Swimming With the Dead (5 page)

“Don’t worry, Hannah,” he said, “I’ll give her a snack every day.” 

Sadie would be spoiled rotten and five pounds heavier when I returned.  She’d be in dog paradise.  I worried that someday Sadie would abandon me for Scotty and the good life.  But she always greeted me when I returned with a kid’s Christmas-morning excitement.  She knew I needed her.

Sadie’s well-being assured, I phoned Michael’s former roommate at Berkeley and his advisor, Wayne Grishinski.  Neither could tell me much.  His roommate described Michael much the way his father had, as did Grishinski—friendly, outgoing, committed to his field. 

Though the research was extremely valuable, Grishinski didn’t really see it as threatening.  “It would have taken a couple of years for Michael’s results to be published and several further studies for verification,” he said.  “Even then, it takes pressure from someone more powerful than a Ph.D. candidate to institute change.  Most people see research as purely academic, having no practical application, nothing to do with the real world.  If Michael had been truly motivated, he would have had to take his findings to an individual or group with political clout.  Though I suppose that he was just the sort to do it, and he did have some valuable connections through his family.  All of us at the university are taking his death very hard,” he said, voice faltering.

I spent the next hour reading Michael’s dissertation.  It was dedicated to his parents and Lydia Stewart.  There was also a note of thanks to Peter O’Brien “for keeping me honest and reminding me about the big picture.”  I wondered what he meant.

By the time I turned the last page, I’d learned more than I really wanted to know about the million or so species that exist in the ocean: fish, shrimp, snails, worms, crabs, lobsters, urchins, sea stars, squid, sea plants, hundreds of coral species and sponges, and sea cucumbers, for chrissake. 

Seems like Darwin was impressed, though.  He called the pyramids insignificant when compared to these underwater mountains of limestone.  I guess it takes a naturalist.  I dove to solve crimes, not to analyze the environment or admire my surroundings.  Not that there was anything to admire.  All I’d ever seen in the water were rusted vehicles, brown trout, and muddy, mucky lake bottoms.  The only environmental issue I was concerned with was rotting bodies polluting Colorado lakes and rivers.

When Mack called, I’d been reading about coral colonies.

“Hey, Mack, did you know that coral is really a mix of animal, plant, and mineral.  They are these colonies of thousands of tiny animals, coral polyps.  They have tentacles that capture unsuspecting critters that float in water.  The plant parts are the algae that hide inside the coral doing the photosynthesis thing and passing on sugar and oxygen to the coral.  All this activity forms stony skeletons.  That’s the mineral part.  Can you believe anyone would spend so much time studying this stuff?”

“Jeez, Sampson,” Mack responded, “you really need to explain it all to me?  What I want to know is how the hell you finagled two weeks in the Caribbean?”

“Yeah, well, it wasn’t my idea.  Forty-eight hours ago I was relaxing on the massage table and planning a quiet weekend.”

“Aw, Sampson, I really feel for you.  While you’re down there stretched out in the warm sand, you can think of me driving around in ice and snow.”

“Okay. So, what do you think?  I guess the boss filled you in on the details.”

“I don’t know,” Mack said.  “I’m pretty skeptical.  But I have a lot of respect for Duvall.  I just can’t see him being that irrational.  Though I guess when your kid is concerned, parents can get irrational.”

Mack would know.  He and Sue had raised four kids.  One was twenty-eight and still living at home.  He’d been diagnosed as autistic.  They had taken him to every specialist in the West.  It had been hard on a cop’s salary.

“Anything on the break-in or Greta?”

“Nothing yet.  Still have a bunch of people who work in the building to question.  Brown and Rodriguez will be over there all day tomorrow.  You know the procedure.”

Yeah, I knew.  There would be hundreds of pieces of information, most of it meaningless.  But one small scrap might lead somewhere.  It all had to be checked.

“Hey, call me if you need anything,” Mack said.  “Better yet, send for me.  And Sampson, don’t get burned.”

Chapter 4

I was somewhere over the Atlantic.  Or maybe the black stuff below was the Caribbean.  At 35,000 feet, an ocean’s an ocean.  All I could tell was that it was vast, empty, and deep.  Boating, much less diving, in such a place seemed foolhardy—a kind of death wish.

