Purgatory Ridge

10

FOR TWO HOURS, standing on the flying bridge, LePere headed the Anne Marie south by southeast at a steady eighteen knots. The lake was calm, the passage smooth. He made for the Apostle Islands, which lay on the water in the distance like blue whales sunning. To the Anishinaabe people, many of the islands were sacred, homes of manidoog, spirits of the lake. To John LePere, they were gravestones marking the place where Billy and twenty-seven other good men had died.

Wesley Bridger snoozed in the cockpit on the stern deck. He wore sunglasses and had put on an old canvas hat for protection against the sun. LePere worried a little about Bridger. The man had been drunk on whiskey the night before. For a dive as deep as the one they would make that day, it was best to abstain from drinking alcohol for a good thirty-six hours beforehand. But Bridger knew that. He’d been the instructor who certified LePere.

Wesley Bridger was the closest thing John LePere had to a friend, and LePere owed him in a lot of ways. The man had come into his life the summer before. Their first connection was a mutual fondness for boilermakers.

LePere had been sitting in the casino bar after he’d completed his shift. He was on his second boilermaker when Bridger took the stool next to him.

“Hey, bartender, drinks for everybody, on me,” he called.

The bartender had paused in wiping a glass and looked unimpressed. “Everybody’s him,” he said, indicating LePere.

“Then give him what he wants.”

“Boilermaker,” the bartender said without bothering to ask LePere.

“Give me the same.” He stuck out his hand. “Name’s Bridger-Wes Bridger. And I just won me twenty thousand dollars.”

LePere shook his hand but not with enthusiasm. A free drink was good; conversation wasn’t. Bridger did all the talking. How he’d just hit town. Killing time now. Loved to gamble; did okay. Did LePere know any friendly women.

By the fourth boilermaker, LePere found his own tongue had slipped its rein. Before the evening was out, he’d told Bridger his life story, the whole tragic tale of the sinking of the Alfred M. Teasdale.

A couple of nights later, Bridger plopped on the stool beside him again. “Hey, Chief, what’s shaking?” He slapped down an old copy of a magazine called The Great Lakes Journal, a slick publication with lots of photographs, and he turned to a page that showed a photo of LePere, younger by ten years, standing at the wheel of a Grand Banks trawler. The title of the article was “My Brother’s Seeker.” It was about how John Sailor LePere sailed Lake Superior in his spare time trying to locate the wreck of the Teasdale, hoping to find his brother’s body in that coffin of a ship, hoping to give Billy a decent burial.

“You really thought your brother’s body might still be there?”

LePere slowly spun his whiskey glass. “Doesn’t matter what I thought. I gave it up.”

“In favor of booze?”

“I just want to forget it, okay.”

“But you can’t, can you, Chief? Still have nightmares, I’ll bet. Can’t hold a job or maintain a relationship. Am I right?”

LePere tossed down a shot of Wild Turkey and followed it with a long draw on a chaser of Leinenkugel.

“Ever heard of PTSD, Chief?”

“What is that? Something makes your car run better?”

“Post-traumatic stress disorder. A lot of Vietnam vets suffer from it. But I understand it can happen as a result of almost any traumatic event. Like watching your brother and your shipmates drown.”

“So my nightmares have a name. Big deal.”

“Chief, why do you figure that boat went down?”

“Forget it.”

“You think it went down just because it was an old bucket, right? Maybe missing a few rivets. A tragic accident just waiting to happen. Maybe that’s what the shipping company bastards wanted you to think. You and the insurance company.”

LePere had his beer glass almost to his lips, but he stopped and looked straight at Wesley Bridger. “I gotta go.” He put his beer down and started to slide off the stool.

“What if it was murder, Chief? Cold-blooded, well-planned murder.”

LePere’s chest suddenly felt constricted and for a moment he couldn’t breathe. He swung back and leaned on the bar.

“‘Nother boilermaker here,” Bridger called to the bartender.

The glasses came; LePere didn’t touch his drink. His mouth was dry, but he wasn’t thirsty.

