The Unspoken

“Oh, yes.”

“And he’s capable and professional?”

“All that,” Kat said drily.

“And what else?”

“He’s an ass,” Kat said. “He stomped all over the Chicago M.E. I try to speak first now to protect us from the wrath of local authorities.”

Logan chuckled softly. “I know Chan. I met him at our special units base in Arlington. He’s, shall we say, irreverent, but apparently excellent at what he does. He’s familiar with film, video and computer alteration, so he’ll be great with the film crew. And he dives, which is a major asset on this case. Are you going to see the Jerry McGuen soon?”

“If I know Chan, very soon,” Kat said, glancing over at her new colleague.

“Keep me posted on any developments,” Logan told her. “I should be there by midafternoon tomorrow.” Then he rang off and Kat returned the phone to her purse, signaling that the call was finished.

Chan approached her seconds later. “Ready?” he asked.

She nodded.

Their next stop was the harbor, where the police search and rescue boat that had brought in the body was docked.

The harbor and the lake were beautiful that day. Summer was still with them but would begin to fade in the next few weeks. Today, though, the water glistened under a benign sun.

They were able to see all four officers who’d been on the search and rescue boat. Officer Aldo Reynald had been in charge, and he seemed sincerely interested in their queries.

“When we got there, the woman was crying her eyes out…Amanda. Yeah, Amanda Channel. She was kneeling over the dead man. She said she’d done CPR, but she didn’t think it helped. She said we had to save her friend. The other guy, Jon Hunt, was walking around the dock, rubbing his chin, scratching his head. I tried CPR as we got him to shore. No luck. We have a state-of-the-art truck to deal with emergencies like this. You get a lot of divers who think they know their stuff and don’t, or divers who are used to the tropics and get into trouble in the lake. And naturally we have boating accidents, so…we’re prepared. We used every possible method of resuscitation on the way to the hospital, but…then we got there and they called it.” He shook his head glumly. “I’m assuming we’re going to have to be vigilant as this whole thing proceeds because diving a wreck is inherently dangerous, and a newly discovered one even more so.”

Reynald was lean and fit; he was obviously experienced, practical—and compassionate.

“But you believe he was dead when you arrived?” Kat asked.

He nodded grimly. “Dead as a cold mackerel, I’m afraid.”

“How long?” Will asked next.

“He couldn’t have been dead more than half an hour or so,” Reynald told them. “I’m not sure what I’m basing that on, other than that I’ve pulled more than a few bodies out of the lake. Like I said, he was declared DOA at the hospital.”

“Were there other boats near the dive spot?” Will asked.

“Boating on a good day on Lake Michigan? You bet.”

“Close to the dive site?” Kat continued for Will.

Reynald drew in a deep breath. “Yeah, near enough, I think. The other Preservation Center boat was there—as well as the one the dead man had been on. Oh, and the film crew has a snazzy research boat, too. There was a sailboat maybe two hundred feet away and others farther out….”

One of his fellow officers chimed in. “There were two motorboats nearby. One was a Cigarette—nice speedboat. I noticed that because I always wanted one. The other…a little cabin cruiser. Looked like the people aboard were fishing.”

“Fishing,” Kat echoed dubiously.

The officer grinned. “Not that long ago, Lake Michigan was so polluted you could die from eating fish you caught out there. But it’s cleaned up. You’ll find lots of people fishing in the lake now.”

“Did you notice anything else about the boat?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I’m afraid I didn’t.”

“Either have a dive flag up?” Will asked.

“Neither,” the second officer replied.

“We were called in on an accident, and rescue was our main objective,” Reynald told them. “I feel like a fool because we’re also law enforcement officers. Do you suspect it was more than an accident?”

Kat answered carefully. “We’re not sure yet. We’re just investigating at this point.”

“Well, we’re here anytime you need us,” Reynald said.

They thanked him. As they headed back to the car, Will seemed thoughtful. He glanced over at her. “You tired? You want to call it quits for the day?”

She scowled back at him. If she’d been falling off her feet, she’d never have admitted it to this man. “I’m fine. What do you have in mind?”

“Two quick stops—Landry Salvage and Simonton’s Sea Search. Neither may really help. Salvage companies don’t usually drive around in Cigarette speedboats, but…”

“And if someone else is searching for treasure, that person may not be involved with a salvage company at all,” Kat added.

