Gina Cresse - Devonie Lace 02 - A Deadly Bargain, Plan C

by Gina Cresse

  Clancy scratched his head. “Yeah. I think so. About a week later.”

  I looked at my watch, then I gazed out over the horizon. “Think your friend Morgan would be up for a dive this morning?”

  It took us a little more than two hours to get to the position identified on the GPS. Clancy cut the engine and dropped the anchor. “This is it,” he announced.

  Morgan checked the reading on the depth indicator. “Hundred and fifty feet. You ever go down that far, Devonie?”

  “No. Deepest I’ve ever gone is fifty feet,” I said.

  “You sure you want to do this? Going down one-fifty—there are risks,” Morgan warned.

  “Risks?” My voice wavered a little.

  “Nitrogen narcosis. Affects your ability to think and make judgments. Basically, breathing air at a pressure of four or more atmospheres can turn you into a falling-down drunk,” Morgan explained.

  “What else?” I asked.

  Morgan crossed his arms over his chest. “Well, then there’s oxygen poisoning. What we’re breathing right now is about seventy-eight percent nitrogen and twenty-one percent oxygen. Excess oxygen can damage lung tissue and adversely affect the central nervous system. Oxygen poisoning can occur when the partial pressure of pure oxygen equals two atmospheres absolute.”

  Clancy gaped as his friend spieled off gas ratios and PSI figures. Finally, he added his two-cents worth. “And don’t forget the bends.”

  Morgan stopped and smiled at Clancy. “That’s right. There’s always the risk of the bends. You ever get the bends, Clancy?”

  Clancy bent over and held his hand to his back. “Every morning when I get out of bed.”

  We all laughed. I stood up and grabbed a tank. “Okay. I’ve heard the risks. I’m ready. Let’s do it.”

  Morgan stayed close as we descended. He continually checked to make sure I felt okay. As we approached the sea floor, the powerful light beam from his flashlight shone on something white—big and white. We swam to the rail. She was huge. A hundred feet, I guessed. We glided along her side and inspected her all around. A mural painted on the port side depicted a school of dolphins playing in the surf. On the starboard side, a similar mural immortalized a pair of Orcas, one diving and one breaching. As we rounded the last curve, I read the name painted on the stern: Gigabyte.

  Morgan touched me on the shoulder and pointed to his watch. Our ten minutes were up. We had to return to the surface.

  Clancy helped me over the railing, then reached for Morgan’s hand. I struggled to get my gear off.

  Morgan climbed over the rail, spit out his mouthpiece and said, “Do you know what that is down there? My God! That’s the Gigabyte!”

  “Bates’ yacht?” Clancy asked.

  “Bates’ yacht! Yes! She’s down there, right now! The whole country’s been looking for that yacht for six months—and we’ve found it! Where’s my phone. I’ve gotta call the office,” Morgan babbled.

  “Well, I’ll be danged. What do you think the salvage award would be on that one?” Clancy asked.

  “Salvage? Clancy, it’s a hundred footer. It’ll take a couple barges to bring her up. You don’t have the equipment to raise something that size. I’ll call the Coast Guard.”

  “Now wait a minute, Morgan. Maybe I can get my hands on—“

  “Clancey.” Morgan held his hand up. “This is Gerald Bates’ yacht we’re talking about. The man is the richest computer industrialist in the world. He and this yacht have been missing for over six months. You think the Bates Corporation is going to let Tex and Clancy’s Marine Salvage get anywhere within a mile of this spot when they find out?”

  I watched Clancy’s chin drop two floors. He knew Morgan was right.

  “Olive and me could’ve retired on what that salvage award would be.”

  Morgan put an arm over Clancy’s shoulders. “Retire? You? Then how would you have any fun? You can’t ever retire, old man. You wouldn’t know what to do with yourself with no purpose in life.”

  “Maybe so. But I sure as heck wouldn’t mind giving it a try for a while,” Clancy said.

  “I know, Clancy. But you know I’m right. Don’t you?”

  “I suppose. Go ahead. Make the call.”