“Let me tell you a story,” Bridger began. “My third year as a SEAL, I got tapped for an assignment. Me and two others. Top-secret stuff. We meet with these intelligence people and the deal is this: There’s a freighter preparing to depart Singapore, flying the Libyan flag. She’s loaded with phosphates or something, but that ain’t all, because these intelligence guys want to make certain she doesn’t reach Qaddafi. They can’t do anything officially because they don’t want to cause an international incident. So what they propose we do is go under that freighter and attach a line of explosives across the hull. They want us to rig the charges with remote electronic detonation capability. They figure to shadow that freighter, and when it hits high seas, detonate the explosives. They want to make a perforated line across the hull. They’re hoping the stress on the vessel will make it break apart, like tearing a sheet of creased paper, and it will go down looking as if it had all been a tragic accident. I’m thinking these guys are fucking nuts, but they got rank, right? So we do it. Get the explosives and detonators in place, then we all follow that fucking freighter in a little boat of our own. Three days out, we hit rough weather. Encounter eighteen-foot waves. Guy who’s in charge of this operation gives the order. One by one, the charges go off. We’re monitoring their radio broadcasts, and we’re holding our breath, wondering if they’re aware of the explosions. But, hell, you been in gales. You know how noisy it is inside a ship that’s being hammered by rough seas. And each charge by itself is nothing big. Anyway, they don’t say jack about it over the airwaves. The ship, she don’t seem to show any effects. Just keeps right on moving. Everybody’s getting nervous, except the dude who planned the whole thing. He’s telling us all to be patient. And sure enough, about twelve hours later, just as the storm’s starting to let up, that big-ass freighter folds in half and goes to the bottom in a couple miles of ocean. Nothing in the final transmissions says anything about sabotage. It looks like a terrible accident caused by structural flaws and the fury of Mother Nature. Fucking ingenious.”

During the whole story, LePere had been staring at his hands, which were gripping the top of the bar. “You’re saying somebody sank the Teasdale?”

“I’m only saying it’s been done before because I did it. And just think for a minute, Chief. That old scow was due to be scrapped. How much does the Fitzgerald Shipping Company get for a few hundred tons of scrap metal versus insurance on an ore carrier fully loaded? The difference is probably enough to tempt anybody to commit murder. I’d bet my left nut on it.”

That evening, LePere had stumbled from the bar in a daze not due to the boilermakers. He spent a sleepless night reliving the sinking of the Teasdale, dredging up every detail, examining it with bitter care. He thought about the boom that awakened him, that had made the ship pitch so that he’d been thrown from his bunk. He thought about Pete Swanson, the coal passer they’d picked up in Detroit, a man he’d never worked with before, a man whose dying words were “I blew it.” LePere had always thought Swanson was simply delirious. But maybe there was more to it. Maybe he was trying to make a confession before he died, before he went to hell for his treachery. By the time a dingy morning light crept through his bedroom window, LePere had decided.

After his shift the next day, he found Wesley Bridger at a twenty-dollar blackjack table. In front of Bridger were several hefty stacks of green chips.

“I want to talk,” LePere said.

Bridger waved him off. “Later, Chief. I’m on a roll.”

“Now.”

“Okay, okay.” He gathered his chips, tossed one to the dealer, and stuffed the others in his pockets. He followed LePere to the bar.

“Why’d you come to Aurora?” LePere asked.

“Like I told you, Chief. Just kicking around. Doing a little gambling, that’s all. I like the casino here.”

“There are other casinos. Why here?”

Bridger signaled the bartender. “Jack Daniel’s, on the rocks. Anything for you, Chief?”

LePere shook his head.

The whiskey came. Bridger knocked it back.

“Ever since I left the SEALs, I’ve been a gambler. Small-time stuff. Never had the kind of stake it takes to play in the big games. One day I’m in the dentist’s office. Got me an impacted wisdom tooth. I’m in the waiting room, waiting for my turn in the chair, reading this magazine. Great Lakes Journal. I find that story about you and the ore boat that went down. It gets me to thinking about that freighter I had a hand in sinking. I figure if you were to find that wreck, at the very least you could probably prove negligence. But maybe you could prove murder. In either case, a jury is gonna give you a shitload of money. I figure it’s worth the gamble. So here I am.”

“To do what?”

