Deeper (15 page)

"If he's
not here when the divers show up,
you
can call his parents."
 
That was the
best she was going to get from me and she knew it and accepted it.

Tom hadn't
shown up by the time the divers were ready to go.
 
Davey had first tried his cell phone several
times before discovering that it was halfway under the bed in Tom's cabin.

Belle kept her
word and called the Summerses', playing phone tag until she could get his
mother on the line.
 
Meanwhile, I watched
the divers getting ready.
 
They had new
equipment this time, and not exactly the sort I was expecting to see.
 
In addition to the usual tanks, lights and
sonar devices, they had two of the
Isabella
's
harpoon guns, complete with harpoons, and Charlie had also confiscated one of
the smaller nets.

I looked at
him like he'd lost his mind.

He looked back
at me like I could go fuck myself.

"Going
fishing, Charlie?"

"I figure
if something shows up again, we can defend ourselves.
 
If not, they don't weigh that much."

"What are
you going to do with whatever you catch?"

"If it's
a fish, I'll cook us a nice dinner.
 
If
it's a man, I'll turn him over to the authorities."

"And if
it's a fish man?"

"Well,
then we have a nice addition to the doc's research, don't we."

I could have
told him to leave the stuff behind, but what was the point?
 
He wanted to go fishing for mermaids; I wasn't
really that worried about stopping him.
 
Still the idea made me a little nervous.

Off in the
background, I heard Belle talking into the phone, trying to placate the woman
she had no doubt sent into
a frenzy
.
 
I know she hated being the one to make the
call, but part of me was still sure she was overreacting.
 
It was hardly the first time I'd had a
college kid on my team who didn't show up for a shift, and I didn't think it
would be the last time, either.

Charlie and
Diana paced impatiently as I started the yacht and piloted us out to the
reef.
 
The black stone shelf seemed
bigger today, but that was probably just because the tide was going out.

As I pulled
the yacht into the same spot as the day before, Charlie walked back over to me,
his face set and almost unreadable.

"You
gonna wish me luck, Joe?"

I looked at
him for several seconds, unable to answer him.
 
I wanted to wish him luck, but I didn't really know what he was looking
for.
 
Finally, I nodded and offered him
my hand.
 
"Good luck, Charlie.
 
Be careful."

He smiled when
I made the peace offering.
 
Sometimes he
was too sensitive for his own good.

I watched them
go down the ladder on the side of the
Isabella
and felt nervous.
 
The day was nicer than
the day before, but I was still getting the feeling that things were going to
go wrong.
 
When they were gone, I went
into my cabin to get away from everyone for a while.
 
Belle was still on the phone, but I didn't
want to hear it anymore.

I wanted to
relax and I knew that wasn't going to happen.

So I waited,
just like everyone else.

And I worried
that I'd never see Charlie again.

10

I guess it's
safe to say that I drifted off to sleep for a while, still in my thick pea
coat.
 
I woke up covered in a light
sweat, with my arm shoved under my body at an awkward and uncomfortable
angle.
 
I had a few seconds where I
wasn't really sure where I was, or at least when.
 
I knew I was on the
Isabella
, but I couldn’t grasp why that was so important.
 
Then I heard Jacob Parsons laughing and
remembered.

A quick look
at my watch told me I'd been out for almost three hours.
 
The tanks the divers were using weren't good
for that long, so either they'd come back up and gone down again — the tanks
were only good for a little over an hour and after that they'd need to come up
and spend a little time recovering — or they'd never returned.
 
I decided to hold off on any panic attacks
until I knew one way or the other.

A quick look
told me that Belle had met up with the Parsonses and was having a good
time.
 
She had a look on her face that
seemed reserved for rare occasions, like Christmas.
 
I left them in peace:
 
right now, near as I could tell, Belle and I
were not on the best terms and I figured she'd have a lot more fun if she was
chatting with celebrities rather than remembering to be pissed at me.

Besides, I
wanted to see what was up with Davey.
 
I
wanted to know if Tom had come back and what was going on with the divers.
 
I had to look for him outside in the cold and
I swear, I think I felt the perspiration on my body freeze solid the second I
walked out there.

He was
cleaning up the decks, mopping away the excess water from where the divers had
been a little while earlier, when I found him.
 
There were several empty tanks to be put away, and I helped stow them in
the right area, careful to mark them.

"So,
anyone hear anything from Tom yet?"
 
I paused in my efforts and looked at Davey.
 
He shook his head, focused on finishing his
mopping or on not looking at me; I couldn’t decide which.

"You
worried about him, Davey?
 
Or does he
pull this sort of thing at home, too?"

"He
wouldn't have left without his cell phone."

"You sure about that?"

Davey nodded
and finally got around to looking at me.
 
His eyes were bleary and red.
 
"Yeah, I'm sure.
 
Stupid
thing is practically fused to his hip, Joe."

That worried
me a bit more than I wanted to be worried, and I decided that maybe my refusal
to actually call Tom's parents was a sad case of me being a jackass.
 
Yeah, he and Davey were both old enough to
vote, but in a lot of ways they really were just kids.
 
Hell, if he'd been seventeen instead of
nineteen, I'd have been legally responsible for his safekeeping on the yacht
and here I was arguing semantics with Belle over the situation because I was afraid
of violating Tom's personal space.
 
