Dead in the Water

by Stuart Woods

  “You are the best lover I’ve ever had,” she said. “Not that I’ve had all that many, but I had the years between puberty and the time I met Paul, and I enjoyed myself. But you are the very best.”

  “That’s high praise,” he said, satisfyingly flattered.

  “Do you know why?”

  He shrugged.

  “It’s not because you’re a beautiful man, though you are, and it’s not because you’re experienced and inventive, though God knows you are: it’s because you’re so considerate. I know when we’re fucking that you really care that I’m enjoying it as much as you. It makes me want to please you even more.”

  “And you do, believe me.”

  “I know I do; I can tell. I think you like me best when I’m wanton, when I do the things a proper Greenwich, Connecticut matron isn’t supposed to enjoy, and when I do them well.”

  He smiled, but said nothing.

  “Take me back to the boat,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  They walked past the two policemen on guard and boarded the yacht, and as they started down the companionway, she began undressing. So did he. She led him to the after cabin and threw off the bedcover, then made him lie on his back. She began slowly, kissing him here and there, using her tongue, but staying away from his genitals until he was completely erect, which didn’t take long. Then she spent several minutes bringing him to the edge and backing off, playing him as if he were a musical instrument.

  Stone then found himself in a condition where he knew he could resist coming for as long as he liked but still remain rigidly erect. Finally she rolled over on her stomach, took him in her hand, and guided him home. Then, after a while, she let him slide out.

  “Now here,” she said, guiding him into a different place. She let him ride her for a short time, then turned on her back and reinserted him in the same place. Then, without parting from him, she rolled him onto his back and sat astride him, moving slowly up and down, making little noises. Half an hour had passed before she said to him, “Now. Come for me.”

  And he did.

  They passed the night alternately sleeping and making love, as the mood took them.

  She woke him at dawn and made him do it again, then they slept for another hour.

  “Want some breakfast?” she said, yawning.

  “Sure.”

  “Oh,” she said, “all my stuff is packed. Will you bring me the smallest duffel? It’s got my toothbrush in it.”

  “Sure.” He rolled out of bed and stretched.

  She kissed him on the belly. “You were perfectly wonderful last night.”

  “You were way beyond wonderful. I don’t think I’ve ever had a night like that. I’m exhausted.”

  “You’ll live.” She slapped him on his naked buttocks. “Now get me that duffel.”

  Stone went forward to the door of the engine room, under the companionway. He opened it, walked down two steps, and looked around the small compartment, which contained the two engines and a small workshop. It was as clean and neat as the galley, he thought. On the bulkhead behind the workbench, all the ship’s tools were arrayed in motion-proof brackets. He picked up a wrench and saw that each tool had been traced in black paint. He marveled at the time Paul Manning had spent ordering his ship. He turned and looked at the other equipment. There was a wet suit, hung neatly on a hanger, and a pair of diving tanks resting in custom-made stainless steel holders fixed to the bulkhead.

  Then, in a sudden, sickening flash, Stone became a cop again.

  He saw something that, in an earlier day, would have made his heart leap in triumph, but now made him feel sick with revulsion.

  Next to the tanks, fixed to the bulkhead and outlined in black paint like all the tools, was a spear gun for underwater fishing, with brackets for the gun and three spears. One of the spears was missing, its outline empty. That would have given him pause, but it was something else that immobilized him. The spear gun was there, but it had been taken down and awkwardly replaced backward in its brackets, the opposite of its painted outline.

  Stone knew in an instant that Paul Manning would never, never have replaced the gun in anything but its proper position. It had been put there by someone else, of course, but the third spear had not been returned to its place.

  The third spear, he knew beyond a doubt, was still in what was left of Paul Manning’s body, out there in the depths of the cold, cold ocean.

