Dark Waters (16 page)

‘Mike,' I said quietly. ‘Josh Weaver's missing. Mike volunteered him and me to go look for him.'

‘Well, that was nice of him,' and yes she said that sarcastically. ‘I thought that was what security was for. Other than for arresting small children, of course.'

I decided to ignore that. It was her kid, too, after all. At this point she wasn't going to see the law and order part of it like I did. ‘Security is on it, but Mike promised Vern.'

‘That you'd look for him?' she said.

‘Come on, honey—'

‘Don't honey me,' she said, her whisper fairly loud. ‘Mike Tulia's daughter is more than likely the one who got John into this whole mess! Just what did she plan on doing with my son up in her cabin? Answer me that!'

You know, you can give a person all the high-faluting education in the world, a whole medical degree in psychiatry, but mess with a woman's kid and the mama lion will win every damn time.

‘I'll be back as soon as I can,' I said, buttoning up my shirt. I was out the door before she could utter another word.

Mike and I headed up to the promenade deck, checking out the shops and the casino. We saw Chief Heinrich's men going into the different entertainment venues and decided to let them disturb the entertainers and patrons rather than us. When we found nothing in the shops or casino, we headed to the open-air pool area, me taking the port side (I think) and Mike the starboard (I think). Nothing. We headed to the food court which was mostly empty, and on to the children's pavilion, not suspecting he'd be there, but we had to check. He wasn't there. We headed out to the deck that went around the food court.

Mike stopped and looked out at sea. It was black as pitch. ‘You don't think he fell overboard, do you?' he asked me.

I shrugged. ‘I dunno. Hope not,' I said.

‘Can you imagine?' Mike said, his voice soft. ‘A kid like him out in that?' He pointed into the blackness. ‘Bobbing up and down, not being able to see anything, just this ship fading from sight?' Mike shook himself. Looking at me, he laughed nervously. ‘I think this might be my last cruise.'

‘I hear you,' I said, staring out at the blackness. I could feel my skin crawling from the thought of a boy, my boy – out in the blackness, alone, treading water, waiting—

‘I wouldn't put it past the little shit to be hiding,' Mike said, breaking into my painful thoughts. ‘He's given Vern nothing but hell ever since he divorced his mom.'

‘Where would he hide?' I asked.

‘I dunno. Where would you hide?' he asked.

I thought about it, then pointed to a door. ‘That says employees only. Think Josh would obey that?'

‘Hell, no,' Mike said.

So we ignored the sign too and went in. Stairs immediately headed down several flights until we reached a long, narrow, unadorned corridor with lots of doors on either side. Probably crew quarters. Another door near the stairway led – by the sign – to the engine room. We tried opening it, but it was locked.

‘So what do you suppose Josh would do when confronted by a locked door?' I asked Mike.

‘Give up. The kid doesn't have a lot of drive.' We looked down the long corridor. ‘Think we should try some of these doors?' Mike asked.

I shrugged. ‘In for a penny,' I said, and headed to the doors on the left, while Mike took the doors on the right. They were definitely crew cabins and few of them were locked. I could see spare navy uniforms in open closets. And truth be told, most of the rooms I found were God-awful messes. Of course, when did they have time to clean their own cabins when they were always waiting on us hand and foot?

Mike had found several open doors before he hit the jackpot: an enraged young lady.

‘What the hell do you think you're doing?' she yelled. ‘This is my private room! Are you a passenger? It's not enough that I slave for you day and night, you have to come down here and what? Do you think you can seduce me? Or are you a rapist?'

All this time, Mike was backing up and trying to apologize.

‘I'm really sorry! I didn't think anybody—' Mike tried, to no avail.

‘Oh, my God! You're not alone!' she screamed upon seeing me. ‘Rape!' she yelled at the top of her lungs. ‘Rape!'

I held up both hands in surrender. ‘Miss, wait now, miss—'

But she yelled that word again. Mike and I looked at each other and took off running for the stairs leading up.

We got to the brisk night air of the deck and both sighed heavily. ‘Jeez, what was with that broad?' Mike asked.

‘You do have a way with words, don't you, Mike?' I said.

