Dangerous Depths (7 page)

The back room was filled with
supplies—chemicals, test tubes, one of those short boxy
refrigerators where Elyse kept her samples. A microscope was set up
in the corner on a table, a carton of glass slides opened nearby.
Elyse’s bike leaned against a wall. It was an old Schwinn: bulky
tires, wide fenders, a metal basket attached to the handlebars.

Elyse’s office was in the front. It was way
too small to hold what it did—a desk, file cabinets, overflowing
bookshelves, studies and reports stacked on chairs. I started with
the desk. It was littered with another stack of reports, memos,
notes, and pages of data. I piled the folders that were strewn on
the desk chair onto the floor, sat, and began to look through the
material.

There was a detailed report about sediment
runoff into Simpson’s Bay from the gravel pit near the airport. It
contained several pages of tables: GPS coordinates, with
corresponding data on water temperature, visibility, bottom
conditions, and sea life. Elyse’s written report followed. In it,
she discussed her findings: the smothering of nearshore reef
communities, an increase in water turbidity that was also
associated with decreases in coral growth and productivity, and
more sediment accumulation in mangroves.

Calvin had said that Elyse was complaining
about the runoff the Sunday morning when he helped her refuel the
boat. I jotted down the address of the gravel pit and the owner’s
name, Amos Porter.

Next was a report on rat eradication on
Hermit Cay. It was a summary of the successful efforts written by
LaPlante, the chief scientist who had conducted the project. Elyse
had taken part. She had camped out at the cay for a week, helping
to maintain bait stations and monitor conditions in terms of safety
for other wildlife, especially any birds and other vertebrates that
might ingest the poison.

Another folder was earmarked for Tom Shields
and Liam Richards. Tom and Liam were two semiretired oceanographers
who were in the islands as volunteers, counting and tagging
turtles. Inside the folder marked with their names I found an old
report about sea turtles along with a map of habitats and nesting
grounds.

Other loose sheets of paper scattered around
the desk included everything from coral bleaching to the
repopulation of black urchins, which had been almost completely
wiped out of the Caribbean some twenty years ago, to an e-mail from
a guy over at Brandywine Bay about someone leaving bags of garbage
on shore. When I turned the fax machine on, a message from the
coast guard spewed out about the prosecution of the fishermen whose
boat we’d found last month loaded down with shark fins.

I found Elyse’s appointment book in the top
desk drawer. It was filled with notations and appointments: dinner
dates with her boyfriend, Alex Reidman, support group meetings, an
appointment to meet with Abernathy, the candidate for chief
minister. She had penciled in an appointment with LaPlante for
Monday that she’d obviously missed. I wondered if LaPlante knew
that Elyse was in the hospital.

I tossed the folders and appointment book
into a shopping bag Elyse had stashed under the desk. I’d pass the
old turtle survey on to Tom and Liam and go through the rest of the
material back at the office. I shut down the fax machine and was
just placing a finger on the light switch when a shadow appeared at
the front door. Someone turned the knob and pushed on the door,
then peered in the window. The shadow moved away and I could hear
footsteps crunching along the side of the building. I stepped into
the back room and waited, pressed against the wall behind the
door.

Who the hell would be snooping around Elyse’s
office at this time of the morning? Someone looking for something?
Kids looking for a place to hang out instead of being at school? I
waited. Whoever it was hesitated at the back door. Finally, the
knob turned, the door slowly opened, and one foot wearing an
expensive, hand-tooled cowboy boot crossed the threshold. Then a
man’s fingers, big, soft, and manicured, wrapped around the edge of
the door and eased it open. Obviously trying to remain soundless,
he pushed on the door and stepped inside, where he stopped again,
hesitant. Then he moved into the room.

“Hold it right there,” I said, slamming the
door shut as I pulled my gun. I hoped the guy would be cooperative.
I hate pointing guns at people, much less firing.

“What the hell?” The man turned. “Hannah,
jeezus, you scared the shit out of me.”

“Alex, what are you doing sneaking in here?”
Alex Reidman. I lowered the gun.

“I was on my way to the bank. I saw the light
on. I thought I should check. Make sure everything was okay. What
are
you
doing here?” he asked, glancing nervously at the gun
I held by my side.

