Lemon Reef (32 page)

I got out of the shower to answer my cell phone. It was Doug Andrews, and he dove right in. “My guy from the lab said something's not right. Twenty percent carboxyhemoglobin in her blood is low for a carbon monoxide fatality and it's high for a smoker. Maybe we're seeing numbers that are well past her peak, so it may have been much higher at some point. Anemia might affect it, certainly, but again, twenty percent is low to bring on a heart attack. It's possible. Anything is possible with diving, you know, it's like flying, we're not meant to do it.” There was a momentary pause, and then he said, “I guess what the ME's office is saying is between the COHb and the anemia, the compressed air just put too much stress on her heart. But we think they're wrong. We're guessing cyanide. You don't see it very often.”

“
Cyanide?
But the autopsy, I mean, wouldn't they know, wouldn't it be apparent in a basic blood analysis?”

“No, it won't even show up in the comprehensive toxicology report, unless they're testing for it specifically. It's not a common form of murder. And he's smart for putting it together with diving. It's just commonly believed that divers increase their risk of heart attack when they smoke before they dive. Carbon monoxide poisoning, cyanide poisoning—easily mistaken.”

He continued, “No indication of an almond smell, or at least none detected. That's not conclusive—some people can smell it and some people can't.” Thinking aloud, “Well, and that may explain why he sank her rather than just pull her to shore. He was hoping the body would disappear and there would be no evidence of poisoning, or she would be submerged and her body saturated for several hours, and any smell would be diluted.” I heard him shuffling papers.

I took a deep breath, my first one in nearly an hour. “So, what now? It's one thing to know this, it's another thing to prove it. What's the half-life? Do I tell the lab to run special tests?” I imagined the journal and the tapes would be enough to get Beasley to agree to further testing.

“Cyanide is tricky,” Doug said. “Tell them to test for cyanide specifically. They'll know what to do. And keep in mind, once they embalm, any signs of cyanide may be destroyed. There's always urine. It's not a great way to test for cyanide, but it could work, although there may not have been any in her body.”

I said jokingly, “Porta-Potty on the boat?” He laughed.

Porta-Potty. As I put my still stale-smelling clothes back on, I realized I had already decided I was going to the boat for the videotapes. I couldn't fix the ways I'd let Del down fifteen years ago, but I could do my best now to retrieve the evidence that could exonerate Sid and, in the process, destroy the sex tapes for her.

*

The way the heat held constant in Miami, even at night, was something I'd forgotten. As we left Pascale's house to go to the boat, I braced myself for a chill. But the air I stepped out into was warm and heavy and moist—disarming. Smells lingered from the day: roof tar, gasoline from a neighbor's lawn mower. And kids' voices carried from the corner, where a group of them had gathered to fight or flirt, it was hard to tell.

Now heading east in Gail's car, Jed Bush dominated the radio stations with endorsements for his brother. A police car appeared behind us. A siren blipped, and then stripes of red and blue began spinning inside the car like a frenetic American flag. Gail startled, glanced in her rearview mirror, and began to pull over. But the police car suddenly shifted lanes and targeted the car next to us. There was palpable relief as we slipped by. We were like minnows, grateful the shark had eaten someone else.

Katie was in the front passenger seat. She persisted in searching out music, relaxed only after she found an old Billy Joel song—“Only the Good Die Young.” Ida reached over Katie's shoulder and turned it up, and for a moment the mood lifted, all of us recklessly belting out the words along with Billy, accompanied by hand and head gestures. It felt insane. It felt, in our quick harmonizing, memorized lyrics, mutual gestures, and ready abandonment, familiar.

When it was over, Katie lowered the volume on the next song, and no one said what we all must have been thinking—that it was Del we'd been singing to.

Nicole lit a cigarette and announced, “Pascale said Talon's planning on taking Khila to Texas on Saturday, right after the funeral.” Her anger increasing, she looked to me. “Jenna, did you hear me?”

I didn't answer her. I was worried about Talon taking Khila to Texas, too.