He paused at the car door, looking over it. “True. But you have to know something about diving to get down there. You’d have to follow the research to find the ship—and you’d have to follow Brady Laurie out to the site…and gone after him right away.”

“Maybe it’s someone who works for a salvage company,” Kat suggested. “Not the company itself.”

“That would be my bet.” Will grinned as she joined him in the front seat. “Your choice—Landry or Simonton’s Sea Search first?”

“Simonton’s. I like the alliteration,” she said.

Simonton’s was just north of the pier. There was a massive vessel with all kinds of cranes and netting at the dock. The office itself was small and looked more like a sea shanty than a professional building. Inside, Kat was surprised to see that it was nicely outfitted with modern office furniture and file cabinets that occupied most of the wall space. The walls were decorated with old anchors, flags and other boating paraphernalia. A receptionist who introduced herself as Gina led them to a back room, where the walls were decorated with sea charts and maps, and the rear wall held the figurehead of a beautiful siren.

The man standing behind the desk was in a windbreaker, deck shoes and jeans. His desk was strewn with papers, despite the computer that took up at least half of it. “Hi. I’m Andy Simonton,” he greeted them. “What can I do for you?”

He was young, maybe thirty, with slightly shaggy blond hair and bright blue eyes. He swept out a hand to indicate the chairs in front of his messy desk. They sat.

“You’re with the FBI?” he asked curiously. He didn’t seem afraid or threatened in any way, but rather intrigued.

“We’re looking into the death of Brady Laurie,” Will said.

“Sad affair, that drowning,” Simonton murmured.

“This is your company?” Kat asked him.

Simonton nodded. “My father’s company, really. He wants to retire. I’ve been handling the business for about a year.”

“And what is your business, exactly?” Will asked.

Simonton looked confused. “Um, salvage.”

Will had the grace to laugh. “No, I’m sorry, what type of salvage? What are you working on now?”

“Oh!” Simonton said. “We’re conducting two recovery missions. A Florida boater underestimated the power of the lake and sank a sixty-foot sailboat, and we’re also working on recovering the cargo from the hold of the Mystic Susan—she’s a merchant vessel that went down with crates of high-fashion clothing,” Simonton explained.

“That does sound like work. Not terribly exciting,” Kat said sympathetically.

Simonton gave a nonchalant shrug. “It pays the bills, and quite nicely, too. Oh, and Mrs. Ciskel—she’s the wife of the Florida boater—is furious because she had a lot of jewelry aboard when their boat went down. I’d like to find that cache myself. To return to her, of course. She’s promised a massive bonus if we get back all her jewels.” He frowned. “Now, what’s this all about?”

“We were wondering if you’d ever had any plans to explore and salvage the Jerry McGuen,” Will said.

“We were invited to the reception put on by the Egyptian Sand Diggers.”

Kat glanced at Will. “The Egyptian Sand Diggers?” he repeated. “Who are they?”

Simonton waved one hand in the air. “They’re a local service club—and they’re just a little nutty, you know? In love with all things ancient Egyptian. Some of them are true scholars, while the rest are more what you’d call armchair historians. They held a reception about six months ago, and they shared all sorts of current information on expeditions into the Valley of the Kings, the closing of the Great Pyramids for maintenance, stuff like that. And they had an exhibit on Gregory Hudson—he’s the guy who discovered the Amun Mopat tomb way back—and the Jerry McGuen. They were trying to encourage local salvage companies to search for her. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time or money to go on a wild-goose chase, although I wish I had gone on that goose chase. I suppose the location is pretty well-known by now and anyone might have found her after she shifted on the seabed. See, it was wide open. The State of Illinois gets everything recovered in this area of Lake Michigan, but the salvage company that finds it does get certain rights. The original company went bust soon after the sinking of the Jerry McGuen and the passengers’ families were paid off with what was left, so any descendants aren’t really a factor. Now, as far as the salvage goes, the State of Illinois would probably return most of it to the Egyptians.”

“Do you know of anyone else who was planning to go after the ship?” Kat asked.

“Landry,” he said. “He and my dad were always competitive. Maybe he wanted to find it just to rub in my dad’s face—or my face now. He was at the reception, by the way.”

