Undercurrents

by Pamela Beason

  But cute videos and pleasant travelogues weren’t what she wanted to produce. She wanted to write about Dan. Unfortunately, she didn’t have enough information to write a coherent article. She was the only one who had seen his corpse. All she had was a mystery. And a throbbing headache.

  In her cabin, she downed three aspirin. After stuffing her camera gear in her backpack, she walked to the stern to join the tour. One panga, riding low in the water, was already bearing the first group of tourists toward Floreana Island. Was Papagayo’s second panga still somewhere near Isabela, trolling for Dan’s corpse? She hadn’t seen either the captain or Tony at breakfast.

  Ken, Dan’s drinking buddy, leaned next to her on the railing. Others waited below on the platform.

  “How’re you doing?” Ken asked.

  “Fine,” she choked out. Please don’t be kind right now, or I’ll break down.

  “Did Kazaki drown?”

  Dan’s slack open mouth and slashed throat swam up in her memory. “I don’t know.”

  “You weren’t with him at the time of the accident?”

  What? The captain told the passengers it was an accident? She had an abrupt sickening realization that all the passengers had been gone when she paddled away in her kayak. Nobody had witnessed her departure. Or Dan’s, apparently. She turned to face the grad student.

  “Ken, while you guys were off on your morning hike, I paddled my kayak down the coast and went hiking alone on Isabela, up towards the Alcedo volcano. When I left at nine A.M., Dan was working in his cabin.” At least she assumed he was; she hadn’t actually checked before launching her kayak. “As I was coming back, I saw sea lions playing around some rocks, and I just happened to find Dan—”

  The story sounded improbable, even to her ears. She took a shaky breath and continued, “His regulator mouthpiece was missing. He had a gash across his throat and face. His lips were blue.” Her voice cracked as she relived the sight of her friend’s vacant eyes behind his water-filled mask.

  “Sorry.” Ken shifted his gaze to the rocky shores a short distance away, giving her a chance to compose herself. “What do you think happened?”

  “I have no idea.” She swallowed painfully.

  An awkward silence descended. Ken self-consciously ran his fingers through his hair. “Where the hell is Brandon? I better go get him.” He escaped up the stairs.

  Abigail Birsky, dressed in a long denim skirt and T-shirt and carrying a canvas tote over one arm, climbed carefully down the steps, clutching the railing tightly. Sam said hello, and then asked the older woman, “Abigail, was everyone with you when you went hiking on Fernandina yesterday?”

  “Everyone?”

  “The whole tour group? The crew? Both park guides?”

  The wrinkles on Abigail’s forehead flowed into a V as she considered. After a few seconds, she said, “Jon Sanders didn’t come.” She whispered conspiratorially, “Probably didn’t want to disturb his coiffure.” Then she continued in a normal tone, “Jerry Roberson stayed behind, too. Sandy said he had a headache.” She brushed a thumb across her lower lip, considering. “Eduardo was there the whole time,” Abigail said, “pointing out plants and animals for us. Such a sweet young man.”

  Sam smiled at her reference to Eduardo as a young man. But Abigail was probably twenty years older than Eduardo.

  “And then, in the afternoon, Constantino and Maxim came in the dinghies, following us while we snorkeled.” Abigail dipped her head once, as if punctuating the end of her account.

  “How about the captain and the rest of the crew?” Sam asked.

  The older woman shrugged. “They stayed on the boat, I suppose.”

  So Tony was not accounted for yesterday. But speak of the devil—he neared now, driving the inflatable, to take the second load to the island. As soon as he landed the dinghy and looped a rope around a cleat on the stern of Papagayo, he turned toward the gas tank and fiddled with a hose there.

  Ken, Brandon, Maxim, and Ronald Birsky came down the steps to join Sam and Abigail. They all found seats on the wooden benches of the inflatable as Tony focused on switching the gas hose from one tank to another.

  “Tony,” she said.

  He looked up.

  “What is your last name?”

  “Tu apellido,” Maxim said, doing his guide duty as translator.

  “Diaz,” Tony murmured, his expression guarded.

  Her suspicions were right on, then. “Do you have a brother named Ricardo Diaz, with a boat named Coqueta?”

