By Blood Written (22 page)

“You ready to dive, lady?”

“I guess so,” Taylor tried to say, but she didn’t take the regulator out of her mouth and it came out as muffled gob-bledygook.

“I’ll take that at as a yes,” Michael said, slipping the regulator back into his mouth. Then he held up the dump tube off the BCD in his right hand, his thumb on the valve to release the air inside. He nodded. Taylor held her own tube up, her fingers tight, and nodded back. She watched as he pressed the button and his BCD began to hiss softly. As it deflated, Michael’s body sank slowly beneath the surface.

Taylor anxiously pressed her own valve and felt the BCD

around her begin to deflate. There was a hissing sound for her as well, and within, it seemed, half a second, her head was slipping beneath the surface into a silent, warm, thick world of blue.

As her head went under, she realized she’d closed her eyes tightly. Once under water, she forced herself to open them.

A small puddle of water had formed at the bottom of her mask. She tried to remember the procedure to clear it.

A few feet way, Michael had let go of his tube and was hovering just below her. He waved at her slowly, his hand fanning back and forth in the water. She waved back, forced a little more air out of her vest, and descended to his level.

He swam up to her, looked into her eyes through their masks, and reached out for her. He took her two hands in his, squeezed them slowly yet firmly, and she felt herself relax. She was with Michael; she could trust him and she was safe.

He reached for his relief valve again, held it over his head, held her hand with his free hand, then waited for her to lift her tube. He nodded. They both pushed the button and began sinking. Taylor felt the pressure rise in her ears, then let go of Michael’s hand, held her nose through the mask, and blew air into her ears to equalize the pressure.

She smiled; it worked. That was the first time she’d ever equalized perfectly the first time. She snaked her hand around and grabbed the lines that held her gauges. She held them up to her mask. They were descending through forty feet. She smiled behind the regulator and held it out to Michael. He looked at it and gave her a thumbs-up.

Taylor looked down and was surprised to find the coral-encrusted ocean floor coming up toward her. She and Michael put a small burst of air into their vests to keep them off the coral, a few feet above. Michael shifted himself into a prone position, hovering above the ocean floor in a Superman pose. She felt herself smile again, her lips hard on the regulator, trying to remember to breathe slowly and rhythmically. She swam up to him and flattened herself out, then reached over and took his hand. The two began slowly kicking their fins in a scissorlike motion, quietly moving over the seabed plants and coral. A school of bright yellow fish that Taylor didn’t recognize swarmed around them. In the distance, she caught a glimpse of the other divers and remembered that they weren’t alone.

They swam slowly along, alternating that movement with a still, relaxed drift. They swam in circles, never too far away from the anchor chain. Taylor relaxed, trusting Michael to take care of her, to watch over her. She was glad she’d done this, glad she’d met him, glad she’d taken the biggest chance of her life.

Taylor realized that at this moment, sixty feet below the surface of the Caribbean just off the coast of Venezuela, in the early part of March, with a man she’d been with barely a month, she was happier than she’d ever been in her life. For perhaps the first time in her life, she was completely happy.

The last night in Bonaire, Taylor and Michael went to a local place called the Island Cafe for dinner. Michael had done some research into where the locals went when they wanted to celebrate something away from the tourists. They took a cab into Kralendijk, the only real town on the island, and found themselves in a narrow alleyway near the town center.

The alleyway was dimly lit, crowded with locals, and had a different feel than anyplace else they’d been.

Michael held her hand and walked ahead of her down the winding alley, taking one wrong turn, backing up, then taking another. The Island Cafe was tiny compared to the other restaurants they’d been to, but the smells coming from the kitchen were exquisite. With all the diving and exploring, not to mention the staying up half the night locked in each other’s arms, they had both lost a couple of pounds. Taylor was ravenously hungry.

They drank the local beer and ate pastechis, the plump little pastries full of spicy shrimp and meat. They ordered giambo, the thick, spicy okra soup that was sort of like gumbo, only with a twist. They ordered steaks and fish and wine and ate like starved, caged animals for the next hour, almost without talking. When they finished, Taylor leaned back in her chair and stared across the table at Michael.

