“Could you…walk with me on the beach?”
“Do I really look like a beach guy to you?”
“Just for a few minutes? Please?”
Chapter31
ONCE MORE DURING THIS TRIPDecker found himself on the sand.
Roe had taken off her shoes. Decker had stuffed his socks in his coat pocket. He towered over her as he did most people. They walked in silence for a minute or so until she stopped and looked toward the water.
“It was out there, somewhere.”
“You never said how your father died.”
“I didn’t, did I?”
“Look, it’s no business of mine.”
“I didn’t bring you out here because it was no business of yours.”
He looked out to the horizon. “Okay, I’m listening.”
“I think he went out to fish. My father loved deep-sea fishing.”
“Was he alone?”
“I don’t know.”
“How could you not know?”
“Well, no one went out with him, at least that I know of. But that doesn’t mean he was alone.”
“Anyone reported missing other than him?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Well, if someonewaswith him, wouldn’t they have come back and told you what happened?”
“No one came back. The boat disappeared. They never found any bodies. They never found the cause of what had happened.”
“You mean no debris, no oil slick to show if the boat went down?”
“They did a brief search of the area where they thought he might have been, but they did no underwater search because there was no evidence that the boat sank. And it’s a huge area. And unlike a plane which has to file a flight plan, you don’t have to file a plan for your boat trip. The regular fishing charters go to the same areas, but that didn’t apply to my father, of course.”
“Who reported him missing, then?”
“A friend of his who often went fishing with him. No one realized my father had not come back until the next day. He went out on a Saturday and no one noticed his boat was missing from its slip until later in the day on Sunday. Then, as I said, they sent a search team out to where they thought he might have been. They found nothing. But he might not have stayed in that location. The water is very deep out there. During the time he was gone, the boat could have sunk. But as I said, they found no evidence of that.”
“Then how do you know he died?”
“Because I’ve heard nothing from him for three years. If he was alive, he would have contacted me. He has to be dead. My father would not leave me in limbo.”
“Are there pirates out there?” asked Decker.
“There are smugglers. And he might have run into something like that. I had an investigation done along those lines, and it got nowhere.” She turned to Decker. “Which is why the Slovakian money found at the crime scene has me…concerned.”
“Because it might somehow connect to your father’s disappearance?”