“We need to take his mask off,” I said, and I motioned to the rescuers.
They seemed confused, and wherever the transducer was, it clearly wasn’t with them.
They couldn’t hear a word we said.
“You need some help getting your mask off?” one of them shouted as he reached toward me.
I waved him off and shook my head. Grabbing the side of the boat, I hoisted myself up enough to reach the basket.
I pulled off the dead man’s mask, emptied it of water, and laid it next to his hooded head with its straying long wet hair. It was then I knew him, despite the deep oval impression etched around his eyes. I knew the straight nose and dark mustache framing his full mouth. I recognized the reporter who had always been so fair with me.
“Okay?” One of the rescuers shrugged.
I gave them an okay, although I could tell they did not understand the importance of what I had just done. My reason was cosmetic, for the longer the mask caused pressure against skin fast losing elasticity, the slighter the chance that the indentation would fade. This was an unimportant concern to investigators and paramedics, but not to loved ones who would want to see Ted Eddings’ face.
“Am I transmitting?” I then asked Ki Soo and Jerod as we bobbed in the water.
“You’re fine. What do you want done with all this hose?” Jerod asked.
“Cut it about eight feet from the body and clamp off the end,” I said. “Seal that and his regulator in a plastic bag.”
“I got a salvage bag in my BC,- Ki Soo volunteered.
“Sure. That will work.”
After we had done what we could, we rested for a moment, floating and looking across muddy water to the johnboat and the hookah. As I surveyed where we had been, I realized that the screw Eddings’ hose had snagged on belonged to the Exploiter. The submarine looked post-World War II, maybe around the time of the Korean War, and I wondered if it had been stripped of its finer parts and was on its way to being sold for scrap. I wondered if Eddings had been diving around it for a reason, or if after death, he had drifted there.
The rescue boat was halfway to the landing on the other side of the river where an ambulance waited to take the body to the morgue. Jerod gave me the okay sign and I returned it, although everything did not feel okay at all. Air rushed as we deflated our BCs, and we dipped back under water the color of old pennies.
There was a ladder leading from the river to the dive platform, and then another to the pier. My legs trembled as I climbed, for I was not as strong as Jerod and Ki Soo, who moved in all their gear as if it weighed the same as skin.
But I got out of my BC and tank myself and did not ask for help. A police cruiser rumbled near my car, and someone was towing Eddings’ johnboat across the river to the landing. Identity would have to be verified, but I had no doubt.
“So what do you think?” a voice overhead suddenly asked.
I looked up to find Captain Green standing next to a tall, slender man on the pier.
Green was apparently now feeling charitable, and reached down to help. “Here,” he said.
“Hand me your tank.”
“I won’t know a thing until I examine him,” I said as I lifted it up, then the other gear.
“Thanks. The johnboat with the hose and everything else should go straight to the morgue,” I added.
“Really? What are you going to do with it?” he asked.
“The hookah gets an autopsy, too.”
“You’re going to want to rinse your stuff really good,” the slender man said to me as if he knew more than Jacques Cousteau, and his voice was familiar. “There’s a lot of oil and rust in there.”
“There certainly is,” I agreed, climbing up to the pier.
“I’m Detective Roche,” he then said, and he was oddly dressed in jeans and an old letter jacket. “I heard you say his hose was caught on something?”