The Girl Beneath the Sea (Underwater Investigation Unit #1)(10)

I swim back to the side, where Swanson is still waiting, and emerge from the water.

“Anything?” he asks.

I hold up the magnetometer. “I’m just getting it calibrated.”

Out of the corner of my mask, I can see Solar still looking at me. That damn stare.

I look at the device meaningfully. “Okay,” I tell Swanson. “I’m good. What I need you to do is move the line ten feet every five minutes. Okay? We’ll stop at the midway point, and I’ll grab a new tank.”

“Got it.”

I dive back to the bottom and drag the device just above the muck and feel the buzzing in the handle as it picks up various metallic objects.

There are dozens here. Aluminum cans, bottle caps, coat hangers, wire, you name it. I’ve done this enough times to know the familiar pulse of a large piece of metal; I only have to stick my knife into the muck a few times to pry out a rusted wheel rim and a metal fence post.

Halfway to the midpoint, I find an entire automobile bumper. Reluctantly, I call it out to Swanson so he can use a line to drag it to shore.

While it probably broke off years ago when a car collided with the guardrail, there’s a chance it was in a hit-and-run and still bears a visible serial number.

I finally finish my sweep and climb out of the water where I started. Cardiff and Solar are talking to Swanson.

“Are you sure you didn’t miss it?” asks Cardiff.

I ignore the stupidity of his question. “I did a thorough sweep in the most probable zone.”

“What about the improbable ones?” he replies. “It seemed like you didn’t clear the area directly below the guardrail and only did a narrow band.”

“Those are the FBI tables,” I answer as calmly as possible while unfastening my regulator from the tank.

“Well, this isn’t the FBI. We don’t quit until we find what we’re looking for.”

I think he’s goading me into saying I have to go pick up my daughter or that I’m tired. Instead I vent the other tank and start attaching my regulator. “Who said anything about quitting? I’ll do as wide a pattern as you want. I have three more tanks in the car. I can do this all day and night.” I throw the last part out just to bait him. “It’s overtime and a half for me.”

Solar watches this exchange, then looks out at the causeway. “Swanson, you mentioned the driver was smoking a cigarette?”

“Yes. I believe so.”

“And how do you know that?” he asks.

“I saw the sparks from the butt as he threw it out.”

“Do you recall at what part of the bridge?” asks Solar.

“No, sir. I was still far back. Maybe in the middle.”

Solar walks through the grass back up to the causeway and starts a slow pace down the sidewalk, staring at the concrete and into the water beneath the rail.

“If he finds the cigarette butt, I’ll eat my own dick,” Cardiff murmurs.

“I’ll find you a teaspoon,” I mumble before putting the regulator in my mouth and letting it vent.

Cardiff blinks, trying to figure out what I said. Swanson turns red.

Solar stops a third of the way across the causeway and shouts back to me. “McPherson, can you do a three-foot-wide sweep from here to about twenty feet out?”

I give him a thumbs-up. “Swanson, you got the line?”

I plunge back into the water, curious to see what Solar thinks he’s found.

Over the years I’ve heard stories from other cops about the man. His ability to find evidence seemed almost supernatural. From the trial, I know for a fact that Uncle Karl went to great effort to conceal his cargo, but Solar somehow knew exactly where to tell the DEA search team to look.

Some said he’s simply got a knack. Others said he had informants and might have been dirty himself.

Up until now I’ve chosen to believe the latter, because it makes Uncle Karl’s conviction look more like a miscarriage of justice, but damned if I’m not curious to find out if it’s the former.





CHAPTER SEVEN

THE KNACK

I find the gun four feet from the edge of my first search band. Right where Solar told me to look. It could have taken me ten hours to get this far, if at all. Instead, it only took four minutes.

I slide the gun into a pouch and place a weighted ribbon in the spot where I found it, then swim to the surface. Solar is leaning over the edge of the railing, still staring down at me.

Cardiff and Swanson look surprised.

“The cigarette butt,” Cardiff blurts out. “I said I’d eat my dick if he found that.”

Solar does a slow turn toward him with an expression I can only describe as contempt. Well, at least he hates everyone. That’s good to know.

“How the hell?” asks Swanson as he lets the line go slack and the raft begins to drift.

Solar catches it. “Let’s let Officer McPherson dry off first.”

Officer McPherson? Did I just get a promotion from white-trash drug smuggler to possible human being?

I hate myself for how much this grudging nod of respect means to me. But it does mean something . . . How do assholes make us care what they think?

I swim over to the seawall, and Swanson gives me a hand up. After putting my gear back in the truck, I unzip my wet suit, causing a moment of panic as the cop doesn’t know whether to keep staring or look away.