Krewe of Hunters 7 The Unspoken (7 page)

Where the offices of Simonton’s Sea Search had seemed like an old-fashioned sea shanty, Landry’s was almost sterile. The floors were bare, the white walls adorned with single black strokes of paint. The reception desk was sparse, and the woman who greeted them was young, very pretty and very blank. It seemed to take her several minutes to figure out who they were, and then several more to understand what they wanted. The little sign on her desk identified her as Sherry Bertelli.

“Oh, oh, oh!” she said at last. “Oh! You’re here about the professor or the Egyptologist or the…whatever he was who died so tragically!” She pushed a button on the single piece of office equipment before her. “Mr. Landry, the FBI is here to see you.”

They heard an impatient reply. “The FBI? Whatever for?”

Kat leaned over the desk. “Agents Katya Sokolov and Will Chan, Mr. Landry. We’d like to speak with you. We’re hoping you can help us.”

There was a moment of dead silence, and then Landry said, “Of course. Come on in. Ms. Bertelli will escort you.”

Sherry Bertelli rose quickly. “This way, please.”

It was hard to tell where glass walls and doors met. They went down a long hallway. Eventually Sherry Bertelli pushed on a glass panel, and they were ushered into another state-of-the-art ultramodern office where Landry was standing behind a black chrome desk.

“How do you do, how do you do?” he asked, stepping around to shake their hands. “I’m Stewart Landry. Have a seat, please, have a seat. Would you like coffee or anything?”

“No, no, thank you, we’re fine,” Kat assured him. Will held one of the chairs for her, then took his own. Stewart Landry sat back at his desk. Sherry Bertelli just stood there.

“That’s all, Sherry, thank you,” Landry said.

Without a word she turned and marched out of the office. Landry cleared his throat. “Sherry’s, uh, very popular with our clientele,” he said, as if excusing his receptionist’s undeniable limitations.

Landry was somewhere between fifty and sixty years old. His suit was designer label, his nails were clean and buffed and his silver hair was well groomed. Kat had to wonder if there wasn’t something more intimate going on between him and Sherry than the typical employee-boss relationship.

“Now, how can I help you?” Landry asked.

“Frankly,” Will said, “we’re trying to find out if you’d considered diving the site of the
Jerry McGuen.
We understand that a group called the Egyptian Sand Diggers was encouraging local interest and, as I’m sure you’ve read or seen on the news, a diver died at the site.”

Landry frowned. “Yes, I saw the news, and I knew Brady Laurie. He was quite angry at that reception and behaved rather badly. He wasn’t a member of the group, made very clear that kind of thing was beneath a
true
historian such as himself. He argued with the members that he was already on the case, and that he and his colleagues needed to find the treasure, not any of us ‘money-grubbing bastards.’ Don’t get me wrong—the death of any young person is lamentable. But Dr. Laurie was out of line. The Egyptian Sand Diggers invited us
all
to that soiree, and I think it was because they didn’t believe Laurie was right in his calculations. He was, of course. That’s obvious
now.
”

“Did you plan to dive the site at all?” Kat asked, returning to the original question.

He shrugged. “Honestly? It was an intriguing thought. But as to planning any operation—no. Our big ship is out in Lake Huron working on a ferry that went down. We have some smaller vessels working more shallow waters, but as to the
Jerry McGuen
… If Laurie
hadn’t
found her, we might’ve made an attempt to see what our sonar could identify in the area. Thing is, no one really knew exactly where she went down, other than that she was supposedly near Chicago. You might not realize it, but the lake is huge. Searching it is almost like searching the North Atlantic. When you’re just looking at the lake, it seems to stretch out forever. And when you’re boating on it alone, you can feel as if you’re the last man on earth.”

“But the treasure in the
Jerry McGuen
is of inestimable worth,” Will commented.

Landry nodded. He smiled suddenly. “But searching for that kind of treasure—needle in a haystack. I can tell you that Brady Laurie was obsessed with it. I wasn’t shocked when I heard about his death. He was threatened by all of us—no, no, that came out wrong. No one ever
threatened
him, but…check with the Egyptian Sand Diggers. They were pointing out the historic value of the find, which
we
already knew, and he got furious. Their president is a fellow named Dirk Manning, and what they call their ‘guardian’—an old fellow who’s been involved in it since he was twenty-one—is a man named Austin Miller. Talk to one of them about Brady Laurie. In my opinion, he had no real interest in joining the group, but he probably spoke to those gentlemen more than anyone else. Me? I believe Laurie was so obsessed with the ship that he signed his own death warrant.”

