Deep Cut

by Nick Sullivan

  “Sid was really looking forward to coming today. His ribs were feeling much better, so we both arranged to get the morning off for it. Even though he lives on an island, he hasn’t dived very often.” Sophie was sitting on a bench in a red bikini top, her wetsuit pulled up to her waist. She watched as Boone pulled on his own wetsuit.

  “Police business, I’m guessing.”

  “Yes. Late last night, a family called saying their daughter hadn’t come home. Then, early this morning, another call, another family. Their son wasn’t in his bed when they woke up.”

  “The girl and boy… were they…?”

  Sophie smiled. “Good instincts. Young and in love, is what Sid told me. He talked to several mutual friends of theirs and they all said they’d been dating for months. Maybe they eloped.”

  Boone nodded, mulling that over as he reached back and zipped up his suit.

  Sophie stood, pulling up her own suit and threading her arms into the neoprene sleeves as she turned her back to Boone. “Can I get a zip?”

  “Uh… sure.”

  “So… I’m going to need a dive buddy,” Sophie said over her shoulder as Boone stepped behind her.

  “Gotcha covered,” Boone said, zipping her up. “Chad! Can you buddy up with Sophie?”

  “It’d be my pleasure,” Chad replied. “Don’t you worry Sophie, you’ll be in good hands.”

  Boone mouthed sorry, as Sophie gave him a look that promised future retribution. He left her to join Anika at the wheel. “Where to this morning?” he asked over the thrum of the engines.

  “Diamond Rock,” she said. “Up near the northwest coast. Still pretty calm, so it’s a good day for it.”

  Ahead, a shape appeared in the distance. As they drew nearer, Boone could see it was an upthrust rock, tapering to a point, like a jagged tooth rising from the water. Adding to the toothy appearance was a predominately white coloration. Then, Boone noted the sea birds clustered at its apex. He stepped out from the cockpit to get a better look. Chad joined him.

  “The white color… is that what I think it is?”

  “If what you think it is is bird shit, then yes.” Chad said. “This is a great dive, man, one of my faves. Pinnacle goes down to a sandy bottom at eighty feet so you can swim all around it. There’re some great little canyons. A ton of spiny lobsters. I know where a little chain moray hangs out. If I spot it I’ll try to catch your eye.”

  “I haven’t seen many chains. Thanks.”

  “And thank you for my dive buddy.” Chad winked and elbowed Boone, but then leaned in. “I’m just kidding, man. She’s hot, but she’s with Sid and he’s a great guy. Besides, if I made a pass at her, she’d probably snap me in half.”

  “She might,” Boone agreed, before grabbing the boat hook and mounting the bow, ready to snag the mooring line.

  After Diamond Rock, the dive boat had motored next door to Man O’ War Shoals. Both dives had been spectacular, with far more life than on the previous days’ dives. Boone had counted no less than eight juvenile drums on the last dive and made a mental note to insist Emily return here with her camera. The tiny black-and-white fish with its enormous trailing dorsal fin was one of her favorite underwater photography subjects.

  “Hey, Boone…” Anika called, motioning him over to the wheel as they headed away from the mooring.

  “What’s up, ’Nika?” he asked.

  “Emily for you,” she said, handing her cell phone to him.

  Boone pressed the phone to his ear, plugging the other with a finger. “Hello?”

  “Boone, hey! I tried your cell first, but I’m guessing it’s crammed into your dry bag. You survive the dives without me?”

  “Barely. How about you? You learn everything you need to know to be a weather girl?”

  “That’s why I’m calling you. Hurricane Irma went through this bonkers intensification. She’s up to 110 miles per hour. That’s almost a Category 3.”

  “Just from this morning?”

  “Yeah, totally off the trolley. The weather blokes are saying it’s rare to ratchet up that fast.”

  “Is it coming here?”

  “Still up in the air,” Emily said. “So… how was diving with Sophie?”

  “I buddied her up with Chad.”

  “Well I’ll be jiggered, there’s hope for you yet. Put Anika back on—Lucky wants to talk to her.”

