a look. You see if you can get the engines to come back online. We might be able to save ourselves yet.”

  Da-Marr nodded. Not a second later, he pivoted and headed up the stairs to the bridge deck, and I ducked into the salon and headed for the hatch to the engine room.

  Thank God, we still had battery power, because I knew there were no flashlights aboard. Once inside the cramped space that housed the engines, I had to shuffle around using my good knee and elbows to scramble across the cramped space. Until that moment, I wouldn’t have thought I was claustrophobic, but inching my way toward the front of the engine room made me long for the cold fresh air above. Da-Marr hadn’t managed to start the twin car engines, but I could hear clicks and other noises as he tried to coax the fuel-starved motors back to life.

  It was obvious that Bobby had already been do
wn here and searched. The covers were off the various modules and the main battery unit that that was big enough to power a house in an electrical outage.

  I looked around me and had no clue where to start my search. And unless Da-Marr got those engines started, I only had minutes to do it.

  Closing my eyes, I opened my mind and hoped whatever link I’d forged with the late Jack Morrow would lead me to the diamonds. But as I waited for inspiration to hit, I suddenly wondered why I gave a flying fig about the damn stones. They wouldn’t benefit me. They wouldn’t benefit anyone I knew. The people who’d lost their money by trusting Morrow were probably all greedy bastards who deserved to lose their cash. But not their futures. The mugger who’d cracked me over the head with a baseball bat deserved the worst in life. I guess I’d wished that on Da-Marr, too, just because he reminded me of the bastard who’d ruined my life. Well, maybe not ruined — but had changed it in ways that could never be recovered. And Da-Marr wasn’t entirely innocent, either.

  I shook those thoughts away. Diamonds, idiot, diamonds.

  Opening my eyes, my gaze focused on a small red fire extinguisher clamped to the room’s silver-backed insulation. If there were a fire, it would be totally inadequate to douse all but the smallest of flames.

  I can’t say why, but something about it called to me. My elbows scraped against the fabric of my denim jacket as I pulled myself through the narrow well between the twin engines. Unclamping the extinguisher from the wall, I noticed how light it felt — as though it was empty. I examined it from all angles but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Why would Morrow have left an empty fire extinguisher in his boat? It didn’t make sense.

  I was about to replace the bottle when I noticed a slight ripple in the insulation. I peered closer. Not a ripple — a cut. I poked at it, but the imperfection appeared to have been mended. I ran a fingernail around the edges of it, hoping to poke through the thin silver skin, but it was tougher than it looked. I patted the insulation and felt a slight bulge. The beginnings of a shit-eating grin tugged at my mouth.

  Resting the bulk of my weight on my left forearm, I reached up and fumbled with the insulation where it met the room’s low ceiling until I found a breach, then I ripped it downward and out popped a bundle wrapped in a soft purple cloth bag — the kind that used to come with a bottle of Crown Royal. I opened the gold drawstring and dumped out a jeweler’s chamois, unfolded the cloth and found pay dirt — a handful of gray and yellow hunks of stone.