A Superior Death

“In an antique sailor suit,” A

“In an antique sailor suit. Maybe he borrowed gear, put the costume on, dived, dumped his tanks. Suicide.”

“On his honeymoon?”

Lucas said nothing and A

“In thirty-four-degree water he’d have been dead of hypothermia before he reached the engine room,” A

“Possibly. Maybe he had the costume under the dry suit. No… Nix that theory. Ralph and I didn’t see any suit or tanks and he couldn’t have swum far without them. He must have been killed above the water, then the corpse was hidden there.”

“In the hope it would get lost in the crowd?” A

“No good either,” Lucas contradicted himself. “I don’t think the ‘hide in plain sight’ axiom works with such a celebrated collection of bodies as inhabit the Kamloops.”

“He could have been put there just for that; to be seen. A warning of some kind,” A

“Could be. That would make the Feds doubly happy: a drug-co

A

“Do you know Tinker and Damien Coggins-Clarke?” Lucas asked abruptly. “They’re SCAs at Rock. Flaky. Naturalists.”

“I know them,” A

For a moment Lucas didn’t go on. He looked as if he struggled with a statement as absurd as the one resting under A

A

“It’s as good an explanation as any we’ve come up with,” she said. “It certainly fits with the personality involved better. I can’t see De

Lucas snorted genteelly. Though he’d brought the subject up, this line of conversation was to be at an end. A

Bow and stern lines in hand, A

Lucas stepped onto the dock, smoothing his coarse black hair where the hat ruffled it. “Stay close,” he said. Obediently, A

The windows were open but all the curtains were drawn, and when there was no answer, A

Scarcely louder than the squeaking of the boats as they rubbed their fenders between dock and hull, mutterings leaked through the cabin windows. Hawk and Holly were conferring in whispers.

A

The cabin door opened. Hawk, tousled and blinking, looked up at them.

“Sleeping?” Lucas asked politely.

“No.” Hawk looked over his shoulder into the cabin’s interior. “No, we were just…” The words trailed off as if he couldn’t concentrate long enough to finish the sentence. “Sorry. Come aboard if you want. We can put on coffee or something, I guess.”

A

“Holly, we got company,” Hawk said and they heard a muted scramble from within as he vanished inside. Lucas followed.

“The quarters are cramped. You stay on deck.” The Chief Ranger-half in, half out of the cabin-fixed A

She did. He closed the door behind him. Through the window A

A

Remembering Lucas’s pointed stare, she stopped eavesdropping and began searching the deck; not looking for anything, just looking at what was there and what was not.

Gear was piled in every available place. Besides two bottle caps, a bit of braided black nylon cord, one broken thong sandal, and the usual boat supplies, there was full diving paraphernalia for three people and a portable air compressor-the gasoline-driven kind that was the bane of lovers of quietude-for recharging spent tanks. As a rule divers recharged their tanks immediately after use. Six one-hundred-cubic-foot scuba tanks were piled in a pyramid between the box covering the engine and the hull. An oversized single with a Y valve that A

She glanced at the pressure gauges. All the one hundreds were fully charged. The single was only half full. There could be a dozen good reasons the single had not been topped off. Hawk or Holly might have used it on a dive earlier that day. Most ISRO dives didn’t require double hundreds. The regulator might have been damaged. They could have run out of fuel for the compressor, or just gotten lazy.

But to a suspicious mind it could suggest that when the Bradshaws had filled the tanks the previous day, they had known De

Lucas’s interview with the twins was neither reassuring nor conclusive: The Bradshaws, he said, reacted as if dead inside. Maybe shock, maybe forewarning-Vega was a ranger, not a shrink.

EIGHT

“Dead bodies seem to follow you around, A

“I saw it,” Alison stuck in. Ally was sitting in A

“Don’t stand up!” A

“Like this.” Alison demonstrated from her seat, swinging her arms like a chair-bound Frankenstein’s monster. “They were supposed to be scary but they were just stupid. It was in black and white,” she said as if that explained everything.

“Night of the Living Dead scared the pants off me,” A

“Don’t stand up!” the two women repeated as Ally squirmed.

“-and I’d turn totally paranoid,” A

“What’s paranoid?” Ally asked.

“Being scared of things that aren’t really going to hurt you,” her mother replied. “Pair-ah-noyd. P-a-r…”