  As the boat traveled south along the coast, Boone looked up and spotted the customs house in the distance. He thought back to last night: the flashlights. Maybe the missing boy and girl had been the ones with those lights. If so, perhaps they’d simply had a wild night and had turned up by now. But you felt something else, didn’t you? His eyes locked onto the little building’s white walls and red roof, tracking it as the boat swept past, heading back toward Fort Bay.

  “Where is it?” the Servant snarled. He dug through his belongings for the third time. After a moment, he stopped and took several long, slow breaths. You probably lost it last night. Where? Think back.

  It had been a long night, and he was exhausted. The girl had regained consciousness as he was binding her with duct tape. She had given him a nasty set of scratches on his neck before he could subdue her, holding her still while he injected her with a dose of the sedative he had stolen from a medical school on a previous island. Then the long trek up the stone stairs to the cottage, the girl over his shoulder. He had stopped from time to time, listening intently, in the unlikely event someone else was out for a nighttime hike. After chaining her in the basement of the cottage, another trip back down to the customs house to dispose of the body. The sleeping bag made a convenient means of conveyance, and he had loaded the corpse into it alongside the flashlights, beer bottles, and the bloody rags and cleaning supplies he had used to wipe up the blood. Fortunately, most of it had been absorbed by the sleeping bag and the young man’s T-shirt. It had taken nearly an hour for the Servant to bring the heavier load up to the top of the stairs.

  Then had come the trickiest part. The Servant didn’t want to risk carrying the body out in the open, but the road was the only safe way to get to the trail he had scouted yesterday morning. Leaving the sleeping bag near the base of the stairs, he went to the cottage and backed his SUV to the break in the wall, loading the sleeping bag onto a tarp in the back. Driving slowly with the lights off, he parked at the dead end. The nearby residence was completely dark and he quickly unloaded the sleeping bag, stuffing the tarp into it before starting carefully down Middle Island Trail. Even with his tremendous strength, carrying this kind of load down a steep, uneven trail in near darkness was a difficult task. He had taken his time and was grateful that the bright glow of the waxing moon had illuminated the way. It would be full in just six days. This was a fact he knew very well.

  Reaching the abandoned cistern he’d found yesterday, the Servant loaded the now-bulging sleeping bag with a number of sizeable rocks. He stripped out of his coveralls and stuffed them in as well. Finally, zipping the bag shut, he pitched it into the brackish water where it immediately sank. The cool night air felt glorious on his sweat-soaked body as he climbed back up the trail, nude but for the hiking boots on his feet and several leather thongs around his neck. After insuring the coast was clear, he quickly ran to the truck, grabbing a pair of clean coveralls from the passenger seat. He had been wise to buy these in bulk during his time in Nevis.

  It was nearly dawn by the time he returned to the cottage basement and collapsed onto a folding cot to sleep, the whimpers of his prisoner mingling with his soft snores. Upon waking, he had reached up to the thongs on his neck, his fingers finding the items threaded through the lengths of leather: a musket ball from Saint Kitts, a shark’s tooth from Nevis, a chunk of pumice from Montserrat… but that was all. One was missing. The Servant had spent several minutes retracing his steps in his mind.

  Now, breathing slowly, his fingers rose
again to the thongs around his neck. This time they paused as they found the spot where his prisoner had scratched him. He opened his eyes and slowly turned to the girl in the corner of the basement, her wrists handcuffed behind her back, the cuffs themselves secured to a sturdy pipe. “You…” he growled. The girl saw the look in his eyes and shrank from him, scooting back along the earthen floor. The pipe only allowed a few inches of retreat and she whimpered into the duct tape layered across her mouth. The brief struggle just outside the customs house when she revived from the choke hold—she must have snagged the missing thong when she clawed at his face. Rage building, the man took two steps toward her.

  And stopped in his tracks. The Voice came to him. A tiny part of his rational mind knew it was only his own thoughts, but the greater part of him believed that voice was so much more, springing from ancient places. No. You may not harm her further. She no longer belongs to you. You will keep her safe, to fulfill her greater purpose.