  Tony pursed his lips, wrinkled his brow, then began, “I have no Eng—”

  Maxim quickly translated Sam’s question. Tony stared at the water for a few seconds, clearly uncomfortable. Then he blurted out a few angry sentences in Spanish and abruptly put the engine in reverse, causing everyone to grab on to their seats. After he slammed the gearshift into forward, he turned the inflatable toward the island, his gaze focused on the shore ahead.

  Maxim leaned close to Sam. “He says that Ricardo Diaz has the same father, but they are not friends.”

  “I see,” Sam said. “That explains the resemblance.” Her powers of observation were still intact, then; she hadn’t simply been paranoid about the similarity between Tony and Ricardo. Tony’s gaze flicked her way, and she smiled to prove she meant no harm, but he quickly looked back toward the island.

  Maxim leaned close to murmur, “Diaz left the mother of Tony to marry the mother of Ricardo. It is a local scandal.”

  “Do the families live in the same town?”

  Maxim shook his head. “Baquerizo Moreno”—he pointed with his chin toward Tony—“and Ricardo comes from Villamil.”

  Puerto Villamil, the fishermen’s stronghold. She wanted to ask Tony more questions about his half brother and the local fishermen, but the way the first mate’s jaw was clenched did not suggest cooperation.

  “Galápagos is a small community.” Maxim repeated Eduardo’s words from two days ago. “Many are related somehow.”

  Which reminded her that she shouldn’t trust anyone who lived here.

  The panga landed at Post Office Bay among sea lions sleeping in the sun. A few opened their eyes or shifted a flipper on the brown sand, but that was all the notice they took of the inflatable and people.

  The tour group walked up the path to the wooden post office barrel. Maxim explained that mail had been deposited by sailors on the island for more than two centuries, in hopes that a passing ship would post the envelopes on returning home. These days it was obviously tourists who deposited the mail, judging by the number of colorful postcards Maxim pulled from the barrel, and when Maxim distributed one piece of mail to each of them, it was clear that other tourists were expected to get them to their final destination. The post card she received was addressed to Calgary, Alberta. Good; postage to Canada was relatively cheap and easy to come by at home. Brandon and Ronald left postcards of their own for someone else to pick up.

  Maxim pointed out the remains of a Norwegian fishing village that had gone bust, and then talked about the island’s scandal in the 1930s. An Austrian baroness moved in with two lovers and plans to build a luxury hotel, managed to piss off other families already settled on Floreana, and then mysteriously disappeared, along with one of her lovers. The baroness’s other lover ended up dead under suspicious circumstances, along with a fisherman and another settler from Floreana. Maxim hinted that the remaining inhabitants of the island knew more than they would talk about.

  With each mention of “missing” or “dead,” someone in the group glanced at Sam. Of course Dan was in her thoughts, but she had no tears left. The emotions running through her mind were guilt and disgust at her own species. Human history was full of these stories: toss a handful of people together in a contained environment such as a small island, and sooner or later, some would kill others. Murderers got away with their crimes every day, all around the world. Here, it would be so easy to make someone go “missing” forever among the bleak islands and swift c
urrents. Would Dr. Daniel Kazaki become just another mysterious missing person in the Galápagos?

  They joined the other tour group for a box lunch at another landing site, Punta Cormorant. Eduardo explained that the green color of the beach was due to olivine crystals. Olivine, he added, was a cousin to a green gemstone called peridot. In Sam’s current state of mind, all this information seemed so irrelevant. In her head, she could hear her father explaining, Life goes on. She needed time to stand still for a moment—or more accurately, at least a day to mark Dan’s death.

  They walked a short trail to a small lagoon, where pink flamingos were feeding in the brackish water. Sam took a photo that seemed more like Florida or Africa than an island in the middle of the Pacific. The long-legged pink birds were accompanied by a great blue heron sauntering slowly along the shoreline, searching for prey. Sam was accustomed to seeing the gray long-necked birds hunt along the fern-lined shores near the Canadian border. To her eyes, this one looked out of place among lizards and lava.

