When The Devil Whistles (16 page)

Or was it an optical illusion? Another sailor had once said any curve in the horizon was so slight that it couldn’t be seen. Mitch had nothing better to do, so he decided to test that claim. He fished a piece of paper out of his pocket, smoothed it out, and held it a foot from his face with the corners touching the rim of the ocean. Then he stared over the center, trying to decide whether he could see a sliver of dark blue above the paper. There it was. No, one corner had slipped down a hair below the horizon. Now there was nothing but bright sky above the blurry white of the paper. Was he holding it too high?

After ten minutes, he gave up and looked for something else to do. He had a lot more free time on this trip than he had expected.

He had thought he would be down below working with Ed Granger on the search for Nazi treasure. But after one busy day getting the ROV, sidescan sonar, and dive equipment ready, he was suddenly a fifth wheel.

Jenkins had pulled Mitch aside and told him the “good news” that David Cho would be working with Ed, which would give Mitch plenty of time to “relax” and “kick back.” Nothing against Mitch, of course. The passengers just wanted Cho, that was all. They insisted that he was good at this sort of thing, whatever Ed might say. Ed had said plenty, of course, but it hadn’t changed anything.

So Mitch watched the ship’s scratchy collection of James Bond DVDs for the dozenth time. He fished out the old Nintendo console in the lounge and played Super Mario Bros. until he had rescued Princess Peach twice. He stared at the horizon. And through it all he chafed at not being down below with Ed, surrounded by monitors, keyboards, and joysticks— all feeding him dozens of types of information. He knew more about the ocean bottom sitting in his battered old swivel chair than a diver on sea floor. That’s where the action was. And Mitch was shut out.

Well, he’d know soon enough. They had reached the search area three days ago. They had deployed the sidescan sonar and the sensor arrays, and now they were slowly sailing back and forth in long sweeps criss-crossing a jagged undersea mountain range with roots miles below on the ocean floor and peaks just a few hundred feet below the surface.

Mitch walked over to the railing and looked down into the small bow waves. The Nazi treasure sub must be down there somewhere among those rocks. They would have been running silent and deep to avoid American destroyers and anti-sub planes. Their sonar would have been off, and they would have been relying on charts to navigate. The German sailors wouldn’t have had any warning. They would have been working, eating, sleeping, and playing cards over coffee. Then a sudden shock and water roared in. Maybe they were crushed to death or maybe they had time to drown.

Mitch crossed himself unconsciously, a habit he had picked up from his Mexican mother. Salvaging a shipwreck, especially one filled with bones, always made him uncomfortable. It hit too close to home.

“Hey, I’ve been looking all over for you.”

He turned and saw Ed Granger coming toward him. Ed was breathing heavily and his low forehead was damp. He hauled his fireplug frame up a short flight of steps and tugged at Mitch’s arm. “Come on!”

Mitch saw the excitement in his friend’s eyes. “You found it?”

“Maybe. I found something that’s about the right size and shape. Don’t wanna jinx it, but…”

“That’s great! So, when are we sending Eileen down?” Envy stabbed him as he suddenly remembered. “Or, I mean, when are you sending her down?”

Ed laughed and punched him in the arm a little harder than was necessary. Mitch was about to complain, but the words came tumbling out of Ed. “It’s we, buddy! That’s why I was looking for you. As soon as I saw it on the sidescan, Lee says, ‘You must send down the ROV at once.’ So I say, ‘Yeah, right. No way I’m sending it into a wreck without Mitch backing me up.’ And Lee says, ‘You have Mr. Cho.’ Then I tell him, ‘That’s not good enough. Not with a wreck. Do you know how many things can go wrong? We lose the ROV down there and we’re done. D-O-N-E. We can turn around and head back home. I do this with Mitch or I don’t do it at all.’ ”

“Thanks, man! So they agreed with you?”

“No, they called Jenkins and wanted him to order me to do it with Cho. Jenkins turns to me and says, ‘If I order you, you’ll just disobey, right?’ And I say, ‘You think?’ So he tells Lee, ‘If he does that, I’ll have to confine him to quarters and the ROV still won’t go down. You’d better let him use Daniels.’ Then they jabber away in Korean for a while. And then they said yes.”

Mitch felt a warm glow in his chest. He grinned. “I’ll try not to screw anything up.”

Ed snorted. “Oh, you’ll screw up, down, and sideways. You always do. But you’ll be better than Cho.”

26

C
ONNOR SAT BACK IN HIS OFFICE CHAIR AND REREAD THE SEARCH RESULTS
for Samuel Stimson, the final Deep Seven ex-employee on Allie’s list. No wonder his phone was disconnected: he had vanished.

According to the one-paragraph news item Connor found in the Oakland Tribune, Deep Seven’s security records showed that Stimson left the building at 5:11 p.m. on March 23. He didn’t show up for work the next day or the day after that. His parents had filed a missing person report for him on April 3. The police called his disappearance “suspicious.”

That was all. No follow-up item announcing that his body had been found or that the police had opened a murder investigation. No new phone number or address indicating that Stimson had reappeared. Nothing. It was as if the ground had opened beneath his feet as he walked out of Deep Seven, swallowed him up, and closed over his head.