“I don’t want to go,” she said simply.

“I don’t, either. But we have to. We have to get back to the real world.”

“Why?” she complained. “Why can’t this be the real world?”

“Because it isn’t,” he said. “I have a book to write and I’m on deadline. You have clients that need you. Joan needs you.”

“She can’t need me that much. I haven’t had a single call from her.”

“That could have something to do with the fact that you didn’t tell her where you were going,” Michael said, smiling.

“Maybe. But she has ways of finding out.”

“You know she’s champing at the bit for you to get back.”

“Maybe.”

Michael leaned forward on the table and took her hands in his, then pulled her toward him.

“There is one thing we can take with us from the island.

Something that will make this an even more important week than it’s already been.”

Taylor looked at him, questioning. “What?”

Michael squeezed her hands and they suddenly felt cold.

Taylor looked down at their hands and realized his palms were sweating.

“What? What’s the matter?”

“Oh,” he said slowly, “nothing’s the matter. I guess I’m just a little new at this.”

“New at what?” she said, almost exasperated.

He let go of her right hand with his left and reached into his pocket. When his hand came back up to the table, it held a small, velvet-covered cube.

Taylor stared at his hand, stunned. “Wha—”

Michael let go of her left hand and raised his right index finger to his lips. “Ssshh,” he said.

“What are you—”

“Let me,” he said hurriedly. “Please.”

She was silent for a moment, uncomprehending. “Ever since I met you, Taylor, it’s been like my life has come together. The day I met you is the day I turned the corner. It was the day when everything started to make sense. Suddenly, I know what I want with my life, and I know who I want to spend it with.”

“Michael, I—”

Michael’s voice rose just a notch, and he looked directly into her eyes. “Now that you’re in my life, I don’t ever want to take a chance that something might happen and you won’t be. I love you, and I want to be with you and nobody else, ever. I’m through with everything I used to do and used to want. I know what’s important to me now, and now that it’s here, right next to me, I don’t want to ever let it slip away.

“Taylor, will you marry me?”

He opened the small ring box and held it toward her.

Shocked beyond recognition, she stared at it a second before realizing what it was—a beautiful European cut diamond that had to be pushing three carats. It was the largest diamond she’d ever seen up close, even larger than her grandmother’s.

“My God,” she whispered. And as she finally got what he was saying and asking, her eyes began to fill. She looked up from the box, into Michael’s eyes, and looked at him through a film of tears.

“Are you sure?” she whispered, her voice barely audible.

He nodded. “More sure than I can even begin to tell you.”

She laughed. “A writer at a loss for words. When’s the last time we saw that?”

She laughed again, louder this time. “Yes, Michael,” she said after a moment, taking the box from him and setting it on the table between them. She took his hands and squeezed them, hard.

“Yes, I’ll marry you.”

All around them, the other restaurant patrons began clap-ping and cheering.

Friday afternoon, Nashville

Hank Powell slipped his rented Mitsubishi Gallant into the first available space in the public parking garage across from the Nashville Criminal Justice Center and jerked the gearshift into park with a loud crunch. Next to him, Special Agent Fred Cowan, the resident agent who worked out of Nashville under the supervision of the Memphis Field Office, bounced forward and caught himself with his palm on the dashboard.

“Easy, Hank,” Cowan said. “We’ll make it.”

“We’re late,” Powell muttered. “I hate being late.”

“We’ve got a couple of minutes,” Cowan said, climbing slowly out of the car in a manner far too relaxed to suit Powell. “This is Nashville. Everybody gets hosed up in traffic sooner or later.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Powell said, slamming the door and turning for the exit at a near-trot.

“Wait up!” Cowan called, racing to catch up.

The two agents crossed the side street and walked hurriedly up to the main entrance. Powell already had his badge and credentials out when they got to the main reception desk. He fidgeted nervously as the desk officer phoned upstairs. Less than a minute later, the metal entrance door to the police offices buzzed and Maria Chavez stepped out.

She waved Hank and Cowan past security and held the door for them as they entered the long hallway.

“Sorry we’re late,” Hank said.

