Black Coral Page 8

  George lifts a folder I’d placed on the table and slides out the X-rays of the kids. He places them side by side and stares at them for an eternity. Finally, he looks up at me. “Damn it, McPherson. Damn it.”

  “Don’t pull this,” I reply. “You knew something was off from the start. Before Hughes and I did. Aguilló did a rush job, and things didn’t fit. Yet you ignored them.”

  “It’s a cold case, McPherson. I said this before.” He points to a filing cabinet against the wall. “We got a bunch of them.”

  “And now we may have a fifth victim,” I reply. Or at least a fifth person who was in the van, I think to myself.

  “Who, correct me if I’m wrong, nobody is looking for.”

  “Take a look at the stack of papers under that folder. It’s two hundred young men who went missing on or around that date.”

  George flips through the photos and descriptions. He turns one toward me. “Nikolaus Healy went missing in Idaho.” He holds up another. “Terrell P. Irwin went missing in Alaska.”

  “Ever heard of hitchhikers? Maybe the kids met up with Nikolaus or Terrell or any one of those other young men. Maybe that’s our fifth victim.”

  “Did any of the parents mention another person?” asks George.

  “No. But I never told my parents about all my friends—especially not the sketchy ones.”

  “All right. So you want to do more background? You want to talk to anyone who knew the kids? Like the guy who spoke at the memorial?” asks George.

  “Yes. I’d like Hughes’s help to talk to teachers. People who were at the concert. Anyone else who might have information.”

  “Okay. As long as it doesn’t interfere with the Bandit case.” He looks to Hughes. “You know this is going to add to your workload. And you’re allowed to tell McPherson no. At least in theory. Lord knows it doesn’t work for me.”

  “I understand. It won’t affect our primary case.”

  “Right,” says George, unconvinced.

  “One more thing,” I say.

  “No,” he shoots back.

  “You haven’t even heard it.”

  “I know you. I know how you work your way from some simple request to asking for something ridiculous. You’re already getting Hughes against my better judgment. What else?”

  I try to say it like it’s the simplest thing in the world. “I want to go back into Pond 65 to look for evidence.”

  If George had been drinking coffee, I’m pretty sure it would be all over the table by now. He shakes his head adamantly. “No. Fish and Wildlife trappers aren’t going to go back out there and capture the gators. They’re already getting hell from the environmentalist groups about their treatment of Big Bill.”

  “No Fish and Wildlife,” I reply. “Just me in the water. You guys in a boat.”

  “Oh, why didn’t you say so?” he says sarcastically. “That makes so much more sense. I’ll scare away dozens of agitated reptiles. Brilliant plan.” He turns to Hughes. “See what you signed on for?”

  “I have a plan,” I reply. “Actually, it was something my dad suggested.”

  “Oh, even better. Your pirate father with shark-bite scars has a plan. This I got to hear.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CAGED

  My dad’s brilliant solution to going into Pond 65 and not getting eaten by Big Bill or any of his scaly cousins is something he used in his younger days, when he and his friends were treasure hunting off the coast of Cuba—in waters that were most definitely Cuban and shark-infested.

  To avoid the Cuban navy, they’d drift into Cuban territory at night and dive while it was still dark. Because this was prime hunting time and territory for bull sharks, they had to be on constant lookout for the creatures—and even then, looking out for the predators only confirmed what you already knew: bull sharks roamed the area and could bite you at any moment.

  While speargunning a large shark can sometimes discourage others, bull sharks will devour each other if they’re bored, and killing a bull shark is just as likely to spark a feeding frenzy in which humans are the easiest pickings. Although it’s true that sharks don’t generally want to eat humans because we’re too bony, bull sharks bite and maim for the sake of it.

  Dad’s solution was a kind of mobile shark cage. Actually, it was two large crab cages bolted together with an open floor. Weighted at the bottom with a small float on top, the cage would stay upright and allow the diver to pick up the cage and walk across the ocean floor as they shoveled and probed for treasure.

