Guns generally tend to stay where they land. Bags of cocaine, bodies, and cell phones drift. Although bodies have a habit of gassing up and floating to the surface, which makes them easier to recover, it’s not always the case. Bullet and knife wounds can keep a corpse underwater.
One of the first things they teach you in forensic-diving classes is that there are exceptions to everything, but in 90 percent of the cases, follow the tables and rules of thumb.
I reach the end of the causeway and touch the seawall. Swanson’s shadow is above me, still holding the line.
“No luck?”
“Nope. I’m going to go deeper and try the magnetometer.”
I reach down to the cable at my belt and realize that the device is not attached. Damn. I turn back to the shore where I went in. It’s not sitting there either.
I must have dropped it during my swim.
Not good.
Congratulations, expert police diver Sloan McPherson, you just lost a five-thousand-dollar piece of equipment while trying to conduct an evidence search.
“Everything okay?” asks Swanson.
I give him a thumbs-up. “I’m going to start here,” I lie. What I’m really going to do is go to the bottom and quickly backtrack to the other side of the causeway to try to spot my bright-yellow metal detector before anyone realizes I dropped it.
Ace move, as my brothers liked to say any time you made a bold attempt to cover your ass.
I kick off from the seawall and keep my body close to the bottom of the channel in case a speedboat decides to rip through here and chop me in half.
While I have a cold relationship with pelicans, I’ve swum close to manatees and seen firsthand the scars on their backs from boat propellers. Other than seeing Jackie get hurt, nothing twists my heart like one of those big-eyed, gentle giants with a wound from a careless boater.
I skim along the bottom, creating eddy currents of muck like an airplane swooping over a dusty field. To the left I see the swish of a tail. It probably belongs to a grouper lurking in the shadow of the bridge. I’ve seen some pretty large ones in some of the out-of-the-way places I’ve dived. But I keep my mouth shut about the really large ones, the potential record breakers. The last thing I want is to tip off some trophy hunter.
I spot the yellow handle of the magnetometer sticking out of the sediment only a few feet from where I entered the water. A grimy layer of dirt covers the rubber controls, so I surface to clean it off.
At the same time that I pop my head out of the water, a small Boston Whaler glides by carrying a suntanned elderly woman and a little dog.
She doesn’t see me but waves at someone over my head. That’s when I spot the shadows of Cardiff and Solar on the rippling water. They’re directly overhead on the causeway.
“. . . there are no coincidences,” Cardiff is saying. “Isn’t that how it goes?”
I’m about to dive back in and mind my own business when I catch a reference to me.
“We’re supposed to believe that she was just out randomly diving? Bullshit.” Cardiff’s shadow grows animated as he explains this to Solar. “You know her family. What they do. My money’s on her and that Miller girl going out there because they had some inside info. Then one of Bonaventure’s people caught up with them.”
Miller. Why does that name ring a bell? And Bonaventure? I know that one. He’s a Miami lawyer who reps drug dealers.
Cardiff thinks I’m tied up with them? I’ve half a mind to tell him to go fuck himself right now. Fortunately, the rational side of my brain keeps me from going all McPherson on him. I take a slow breath and put the regulator back in my mouth as I slip under the waves.
From beneath the surface, I can see Cardiff gesturing wildly as Solar stands perfectly still watching the water . . . staring at me.
How much does he know I overheard? How much should I care?
I don’t know.
It seems like everyone knows more about what happened yesterday than I do—yet somehow, I’m allegedly at the center of this murder?
Only it’s more than a murder. Bonaventure is a serious name. The shipment my uncle got busted for belonged to one of his clients. I distinctly recall Dad saying to my oldest brother that his biggest fear wasn’t the feds; it was the people Karl owed money.
I suspect the reason he didn’t plead to a lesser crime was because he knew if he did, there’d be a bill due when he got out of prison—one he couldn’t hope to afford.
I swim back to the side, where Swanson is still waiting, and emerge from the water.
“Anything?” he asks.
I hold up the magnetometer. “I’m just getting it calibrated.”
Out of the corner of my mask, I can see Solar still looking at me. That damn stare.
I look at the device meaningfully. “Okay,” I tell Swanson. “I’m good. What I need you to do is move the line ten feet every five minutes. Okay? We’ll stop at the midway point, and I’ll grab a new tank.”
“Got it.”
I dive back to the bottom and drag the device just above the muck and feel the buzzing in the handle as it picks up various metallic objects.
There are dozens here. Aluminum cans, bottle caps, coat hangers, wire, you name it. I’ve done this enough times to know the familiar pulse of a large piece of metal; I only have to stick my knife into the muck a few times to pry out a rusted wheel rim and a metal fence post.
Halfway to the midpoint, I find an entire automobile bumper. Reluctantly, I call it out to Swanson so he can use a line to drag it to shore.
While it probably broke off years ago when a car collided with the guardrail, there’s a chance it was in a hit-and-run and still bears a visible serial number.
I finally finish my sweep and climb out of the water where I started. Cardiff and Solar are talking to Swanson.
“Are you sure you didn’t miss it?” asks Cardiff.
I ignore the stupidity of his question. “I did a thorough sweep in the most probable zone.”
“What about the improbable ones?” he replies. “It seemed like you didn’t clear the area directly below the guardrail and only did a narrow band.”
“Those are the FBI tables,” I answer as calmly as possible while unfastening my regulator from the tank.
“Well, this isn’t the FBI. We don’t quit until we find what we’re looking for.”
I think he’s goading me into saying I have to go pick up my daughter or that I’m tired. Instead I vent the other tank and start attaching my regulator. “Who said anything about quitting? I’ll do as wide a pattern as you want. I have three more tanks in the car. I can do this all day and night.” I throw the last part out just to bait him. “It’s overtime and a half for me.”
Solar watches this exchange, then looks out at the causeway. “Swanson, you mentioned the driver was smoking a cigarette?”
“Yes. I believe so.”
“And how do you know that?” he asks.
“I saw the sparks from the butt as he threw it out.”
“Do you recall at what part of the bridge?” asks Solar.
“No, sir. I was still far back. Maybe in the middle.”
Solar walks through the grass back up to the causeway and starts a slow pace down the sidewalk, staring at the concrete and into the water beneath the rail.