“What’s going on?” Hauck called back to him.

The Trinidadian captain glanced at his watch and shrugged. “No one there.”

“What’s wrong, Ty?” Karen asked, suddenly worried.

He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

At a slow speed, they crept up on the bobbing craft from the port side. An anchor cable stretched underwater from the bow. No sign of life on deck. Nothing.

“When is the last time you spoke with him?” Hauck called to Neville.

“Didn’t.” The captain shrugged. “He left me a message on my cell phone last night. Said to pick you up at ten and bring you here.” He brought the Sea Angel around to within about fifty feet.

Still nobody visible.

Hauck climbed as high as he could on the railing and peered over.

Neville coasted the Sea Angel closer in. He called out, “Mistuh Hon-son?”

Only silence. Worrisome silence.

Karen placed her hand on Hauck’s shoulder. “I don’t like this, Ty.”

“Neither do I.” Hauck took the Beretta from his pocket. He grasped for the railing of the larger boat as the Sea Angel came abreast. He said to Karen, “Just stay where you are.”

He jumped on board.

“Hello?” The main deck of Charlie’s boat was completely empty. But in troubling disarray. The seat cushions were upended. Compartment drawers were open. Hauck noticed an empty bottle of rum on the deck. He bent down and picked his finger at a small stain he noticed on one of the displaced cushions, and didn’t like what he saw.

Traces of blood.

He turned to Karen, who was still on the Sea Angel with a worried look on her face. “Stay on board.”

Shifting the gun off safety, Hauck climbed down to the cabin below. The first thing he encountered was a large galley. Someone had been here. The sink was filled with mugs and pots. Cabinets were open, pawed through, condiments strewn all over the floor. Farther along, toward the stern, Hauck ran into three staterooms. In the first two, the beds had been tossed, drawers open, empty. The larger one looked like the Perfect Storm had hit it. The mattress was askew, sheets ripped all about, drawers rifled through, clothes thrown everywhere.

Hauck knelt. His eye was caught by the same traces of red on the floor.

He went back up on deck. “It’s clear,” he called to Karen. Neville ran a line and helped her climb aboard. “No one’s here.”

“What do you mean, no one’s here? Where the hell is Charles, Ty?” said Karen, agitated now.

“Zodiac’s still here,” Neville said, pointing to the yellow inflatable raft, the one Karen had seen the day before, meaning that Charlie had not taken it ashore.

“Who knew he was here?” Hauck asked Neville.

“No one. Mr. Hanson kept to himself. We just moved our location yesterday afternoon.”

Karen’s face grew tense. “I don’t like this, Ty. He wanted us to come to him.”

Hauck gazed across the bay, toward the island, maybe about two or three hundred yards away. Charles could be anywhere. Dead. Taken. On another boat. He didn’t want to tell Karen about the blood, which complicated things.

“Where’s the nearest police station?” he asked Neville.

“Amysville,” the captain replied. “Six miles or so. Around north.”

Hauck nodded soberly. “Radio them in.”

“Oh, Charlie…” Karen shook her head, exhaling a troubled breath.

Hauck went up to the bow and examined the overturned forward seat cushions, looking at the drops of blood. They seemed to lead right to the edge. He leaned over the side. The anchor line went under the surface from there. Hauck ran his hand along the cable. “Neville, hang on!”

The captain turned back from the bridge, the radio in his hand.

Hauck asked, “Do you know where the anchor switch is?”

“Of course.”

“Raise it up for me.”

Karen inhaled nervously. “What?”

Neville stared quizzically himself, then flicked a switch at the helm. Instantly, the anchor cable began to slowly wind back up. Hauck leaned over as far as he could, holding on by the railing.

“Stay back,” he said to Karen.

“Ty, what do you think is going on?” she asked, a rising anxiousness in her tone.

“Just stay back!” The anchor motor whirred. The tightly threaded cable rewound. Finally something broke the surface. Like a kind of line. Fishing wire. Seaweed wrapped around it.

“Ty…?”

A grave dread ran through Hauck as he looked it over.

The wire was wound around a hand.

“Neville, stop!” he called, throwing up his own hand. Hauck turned back to Karen. The solemn feel in his gaze communicated everything.

“Oh, Jesus, Ty, no…”

She ran to the side to look, panicked. Hauck came back over and caught her, tucking her face firmly into his chest, hiding her from the ugly sight.

“No…”

He held on to her as she flinched, trying to break away from him. He motioned to Neville for him to raise the line a little higher.

The cable wound a few more turns. The hand that came out of the water locked tightly around the cable. Slowly, the rest of the body began to emerge.

Hauck’s heart sank.

He had never seen Charles except in Karen’s photos. What he was staring at now was a swollen, ghostly version of him. He hid Karen’s face away and held her firmly to his chest.

“Is it him?” she asked, eyes averted, unable to look.

Charles’s bloated white face rose above the surface-staring widely.

Hauck raised his hand and signaled for Neville to stop.

“Is it him, Ty?” Karen asked again, fighting back tears.

“Yeah, it’s him.” He nodded. He pressed her face close to his chest and held her as she shook. “It’s him.”

CHAPTER NINETY-ONE

A launch of white-uniformed officers from the town of Amysville arrived an hour later with a local detective on board.

Together, they raised him.

Karen and Hauck stood by, watching Charles’s body pulled up on deck, stripped of the oily seaweed and debris that had clung to him and the wires that had bound him to the anchor line.

Hauck identified himself as a police detective from the States and spoke with the local official, who was named Wilson, while Karen stood by, holding her face in her hands. Hauck identified her as Hanson’s ex-wife and said they had gotten back in touch after a year and had come to visit. They both said they had no idea who would want to do such a horrible thing. Robbers, maybe. Look at the boat. That seemed easiest, without opening everything up. Whatever happened next, Hauck determined it was important that he control the investigation from the States, and if they came entirely clean with the local authorities, that wouldn’t happen. They gave their names and their addresses back in the States. A brief statement. They told the detective what line of work Hanson had been in-investments. Hauck knew, once they checked, that Charles’s new name wouldn’t yield much.

The detective thanked them cordially but seemed to regard their stories with a skeptical eye.

Two of his men lifted Charles over to a yellow body bag. Karen asked if she could have a moment. They agreed.

She knelt down next to him. She felt she had already said her good-byes to him so many times before, shed her tears. But now, as she looked into the strange calm of his face, the puffy, bluish skin, recalling both the anguish and the resigned smile he had displayed on the beach the day before, the tears began to flow, all over again. Unjudging this time. Hot streaming rivers down her cheeks.

Oh, Charlie… Karen picked a piece of debris out of his hair.

So many things hurtled back to her. The night they first met-at the arts benefit-Charlie all decked out in his tux, with a bright red tie. The horn-rim frames he always wore. What had he said that charmed her? “What did you do to deserve to sit with this boring crowd?” Their wedding at the Pierre. The day he opened Harbor, that first trade-Halliburton, she recalled-everything so full of hope and promise. How he would run along the sidelines at Alex’s lacrosse games, living and dying with each goal, shouting out his name-“Go, Alex, go!” clapping exuberantly.