  When I asked him if it worked, he didn’t exactly give me a specific answer, but he suggested that my private school tuition and his divorce from my mother may have in part been paid for by that expedition.

  He also hinted that the maps they got of the wreck may or may not have been supplied by the CIA, which wanted to prevent the Cuban government from benefiting from the treasure.

  Morally complicated is a phrase that describes much of my childhood.

  While I like to think I walk a straighter ethical line than my dad and grandfather, I can’t claim I have more common sense. I’m at the bottom of Pond 65 in my “dog cage,” as George called it.

  Big Bill was nowhere to be seen when we rolled up to the pond in our trucks with George’s boat on a trailer. Hughes spotted a small nest at the far end of the lake, and I noticed the telltale bubbles of an alligator not too distant.

  Alligators like to keep their distance from each other, but with the warm outflow from the power plant, this territory is a little like a dog park: open to anyone—until a crazy dog shows up.

  I’m searching the area around where the van came to rest. The best-preserved remains I’ll find would probably be underneath the van itself. Even though we pulled the van out of the water a week ago and currents and sediments have begun to shift, finding the rectangular indentation in the muck where it came to rest isn’t difficult.

  Muck—in a word, that’s the challenge of underwater archaeology. Nadine Baltimore would not approve of the haphazard way I’m searching the pond. It’s more scattershot than procedural. I’m sticking a pointed pole in the mud, trying to feel for anything solid—like the sole of a shoe or a skull.

  Sticking pointy things into the ground may not sound like the most scientific process, but I’ve become quite good at it. Grandpa actually taught me this technique. He learned it from Peruvian grave robbers. At a party, he once demonstrated the method using a ski pole in the host’s backyard. It took Grandpa ten minutes to figure out where they’d buried their cat. “Feel that crack? That’s a thin skull like a cat’s. Just an inch farther down? That’s a spine. If I move the pole over and tap on it, you can hear an echo in the gas-filled stomach.”

  My childhood was both traumatizing and amusing.

  I make enough holes in the van’s indentation to be satisfied that the only way to know for certain that nothing is there is by vacuuming up the muck—something George would never go for.

  I decide to extend the radius.

  “I’m going to move out from the van and toward the shoreline, over,” I call into the radio.

  “Dolphins up by six,” replies George.

  He and Hughes are evidently watching the football game on the boat. I can only hope that they’re keeping at least one pair of eyes on the water.

  My pole hits something hard. “Got something.”

  I reach into the mud and feel what seems like a large chunk of rubber. I put it into the nylon bag clipped to the inside of the cage.

  Already I’ve found a woman’s sandal, fourteen beer cans, and items too encrusted with sediment to know what they are at this moment. All of them have gone into the pouch. I’ve already sent three pouches to the surface.

  The pole hits something metallic. It takes me a minute to pull it free. It’s a side mirror. The van was missing both.

  “I think I found a side mirror. Looks like the van may have rolled. Over.”

  “Send it up with the rest,” says George.
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br />   I put the mirror in the bag and attach it to a nylon cord that goes up to the boat and give the cord a tug.

  The bag gets pulled up and through a hatch on top of the cage. I watch as it ascends into the light at the surface. George’s boat is a shadow floating on a shimmering mirror.

  As the bag nears the surface, I see a long shape glide past.

  Looks like I’m not alone.

  “I just spotted an alligator,” I call into the radio.

  “Bill?”

  “Negative. A small one. Maybe four feet. Probably curious about what we’re doing.” This guy is barely an adult. I’m a bigger threat to him.

  “I don’t like curious alligators,” says George.

  Fair point. But the funny thing about alligators is that they actually look kind of adorable when they swim. At least I think so. It’s that toothy smile and those dangling legs. I mean, when I have a close call, they seem far from adorable. But as this one swam by, I could make out the grin and the pot belly. Baby alligators would be almost cuddly if it weren’t for the fact that their mother would snap you in two for being in the general vicinity.