  I sat quietly on a padded bench and gazed out over the Pacific. My mind was a thousand miles away. We had just discovered Gerald Bates’ sunken yacht. Gerald Bates, the wealthiest man in the world.

  Chapter Seven

  I pounded on Spencer’s door for the third time. “Come on, Spence. Open up!” I yelled into the solid piece of oak standing between me and the most accomplished computer geek this side of the Mississippi—and probably the other side, too. I could hear his pathetic voice call back to me from somewhere inside the house.

  During the twelve-hour drive from San Diego to Sacramento, I tried to imagine what Spencer’s house might look like. I pictured a scene from NASA—rows of computer terminals, little orange, red, and green flashing lights, racks full of electronic paraphernalia. A vision of wires running along the baseboards, anchored with straps and ties, disappearing into countless boxes mounted on the walls danced through my mind. You’d have to know Spencer to understand why I’d conjure up such a picture.

  “Devonie? Is that you?” I could hear him fumble with the lock. The door opened slowly and a picture I didn’t expect brought a smile to my face.

  I’d driven all night and it was nearly six in the morning by the time I arrived in Sacramento. I’d obviously gotten Spencer out of bed. His mouth opened in a yawn so large I could see his tonsils. He scratched his head and rubbed his eyes. His hair, naturally brown, but bleached to a nearly yellow blonde, stood strait up from his head. But it didn’t stand at attention. The result of too much bleaching and styling gel left the mess looking like the victim of a lightning strike. He stood about six-foot-four and probably weighed about one-seventy, soaking wet. The skinny frame was bare from the waist up. I’d never seen Spencer without a shirt before. My eyes fixed on the small tattoo he’d permanently branded onto his chest. The image, a green square with small black and silver dots and lines running in all directions like a city street map, was framed with the words, “I love my Motherboard.” From the waist down, an entirely different story was told. Spiderman pajama bottoms hung on the slim hips, too short for his long legs. The hem fell about mid-calf. His bare feet were large and striking against the cold tile floor. I gawked at the curled up toes on those number twelves. “You paint your toenails?” I marveled.

  He glanced down at the bright-red tips on his toes and wiggled them proudly. “Like them? Cindy did it. She’s practicing to get her cosmetology license. I could find out the color for you if you want.”

  “That’s okay. I go for a lighter shade,” I replied, grinning.

  I picked up the heavy scuba tank I’d brought and carried it inside. I set it down in the entryway and marveled at the surroundings—not a computer in sight. Nothing on the walls but tasteful artwork and bookshelves. The only electronics I could see were the usual—television, stereo, VCR, and microwave. I set my purse on the table. “Is this your parent’s house?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I just pictured something different.”

  Spencer examined the scuba tank. “This the tank you want to check out?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Think we can lift any prints off it?”

  “Don’t know. It’s been in the water. You’ve been handling it like a stress ball. Probably been touched by a half-dozen people since you bought it. What’s the deal with it, anyway?”

  “You see the news today?” I asked.

  “News?”

  I picked up the remote and turned on the television. Nearly every station was reporting on the discovery of Gerald Bates’ yacht, the Gigabyte.

  Spencer sat down in a big leather recliner and gaped at the TV screen. “They found Bates?”

  “Not Bates. Just his yacht. Actually, I found it.”

  “You? How?”

&n
bsp; “The guy who owned this tank discovered the wreck and recorded its location on his GPS. That’s Roy Hastings, the guy I asked you to check out. Get anything?”

  “Not much. Nothing on him in the California Criminal History database. I went to the DMV database. Got the basics: date of birth, height, weight, address. Had a pickup and a boat registered in his name and a certified dive instructor license issued back in the seventies.”

  “That’s it? Nothing else?” I said.

  “That’s all I could come up with. If you want to know more, why don’t you call the guy up and ask him yourself?”

  “I would if he were anywhere on the face of the Earth. It seems the Gigabyte was Hasting’s last stop before he disappeared. This tank, filled with poison gas, was on Hastings’ boat when it was found, abandoned.”

  Spencer scratched his mop-top head and peered at the tank. “Just let me down some Cheerios and grab a quick shower, then we can run it down to the DOJ.”

