Rachelle McCalla - Survival Instinct

Scott was glad for the headlamps mounted on each kayak, as well as the LED lights they each wore on a headband. But as they paddled the short distance to the gaping maw of the sea cave, he realized the powerful lights were feeble weapons against the pressing darkness. Shadows loomed in every corner, spilling out at odd angles as their lights drifted by, taunting them with the possibility of what could be hidden under the cloak of their darkness.

Their crafts glided silently into the cave. Scott tried to maneuver his kayak so his light would pan across the back wall of the cave. As Abby had previously predicted, the cave ended a mere sixty or seventy feet from the spot where it opened to the sea. There was enough space to shelter a decent-size boat, yes, but the wide mouth of the cave offered no cover. The pirates in Burt’s story wouldn’t have lasted long hiding from the authorities in this wide-open space, and neither would the diamond smugglers. Any vessel sailing past the north side of the island would have seen them easily if they’d attempted to hide there.

“I’m not seeing a body anywhere,” Tracie murmured, her words echoing against the brownstone walls and resonating dissonantly with the sounds of the lapping waves.

“What if he sank?” Scott suggested, looking down into the clear water. “I wonder how deep the water is here.” Holding tight to one end of his paddle, he plunged the other end downward…and never felt bottom. As the force of the lapping water pressed against his paddle, it almost felt as though the lake was trying to pull it from his hands. He quickly pulled the paddle back up. “It’s at least six feet deep, and could be infinitely deeper,” he speculated.

“Deep enough to hide a body,” Abby agreed. “But Trevor was pretty buoyant.”

Scott smiled at the polite way Abby referred to her exfiancé’s extra girth. “What if he was weighed down by something? He could have been carrying heavy equipment in his pockets or on his person.”

Tracie pointed out, “If he’d have been wearing a bulletproof vest, it might have been heavy enough to pull him under. But that’s why we Coasties rarely wear the vests, even though we have a crime-fighting role out here. The odds of ending up in the lake are much higher than the odds of being shot.” She paddled closer to the ledge that extended along one back corner of the cave. “And anyway, if he’d have been wearing a vest, there wouldn’t have been blood, and he probably wouldn’t have died.”

“Good point,” Scott noted, but Tracie didn’t appear to be listening anymore. She was staring intently at something on the ledge.

“What do you suppose?” she mused aloud, then pulled out her camera and snapped a few more pictures before panning her light farther along the wall. “Could one of you come hold my kayak?” she asked a moment later.

Scott paddled over and held her craft steady while she climbed out onto the brownstone. He watched as she dabbed gauze at something smeared on the ledge, and then placed it in a plastic bag from her pocket. It wasn’t until she pulled out a marker and labeled the bag that Scott was sure what she’d swabbed up from the ledge.

Blood-inside cave.

“Trevor’s blood?” Scott asked quietly.

Tracie shrugged and stuffed the baggie into her pocket. “It appears to be fresh, just like the spatter outside.”

Abby had paddled over near them and was watching with interest. “But what would his blood be doing way back in here? It isn’t as though he’d have likely drifted up onto the ledge, and his body clearly isn’t here anymore.”

Though they’d nearly ruled out the possibility already, Scott flashed his light downward into the deep clear waters below them. The pool appeared to have no bottom. From his vantage point close to the edge, Scott could see the brownstone drop away sharply, disappearing into the watery abyss below. It was a chilling sight, but there was still no sign of a body.

“If he was shot from a boat or a kayak,” Tracie pondered aloud, “and then whoever shot him hid inside this cave, they probably heard us talking up above and decided to dispose of the evidence before we could recover anything incriminating.”

Scott looked around warily, half expecting the gunman to suddenly appear in the mouth of the cave behind him. The hairs on his arms and neck stood on end.

“But why would they pull the body onto the ledge?” Abby pressed.

“Perhaps they heard John and Mack coming and got spooked. Or, I don’t know, maybe they wanted to search him. Maybe they thought he had something on him, something they wanted.”

Cautiously, Scott paddled back the way they’d come, back into the daylight that made him squint with its sudden brightness. He stared at the low rock where Trevor had apparently been standing when he’d been shot. Then his eyes traveled farther back to where the shallow rocks cupped a still pool of water before giving way to the brownstone cliffs that rose upward to meet the sun.

On a hunch, Scott beached his kayak on the small rocky spit where Tracie had left hers when she’d collected the sample earlier. But instead of inspecting the spatter, he stepped past it to the shallow pool that was protected from the action of the waves by the outcropping. There he crouched down, his eyes scanning the rock, until something caught his eye. He squinted, leaning closer for a better look, nearly missing the gray object hidden among the darker rocks.

He shouted to the women, “Come take a look at this.”

Abby arrived first, and he plucked up the ring, holding it out to her almost reverently. “Do you recognize this?”

“Yes.” She met his eyes.

“I was a groomsman at my mother’s second wedding. I still vividly remember Mitch showing this off to the guys before the wedding, boasting about what it was worth. I haven’t paid much attention to it since then, but I thought it looked familiar.”

As he spoke, Tracie paddled around the rock. “What’s that?” she asked.

“Mitch’s wedding ring. I found it right here.” He tapped the spot with his foot, and the shallow water splashed.

“So Trevor still had the ring,” Abby muttered. “Whoever killed him must have figured he had it on him. They probably took his body in order to get the ring.”

Scott looked at her and suddenly realized how difficult the situation must be, finding a wedding ring so close to the spot where the recently deceased had once proposed to her. But she seemed to be holding herself together just fine. “Do you think it may have been the same people who told him to get your ring back from you?” he asked her quietly.

“I’d say almost certainly,” Abby agreed. “The two have got to be related.”

“Wait.” Tracie steered her kayak around until she faced them both. “What are you guys talking about? Are what two related? Do you know something I don’t know? Because if so, now is the time to tell me.”

“Remember how I told you earlier that Trevor proposed to me on that ledge?” Abby pointed upward. “Well, he showed up at my place a couple of nights ago and demanded I return the ring to him.”

“Did you?”

“Not yet.” Abby’s hand went around to the backside of her two-piece wetsuit. “In fact, I have it on me right now.” She pulled out a handful of diamond jewelry. “And Marilyn’s earrings, which I’ll hand over as evidence because I have no more use for them than I do for the ring. I’m not a jewelry person, but all of a sudden there seems to be a lot of diamond jewelry in my life. But apparently they aren’t even real.”

Tracie paddled her kayak closer and gingerly accepted the jewels from Abby. She zippered them securely into a plastic bag and labeled it. Scott made sure she got Mitch’s ring in with the others before she tucked them into an interior pocket of her jacket.