  I try to find the right balance between adoration and fearful respect for these creatures when I’m underwater. Anecdotally, and speaking more from my grandfather’s and dad’s experience, thinking about sharks and alligators as big, goofy dogs that will bite you out of fear or curiosity, not malice, helps you handle a crisis better when something does take a bite. Like a big dog, they can kill you, but panicking only escalates the encounter. And the surest way to panic is to imagine these creatures as aquatic serial killers, waiting to murder you. Some are; most aren’t.

  I start pushing the cage toward the shelf that Hughes and I dived from when we pulled the van from the water . . . the overhang that seemed like an excellent spot for an alligator burrow.

  I push the pole into the bottom, hit a few rocks, and keep moving. The rocks indicate that this end of the pond is more geologically stable and not the mud pit the rest of the pond resembles.

  CLANK! My pole hits something metallic. I dig into the mud and retrieve sideview mirror number two. Now it’s a matching set—and in a completely different place from where the van came to rest.

  “McPherson, we see you’ve moved,” says Hughes over the radio. They can follow me from the surface via a floater attached to a cord.

  “Affirmative. I found the other mirror.”

  “We’ll bring the boat closer.”

  I shove the mirror into the bag and look up at the wall of the shelf. There’s a dark spot about five feet below the surface and level with the top of the cage.

  I pick up the dog cage and move closer for a better look. It’s a three-foot-wide hole. When I aim my flashlight into the opening, it fades after about six feet.

  This is an alligator den. From the rocks around the side and the size of it, an old one.

  Lots of alligators have lived here over the years. This is also where an alligator would drag a large carcass to consume at their leisure.

  If there was a fifth victim and they somehow landed outside the van, this burrow might be where they ended up. There wouldn’t be much left of a thirty-year-old eaten corpse, except maybe clothing, a backpack, or a shoe . . .

  All right, Sloan, how badly do we want to know what’s in there?

  I’m already strapping my flashlight to the end of my pole like a bayonet. That way I can push it ahead of me into the tunnel. If Bill or some alligator renter from their version of Airbnb is inside, I’ll see their toothy face and be able to back out.

  Um, great plan.

  “Hey, fellas, I’m going to check something out. I might have a few minutes of radio silence,” I say into the microphone.

  “McPherson?” asks George.

  “Just give me five minutes.”

  I open the door to the cage and pull it close to the wall face, making it easy for me to retreat if I need to do so in a hurry.

  I pull myself up and push my spear into the cave and follow the light into the darkness.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  LAIR

  Get my father a little buzzed—basically catch him anytime after three in the afternoon—and bring up strange things he’s seen in the ocean, and he’ll tell you stories until the sun comes up. He’s a hard-ass skeptic about what other people have experienced, but he’ll shake a sinewy finger in your face if you dare question a single detail about the strange green lights he saw drifting over the ocean off the coast of Venezuela or the incredibly long tentacle that snaked across his ship’s deck in the Philippines.

  Even if I believed only 10 percent of what he says, that’s still an incredible amount to believe. I give him added credibility because, ever since he was a boy sailing around the world with his father, he’s explored some extremely unexplored places.

  Sometimes all it takes is the right perspective to understand how something that sounds impossible could be perfectly plausible. Crocodiles are known to dig burrows like alligators in order to survive the cold. In the Roman era, when the climate was warmer for a period, it wouldn’t surprise me if more than a few of them made it north to European rivers and perhaps inspired early legends of dragons.

  I don’t feel like a brave knight as I swim into the burrow. I don’t know if it’s fear or anxiety. The two kind of blend for me. I usually define fear as the thing I feel when the unexpected happens. Anxiety is when I’m doing something that I already know is stupid.

  This tunnel is long. I’m at least ten feet in, and my light hasn’t hit the end. While it’s tall enough for my air tank, it’s not that wide. I’m not sure if I will be able to turn around without slipping it off. Thankfully, I’m well practiced at that maneuver.

