I don’t know that I actually forgot about having previously written a SCUBA mystery of my own when I was writing the last post, but I didn’t mention it. Perhaps I was just too excited about the new books I had found.
Of course, the books that I mentioned are full length novels, whereas my SCUBA mystery is just a short story. And you know I love writing short stories.
My short story, “The Hand,” which can be found in the book Esmirana’s Trunk. And Oh Joy! It is the first story of this book, so you will be able to read it for free by accessing Amazon’s Look Inside feature.
Oh, but wait, you might not even have to go to Amazon. There is a button on the top of my webpage that I’ve forgotten about. It is called something like View/Purchase Books. And when you click on this button and follow through to any particular book there is also a button to click to read a sample.
Just a minute, let me see if you can actually do this as I’ve suggested. I’ll also check to see that the whole of the story shows.
Wait here, I’ll be back.
Ok, I’m back. It didn’t work. It worked to some degree, as you could get to a sample of the book that you could view. You just don’t get to see the whole story.
This really sucks. Maybe they are onto my tricks. I constantly tell people to use the Look Inside and read the first story. Seems like you used to be able to get the whole of the first story of this book. You get most of the story, as far as I can tell.
What I mean by one place versus another is that you can follow to the sample from my web page, or you can go to Amazon directly and try it. I did both. It varies how much you can see. You do get most of the story.
This bums me out, though. I tell people to check this out all of the time. What do I care if you read a whole story for free? There are plenty of stories in each book. And I’ve got a ton more stories for you to read, some of which have yet to be written.
I check out the Look Inside feature with other author’s works all of the time. In some books of short stories, you can sometimes read a couple stories. I know it all depends on the length of the stories; but still, I could swear that you were at one time able to access the whole of “The Hand.”
Oh well, I’ve been thinking about running another Goodreads Giveaway contest again soon for Esmirana’s Trunk. So keep an eye out.
This SCUBA mystery is related to a novel. The characters in the story are from the first novel I ever wrote. This novel was never published. It doesn’t even have a title.
I just did a first draft. I wrote it around 1993 or 1994. This novel was around 84 or 86 thousand words. I wrote it after reading a book titled something like, How to Write a Novel in 90 Days.
I think I was on track and wrote the first half of the novel in the proper amount of time. But then I stopped for some reason and wrote the rest of it six months or so later.
Two characters, Milo Bates, and Jessie (I forget her last name—might not have even given her one) from the novel are in this short story, which I wrote around 1999 or 2000.
Milo is a former cop, now turned Private Investigator, and Jessie is a CSI type, and his girlfriend. Not sure if she was exactly a full-on girlfriend in the novel. I don’t think so, since Milo ended up getting involved with his client. His client (whose name was Millie) was a woman who, looking for some excitement in her life, turns to a friend. The friend puts Millie in touch with a group, indirectly (I think there is just a voice on the phone) and she then performs a clandestine task. She ends up being recruited to transport a large red suitcase from a locker to a hotel room (or maybe it was the opposite way around). She does this, not knowing that the contents of the suitcase are (coincidentally?) the remains of her very own husband. I know, very far-fetched, a little cheesy (and gory), right?
Milo falls hard for Millie, as he tries to figure out the case. He needed to figure out who killed her husband and placed body in the suitcase, not to mention the why of it all. And, he and Millie aren’t sure whether she might not be next on the hit list.
Anyway, I suppose I could revamp this draft and maybe publish it. There are a few things outdated in it. Cell phones were brand new at the time, and only for the wealthy.
Milo lives on a sailboat. I believe I used the same boat for the short story.
Jessie is a little younger than Millie. Millie is a brunette and a little more solidly built, while Jessie is sort of “coltish” and has blonde hair of a shorter cut or style. The two women were totally different.
The short story takes place well after the time frame of the novel. Milo and Jessie are definitely a couple now.
If you are interested in checking out the short story, you can still do the Look Inside feature and then I’ll go ahead and post the ending of the story at the end of this post so you will be able to read the whole thing.
But first I’m gonna hit you with another possible SCUBA story . . .