Will stood up and shook hands with Landry. Kat stood, too. “If there’s anything I can do, please let me know,” Landry said.

“Thank you.” Kat smiled—then remembered Will’s earlier remark about her niceness.

“I’ll have Ms. Bertelli show you out,” Landry offered.

“We can find our way,” Will told him, “but thanks.”

When they passed Sherry Bertelli, she was sitting behind her desk, flipping through the pages of a fashion magazine. She looked up long enough to smile vaguely at them and wave. “Ta-ta!”

“Yep, ta-ta,” Kat responded.

She didn’t realize Will was laughing until they were in the car again.
“Ta-ta?”

“I simply returned the courtesy,” she said primly.

“I get the feeling they didn’t hire her for her math skills.”

Kat shook her head and turned to him. “This is just about impossible,” she said. “No one, not even the first responders, really knows if anyone else was near the site when Brady died—or was killed. It sounds like he could be extremely hostile about anything concerning the
Jerry McGuen.
He did dive alone—and went down almost a hundred feet in cold water. This wasn’t a pleasure dive to a warm-water reef.”

Will glanced at her, then looked at the road again. “But you saw his body.”

“Yes. I saw his body. And seeing his body made me believe this is worth investigating. But what we saw doesn’t guarantee that Brady Laurie was murdered. There are other explanations for the bruises. It’s possible that he might have gotten into an altercation with someone. He was furious with the Egyptian Sand Diggers and apparently everyone knew it.”

“So you think one of the Sand Diggers was out on a boat, slipped into the water while pretending to fish and killed Laurie?” Will asked. “Why? The Sand Diggers supposedly
wanted
someone to find the treasure.”

“I don’t know,” Kat said. “We’ll have to ask them. Logan should be getting back to me with some information pretty soon. We can check them out tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow afternoon. Tomorrow morning we dive the site.”

Kat turned to him. “You sound excited about it.”

“I am. A shipwreck like the
Jerry McGuen?
Come on, you have to be somewhat excited!”

“Thrilled to pieces,” she muttered. Maybe one day, she’d tell him about the experiences she’d already enjoyed because of Amun Mopat!

“You don’t believe in a curse, do you?” he asked, grinning.

“No. I do, however, believe that people can go a little crazy because of them.”

“I agree,” he said. “I spent a lot of time in the Caribbean. Islanders can be very superstitious. I’ve seen men who felt convinced they were possessed, and women who managed incredible feats of contortion in a ceremonial dance. The mind is a powerful influence on the body.”

Kat nodded.

“You think someone would sabotage the mission to keep Amun Mopat from being brought back to the surface?” he asked. “That’s an idea.”

“Crazy people can latch onto anything, but…at this point, I don’t know
what
I think or feel,” Kat told him. “Except that it’s been a really, really long day!”

“And it’ll be an early morning,” he said.

She was glad he’d said that; his stamina seemed to be on a par with the Energizer Bunny’s. She hoped he was taking her back to her hotel. “I’m at a place called the Edwardian off Michigan Avenue.”

“Yep.”

“You know that, of course,” she said.

“Of course.”

He didn’t just drop her off; he brought the car in front to the valet. She sighed as she saw him get out and walk around to her. “You’re staying here, too.”

“Government dollar.” He shrugged. “We go where they get their deals,” he said. “I’ll meet you in the lobby at eight.”

“We’re diving at 8:00 a.m.?”

He hesitated. “You’re not required to go down.”

“I wouldn’t miss it. Remember? We’re excited about this.”

“Would you like to get some dinner?”

“I think I’ll just go upstairs and order in,” she said.

“Good night, then.”

There was a small restaurant in the hotel. He walked toward it, a folder and an iPad in his hands. He was going to keep working, she realized.

And she
was
starving….

He stopped suddenly, a curious frown tightening his brow. She was startled to notice again what a striking and unusual man he was.

He walked back to her. “All day I forgot to ask… Well, I suppose you would’ve said, but…did you get anything from the corpse?”

Kat studied his eyes. She was surprised, after the day they’d spent together, to feel strangely close to him. But then, when you were one of the lucky or the cursed who’d always assumed they were ever so slightly crazy, there was an instant bond with others who shared that luck or that curse. She shook her head. “No, and I was hopeful. We’re always hopeful,” she said quietly. “You?”