  Chapter

  42

  Stone placed the small duffel on the bed in the aft cabin and looked at Allison, who was sitting on the little stool in front of the vanity, brushing her hair. She looked, he thought, like something out of a Degas oil. He was having a lot of trouble. It wouldn’t be the first time, he thought, that he had represented a client whom he knew to be guilty; that was part of his job. It was the first time, however, that he had represented a guilty client with whom he had been enthusiastically making love—one he had grown very fond of—was nearly in love with. It was also the first time he had represented anyone charged with a capital crime. He was trying very hard to ignore his cop’s instincts and keep her innocent in his mind.

  “Allison,” he said absently.

  “Yes?”

  “After Paul died, why didn’t you use the satellite phone to call for help?”

  “Two reasons,” she said without hesitation. “First, I couldn’t get the damned thing to work. I’ve never been very good at reading manuals, and I just couldn’t get it to lock onto a satellite, so I gave up. After I got to port I got it to work the first time; maybe it was because the boat wasn’t moving anymore, or maybe it was the crossword syndrome.”

  “What’s the crossword syndrome?”

  “You’re working on the crossword, and there’s a big patch of it you just can’t solve. So you put the thing down for a while—maybe until the next day—and you pick it up and immediately get all the words. Maybe it’s like that with following directions in a manual.”

  “I’ve had that experience,” Stone agreed. “What was your second reason for not calling for help?”

  “First of all, I did call for help, but on the VHF radio. I didn’t know how to work the high-frequency unit—still don’t—but I tried calling ‘any ship’ on channel sixteen, but I never got an answer. I never even saw a ship or a yacht the whole trip. Second, I would have been ashamed if somebody had come to my rescue.”

  “Why ashamed?”

  “Well, I had a perfectly good yacht under me, and I had some idea of how to sail it, so my sense of self-reliance would have been punctured if I’d had to ask somebody else to do it for me. Anyway, in the end, I proved I could sail her.” She looked at him in the mirror. “Why did you want to know about the satellite telephone?”

  “I thought the police might have seen it during their search and that Sir Winston might ask the question at the trial. If he does, stick with the answer about not being able to get the phone to work, and calling for help on the VHF; don’t mention that business about your sense of self-reliance. I’m not sure how it would play with the jury.”

  “Okay.”

  “Later, I’ll go through your testimony with you, and we’ll fine-tune it.”

  “You mean you’re going to rehearse a witness?”

  “You bet I am. Oh, I’m not going to tamper with your story; I just want to shape it in a way that will tell the jury, in a simple and straightforward way, that you’re innocent.”

  “Okay. What are you going to do the rest of the day?”

  “I have to go out and talk to Leslie Hewitt about the trial. I’ve made some notes that I want to give him.”

  “I’ll be here all day,” she said, “or as long as the cops are.”

  “You don’t have some other escape plan up your sleeve, do you? Because if you do, I beg you not to try it.”

  “Relax, Stone; I’ve learned my lesson about escaping.”

  “I hope to God you have.”

  Stone borrowed Thomas’s car
and drove along the coast road to Leslie Hewitt’s house. He turned down the dirt road to the cottage and parked out front, next to Hewitt’s Morris Minor station wagon, and got out, taking a file folder with him. The front door of the house stood open, and Stone stepped inside. “Leslie!” he called. “You home?” There was no response. “Leslie!” he called again. He looked in the little study and in the kitchen, but the barrister was not in the house.

  Stone walked out the back door and into the garden, but there was still no sight of Hewitt, not even down at the beach. He walked a few steps more, looked around, then turned to go back into the house. As he turned his eye drifted to his left and there, behind a low hedge, lay the inert form of Sir Leslie Hewitt, clad only in faded Bermuda shorts. He was lying on his stomach, his head turned away from Stone; a bucket of hand gardening tools lay next to him and a trowel was near his right hand.

  “Leslie!” Stone cried, turning him over on his back and brushing dirt from his face. He slapped Hewitt’s face lightly and peeled back an eyelid. The pupil was contracted; thank God for that.