***
So here is something that has been knocking around in my brain since the last post.
Kind of the start of a SCUBA story. You ready?
Here goes . . .
I glance at my gauges. Eighteen minutes left before I have to start for the surface. Roughly seventy feet down. I start moving toward the wreck. A small octopus darts upward at an angle, crossing my path just a few feet away. The octopus disturbs a bit of the ocean floor and there is a cloudy mist of something squirting out behind the creature as it rises. He, I’m guessing it’s a he, locks an eye on me as he passes.
In the distance, about forty feet away, I can see the tip of the right fin, and the end of my brother’s left leg and fin as he enters an opening on the wreck.
There is the soothing peace that blankets me each time I dive. That peace has always been there, all the way from the beginning, from my first dive. The only intrusion on this peacefulness is the rhythmic sound of the regulator. Soothing. I breathe in and then out. The bubbles rise . . . I move toward the wreck. I don’t see my brother anymore. There is movement to the right. Coming from around the right of the wreck in the distance is a medium sized “cuda,” as in barracuda. I stop slowly. It moves along, not noticing me, or maybe just not caring. It turns and veers out and away. I watch, waiting to see if maybe it is going to circle back. I look again at the hole where my brother entered. Nothing, just the dark and gaping hole. What’s he doing?
That’s the last . . .
“Wake up.” It’s the hypnotherapist’s voice. I didn’t hear her counting me up this time. And it’s early. Usually, we go through the whole thing. I like when she’s counting me up as I’m actually ascending to the surface. Well, I guess that’s not correct, really. I don’t actually like any of this. I would prefer not to wake up in the middle of the night with night sweats, in a panic, feeling as though I can’t breathe, feeling as though I’m still down there, the full seventy feet, drowning.
Usually, we go through the whole thing. I swim to the wreck and look inside. Nothing. My brother’s not there. He’s not in the hold of the ship, not in the first compartment, or the second, or the third . . . He is nowhere. I check inside and out. I circle the whole ship, even passing under the leaning side, not even thinking or wondering if the crusted behemoth might decide to crumble and crash to the ocean floor, crushing me. My brother Derrick is gone. Disappeared.
Usually, we play it all the way through, all the way to the point of finding the mask, bright yellow, laying in the sandy muck of the ocean floor, twenty or thirty feet from the wreck. It isn’t my brother’s mask; it is his daughter’s. But he was wearing it.
When we were on the boat that morning and then were getting ready, gearing up, he checked his dive bag and his face mask was missing. All that was in his bag was his young daughter’s snorkel and mask. The thing didn’t really fit, and looked funny as hell, but he somehow made it work. The thing was tiny on his face. I couldn’t help laughing at him. There was the tiny mermaid sticker attached to the side of it, right there on the bright yellow. And the snorkel had sprinkles of glitter attached to it. It was as though his daughter had been working on a school project of some sort. It cracked me up. He was pissed. And he was even more angry that I was laughi—
“Nothing new?”
“Nah, Doc. Not that I noticed.” I had already halfway sat up. I rubbed my eyes, feeling a little groggy as usual. We had been at it for six months, once a week, every week. “Why did you bring me up early?” I was expecting her to tell me she cut it short because she had another appointment, or something had come up. I was gonna be a little upset.
“I didn’t,” she said.
I glanced at my watch. She hadn’t. I was under the full amount of time, same as usual. Why hadn’t the whole thing played out? Where had the time gone? The underwater time and the time in trance. Where had it all gone?
“What?” she asked. She was staring at me, obviously noticing my befuddlement. “Something wrong?”
“Yeah, the whole thing didn’t play out. I thought you brought me up early.”
She shook her head no.
We sat looking at each other for another minute or so.
“Do you want to go back under? I’ve got another half hour before the next person.”
I rubbed my eyes again. “Nah, that’s okay. I’ve gotta be somewhere in about fifteen.”
I stood and stretched. I sighed.
“You’re still frowning. Something bad happen?”
“Yeah, all of it’s bad.”
