Ryan Lockwood - Below

“And what do we do when we find them?” Sturman asked.

“Ever landed a squid before, cowboy?”

Sturman got the call that night.

It was a warm Friday evening, and he’d just finished washing dishes after eating a relaxed dinner of runny fried eggs and crisp bacon on his boat when he realized his cell phone had been off. He pulled up the voice mail and listened to the message from Joe, and knew even before he’d called him back what he was going to hear. Until then, he’d even been going very light on the beer, and had been thinking about the feisty biologist he’d spent the day with. But now only one thought went through his mind.

Steve Black was dead.

After calling Joe back and hearing more of the details, Sturman had gone to the coroner to help Joe identify the body. Apparently Steve had washed up on the beach yesterday, mutilated almost beyond recognition. A diving accident—that was what the sheriff ’s department was calling this now. They were also looking into a possible shark attack or potential foul play. An entire family that Steve had taken on a dive excursion had gone missing with him.

Sturman knew it was Steve because of the tattoos. Despite Joe’s recommendation, he had looked at the face of the corpse, but that hadn’t been Steve’s face. Just a wrecked crater of flesh that fish and crabs had hollowed out. After that, Sturman had needed a drink. That was last night.

“Hey, hon, how about another smoke?”

Jill stopped wiping down the bar and headed over to Sturman. He had been drinking beer at The Lighthouse since its doors opened at 10:30. In reality, he’d been drinking since about ten o’clock the night before, but had passed out somewhere—he couldn’t remember where—in the wee hours before resuming his binge in the morning.

She walked over to him and pulled a pack of lights out from under the bar, handing it to him along with an ashtray. Sturman lit a cigarette and took a deep pull.

“Are you gonna be all right, Will? You’ve had a lot of beer, and it’s only lunchtime.” When he didn’t respond, Jill continued. “Look, I know you’re upset about Steve. I am too. But you should be with friends and family right now.”

“Steve was my family, Jill.”

“I know, I’m sorry. I’m just saying—”

“Thanks for the cigarette, but save the advice. Gimme another.”

Jill shook her head and walked down the bar to refill Sturman’s glass. “All right, but this is the last one.” She set the beer down in front of him. “Let me know if you want to talk. Okay?”

Sturman took the beer and got up, staggering a little as he rose. He walked slowly toward the bar’s quiet pool tables. Nobody was playing right now. The few other regulars were sitting at a booth at the far side of the bar, laughing over a game of cards. Sturman put his hand on one of the pool tables, feeling the faded red velvet surface.

He and Steve had spent a lot of time at these tables.

Sturman heard Jill talking to someone, and turned to see Joe Montoya entering the bar. Joe had never liked Steve, but Sturman couldn’t blame him. Steve had certainly had his faults. One of the biggest was that he could be a racist old bastard. That obviously had never sat well with his other friend, whose family was from Mexico.

Joe looked up as he finished talking to Jill and saw Sturman at the pool tables. He clenched his jaw and headed toward his friend.

“Hey, pal. After I didn’t see you at your boat, I figured you’d be down here.”

“Hey, Montoya.”

“Buy you a beer?”

“You may have to. Jill cut me off.”

“Shit. You’re pretty drunk, aren’t you? How you holdin’ up?”

“I’m all right.” Sturman smiled weakly. “Steve spent a lot of time here. Even more than I did, amigo.”

“Yeah. He liked his drink.”

“Let me get you a beer.”

“I can’t, pal. I’m on duty. I just thought I’d stop in to see how you’re doing.”

Sturman looked away. “I can’t even remember what he really looked like, Joe. All I see is his dead face.”

“Give it time. You’ll remember again.”

Joe put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed—a rare gesture of affection from the all-business cop. Sturman felt his throat knot and swallowed it back. He tilted back his glass and gulped down the full glass of beer. He turned and hurled the glass against the wall. When it hit the bricks, it exploded with a loud crack, sending broken glass back at them. Sturman took off his cowboy hat, bits of glass now on the brim, and rubbed his head.

Joe stood motionless, but Sturman couldn’t blame him. What was he supposed to say? The men hadn’t spoken for a few minutes when Jill walked over and cleaned up the mess without saying a word. Finally, Sturman spoke.

“Find out what happened, Joe. Just find out what happened.”

When he staggered out of the bar, he didn’t care if they knew he was only headed to another.

Sturman drank heavily all weekend. He never took his boat out at all, and didn’t return any of the biologist’s persistent phone calls.

When he had gone to The Lighthouse on Saturday morning, still mostly drunk from the night before, he hadn’t planned to spend the entire day boozing, but under the circumstances he had lost all self-control and had again gotten blind drunk. Somebody had helped him home Saturday night after he had nearly gotten into a fight with a husky biker in a black leather jacket. He’d vomited at some point, and only remembered being in some sort of alley, near some Dumpsters. That, and some black-and-white posters peeling off the brick outer walls that advertised a band called “Aphota.”

He awoke still reeling on Sunday morning. He thought of making himself a screwdriver to quickly fall back into the numbness of the night before. Instead, he poured himself a tall glass of orange juice. Then he called Val to explain what was going on. Her equipment hadn’t arrived as scheduled from La Paz, so there was nothing they could have done over the weekend. Lucky for him—Steve dead or not, he needed the money.

With his binge winding down, he thought about going fishing, but fishing without Steve wouldn’t feel right. The thought made him feel even hollower. Tonight he needed to head out with Dr. Martell and try to find the shoal, though, and knew he had to clean himself up. He lit a cigarette and resolved not to drink any more today. He didn’t want her to see him this way. He was hosing off his boat when Joe Montoya walked up.

“Hey, Sturman.”

“Montoya.” He lowered the hose.

“How are you doing?”

“Seen better days, but I’m holding up. Thanks for stopping by yesterday.”

“No worries. Let me know if Elena and I can do anything, okay?”

“Sure. What’s up?”

“I just left the coroner’s office. They finished their preliminary report this morning.”

Sturman took a drag off his cigarette, nodded, and set the hose down. He stepped into his boat and grabbed a towel, which he used to dry the sweat and water off his face and the gray-tinged stubble on his head. “Come on in, Montoya.”

Joe boarded the boat and sat down across from him in the stern. Joe looked at him for a minute without saying anything, and Sturman put his stained hat on, pulling the brim down low over his eyes. Joe reached out and Sturman handed him the cigarette. Joe took a deep, long pull and handed it back. Somewhere nearby reggae music drifted toward them from another boat.

“Just spit it out, Montoya. What did they find out?”

“You sure you want to hear this, Will?”

Sturman gave an almost imperceptible nod.

“They don’t think it’s a shark attack anymore. It looks like Steve drowned.”