"So what could have happened?" Marino asked.
"I think he inhaled cyanide gas."
He looked baffled. "How? Through the compressor?"
"it draws air through an intake valve that's covered with a filter," I reminded him. "What someone could have done was simply mix a little hydrochloric acid with a cyanide tablet and hold the vial close enough to the intake valve for the gas to be drawn in."
"If Eddings inhaled cyanide gas while he was down there," Lucy said, "what would have happened?"
"A seizure, then death. In seconds."
I thought of the snagged air hose and wondered if Eddings had been close to the Exploiter's screw when he suddenly inhaled cyanide gas through his regulator. That might explain the position he was in when I found him.
"Can you test the hookah for cyanide?" Lucy asked.
"Well, we can try," I said, "but I don't expect to find anything unless the cyanide tablet was placed directly on the valve's filter. Even so, things may have been tampered with by the time I got there. We might have better luck with the section of hose that was closest to the body. I'll start tox testing tomorrow, if I can get anybody to come into the lab on a holiday."
My niece walked over to a window to look out. "It's still coming down hard. It's amazing how it lights up the night. I can see the ocean. It's this black wall," she said in a pensive tone.
"What you're seeing is a wall," Marino said. "The brick wall at the back of the yard."
She did not speak for a while, and I thought of how much I missed her. Although I had seen little of her during her undergraduate years at UVA, now we saw each other less, for even when a case brought me to Quantico there was never a guarantee we would find time to visit. It saddened me that her childhood was gone, and a part of me wished she had chosen a life and a career less harsh than what hers must be.
Then she mused as she still gazed out the glass, "So we've got a reporter who's into survivalist weaponry.
Somehow he's poisoned with cyanide gas while diving around decommissioned ships in a restricted area at night."
"That's just a possibility," I reminded her. "His case is pending. We should be careful not to forget that."
She turned around. "Where would you get cyanide if you wanted to poison someone'? Would that be hard?"
"You could get it from a variety of industrial settings," I said.
"Such as?"
"Well, for example, it's used to extract gold from ore.
It's also used in metal plating, and as a fumigant, and to manufacture phosphoric acid from bones," I said. "In other words, anyone from a jeweler to a worker in an industrial plant to an exterminator could have access to cyanide. Plus.
you're going to find it and hydrochloric acid in any chemical lab."
"Well," it was Marino who spoke, "if someone poisoned Eddings, then they had to know he was going to be out in his boat. They had to know where and when."
"Someone had to know many things," I agreed. "For example, one would have had to know what type of breathing apparatus Eddings planned to use because had he gone down with scuba gear instead of a hookah, the MO would have had to be entirely different."
"I just wish we knew what the hell he was doing down there." Marino opened the screen to tend to the fire.
"Whatever it was," I said, "it seems to have involved photography. And based on the camera equipment it appears he had with him, he was serious."
"But no underwater camera was found," Lucy said.
"No," I said. "The current could have carried it anywhere, or it might be buried in silt. Unfortunately, the kind of equipment he apparently had doesn't float."
"I sure would like to get hold of the film." She was still looking out at the snowy night, and I wondered if she was thinking of Aspen.
"One thing's for damn sure, he wasn't taking pictures of fish." Marino jabbed a fat log that was a little too green.
"So that pretty much leaves ships. And I think he was doing a story somebody didn't want him to do."
"He may have been doing a story," I agreed, "but that doesn't mean it's related to his death. Someone could have used his being out diving as an opportunity to kill him for another reason."
"Where do you keep the kindling?" He gave up on the fire.
"Outside under a tarp," I answered. "Dr. Mant won't allow it in the house. He's afraid of termites."
"Well, he ought to be more afraid of the fires and wind shear in this dump."
"In back, just off the porch," I said. "Thanks, Marino."
He put on gloves but no coat and went outside as the fire smoked stubbornly and the wind made eerie moaning sounds in the leaning brick chimney. I watched my niece, who was still at the window.
"We should work on dinner, don't you think?" I said to her.
"What's he doing?" she said with her back to me.
"Marino?"
"Yes. The big idiot's gotten lost. Look, he's all the way up by the wall. Wait a minute. I can't see him now. He turned his flashlight off. That's kind of weird."
Her words lifted the hair on my neck and instantly I was on my feet. I dashed into the bedroom and grabbed my pistol off the nightstand. Lucy was on my heels.
"What is it?" she exclaimed.
"He doesn't have a flashlight," I said as I ran.
Chapter 4
IN THE KITCHEN, I FLUNG OPEN THE DOOR LEADING TO the porch and ran into Marino. We almost knocked each other down.
"What the shit…?" he yelled behind a load of wood.
"There's a prowler," I spoke with quiet urgency.
Kindling thudded loudly to the floor and he ran back out into the yard, his pistol drawn. By now, Lucy had fetched her gun and was outside, too, and we were ready to handle a riot.
"Check the perimeter of the house," Marino ordered.
"I'm going over here."
I went back in for flashlights, and for a while Lucy and I circled the cottage, straining eyes and ears, but the only sight and sound was our shoes crunching as we left impressions in the snow. I heard Marino decock his pistol as we reconvened in deep shadows near the porch.
"There are footprints by the wall," he said, and his breath was white. "It's real strange. They lead down to the beach and then just disappear near the water." He looked around. "You got any neighbors who might have been out for a stroll?"
"I don't know Dr. Mant's neighbors," I replied. "But they should not have been in his yard. And who in his right mind would walk on the beach in weather like this?"
"Where on this property do the footprints go?" Lucy asked.
"Looks like he came over the wall and went about six feet inside the yard before backtracking," Marino answered.
I thought of Lucy standing before the window, backlit by the fire and lamps. Maybe the prowler had spotted her and had been scared off.
Then I thought of something else. "How do we know this person was a he?"
"If it ain't, I feel sorry for a woman with boats that big," Marino said. "The shoes are about the same size as mine."
"Shoes or boots?" I asked, heading toward the wall.
"I don't know. They got some sort of cross-hatch tread pattern." He followed me.
The footprints I saw gave me cause for more alarm. They were not from typical boots or athletic shoes.
"My God," I said. "I think this person was wearing dive boots or something with a moccasin shape like dive boots.
Look."
I pointed out the pattern to Lucy and Marino. They had gotten down next to me, footprints obliquely illuminated by my flashlight.
"No arch," Lucy noted. "They sure look like dive boots or aqua shoes to me. Now that's bizarre."
I got up and stared out over the wall at dark, heaving water. It seemed inconceivable that someone could have come up from the sea.
"Can you get photos of these?" I asked Marino.
"Sure. But I got nothing to make casts."
Then we returned to the house. He gathered the wood and carried it into the living room while Lucy and I returned our attention to dinner, which I was no longer certain I could eat because I was so tense. I poured another glass of wine and tried to dismiss the prowler as a coincidence, a harmless peregrination on the part of someone who enjoyed the snow or perhaps diving at night.