The Deep Blue Alibi

Fowles' eyes seemed to squint behind his mask. Then he shook his head.

Steve checked his air gauge. The needle was at the red line. Maybe five hundred pounds of air. God, had he been sprinting? Just a few minutes left.

Now, images did appear to Steve. Quick ones, flashing by. His mother, dead all these years from a vicious cancer. His father, young, handsome, and prosperous. Bobby the day Steve carried him out of the hellhole where Janice kept him caged. Herbert would have to take care of the boy now.

I can live with that. Or die with it. My old man's a better grandfather than he ever was a father.

Then Victoria's face floated by. He smiled and almost laughed, exhaling through his nostrils and momentarily fogging his mask.

She made me laugh. So upright and uptight. From that first day in the jail cells together, she made me laugh.

Realizing that he was thinking in past tense, that his life would soon be discussed by others, if at all, in past tense.

Fowles was banging something against the metal hull. Trying to get his attention.

The magnetic slate.

Okay, what?

Fowles wrote something on the slate, showed it to Steve.

'I killed Stubbs.'

Yeah. Yeah. We've been through that, Steve thought. You sort-of killed Stubbs. You're morally responsible. What of it? Why now?

Steve shrugged and raised both hands, palms up, showing his confusion.

Fowles scrawled something else and held up the slate.

'Clive A. Fowles.'

I get it now, buddy. A signed confession. To help Griffin. That's great. But only if someone is alive to haul it into court.

Fowles grabbed Steve by the shoulder and motioned for him to get out of the chariot. When Steve didn't move, Fowles grabbed his air hose and pulled.

Okay. Okay.

Steve unbuckled and floated out of the chariot. Fowles punched his fist toward the sandy bottom: 'Stay here!' Then he thrust the slate at Steve and made one final gesture. Raising his right hand above his head, he flashed the V for Victory sign. A second later, he purged the ballast tank and pulled back on the joystick. The chariot flew upward at a sharp angle.

Maybe it was the fatigue or the fear or the oxygen-nitrogen mixture that fogged his brain. Whatever the reason, it took Steve several seconds to figure out exactly what Fowles was doing.

He was attacking Conklin the same way his grandfather had attacked the Tirpitz.

Gripping the slate, Steve swam after the chariot.

Why? He didn't know exactly. Except it seemed unmanly to sit on the bottom of the ocean while Clive Fowles chased the Victoria Cross his grandfather had won.

Steve kicked hard but, above him, the chariot rapidly picked up speed, putting distance between them. Without a heavy warhead in the bow, without Steve's weight, and with its ballast tank blowing, the chariot could burst from the water like a Polaris missile. Except it was headed straight for the hull of the Cigarette.

The chariot's propeller churned white water, and Steve didn't have a good view. Still, he knew Fowles was aiming for a spot where the fuel lines came out of the Cigarette's lightweight aluminum tanks.

He felt the explosion before he heard it.

The shock wave compressed his chest.

The sound pounded at his eardrums with a thunderclap of pain.

He tumbled toward the bottom with terrifying speed.

Arse-over-tits. That's what Fowles would have called it if he could have survived the explosion and fireball. That was Steve's last thought before his head crunched into the sandy bottom, and everything went dark.

Forty-seven

THE DRAMA QUEEN

'How long have you worked for Poseidon?' Victoria asked.

'Twenty-three years,' Charles Traylor said. He was a portly man in his fifties who looked as if he never left the Jacuzzi, much less dived to the bottom of an Atlantic trench. On direct examination, he'd testified that it was 'highly unlikely' the Poseidon Mark 3000 speargun, powered by a pneumatic blast of air, could accidentally discharge while being loaded.

'Another two years, you'll get that nice pension.'

'Not sure I follow your drift.'

'You're a loyal employee, Mr. Traylor. You run Poseidon's quality-control department and you've certified the Mark 3000 as safe. Wouldn't you be fired if it proved to be defective?'

'Objection!' Richard Waddle leaned over the prosecution table, palms pressed into the mahogany. 'Counsel's testifying, not interrogating.'

'Sustained,' Judge Feathers said. 'Ms. Lord, I give counsel some room to roam on cross, but you've just passed the county line.'

'I'm sorry, Your Honor,' Victoria said, though she wasn't sorry a bit. She'd gotten the point across to the jury.

Victoria held the speargun-state's exhibit three-in both hands. 'In the instruction manual, your company warns that the shaft should be pointed away from the person attempting to load the spear. Obviously, you anticipated a person shooting himself.'

'Oh, the lawyers put that in.'

Those darn lawyers.

'But we've never had a lawsuit,' Traylor added hastily.

A lawsuit would have been nice for the defense, Victoria thought. A class action even better. 'Everybody shish-ka-bobbed by the speargun, raise your hands.' But you have to play the cards you're dealt.

The courtroom door squeaked open, and her mother swept in. The Queen had disappeared two days earlier, her final words chillier than the frozen margarita she'd been drinking at the time. Lunch at a Mexican restaurant near the courthouse. Victoria had been working on her order of proof at a secluded table when her mother breezed over, carrying her slushy drink. Barely past noon, but the drink wasn't her first of the day. Skipping pleasantries, The Queen berated Victoria for being 'bitchy and judgmental and no damn fun,' saying it's no wonder she couldn't hold a man.

'Do you ever consider my happiness?' Irene demanded.

'I didn't think it was necessary, Mother, with you spending full time on the job.'

'You're a little icy for my taste, darling. Comes from your father's side.'

'If only he were here to defend himself.'

'I'm entitled to happiness, too.' Her mother pirouetted toward the door, the hem of her pink cotton Cynthia Steffe bubble skirt swirling around her hips.

The Drama Queen.

'Good luck in court, dear,' her mother tossed over her shoulder. 'Even if you don't care about my happiness, please win for your uncle Grif.'