It
was one thing to make him gut a hundred fish for a group of tourists and
another to check in on him when he was sleeping on the
Isabella
.
 
Not my wisest
move, maybe, so I nodded my head as I finished putting the spent tanks into the
hold.

"Did he
say anything at all about going for a walk or something?"

"No.
 
He said he was tired."
 
Davey shrugged.
 
"He was gonna call Theresa and then he
was going to sleep."

Theresa was
his girlfriend back in Bowden's Point.
 
She was still in high school and graduating in the spring.
 
After that they were planning on going off to
college together.
 
Tom was the one who'd
been extra happy about getting the late gig, because it was more money he could
sock away for college when the time came.

Theresa
Lattimore was more important to Tom than a little shameless flirting with the
college girls.
 
That was what I'd managed
to forget along the way.
 
Tom was about
as quick to flash her picture at someone as a gunslinger in Deadwood was to draw
his iron and fire six bullets into someone trying to make a name.

I felt my
stomach tighten up and forced a breath out from my lungs.
 
This was looking about as bad as it could
without a body popping up.
 
It was
looking even worse to me, because I'd been an ass and never realized how stupid
I was being.

I mumbled
something under my breath in Davey's direction and gave him a wave to let him
know I was heading off.
 
I wasn't ready
to talk with Belle and admit that I was being stupid, not just yet.
 
I wanted to think things through first, to
double-check all of my facts and make sure I wasn't missing anything.

I did what
I've almost always done to help myself relax:
 
I stared at the sea and reminded myself that my problems, no matter how
immense they might seem, are little more than a speck of dust in comparison to
the enormity of the ocean that surrounded me.

The breeze was
coming in from the ocean now and then it shifted a bit and I caught a whiff of
the marshes to the north of town.
 
They
smelled stagnant and foul, as if someone had been dropping the remains of fish
there for months and letting them rot.
 
I
looked in that direction and saw the seagulls swooping and diving down to feast
on whatever might be over there.
 
The
birds were so much a part of my life that sometimes I failed to notice
them.
 
The gulls up here are great gray
monsters, big enough to scare the life out of someone when they get an
attitude.
 
I'd seen them dive out of the
air and snatch everything from hamburgers to pizza out of careless people's
hands, and while a lot of people thought they were nuisances, I'd always liked
them.

Damnedest
thing:
 
not a one of the seagulls had
ever come near the yacht.
 
Not while we
were docked in Golden Cove and not when were out at the reef.
 
It was like the lack of dogs, something I
should have noticed from the beginning, but had overlooked.
 
I'd left over ten pounds of raw fish innards
in a bucket on the back end of the yacht and not a single gull had come over to
take a few sample bites.
 
Damned unsettling
is what it was.
 
My skin tried to shimmy
across my body and I felt the gooseflesh pimple over my arms and neck.

I stared out
at the ocean until the divers came back up, lost in my thoughts and an
increasing sense of discomfort.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

Belle came up
behind me as I was staring into the waters and slipped her arms around my
waist.
 
She rested her head against the
back of my shoulders and I closed my eyes, savoring her presence.

"I'm a
dumb ass, Belle.
 
I'm sorry."

"I was
just going to say the same thing to you."

"What?
 
That I'm a dumb ass?"

"No.
 
That I am."

"No one
gets to talk about my wife that way, not even my wife.
 
"Watch yourself."
 
I turned to face her as I spoke and pulled
her into my arms.
 
There has never been
another person who understood me as well as she does, or who had had a better
sense of timing
..
 
Not in my world, at least.
 
We
held each other for a few minutes and I lost myself in her.
 
Belle is my favorite way of getting lost.

"What did
Tom's mom have to say?"

"She's
worried, but she knows you'll look out for him."
 
Ouch.
 
That hurt, too.

"Davey's
worried and that makes me worried.

"Well,
hopefully he just got drunk and picked up a hooker."

"I don't
think so.
 
I wish it was that easy, but I
don't think it will be."

"Neither
do
I
."
 
Belle
barely knew Tom except as the kid who worked on the yacht whenever he
could.
 
She had maybe met him five times
in her life, but she was like that.
 
She
made worrying
about
 
other
people an art form.
 
I didn't let myself worry about too many people.
 
I had Belle and the kids and Charlie.
 
That was about enough.

And now I had
Tom.

On the
brighter side, Belle and I were back on speaking terms, and that meant more
than you know to me.
 
The idea of her
being upset was normally enough to give me a headache.
 
The idea of her being angry with me was
enough to make the world seem bleak.
 
The
world didn't seem to need much help in that department right then.
 
Tom was missing and the divers were down in
frigid waters carrying enough weapons to almost guarantee someone getting hurt
if anyone made a misidentification.
 
I
knew Charlie wouldn’t get stupid, even if he panicked about bugaboos under the
water.
 
Charlie had a level head, and always
looked before he acted.
 
It's one of the
reasons I hired him and one of the reasons I kept him on.

Still, I
worried.

I was fretting
away at high speeds when I heard the splashing noises and then heard Charlie
calling out to me.

"Joe!
 
Get over here, damn it!"