Blood Reckoning, page 12
He finishes preparing his equipment and drops the sonars into the water.
“We’ve got side and down sonar running,” he says, nodding toward the screen.
One of the mounted monitors displays a split screen—one showing a graphic of the boat on a black background with large gold boxes extending out on each side, the other showing black above what looks like a field of glowing gold corn stalks. The other, which isn’t as clear and resembles more a doctor’s office sonogram, is from the live scope.
“Everything black is water,” he explains. “The gold is riverbed. This image extending out from the boat on this one is the side scan sonar. It reaches about seventy-five feet on each side. This other is the down sonar. That’s directly beneath the boat. The other monitor is a live view. It’s a little harder to read but more immediate.”
I nod. “Thanks.”
“Won’t take us long to scan this area,” he says. “Not much to it.”
I want to find Carla and her vehicle more than anything right now, but not here, not submerged beneath the black waters of the Miccosukee River.
“When a vehicle goes into the water, it’s going to be moved some by the current—depending how fast it was going, how far it went in, and the speed of the current, but once it settles on the bottom it’s going to stay where it is. It won’t move after that. We’ll start about where I think a vehicle would come to rest if it was driven into the water here.”
He maneuvers the boat over to a spot about twenty-five feet from the boat ramp and begins his scan.
“I’ll be surprised if there’s not several things down here,” he says. “Old boat or two, fallen trees, maybe even an old vehicle.”
He studies the monitors as we slowly ease up stream.
He is very practiced and methodical, guiding the boat in strait rows as if tilling the ground for a garden.
“See that?” he says, pointing toward a spot on the monitor.
I follow his finger to a raised area in the gold section.
“That’s probably an old boat. We’re seeing the side of it. You can tell by the angle and size—and it has been down there a while. Got a lot of sediment on it.”
I am unable to tell any of that from the image he’s pointing at, but I know he knows what he’s talking about.
“Over there—see that,” he says, pointing to another spot on the side scan sonar. “That looks like a very old truck. We’ll know more when we get over there on top of it. But—”
He stops and turns his attention to the live scope monitor.
“That’s . . . Look at that.”
He kills the motor and drops an anchor.
“That’s a . . . we’re directly on top of a newer car. It’s . . . How deep is it here? Fourteen-four.”
My heart seems to sink into the empty abyss that is now below it.
“See?” he says, reaching over and pointing to a spot on the other monitor.
I see what he’s pointing to, and it does look different from the area around it, but nothing about it resembles a car to me.
“It’s upside down,” he says. “See the tires sticking up—here and here.”
I see something that slightly resembles a gold and black tire coming in and out of the undulating signal.
“We found it,” he says. “That’s . . . I’d be willing to bet that’s Carla’s car.”
He reaches past his dive equipment, grabs a magnet the size of a couple of hockey pucks on a line, and drops it into the water.
“We need to get the dive team down here,” he says.
“I want to go down first,” I say. “See for myself.”
“What? No. I promise you you don’t.”
“I do. I’ve got to.”
“Do you even know how to dive?”
“Yeah. It’s been a while, but yeah.”
“Diving in the river is dangerous, plus visibility is zero. And if she’s been in there a couple of days you don’t want to see her.”
“You’re right. I don’t want to. But I have to.”
CHAPTER
FORTY
I stopped diving several years ago primarily because of sinus issues and the havoc the water pressure wreaked on my head.
I had returned to the surface too many times with blood in my mask and skull-splitting headaches.
I’m out of practice and was never very skilled to begin with, but I remember enough to go see for myself if Carla and her car are submerged here, buried in this watery grave.
I adjust my BC, make sure the tank is secure, and ease into the water holding my mask.
The wetsuit is very tight, and the mask and fins and weight belt don’t fit quite right, but I don’t want to take any additional time to adjust anything—and I’m not sure how much difference additional adjustments would make.
In the water, I wash off the mask and put it on, then do the same with the regulator.
“I only have this for emergencies,” Kent says. “Probably not much left in that tank.”
I check the gauge. He’s right. It’s in the red. Depending on my breathing, I only have a few minutes.
He leans over and hands me down the underwater dive light with the pistol grip.
“Need to get down there and back up here as quickly as possible,” he says.
I give him the okay sign.
Releasing the air out of the BC, I begin to sink.
My descent is faster than I would like, and I can feel the pressure in my head immediately.
I’d like to slow it down but don’t feel as though I can.
I realize I’m breathing rapidly and attempt to slow my heart rate and breathing.
Visibility is even worse than I had imagined. There is nothing but blackness everywhere—except directly in front of the beam of my dive light.
It doesn’t take long to cover the fourteen feet or so between the surface and the riverbed.
When I reach the bottom, I realize I’ve drifted away from the vehicle—or was never directly over it to begin with.
I shine the light around and turn slowly in every direction.
Nothing.
I begin to swim around, searching, feeling with one hand, shining the light with the other.