“Nothing at all. And I just think that in this situation, with the money involved in salvage, what seems to stink
does
stink. I really believe he was murdered. I grew up in the islands. I’ve been diving since I was a kid. No, he should never have gone down alone, but from what I’ve learned and seen, there was nothing that should have caused him to lose control. His equipment was in perfect working order. Even after being tested for leaks, his tank had air.” He paused. “It’s strange. We still can’t explain why some souls stay around, and some don’t.”

“Maybe some people who die by violence aren’t compelled to stay on earth to see that justice is done,” she said. “Some may find peace—who knows? There’s an incredible amount that we haven’t begun to understand.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” he said. “Well, get some rest.”

He started to walk again.
He was a workaholic,
she thought. Usually so was she. But she really
was
tired.

Still, they were supposed to be working this case together. She sighed.

A mummy. Great. It just had to be a mummy. The mummy of Amun Mopat.

“Wait,” she called. “I’ll join you. We can discuss what direction we’ll take after the dive.”

Yes, she was going to dive. And the idea gave her the creeps.

She suddenly wished the
Jerry McGuen
had remained lost to the world forever.

4

W
ill passed his iPad over to Kat as soon as they’d ordered. “Just click Go. You’ll see the footage that was taken when they found Brady Laurie,” Will told her.

Startled, Kat looked at him. “You had this all along?”

“Yes. But the cops who were on duty when Brady was brought up, not to mention the salvage companies, are easier to visit by day—not at night.”

She didn’t respond, thinking he might have told her he had the film footage. Sure, he
said
he was giving her the lead in their investigation, since
her
Krewe had been called in. Somehow, he was taking the lead, anyway. She felt like getting up and going to her room, but reminded herself that she was the one who’d said they weren’t in a pissing contest.

Kat touched the icon, and the footage leaped onto the screen. She lowered the volume, not wanting anyone nearby to hear, but there really wasn’t any sound, other than the videographer’s breathing, and then, of course, the muted screams when Amanda and Jon came upon the body of Brady Laurie.

As she’d heard, Brady could be seen floating in the hold. Jon had come upon him first; he’d tried to get the regulator back in Brady’s mouth. Amanda had been at his side soon after. For a few minutes, there was nothing but shots of the inside of the hull and the flooring, covered with plankton and other growth, and strewn with holes. The videographer had momentarily forgotten his task in the horror of their discovery. When he regained control, Kat was glad to see that once they’d found Brady, they had left behind all curiosity and interest in treasure; they started back to the surface immediately. In the course of doing that, they had to make a few safety stops. At the surface, the footage ended.

“I met with Alan King, Bernie Firestone and Earl Candy last evening, as soon as Jackson reached me,” Will explained, studying her across the table. “Earl wanted to destroy his film—he doesn’t want gawkers watching the discovery of a man’s death. I promised him that when the investigation’s over, I’ll destroy this copy.”

“Of course,” Kat murmured. She pushed the iPad toward him, frowning. “I just don’t see how anyone could have gotten to Brady between the time he went down and when his coworkers and the film crew arrived.”

“Easy enough, I suppose. Down in Lake Michigan, it’s damned dark. If someone was already down there, knew the lake and was a good diver, he—or she—could have found Brady’s coordinates just before Brady did…and waited for him. Remember, Brady had made a big thing of his belief that he could find the
Jerry McGuen.
If someone hacked into his computer or even read his blogs, they could follow his reasoning and figure out where the ship might have ended up. That’s one idea. Or, perhaps, someone could’ve been surprised by Brady. If you know the area, you keep to the depth, follow your compass and then come up at a distant point.”

“True,” Kat said. “But still, the timing…”

“How much diving experience have you had?” he asked her.

She tensed inwardly. “A fair amount in the Caribbean—around a number of the islands. I’ve dived cold-water springs in Florida and caves in Mexico. I haven’t done a lot of cold-water diving, so I admit I’m grateful it’s still summer.”

“I don’t see the temperature as much of an issue. Think about how much time—at that depth, with safety stops—it took Amanda and Jon to get down there. And then to go back up—and call a search and rescue boat. The depth isn’t that great, but we’re talking time and water pressure.”

She nodded. “So you think it could be Landry? Or Simonton?”

“Maybe neither,” he said with a grimace. “And I don’t know whether Brady Laurie died because he surprised someone down there, or if the intent was to start killing people so the search would end.”

“Let’s hope it’s the first.”

