Willits waited before saying anything else.
The proprietor of the Humphries Search and Recovery operation, when it came to understanding what he found . . . clearly found this discovery confusing and unsettling.
But after a bit, he said, “Look, Billy. I still got plenty of air. Which means time, you know? Can do whatever you want me to. This is on your dime. I can come up, though, bring down a line, hook the winch up to this bag containing whoever the two people are inside.”
He paused.
“And bring them up. Though—that may have legal, um, implications?”
Billy was thinking, mind racing now. This was unsettling, to say the least. And he hadn’t really thought through the next step, at least not clearly. Namely: What would he do if Willits found something?
Now this.
But he had to make a decision. After all, there was a person hovering deep down there, waiting for instructions.
“Okay, Ted. Got a question . . .”
“Shoot.”
“Can you mark where the—”
First time Billy used the words . . .
“—the bodies are? So you can come find them, get them at any time?”
“Yup. Do it all the time. Um. I mean with things I find. Generally, though—not corpses.”
Some Vegas-style comedy? With bodies in play? Right . . .
Willits here till Thursday, folks, two shows a night. Oh—and try the veal!
Funny guy.
Though Billy was in no mood to laugh.
“Okay. So just come back up. Mark the spot on your sonar, however you do that. So, when the time comes, we can tell . . . dunno . . . Chief Bristow, the Coast Guard . . . whoever will be handling this mess, this—”
He didn’t use the word murder. Though that word certainly made sense.
“Gotcha. Just leave them sleeping here and head back to the dock? That the idea?”
“You got it.”
“Okay. Pretty sure that violates some rule or code for people like me. But—never was much one for following rules.”
Billy laughed at that. “Me either. Okay—see you in a bit.”
And at that, on the camera monitor, Billy watched the seafloor and the body bag with two corpses . . . disappear. Now to see just the shroud of the murky water.
Billy thought: This is important. But he actually knew nothing about it. Didn’t even know for sure that Jack Landry was one of the bodies down there.
But he also knew, once brought to the surface, well then . . . whatever it was he was doing here would be all over.
And this part he didn’t really understand clearly—he wasn’t quite ready to do that.
So many questions. And well, he had just started to get answers. And maybe, just for a while longer, he should continue doing just that.
And he realized: it wasn’t about the promised money. The hope of getting back some of what he’d lost.
No. This was about people doing really bad things. And Billy—just the way he was wired?—wanting answers.
So, that decision made, that understanding—if that’s what it was—reached . . . he went to one side of the boat and waited for Willits to bob to the surface.
* * *
For a few moments, Billy thought that something might be wrong when Willits didn’t quickly come to the surface.
But soon he made out a blurry shape below the water, and then Willits’s head was above the surface of the choppy water.
Willits gave a thumbs-up as he surfaced—Billy guessed maybe that was something divers did. And he watched Willits paddle over to the metal platform on the back of the boat, pull himself up, and sit.
Then he took his headgear off and turned to Billy.
The man smiled. “How about a nice cold Corona?” Billy went to the cooler and pulled out two beers.
When he came back, Willits had his fins off and had also undone his vest, which held the tank; his weight belt was off too.
Billy unscrewed his bottle along with Willits’s.
“So, before we get going. Heading back?”
“Yeah?”
“I’ve been at this a long time.”
“And never found a body under the water?”
The man smiled at that. “Oh, no, done that plenty times before. You know, boating and accidents kinda go together. Especially”—he tilted his beer bottle back and forth—“when you add a lot of these.”
Willits turned, looked at him.
“But, never found two bodies, together. Yup, that’s a first. And second, well, I always bring the unfortunate corpse up.”
“You will. I imagine. Eventually. Just now—”
Willits nodded. “Yeah, I get it. Right now, all that isn’t helpful for whatever the hell you are looking into.”
“Kinda.”
“But before we get going, I’d be—what’s the word?—remiss if I didn’t tell you. What’s down there, all neatly weighted and bagged up . . . ?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Think . . . you want to make real sure that you don’t become just like them. Just a little”—Willits grinned—“um, a little warning?”
To which Billy said, “Getting a lot of those these days . . .”
“Okay. Let me get out of this suit—and back we go.”
Willits sat down, unzipping the bulky dry suit as he turned for one more thing . . .
“By the way—for now?—my lips are sealed.”
“Good. Appreciate—”
But Willits shot up a hand.
“For now. People come asking questions. Dunno. Police. The Coast Guard. Maybe even other people . . .”
Billy could guess who he was talking about. Namely the people who put those bodies down there.
“Well then, may have to eventually say what I saw, you know? Just so you know . . .”
Billy nodded at that. “Got it. I mean, is that even Jack Landry down there?”
“Good point. We can only . . . surmise.”
Willits peeled off his suit, sun already low in the sky. The chop in the water was kicking up even more.
But Billy had to think: bullet holes in the man’s boat. Body bag down below?
He was a good chef, and while not great at math, he was pretty sure this added up to Landry being one of those bodies.
Yet—two big pieces of the equation were unanswered:
Why? And who was the other body down there?