  They ended at another small beach, this one composed of white sand from coral. “A favorite nesting place for green sea turtles,” Maxim added.

  “Are they safe?” Sam asked. “Do the eggs and hatchlings survive?” Turtle eggs and meat were considered delicacies in most parts of the world.

  Maxim frowned. “It is nature.”

  Then he announced the plans for the rest of the day: snorkel at Devil’s Crown and a trip to the highlands to see a handful of giant tortoises.

  On the horizon, two boats were visible; a small sailboat less than a mile away, and another tourist yacht in the distance. Boats were everywhere. Now that she thought about it, the only time she hadn’t seen a boat of any kind was when she had kayaked by herself to the remote area of Isabela.

  Had Dan seen a suspicious boat near Papagayo and donned his dive gear to go check it out? She tried to picture the scenario. Dan, diving unseen below the surface. Two converging fishing boats: one low in the water, heavy with an illegal load of sharks—her imagination colored the boat red and yellow like the one driven by Eduardo’s cousin—and the other a large, high-powered cruiser, a courier for an Asian ship that waited on the horizon.

  She had a vision of swimming beneath the surface, amid bodies of still-wriggling sharks sinking through water red with blood. The blood and wounded sharks would attract other sharks, just like the poor finless shark she’d seen the day before yesterday. What were the odds of a scuba diver surviving in the midst of a feeding frenzy?

  But that scenario didn’t make sense. If Dan had been attacked by sharks, his body would not have been whole. If she could trust her shaky memory of his corpse, all his limbs had been intact.

  Scratch the shark feeding frenzy, then. Maybe the fishermen had just begun to de-fin the sharks or pass pepinos from one boat to another. Suddenly Dan popped up from below, and— She remembered the fishing gaff lying at Buoy 3942 amid the other debris lost from boats. And one of the men—he resembled boat driver Ricardo in her mind’s eye—cracked Dan over the head. Plausible. She rubbed the back of her hand across her sweating forehead. All too plausible. Maybe the fishing gaff had ripped Dan’s air hose. But why would any poacher operate within sight of Papagayo?

  It occurred to her that just because Dan had been found dead in the water didn’t mean that he was killed in the water. His death could have been made to look like a scuba accident. Which brought her back to someone on board Papagayo.

  “Miss Westin?”

  She jumped and nearly dropped her camera, banging it painfully against her hipbone.

  Maxim stood beside her, his boyish face wrinkled with concern. “You are okay?”

  She must look like an idiot, standing mesmerized on the sand long after her group had moved on.

  “Yeah, I’m all right.” She pushed her sunglasses back to the bridge of her nose. “And call me Sam.”

  Maxim smiled. “Okay, Sam. We are over here now. It’s a good afternoon for a swim.”

  She allowed herself to be herded back to the group.

  * * * * *

  Twisted in the sheets of his lumpy bed in the cut-rate South Tucson motel room, Chase Perez had a nightmare about shooting a group of criminals. A righteous shooting, self-defense. But as he turned over the bodies, they all appeared to be innocuous-looking strangers. The last one was Summer Westin.

  He woke with a jerk. In the other bed, Nicole was snoring softly, or more accurately, making little moaning sounds with each breath. Those noises had probably inspired the damn dream.

  The numbers on the bedside clock morphed from 5:59 to 6:00 A.M. Not quite sunup yet. Chase rolled onto his back and stared at the stained tile ceiling while his heart rate subsided. Nicole had sent their report last night via their secure email address, so their SAC would know their status. There’d been no messages for either of them from the outside world, which meant no known problems with their families. But then, Summer wasn’t on his family list and wouldn’t know how to contact him through the Bureau.

  He had to know she was safe. He slipped out of bed, quietly dressed in running shorts, T-shirt, and worn jogging shoes, and locked the door behind him. Outside, the morning air was cold. Rosy streaks of dawn were just beginning to break over the gray-brown hills to the east. He did a few stretches and retied his shoelaces as he checked the parking lot and surrounding buildings for observers. Nobody else was up yet. Then he set off jogging down the alley behind the motel, staying alert, listening for footsteps or car engines behind him.

