Dangerous Waters

by Toni Anderson

  He checked his dive computer.

  Time to go. He tapped Holly on the shoulder after she took another set of photographs of the weight belt, but she shrugged him away. He did it again and she batted his hand. Pissed now, he stuck his hand in her face, giving her the thumbs-up signal. Her body tensed and she blew out a plethora of bubbles. She flashed him back the same sign.

  He waited for her at the hatch. It felt wrong to leave the dead guy dangling in the breeze, so to speak. Holly reached his side, and he indicated she should lead the way out through the stairwell. They both paused, watching a school of small fish feed on a long pink blob. It took a moment to figure out the blob was an eyeball. A reflex gag hit him, but he choked it down. Holly’s face was ashen in the beam of his dive light, but at least she hadn’t thrown up. He dug in his bag for a sample jar and captured the object, putting the exact nature of the thing out of his head. That was how he coped. That was how he’d learned to do the things that scared the shit out of him. He slipped the jar into a bag, then tilted his head to get her to swim out ahead of him. He followed her slender form through the dark tunnel.

  When they exited the ship, four black-suited divers were waiting for them. They’d just started photographing the ship’s exterior. Finn used hand signals to ask one guy to take Holly to the surface. She shook her head vigorously. Trying to defy him.

  He dug for the eyeball jar, knowing there was a chain-of-evidence thing she needed to follow. She took it with a blast of air bubbles. He pointed to her air gauges, which were approaching the red zone, and repeated the thumbs-up gesture, then indicated on his computer screen how long and where she would need to decompress. Her expression was livid, but he ignored it. Keeping her alive for the duration of this dive was his responsibility, and he knew how to do his job.

  With another huff of air, Holly finally followed the cop up the anchor line. Finn turned back to the vessel. He checked his air and pointed to the other men to follow him. Police divers were professional and experienced, and he didn’t worry about telling them what to do. He’d show them where the body was and leave. This was the very last time he was ever going into the bowels of this cursed wreck.

  CHAPTER 2

  Holly broke the surface and nodded thanks to her escort, torn between gratitude to Finn Carver for taking her down and resentment he’d made her surface so quickly. The diver from the Underwater Recovery Team slid back into the water and disappeared from sight. When she looked up, she found eight pairs of eyes glued to her, a group of officers hanging over the side of the Coast Guard ship, including one pair she’d hoped never to see again—Staff Sgt. Jimmy Furlong.

  Shit. Inside, her heart squeezed into a tight little ball, but outwardly she smiled and lifted her hand in greeting, mentally tallying her favorite swear words, and swam to the small boat Carver had brought them out on. She climbed on board and carefully disposed of her equipment, stacking it the way Carver had earlier.

  Jimmy Furlong. Of all the twists. In this part of Canada, murders were investigated by a group of dedicated police officers led by a primary investigator—her—but overseen by a team commander. She’d transferred to the major crime unit on the island when she’d heard Furlong was moving to the integrated crime unit in Surrey, and yet here he was. When resources were stretched, they sometimes pulled personnel in from other sections. She had to be the unluckiest woman alive. The realization left a bitter taste in her mouth.

  Her heartbeat slowly settled. She could get through this.

  The victim was more important than her own fractured pride. She’d pushed her luck with Carver in the wreck. He’d been pissed with her at the end, but she’d got what she needed and neither of them had died, even though she’d almost swallowed her tongue when that damned eyeball had bobbed their way. Human eyeballs shrank in seawater. The prof she’d been working with at Simon Fraser University was going to be very interested in the fact that it had come loose.

  She found the zip of her suit across the back of her shoulders and tugged to get it undone. Pulling her way out of the neck seal was like trying to pry a turtle out of its shell, but eventually the neoprene stretched over her head. She swore as it ripped out a handful of hair.

  A small inflatable sped toward her. Staff Sergeant Furlong was driving, and it was just moments before he pulled up beside the marine lab’s boat.

  “So do we have a homicide or not?” he yelled over the wake and engine noise.

