Dead in the Water (46 page)

Then gone.

Slowly she rose, cradling the bottle and the note. Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit. Goose bumps coated her, outside and in. Holy shit.

Okay, make it work: the captain was nuts. He’d started picking off the
Morris
survivors—oh, God, let that be wrong—and he was rounding up the ones who were left. And he had somehow gotten rid of everyone else. Yeah, right. He just stashed them somewhere, Donna. Right. That all made sense.

Nearer, my God, to Thee.

Shhhoooooo
.

Make it work: a tape. Someone was rehearsing a play. A music system, heretofore unused.

With feet like lead weights, she walked toward the museum. Make it work. Jesus. It didn’t work. None of it.

Low, nasty laughter jittered down the hall, the kind a boy made when he snuck-read a dirty magazine or a little girl saw her big brother with his girlfriend: a sexual, titillated laugh, kiddie-porn night with the guys.

Her hair stood on end. It was loud, as though amplified through a sound system; and it was off-center, the laughter of someone who wants not to laugh, but can’t help it.

“Hey. Who’s there?” she demanded in a strong cop voice.

It rose half a note, faltered, then trilled hysterically up the scales, bass to alto to a falsetto high C. Donna scratched her
knuckles and kept walking. Someone was out of control. No shit, Sherlock.

And the Special Guest of Honor was going to bust him. Or her.

Had to be the captain. But why? How?

She turned the corner. The museum door was open. All the lights were off. The place was dark as a cave.

And the laughter flew out of it, like a winged thing, and swooped down on her. Donna ducked as if something were really coming at her, straightened as soon as she realized it was only noise.

“Okay, come out,” she called. Waited, chewing the inside of first her left cheek, then right. Her heartbeat revved; the tips of her fingers tingled. Her stomach started to pull into itself. Her senses grew sharp, alert, poised, the old fight or flight response. Blood pressure up, vein in her forehead doing the chimichanga.

The laughter rang forward, ebbed, crashed closer, ebbed, like a tide.

“That’s real neat,” she said. “I’m impressed. You could get a job in Hollywood. But if you’re finished—”

A harsh white light focused on her, flicked off her, beamed at the scores of bottles overhead. They were swinging back and forth, and their surfaces sent out sparks of light. Back and forth, back, forth, rhythmically, out on the open sea. Out on the—

on

the

lake; trying to save that kid, trying to stop everything from happening. The lake was liquid ice, so absolutely draining. It just sucked the will out of you, the strength and the power; you were nothing in that lake, just a fucking corpse in suspended animation, dreaming as you went down down,

down;

moving on in your head to a future you were not going to have. Moving on, as you drifted in the ice, rocked gently as death curled around you and tried to get inside you before all your warmth evaporated; Death is cold and so very alone; Death is lonely for you and what else do you have,
anyway? No family, no man, no talent, no life. And you’re too dumb, too slow, powerless.

Let him grab your ankle and pull. Let him do it, now, and you’ll go

down

down

“
Good morning, heartache
,” Billy sang,
really
, in Donna’s ears, and it was that that jerked her out of her stupor.

Shit, was somebody trying to hypnotize her? Was that it? Some kind of Mission Impossible group hypnosis tripping them all out?

Slowly, the light descended, bringing with it the bottles. They lowered en masse, eye level, revealing a flotilla of pitching miniature vessels inside them. Battleships and schooners and subs and sailboats. Luxury liners, tankers, barges, steamboats.

The
Titanic
.

The
Normandie
.

The
Robert E. Lee
.

The
Bismarck
.

The ships in bottles floated around her like bubbles. They rode on seas that seemed to froth and swell: an illusion, she told herself. Caused by the lights.

She grabbed the nearest one, a model of a tug. It vibrated in her grasp, shooting a charge into her forearm. Her hair stood on end as she released it and it hovered, connected to nothing, hanging in the air of its own accord. A magic trick. She passed her hand over the nearest ship, under it. No wires, no transparent filaments.

Cautiously, she drew back her hand and stared at the bottles.

“Cute. Real cute,” she said at the light.

The laugh was successfully muffled this time. She took a step forward. Another. Another. Walked halfway into the museum.

