next can of beer, had foolishly taken the party beyond the barrier reef into rough waters. It was not pleasant to dive under such conditions, and it took every ounce of energy, and most of the divers that day never got off the boat, finding themselves too sick to do anything other than puke over the side.
Jim motioned for her to follow the contours of the circular field they'd discovered in one direction while he explored the other. The clarity of the water was better here than above, for it was calmer. Still, the sediment at the bottom of the reservoir was in a constant swirl, disturbed by the current, moving back and forth like milky, dirty water in a washbasin. Yet if she worked at it, she could see through this thin cloud, which hung ghostlike over the bottom, to see teeming life darting about, rooted plants, seaweed and coral and volcanic stone. A course could be determined and followed. One thing was quite clear, with visibility so bad, they had to remain above the sandy floor, to keep their fins from swirling up the sediment even more.
As it was, they could barely see one another after a few feet of separation. Parry in fact looked like a ghost as he swam off in one direction, disappearing before her eyes. Being careful, picking her way along with great caution, fearful of swimming into a vortex, Jessica felt her stomach lurch at the thought that her last sight of Parry might have already occurred.
They were crazy to be here doing this…
She adjusted her weight and descended further, getting closer for the survey of the floor, wiping aside floating debris. She followed a zigzag pattern, but not for long. She was stopped instantly by an unusually large, ivory stone with smooth contours below the sea, lichen growing on its base. Mold had so painted it over as to make it one with the surroundings, save for the top, rubbed bare, fanned for all eternity by the current. She sensed something strange about this stone immediately. It appeared bonelike.
She descended, parting small schools of fish as she did so. Nearby a sea turtle played out its underwater ballet, so at ease was it here in the depths. It came so near she reached out to touch it, but it sped off just ahead of her fingertips, as if in a teasing and familiar dance it'd danced with mankind for generations.
Below, in the sand at the bottom, she was coming to rest over what appeared the unnatural formation, a mound amid an otherwise smooth surface. Just as her knees were about to touch bottom, a UFO-shaped portion of the sand lifted off and shot away, its eyes on its head, looking angry and ratlike as it sped off.
If fish could curse, the pancake flounder would have the vilest words to say, she thought.
Jim Parry, doing his own zigzagging probe, saw her kneeling there, causing a smokescreen of sediment to settle around her. He came gliding over, curious about her find, giving her the universal hand gesture for What? He looked great underwater, she thought while pointing to her discovery, fearful of embarrassment now should her treasure turn into nothing, a false alarm.
She dug in with her gloved hands at the conical cap of the mound, Jim lending his own powerful hands, each scooping away sediment around the base. In an instant which made them both draw back, Jessica came away with a human skull and the neck bone from which it had so easily detached. The unmistakable skeletal remains of the skull's owner protruded now, shoulder bones and spinal column looking like a macabre mockery of the living coral around it.
Even here and through her face mask, Jessica could tell from the size, heft, contour and jaw that it was the skull of a woman. It was partially shattered at the cranium, brittle, ready to cave in. The eye sockets stared ceaselessly back at the divers. Christ help me, she thought, it's my nightmare come true, like a damned premonition. Parry went to work uncovering more bones, discarding rocks and silt, until soon, it appeared they had a large cache of human bones.
Jim had been so right it was scary, she thought.
Underwater everything was exaggerated, the five senses heightened, underscored. Colors were indescribably bright and blinding, shapes monstrous and large, and it took more effort to stare into death here like this than in her lab. Every effort made when working underwater, too, was more difficult; maneuvering the bone cache, like two spacemen lifting moon rocks in a zero- gravity environment, took its toll. Still, they worked to dig at the find with deliberate patience.
She had just begun to wonder how they were ever possibly going to get the bones to the surface when, like a magician's trick. Parry extended her a large net-from out of thin water, she mentally quipped-a net used for shelling or lobstering which he'd obviously brought along. Together they began filling the net with an array of bones, from ribs to femurs to skulls, some of which seemed too ponderous to be those of women-but this was no place to make such judgments. In fact, it was far too soon to tell for certain if all the bones were human, she conceded while Parry finished filling the net.
Now, the net filled to capacity, making it impossible for them to collect any more of the skeletal remains, they saw they had hardly scratched the surface of the underwater tomb. Still, it appeared that the top layer of bones was of more interest to them, since they appeared newer than most they'd found here.
Unlike the Navy divers at the Blow Hole, who'd not used satellite photo reconnaissance and had not located such a find, she and Parry had been extremely fortunate. Parry had made things happen here. She respected him for that. Forensically speaking, it appeared that they had Lopaka Kowona cornered in every sense of the word now. Just too bloody bad they didn't have the killer himself cornered.
Still, at least now they had more than the handful of bone fragments found at the Blow Hole, so skimpy as to be not enough for the usual jury, no matter how much Linda Kahala's minuscule remains might tell Jessica Coran.
Jim gave the signal that they should now find the tow rope and ascend the way they had come. She dreaded the return trip, but realized that the danger was only in one area, and when they reached that current belt, they'd have to move quickly and determinedly on. She worried about Jim and the extra weight the bone net represented, but then she saw that he had thought of everything, for he was attaching the net to the lifeline and tightly securing it there. He meant to bring it up with the anchor once on the surface, hand-over-hand.
Their little salvage operation looked to be a success when they were both successfully past the dangerous current zone and beyond any threat from the sea. The ocean was both benefactor and punisher here, depending on its whim and the foolishness of mortals like them who dared taunt the enormity of this god. Arising to meet the radiance of the upper world, Jessica was anxious to return to safety there amid the black stone beach, the sun and the silence of their private world above. She knew she'd been badly battered against the coral and lava rocks, and that her bruises would not soon heal, but they'd also be a friendly reminder of her exhilarating time here in this raw world with Jim Parry.
Even before he surfaced, Jim was looking at his watch, anticipating the arrival of the chopper and their departure. The bittersweet thought of leaving here was so strong that each of them felt it in the other's mind as they made their way out of the pounding surf to the safety of the protected bay and shore. They had yet to haul the bones from the sea. It was nearing mid- moming.
23
To the homicide detective, the earth spins on an axis of denial in an orbit of deceit.
All the bones were fleshless and from the creamy surfaces and the growths and green, easily smudged life that clung to them, it appeared they were old. When Jessica mentioned this, Jim immediately wanted to know, “How old?”
“ I couldn't say. I'm not a forensic anthropologist, but suffice it to say they're a hell of a lot older than Linda Kahala's was.”
'Two, maybe three years old? What?”
“ If I had to hazard a guess, yes… if not older.”
“ Older?”
“ Yes, older, maybe a great deal older, and Jim, some of them…” She paused.
“ What? Some of them what?” They'd spread out some of the bones along a ledge, staring down at them,