  “Knife to the heart suggests we do, sir.” She schooled her features to give nothing away. “If you give me five minutes, I’ll get dressed and bring everyone up to speed.”

  There was a thick pause. “How are you, Holly? I heard you got injured during your last assignment.”

  “It was just a scratch. I’m fine, sir.” She picked up a towel and scrubbed at her hair. “How’s Penny and the baby?” she asked brightly.

  “They’re great.” His teeth gleamed as his eyes ran over her in a familiar way. Nausea swirled in her belly. “You got here fast.”

  “I was in the right place at the right time. Dad and I decided to take our yearly vacation before I started the new job in Victoria. We were learning to scuba dive near Tofino. We cut the trip short when I heard about the case.” She locked her teeth together.

  His lips compressed. “This is your first case as primary, correct?”

  “Yes, sir.” No pressure. She plucked at her sopping, bedraggled hair. “I need to get dry before I get too cold.” She picked up the evidence jar and pressed it into his hand, taking care not to connect with any skin. “Meet the victim. Part of him, anyway.”

  “I see.” A frown furrowed the skin of his tanned brow. “Is this going to be a problem—us?”

  She laughed and was pleased at how it came out, all tinkling and light rather than rabid and nasty. “There is no ‘us,’ so there’s no problem, sir.”

  He nodded, and a rush of water at the end of the boat made her flinch. Finn Carver hauled himself on board the dive platform and started peeling off gear. How long had he been there? What had he heard?

  Staff Sergeant Furlong gave her a nod. “I’ll see you on the Coast Guard vessel in thirty minutes. They’ve offered us space to begin our preliminary work.”

  She stood straight. “Yes, sir,” she clipped out. And then he was gone.

  Silence hung in the air. The blue sky and gentle lapping of water against the hull seemed inappropriate for her mood, but a hurricane wouldn’t be good either. “Thank you for taking me down today, Mr. Carver. I can appreciate why you weren’t so keen.”

  A sexy dimple appeared in his cheek as he casually stripped down to board shorts. “Call me Finn.”

  “Finn.” She must have been distracted earlier because she hadn’t noticed the sheer quality of muscle packed into that body. This was a man in peak physical condition, with superb observational skills. He caught her looking.

  “Checking me for weapons?” He raised one Viking brow.

  She was a little unsettled by the thought of frisking him in any capacity, especially so soon after talking to Jimmy forgot-to-mention-I’m-married Furlong. “Just keeping an eye on you, Mr. Carver.” She peeled off the wet neoprene and realized she stank. She sat there bedraggled and shivering and figured there were days when the deck was heavily stacked against being a woman.

  “There’s a shower downstairs. Go grab one before you have to report in.”

  Considerate men were the most dangerous. Jimmy Furlong had been a hell of a considerate guy, all the way to the bedroom. And it must have given him a goddamn heart attack when he’d found out who her father was.

  She pulled her wet hair off her forehead. “You need to come over there too. I need to take an official statement.”

  He grunted. “I need to get back to work, Sergeant Rudd. Come by the marine station when you’re done here. You can interview me and my dive buddy from last night at the same time.” He looked over toward the two boats guarding the scene. “I’ll even tell the cook to put on a big pot of
stew in case your guys get hungry. Students can eat it tomorrow if you don’t.”

  Her brows hitched in surprise. People rarely defied her, but this plan made sense. She grabbed her bag and started down the steps.

  “Guys like that always cheat. You know that, right?”

  She froze.

  “You should pity his wife.” He’d spotted the ring Jimmy Furlong hadn’t been wearing the week they’d met during a FBI Academy training session.

  Her fingers curled tight around the banister. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I hope you nailed his balls to the wall when you figured it out.”

  She stood frozen on that top step as if it were a hundred-foot drop beneath her. She looked over her shoulder, but she kept her mouth shut tight. A hint of sympathy twisted his lips, but she didn’t want pity. She’d rather get a punch in the face. She nodded and headed for the shower.