‘What?' he asked in apparent innocence.

‘Hens? Broads? What next? Bimbos? Dames? Floozies?' I said.

‘Gee, Milt, did I hurt your feelings? You on the rag, boy?'

‘See, there you go!'

‘OK, I'm not a she-man, all right? I'm a man's man! I like to hunt and fish and watch the cowboys and fart in my living room!'

‘Hell, I like all those things, too, including farting in my living room' – I like it, I just didn't do it anymore since Jean and I got married – ‘but you just don't call women—'

At that moment we must of hit a minor tsunami 'cause the ship rocked heavily, knocking me and Mike up against the wall. Across from us was one of the life boats. When the ship hitched, an arm, presumably attached to a body, fell out from under the tarp covering the life boat. And the arm wasn't moving.

M
ike and I were surrounded by four security personnel, plus Chief Heinrich, the head steward, and somebody from the bridge whose rank I didn't get. We all stared at Josh Weaver's uncovered body. By the marks on his neck, the fact that most of his tongue was hanging out, and my years as a professional lawman, I deduced he'd been strangled. Unfortunately even Mike, a tool and die guy, deduced the same thing, so I didn't get all uppity about it. We were all staring when the door down to the crew quarters opened and the irate young lady from only a few moments earlier came barreling out.

‘Chief Heinrich!' she cried. ‘You got them! Thank God! They tried to—'

She stopped in mid-sentence, I suppose because people moved enough for her to see poor old Josh lying there with his tongue lolling out.

‘Oh,' she said. ‘Is he dead?'

No one answered her 'cause at that moment Vern Weaver came rushing down the deck with Crystal running behind him. I'm a happily married man, but that didn't keep me from noticing that when Crystal ran, especially wearing nothing but a silky-looking short nightie and a matching silky-looking short robe, her D cups hardly moved. Her legs were longer than I thought humanly possible, and her red hair flowed behind her like she was in a shampoo commercial. I couldn't help wondering if the fact that her D cups didn't move meant they weren't real. That would be a real shame, because they were awful pretty peeking out of that flimsy nighty.

‘Josh!' Vern yelled. The crew made way for him and he grabbed his son and pulled the boy to his chest. I started with an ‘Ah, Chief,' thinking about all the forensics he was messing up, but Heinrich just glared at me so I shut up and watched Vern cry over his son. Crystal came up behind Vern and hugged his back, making sounds like she was bawling her eyes out, but the lady had some heavy mascara on and I didn't see it smudge. I'm just saying – for what it's worth.

I tapped Mike on the shoulder. ‘You should stay for Vern, but I'm just in the way here,' I said. ‘So I'm heading back to my cabin.'

Mike nodded his head and moved to his partner, patting a free shoulder. I walked back to our cabin, wishing I had Jean's scooter 'cause I was dog tired and didn't feel like walking the length of the ship to get to bed. So to keep my mind occupied while I made my way, I had to wonder, who would want Josh Weaver dead? The kid wasn't the best-looking, brightest, friendliest, nicest or any of the other ‘est's' you could think of, but that was hardly a reason to choke him to death. He and Vern had been at each other, but no more than any other father and teenaged son. Something I had to look forward to, I thought with a little trepidation. I was thinking about the people we knew who knew Josh. The Tulias, Esther Monte, her daughter and her shipboard romance, Lance Turner, and Rose Connelly and her boys and in-laws. Why would any of them want him dead? The only people even close enough to the Weaver family to care would be the Tulias – Mike, Lucy and Janna. I ruled out Janna purely because she wouldn't have the strength to put Josh in the life boat. Could probably rule out Lucy for the same reason. Not to mention neither one had hands big enough to have left the bruising I had seen on Josh's neck.

But the most likely scenario was someone I didn't know. Josh, as a teenager, probably roamed the ship at his leisure, so probably met a lot of people, including kids his own age. With the personality he appeared to have, it was likely he'd rubbed the wrong somebody up the wrong way.

I'd have to ask the boys in the morning what they'd thought of him the few times they'd been around him.

