P.J. Alderman - Ghost Ship

“ Oh. My. God. ” Jordan stared past Darcy’s shoulder.

“Look,” Darcy said, sounding uncomfortable. “If it bothers you that much—”

“No, no!” Jordan tugged on her sleeve to turn her toward the surf. “That’s not what I think it is, is it? Is it? ”

Darcy peered in the direction Jordan pointed. “Son of a bitch!” Jogging over, she knelt next to a black, rubber-encased body floating facedown in the shallows.

When Jordan started to follow, Darcy put up a hand. “Stay back.” She felt for a pulse, then turned over the body, pulling back the hood of the dry suit.

Jordan pressed fingers against her mouth. She would have recognized that bleached-blond buzz cut anywhere. “That’s …”

“Yeah.”

Holt Stillwell. Port Chatham’s most notorious womanizer, descended from a long line of infamous criminals, not the least of whom was the Pacific Northwest’s most ruthless shanghaier of the late nineteenth century, Michael Seavey.

Holt’s eyes were closed, and his skin had a weirdly translucent pallor.

He also had a bullet hole in the center of his forehead.

Chapter 2

JORDAN didn’t have any experience with dead people, other than from the night she’d had to identify her husband’s remains. Her former patients, no matter how damaged when they came to her, had always been alive and kicking.

She couldn’t seem to quit looking at Holt’s face. Swallowing rapidly, she concentrated hard on not losing her lunch.

“You’re not planning to hurl all over the crime scene, are you?” Darcy asked absently as she studied the area around Holt’s body.

“Of course not.”

Darcy pulled out her cellphone, flipping it open and sweeping it in an arc. “ Dammit! No signal.” Leaning down, she braced her hands on her knees and stared at the sand. “Okay, it looks like the tide has washed away any footprints, so I guess it doesn’t really matter. Get over here and help me.”

“What’re we doing, exactly?” Jordan asked warily.

“We’re moving him above the tide line. I can’t stand in forty-degree water, holding a corpse in place until the crime-scene techs get here.”

That made sense. Rubbing her palms on her jeans, Jordan edged forward.

With her grappling Holt’s bare ankles and Darcy at his shoulders, they managed to drag him out of the shallow surf and up the beach. They stood over the body, catching their breath. Jordan’s running shoes were now filled with sand and salt water, and her blisters were stinging big-time.

“The medical examiner is going to kill me for messing with the position of the body,” Darcy muttered, as if talking to herself, “but it couldn’t be helped.”

Holt’s torso was propped against a giant log, his head lolling to one side. There was no way Jordan was sitting down on that log to empty out her shoes. And she really didn’t want to stand there, staring at the nasty little hole in his forehead.

“What do you suppose he was doing way out here?” she asked, to distract herself.

“Good question. As far as I know, Holt wasn’t a dive enthusiast. And even if he was, there are far more interesting dives closer to town or off the west side of Vancouver Island.”

Jordan raised a brow.

“Old shipwrecks and the like,” Darcy elaborated.

“Shouldn’t he have been with a dive buddy? Don’t divers usually swim in pairs, for safety reasons?”

Darcy shrugged. “It’s not like Holt ever played by the rules.”

“True, but …” Jordan thought about the man she’d seen earlier. Had he been real after all? “Maybe the dive buddy is the murderer.” Maybe she’d just exchanged pleasantries with a cold-blooded killer. “Holt could’ve pissed him off, just like he did everyone else, and the guy lost it.”

“And shot him with the handgun he just happened to have in a watertight Baggie stowed inside his dive suit.”

“Okay, point taken.” Not to mention that if it had been the person Jordan had seen, his suit had lacked such conveniences as pockets. Did some people make their own dive gear? She didn’t know; she’d never been interested in the sport. “So what do we do now? Look for the murder weapon?”

“You’ve been watching way too many CSI shows. If you’d just shot a guy and dumped him in the water, what would you do with the gun?”

“Well, assuming I have homicidal tendencies and I’ve thought the crime through before committing it, I guess I would’ve tossed it as far out into the ocean as I could … No, wait.” Jordan reconsidered. “Unless I’m familiar with the local currents, I’d be worried the tide would wash the gun back onto the beach. And there’s no good place to hide it on this spit; you could bury a gun in the sand, but a good metal detector would find it in a heartbeat. I suppose you could toss it into the reeds on the protected side, but to be safe, I’d probably carry it back with me, intending to dispose of it somewhere else.”

“Exactly,” Darcy confirmed. “We’ll get teams out here to comb the driftwood and beach grasses, but I doubt we’ll find anything. The gun could be anywhere.”

Jordan glanced around. “Where’s Holt’s gear? You know—oxygen tanks, flippers? You don’t suppose someone robbed him, do you?”

“I doubt they killed him for his dive equipment,” Darcy replied drily, “though a friend of mine regularly complains about the cost. But you’re right—it’s odd that he doesn’t have any.”

“Maybe he was killed somewhere else and then dumped here. Maybe the killer was hoping the tide would carry him out to sea before someone noticed him. After all, normally he could’ve counted on a fair amount of time elapsing before someone would come along and notice. It’s not like anyone in their right mind takes this hike willingly .”

Darcy gave her an exasperated look. “I shouldn’t even be discussing this with you.”

“Hey.” Hadn’t she just solved a murder? A hundred-year-old murder, no less?

Darcy checked for a signal again, then swore. “See if you have cellphone coverage; your carrier is different from mine.”

Jordan did as she asked, with the same result, then gazed in both directions. No one in sight, not even the other diver, who seemed to have disappeared. She spread her hands and gave Darcy a shrug.

“Okay.” Darcy drew a breath, sounding businesslike, “I need to stay with the body, to protect the integrity of the crime scene as much as possible. So I need you to continue on to the lighthouse.”

Of course she did.

“You should be able to pick up coverage there,” she added. “Call 911 to report the crime.”

Jordan hesitated. With the exception of Darcy, she still didn’t feel completely comfortable around cops, given her recent experiences with the LAPD. And she’d be calling to report a murder, which might lead to all kinds of speculation. After all, it had only been in the last week or so that the speculation over her husband’s murder had finally died down.

Darcy correctly interpreted her expression. “Relax. I can verify what you tell them—they aren’t going to jump to any conclusions about your being out here. And put in a call to Jase—have him come pick you up. He can borrow a power boat and bring it to the landing area on the south side of the lighthouse.”

The aforementioned sublime pub owner. Damn. Jordan was finding it hard to remain in denial when her hormones rioted every time he came within twenty feet of her.

The implication of what Darcy had said sank in. “You mean we could have taken a boat out here?”

“Sure. But then we wouldn’t have found Holt, would we?”