“Because we didn’t find it in the car,” Cardiff replies. He kicks a toe at my underwater magnetometer. “We thought we’d send you out with that thing and you might find it.”
“Didn’t your diver try?”
“He spent about an hour,” says Swanson.
“This same exact area?”
“Are you trying to avoid going in or what?” Cardiff growls impatiently.
“I’m just trying to keep my search pattern from being something larger than the county.” This guy irritates me. Swanson I can handle.
They both look over my shoulder as an old blue pickup truck pulls onto the grass near the bridge entrance.
Damn. I’d almost forgotten about George Solar. I don’t know if it shows in my face, but I can feel my blood pressure rising.
I continue to check my gear, making sure my breathing regulator gets a fifth look, a totally unnecessary inspection, and do my best to pretend that George Solar being here is no big deal. With DEA asking questions about me this morning and Solar showing up now, I can’t help but feel a little paranoid.
“Need any help?” Swanson asks.
I glance up and give him a weak smile as I vent air from the regulator. “Nope. All good. Just checking.”
I catch Solar’s shadow as he walks over to us. There’s something spooky about the perfectly still way he stands there watching me.
Watching . . . I remember his eyes most clearly. As we sat behind my uncle in the courtroom—I must’ve been thirteen at the time—George Solar occasionally glanced in our direction from the witness box. His dark-green eyes scanned each of us, trying to figure out how much we knew.
Nothing. That was the plain truth. I could recall a few arguments between Dad and Uncle Karl but not the context. Dad admitted to me later that he knew Karl had been running around with some people from Everglades City known for trafficking, and he wasn’t happy about that. For his part, Karl had told his older brother to mind his own business.
Uncle Karl wasn’t the first outlaw in the family. Great-Grandfather McPherson was a rumrunner, and it was a poorly held secret that his son had been involved with the trade of archaeological artifacts whose provenance was in some dispute. As serious as those crimes were, they sounded almost quaint compared to Uncle Karl getting arrested smuggling cocaine in the false bottom of a boat.
The family rallied around him, in no small part because the newspapers impugned us all with headlines about World-Famous Treasure-Hunting Family Fingered in Cocaine-Smuggling Plot.
It didn’t matter that my uncle was the only one charged, or that when the son of the governor got busted for selling MDMA on campus around the same time, the matter was quickly dropped. There was no headline about the governor’s mansion being a potential center for drug trafficking, even though it’s a near certainty that his son was dealing while living there.
When I complained to Dad about the injustice, he explained that the rich and the powerful had better lawyers and could fight such accusations. It didn’t seem fair, especially when I heard whispers around school about my family’s involvement in Karl’s crime.
To be honest, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. I was still going to private school at the time, and there were dozens of kids there with parents who made headlines for everything from Ponzi schemes to the overthrow of foreign governments.
Well, I can’t pretend to inspect my gear forever, so I stand up, acknowledging the presence of George Solar.
He’s older now. Grayer, more wrinkles, more weathered. The green eyes still sit behind tinted glasses, silently judging.
“McPherson,” he says with a nod.
It sounds like something between a greeting and an accusation—as if he’s just reestablished his label for me. McPherson: White-Trash Drug Smuggler.
“Mr. Solar,” I reply. Probably a little too coolly.
“Ah, that’s right, I forgot you two know each other,” says Cardiff with restrained glee.
If Cardiff was waiting to see my reaction, he’ll be disappointed. Instead, I throw it back in his face.
“It’s good of you to come out of retirement to help Cardiff with his work.”
“George is just here to advise,” Cardiff responds, a little defensively.
Swanson jumps in. “I was thinking we should start the search at the far end of the causeway. The last diver was in a bit of a hurry. A few of the streetlights are out at that point, and that seems like the most probable spot for the gun to be tossed.”
I notice that Solar’s head tilts to the side a little as if he’s about to say something, but he doesn’t. That’s the other thing I remember about George Solar—the way he used silence.
When Uncle Karl’s attorney had him in the witness box, he took his time answering each question, sometimes creating long, drawn-out moments during which he simply stared at the attorney like a monkey in a cage.
This drove Uncle Karl’s lawyer nuts, and he asked the judge on several occasions to make Solar answer the questions more quickly. The judge demurred.
At one point, Karl’s attorney even called Solar out on it in front of the jury, saying he should answer the question before they fell asleep. Solar only stared and took his sweet time. I saw smiles in the jury box and felt a pang of frustration, realizing that Karl’s lawyer might have lost the case right there by making them take sides. Between Uncle Karl and his sun-bleached surfer looks that screamed rich-kid drug dealer and the working-class Solar, who could have come straight out of a Tommy Lee Jones movie, it was no contest for the jurors. Solar was in control.
I hand Swanson a rope tied to a small inflatable raft with a dive flag and a line that will extend to the bottom of the waterway. The flag’s to warn boaters I’m down there, and the line gives me something to keep my bearings underwater. These channels are pretty murky, and it’s easy to find yourself fifty yards from where you thought you were searching.
“Let’s start at the far end, like you said. But first I’m going to do a surface swim and look for anything shiny. Got it?”
Swanson nods and takes the line over to the railing on the causeway. I pull myself over the seawall and drop into the water next to the small raft while Cardiff and Solar watch from the causeway sidewalk above.
I pull my mask down, purge my regulator, and go under, putting them behind me.
Things are so much simpler underwater.
CHAPTER SIX
SHINER
In the two hundred feet from one end of the causeway to the other, nothing shines or gleams back at me. At the deepest part, the water is about fifteen feet deep. It’s clearer than usual, and the sun is out, which means I can see about twelve feet.
Besides the fact that the gun—if there even is one—probably isn’t chrome plated, there’s the problem that the muck at the bottom is a thick haze barely penetrated by light. I didn’t expect to see the gun from right below the surface, but it’s always a good idea to get an overview of the area first.
Tossing a gun from the driver’s seat means throwing it through an open passenger window and managing not to hit the guardrail. With a strong enough arm, the gun could be anywhere from right below the bridge to fifteen feet away or more.
I’d plotted a graph on a map showing the probable areas along the bridge. I’ve done this so many times I can create a search pattern with my eyes closed. The tricky part is if there’s a strong current and sediment flow on the bottom.