  She’d been played for a fool, and it had been a hell of a lesson. In truth, she was grateful to Staff Sgt. Jimmy Furlong. He’d taught her one of the most important lessons in life. Trust no one, not even her fellow cops.

  Finn tied up the boat. His jaw ached because it had been clenched ever since he’d gotten a look at the knife sticking out of the dead man’s chest. He needed to refill cylinders, check seals, and hose down the equipment to prevent salt damage. He needed to pack up the equipment they’d used on the dive last night so the cops could test it for god knew what. To log in, check nothing important had happened in the last few hours, and make sure everything was ready for tomorrow’s rescheduled dives. As he’d told Holly, he had work to do.

  A black cormorant sat in judgment on the end of the pier. Gulls were curiously absent.

  The smell of brine washed through the air, a constant in this damp, temperate region. His feet pounded the wooden boards as he scanned the surroundings. It was quiet. No one was around. They were running two courses, but both had switched to lectures and labs today as opposed to scheduled fieldwork. Seeing no one, he went inside the dive shed and straight to Thom’s locker. He checked rapidly through his stuff. His hand lingered on the brand-new dive knife on the top shelf of the locker. Fuck.

  “Finn, you in here?”

  He turned slowly.

  Mike Toben, whose family owned the hardware store, stepped through the open doorway, eyes sharp. “Got the RCMP cruiser outside. Thought I might leave the keys with you?” The cops kept a vehicle stored in town in case the West Coast Marine Service needed to do land-based inquiries. The Tobens rented them storage space in their warehouse.

  Mike reached up above the desk that held a whiteboard full of the week’s dive schedules. There was a rack of keys on the wall.

  “Leave ’em behind the sun visor.”

  Mike’s eyebrows climbed halfway up his forehead as he held on to the keys. “How come? What’s going on?”

  “I’m going to start locking the outside door.”

  “Why? Something been stolen?” Unlike Finn, Mike had never left the area. They had beers occasionally, but that was as far as it went.

  Finn wasn’t about to confide in the guy. “We’ve got a lot of expensive equipment here. I don’t want it walking.” He herded Mike outside.

  The younger man eyed him narrowly. “Something’s going on. What is it?”

  Finn strode down to the boat and started hauling equipment up to the shed.

  “Need a hand?” Mike offered.

  Finn stared unsmiling at the other guy. He didn’t want to talk to anyone right now. “I can manage.”

  On cue, a car horn honked, and Mike turned to wave at his dad, who was waiting for him at the top of the hill.

  “See you at O’Malley’s later?”

  “Sure.” Finn turned on the hose and started washing down the dry suits. He wasn’t going anywhere near O’Malley’s or any other damn place where he’d be interrogated by the natives. He needed to figure out how Thom’s old dive knife had ended up hilt deep in the body of that diver. And he needed to make sure no one else knew about it.

  “Any clues as to the identity of our vic?”

  Holly shook her head as she handed her underwater camera over to Cpl. Steffie Billings, the exhibit custodian for the command group that had been set up to investigate this murder. She’d worked with Steffie in Chilliwack years ago, and they’d been close friends ever since. She was looking forward to working with the no-nonsense blonde again. “Download these, will you? There’s a timestamp on them. You got the eyeball?”

  “I did.” Steffie gave her an arch look over her spectacles. “Thank you for that.”

  Holly grinned. “Sorry. We couldn’t exactly leave it floating around being nibbled on by baitfish—”

  “Too much information.” Steffie held up her hand. “I’ll get to see all the gory details during the postmortem, so I really don’t need to hear about it now.” She gave a shudder. “Floaters are always the worst. Well, except for children.” She stopped talking for a moment and they both paused. Certain aspects of their job made grim look like sunshine. The only thing that made it worthwhile was incarcerating bad guys so they didn’t hurt anyone again.

  “I passed the eyeball on to the guys from forensic identification.” She pointed to one side of the room where three IFIS guys were unpacking an array of machines and tubes. One had the sample jar next to some monitor. “They drove in from Port Alberni. Said the road’s a bitch.”

