“You were way beyond wonderful. I don’t think I’ve ever had a night like that. I’m exhausted.”

“You’ll live.” She slapped him on his naked buttocks. “Now get me that duffel.”

Stone went forward to the door of the engine room, under the companionway. He opened it, walked down two steps, and looked around the small compartment, which contained the two engines and a small workshop. It was as clean and neat as the galley, he thought. On the bulkhead behind the workbench, all the ship’s tools were arrayed in motion-proof brackets. He picked up a wrench and saw that each tool had been traced in black paint. He marveled at the time Paul Manning had spent ordering his ship. He turned and looked at the other equipment. There was a wet suit, hung neatly on a hanger, and a pair of diving tanks resting in custom-made stainless steel holders fixed to the bulkhead.

Then, in a sudden, sickening flash, Stone became a cop again.

He saw something that, in an earlier day, would have made his heart leap in triumph, but now made him feel sick with revulsion.

Next to the tanks, fixed to the bulkhead and outlined in black paint like all the tools, was a spear gun for underwater fishing, with brackets for the gun and three spears. One of the spears was missing, its outline empty. That would have given him pause, but it was something else that immobilized him. The spear gun was there, but it had been taken down and awkwardly replaced backward in its brackets, the opposite of its painted outline.

Stone knew in an instant that Paul Manning would never, never have replaced the gun in anything but its proper position. It had been put there by someone else, of course, but the third spear had not been returned to its place.

The third spear, he knew beyond a doubt, was still in what was left of Paul Manning’s body, out there in the depths of the cold, cold ocean.

Chapter
42

Stone placed the small duffel on the bed in the aft cabin and looked at Allison, who was sitting on the little stool in front of the vanity, brushing her hair. She looked, he thought, like something out of a Degas oil. He was having a lot of trouble. It wouldn’t be the first time, he thought, that he had represented a client whom he knew to be guilty; that was part of his job. It was the first time, however, that he had represented a guilty client with whom he had been enthusiastically making love—one he had grown very fond of—was nearly in love with. It was also the first time he had represented anyone charged with a capital crime. He was trying very hard to ignore his cop’s instincts and keep her innocent in his mind.

“Allison,” he said absently.

“Yes?”