“Checking on a few things.”

“Like what?”

“Like what Elyse has been up to the last few
weeks.”

“Doesn’t seem as though you should be rifling
through her stuff,” he said, noticing the shopping bag I held.

“Look, Alex. I’m just not buying this
accident theory. I think someone tried to kill her.”

“Who would want to hurt Elyse?”

“I’m betting she was into something that
threatened someone.”

“You really think anyone would try to kill
her over the environment? I seriously doubt it,” he said.

“People kill for all kinds of reasons,” I
said. “Did Elyse talk to you about anything she was up to?”

“You know, Elyse. She is always fighting one
cause or another. Lately it was a lot of talk about that kid,
Jillian.

“What did she tell you?” I asked.

“Elyse was concerned about Jillian’s parents
sending her to that school. She said she was going to talk to them
about it. Certainly nothing so extreme that they would feel
threatened. Though I suppose they might have worried that Jillian
would simply take off if Elyse convinced her to. I know she’d spent
a night on Elyse’s boat. She’d had a fight with her folks. I guess
a parent could get pretty upset about their kid being gone all
night.”

I remembered the night Jilli had stayed with
Elyse. She’d come over there on the verge of tears. We fixed dinner
together. By the time we’d finished eating, Elyse and I had found a
way to make Jilli laugh.

“You’re way off base here snooping around her
office, and there is nothing more I can tell you,” Reidman
said.

“I want to know what Elyse was doing. I don’t
think she’d object to my being in her office.”

“You need to let it go, Hannah,” he said. I
wondered why he cared.

“What difference does it make to you,
Alex?”

“None at all,” he said. “Is Dunn going along
with this?”

“I’m not letting this go until I find out
what happened on the
Caribbe
.” I avoided the question about
Dunn.

We walked out together, Reidman making a
point of engaging the lock and pulling the door closed behind us.
Kind of proprietary, I thought. Maybe a bit too protective. Fine. I
had what I needed. Besides, I could get back in if I wanted.

Reidman was heading down the sidewalk as I
climbed into the Rambler. When I passed the bank a block down from
Elyse’s office, Edmund Carr was just opening it up for the day and
holding the door for Reidman and a few other anxious customers. I
honked and waved. Carr smiled and waved back. Reidman ignored
me.

It was almost ten by the time I snuck into my
office. I hoped Dunn wouldn’t notice. Fat chance.

“Good morning, Detective.” He stood at the
door, hands on his hips.

“Morning, Chief. Sorry I’m late. Kind of a
long day yesterday. I overslept.”

“No need to be making excuses. Alex Reidman
called. He said he ran into you at Elyse Henry’s office.”

Christ, he must have called Dunn the minute
he’d walked into the bank.

“What’s his problem?” I asked.

“I believe he was concerned that you were
trespassing, Detective.”

“Jeez, I knew the guy was a control freak but
this is silly. Elyse is a friend.”

“I know, Hannah, and I know what you were
doing. Let it go. Snyder has been chomping at the bit to get out of
the office. I want you to focus on those thefts. Stark and Mahler
have already gone over to the west end. But they can’t conduct
their investigation without help. Snyder’s waiting for you down at
the dock.”

I tried not to blame Dunn for being so
shortsighted. We were notoriously understaffed in the department,
and he’d been getting a lot of pressure about the boat thefts.
People were worried about the effects on tourism. But dammit, why
couldn’t he see that there could be someone out to get Elyse? I’d
help investigate the thefts, but I wasn’t about to let it interfere
with finding out who had sabotaged the
Caribbe.
Besides, I
was sick of being told to “let it go.”

When I got down to the docks, Snyder had the
Wahoo
gassed up and was hobbling around on deck cleaning the
damned boat. He didn’t see me coming. He was reaching for something
down in the hold when he suddenly stood up and bent over, held onto
his side, and grimaced.

“Snyder,” I said, stepping onto the boat,
“you need to take it easy, for chrissake.”

“I be doin’ fine. Just a bit a pain in da
belly. Probably something I had for breakfast. You know my mama.
Food be da cure for all dat ails. She be stuffing me with conch
stew and potatoes every chance she gets.”