“I know. I meant bad this time, as in something different bad. Or just something diff—”
“I know, Doc. Sorry. I just—”
“I know. It’s tough.”
No, you don’t, I thought. You don’t know, not really. I didn’t say that. “It’s been two years and I still . . .” That’s what I said, trailing off. I couldn’t find the words.
“I understand,” she said.
No, I thought. No, you don’t. Stop saying that. You don’t ‘know’ or ‘understand.’ You can’t. Nobody can, unless their brother disappeared into thin air—Or deep water. Seventy feet under water. Poof. Gone.
I was irritable, that’s all. Something had happened. Something different. I just couldn’t put my finger on it.
She handed me back my credit card. I put it up.
She smiled. “See you next week?” She posed it as a question, oddly enough.
I fished for a smile. I hooked a small one and flashed it at her. “Sure.” I started toward the door, trying to think of something to say. I had been a little testy. I was going to ask if next week would be the same time. That would have been stupid. It was always the same time. If not, she would let me know ahead of time. I stopped and looked over at her. “Thanks, Doc,” I said. “For everything.”
“You’re welcome.” Steady as usual.
I was driving along when it hit me. I almost slammed on the brakes and got rearended. Eighteen minutes, I thought. Damn! That’s what was different. I only had eighteen minutes left. I had started with a full tank of air. We both had. There should have been more air, more time. So, something was different on the front side. What had happened? What had I been doing in the time before I headed for the shipwreck?
I pulled into the nearest lot and called a buddy?
“Nick,” I said. “You up for a dive?”
I had wanted to go tomorrow. No go. He said he was good for the day after. “Great,” I said. “See ya.”
Now I was feeling better. I still didn’t know how exactly that eighteen-minutes made a difference. But I was gonna figure this shit out. It’s a start.
***
OK. So, this is all off the cuff, as usual. I have absolutely No Idea what that eighteen-minutes means. Or where his brother disappeared to, or how he disappeared. Crazy, I know. But this is how it starts, every time. That’s the fun of it, the fun of writing.
***
And now for the rest of the short story, “The Hand” (from Esmirana’s Trunk). Be sure and read the first part of the story with the Look Inside feature and then come back to check out the end of the story. The story is too long to post the whole thing in one post.
***
She fired. The man fell backward on the deck, the revolver he held fell from his hand. The spear stuck up out of the middle of his chest. There was no one else around. He was Cuban, a little older than the other one, probably a little smarter, but just as dead. The other boat drifted quietly along the starboard side. It had returned for the first man after all.
Milo rolled up and over onto the deck. He was bleeding. The last shark had gotten ahold of him. Not only had it caught the ladder, but it had also taken a small chunk of flesh from his thigh and buttocks. The pain was excruciating. He lay on his side, staring up at Jessie. She stood on the deck, half naked, staring down at the man she had killed.
She still held the spear gun in her left hand.
“Jessie,” Milo groaned. She didn’t move.
“Jessie,” he tried again. Still she didn’t move. Milo reached, grabbing her ankle. She jumped, startled. “Jessie!” She turned and finally looked down at Milo. Her eye catching the spear gun. She turned slowly, still in a daze. She stared at the gun, then dropped it to the deck. Milo hollered again. She looked at him, her eyes vacant. He called to her, soothing his voice. “Jessie, come here.” It took a few moments for his voice to register, but she eventually responded by coming over to him. She moved slowly, still in a daze. She was finally standing over him. “Down here,” he said. “Bend down.” Slowly, she squatted, staring at him. He grabbed her face in his hands and pulled her close. For a second, he grit his teeth against the pain in his backside. “Jessie, I’m hurt. You’ve got to get help.” Still it didn’t seem to register. He slapped her hard across the face, putting his pain into it. Her eyes watered with the slap, her head flinging to one side. She turned back to Milo, recognition seeping back into her face. She broke, tears flooding down her cheeks.