Annoyed by the smoke from Nicole's just-lit cigarette, Gail pulled over and put the roof down. I expected relief from the heat as the top lifted and folded, but the air outside the car was exactly the same temperature as the air inside the car.

We drove the strip of Coconut Grove with its shop-lined streets, crowds of pedestrians, neon lights, and loud cars. I spotted the Hindu Market where Gail and I bought the wooden Kalki figure for Del.

“That's it,” Ida said, pointing to an entrance into the boatyard. “Lot number thirty-two.”

I sighed.
How did she know that?

Gail parked and we tumbled out.

“Okay, so now what?” Katie asked.

I began to look around. It was quickly apparent that boarding Kramer's boat meant getting wet. The berths were lined side by side in a U-shape, and they were secured behind razor-wire-topped ten-foot gates that required keys or combinations to open.

“I'm going aboard,” I said. Nicole was beside me instantly.

Gail and Ida remained with the car parked near one entrance, facing the berth. Katie took a flashlight and went to the only other entrance. Each understood to turn the headlights or flashlight on if anyone entered from either side.

Nicole and I found our way to the edge of the pier and onto the steep layers of rocks—an unintended stairway into the bay. Without saying anything, I stripped down to my sports bra, briefs, and sneakers. When I looked over, Nicole was naked but for her sneakers and the leather pouch she always wore.

To my questioning expression she replied, “What? I don't wear underwear.”

I shook my head at her appreciatively.

The greenish moon was close in and full, drawing in the tide and disquieting the surface of the bay. I placed a small flashlight between my teeth and waded into the murky, algae-thick film brimming the water's edge. The bay was chilled but nothing in comparison to what they call a beach in Northern California. I pushed gently off the rocks, slicing the muck and slipping along the petulant surface. Nicole put her survival kit in her mouth to keep it dry, and then she followed with determination. She wasn't a strong swimmer, but she had insisted on going with me, not trusting me to be able to successfully commit a felony on my own. We made our way across the liquid courtyard. I watched Nicole struggle to hold her head out of the water and move her arms and legs at the same time, denying or, in any event, refusing to let show her considerable vulnerability.

Kramer's boat was easily distinguished by the web of yellow crime tape streaming from and around it. I climbed the partially submerged stepping ladder leading to the swimming platform off the back of the boat and sat down, waiting for Nicole. She came up next and sat beside me, greatly relieved, it seemed, to be out of the water. She was breathing hard; I could practically hear her heart pound.

As she caught her breath, Nicole said, “This is the first time in ten years I feel like I'm doing something to help my sister. It's because of you. If you weren't here, Talon would have gotten away with this for sure.”

“He still might.”

“At least we're trying. At least we're doing something.”

I noticed her clear eyes and the way her wet hair cut across her cheekbone. She seemed sober and present in a way I'd never experienced her before, and I wondered if the
doing something
about the injustice in her life was the real medicine Nicole had needed all along.

We crawled onto the rear deck through the port entry; I turned on the flashlight; and from where we were huddled at the back of the boat, I began to survey the layout. The boat looked to be about forty feet long. It had a large bow for sunbathing, a smaller rear deck, and between them a cockpit that housed the main control center. The bridge was perched above the cockpit; the cabin apparently ran below. The cabin door was in front of us, between the captain's chair and a passenger seat, inside the cockpit. Flashlight in my mouth, I crawled on my hands and knees to the door and began to reach for the release, hoping it wasn't locked.

Nicole tugged at my ankle urgently. She crawled beside me and whispered, “Check for an alarm before you do that.”

I could feel the boat gently rocking. I shined the light along the door seam and did notice a clear wire embedded in the lining of the frame.

Nicole wiggled closer to the captain's chair and searched around under the console. Then she ran her hand along the walls and across the floor under the chair. Feeling for and finding a compartment concealed beneath the snap-in carpet, she retrieved a multipurpose pocketknife from her survival kit and then used the screwdriver to remove the cover. I watched her feel around with agility and speed, locate the correct fuse, and disable it.