  Suddenly Hewitt coughed, then opened his eyes. “Oh, good morning,” he said, sitting up and rubbing his eyes with a fist. “I must have dozed off.”

  “Leslie, are you all right?” Stone asked. “You were out like a light.”

  “Young man, when you are my age, you will take the occasional nap, too, believe me.” With Stone’s help, he got to his feet. “Well now, what brings you to see me?” he asked.

  Stone wasn’t sure that Hewitt recognized him, and he didn’t want to ask. “I brought you some material to read in preparation for the trial,” he said. “Do you feel up to reading it?”

  “Of course,” Hewitt replied. “Come into the house, Stone.”

  Stone breathed a sigh of relief and followed him into the study.

  Hewitt arranged himself behind his desk. “Now, what is it?” he asked, in the manner of a man who didn’t have much time for whatever Stone wanted of him.

  Stone placed the file folder before him. “Leslie, I know you plan to give the opening and closing statements, but I put some thoughts together on how you might proceed, and I’d appreciate it if you’d read the two statements I’ve prepared. There might be something there you can use.”

  “Of course I’ll read them,” Hewitt replied. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to get back to my garden.”

  “Do you think you could find time to read them now?” Stone asked. “You might have some questions for me.”

  “No, no, not now,” the man said. “I’ll read them this afternoon after my nap; I’m more alert then. Now, I’ll see you in the courtroom.” He walked out of the room, leaving Stone standing there alone.

  Stone followed him as far as the back door and watched as Hewitt knelt down and began digging in the earth behind the low hedge again, seemingly oblivious to Stone’s presence. Finally, Stone shook his head and returned to the car. As he was about to turn toward English Harbour, he had another thought and turned left instead, toward the airport.

  He drove through the gates and down the approach road, with the runway and the single hangar in full view. He pulled up in front of the hangar and got out. The mechanic who had testified at the inquest was working on an engine of the DC-3 that belonged to the St. Marks government. Stone couldn’t remember his name, but he walked over to the airplane.

  “Excuse me,” he said to the man. “I’m Stone Barrington; I heard you testify at the inquest.”

  “Righto,” the man said. “You’re the lawyer fellow, aren’t you? The one who’s defending that lady?”

  “That’s right. I wonder if I could talk to you for a minute. What’s your name again?”

  “Harvey Simpson,” the man said, turning away from the airplane and wiping his hands with a cloth. “What can I do for you?”

  “I was just noticing that the hangar has an overhead door, like a garage,” he said, pointing at the ceiling, where the door was retracted.

  “That’s right; there it is,” Simpson said, following his gaze.

  “Do you close that every night and lock up?”

  Simpson shook his head. “Not unless the weather looks like it’s turning bad. That door is a pain in the ass; sticks all the time. I keep meaning to do something about it, but I never seem to get around to it.”

  “Was the hangar door closed the night before Chester’s crash?”

  Simpson thought for a minute. “No, we haven’t had no bad weather for a while now.”

  “So anybody could have come in here where Chester’s airplane was?”

  “That’s right, I guess.”

  “How about your tool cabinet over there,” Stone said, pointing to a large, double-doored cupboard. The doors were open, exposing an array of spanners, screwdrivers, and socket wrenches.

  “I never lock it,” Simpson said.

  “Don’t your tools get stolen?”

  Simpson shook his head. “Everybody who might steal them knows that my tools are American gauge, for working on the American-built airplanes. All the cars on the island and all the other machinery are metric gauge, so my tools wouldn’t be worth much to anybody.”

  “So somebody could have come in here the night before the crash, taken some tools out of your cabinet, and done something to an engine?”

  Simpson gazed into the middle distance for a moment before answering. “Yessir, I guess somebody could have done that. But there isn’t no one on this island who would want to do that to Chester.”

  “How about to his passengers?”