“How many boats do you have, Mr. Simonton?” Will asked.

“I have a little Mako for my own pleasure,” Simonton said. “You can go see her if you want. She’s sitting right outside.”

“This looks like a good operation.” Kat smiled. “And obviously a successful one.”

“I’m all about paying the bills,” Simonton said. He tapped a pencil on his desk. “Can I do anything else for you? I’m sorry, but I’m kind of busy and…well, honestly, I’m not really sure what you’re after.”

“We think someone helped Brady Laurie drown,” Will said bluntly.

Simonton gaped at him. “Wow. Well, I can’t see how that could have happened. I mean, his own people were right behind him and they’re the ones who found him.” He sat back, staring at them, still not threatened, just surprised. “Um, you’re welcome to search anything we own or, uh, whatever.”

“Thanks. If we need to search, we’ll get back to you,” Kat said. “What we could use is information on the Egyptian Sand Diggers.”

“Oh, sure!” He started rummaging through his desk. “That invitation is in here somewhere…. They used nice stationery and calligraphy on it.”

He gave up with a sigh and stood, heading out to the receptionist’s desk. “Gina, can you find me that invitation from the Egyptian Sand Diggers?”

Simonton stood by the door as Gina searched for the invitation. Kat leaned over and whispered to Will. “Why don’t you just call the Tribune and announce that we’re looking for a murderer? We’re not even sure of it ourselves!”

He shrugged. “What? You think people will believe the FBI is involved because we want to dive a wreck?”

She gritted her teeth again, but before she could respond, Simonton returned with the invitation. “Here you go. Their address is right there, where it says RSVP.”

“Thank you,” Kat said, accepting it. She smiled. “You were really helpful. I hope we can count on you in the future, if we need to.”

He gave her a warm smile in return. “Oh, you bet!”

“You did a lovely job. Maybe I should let you do all the talking,” Will muttered as they left the office.

“What?”

He turned to her. “Mr. Simonton was quite…taken with you. That’s good. He’ll help us.”

“Agent Chan, that is hardly—”

“Professional? Sorry. But you were being all nicey-nice, and in this case, it seemed to work. I say we go with it.”

“I say it’s better than you offending M.E.s and cops!”

“McFarland needed to know that he’d make a fool of himself if he crossed Laurie off as an accidental death. Now he knows, and he won’t do it. And I was perfectly polite with the cops. I don’t blame them. This is a tough town, and when they can close the books on a situation, they have to do it. I honestly don’t think it occurred to most people working the drowning that it might have been an assisted drowning—or murder. Now, they’ll think about.”

“Are we going out to talk to Landry or the Egyptian Sand Diggers?” Kat asked. She decided to let his previous remarks—a backhanded compliment if ever there was one—slide.

“Let’s check out Landry first,” Will said.

Kat agreed, getting out her phone.

Will glanced over at her. “Are you getting someone to look up the Sand Diggers?”

She nodded.

“Good idea.”

After a brief conversation, Logan promised that he’d learn whatever he could about the avid amateur Egyptologists. By the time she’d finished, they were pulling into a lot by the glass-and-chrome offices of Landry Salvage.

“They seem to be doing a bit better here, don’t you think?” he asked Kat.

“Either that, or they’re more impressed with appearances.”

Where the offices of Simonton’s Sea Search had seemed like an old-fashioned sea shanty, Landry’s was almost sterile. The floors were bare, the white walls adorned with single black strokes of paint. The reception desk was sparse, and the woman who greeted them was young, very pretty and very blank. It seemed to take her several minutes to figure out who they were, and then several more to understand what they wanted. The little sign on her desk identified her as Sherry Bertelli.

“Oh, oh, oh!” she said at last. “Oh! You’re here about the professor or the Egyptologist or the…whatever he was who died so tragically!” She pushed a button on the single piece of office equipment before her. “Mr. Landry, the FBI is here to see you.”

They heard an impatient reply. “The FBI? Whatever for?”

Kat leaned over the desk. “Agents Katya Sokolov and Will Chan, Mr. Landry. We’d like to speak with you. We’re hoping you can help us.”

There was a moment of dead silence, and then Landry said, “Of course. Come on in. Ms. Bertelli will escort you.”