“This is the deal. I stake you, Chief. I outfit that old boat of yours-we fix ‘er up, make her seaworthy, give her some good sonar. I teach you how to dive and supply the equipment. When we find the wreck-and I guarantee you we will-and when we get the evidence to nail those bastards to the wall, you give me a percentage of whatever the jury awards you.”

LePere looked at him and said nothing.

“Aren’t you going to ask what kind of percentage?”

“You help me find that wreck, you help me prove the Fitzgerald Shipping Company murdered Billy, you can have it all.”

Bridger laughed. “That’s okay, Chief. I’m not greedy.” He shoved his hand at LePere. “Deal?”

“Deal,” LePere said. And they shook on it.

A half mile east of Outer Island, LePere approached a buoy and cut the engine. Bridger woke up, stretched, and yawned. He stepped to the gunwale of the Anne Marie, where he stood a while, studying the lake.

“Tie her up to the buoy,” LePere called as he maneuvered the boat near.

Bridger grabbed the bowline in one hand and a gaff in the other. He hooked the buoy with the gaff, drew the boat up next to it, and secured the line. LePere shut off the engine, and the quiet of the lake settled over them.

“Damn fine day for a dive,” Bridger declared. He threw off his hat and began to undress.

The water of Lake Superior was far too frigid for a wet suit. The men donned dry suits of insulated, vulcanized rubber that kept the water from touching them. The suits had boots and hoods, and under the rubber the men wore sweats to fight the cold they’d encounter one hundred and fifty feet below the surface. LePere strapped his knife to the inside of his lower left leg. He buckled weights about his waist. From his belt hung a nylon bag for collecting things and a powerful Ikelite to illuminate the depths. He hefted his air tank onto his back. An extra hose hung from the regulator, and this LePere plugged into a valve on the front of his dry suit. The hose would feed a layer of air under the rubber to help insulate the suit and keep him dry. He pulled on his mask and, last of all, a pair of insulated gloves. He was left with only a small area of exposed skin on his face between his mask and the edge of his hood. He glanced at Bridger, who’d held off putting on his mask and was staring at a boat anchored a few hundred yards away.

“Third time, Chief,” Bridger said, sounding unhappy.

“Third time what?”

“Third time that white launch has been anchored there when we dive. I thought last time it was just coincidence. Got your field glasses?”

LePere climbed up to the flying bridge and grabbed the binoculars from beside the wheel. He came back down and gave them to Bridger, who put them to his eyes.

“Too far away. Can’t read the name or registration. I don’t like it. Maybe we should hold off diving.”

“I’m not getting this close and turning back. Come on, Wes. So what if they’ve been there before. They haven’t done anything.”

“Doesn’t mean they won’t. Look, Chief, if it’s the Fitzgerald Shipping Company, and you can bet your ass it is, they’ve killed before. Adding a couple more dead men to the roster wouldn’t mean anything to those greedy bastards.”

“Do whatever you want. Me, I’m diving.” LePere lifted the new video camera, a Sony DCR-VX1000 in a Gates aluminum housing. The camera and deepwater housing had set Bridger back more than two grand, but it was absolutely necessary to gather the evidence they needed. “Come on, Wes,” LePere said.

Bridger hollered toward the launch, “Fuck you!” He lifted his hand and gave the distant boat the finger. “All right. I’m ready now.”

LePere went over the side. A minute later, Bridger followed.

The previous summer, Bridger and LePere had begun the search for the Alfred M. Teasdale. Bridger had paid to equip the Anne Marie with sonar and they’d carefully swept the area northeast of the Apostle Islands where LePere believed the Teasdale might have gone down. It took them weeks. Then they found the bow. Unfortunately, it lay in over three hundred feet of water, too deep for scuba. They were forced to abandon the hunt for the stern when the foul weather of November set in. They began again in April. Two months later they finally found the rest of the Teasdale, all in one piece. The propeller had still been turning when the aft section of the ore boat headed off into the storm, carrying Billy away. The stern had traveled more than five miles before it finally sank, coming to rest at a steep angle on the rocky bottom off Outer Island. On the first dive, they’d attached a steel cable to the propeller shaft and spooled the cable to the surface, where they set the buoy to mark the site.