Their meals arrived; they’d both ordered fish. “I would’ve taken you for a steak eater—in Chicago, anyway,” she told Will.

“Ah, but we’re going down nearly a hundred feet tomorrow,” he said. “I’m going to keep it light.”

“But you do eat steak?”

“Yes. You’re a vegetarian?”

“I’m a wannabe. I like cows. They do no ill, not to my life, at any rate.”

“Russian?” he asked her.

He changed focus quickly,
she thought. “My dad,” she said. “My mom is a good old American mix of English, Irish and Scandinavian. You?”

“I was born in the States. My parents are Trinidadian. A mix of English, Chinese and Indian,” he said. “Your first time?”

She sat back at the question, stunned at his audacity.

He laughed. “I meant your first time with a ghost.”

She wished she wasn’t so pale and that a flush didn’t instantly cover her from head to toe. “A ghost. Of course,” she said, looking down. She raised her eyes again. “I was at a Civil War reenactment with my parents. I was about ten. I talked with a soldier. Everyone assumed I’d talked to a reenactor, and I believed them. Years later…I was at my grandfather’s funeral. He was desperate that my grandmother find his financial records. He died suddenly, you see, and had barely written a will, much less made sure that his affairs were in order. She was old school and hadn’t paid bills or known anything about finance. He told me where to look for his papers.” She hesitated. “I think my grandmother had something of whatever this…ability is, too. She seemed to understand right away how I knew things—and she warned me to be careful. People would make fun of me, or worse, she said. They’d see that I was locked up. And then…when I was in residency after med school, I was present at the death of a child. There’s nothing worse. But she’d written a letter to her parents, filled with love. She’d had a severe case of cystic fibrosis and wanted them to know she was at peace, and that she loved them and her sister. She told them that her time with them had been happy. After that…an old M.E. I knew talked me into changing course. Who knows? Maybe he had a bit of it, too. So I went to work as an M.E., and I wound up working with the San Antonio police a lot—and with Logan Raintree, who was with the Rangers’ office then. Eventually, we all met Jackson Crow and worked a San Antonio case before becoming, unofficially, the Texas Krewe. And you?”

“I was born in the States but I spent a lot of time in Trinidad and the other islands. Conversing with the dead is far more accepted in some of those places. I think I was five. I was in Jamaica. A fisherman had been murdered.” He shrugged. “The corpse told me who did it. If only it was always that simple.” His grin was engaging. “Actually, of course, it
wasn’t
that simple. I told my father, who told the cops, who almost arrested my father. But when they investigated, they found out that what I’d said was true. Then, of course, they wanted to arrest my father for being an accomplice. So I learned to keep quiet. I didn’t go into law enforcement at all. I went into magic—I’m a really good magician, should you ever need one—and from there, I segued into film. And then I was called in to work with Jackson Crow, and wound up taking the training at Quantico…and here I am.”

“Strange how we were all found,” Kat said.

“Maybe. Maybe not. Adam Harrison worked quietly with the FBI for years before his units were formed. And for him, it came from
not
having the gift, while his son, who died young, had been blessed with it. After that he began to seek out those who did.”

“I guess if you know it exists, you can find it,” Kat said.

Will glanced at his watch. “We should get some sleep. We’ll be at the dock early in the morning. I’ll meet you in the restaurant at seven. We should have something to eat before we head out.”

Kat felt her teeth grind. He was taking control again. She decided that was a childish reaction, telling herself he was right; they were going diving.

But for some reason, that made her grab the bill the moment it came to the table. He didn’t protest. Apparently, he had no hang-ups about a woman paying. She tried to take a deep breath; she really
was
acting childish. It was just that this was the first time she’d been on an investigation without Logan and the others, and she couldn’t help remembering that the whole thing had begun because
her
unit knew the filmmakers who’d requested that they step in. So she felt a little proprietary.…

They left the dining room and headed for the elevator. She hit the button for the fifth floor. He didn’t hit a button at all. She should have known. Their rooms were next to each other.

The accommodations had been booked from their central office in Virginia. Tomorrow, Kat was certain, she’d discover that Logan and the rest of her unit were booked into the surrounding rooms. Logan’s would be a suite with a big round table where they could work on their computers and discuss their findings.

“Good night,” Will said.

She wished him a brusque good-night as well and entered her room.

She shouldn’t have been tired; she should still have been on L.A. time. But, as she’d said earlier, it had been a long day.

A very long day,
she thought.