I become aware of breathing too rapidly again and attempt to relax and breathe more slowly.
My nose is bleeding—something I feel rather than see.
I can’t believe I can’t find the vehicle. It should be right here.
I may have drifted even farther than I realized, and now that I’ve been swimming around in the dark I have no idea where I am in relation to the boat above, no bearings, no points of reference, no clue. And I’m running out of air.
I change directions again and continue to feel my way around, floating about three feet from the bottom.
The beam of the bright light finds trash and debris and downed trees but no vehicles.
Wondering how much air I have left, I grab my gauge and bring it around to check it.
And as I’m trying to see it, I bump into the rear quarter panel of the passenger’s side of Carla’s gray Camry.
Dropping the gauge, I bring the light around and begin to search the car, my vision blurring from the tears in my eyes.
The vehicle is upside down on a slight incline, its back tires about a foot higher than the front.
The bright light finds John Paul’s initials on the back window and the dent in the back bumper, but it didn’t need to for me to know it’s Carla’s car.
Running out of air, I quickly search the vehicle, starting in the back.
The trunk is open.
I shine the light inside it.
It’s empty except for a small plastic crate and some random clothes and shoes, a few of which are on the riverbed below it.
Making my way around to the driver’s side, I see that the front window on that side is open—not broken, but rolled down.
Taking a breath and preparing myself for what I might find, I swim down to the window and look inside.
The first thing I see is one of John Paul’s toys, a bright yellow dinosaur floating above the steering wheel.
Other items float around the interior of the upside down vehicle—empty soda bottles, a sneaker, a Styrofoam food container, more toys, more trash, a pair of jeans shorts.
In the backseat the straps from John Paul’s carseat hang down toward the roof.
The front passenger side door window is halfway down, but the two back windows are up.
Carla is not inside the vehicle.
Was she ever?
Had she been in it when it went into the water? Had she been alive and escaped through the open window? Had she been dead and eventually floated out?
Or had someone driven her vehicle in here to hide it and swum out once it was in the water?
I want to search the area for her body. I want to search the car for signs of violence or clues as to what happened, but I’m out of air, and now both my nose and ears are bleeding and I must re-inflate my BC and swim for the surface.
CHAPTER
FORTY-ONE
“Good work,” Fred Miller says softly as he walks up.
Michelle and I are standing at the lower landing, watching as the winch on the large black and white tow truck slowly pulls Carla’s car from the water.
It’s early evening, and the sinking sun burnishes the delicate surfaces of flowers and leaves with a warm orange tint and suffuses the atmosphere with a soft golden glow.
A Search and Rescue boat is in the river not far from the car, a diver is in the water, and various deputies, emergency service personnel, and FDLE crime scene techs, and members of Search and Rescue are standing on the sides of the boat launch, all watching as the river is forced to give up the vehicle.
The landing is quiet, the only consistent sound in the hush of the gloaming being the monotonous whine of the electric winch motor and the metallic twitching tension on the cable extending from it to Carla’s car.
Everyone looking on does so reverently as if they believe a body to be inside the vehicle.
“No sign of the . . . of Carla?” Miller asks.
I shake my head.
“What’re we thinkin’?” he asks.
“Driver’s window is down,” I say. “Whoever was in it—Carla or someone else—could’ve been conscious and swum out as the car sank. Or . . . if whoever was in it was . . . unconscious, their body could’ve floated out later.”
“We need Search and Rescue to drag the river in case that’s what happened,” he says.
I nod. They already are.
He says, “Finding her vehicle here will give them new parameters to focus their search.”
He frowns and nods slowly and says, “I hope . . . she’s not . . . that she’s not . . . in the river.”
Michelle says, “FDLE is going to take possession of the vehicle and process it. We should know more about who was in it once they have.”
“Good,” he says, nodding more quickly. “That’s good.”
We are quiet for a moment.
“I guess . . .” Miller says, “the thing to hope for is that she was in the vehicle and got out or never in it to begin with. If someone else was . . . it means they wanted to hide it for some reason. And if she was . . . unconscious or . . . Anyway . . . Praying for her safety. John, can I see you for a minute before I head back to the office?”
I walk over to his SUV with him.
“I understand you dove down to the vehicle when you found it,” he says.
“I did.”
“I wish you hadn’t done that,” he says. “I understand . . . you wanting to, but . . .”
I nod.
“There’s a reason why we don’t work the cases that involve people we’re close to.”
“I won’t do anything like that again,” I say.
“I feel like you’d . . . that it’d be better for you to work something else right now.”
I can’t not work Carla’s case. I’ve got to convince him to leave me on it.
“Please,” I say. “Let me stay on this. I won’t do anything like that again. I can stay objective. I can . . . please let me keep working this. I’ll treat it like any other case. I will.”
He looks as if he’s contemplating his decision.
“Please,” I say.
What will I do if he takes me off of it? Work it anyway? Quit and work it independently? And if I do, how will Anna and I pay for Nash to go to college or anything else?