“Don’t worry, we haven’t started yet. C’mon, this way.”

Maria Chavez wore jeans and boots, with a long-sleeved white cotton shirt. She looked like a clean, freshly scrubbed farmhand, with the exception of the nine-millimeter Glock Model 19 attached to her belt.

“Maria, I’ve got to tell you,” Hank said as the three walked quickly down the hallway, “that report you did was sensa-tional. I can’t believe you put all this together.”

Maria turned, smiling broadly, her white teeth glistening in the harsh fluorescent light. “Thanks, Agent Powell. I appreciate it. But it was really that daffy old lady who convinced me.”

“Please, Maria, it’s Hank.”

“Thanks, Hank.”

Maria came to a bank of three elevators and pushed the up button. Hank leaned down and glanced at his watch, which read one-twelve. Twelve minutes late …

As if reading his mind, Maria chimed in. “Don’t worry, Howard Hinton just got here, too. There’s road construction all the way down I-24 to Smyrna. Took him an hour and a half to make the last twenty miles.”

Cowan grinned. “I hear the legislature’s thinking about making the orange traffic barrel the state bird.”

Chavez chuckled. “Good one.”

Hank secretly wished Cowan would shut the hell up. He was a bit too relaxed and jovial for the circumstances, or maybe it was just that Hank was unable to be relaxed or jovial about any of this. If this meeting went the way he thought it would, then Maria Chavez’s theory was the break in this case they’d been needing for years.

Hank had spent the entire week reading the rest of Michael Schiftmann’s work and analyzing Maria’s report. He now believed that Maria was right, but he also knew that if she was right, this was going to be the biggest media fire-storm since the O. J. case. Hank wasn’t even ready to begin thinking about the consequences of charging a celebrity like Michael Schiftmann with being a serial murderer, with the corroborating theory being that he was basing the plots of his own best-selling novels on murders he committed himself.

As Maria Chavez led Hank and Cowan into the small conference room that was already crowded with Murder Squad investigators, the voice in his head was still warning that even though he believed it, no one else was going to.

Max Bransford sat at the head of a long table and rose when Hank entered the room. He looked like he’d gained ten pounds and lost a year’s sleep since that cold February night of the Exotica Tans murders. In fact, Hank noticed, looking around the room, they all looked tired.

“Hello, Hank,” Bransford said, extending a hand as Hank approached him. “It’s good to see you again. Thanks for coming down.”

“Thanks for inviting me,” Hank said.

“Here,” Bransford motioned, “sit next to me.”

Hank took a seat to Bransford’s left, then nodded and leaned across the table to shake hands with Howard Hinton of the Chattanooga Police Department’s Homicide Squad.

The two exchanged comments about the terrible Nashville traffic as the rest of the investigators took seats in an informal, but recognizable, seating by rank. Fred Cowan took a side chair near the end of the table where Gary Gilley, lead investigator on the case, sat anchoring the group.

“Let’s get to work, ladies and gentlemen,” Bransford intoned, as people began shifting in their chairs, shuffling paperwork, and opening notebooks in front of them. “We’ve got a lot to cover today, a lot of thinking to do. Has everyone had a chance to read Maria’s report?”

All heads nodded with the exception of Cowan, who held up an index finger. “I’m sorry. I just got it this morning.

Haven’t had a chance to get to it.”

Hank clenched his jaw. If Cowan had mentioned that to him, he would have brought him up to speed on the long drive down West End Avenue. Instead, the two made tense chitchat as Hank maneuvered his way downtown.

“Don’t worry,” Bransford said. “Just hang with us. You’ll catch up.”

There was a moment’s silence as all the investigators turned to Bransford. “I guess the first thing we should do is have a show of hands. Is there anyone in this room who actually believes this cockamamie theory of Detective Chavez’s that a famous, rich, best-selling writer comes into town for a book signing and, just for shits and grins, decides to butcher two young girls?”

A few hands went up, including Maria Chavez’s and Hank’s, with Gary Gilley at the other end of the table holding his hand out over the table, palm down, wiggling it back and forth.

“Okay, Gary, what’s that mean?”