“M-Milo . . .I k-k-killed a m-ma-that m-man. Sh-shot . . .spear. . . I -kk–”
Milo shook her. She stopped talking, but the tears continued. “Jessie,” he said, pausing. He decided it best not to tell her she had actually killed two men. “It doesn’t matter. It had to be. It was–”
“It matters,” she stumbled on through tears. “Oh, it matters. It matters a lot.” She started to rock back and forth, moving along with the boat.
“Okay, okay. It matters, but not right now.” He reached up and pushed her hair back from her face with his thumb, looking her straight in the eyes, sincerely. She was suddenly a little girl again, not the twenty-four-year-old that he had known and made love to many a night. The twenty-four-year-old woman would be back, he was sure of it. A wiser, more mature, very old twenty-four, but she would be back. There was a big difference between studying the dead tissue of a body with a scientific eye, and actually bringing death to a living being with your own hand. “What matters right now is that you get a grip,” he continued. “You need to get a hold on yourself Jessie. I’m hurt. I’m bleeding. I need a doctor. You’ve got to get the first aid kit. And you’ve got to radio for help. They will need to send a helicopter, probably.” He looked at her. She stared back.
“Do you understand Jessie?” She nodded. Slowly, but she nodded. She understood. “Now, Jessie. Go radio for help and bring the first aid kit. Now. Please.” She nodded again and got slowly to her feet. She moved toward the ladder leading below deck, only stopping to look back at Milo once, looking back over her shoulder. He smiled a painful smile at her as she pushed her hair back behind her ear absently, out of mere habit. She was very careful to keep her eyes turned away from the man lying on the deck with the spear sticking out of his chest. “And Jessie,” Milo called after her. She was at the ladder and started down. She stopped and looked at him. “Get some shorts on, or something. Before they get here.” She looked down at herself, just then realizing she was naked except for her bikini top. She disappeared below.
After she was gone, Milo crawled, pulling himself, inching slowly over to where the man lay on the deck. The spear stuck straight up out of the man’s chest, and blood still seeped out around it through his shirt. It ran down his left side, and spilled over into a widening pool on the deck. Milo reached up and felt the man’s throat. There was no pulse. He pulled himself over to the man’s firearm, which lay silently on the deck, not more than three feet away. Milo picked it up and gripped it tightly in his hand. He knew it would have been too much to ask Jessie to come close enough to the man to pick the gun up before going down below. Even though it would have been for her own safety, he couldn’t bring himself to suggest it. He did, however decide that he would watch the entrance below with a sharp eye, and if anyone came up out of there besides her, or even with her, he would not hesitate to fire. After all, he had been ambushed below, and there was no way of knowing whether there were other men besides the two they had come across. The other boat sat silent, rocking in the water. Milo cranked his head around and took a quick glance at it. No signs of anyone stirring on it as far as he could tell. His neck grew stiff. He looked away and tried to roll over so he could get a better view of the door to the galley when the time came for Jessie to emerge. He wondered what could be taking her so long. He knew he would have to somehow edge away from the man on the deck before she came back up. She would have a hard time coming to administer first aid to him when the man she had just killed lie right beside him. He would move away in a second, he thought. He just needed to lie back and rest. Just for a moment.
***
When Milo woke up again there was a dim light all around. He sucked in quickly, trying to pull air from the regulator. There wasn’t one. He panicked, thinking he might drown. Then he realized that the air was coming free and easy. He could breathe. He felt around and touched bed sheets. His hand knocked against the railing of the hospital bed. He looked to his left and saw Jessie. She was perched in a chair beside the bed, reading a book. She looked over at him and smiled, reaching over to touch his forehead.
“How you feeling?”
Milo thought about it for a second. “A little lighter in the rear, but other than that, like a million bucks.”
“Don’t worry. You only lost about ten pounds back there. You’re just about right now.” She smiled. “Really, it wasn’t as bad as you thought. They did have to do some patch work though, from what I hear. I haven’t really seen it since they stitched you up. They keep it pretty well bandaged.” She decided not to tell him just yet that she had done most of the initial sewing back at the boat, using a needle and some fishing line. She had concentrated on the sewing. It was the only thing keeping her terror under control, sitting there on the deck with the man she had killed only two feet away. “You probably aren’t feeling much pain right now, huh?.”