The search results also contained a list of Stimson’s known addresses and phone numbers. Most were clearly obsolete (university dorms, his parents’ home, etc.), but his last place in Oakland still had a phone number listed as “current.”

Connor’s eyebrows went up. That wasn’t the number Allie had given him. Maybe she had found Stimson’s cell number and this was a landline that he shared with someone. Whoever it was, a call was in order. Probably a waste of time, but worth a shot nonetheless.

He dialed the number and it rang. And rang. Connor kept waiting for voicemail to pick up, but it never did. After ten rings, he was about to hang up. But as he reached for the “Call End” button on his phone, a loud clattering came through the receiver. Then came a loud thunk and a scratchy male voice swearing in the background. Then more clattering. Finally, the male voice—clearly an old man’s—said, “Hello? Who’s this? What do you want?”

Connor slouched back in his chair and wondered how long it would take this guy to hang up on him. His record for this case was about two minutes. “My name is Connor Norman, and I’m an attorney at Doyle & Brown. I’d like to ask you a few questions about Samuel Stimson. Do you know him?”

“Sam’s my grandson. Why do you want to know about him?”

“Well, I’m working on an investigation of Deep Seven Maritime Engineering. I understand that Sam worked there, and—”

“You work for Deep Seven, do you?”

“No. I’m not at liberty to say whom I represent, but it’s not Deep Seven. I’m looking into whether Deep Seven committed certain wrongdoing, so—”

“Well, good. I’m glad somebody finally is.”

Connor sat up a little straighter and started taking notes. Maybe this wasn’t a wasted call after all. “Why do you say that?”

“Because they murdered my grandson.”

Connor’s pen stopped in mid-word. “How do you know?”

“Things he told me before he disappeared. They had this secret computer, see.” The old man’s voice grew excited and quick as he talked. “The S-4 or something like that. No one could look at it, not even Sam—even though they hired him ’cause he was a computer genius.”

“Any idea what’s on the computer? Could it be evidence of fraud on the government?”

“Could be, could be. They’ve got all sorts of secrets over there.”

“And you think they killed Sam to protect those secrets?”

“I
know
they did!”

“Okay. Do you mind telling me how you know that?”

“Sam would never just run off like that. I don’t care how much money he owed.”

“Sam owed money to someone?”

“Yes, but that’s not the point.”

“Was it a lot of money?”

“It doesn’t matter! The credit card companies didn’t kill him.”

So Sam Stimson had unpaid debts. That detail hadn’t made it into the database Connor had searched. “So the reason you think Deep Seven killed him is that he disappeared? Do you have any other evidence?”

“What more do I need? You’re starting to sound just like the police. Bunch of masons.” His voice turned suspicious. “Are you a mason?”

“A what?”

“Don’t play dumb! You’re a free mason, aren’t you?”

A free mason? Where did that come from? “Uh, no.”

“You tell all your mason buddies down at the lodge that I’m on to them! I’ve been down to the docks. I’ve seen what Deep Seven is up to.”

“And what’s that?” Connor half expected the answer to involve aliens or Nazis.

“Tell them I’ve got pictures! I can prove what they were putting on that ship, the
Grasp II
. And I know about the Nazi submarine too. I heard those two talking about it in a bar. Granger and Jenkins. Got that on tape. And it’s all in a very safe place in case anything happens to me.”

Connor smiled. Nazis it was. “Uh-huh. Can I see the pictures and listen to the tapes?”

The man scoffed. “You just tell them.”

Click.

27

A
LLIE SAT ON THE EDGE OF THE DIRTY GREEN COUCH IN THE LOBBY OF
Clayton Investigations, one of the firms Connor had recommended. Julian Clayton was a former police detective who had specialized in undercover homicide investigations for two decades before leaving the police force “because he wasn’t very rules-oriented,” as Connor had put it. Exactly what she was looking for.

Clayton opened the door and motioned for Allie to come in. He was a handsome black man with a bald head, long beard, and piercing eyes—the sort of man who would have intrigued Allie if she had met him at a jazz concert but frightened her if she had met him on a deserted street.

Once they were seated in his office, he pulled out a yellow notepad covered with crabbed handwriting. “There’s still one loose end, but otherwise I’m pretty much done with my investigation.”

“And?”

“The story you heard pretty much checks out. A kid named Jason Tompkins did die in Salina, Kansas last month. The cause of death was a methamphetamine overdose.” He handed her a picture of a boy with long brown hair, braces, and wide blue eyes. “That’s him.”

She looked at the picture quickly, avoiding the eyes, and handed it back to him. “When did he die? What was the date?”

He paused and regarded her with those burning eyes. “He was admitted to the hospital on May third. He died the next day.”

So he was in the hospital the day after Erik’s band played in Salina. She wanted to throw up and then crawl into a hole. Why was she paying this guy to tell her things she didn’t want to know?

All thought of telling Connor vanished. His words rang in her mind:
If you commit a crime, you should pay the price. Every. Single. Time. No excuses, no compromises.
He wouldn’t help her; he’d do everything he could to get her locked up.

She forced her face to stay blank and nodded. “Okay. Sorry, go on.”