Eventually, he nods slowly. “Okay. For now. But make sure you . . . I don’t want to have to pull you, but I won’t have any choice if you . . .”
“I won’t,” I say.
When he is gone, I walk over to Carla’s car, snapping on gloves as I do.
The Camry is on land now, moving slowly toward the tow truck at the top of the boat launch, river water leaking out.
I motion for the tow truck operator to stop.
He does.
Michelle walks over to me. “FDLE is going to process the car.”
“I know,” I say. “I just want a quick look inside before they take it.”
“Be careful,” she says.
I walk around the exterior of the vehicle to check for damage.
Seeing John Paul’s initials on the back window makes my heart ache for him, and I resolve to get home early enough to spend time with him and the rest of my family before they go to bed.
There’s no obvious new or unexplainable damage to the vehicle.
I walk back around to the driver’s window and look inside.
Leaning down into the open window, I am assaulted by the odor of mildew and the strong stench of soured and rotting waterlogged cloth and fabric.
I scan the entire vehicle.
There’s still a foot or more of standing water in the floorboards, but unless something’s hidden in there I don’t see anything in the car I wouldn’t expect to be there.
Glancing down at the driver’s seat, I can tell it has been adjusted.
Opening the door just enough for the water to flow out more quickly but not far enough for any objects inside to spill out, I wait for the water to drain. Once it has, I open the door the rest of the way.
Squatting down to more closely examine the seat, I can see that it’s positioned back as far as it can go.
“What is it?” Michelle asks.
“Carla is on the short side,” I say. “Has to have her seat moved forward to reach the pedals. The seat is set as far back as it can go.”
“So she didn’t drive it into the river,” she says.
“Exactly. Doesn’t necessarily mean she wasn’t inside the vehicle at the time, but it does mean she wasn’t driving.”
CHAPTER
FORTY-TWO
“John, can I be Chunky for Halloween?” John Paul asks.
We are lying in his bed, and I’m reading Pumpkin Jack by Will Hubbell to him.
It’s his favorite book, one we read year round, and even though Halloween is over two months away, it has him thinking about his costume.
Anna is helping Taylor get ready for bed. Johanna and Nash are in their rooms.
“Sure,” I say. “Who is that?”
“Chunky,” he says again, as if it’s obvious.
“Is he or she from a cartoon or a book or a video or a game?”
He gives his little shoulders a shrug.
“What does he look like? Where did you see him?”
“You know . . .” he says. “Chunky.”
“Can you describe him to me?”
I pull out my phone and search Chunky kids character.
Nothing that remotely resembles a kids’ character comes up in the search results.
I click over to Youtube, and say, “Is he from a video you watch?”
“Yeah,” he says. “On mommy’s phone.”
I type Chunky into the Youtube search bar.
A Bruno Mars song comes up, followed by Trampsta, an old black and white film dance, then a clip from Madagascar.
“Is this it?” I ask, pointing at the Madagascar image.
He shakes his head. “We need mommy’s phone.”
“Yes, we do,” I say.
“I miss her. When is she coming back?”
“I’m not sure, but I hope very soon. I’m sorry she’s not here right now, but let’s see if we can get my phone to work like hers, okay?”
He nods his little head and says “Okay” in such a soft, sweet little voice that my eyes begin to sting.
“Chunky,” he says again. “And the bride.”
“Do you mean Chucky?” I say.
“Yeah.”
“The little doll?”
“Yeah.”
Carla lets him watch content I wouldn’t, but I can’t imagine she’d let him watch that.
“Have you watched Chucky or just seen a picture?”
“My mommy was watching it on her phone. She stopped it, but I saw him.”
He likes dark, suspenseful, and scary stories, and I’m not surprised he’d be drawn to the image of a doll that embodies all those things.
I bring up an image of a Chucky doll on my phone.
“This?” I ask.
“Yeah. Can I be that for Halloween this year?”
“We’ll talk to your mommy about it,” I say. “You still have plenty of time to decide. Halloween is two months away.”
“Okay.”
“What’re y’all reading?” Taylor asks, as she walks in. “Let me guess. Jack Pumpkin.”
She is freshly bathed and in her unicorn nightgown.
“I’m gonna be Chunky for Halloween,” John Paul says.
“You should be Jack Pumpkin as much as you like that.”
I don’t remind her it’s Pumpkin Jack.
Anna walks in a moment later. She looks tired and ready for bed herself. Not only does she have an extra child to care for, but I haven’t been helping as much as I normally do over the past couple of days.
“One more book then lights out,” she says. “What do y’all want to read?”
“Percy Jackson,” Taylor says.
“Pumpkin Jack,” John Paul says.
“We can do Pumpkin Jack since your . . .” Taylor says. “Pumpkin Jack is fine.”
“Thank you, sweet girl,” I say. “That’s very kind of you. Do you know what you want to be for Halloween this year?”