“Not really. How long’s it been?”
“About four days.”
“Where am I?”
“Miami General.”
“The boat?”
“Back in Velo Beach. Your usual parking slip at the pier.”
“They find out who the hand belongs to?”
“Yeah, you remember the guy down from New York? From that Real Estate syndicate? The one who disappeared after trying to buy up all that waterfront property along South Beach?”
“Yeah, it was in all the papers that he mysteriously disappeared and it was real weird that Ricardo Avio immediately bought up all of it.” Ricardo Avio was a local, Velo Beach, heavy hitter. He was into drug smuggling mostly, but also whatever else turned a buck. He was suddenly into Real Estate. “I thought that land was contaminated. That’s why the guy disappeared? I know they had been trying to play it off as though he flew quietly on back to New York.”
“Well it turns out that the land wasn’t quite as contaminated as they thought at first. That had just been a ploy to bring the price down. Anyway, the guy hadn’t gone back to New York, because it was his body that was dumped overboard by the thugs on the other boat. Guess who the boat was chartered for? What name?”
“Avio?”
“You guessed it.”
Milo shook his head. “Why would he be that stupid?”
“Maybe he thought his men were smart enough to go far enough out to dump the body.”
“Or I guess he didn’t realize they had a sick enough sense of humor to dump the thing where people were diving. They thought they had the situation under control by sticking around to make sure no one came up alive.”
Jessie squirmed a little in the chair.
“So you were able to get finger prints from the fingers we brought up?”
“Well, yeah, but they weren’t much help at first. They didn’t seem to match up with any on file. The guy had never been convicted of anything. He was clean. Then the wife came down looking for him. She identified the rings. She said he had been in the military at some point, so somebody got a hold of a clerk somewhere, but they couldn’t find his file. The woman said she thought he might have a copy back home in a file cabinet with a lot of military papers. Her sister went over and dug, and tracked down a copy of his prints for us. Actually, we would have probably only needed the folder itself, or any copy of a letter, just something we could dust for prints, something he had touched. But the actual documented prints are better.
“The twine and then fibers and skin fragments under the nails helped to determine who actually killed him. There were traces from the boat he was dumped off of, the trunk of a car, which also led to Avio . . .”
Milo interrupted her: “So the salty water really didn’t damage the fingers much?”
“No, they weren’t down there long enough. We just had to sort out some of the materials. There were bits of neoprene, of course, from our suits. That sort of thing.”
“Yeah, I was thinking about that back on the boat. I should have let you keep the things in the dive bag, away from our bodies, that was really stupid. At least we could have dropped the bag if we were attacked . . .”
“Well . . .”
“Anyway,” Milo went on. “We gotta give the guy a hand for solving his own murder.” He realized what he had said after he said it and saw the pained look on Jessie’s face.
“Please,” she said.
“Bad joke, huh?”
“Very.”
They both smirked.
“The boat and the man, were strong points of evidence. And if it hadn’t been for the two of us diving, the men dropping him on top of where we were diving . . .”
“Amazing,” Milo said. “They really could have dropped him anywhere else in the ocean and gotten away clean. We go diving and I get a case dropped right in my hands.” “Our hands,” she corrected him. She gasped. “And will you quit with the hand jokes. That’s sick.”
“You’re doing it too.” He smiled at her. “Besides, I’m the only licensed detective here.”
“And you can keep it too. I don’t want any part in it.”
Milo knew what she was talking about. He noticed earlier that she had made reference to the boat and the ‘man’, not the dead man. There was a silence.
“So how are you doing?” he asked. She knew what he meant.
She squirmed and looked away. A few more seconds passed before she answered.
“Let’s just say I won’t be doing any diving with you again for a while. Come to think of it, you won’t be doing much diving either.” She reached over to the bed and pushed the rail down, then sat on the bed beside him. “Let me see those stitches, anyway.”
“Maybe later,” he said.
She leaned down and kissed him.
“Definitely later,” he corrected as their lips parted.