Sherry Bertelli rose quickly. “This way, please.”

It was hard to tell where glass walls and doors met. They went down a long hallway. Eventually Sherry Bertelli pushed on a glass panel, and they were ushered into another state-of-the-art ultramodern office where Landry was standing behind a black chrome desk.

“How do you do, how do you do?” he asked, stepping around to shake their hands. “I’m Stewart Landry. Have a seat, please, have a seat. Would you like coffee or anything?”

“No, no, thank you, we’re fine,” Kat assured him. Will held one of the chairs for her, then took his own. Stewart Landry sat back at his desk. Sherry Bertelli just stood there.

“That’s all, Sherry, thank you,” Landry said.

Without a word she turned and marched out of the office. Landry cleared his throat. “Sherry’s, uh, very popular with our clientele,” he said, as if excusing his receptionist’s undeniable limitations.

Landry was somewhere between fifty and sixty years old. His suit was designer label, his nails were clean and buffed and his silver hair was well groomed. Kat had to wonder if there wasn’t something more intimate going on between him and Sherry than the typical employee-boss relationship.

“Now, how can I help you?” Landry asked.

“Frankly,” Will said, “we’re trying to find out if you’d considered diving the site of the Jerry McGuen. We understand that a group called the Egyptian Sand Diggers was encouraging local interest and, as I’m sure you’ve read or seen on the news, a diver died at the site.”

Landry frowned. “Yes, I saw the news, and I knew Brady Laurie. He was quite angry at that reception and behaved rather badly. He wasn’t a member of the group, made very clear that kind of thing was beneath a true historian such as himself. He argued with the members that he was already on the case, and that he and his colleagues needed to find the treasure, not any of us ‘money-grubbing bastards.’ Don’t get me wrong—the death of any young person is lamentable. But Dr. Laurie was out of line. The Egyptian Sand Diggers invited us all to that soiree, and I think it was because they didn’t believe Laurie was right in his calculations. He was, of course. That’s obvious now.”

“Did you plan to dive the site at all?” Kat asked, returning to the original question.

He shrugged. “Honestly? It was an intriguing thought. But as to planning any operation—no. Our big ship is out in Lake Huron working on a ferry that went down. We have some smaller vessels working more shallow waters, but as to the Jerry McGuen… If Laurie hadn’t found her, we might’ve made an attempt to see what our sonar could identify in the area. Thing is, no one really knew exactly where she went down, other than that she was supposedly near Chicago. You might not realize it, but the lake is huge. Searching it is almost like searching the North Atlantic. When you’re just looking at the lake, it seems to stretch out forever. And when you’re boating on it alone, you can feel as if you’re the last man on earth.”

“But the treasure in the Jerry McGuen is of inestimable worth,” Will commented.

Landry nodded. He smiled suddenly. “But searching for that kind of treasure—needle in a haystack. I can tell you that Brady Laurie was obsessed with it. I wasn’t shocked when I heard about his death. He was threatened by all of us—no, no, that came out wrong. No one ever threatened him, but…check with the Egyptian Sand Diggers. They were pointing out the historic value of the find, which we already knew, and he got furious. Their president is a fellow named Dirk Manning, and what they call their ‘guardian’—an old fellow who’s been involved in it since he was twenty-one—is a man named Austin Miller. Talk to one of them about Brady Laurie. In my opinion, he had no real interest in joining the group, but he probably spoke to those gentlemen more than anyone else. Me? I believe Laurie was so obsessed with the ship that he signed his own death warrant.”

Will stood up and shook hands with Landry. Kat stood, too. “If there’s anything I can do, please let me know,” Landry said.

“Thank you.” Kat smiled—then remembered Will’s earlier remark about her niceness.

“I’ll have Ms. Bertelli show you out,” Landry offered.

“We can find our way,” Will told him, “but thanks.”

When they passed Sherry Bertelli, she was sitting behind her desk, flipping through the pages of a fashion magazine. She looked up long enough to smile vaguely at them and wave. “Ta-ta!”

“Yep, ta-ta,” Kat responded.

She didn’t realize Will was laughing until they were in the car again. “Ta-ta?”

“I simply returned the courtesy,” she said primly.

“I get the feeling they didn’t hire her for her math skills.”

