by Rene Fomby
“Right.” Casey’s demeanor seemed to change slightly as he mentally peered back into his somewhat distant past. “Okay, so it was our senior season at Southlake. We’d been dominant for quite some time in Texas football, but the programs in Austin and Katy had caught up with us, and suddenly all our past success was becoming like ancient history, you know? We had Billie, of course, and he was a real fireplug of a runner, cutting through and around and under any defenses we faced, virtually unchecked. During seven-on-sevens, though, during the summer football competitions, our quarterback and wide receivers had lit up the country, and all of the sports writers were saying we had a good shot at grabbing the biggest prize in the state. Brett, our quarterback, he was the best of the best, at the very top of all of the national player rankings, and everyone had him pegged to wind up at either Alabama or Texas. Top national program or local favorite, take your pick.”
“So what happened?” Espinosa asked, furiously scribbling into a small notebook, trying to keep up.
“Yeah, well, the football gods can be mighty fickle at times, it seems. Brett wound up tearing up his shoulder during training camp in August. A weird hit, not really all that bad, but he couldn’t throw for at least three months. That elevated Trevor to QB1.”
“Excuse me? QBwan?” Espinosa asked, his brow deeply furrowed as he struggled to keep up with the conversation.
“Quarterback One,” Casey explained. “Starting quarterback. He took over all of the first team reps for the practices.”
Espinosa was still confused. “Reps? What do you mean by that?”
“Repetitions,” Casey answered, with a ‘why can’t you understand plain English?’ kind of look. “He got to practice with the first team.”
“Okay.” Espinosa sighed slightly, clearly still struggling with the nuances of this foreign American sport. “So Trevor is now QB one. What happens next?”
“We go into fall, and Brett is still sidelined, so Trevor is our only remaining option at QB, or at least the only one who could play worth a damn. And then we have our first game, against Westlake of all teams, and Trevor lights them up. Or, to be more accurate, I light them up. Five TDs, almost 400 total yards, including my famous end-around sweeps. Should have made player of the week for our district, for sure, but somehow Trevor still managed to hog all the credit. By the time Brett was over his shoulder injury, Trevor owned the spot. Had it all boxed up with a pink damned ribbon on top.”
Gavin added that observation to his legal pad. “If I’m hearing you right, then, you’re still a little resentful of Trevor’s success. As is Brett.”
“No, it’s not like that,” Casey protested, rising up slightly in his seat, then sitting back down just as quickly. “Okay, maybe we were at first. Particularly Brett. I mean, before his injury, he had offers to all of the top tier schools. Alabama. OU. Texas. He was just holding out until the end to see which team had the best chance of vying for a national championship. But then it all fell apart for him. With Trevor eclipsing almost all of the passing records Brett had set just the year before, those offers faded away pretty quickly. By signing day all he had left was Texas State.”
Gavin arched an eyebrow. “Wow. From Alabama to the Bobcats? That must have really sucked pond water for him.”
Casey nodded, remembering. “Yeah, he took it pretty hard. Wound up starting at quarterback down there for most of three years, but it was like, the Bobcats, you know? No front line to protect him, no one to throw to that was worth a dog’s fart. So in the end his numbers wound up being good but not great.” Casey paused, hesitating. Gavin gave him a long look, and he continued, this time in a halting voice. “But… that wasn’t the worst thing…”
Espinosa had long given up hope of following all the insider talk about a sport he had never watched in a state he had visited only once in his life, but that last statement opened his eyes. “The worst thing? What do you mean by that?”
Casey leaned forward, pressing both hands into the polished marble table sprawling between them. “Because that’s when Trevor stole Brett’s girl. That’s when Trevor stole Katy.”
7
Casey
Gavin and Espinosa sat up like they’d both been slapped. “Wha—what do you mean, Trevor stole his girl?” Gavin spluttered. That rather significant fact had somehow escaped the attention of whomever had assembled the dossier he’d read on the way down. Raising the inevitable question of just what other key facts in the case had managed to slip through the net, as well.