The light jerked from her to a case on her right. The case where the green bottle usually lay, cloaked with a velvet cape.

She slid her glance toward it. Inhaled sharply.

The drape had been removed, and a bottle identical to the one she held in her hands rested in the case.

Stay calm, she told herself. That didn’t mean anything. So there were two bottles. For all she knew, there were fifty of them. He bought them in Hong Kong.

There was a note inside the second bottle, too. It practically glowed, some Alice in Wonderland magic:
Read Me
. Donna strode to it, deliberately making a lot of noise, because creeping made you look frightened and frightened made you vulnerable to attack, and reached inside.

A tidal wave of maniacal laughter, half screams, half hissing, rose around her, crashing, foaming along her spine. Ignoring it, she stuck her hand in—

—and a low, visceral terror spread across her skin like a layer of gellid paste, contracting, constricting, pulling the hairs on her arms, her legs, her head. Get your hand out of there, she commanded herself. Get it out or you’re going to lose it—

—oh, God—

and because of the terror, because of it, goddamn it, she had to pick that fucking bottle up and read the fucking note.

“Shit,” she said under her breath. The laughter caromed around the room. When she found that asshole, she was going to cram the damn bottle down his throat.

She hesitated one more second, forcing herself to keep her eyes open. They watered from the strain. Unknowingly, she drew back her lips. God, here goes. Here goes.

She picked it up.

Every time I close my eyes, I jerk awake … Donna came by to ask for a sleeping pill …

 … we never did find anything …

This fog …

Ulcer …

John. John Fielder had written this. What the hell was it doing here?

There were more pages:

 … Everybody thinks Cha-cha’s a harmless old guy, but he’s scary, man. Only thing in that net were some fish and some damn shark or something, the one who chomped my finger off, practically
.

The lady cop is right about one thing: if something does happen, like if King Neptune tells Cha-cha to go for it, I don’t think the crew will be any help at all
.

That sounded like Kevin. She read the last page, a fragment from a lined, bound book:

15 April 0900

 … my God, my God, I never believed Cha-cha was dangerous, but he’s butchered them! Sweet Jesus, when I came on deck, and saw what he’d done … and then I realized they’d taken him into the lifeboat. They’re alone out there with that maniac, and there’s no way I can warn them
.

This is my last entry. We’re taking on too much water. I’m amazed we haven’t gone down yet
.

Wait! What’s that? I hear another ship
!

Thank God, we’re saved
!

Cha-cha? Oh, God, not Cha-cha. She thought about the missing people. Before or after he came on board? Think, Donna, missing before or after?

But how come Reade had told them there’d been a false alarm aboard the
Morris
? If it hadn’t gone down, would Esposito have warned Reade about Cha-cha?

At a noise, she glanced up from the pages. Captain Reade stepped into the glow from the hallway. He angled the flashlight under his chin; it shot his face with harsh, ghoulish streaks of white. He was dressed in a ship’s officer’s uniform from another time, dark blue coat and white trousers. His eye stared at her and his mouth was drawn back in a wild, fierce grimace. His skin was shiny with sweat; in the light it looked as if it had been varnished, as if he’d been made of wood. A six-foot-tall nutcracker, the features painted on with a less
than steady stroke. His head tremored like an old man’s. His teeth clicked together and he blinked rapidly.

“What does this mean?” she asked evenly. Christ, he was totally insane. What the hell was she going to do?

The captain shook his head. “You are so thick. What do you think it means? Or
can
you think, you bitch?” He raised the flashlight above his head, brought it down in an arc and hit his open hand. “Are you capable of thought?”

She breathed through her mouth. She said, “I think these are papers from the lifeboat.”

He sneered at her. Took two steps forward, hit his hand with the flashlight again. “Do you? Do you really?” His mouth twitched; he covered it with a gloved hand, and a high-pitched giggle, almost a squeak, erupted from behind his white fingers. The flashlight beam cut a jag through the blackness as he fought for control.

“You know they’re from the
Morris.
”

“Cha-cha brought them in his lifeboat,” she insisted. Did he cut up everybody? Jesus, Jesus.

The flashlight flew upward, down. Up, down. His hand was beginning to swell. He advanced on her, smiling. Cawing noises spurted out of him, sea gull laughter. He lowered his head and peered coyly at her through his lashes.