  My bigger concern is making sure that I’m alone in here and don’t have to pull my tank off to escape in a hurry. If Big Bill’s sitting back in this tunnel—which I really, really doubt—I’ll see a flash of silver light as it reflects from the backs of his eyeballs. He’ll then either retreat or snap at my pole, giving me enough time to pull back. Theoretically.

  I remind myself that this burrow is designed as a place to hide . . . well, that and make a sneak attack on any large fish that swim near the entrance. But mostly to hide.

  The walls of the tunnel are thick dirt with roots and rocks, kind of like what you’d expect Bilbo Baggins’s house to look like—or Gollum’s.

  Damn, this tunnel is long.

  “McPher—” George’s voice is cut off by the interference of the cave walls.

  I focus on the floor of the tunnel, looking for anything resembling a bone or a human artifact, but all I see is rocks and dirt.

  My light reaches the end of the tunnel abruptly. I guess this was a pointless exercise . . .

  Wait a second.

  There’s a shaft branching to the left. I stick the light to the side and wait for the bone-jarring experience of an alligator snapping it in two, but . . . nothing.

  I poke my head around the bend. This branch of the tunnel widens into a much larger chamber. This must be Bill’s turnabout. I move the light around. The water here remains muddy and hard to see through, but there’s no telltale sign of scales or gleaming eyes.

  I’m pretty sure nobody is home.

  Good . . . The chamber’s floor is littered with fish skeletons, beer cans, and a thousand other pieces of debris.

  My hand brushes something ridged and hard, and my heart jumps. It’s only half a car tire.

  Jesus. What happened to the other half?

  I glance up and realize that there’s a reflection on the ceiling. I push myself up from the bottom, and my head pops into an air pocket.

  Holy cow, this is a pretty big little cave. Mentally, I try to place where I am. I’m guessing I set up my tanks and equipment directly above this location.

  I’ve never heard of an alligator den like this before—or one containing this much crap. Bill or whoever made it is one odd gator.

  Okay, no time to speculate on the i
nner psychology of alligators. I need to gather anything that looks like a clue and do it fast.

  I go back underwater and start shoving cans, mysterious blocks of metal, and more chunks of rubber into my bag, feeling along the floor with my gloves. As I do this, my spear slips free and floats to the surface. The flashlight at the tip of the spear illuminates the entire chamber.

  When I poke my head up again, I notice a section I didn’t see before. There’s a shelf above the waterline about as large as Big Bill.

  Thankfully, there’s no Big Bill there. Although the reflection of a glass bottle nearly gives me a heart attack.

  Why couldn’t my parents have raised me in the desert?

  I aim my light at the nest and notice something white. Something long and white. It’s a bone. A large bone.

  I move close to the ledge and shove my pole into the nest, praying that a bunch of baby alligators don’t come crawling out and cry for mama.

  I’m pretty sure Bill is a guy, but it wouldn’t be polite to assume. A fun fact about alligators is that the temperature of the nest determines the sex of the babies. Warm nests produce males; cold ones produce females.

  I use my spear to lift the white bone. Yep. It’s a big bone, but it’s covered in grime and cracked on the end, so I can’t tell what kind of animal it came from. It’s definitely going in the bag, because it looks about the same size as the femur of a certain two-legged ape that inhabits Florida.

  Nice job keeping things light in the dragon’s den, Sloan.

  With it, I find a clump of fabric clotted with dirt. I shove that into the bag as well. My probing doesn’t reveal anything else, so I turn back to the main body of the chamber and resume pushing the pole along the bottom.

  “SLOAN! YOU . . .” The radio cuts in and out again.

  The water level in the cave suddenly surges . . . like something just entered the mouth of the cavern.

  Oh damn.

  I was so worried about finding Big Bill in here, I didn’t think about what would happen if he came home.

  And it looks like he just arrived.