  Spencer commandeered a Radio Flyer wagon from his garage to transport the tank. I don’t know why a grown man with no children has a wagon, but then I don’t know why he allowed his girlfriend to paint his toenails, either.

  I pulled the wagon through the massive glass doors Spencer held open for me. A guard behind a glass wall glanced up from his morning paper.

  “Morning, Spencer. Kind of early for you, isn’t it?”

  “Special project. Research knows no time boundaries,” Spencer replied. “Howard, this is Devonie Lace. I need a guest badge for her.”

  “Sure thing. Just fill out this form.” Howard pushed a sheet of paper and pen under the pass-through.

  Howard issued me a special guest badge and let us through the glass doors into the California Department of Justice building. I pulled the little wagon behind me down the long corridors, following Spencer through the maze of hallways.

  A man trudged from the other direction, overburdened with a stack of folders. He stopped to rest and propped his load on a handrail. “Morning, Spencer.”

  “Good morning, Marv,” Spencer replied. “How’s it going?”

  Marv rolled his eyes and adjusted his grip on the mass of paper in his arms. “It’s going to be one of those days. I can just tell.”

  “What’s the problem?” Spencer asked.

  “You name it. I’ve got fifty-two apps for gun permits here. Four ex-postal workers, eighteen recently divorced, nine with rap sheets a mile long. Man, they’ve got nerve. To top it all off, Hollywood wants to blow up the city of San Francisco, and the joker who filed the app thinks it’ll be more artistic if they do it for real instead of hiring the special effects team.”

  Spencer chuckled and patted the weary man on the back. “Cheer up, Marv. Only fifteen more years till retirement.”

  “Thanks a lot, Spencer,” Marv grumbled, and then he continued on his long trek down the hallway and disappeared around a corner.

  We pushed through a pair of swinging doors and entered some sort of lab. A man sat on a stool in front of a strange looking device and peered over his glasses at us. Then he glanced at my little wagon. “Sorry, guys. I can’t come out and play right now. I’ve got work to do.”

  “Everyone’s a comedian,” Spencer said. “Sam, this is Devonie.” Spencer motioned toward me and I extended my hand. “We want to lift some prints off this tank. Any ideas?”

  Sam examined the tank. “Hmm. Been in the water?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  Sam shook his head. “How old are the prints you want to lift?”

  “I don’t know. Probably at least six months,” I replied.

  Sam frowned, his head still shaking. “Six months…been submerged. Hope you’re not hanging your hat on these prints.”

  Spencer kneeled next to the wagon. “To top it off, it’s been handled by every Tom, Dick, and Harry this side of the border. We’ll be lucky to get one good print.”

  Sam took the handle of the wagon and pulled it to the end of a long bench. “Don’t think superglue will work. Best bet is probably the VMD.”

  “VMD?” I questioned.

  “VMD. That’s Vacuum Metal Deposition,” Sam explained.

  I raised an eyebrow and looked at Spencer. Spencer shrugged his shoulders. “You got me. By the time I get them, they’ve already been developed and are ready to load into the computer.”

  Sam put on a pair of latex gloves and hoisted the tank up onto the bench. “VMD develops latent prints in situations where other methods fail.”

  “How does it work?” I asked.

  “Well, we just put the tank in this sealed chamber,” Sam explained as he closed the door on the box. “Then all the air is sucked out, making it a vacuum. A few milligrams of gold and zinc are evaporated in the chamber. The gold and zinc interact with the stuff that makes up a fingerprint. The metals will condense on the tank, rendering usable images out of any latent prints. Pretty remarkable.”

  “How long does it take?” I asked.

  “About fifteen minutes. Enough time to go have a coffee break. Come on,” he motioned. “Just put on a fresh pot.”

  We found fourteen usable prints on the tank. Usable, in that there was enough of the fingerprint pattern area to make a comparison and, hopefully, an identification. Spencer loaded the developed fingerprint images into a computer and we began the process of separating and grouping them. After that procedure, we determined the fourteen prints belonged to a total of five different fingers—fingers from people, as yet, unidentified.