“Oh, yes? Did you, Cha-cha?”

She watched, stunned, as Cha-cha bobbed into the light. His face and clothes were clotted with blood. He looked featherlight, wan, terrified.

He looked pleadingly at Donna. “Do you hear the voice? The other voice, down there? Do you hear it? I tried to go down there again, but I couldn’t find the ladderwa—”

“Cha-cha,” she said, taking a step forward. Then she bolted toward him.

“Cha-cha, defend yourself,” Reade ordered.

Cha-cha drew her revolver from the waistband of his jeans. He hunched over like an old man and aimed it at the floor.

“It’s loaded,” he said miserably. “Office D., I put the bullets in it.”

“Careful then, Chach,” she said, halting. “There’s no safety.”

“No?” he asked querulously. “No? But he said, but he said … do you hear the voice?”

Reade snapped his fingers. “I repeat: You know they’re from the
Morris
, and you know I took her down. Admit it! Admit it and I won’t hurt you.”

“You won’t hurt me anyway, you crazy son of a bitch.” She lunged at Cha-cha and wrested the gun from his limp grasp, ran backward, and took aim. With a cry, Cha-cha pushed her out of his way and ran out of the room, slamming the door behind him. The floating bottles swung back and forth, like so much sea junk on the waves.

“Stop!” the captain shouted. “I order you, Cha-cha! This is your king!”

“I’m coming!” Cha-cha cried in the distance.

“Let him go. He’s hallucinating,” Reade said, as if to himself. “There is nothing calling him. There is … I …”

Reade shook himself. He moved his shoulders in a strange, agitated way. Then the moment seemed to pass. He gazed at Donna and saluted her with the flashlight angled smartly against his tricorne.

“Please, Miss Almond. Say it with me. ‘Captain Reade, I know you sank the
Morris
.’ ”

She gazed at him. He scowled at her and lowered his arm, said, “That’s why these pages are in the trophy room. All these things.” He gestured left, right. “They’re my … scalps.” With a smack of the flashlight, he said, “Quickly, now. No more foreplay. I have invited you to come aboard. I’m waiting for the pleasure of your reply.”

Silently she cleared her throat. She would not freak out; she would not. “I
am
aboard.”

As the flashlight moved across his face, she saw him smile. Then he burst into gales of laughter.

“You are so foolish, you’re such a sodding bitch, you fool, you loose whore of a fool; you have no idea, none, you don’t know. You haven’t figured it out, have you? That things are not what they seem here? Things on my ship are the way I want them, and no other way? Haven’t you seen, haven’t you heard? Are you so thick, then, that you can’t be fully
reached? Are you so damnably thick? Why haven’t you been sucked farther down?”

He pawed the air, waving the flashlight. Spittle flew from his mouth. His eye flashed like a green beacon in the light. “It doesn’t make sense! You’ve seen this much. Why don’t you see everything?”

She wanted to take a step backward, didn’t dare show weakness. She had no liking for killing; there must be a way to stop this, here and now, and no lives lost. But God! How had he done all this? And how had he gotten so fucking crazy? Or rather, how had he acted so normal?

“What are you talking about, Captain Reade?”

“No,” he said decisively. “No, I won’t hand everything to you on a plate.” To her astonishment, he spun slowly in a circle, his hands out at his sides, his head tipped toward the ceiling.

“Charades, my dearest slut bitch Donna Almond. I spend eternity playing charades. What am I now? Am I a spinning boy, or a spinning bottle? The wheel of fortune? Or your lover? The call of loss, the call of love? Which call for you?” He jerked to a stop and shined the light into her eyes. She looked away; the room flashed like a piece of film negative. She almost dropped the gun.

Then the ceiling dropped to within a breath of her height. The stench of human shit and piss and sweat rammed down her nose. The floor squirmed and wiggled. Black fingers pawed her foot.

“God!” she screamed.

“Yes. Now it begins with you. I think it is the boy, after all. My beckoning to you, the thing that finally makes you listen. Makes you see. You can save him here, Donna. You can save him.”

“What?” She plowed through the mine field of hands, pulling at her ankles, her calves, down …