Somewhere up ahead, about three hours away according to the voice from the cockpit, lay Puerto Rico.  God, three more hours in this hotdog-shaped prison.  Then I was scheduled on a puddle jumper to a place called Beef Island.  I could just see it: some tiny island with pot roasts strewn under palm trees.  So much for island paradises.

Desperate for distraction, I retrieved Michael’s guidebook to the British Virgin Islands.  The first thing I learned was that anyone who knew anything called them the BVI.  According to the welcome letter from the chief minister, the BVI is the yacht-chartering capital of the world.  The area is made up of some forty islands, cayes, and rocks.  They count rocks?  Looking at the map, I’d guess that most of the forty were, in fact, rocks.  About eight looked like they might classify as islands, and that was pushing it.  Names ranged from the mundane to plain weird—Norman Island, Cooper Island, Virgin Gorda, Big Dog, Cockroach.  The largest, Tortola, is maybe eight miles long by four across, practically spitting distance to the other side.  It’s the seat of government, and most of the 16,000-some inhabitants of the BVI live there.

“Breakfast, ma’am?”  I looked up to see the steward hovering with what he was calling “breakfast.”  He placed a tray containing a dried out cinnamon roll and a bowl of fruit in front of me.  The cantaloupe was crunchy and tasteless, the strawberries mushy.  I decided to stick with the coffee.

“Not going to eat that roll?” the man sitting next to me asked.  He was with his wife, who clearly planned to consume every morsel of her meal. 

“No, please, help yourself.”

“Thank you.  Can never get enough to eat on an airplane.  Meals just aren’t what they used to be.  Name’s Gerald, this here’s my wife, Patricia.” 

The woman next to him leaned over to shake my hand.  Shit, I thought.  I knew the signs.  If I didn’t act fast, I’d be doomed to small talk all the way to San Juan.  I excused myself and made a quick escape to the bathroom.

As I walked to the back of the aircraft, I was assaulted by a five-year-old who thought I was the perfect candidate for a game of cops-and-robbers.  I had just made it out of his grasp when I was tackled by an overstuffed shopping bag jutting out into the aisle.  I narrowly avoided falling into the lap of the gentleman in the seat behind. 

“Watch what you’re doing,” the owner of the shopping bag hissed as she pushed papers and files back inside and tried unsuccessfully to cram it under her seat.  Like it was my fault. 

She was a big woman, way too big to be wearing a god-awful bright green running suit.  She looked like a giant lime.  She was lucky that I wasn’t one to rise to the occasion, exhibiting the airplane version of road rage. 

I guess I would put air travel second on the list of things I hate, right after telephones, which have held first place for a while now.  I’m a firm believer in the theory that all this high-tech stuff that was supposed to make life more pleasant and provide more leisure has simply made life more stressful.  Now we can do everything we used to do in half the time, which gives us a lot more time to do more, faster.  That all translates to a reduction in quality and to stress with a capital S, as far as I’m concerned. 

My sister’s the perfect example.  She’s got one of those high-powered ovens that will cook a meal in something like thirty minutes.  We used to spend Thanksgiving chopping, mixing, playing board games, and savoring the smell of turkey, growing stronger and more succulent as the day passed.  Last Thanksgiving, my sister and the kids spent the day at the mall and rushed home to mix up a box of stuffing and toss everything in the microwave a half hour before our designated arrival with the appropriate side dishes.  So much for family time and the glow of holiday togetherness.  I guess I shouldn’t complain.  At least she did most of the cooking.

Like everyone else, I have taken up the lifestyle, joining a bunch of strangers packed inside a tin tube, eating breakfast that came in shrink wrap and breathing recycled air.  I splashed water on my face and ran a brush through my hair.  I looked like I’d had about four hours of sleep, which is exactly what I’d had.  My hair needed cutting and my skin had taken on the pasty glow of winter. 

I returned to my seat, relieved to find Patricia asleep, with Gerald, head on her shoulder, mouth open, snoring.

In San Juan, I boarded a tiny aircraft that actually had propellers for the forty-minute flight to Beef Island.  The captain didn’t even bother to close the cockpit door.  Just before takeoff he turned around and asked, “Where ya wanna go?”

I wasn’t sure whether he was kidding or not, and I had serious doubts about ever seeing my luggage again.

Forty minutes later we began to descend, and mounds of deep green appeared.  As we got closer, I could see sandy beaches and calm bays with a bunch of poles sticking out of the water.  Finally, I realized they were sailboats.  I figured it was all a setup for those postcards—you know, those idyllic Robinson Crusoe–type places that exist only in the imagination.