Casey nodded, smiling broadly for the first time since they’d first come onboard. “Yeah, just that. You see, the summer between our sophomore and junior years, Brett met Katy at a Young Life camp in Dallas.” He caught Espinosa’s eye. “Young Life is a Christian youth group. Brett and Katy were both serving as camp counselors.”
“Got it,” Espinosa said, recording that fact in his little notebook.
“Anyway, they started out as just friends, from what I understand, but then things heated up fast. Especially after Brett became this big football stud, taking us within a last-second touchdown of winning the state title that year. That, plus winning a national championship in seven-on-seven the next summer. Practically overnight he became a real BMOC—”
“Big Man On Campus,” Gavin translated for Espinosa.
“Right,” Casey nodded. “So anyway, by late spring they were this big hot item. Brett even switched churches so he could spend more time with her. Wedding bells were definitely going to be ringing in the near future for the two of them, and I think her daddy was already putting some money aside for the bills.” He smiled again. “Like he ever needed to worry about money, you know?”
“Okay, so what happened to put the brakes on all that?” Espinosa asked impatiently. “How did Trevor manage to split them up?”
“I don’t really know for sure what happened between the two of them. I mean, guys don’t talk about shit like that, so I only caught some of the rumors. But from what I heard, after Brett’s injury, he had this big shoulder brace that kept him from driving for a while. His parents chauffeured him around to any place he really needed to be, to school and back, mostly, and to the doctors, but they didn’t have the time or the energy to haul him back and forth to Dallas to see Katy. Or even hang out with her at church. Especially since it wasn’t their church, you know? So the relationship started to become something of a one-way street, driving wise, and after a few months of fighting traffic all the way out to Southlake and back to see him, I guess she started to pull away a bit. To be honest, my sense of it all was, once Brett was no longer this bright shiny new toy, once Trevor started putting up numbers that made Brett’s junior year look pretty average by comparison, Katy just plain lost interest in him. It didn’t help that Brett had become kind of sour about the whole QB thing, about losing his slot to a guy we all considered rather mediocre, and it started to show in his overall attitude. Thinking back on it, I guess he must have fallen into some kind of depression, although we didn’t really recognize it as such way back then. We just thought he had a really bad case of the blues.”
Gavin leaned forward, his forehead now a study in lines. One comment in particular had him puzzled. “Mediocre? I thought you said Trevor was setting new state records for passing?”
Casey stopped to push his glasses higher up on his nose, still looking a little dazed as his thoughts hovered over events that had happened well over ten years earlier. “Yeah, but you gotta understand, Southlake had developed into a real football factory over the years, churning out players who had spent their entire lives preparing for their moment or two under the lights. Weight training, special diets, special doctors, the works. And our senior year, it all came together into one magical season. We had twelve starters off that team recruited into Power Five schools, and another five or six to lesser schools. Including Brett. And our front line was truly awesome, opening up holes for our backs to plow through almost untouched, and giving Trevor all the
time in the world to sit back in the pocket and pick the other team’s D apart. Plus, in all modesty, we had the best receiver corps in the state. So the winning came easy for Trevor.”
“Okay, I think I understand.” Gavin drew a circle around the word “jealousy” on his pad. “So Brett and Katy started drifting apart. How does Trevor fit into this whole love triangle thing?”
“To be honest, I’m not really sure. Again, not something we bros ever really talked about. But from the outside looking in, it seems Katy just found an opportunity to upgrade, is all. I mean, look at them, Trevor and Brett. Brett’s a really nice guy and all, and damned funny to boot, but Trevor—that guy’s a movie star. The kind of guy that makes girls melt at the knees just by smiling at them. I don’t think it took all that many smiles to win her over to the Trevor team for good.”
