Ghost River Jon Coon (free reads TXT) 📖

Still no pumps and still in the Viking dry suit, Gabe climbed up the stern onto the boat’s rear deck. The boat reeked of river and was a slippery mess of mud, sand, and a foul-smelling level of slime. The roof was flattened enough that Gabe had to crawl through a port side window to get in, and once inside he sank waist deep into an ooze of foul smelling river mud. Nick waited behind him on the rear deck.

“Room for me down there?”

“Not yet, it’s tight in here. Just stay put.”

“You never explained how you knew about this,” Nick said.

“I didn’t know. But here it is, and we need to have a look. It must have been buried under the old bridge junk for us not to have seen it,” Gabe lied, and he felt terrible about it. However “because a dead guy told me” wasn’t going to cut it.

As Gabe probed the mud he made contact and felt what he expected to find. The skull was intact and still attached to the skeleton. He gently let it rest and continued probing until he found the other, only inches away. He imagined the terror of the boat being crushed and slammed into the river bottom. The couple holding each other, murdered, lying in cold, black water for years, waiting.

“Wilson and Nancy,” he said. “Now you can go home.”

He gently pushed mud back over the bones and through the window asked Nick, “How are we doing for time?”

“We should probably head back,” Nick answered. “Find anything?”

“Nothing that can’t wait until tomorrow.” If he told Nick what he’d found he’d lose the chance to talk with Nancy. He’d promised Wilson he would find and care for her. Plus, finding that Pelican case was important, and she knew where it was.

On deck they walked past the clam bucket. It was the size of a small truck with teeth on both jaws over a foot long. Gabe stopped for a better look.

“I had a friend in the oil patch, Paul Perry,” Gabe recalled, “who was diving construction on the Mobile tunnel. Crane operator picked him up out of ninety feet in one of those monster clam buckets. Had him about thirty feet in the air when he saw Paul’s legs dangling out the bottom. The operator panicked, opened the bucket and dropped Paul back to the bottom.”

“Kill him?”

“You would think, but he had on an old Navy style leather weight belt, that belt, and the trash the bucket picked up, kept him from being cut in half. And this is the amazing part: the bucket was missing one tooth, just one. The tooth that would have severed his spine. He was in the hospital for a while, but he lived to dive another day. Now every time I look at one of those monsters, I think of Paul and get shivers.”

1900

Back at the RV, Gabe put burgers on the grill while Carol and Emily fixed salad and beans. By the time they finished eating he had a plan. “Could we have a date tonight?” he asked Carol.

“Like a real date? You’re going on a real date!” Emily exclaimed.

“A little different,” he smiled.

“Sounds exciting. How different?”

Before he could explain, Bob called. “We’ve got a talker at McFarland. Bodine’s administrative assistant is pretty upset. She’s known him for years and swears he’s the last guy on earth to take his life like that. She says he’d been building files about the bridge scam on a laptop, and now it’s gone.”

“Billy, the dive supervisor, told me one of their guys saw Bo throw it off the bridge. We’ve started looking, but it’s a big river.”

“Good luck. I’ll be in touch.” Bob signed off.

Carol and Emily were finishing the dishes.

“Okay, now how would you like to go get really dirty for a couple of hours?” he asked with a grin. Carol threw a dish towel at him.

When they were alone, loading the gear, he told her, “McFarland salvaged the boat, but I don’t think they know about the bodies. We need to get there before they find them.”

Gabe checked in with the McFarland security guard. “We’re going to be working on the boat,” he told the guard. “It’s important that only I and my team get on it and no one else dives here until we reopen the site. Hope I can count on you to help us.”

Gabe drove in past the guard shack and parked by the boat. He got out and pulled on his dry suit. Carol was in a wetsuit. After zipping up, they climbed through the window into the cabin.

Knowing where to look expedited the process, and Gabe quickly relocated the bodies and began uncovering them both. As he rolled away the mud, he could see the full skeletons, spooned together in a final embrace. Carol looked in and sighed, “How sad, look at them. Like those bodies in Pompeii, together forever, petrified in ash. It’s beautiful as well as heartbreaking.”

Gabe continued scraping away the mud. He raised Wilson’s bony arm, wrapped around Nancy’s torso and holding her hand. As he separated their bony fingers, he whistled and said, “Look at this.” On her slender ring finger was a large diamond engagement ring.

Carol was holding a dive light and sighed when she saw bony fingers and the ring.

“What a beautiful ring,” she said. “How sad.”

Gabe gently removed the ring, handed it to Carol and then recovered the bones in the mud.

“Are we just going to leave them here?”

“Just for tonight. Tomorrow night we’re going to put her back in the water and have a chat. It’s time to send her to be with him, but first, we need to know where she put that briefcase.”

CHAPTER 30

0800

The Family Diner

Back at the diner the next morning, Bob started, “I’ve got the assistant Janna going over the photos, putting names on as many as she can.”

“Did Bo have a family?”

“Several. Old Bo liked