  The birds scolded him from the trees as he ran slowly through the streets on the dusty outskirts of town. Each year it got harder to find public phones, and directly calling someone from home on a cell, even a throwaway, was too much of a risk while they were undercover. There. No, someone had ripped the receiver off, left the useless cord dangling from the machine. He jogged on, and six blocks later located an old-fashioned phone booth outside a 24-hour Laundromat. Staring through the scratched plastic booth walls, he tapped in the number for his home voicemail. A delivery truck tossed newspapers into doorways across the street. Closer to him, a couple of stray dogs investigated odors deposited along the curbs. After sniffing around the base of the phone booth, they moved on down the street.

  Eleven voicemail messages awaited him. First was a call from his sister Raven about their parents’ upcoming fortieth anniversary in May—she wanted to throw a party for them and wondered if he’d be able to come to Boise then. He’d respond to that later; Raven was used to not hearing from him for weeks at a time.

  The rest of the calls were from Summer. Please call me when you get this. Call me as soon as you can. I really need to talk to you. Was she sobbing? He’d seen her scared, he’d seen her mad, but he had never known her to cry. What the hell was going on down there in Ecuador? According to the time stamps, she’d left all the messages yesterday evening.

  He deposited more money, then dialed her home number and rousted her housemate Blake out of bed. The guy wasn’t happy. “I haven’t heard from Sam since she left for the Galápagos. Cripes, man, do you know it’s not even six A.M. here?”

  Chase apologized, but before he hung up, he got Summer’s work number from Blake. When he called her satellite phone, he only got a cheery voicemail message: Hi, you’ve reached Reporter Summer Westin at Out There. I’m doing exciting work in the field right now. Leave a message and I’ll call when I can. It wasn’t even her voice; sounded more like a chirpy high school girl.

  “Carajo,” he muttered, punching the phone booth wall in frustration. Then he realized the voicemail system was recording. “Uh, this is Chase, querida. I’m so sorry I missed your calls. What’s going on? Are you okay? And damn it, you can’t even call me back. You know why. I’m at a public phone now. I’ll call again when I can.”

  A pretty dark-haired young woman jogged down the other side of the street. Their eyes met briefly, and she waved as she ran past. Chase waved back, then continued with his phone message, “I wish you’d jump on t
he next plane out of there. But I know that’s not likely to happen because you’re, well . . . you. So for once, I’m glad you’re with another man. Kazaki damn well better be protecting you.” He and Nicole were hitting the road today with their New American Citizen Army buddies, destination unknown, but he couldn’t tell Summer that. Instead, he said, “I will find a way to meet up with you on the twenty-second, no matter what. Stay safe, mi corazón.”

  He cursed with each step as he jogged back to the motel. Had Summer really been crying? He ached to hold her, and they weren’t even on the same continent.

  Nicole was in the shower when he let himself into the room. He booted up Charlie’s suitably ancient laptop, located the hotel’s unsecured wireless network, and brought up Out There’s page. There were two new posts. Wilderness Westin’s was all about giant turtles and lizards.

  Zing’s post was critical of the situation there and featured a couple of gruesome video clips of sharks feasting on fish corpses. The negative comments in response to Zing’s post, especially those in Spanish, had doubled since yesterday. Was this what Summer was upset about?

  The posts sounded very different. According to the photos, Zing appeared to be a young athletic redhead. Maybe Summer wasn’t the daredevil photographer shooting the shark videos after all. He hoped that was the case. Sea kayaking and climbing volcanoes were a lot safer than swimming with sharks and poachers.

  In her photo, Wilderness Westin was smiling, as few people would be with giant snakes hanging around their necks. But that was his wild woman. He touched the tip of his index finger to his lips and then pressed it to the screen over her heart. “Te quiero.”

  Nicole emerged from the bathroom, her body wrapped in a robe and her hair wrapped in a towel. She took one look at his face and at the computer screen, rolled her eyes, and drawled, “I oughta shoot you right here, Charlie, lustin’ after that reporter gal.” Then she flashed him a stern look that reminded him he needed to stay in character at all times.

  He shut down the laptop and stood up. “Ah, baby, you know the lust is only in my heart.”