The Deep Blue Alibi

'So how did it work out?' he repeated. 'Who paid Stubbs to turn him around?'

Fowles squinted into the sun, trying to get a look at the boat. 'Headed our way, isn't it?' Sounding like a man trying not to sound concerned.

'You expecting company?'

Fowles looked back toward the Fowles' Folly, anchored maybe a thousand yards away. He seemed to be measuring the distance and time it would take to get there.

'What's going on, Fowles?'

The chariot rose and fell in the gentle swells. With each dip, the approaching boat disappeared. With each push upward, it appeared closer.

'Talk to me, Fowles.'

'I'm a little nearsighted.' Fowles gestured toward the oncoming boat. 'What can you see?'

'Moving fast on a high plane. Long and thin. Built for speed.'

Just like the boat on the satellite photos, the one tailing the Force Majeure.

'Should we get back to the boat, Fowles?'

'Wouldn't make a difference. We can't outrun it.' His voice was tight.

The roar grew louder. Steve remembered the Force Majeure approaching the beach at Sunset Key. The sound of an avalanche. This was more of a whine, like

a jet engine.

'Jesus, Fowles. What the hell's happening?'

'Shut your gob and listen, mate. We don't have much time. It happened pretty much the way you said. I took the chariot into the Gulf. A Cigarette picked me up, a Top Gun Thirty-eight. Then dropped me off near Black Turtle Key. I stayed in the water till the Force Majeure got there. When Mr. G was pulling up his lobster traps, I climbed aboard. I went down the hatch to the engine room. In a few minutes, I could hear them both through the salon hatch. Mr. G hands over the hundred thou and Stubbs says it's not enough. Someone else has been bidding for his services. Someone who'll pay ten times that if he'll sink Oceania.'

Just what Griffin said when he'd finally told the truth.

'They'd both been drinking all day and were bloody snockered. Mr. G demands to know who's the bidder, but the little bugger won't say. There's yelling back and forth. Mr. G must have pulled out the speargun, because Stubbs laughs and asks if maybe he forgot something. Then Mr. G laughs. The gun didn't have a spear. They both settle down and Stubbs says he'll turn down the other guy and take Mr. G's money with another hundred thou every year. That seemed to settle it. Mr. G goes back up to the bridge and heads toward Sunset Key.'

Again, just what Griffin told them, Steve thought, looking toward the Fowles' Folly. The speedboat was alongside the dive boat. Maybe the guy at the wheel hadn't seen them yet, bobbing in the waves. 'So when Griffin leaves, Stubbs is healthy and breathing,' he said.

'But white as a ghost when he sees me coming up through the hatch. I ask Stubbs if he's forgotten he just took forty thousand dollars as a down payment from someone else.'

'The money the police found in Stubbs' hotel room.'

'Right. Now the fucknugget tells me he'll give it back. Thinks he can return a bribe like a pair of pants that don't fit.' Fowles turned and watched the speedboat move away from the Fowles' Folly and head toward them. 'I tell Stubbs I'm there to make sure he doesn't back out of his deal or to throw him overboard if he does.'

'On whose instructions? Who were you working for?'

'Doesn't matter who. Those were my orders, but I was bluffing. I never would have killed the man.'

The speedboat was five hundred yards away and moving straight at them.

'Now the little bugger goes bonkers,' Fowles said. 'Grabs the speargun, jams a spear in the barrel against the air pressure, but he must not have cocked it right. He's waving the gun around and I grab it. We tussle, and the damn thing fires. Puts the spear right into his chest. I panic. I get the hell out of there and jump overboard. Tread water till the Cigarette picks me up.'

'If you didn't intend to shoot Stubbs, you might have a defense.'

'Morally, I'm guilty. I killed Stubbs as surely as if I'd pulled the trigger.'

They both looked toward the oncoming boat, down off its plane, puttering toward them at less than ten knots. A Cigarette Top Gun 38 with a sleek white hull decorated with orange and red flames. One man was visible standing in the cockpit, a rifle propped on top of the wheel.

'That's the guy who picked you up, right?' Steve said.

'That'd be him.'

'Why's he got a rifle?'

'To kill me. You, too, probably.'

'Jesus, Fowles! Do you have any weapons?'

'Not even a speargun,' the Brit said with a sad smile.

The sound of rapid-fire gunshots crackled across the water.

Steve ducked lower into his seat. 'What now?'

'How much air you have?'

'Maybe fifteen minutes. Less if I'm scared shitless, which I am.'

Gunshots ricocheted off the steel hull of the chariot.

'Crew, prepare to dive!' Fowles ordered, sounding no doubt like his grandfather in a Norwegian fjord.

Steve pulled down his mask and readied his mouthpiece and regulator. 'You still haven't told me. Who is that guy?'

'Name's Conchy Conklin.'

Fowles bit down on his mouthpiece, opened the ballast tank, and pushed the joystick forward. The chariot took them under just as another gunshot pinged off the rusty old craft.

Forty-six

LIFE IN PAST TENSE

Who the hell is Conchy Conklin? And why does he want to kill me?

Killing Fowles, Steve could understand. The Brit was a poached egg, ready to crack. When he did, he'd implicate Conklin and whoever hired them both. From everything Willis Rask had said, Conklin was a lowlife without the brains to pull off a sophisticated bribery scheme. His boss was the one who wanted Griffin convicted of murder and Oceania buried at sea. But who was his boss? Fowles never said.

As the chariot descended, bullets streaked through the water. Dying with a whoosh-whoosh above their heads. Steve felt his heart racing, and he had a case of cotton mouth from the tank air. Then another sound, the rumble of the Cigarette's props, plowing overhead.

They were at twenty feet and descending at a steep angle. Safe as long as their air held out. But no way to outrun the boat. Or to sneak away. Their bubbles could be followed as surely as Hansel's trail of bread crumbs.

When they reached the bottom, Fowles put the chariot down hard. The craft bounced twice in the sand, scattering some spiny lobsters. The sounds above them dimmed, the speedboat idling, Conklin waiting for their next move.

But there was no move. Nothing to be done. The chariot was their metal coffin. Wasn't your whole life supposed to flash before your eyes when you faced death? But no. Steve was thinking they should try something. Anything.

In the front seat, Fowles craned his neck, looking up. Steve tapped him on the shoulder, then gestured with both hands. He pointed toward the boat above, then touched Fowles' chest and pointed one direction, then touched his own chest and pointed another.

Send the chariot up toward the boat, and you and I swim off in different directions.