On this dive, LePere could feel how the hot, dry summer had warmed the upper layer of water, but he knew that in the darkness where they were going, warmth never penetrated. He followed Bridger down the cable. At ten feet, they passed a yellow marker that indicated the place where, when they surfaced, they had to hold for ten minutes while they decompressed. LePere was already beginning to feel the growing pressure of the water on his inner ears.

At thirty feet, Bridger switched on his Ikelite. The water illuminated in the strong beam was blue-green. Except for the suck and sigh of his own breathing and the constant putter of bubbles expelled from his hose, LePere heard no sounds.

At seventy feet, the atmospheric pressure had quadrupled. They were nearing the depth where, LePere knew, without scuba his ribs would collapse, crushing his lungs. He could feel the press of the deepening cold through the rubber of his suit.

The curve of the Teasdale’s stern and the ten-foot blades of the propeller loomed out of the dark at one hundred feet. The hull rested on its side, tilted down a rocky slope at a forty-degree angle. LePere checked the psi gauge on his regulator hose. He’d used one third of his oxygen just reaching the bottom. He had only ten minutes of dive time before he and Bridger had to start back to the surface.

The man in the restaurant in Beaver Bay had been right. At that depth, in that cold, the lake was like a great meat locker and the dead did not decompose. When LePere had first found the wreck, he’d spent all of the precious minutes of every dive searching the quarters, the galley, the boiler room, the maze of companionways, looking in vain for Billy’s body. He’d carefully canvassed the rocks where the hull was cradled, but all he’d found there was the coal that had spilled from the gaping cargo hold. He’d known it was probably foolish, but he had to be certain. Now he dived for a different reason, something he might have argued was justice but felt very much like revenge.

Bridger let LePere take the lead, and they started down the sloping hull where, three hundred feet farther and fifty feet deeper, was the midsection with its severed edge.

LePere hadn’t gone far when the rhythmic clank of metal brought him around. Bridger had stopped and was tapping his tank with his knife. When he saw that he had LePere’s attention, he cupped his hand to the place on his hood where his ear would be, and he pointed toward the surface.

LePere listened. He heard it, too. A sound like the distant buzz of a summer cicada. A boat somewhere above them. Where exactly, LePere couldn’t tell. Abruptly, the sound stopped. Bridger shined his light upward. He looked like a man hanging at the end of a luminous icicle. He gestured emphatically, urging them to surface. LePere shook his head just as emphatically. He had only a few minutes left, and he intended to use the whole time for the purpose that had brought them. He turned and started again down the hull, ignoring the angry banging of the knife against Bridger’s tank.

His own Ikelite pierced the dark ahead of him. He took only a couple of minutes to reach the place where the hull ended suddenly in ragged metal. Slipping over the lip, he shined his light into the huge cavern that had been the hold of the ore boat. For a long moment, he hung suspended in the mouth of memory. The hold was empty now and black. But on that night a dozen years before when LePere stood at the edge of the sinking bow section, crying out Billy’s name, the hold had been full of smoke and fire. LePere had stared into the belly of a beast, and the beast had answered his cries with its own deafening scream of rending metal. He’d watched, paralyzed, as the beast tried to mount the deck where he stood, tried to get at him, to crush his bones. Many times after that, in the lonely dark of a drunken night, LePere found himself wishing bitterly the beast had succeeded.

The beam of Bridger’s light swung into the hold beside his own. Bridger signaled toward his watch. They didn’t have much time. Using their lights, they began to inspect the plating along the edge of the opening. About halfway down the hull, Bridger pointed to an area of metal that appeared gouged, bubbled at the edges, and he gave LePere an enthusiastic thumbs-up. LePere turned on the camera and drifted slowly down, pausing to let the camera linger on those areas where Bridger indicated. Very soon-too soon for LePere-Bridger pointed upward. Time to surface. LePere checked the gauge on his regulator. The needle lay at 500 psi. Bridger was right. They should head up. LePere ignored him and kept at the work. Bridger grabbed him and yanked him away from the hull. He jammed his hand upward vehemently. LePere could guess what he’d have said if he could speak. But they were onto something, and there was so much more to film. He shrugged off Bridger’s hand. With a disgusted gesture, Wesley Bridger washed his hands of his partner, turned away, and exited the cargo hold. LePere was alone in the great empty dark.