Espinosa was ready to get back to something more closely tied to the investigation, and he had a good idea where to start. “All right, we’ve interviewed the dive master, and he told us there were only six of you on the dive last night. Four guys and two women. Who stayed back on the boat?”
“That would be Billie’s girlfriend, Sally, and my fiancée, Jillian. Sally, she was way too loaded up on drugs or whatever she was doing to risk taking along on a dive, particularly a night dive. And my fiancée felt she didn’t have enough experience to try it, not on her first dive trip ever. From what I understand, they hit the hot tub up front right about the time we left for the dive.”
Espinosa scribbled that into his notebook. “Okay. And I take it the six of you buddy dived?”
“Of course. It would be stupid not to, particularly on a night dive. I paired up with Billie, and Trevor and Brett teamed up with their wives.”
“All right, you were with Billie. Was that for the entire dive? Was there any point during the dive where the two of you got separated?”
“Uh, no, I don’t think so. We went into the water together, me first, Billie right behind me. Then we met up at the bottom, and I don’t think we were ever more than ten, twenty feet apart from each other until we surfaced. I mean, I had to pay close attention to where he was at all times, because he’s got this strange thing going on where he really catches the currents. I don’t know whether it’s his body shape or the way he swims, but he was always shooting way the hell ahead of the rest of us, and I’d have to catch up with him and drag him down behind a coral head until everyone else could get even with us. We probably did that three or four times during the dive, I think. Or maybe more.”
Gavin jumped in. “Okay, let’s focus on Trevor and Katy, now. When was the last time you remember seeing them together?”
Casey rubbed his chin. “I can’t be certain. It was really hard to keep track of people down there, and like I said, I was always having to chase down Billie. I do remember seeing them the second time we stopped, about halfway through the dive, but I don’t remember anything after that.”
“You mean that’s the last time you saw Katy? About halfway through the dive?” Gavin asked.
“No, I—I’m just not sure. Like I said, I was way more focused on keeping track of Billie, my dive buddy. I barely had any energy left to even enjoy the dive, to be honest with you. And, of course, I just assumed that the dive master was taking care of all that, making sure we all stayed together. So you can imagine my surprise when we all gathered together on the bottom to head back up, and Trevor and Katy were both missing.”
“Did you think something bad had happened to them?” Espinosa asked.
“No, not really. I mean, there were a lot of people down there, a lot of different groups milling around. I just thought they had gotten mixed up somehow, wound up with another group of divers. You gotta understand, unlike what some people think, diving is really not all that dangerous, if you just pay attention to the little stuff, like making sure you don’t run low on air. And since Trevor and Katy were both missing, it only made sense that they had gone on up by themselves at some point. That’s the whole point of the buddy system, after all, staying together. So when we got the call over the ship’s radio that Trevor had wound up on the wrong boat, we all assumed the two of them were still together.”
“Got you.” Espinosa looked over at Gavin. “You have anything more for now?”
“Uh, not really. Okay, yeah, just one last thing. Do you know any reason, any reason at all why someone might want to harm Katy? Did she have any enemies? Or maybe someone who wanted to hurt Trevor by killing her instead?”
“No way, man. Katy, she was pretty much perfect in every way. Everybody loved Katy. And really, if anyone did actually do something to her down there, you’ve only got three real possibilities. Brett, his wife Tara, and Trevor himself. And I just don’t see how any one of those three would ever lift a finger against her. So it had to have been an accident of some sort. And now we’ll probably never know what really happened.”
All of a sudden, Espinosa’s phone rang, a startling sound in the relative quiet that had fallen over the small salon. He looked down at the screen, then over at Gavin. “Strange. It’s one of your people. American area code.”
Gavin checked his own phone. No signal. So whoever it was, they must have tried his cellphone unsuccessfully and then rung up his partner instead.
Espinosa thumbed the screen on his phone. “Espinosa here. What’s up?” Gavin could hear mumbling on the other end but couldn’t make anything out. “You’re kidding me. Where? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Right. So what’s the plan? Uh-huh. Is the weather going to be a problem? Got it. Okay, let me hand you over to him.”