  “I can’t speak for the white lady, but I knew the black one well, and everybody liked her. Anyway, if somebody wanted to kill her, he wouldn’t kill Chester doing it.”

  “Is there anybody on guard out here at night?”

  Simpson shook his head. “Nope. There’s a couple of people in the airport office, through there,” he said, pointing at a door that led from the main part of the hangar to the offices, “but they wouldn’t be out here at night. The runway lights are pilot-operated, you see. The approaching pilot just tunes in the local frequency and clicks his mike three times, and the lights come on.”

  “I see,” Stone said.

  “Mister, this is not the first time I’ve thought about this,” Simpson said. “I been over it in my mind a few times. I thought about how it was the morning of the crash, and everything was just like I left it.”

  “Did Chester make it a habit of doing a runup before takeoff?”

  “Well, he made it a habit sometimes, and other times he didn’t,” Simpson said. “If you know what I mean. Chester been flying that Cessna a long time; he didn’t have much use for checklists no more.”

  He didn’t have much use for runups, either, Stone thought. A runup might have saved his life and those of his passengers.

  “Chester was a good pilot, though,” Simpson said. “A natural-born pilot.”

  “Right,” Stone said. Chester had been a cowboy; Stone had flown with him in the right seat when he had come to St. Marks, and the man was strictly a seat-of-the-pants pilot—no checklists. Stone walked over to the tool cabinet and looked at the array of tools inside; then he saw something familiar on the cabinet door. He touched it lightly. Fingerprint powder; he had seen enough of it in his time. “The police have been here?” he asked.

  “Sure have; looked at everything, asked a lot of questions, took my fingerprints.”

  Stone nodded. “Well, Harvey, thanks for your time.” He shook the man’s oily hand and walked back to the car thinking, I’ll never fly an airplane off a runway without doing a runup first. Not as long as I live.

  He got into the car and headed back to English Harbour. He didn’t want to think about Allison right now; he tried thinking about Arrington instead and found that he missed her. He still hadn’t rewritten his letter to her; he would do it before the day was out.

  Chapter

  43

  Stone parked Thomas’s car in its usual place and left the keys in it
, as Thomas often did. His business with Leslie Hewitt apparently concluded for the time being, he wanted now to talk with Jim Forrester again, and he was lucky enough to find him at the bar, talking to Thomas.

  “Hi, Jim; have you got a few minutes for me?”

  “Sure, Stone, what’s up?”

  “I want to go through your testimony with you; make sure we’re both on the same page.”

  “Great, let’s get a table.”

  Thomas held up an envelope. “Fax for you,” he said to Stone.

  “Thanks, Thomas,” he said, stuffing the envelope into his pocket. He’d read it when he was through with Forrester. He followed the reporter to a table, and they got comfortable. “Jim, I’ll just ask you some questions, the way I will at the trial, and you answer them as you see fit. If I don’t like the way you answer a question, we’ll talk about rephrasing.”

  “Okay, shoot.”

  “Have you ever testified in court before?”

  “No.”

  “They’ll ask you your name for the record.”

  “Right.”

  “Now I’m on my feet in my robe and my wig, and…”

  “Wig? You have to wear a wig?”

  “I’m afraid so. You’ll have to try not to laugh; it wouldn’t look good for me in front of the jury.”

  “I’ll do my best, but I’m not promising anything.”

  “All right, Mr. Forrester, what is your occupation?”

  “I’m a magazine writer.”

  “And what brings you to St. Marks?”

  “I intend to write an article about this trial for an American magazine.”

  “I see. Now, were you acquainted with Paul Manning?”

  “Yes, I knew him in college.”

  “Tell us how you met him.”

  “We were on the same basketball team.”

  “Hang on, Jim; I thought you told me you played against him.”

  Forrester shook his head and raised the glass from which he was drinking. “I’m sorry, Stone; the booze must be going to my head.”

  “Let’s start again; tell the court how you and Mr. Manning first met.”