Johnny Mac woke up feeling good, until reality came crashing down on him. He'd lost his best friend and any chance of making Janna his girlfriend. He'd pissed off his mom and disappointed his dad. And he was stuck in this cabin or eating nothing but fancy food until the ship docked which, thank God, would be sometime the day after tomorrow. Another two days to get through, he thought.

‘You boys awake?' his dad called from the other room.

He heard Early say, ‘Yes, sir,' and thought
suck up
, then said, ‘Yes, sir,' himself.

‘Come on in here a minute, boys, we need to talk,' his dad said.

Johnny Mac sighed deeply and crawled down his ladder, avoiding eye contact with his former best friend. This is not going to be fun, he thought to himself. Of course, nothing as of late had been a bit of fun.

They went into the other room and took seats together on his dad's hastily made-up bed, Johnny Mac knowing his dad had made it himself – it sure wasn't a professional job.

‘Where's mom?' Johnny Mac asked, rubbing sleep out of his eyes.

‘In the bathroom, getting dolled up,' his father answered. Then he sighed kind of heavy like, and Johnny Mac figured something else was coming down on his head.

‘Boys, something really bad happened last night,' his dad said, and Johnny Mac braced himself for what was to come. Did they steal something really big this time? Roll another drunk? Because he knew it was them – Josh and some of the others.

Then his dad said, ‘Josh Weaver was killed last night.'

For the first time in almost twenty-four hours, Johnny Mac and Early looked at each other. ‘Shit!' Early said.

‘Watch the language, Early,' Johnny Mac's dad said.

The boys looked at each other again, silently asking each other, ‘Do we tell? Is it time?'

Johnny Mac nodded at Early and said, ‘Dad, there's something we need to tell you.'

Dave McDaniel's paint and body shop was on his way to work, so Emmett dropped by there first. Dave was in the small front office with a customer when Emmett walked in.

‘Be right with you, Emmett,' Dave said.

Emmett walked over to a wall that had pictures of a race car that he remembered Steve telling him about. Steve and his dad had built it when Steve was in high school, with the hopes of racing it one day. When the customer left, Emmett asked Dave, ‘You and Steve ever race this thing?'

‘Officer, I refuse to answer on the grounds that you'd lock my ass up and hide the key.'

Emmett turned back to the counter and laughed. ‘I meant on a legitimate race course.'

‘Naw. Never could qualify. Still got it, though.' He pointed with his thumb to the bays behind him. ‘Take it out for a spin occasionally. Wanna go with me next time?' Dave said, grinning.

‘Think you can speed your ass off on the back roads if you got a sheriff's deputy with you?'

‘It had crossed my mind,' Dave said.

Emmett grinned. ‘You bet your ass. Give me a call. Meanwhile, I need to interview your nephew, Malcolm. Understand he works here?'

‘Yeah, just a minute.' He opened the door to the bays and said, ‘Leonard, go get Malcolm out of the paint room and tell him to come to my office.'

Dave pointed to a door at the back of the small lobby area. ‘My office is right in there,' he said. ‘You can use that to talk to him.'

‘Thanks,' Emmett said as a young man opened the door from the bays. He had a painter's mask hung around his neck and was wearing paint-spattered coveralls and heavy gloves which he was attempting to take off. As Grady mentioned, he was about five-eight, very thin, with straight black hair and brown eyes he kept focused mostly on the ground.

‘Malcolm, this is Emmett Hopkins from the sheriff's department. He needs to ask you some questions about Darby Hunt,' Dave said. ‘Just answer them truthfully then get back to work, 'k? I have to go pick up a part and I'll be back in fifteen.'

Dave went out the front door and Emmett ushered Malcolm into Dave's inner sanctum. It was nothing to write home to mom about. Not much bigger than a walk-in closet, it smelled of grease and body odor and was hip-deep in paperwork and car parts. Emmett took the chair behind the desk and Malcolm pulled up a straight-back chair across from him.

‘Yes, sir?' Malcolm said, his focus again downward and his demeanor timid.

‘Don't mean to bother you, Malcolm,' Emmett said, ‘I'm just interviewing everybody in the family about Darby Hunt's murder. You know anything about that?'

‘He's dead,' Malcolm said.

‘Yeah, he is. You know who killed him?'