  Spencer stood and walked to a machine labeled, “Live Scan.” “Come over here,” he called to me.

  I obeyed and stood next to the contraption, gazing at the glass plate.

  “Put your hand on the glass” he instructed.

  I looked at Spencer and hid my hands behind my back.

  “It’s okay. Won’t hurt. Promise. This is Live Scan. We use it to scan fingerprints directly to a file. We’ll scan yours, compare them to the ones we found on the tank and eliminate them to narrow our search of the database.”

  “I see.” I placed my hand on the glass and waited while the machine made the equivalent of a Xerox copy of my handprint.

  We sat down at the computer and Spencer brought an image of a fingerprint up on the screen. “Okay. Let’s see what kind of score this one gets.”

  I watched, mesmerized by the technology.

  “Six fifty. No match. Let’s try the next one.” He brought up the next print and retried the operation.

  “Bingo. Thirty-eight-ninety-two. That’s you.”

  “How can you tell?” I asked.

  “Got a score of over three thousand. Anything over a thousand is a possible. Anything over three thousand is a pretty definite match.”

  “Wow. Now what?”

  “Now we see if we can find a hit with the other four prints we got. Tell me who else you know for sure has handled it,” Spencer asked.

  “Let’s see. Jason helped me with it. Paddy, down at the dive shop—he filled it and checked it for me. And Clancy—no, wait—Clancy didn’t touch it. I remember. He made me carry the heavy stuff. Real gentleman. That’s it.”

  Spencer rubbed his chin with the back of his hand. “Not likely we’ll find a match in this database, unless they’ve been arrested. But I have access to some others we can search. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  Hours of searching through millions of records turned up nothing. Exhausted from driving all night, I laid my head on my folded arms on the desk. “I guess this was a mistake. I’m sorry I wasted your time, Spencer.”

  Spencer patted the back of my head. “You’re not throwing in the towel, are you? That’s not the Devonie I know. What happened to that tenacious, strong willed, hardheaded, never-give-up-till-you’re-dead girl?”

  “She fell asleep two hours ago,” I moaned.

  Spencer ignored my whining and continued searching the database. I closed my eyes and was about to drift off into a light sleep when Spencer’s excited voice startled me out of my tire
d misery. “Bingo! We got a hit!”

  I raised my head and stared at the computer screen. I blinked my eyes a few times to focus on the text. “Kent Morrison? Who the heck is he?”

  “Kent Morrison. Retired. U.S. Naval Intelligence. Here, I’ll print it out.”

  My glassy eyes stared blankly at the printout Spencer handed me. I couldn’t think. A good night’s sleep and another twelve hour drive back to San Diego would give me time to think about what I’d discovered and decide what to do next.

  Chapter Eight

  Spencer waved as I backed out of his driveway and aimed my Jeep down the quiet street of the old neighborhood.

  By the time I got to Bakersfield, my stomach was growling, reminding me I hadn’t eaten for six hours. I pulled off the highway and found a place that looked like it might have a decent salad bar.

  As I picked through the broccoli flowerets on my plate, I gazed out the big glass window toward the parking lot. A black and white police car pulled into the lot and parked across from my Jeep. I set my fork down and watched as the two officers sat in their car, talking with each other, then one spoke into the radio.

  I finished my salad and paid my bill, then pushed through the glass doors and headed for my Jeep. As I slid the key into the door lock, the state troopers got out of their squad car and approached me. The driver was tall and muscular. The brown hair I could see from under his cap was cut very short. With one big continuous eyebrow that covered both eyes, he looked an awful lot like a character I’d seen on the Big Time Wrestling show. The brass nameplate pinned to his uniform said his name was Henry Vladowski. His partner was slightly shorter and about ten years older. For some reason, he had no nameplate to identify him. He stayed one step behind Vladowski and kept both eyes fixed on me.

  I smiled. “Afternoon.”

  Neither one returned a smile. No friendly greeting at all. Officer Vladowski had his hand on his gun. “This your vehicle?”

  “Yes. Why?” I asked.

  “Put your hands on the hood,” Vladowski ordered.