  Holly’s lips tightened. Nothing she could do about the road or the location, but it made everything more complicated. Most officers had flown in from Victoria via Comox. She hadn’t even made it into headquarters to start her new job. But she relished the chance to prove herself, and this was exactly the sort of case to do it.

  “You gonna be OK with you-know-who?” Steffie asked.

  Steffie was one of two friends Holly had confided in about her affair with the rat bastard. Right now she was wishing she’d kept her mouth shut. “Everything will be fine.” She lowered her voice. “Especially when he goes home and leaves us to do our jobs.”

  The sheer number of personnel was making it difficult to move around the ship. Most would leave as soon as the body and evidence were recovered.

  On deck they had a coroner from the BC Coroners Service, plus two of his assistants. None of them were divers, so they were in deep discussion with members of the Underwater Recovery Team, who hung over the rail, waiting for their teammates to surface. She’d spoken to the pathologist, given him details about the condition of the body, substrate, temperature, and depth. Passed on the name of the prof at the university who might be willing to consult on the case. Now they just had to raise the body. The main fear was if the abdominal gases hadn’t already dissipated, they might expand and…well, it wouldn’t be pretty.

  There were three officers from the Nadon, one of the boats that acted as mobile police cruisers along this coast, operated by the West Coast Marine Service. Coast Guard people wandered about, but none in what she was thinking of as the incident room. The command group who’d be investigating the crime consisted of herself, Steffie Billings, four other investigators from the major crimes unit, plus their team commander.

  She squared her shoulders. She could do this.

  The job of team commander was more manager than investigator, in charge of staffing levels, overtime, special expenditures, etc. Cases like this were hardest on the budget, which put everyone under added duress. Furlong also liaised with head honchos, and with a bit of luck, he’d head back to the mainland just as soon as the body was recovered.

  Her braided hair made a wet line down the center of her pale gray shirt, a damp sliver of discomfort. Furlong looked over some heads and caught her eye. She made herself join the group as he introduced her. “Sergeant Holly Rudd is the primary investigator. Do you know everyone, Holly?”

  She shifted from a formal stance into casual.

  “I recognize a couple of faces.” She smiled at Jeff Winslow, who she’d graduated with from basi
c training many years before.

  “Corporals Ray Malone, Freddy Chastain, and Rachel Messenger.” Staff Sergeant Furlong pointed out each individual, and she nodded hello. The rank structure was left over from the police force’s origins as a paramilitary group back in the late-nineteenth century. Steffie waved them over. She’d set up a large computer screen that showed a picture of the outline of the wreck.

  “Cool,” said Chastain.

  “Know anything about the shipwreck?” asked Furlong.

  “Nothing as yet. We need to talk to the Coast Guard and discuss the potential for raising the ship—”

  “Hold on now.” Furlong put both hands in the air. “That’s a pretty serious operation. Any reason to think lifting it out of the water will aid the investigation?”

  “Pretty hard to gather all the evidence when the thing is sitting at thirty meters.”

  “But you’re going to lose most of the evidence as the water drains.” He shook his head. “Talk to the Coast Guard, but don’t proceed until you’ve talked it through with me. I’m not convinced it’ll give us anything useful.”

  True, and she didn’t want to waste time sifting through centuries of debris, but being shot down by the boss was never a thrill.

  “Go on,” she said to Steffie, who flipped to the next image. Finn Carver was in the shot. An enigma and someone who intrigued her on several levels. Definitely someone to avoid unless it was directly related to the investigation.

  “What we know so far is two divers were inside that wreck last night and found more than they bargained for. This guy is Finn Carver. He’s dive master at the Bamfield Marine Science Center. The other guy, I haven’t met yet. He’s the director of the marine lab. I’m going to interview them as soon as the body is recovered.”

  “Any clue as to the identity of the victim?” asked Furlong again.

  Steffie clicked, and the gruesome image of a corpse hanging in the water greeted them. Faces were pulled. Holly was grateful she hadn’t eaten. “He’s not wearing a weight belt or air tanks,” she said. His mask was askew, the lack of one eye obscured by shadows.