Espinosa stretched out an arm, passing the cellphone over to Gavin. “They’ve found a body.”
8
Cozumel Reefs National Marine Park
The dive boat was almost directly on top of the orange inflatable buoy that marked the location where the body had been found, over two hundred feet beneath the surface. The dive master had them all gather around a small whiteboard where he was sketching out the parameters of the dive. He was much shorter than Gavin, and by his features looked to be Mayan, with dark hair, dark skin and a flat, rounded face. He turned away from the white board and pointed to Gavin.
“Are you okay with nitrox? Probably overkill, but with the weather getting worse, we may not get another opportunity.”
“Yeah,” Gavin answered, slipping on a fin. Espinosa was sitting beside him, decked out in a full-length yellow raincoat. “I took an extensive course in underwater rescue at the Academy. Nitrox training was mandatory.”
“Bueno, so we’re all on the same page, then.” He turned back to the white board. “The body is located right about here—” A steep diagonal line had been drawn on the board, and he tapped a location near the bottom. “Best estimate is about two-twenty, two-thirty feet down. A group of Americans were diving the wall a couple of hours ago, and they spotted something bright and yellow down below them. Turned out it was a set of fins. Yellow, just like the fins your girl was wearing during the dive. Pretty much the same color as that raincoat.” He pointed toward Espinosa, a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth, then continued. “The Americans tourists, they didn’t feel comfortable dropping down that low, so they tied off an inflatable scuba tube to mark the spot and then went looking for reinforcements. Their dive boat radioed it in to shore, the message got passed back and forth, and eventually we got called in.”
“And who are you, exactly?” Gavin asked.
“We’re called the Batallones de Comandos Anfibios. Similar to your Navy SEALs. In fact, we train with the SEALs at the Naval Special Warfare Center out in California. My particular group specializes in underwater missions. Rescues, when they’re needed, but mostly underwater demolitions, things like that. I’m the unit’s commander.”
“Good to know if we ever need to blow something up,” Gavin suggested with a slight grin. “Okay, so what’s our dive profile?”
“My men will take the lead. Even with your training, the curre
nts down there can be pretty treacherous, and at well over two hundred feet—”
“No, I get you,” Gavin agreed. “So I guess I’m supposed to sit back and watch while your guys have all the fun?”
“Actually, we’ll need you down there in case we come across anything that might constitute evidence of foul play. Plus, you need to get an up-close and personal look at the crime scene, if that’s what it turns out to be. Video recording just can’t do it justice.”
“Gotcha. Makes sense. Okay then, let’s light the fires and kick the tires.”
“Excuse me?” the commander asked.
Gavin shrugged. “Sorry. Just an old fighter pilot expression. Means let’s stop sitting around overthinking things, it’s time to get this party started.”
“You’re a fighter pilot, as well as a federal agent?” The commander looked impressed.
“Not exactly,” Gavin answered with a grin. “Although I have spent my fair share of time in an F16 or two.” Gavin didn’t bother to explain that he had been in an F16 once, and even then only as a back seat passenger on a ferry run. This Mexican Navy SEAL dude might seem like a nice enough guy, but it never hurt to pop a few balloons every now and then, just to keep all the egos in check.
The Mexican SEAL Team started lining up at the rear of the boat to jump into the water, so Gavin shrugged into his BCD, snapping it tight around his chest and waist, then sucking on the mouthpiece to make sure his air was flowing. Espinosa leaned over to double-check that the valve on Gavin’s tank was completely open, then gave him a quick thumbs-up as Gavin stood up somewhat wobbily and clomped slowly toward the back of the boat, his fins making the trip ungainly as they kept catching every now and then on various objects that were stashed along the sides of the deck. Finally he reached the back and, checking first to make sure the water was clear in front of him, grabbed his mask and regulator and frog-kicked into the water.