Playing Dead

Tom turned. He wasn’t going to answer any questions. He knew better than to talk without an attorney.

Seventy-two hours later he was arrested on two counts of murder.

THREE

When Mitch Bianchi trained in underwater forensics, he thought he’d find something he was not only good at, but enjoyed.

He was very wrong, at least on the latter point. He was good at it-combining his love and skill of diving with his innate law enforcement savvy. But recovering floaters was the worst job in the Bureau, even worse than his work identifying remains in the mass graves in Kosovo early in his FBI career.

But skill trumped desire every time in the Bureau, and this time Mitch had a stake in the investigation. If Oliver Maddox was dead, it gave Mitch one more direction to turn in his private investigation into the murders of Lydia O’Brien and Chase Taverton.

“You’re quiet this morning,” Steve Donovan said as he turned onto River Road heading toward Isleton, where Maddox’s white Explorer had been found in the river. According to the sheriff’s diver, the victim in the driver’s seat had been there for a while. Four months? Possible. And it would confirm Mitch’s suspicion that Oliver Maddox had found out something that made someone nervous enough to kill. Again.

“Just thinking.”

“Funny how you never mentioned you were house-sitting for Nolan while he’s at Quantico.”

Mitch didn’t show a physical reaction. “How’d you hear?”

“Nolan called in last week for some of his files and mentioned it in passing. I remembered he lives only two blocks from Claire O’Brien. So I drove by a couple times, just to check it out, and surprise, I saw you sitting and talking with her at Starbucks Sunday morning. I didn’t have a chance to call you on it in private until now.”

Trying to come up with a lame excuse or lie would only damage Mitch’s friendship with Steve. “You knew I was looking into O’Brien’s case.”

“I didn’t think you were playing with O’Brien’s daughter.”

“It’s not like that, Donovan.”

“Don’t jerk me around, Bianchi. You’re playing a dangerous game here. Meg will draw and quarter you if she finds out you’re working the O’Brien case after you were removed. The only reason you’re on this assignment is because you’re the only diver we have in-house.”

“It’s complicated.” Mitch had to tell Steve the truth. In some ways, he was grateful that Steve had confronted him. Mitch could use a fresh mind to go over the details.

“We have a twenty-minute drive,” said Steve.

“We’ll talk later. I need to lay it out for you. I still don’t know enough to draw any solid conclusions.”

Steve’s mouth tightened. “Don’t screw with me anymore.”

“I won’t.”

“Seven o’clock, tonight, Fox amp; Goose, and you’re paying.”

“Fair enough.” Mitch didn’t want to meet at the Fox amp; Goose-he and Claire were supposed to go there tonight to listen to friends of hers who had a band-but Mitch wasn’t picking Claire up until eight. An hour with Steve, then he could drive the five minutes to Claire’s place. Steve would be long gone.

He planned to tell Steve all about his deception. Everything from his research into the O’Brien-Taverton murders to O’Brien saving Mitch’s life to Mitch befriending Claire under false pretenses. The truth about everything, except for how close he and Claire had become over the last couple months. Mitch couldn’t acknowledge to Steve-to anyone-that his feelings for Claire had moved far beyond professional interest.

They drove in awkward silence. Mitch looked through his notes on Oliver Maddox. He first learned of O’Brien’s connection with the law student through the prison visitor logs. Mitch had looked for Maddox after the prison break, ostensibly because O’Brien might have tried to contact him. But he’d been pulled from the O’Brien case almost immediately. Politics or jurisdictional grandstanding, he didn’t know which. He should have stopped then, but when Mitch found out that Maddox had been missing since a week before the earthquake, his instincts told him something was rotten. He put a BOLO on Maddox with his license plate and description.

Now they had Oliver Maddox’s car and a grossly decayed body at the wheel. After four months the victim would be impossible to positively identify at first glance. Hell, a floater after twenty-four hours was green and sloshy and hard to ID.

Mitch’s instincts told him it was Maddox. Disappeared without a trace, and now his car was found underwater.

Accident? Or murder?

The narrow, two-lane road to Isleton that followed the meandering Sacramento River was one of the most dangerous in the county. Accidents were common, especially during rain or the deadly fog that often descended upon the San Joaquin Valley. There was no guardrail to protect a motorist from going into the river. Once in the water, most accident victims didn’t survive.

The California Delta covered over 738,000 acres. Hundreds of miles of waterways cut through the Delta, the water coming from the Sierra Nevadas through not only the Sacramento River, but numerous smaller rivers and creeks. They all eventually converged before merging with the San Francisco Bay. Isleton was a small river town of fewer than a thousand residents in the southwest corner of Sacramento County. It was known for its annual summer Crawdad Festival and not much else. Mitch didn’t want to think about what those crawdads had done to the body in the Explorer.

Maddox’s vehicle had been found in the river two miles north of the city limits. The Sacramento River flowed steadily, but today’s current didn’t look too bad.

A crowd had gathered alongside the river: local cops and their FBI team. Steve pulled up next to the emergency vehicles and said, “Ready?”

“Always,” Mitch replied.

They got out and a deputy sheriff-Clarkston on the badge-approached with the sheriff’s diver. The local diver was older than Mitch and a foot shorter, graying, with a craggy face and unusually large hands. “Harry Young. Thanks for coming out.”

They shook hands, exchanged credentials, and Young said, “I didn’t disturb the car. It’s a white 1998 Ford Explorer, registered to Oliver Maddox. A missing person report was filed by Tammy Amunson on January 23 of this year. One victim in the driver’s seat, been under for a time-eyes gone, fingers missing. A lot of critter damage, but the trunk and limbs are intact. No visible wounds, seat belt intact and engaged, windows down or broken on impact.”

“Was there any evidence along the riverbank of a car going into the water?”

“If there was, it’s long gone. Four months, rain, weather, growth.”

“Who found it?”

“Fisherman. Early this morning, at dawn. His line got caught and when he freed it, he got a chunk of clothing with it.”

“Where’s the evidence now?”

“Bagged,” the deputy said. “It’ll go to our lab.”

The deputy was more antagonistic than the older, easygoing diver. Mitch smiled at him. Play nice with the locals, he could hear Meg’s stern lecture. The FBI had better relations with local law enforcement in recent years, but some cops were old school.

“How deep?” he asked.

The diver responded. “Thirty feet. We got someone from the EPA on the way since this is an environmentally protected area.”

“It’s now a crime scene.”

Young grinned, patted Mitch on the back. “I’m gonna like you. I got the crew waiting to haul the car up, but your office said don’t touch the vehicle. Don’t much see what you can do down there.”

“We want as much evidence as possible intact before we haul up the vehicle. We may bag the body