  The man relaxed, his face awash with a sudden calm. “Of course. So it shall be,” he said aloud into the musty air of the basement. He would wait for dark and return to the customs house. He would find his missing talisman. Right now, he needed to prepare for a trip to town to meet with the forger. He smiled at the terrified girl. “I imagine you’re thirsty. Hungry too. I’ll fetch you something. You’ll need to keep your strength up.”

  “Sid!” Boone called out. He had asked Sophie to drop him and Emily at the police station in The Bottom before she headed to the airport for her afternoon shift.

  Sid turned from the police vehicle he was exiting. “Hey, Boone! How was the diving? Sorry I couldn’t make it.”

  “Next time,” Boone said. “Sid, the missing couple… did they show up?”

  “Not yet,” Sid said. “I just got back from Immigration at Fort Bay. Checked the passenger manifest for the morning ferry. I thought that maybe they’d snuck off to Saint Martin, but no luck there. Dad’s doing the same down at the airport.”

  “Sid… can you take me to the customs house?”

  “What? Why?”

  Boone explained what he had seen the night before, giving the approximate time and the fact that there were two flashlights.

  “The customs house… why didn’t I think of that?” Sid said. “Yeah, I heard that used to be the place to go catawowing about.” He held up a hand. “Sorry. Saban expression. Means fooling around.”

  Boone started to say more, but stopped.

  “Go on, Boone,” Emily prompted. On the drive up, he had told her of the odd sense of foreboding he had felt.

  “Sid… I just have this feeling that there’s something more to it than a couple kids fooling around.”

  “What do you mean?” Sid asked.

  Boone looked uncomfortable but Emily stepped in. “Boone has these… feelings sometimes. I’ve learned to roll with it. He’s usually right.”

  Sid didn’t hesitate. “Hop in,” he said, opening the doors to the police car.

  The man known locally as “Wink” stared intently at the passport, peering through an oversized magnifying glass. The Servant stood patiently to the side, glancing around the tiny room hidden in the back of the cottage. Wink looked up. “Gunter Schleich,” he said. “Do he want da same name, or another one?”

  “New name, new address,” the Servant said, retrieving a folded paper from a pocket of his crisp new coveralls and handing it to Wink.

  Wink took it and read through the paper’s contents, his right eye occasionally twitching. He’d had the nervous tic since childhood, hence his nickname. “Yours won’t be difficult—I have what I need to make de adjustments to an American passport. But if your friend wants a new EU passport, dere is a different method to da holographic security strip and I’ll need to involve my partner in Saint Martin. And it will cost double.”

  The Servant nodded. He wouldn’t be paying for it. He’d pick up the additional funds tomorrow when he delivered the water Gunter had requested. “How long before I can get it?” he asked.

  The man “chupsed”, sucking his teeth as he thought for a moment. The Servant had heard chupsing often, an odd but common cultural habit among many islanders, meant to express a variety of emotions. Finally, Wink spoke. “Dere’s a ferry to Saint Martin tomorrow afternoon. I have a runner I can send. And I’m expecting a friend wit’ a boat to make a delivery to Saint Martin later in da weekend. He can bring da papers back and I can finish up by…” The eye twitched in a flurry. “Sunday night. Best I can do.”

  “All right.”

  “Anyt’ing else?”

  The man removed a small vial from a pocket. “I need more of this. I imagine the Medical School has some?”

  Wink peered at the label. “Not possible. Dat sort of thing would be under lock and key and I don’t have no one on de inside. Sorry.”

  The Servant thought about asking if some could be procured from Saint Martin, but after running some numbers in his head he decided against it. It would be unnecessarily costly, and he had enough to last until the night it would no longer be needed. As long as he had sufficient doses to keep his prisoner quiet when he left the house, he could make do.

  Wink made a shooing motion. “Come back Sunday mornin’. I need to make some calls right now to make sure we can get it by den. I hear tell dere may be a hurricane coming, and my runner will want to have his boat safely berthed in case we get a blow.

  The Servant frowned. “What hurricane?”