Just last night she’d been in a comfortable bed in L.A., dreaming about being on a ship.

She flinched, unsure why it bothered her so much that she’d dreamed about the ship—and then been sent out to investigate a death in a shipwreck.

She really wanted to sleep. She didn’t want to dream.

Before climbing into bed, she pulled out her octopus, dive boots, mask and flippers. It had seemed prudent to bring her own equipment. With those objects packed in a rolling dive bag, she was ready for morning.

When she did fall asleep, her dream wasn’t the same.

This time, it was about mummies.

She was somewhere…somewhere in a green darkness. There were wall sconces that burned bright blue here and there along the walls. She didn’t seem to be walking, but floating.

Suddenly, ahead of her—a plethora of mummies. They all had their arms outstretched and moved with the slow, staccato movement she’d seen in classic mummy movies.

Even in her dream she paused to think that such an image was ridiculous. Mummies were bound with their arms crossed over the body. In any case, a mummy couldn’t just reach out an arm—it would break off!

But these mummies were coming toward her. And behind them, she saw a man. It was, of course, none other than the evil, robe-wearing high priest Amun Mopat. The priest who had wanted to be a pharaoh, a god.

He was laughing. In old movies, all villains had a maniacal laugh.

They were coming closer and closer and she kept floating toward them. Now that, too, was totally idiotic. She never understood why people in films just stood there and screamed. The mummies moved so slowly. If she turned and ran—or floated more quickly—she could easily escape them. In movies, the heroines usually tripped, and then lay on the ground screaming as the mummy or monster closed in on them. Scenes like that made for great movie posters!

In her dream, she reminded herself that she was a medical examiner and that she understood the human body. She understood the nature of human remains in any condition, even mummified. If she met the mummies, she could fight them—break them into a million pieces—and she’d be fine. But there were so many….

She floated into the fray. As she’d expected, the mummies were brittle, dry and fragile. They weren’t much for fighting.

But behind them was Amun Mopat, watching her from beneath his hooded cape.

They stared at each other, and she wanted to run but couldn’t and then—

Then she woke, startled by a sound. Glancing at the clock radio, she noted the time—4:31 a.m.

For a moment, she lay in bed, vividly remembering her dream and puzzled by the sound that had awakened her.

It came again and her eyes flashed to the door. Someone had tried to enter her room. The sound had been that of an electronic key card.

She rolled over and reached into the bedside table for her FBI-issue firearm and jumped to her feet, instantly alert. There was no sound now. She walked to the door and looked through the peephole. She saw nothing. Thinking quickly, she grabbed her key card from the side table and dropped it in the little pocket of her nightshirt and walked back to the door, looking out again.

She waited, then slid the top bolt, cringing when she heard the noise it made. Gun at the ready, she threw open the door.

There was no one out there, but Will Chan’s door had opened, too. She knew he was standing much as she was—his firearm leveled.

“Will?” She whispered his name.

He stepped out of his room, wearing floor-length pajama pants and nothing else, and his hair, while dead straight, was disheveled, as well. He gave her a nod, which she knew to mean
cover me,
and walked out into the hall, turning from one direction to another, striding away from the elevator bank, and then back toward it.

There was definitely no one in the hall.

“The elevator,” he said softly. He was standing by it.

She nodded. “I’ll take the stairs.”

As she went down the stairs in her long T-shirt of a nightgown and bare feet, stopping to look out at every floor, she thought she should have opted for the elevator.

Will was waiting for her when she got to the bottom.

One lone clerk was on duty at the reception desk across the lobby. Kat arched a brow at Will. “Did he see anyone?”

“Nope. What did you hear?” he asked her. “What woke you?”

“It sounded as if someone was trying to get into my room with a key card. What did you hear? Did they try your room, too? Maybe it was just a drunk on the wrong floor,” Kat said.

“Maybe. Or maybe someone
was
trying to get into our rooms. And maybe that someone has a room at the hotel.”

She shook her head. “That’s rather stupid, isn’t it? Trying to break in on agents in their rooms? Obviously we’re armed. And even more obvious—we’re going to have the doors bolted.”

“Maybe the intent wasn’t to hurt us, just to throw us off,” Will said.

“The clerk says no one’s gone through the lobby?”

“Not since about 1:30 a.m. And he assured me he would’ve noticed. The last customers left the restaurant at about 11:00 p.m., and the last drinker left the bar at one-thirty. He says it’s been quiet ever since—quiet as a tomb.”