Although he was angry with Bridger for a moment, he knew the man was right. And he knew, too, that to jeopardize his diving companion was a selfish and ultimately cowardly thing to do. He turned off his camera, pointed his Ikelite where Bridger had gone, and followed.

He was thinking in an excited way about what he’d captured on the film, but he didn’t think it long. As he swung under the ragged lip at the entrance to the hold, he felt himself pulled back, like a dog on a leash. Some part of his gear had snagged on the sharp teeth of the broken, twisted metal that surrounded the mouth of the open hold. He tried to turn back but found he couldn’t. He imagined his air hose, hooked on a razor-sharp sliver, ready to be severed if he pulled too hard. Reaching back, he tried to feel what was hung up, but his camera and light encumbered him. He realized he was breathing hard. At that depth every breath took several times more oxygen from his tank than at the surface. He could feel the panic taking control. Stay calm, he told himself. He swung his light over his shoulder but couldn’t turn himself to look. He strained to reach back, to feel the problem, only the camera got in the way and his thick gloves made his hands too clumsy. He let go of the camera and watched it drop slowly into the dark below him, then he took a precious few moments to peel off his gloves. Immediately the frigid water made the muscle and bone ache. He felt along his air hose, then his tank. Nothing. What the hell was hanging him up?

He checked the gauge on his regulator again: 300 psi. Even if he freed himself now, there wasn’t enough air left to make a safe, slow climb to the surface. His only hope would be to inflate the vest he wore as a weight compensator and shoot himself upward to the ten-foot marker for decompression. There’d be hell to pay in a lot of ways, but at least he’d be alive.

Then the beam of another light struck him full in the face. Wesley Bridger maneuvered behind him, and a moment later LePere was free. They swam quickly up the hull. At the cable, they started toward the surface. Bridger stayed beside him, holding him back when he tried to go too fast. At thirty feet, LePere motioned toward his tank, then made a slashing motion across his throat, indicating that he was out of air. Bridger pointed toward his own mouthpiece and gave him the “okay” sign. They held at ten feet, sharing the last of the air in Bridger’s tank. Finally they surfaced and climbed aboard the Anne Marie.

LePere shed his mask and gear and turned to his diving buddy. “Thanks, Wes.” He offered his hand gratefully.

“Forget it.” Bridger accepted LePere’s hand. “Christ, you’re freezing. Where are your gloves?”

“Had to get rid of them. The camera, too. I’ve got to go back down.”

“Not today.”

“I’ve got to get that camera.”

“It’s not going anywhere. One close call in a day is plenty.”

The late morning was hot, the sun bright. Although it felt great standing on the deck of the Anne Marie, breathing in the sweet, plentiful air, LePere couldn’t help thinking about the evidence he’d captured on film. He wanted it in his hands.

“What kind of SIT are we looking at?” he asked, speaking of the time interval required on the surface before he could safely make another dive.

Bridger had turned away and now knelt at the portable compressor they’d brought to fill their tanks for a second dive. “I said forget it.” He stood up. “We couldn’t go back down even if I wanted to, which I definitely do not. Somebody took the filter off the compressor, Chief. They were probably hoping you’d go down again. Wanted you to breathe dirty air. I told you those rich sons of bitches would do more than just watch us. That camera of yours must’ve made ‘em nervous.” He scanned the lake, but the white launch was nowhere in sight.

“We’ll come back tomorrow,” LePere said.

“I already told you. I’m in a big poker tournament down at Grand Casino Mille Lacs tomorrow. We can do it another day.” Bridger glanced at him. “Ah Jesus, Chief. I can read you like you’re thinking in neon.” He stepped across the deck toward LePere, who’d never seen on Bridger’s face a look so serious or afraid. “Promise me, God damn it. Promise me on your brother’s watery grave here that you won’t dive alone. Promise me, Chief.”

The lake was dead calm. Over it hung a high pall scented with the vague smell of smoke. The sun was white, and it lit a pale fire on the lake all around the Anne Marie. John Sailor LePere looked at these things, then at Wesley Bridger. He smiled calmly and said, “I promise.”