  “Dey calling her Irma.”

  A flash of red roof through the low trees and the customs house came into view below. It was much smaller than Boone had expected. “Not exactly a stately government building,” he observed.

  “Didn’t have to be,” Sid responded. “Just a bit of shelter for a customs officer to be stationed. Hasn’t seen any use since the main pier went in at Fort Bay.”

  “You ever bring a girl here, Sid?”

  “No. I was actually in the States for my education after middle school, but I’ve heard teens and college students sometimes come up here. My dad said he did when he was young. I don’t think it happens all that often, though. Can’t really leave your car along Ladder Hill Road, and it’s a long hike to get here.”

  As they reached the building, Boone began to look around. It was after four and the sun was still bright on this western slope. The rough stone steps angled around to the right of the customs house, and off to the left were a couple concrete blocks. One was upright, hollow and shaped like an outhouse, while the other might have been a cistern. Short of the main building, Boone stopped, staring at a thick clump of brush. Emily came up beside him.

  “Something there?” she asked softly.

  Boone shook his head. “No. Not now, at least. I don’t know…” He approached the little concrete landing at the nearest opening into the customs house and looked inside. Just an empty rectangular room with another doorway across and an empty window on either side. A single cabinet, its light blue paint peeling, sat against the wall on the upslope side. Boone looked to his right at the sparkling sea. That’s where we were night diving. He walked around the building, noting a little plaque that spoke about the history of The Ladder.

  “You said you saw one light leave the building?” Sid’s voice came from inside.

  “Yes,” Boone said, continuing around and up a little rise into some bushes. “Over here, I think.” He looked around, but nothing caught his eye.

  “Couple bottlecaps here,” Emily called out from inside the customs house. “Carib.”

  “Popular beer on Saba, a close second to Heineken,” Sid remarked. “Those could be from any time.”

  “Could… but they look pretty shiny to me,” Emily observed. “And you know how fast things rust near the sea.”

  Sid took one of the yellow discs. “You’re right,” he said, then gave it a sniff. “And I wouldn’t swear to it, but…�
�

  Emily sniffed the other. “Smells beery to me. Boone, you want to join the party and get a whiff?”

  He didn’t hear her. He had approached the other doorway and his eyes were drawn to the floor just inside. Sid started to speak, but Emily squeezed his arm and put a finger to her lips. After a moment, Boone blinked and looked at them. “Does that patch of floor look clean to you?”

  Sid looked down. “It’s all pretty dirty in here, if you ask me.”

  “No… I mean cleaner. Step back and look at the whole floor.”

  They did so and Emily nodded. “Yeah… I mean… maybe?”

  “You know what I think?” Sid asked, as he took a Ziploc from a pocket and dropped the bottle caps into it. “Our missing couple may have been here last night but they’re not here now. I think I should canvas the cottages up on Ladder Hill Road, see if anyone saw anything unusual.”

  They headed out the doorway to the steps. Sid and Emily began to climb, but Boone lingered, letting his eyes go unfocused as he took in the whole scene: the customs house, the steps, the sea. He turned and headed after his friends before stopping dead in his tracks. Something out of place. Something blue. He went back and walked right up to a patch of rich soil and tropical roots just to the side of the steps, not three feet from the entrance to the customs house. There. Under the roots, looking like a thin root itself, was a length of leather threaded through a small object. Gingerly, he picked it up. A leather cord necklace. One end was curled, the knot having pulled open. Threaded through the cord was a small object. Cobalt blue, it appeared to be made of hard pottery. No… it’s glass. It was five-sided, its edges worn smooth.

  “What did you find?” Emily asked, having followed him back down.

  “A necklace of some kind.” He showed them where he’d found it.

  “I think that’s a slave bead,” Sid said. “Can I see it?” Sid slid the bead off of the cord and examined it. “Yes, it is. Well, they call them ‘blue beads’ now. They come from Sint Eustatius, the island next door. The Dutch used to give them to the slaves as a form of currency. Someone is going to be furious,” he said, threading it back on the cord. “These are becoming quite rare.”