We banked and started a steep descent.  I didn’t see an airport, no runway, no terrain dotted with pot roast, just water.  At the last second, land appeared beneath the wheels and we touched down on a gravel strip that ended at the water’s edge.  Powerful reversal of engines and we were there, in one piece. 

Once inside the airport, two lines were forming, one for “residents and belongers” and one for visitors.  Since I was pretty sure I didn’t belong, I headed to the other line, where the immigration officer took me through the standard routine and stamped my passport.  I grabbed my luggage, which by some amazing stroke of luck had arrived before me. 

The terminal was one flat building with three deserted ticket counters, a little snack bar, and a gift shop displaying a rack of dusty postcards and plastic place mats.  With a few long strides, I was outside.

The trees were green and bursting with red and yellow flowers—in January.  Chickens scattered from beneath my feet and clucked at my audacity.  I guess I was invading their space.  Across the way a baby chick was trying to keep up with its mother and at the same time avoid being run over by cars whose drivers were unconcerned about the wildlife in the road.  The only other building in sight was a shack across the dirt roadway that said “Airport Restaurant.”  Four or five goats were milling about the structure, keeping the grass short.  There are airports and then there are airports. 

It was hard to believe I had been fighting the crowds at DIA a few hours ago.  The only stressor here was that little chick in the road, and I was pretty sure I was the only one worried about it when a little boy, wiry and barefoot, scooped the chick up and put it in the grassy area with the others. 

“Taxi, ma’am?” asked a man in a yellow, green, and red Rasta beret, from which a tangle of matted hair protruded. 

He took my bag and I climbed into his beat-up brown station wagon.  It reeked of marijuana.  I considered finding another cab.  Funny, back in college I’d have paid extra for a marijuana-saturated taxi.  But it ruins a law officer’s image.  People tend to question a cop who smells like a character from
Reefer Madness
. 

I was about to seek out other transportation when the driver held out his hand and with the most disarming smile introduced himself, “Name’s Robert.  Welcome to our beautiful islands!  Where ya wantin’ ta go?”

Oh, what the hell.  “Treasure Chest,” I said.

“No problem, mon,” he said as he ground into first gear and screeched out of the airport, somehow managing to miss every chicken and goat in his path.

“Next time you comes down, you be coming into our new, modern airport.”  He pointed to a huge cement structure nearby.

“I kind of like the one you’ve got,” I said. 

“Lots a folks say dat.  Called progress, though. You be comin’ here ta sail?”

He was surprised to find that I wasn’t.  According to Robert, I was the only person he’d picked up today who was not getting on a boat.  “This be a sailin’ paradise,” he said. “You be needin’ ta try it out while you be here.”      

“Do you sail?” I asked.

“Sure, I be sailin’ since I be walkin’.  Gots myself a little boat.  Can’t afford any of dem big boats.  I sails in all da small boat regattas.  I wins mosta dem too!”

Robert’s long hair hung in tangled ropes over the back of the seat and almost touched my knees. 

“Nice hair,” I said, hoping to illicit some sort of explanation for why a young male would sport hair no woman could run her fingers through.  Hey, cops want to know stuff like that.  Could be important.

“Dreadlocks,” he said.  “I be Rastifarian.  You be hearing of dat?”

“Just the name,” I said.

“Well, Rastas be worshiping Haile Selassie as da African redeemer.  Ya know dat Marley song, ‘Africa Unite.’  He be talkin’ bout dat.  Lotsa Rastas smoke the ganja weed, don’t eat no animals, got dreads.  Dread means God-fearers,” he said.

And I’d thought it was just a fashion statement.  Instead it was politics, religion, marijuana, and hair all mixed into a life philosophy.

Our conversation turned into a monologue, Robert doing all the talking as he sped up hillsides to incredible vistas of the ocean, meeting quiet turquoise harbors, and then coasted down into little enclaves of homes, roadside stands, and shops.  I was too busy trying to stay upright in the seat to enjoy the views, much less carry on a conversation with Robert.  Every time he came up to a slow-moving vehicle or a cluster of livestock, he would honk and swerve around.  Whoever was coming the other way had better watch out.  Thing was, Robert was just keeping up with everyone else on the road, where the speed limit seemed to be defined as “go as fast as you can without running into anything.”