Snyder had put on some weight, his gangly
body filling in. He was looking less like a kid, some of the
innocence gone. Nothing like almost dying to throw you out of
childhood. It was sad but inevitable. I was sorry that I had played
a part in the transition though. But in spite of everything,
Snyder’s eyes were still full of the devil. Thank God. I hoped it
stuck into old age.

Snyder fired up the engine and before I could
object, he was behind the wheel and accelerating the
Wahoo
out of the slip.

“Snyder,” I warned, “let’s keep it below warp
speed, okay?”

“No problem,” he said, as though it was a
given and he always watched his rpms. Then he gave me that damned
smile and pushed the throttle forward. A local fisherman in his
small boat waved with one hand, holding on for dear life with his
other, as our wake hit his boat. The locals knew Jimmy and his lust
for speed.

We headed out of Road Harbor and into the Sir
Francis Drake Channel. It was crowded with sailboats, tipped on
their sides, sails filled. It was a perfect sailing day. Just the
right amount of wind. It would have been a perfect day to be out on
the water with O’Brien. He’d be analyzing the wind, tightening
sail, adjusting the arc in the mainsail, then five minutes later
doing it all over again. O’Brien couldn’t sit still on a sailboat.
He was always searching for perfection.

Snyder and I motored east along the southern
side of Tortola, past Paraquita and Fat Hogs Bay, then Beef Island
and the airport. An American Eagle flight from San Juan swooped
down to the runway and disappeared. It would be dropping off and
picking up the sailboat charterers who made up the bulk of tourism
on the islands. Across the channel, near Salt Island, a dozen
sailboats and dive boats were anchored at the Wreck of the
Rhone
, one of the best dive sites in the Caribbean.

Virgin Gorda was the easternmost island in
the British Virgin Islands, with Anegada directly north. Then it
was open water east all the way to Saint Martin. Snyder headed the
Wahoo
through the Dogs between West Dog and Great Dog, past
George Dog and then the Seal Dogs. The names hardly conjured up
beauty but beautiful they were. Protected by the National Park
Trust system, the little islands were surrounded by spectacular
snorkeling and diving. Fortunately some mooring balls had been
installed to protect the delicate sea life from the damage caused
by anchors being dropped on the coral and wiping out
hundred-year-old colonies.

Still, the hapless, or those who just didn’t
care, had managed to do some damage. Right now I could see a big
fifty-foot catamaran circling in the day anchorage at George Dog.
All of the moorings were full. Instead of going elsewhere, the
skipper was easing the boat into the bay. A fat guy, stomach
hanging over a skimpy spandex swimsuit, was standing in the bow,
getting ready to drop the anchor.

Snyder turned into the bay before I’d
suggested it myself. Elyse had indoctrinated Snyder and everyone
else about ocean conservation. She never let anyone get away with
wanton destruction when she encountered it, and she conducted an
ongoing campaign to make sure that charter boat captains, police,
dive shop operators, anyone who made a livelihood in or near the
water did the same. Everyone understood that destroying the reef
destroyed what made these islands special and that it would affect
tourism. But even more important, it would ruin the islands for
their children and their children’s children.

I’d been diving at the Dogs with O’Brien and
Elyse—at Bronco Billy, the Chimney, and the Visibles. We’d swum
under arches and ledges blanketed in a rainbow of color, thick with
purple and green algae, the oranges, reds, and yellows of sponges,
and coral. We’d encountered nurse sharks, spiny lobsters, banded
coral shrimp and moray eels, brittle stars and crabs under ledges.
Anemones flourished, their pink and purple tentacles swaying in the
currents. Fish of every size and hue—queen angels, triggerfish,
indigo hamlets, fairy basslets, and stoplight parrots—inhabited
these reefs.

Snyder slowed the
Wahoo
and we circled
the big boat, called
Catnip
. It carried the logo of the Sail
BVI fleet out of Tortola.

“Ahoy on
Catnip
,” I yelled. The
captain let up on the throttle and put the huge boat into neutral
as Snyder expertly maneuvered the
Wahoo
alongside. I threw a
couple of bumpers over the side and grabbed onto their rail.