Kat shook her head and turned to him. “This is just about impossible,” she said. “No one, not even the first responders, really knows if anyone else was near the site when Brady died—or was killed. It sounds like he could be extremely hostile about anything concerning the Jerry McGuen. He did dive alone—and went down almost a hundred feet in cold water. This wasn’t a pleasure dive to a warm-water reef.”

Will glanced at her, then looked at the road again. “But you saw his body.”

“Yes. I saw his body. And seeing his body made me believe this is worth investigating. But what we saw doesn’t guarantee that Brady Laurie was murdered. There are other explanations for the bruises. It’s possible that he might have gotten into an altercation with someone. He was furious with the Egyptian Sand Diggers and apparently everyone knew it.”

“So you think one of the Sand Diggers was out on a boat, slipped into the water while pretending to fish and killed Laurie?” Will asked. “Why? The Sand Diggers supposedly wanted someone to find the treasure.”

“I don’t know,” Kat said. “We’ll have to ask them. Logan should be getting back to me with some information pretty soon. We can check them out tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow afternoon. Tomorrow morning we dive the site.”

Kat turned to him. “You sound excited about it.”

“I am. A shipwreck like the Jerry McGuen? Come on, you have to be somewhat excited!”

“Thrilled to pieces,” she muttered. Maybe one day, she’d tell him about the experiences she’d already enjoyed because of Amun Mopat!

“You don’t believe in a curse, do you?” he asked, grinning.

“No. I do, however, believe that people can go a little crazy because of them.”

“I agree,” he said. “I spent a lot of time in the Caribbean. Islanders can be very superstitious. I’ve seen men who felt convinced they were possessed, and women who managed incredible feats of contortion in a ceremonial dance. The mind is a powerful influence on the body.”

Kat nodded.

“You think someone would sabotage the mission to keep Amun Mopat from being brought back to the surface?” he asked. “That’s an idea.”

“Crazy people can latch onto anything, but…at this point, I don’t know what I think or feel,” Kat told him. “Except that it’s been a really, really long day!”

“And it’ll be an early morning,” he said.

She was glad he’d said that; his stamina seemed to be on a par with the Energizer Bunny’s. She hoped he was taking her back to her hotel. “I’m at a place called the Edwardian off Michigan Avenue.”

“Yep.”

“You know that, of course,” she said.

“Of course.”

He didn’t just drop her off; he brought the car in front to the valet. She sighed as she saw him get out and walk around to her. “You’re staying here, too.”

“Government dollar.” He shrugged. “We go where they get their deals,” he said. “I’ll meet you in the lobby at eight.”

“We’re diving at 8:00 a.m.?”

He hesitated. “You’re not required to go down.”

“I wouldn’t miss it. Remember? We’re excited about this.”

“Would you like to get some dinner?”

“I think I’ll just go upstairs and order in,” she said.

“Good night, then.”

There was a small restaurant in the hotel. He walked toward it, a folder and an iPad in his hands. He was going to keep working, she realized.

And she was starving….

He stopped suddenly, a curious frown tightening his brow. She was startled to notice again what a striking and unusual man he was.

He walked back to her. “All day I forgot to ask… Well, I suppose you would’ve said, but…did you get anything from the corpse?”

Kat studied his eyes. She was surprised, after the day they’d spent together, to feel strangely close to him. But then, when you were one of the lucky or the cursed who’d always assumed they were ever so slightly crazy, there was an instant bond with others who shared that luck or that curse. She shook her head. “No, and I was hopeful. We’re always hopeful,” she said quietly. “You?”

“Nothing at all. And I just think that in this situation, with the money involved in salvage, what seems to stink does stink. I really believe he was murdered. I grew up in the islands. I’ve been diving since I was a kid. No, he should never have gone down alone, but from what I’ve learned and seen, there was nothing that should have caused him to lose control. His equipment was in perfect working order. Even after being tested for leaks, his tank had air.” He paused. “It’s strange. We still can’t explain why some souls stay around, and some don’t.”

“Maybe some people who die by violence aren’t compelled to stay on earth to see that justice is done,” she said. “Some may find peace—who knows? There’s an incredible amount that we haven’t begun to understand.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” he said. “Well, get some rest.”

He started to walk again. He was a workaholic, she thought. Usually so was she. But she really was tired.