Now back at the cabin door, Nicole went once again into her bag of tricks to retrieve, of all things, a lock-picking kit. She giggled at my shocked expression. “I never leave home without it.” She proceeded to tease at the lock on the cabin door while I checked to make sure Gail and Katie's signal lights were still off. After some time passed, Nicole said, “It's not working. I don't know this kind of lock.” She became resigned to the idea that we might have to break it. Seeing as tampering with a crime scene is a felony, my preference was to get in and out without a trace.

“I have an idea.”

I wedged the tip of a screwdriver between each pin and hinge, leveraging the pins against the hinges to lift them out a bit. Then—the heel of my hand a hammer, the screwdriver a chisel—I nudged the pins the rest of the way out. With the hinges off, the door was free to pivot on its lock, gaping like a tipsy doorman. We were in.

The cabin was darker than the night. My flashlight beam leading the way, I stepped in. We were in the salon area. There was a galley to our left. The bay was lifting and churning, rocking the boat to the rhythm of the waves pounding her sides, a low, constant drumbeat. The cabin smelled of salt air, dank carpet, and what reminded me of a sun-dried wet suit. I moved the flashlight around, noticed there was not a thing out of place. No strewn clothing, no dirty dishes, no tossed-about gear, no unmade beds.

“He cleaned up,” I said.

“You mean covered up.”

I pointed the flashlight down, remembering something Doug had taught me. When concealing a crime, people almost always forget about the floor. According to Doug, more crimes are solved by what is inadvertently left behind on floors than probably anything else. In this instance there was nothing of note. In fact, the only thing out of place in the entire cabin was the vacuum, postured casually but prominently against the cabin wall, as if intended to taunt us. It told me, loudly and clearly, yes, he had killed her, but he had covered his tracks so thoroughly we would never prove it.

There was one bathroom, and I headed right for it to see what kind of head the boat had. I was expecting a flush marine head on a boat this size, but fortunately, Kramer had been in the process of upgrading the bathroom at the time that Talon and Del had used the boat and was relying temporarily on a Porta-Potty.

“What are you doing, Jen? You think the tapes are in the head?” Nicole spoke and laughed at the same time.

With my light concentrated on the Porta-Potty, I said slowly, “I think I know how Talon killed Del. Well, at least what he used to kill her. I need to find something to prove it.” I breathed out, turned, and faced her. “I think I need a sample from the Porta-Potty.”

Clearly knocked off balance by this, Nicole let out a nervous giggle. “Jenna, that's insane. For one thing, I'm sure she wasn't the only one using that thing.”

“I need to get samples of the contents of the Porta-Potty to take to the lab. I think he used cyanide to kill her.”

“They have her body. What's a little more piss gonna do?”

“The contents of the Porta-Potty are from
before
she was submerged for seven hours.” I was looking for something to put the samples in. Kramer was a dealer, so baggies came to mind. I went through the kitchen drawers until I found the stash: sandwich, snack, and—sure enough—single-grape size. “I know this seems desperate,” I said, “but it's all I can think of at this point.” I began searching for a spoon.

Nicole shook her head, put her palms up as if stopping traffic, and said, “All I can say is you must have
really
loved her.”

I shook my head at her with appreciation as she stood buck naked but for her sneakers and her survival kit. “You look for the tapes.”

“Right.” She scanned the cabin, checked the spaces inside the built-in benches, and searched haphazardly in the drawers and cabinets. “I'm sure the police have searched the whole boat already.” Pointing up, as if at some invisible other, she said, “The police don't know it's a drug boat, do they?” Then she mumbled to herself, “Where would they put the drugs?” She studied the floor. Down on it now, Nicole began lifting the snap-in carpet and peeling it back from the wall in different places. “They have to be in the floor.”

Armed with a sandwich-sized plastic bag and a soup spoon, I made my way to the head, took a deep breath, unscrewed the lid from the Porta-Potty's storage tank, and lifted—empty. It had been not just dumped, but cleaned and sanitized. I immediately told myself it didn't matter, it was a long shot anyway, we were really there for the tapes; still, I felt devastated
.
And as I secured the lid, I felt my weight in my hands and wrists and realized I was using the toilet to hold myself up.
When did he clean it?