The Girl Beneath the Sea (Underwater Investigation Unit #1)(8)

“Need any help?” Swanson asks.

I glance up and give him a weak smile as I vent air from the regulator. “Nope. All good. Just checking.”

I catch Solar’s shadow as he walks over to us. There’s something spooky about the perfectly still way he stands there watching me.

Watching . . . I remember his eyes most clearly. As we sat behind my uncle in the courtroom—I must’ve been thirteen at the time—George Solar occasionally glanced in our direction from the witness box. His dark-green eyes scanned each of us, trying to figure out how much we knew.

Nothing. That was the plain truth. I could recall a few arguments between Dad and Uncle Karl but not the context. Dad admitted to me later that he knew Karl had been running around with some people from Everglades City known for trafficking, and he wasn’t happy about that. For his part, Karl had told his older brother to mind his own business.

Uncle Karl wasn’t the first outlaw in the family. Great-Grandfather McPherson was a rumrunner, and it was a poorly held secret that his son had been involved with the trade of archaeological artifacts whose provenance was in some dispute. As serious as those crimes were, they sounded almost quaint compared to Uncle Karl getting arrested smuggling cocaine in the false bottom of a boat.

The family rallied around him, in no small part because the newspapers impugned us all with headlines about World-Famous Treasure-Hunting Family Fingered in Cocaine-Smuggling Plot.

It didn’t matter that my uncle was the only one charged, or that when the son of the governor got busted for selling MDMA on campus around the same time, the matter was quickly dropped. There was no headline about the governor’s mansion being a potential center for drug trafficking, even though it’s a near certainty that his son was dealing while living there.

When I complained to Dad about the injustice, he explained that the rich and the powerful had better lawyers and could fight such accusations. It didn’t seem fair, especially when I heard whispers around school about my family’s involvement in Karl’s crime.

To be honest, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. I was still going to private school at the time, and there were dozens of kids there with parents who made headlines for everything from Ponzi schemes to the overthrow of foreign governments.

Well, I can’t pretend to inspect my gear forever, so I stand up, acknowledging the presence of George Solar.

He’s older now. Grayer, more wrinkles, more weathered. The green eyes still sit behind tinted glasses, silently judging.

“McPherson,” he says with a nod.

It sounds like something between a greeting and an accusation—as if he’s just reestablished his label for me. McPherson: White-Trash Drug Smuggler.

“Mr. Solar,” I reply. Probably a little too coolly.

“Ah, that’s right, I forgot you two know each other,” says Cardiff with restrained glee.

If Cardiff was waiting to see my reaction, he’ll be disappointed. Instead, I throw it back in his face.

“It’s good of you to come out of retirement to help Cardiff with his work.”

“George is just here to advise,” Cardiff responds, a little defensively.

Swanson jumps in. “I was thinking we should start the search at the far end of the causeway. The last diver was in a bit of a hurry. A few of the streetlights are out at that point, and that seems like the most probable spot for the gun to be tossed.”

I notice that Solar’s head tilts to the side a little as if he’s about to say something, but he doesn’t. That’s the other thing I remember about George Solar—the way he used silence.

When Uncle Karl’s attorney had him in the witness box, he took his time answering each question, sometimes creating long, drawn-out moments during which he simply stared at the attorney like a monkey in a cage.

This drove Uncle Karl’s lawyer nuts, and he asked the judge on several occasions to make Solar answer the questions more quickly. The judge demurred.

At one point, Karl’s attorney even called Solar out on it in front of the jury, saying he should answer the question before they fell asleep. Solar only stared and took his sweet time. I saw smiles in the jury box and felt a pang of frustration, realizing that Karl’s lawyer might have lost the case right there by making them take sides. Between Uncle Karl and his sun-bleached surfer looks that screamed rich-kid drug dealer and the working-class Solar, who could have come straight out of a Tommy Lee Jones movie, it was no contest for the jurors. Solar was in control.

I hand Swanson a rope tied to a small inflatable raft with a dive flag and a line that will extend to the bottom of the waterway. The flag’s to warn boaters I’m down there, and the line gives me something to keep my bearings underwater. These channels are pretty murky, and it’s easy to find yourself fifty yards from where you thought you were searching.

“Let’s start at the far end, like you said. But first I’m going to do a surface swim and look for anything shiny. Got it?”

Swanson nods and takes the line over to the railing on the causeway. I pull myself over the seawall and drop into the water next to the small raft while Cardiff and Solar watch from the causeway sidewalk above.

I pull my mask down, purge my regulator, and go under, putting them behind me.

Things are so much simpler underwater.





CHAPTER SIX

SHINER