Blackwater Sound
Compelling action and suspense in the Florida Keys and Bahamas – in the atmospheric new thriller from a writer acclaimed by Dennis Lehane, Michael Connelly and Robert Crais.The Braswells had everything: money, looks and power. But when their eldest son, the family’s shining light, was killed in a freak fishing accident, he took with him a dark secret. Ten years later, in the steamy shallows off the Florida coast, an airliner crashes, killing all aboard. Helping pull corpses from the water, Thorn finds himself drawn into a bizarre conspiracy: someone has developed a high-tech weapon capable of destroying electrical systems in a powerful flash. How are the secretive Braswells and their family-owned company involved? And what does it have to do with the family’s obsessive hunt for the great marlin that killed their golden boy?Featuring two of his most popular characters, police photographer Alexandra Rafferty and reluctant investigator Thorn, BLACKWATER SOUND is James Hall’s finest thriller yet. Loaded with action and suspense, spiced with humour and featuring some of his most unforgettable villains, it bristles with all the heat and tension of a tropical Florida summer.
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JAMES HALL
BLACKWATER SOUND
For Peter Meinke, great poet and teacher and always good for a laugh
Grief fills the room up of my absent child, Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me, Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, Remembers me of all his gracious parts, Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form.
—King John, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Contents
The marlin was the color of the ocean at twenty fathoms, an iridescent blue, with eerie light smoldering within its silky flesh as if its electrons had become unstable by the cold friction of the sea. A ghostly phosphorescence, a gleaming flash, its large eyes unblinking as it slipped into a seam in the current, then rose toward the luminous surface where a school of tuna was pecking at the tiny larvae and crustaceans snagged on a weed line.
The marlin attacked from the rear of the school. An ambush. It accelerated from thirty knots to double that in only a few yards. A fusion of grace, efficiency, and blinding power. For a creature with the bulk of a bull, the marlin was as sleek as any missile and blazed through the water at a speed not even the most powerful torpedo could attain. When it crashed into the school, it stunned each fish with a blow from its three-foot bill, then swallowed it headfirst.
Morgan Braswell saw its dorsal fin and the curved arc of its tail. She saw its shadow just below the surface. Maybe it was simply the angle of the sun, but the fish looked twice the size of an ordinary marlin. Before she could utter a word, the marlin hit the trolled lure and the outrigger popped.
‘Fish on!’ Johnny yelled.
In the fighting chair Morgan lifted the rod and settled it into the leather holder that was belted around her waist. At the same moment the rod tip jerked and the hundred-pound monofilament began to scream off her reel. Nothing she could do for now except hold on and watch. They were twenty-two miles south of Key West, a marlin highway that ran along a drop-off in the ocean floor, an east-to-west ridge that plummeted from nine hundred feet to two thousand in less than a mile. Wood’s Wall was its name, the beginning of the Straits of Florida.
Andy and Johnny stood beside her. Her two brothers. Andy was the older, curly blond hair and rangy like their dad. At seventeen, a major-league science whiz, chemistry, electronics. He spent long hours in the MicroDyne lab, tinkering with new materials, new fibers, new everything. He was movie-star handsome, funny. A gifted athlete, president of his high school class, perfect scores on his college boards, courted by Stanford, MIT. A golden boy. Everyone in awe of him, most of all Johnny. Johnny was the quiet kid who tracked his big brother’s every move, stood in his shadow, said little.
Morgan was the second child, a year younger than Andy, with electric blue eyes, a sinuous figure, glossy black hair that she wore as short as Andy’s. She was well aware of the effect she had on boys, but didn’t give a damn about trading on her looks, scoring points in the Palm Beach social scene. She’d rather hang with Andy. The two of them endlessly tinkering in A.J.’s workshop or at the company lab. Metallurgy, ceramics, carbides. Morgan had the intense focus and scrupulously logical mind. Andy was the creative one, spontaneous and intuitive, a genius. She was the yin to his yang. The controlled left brain to his exuberant right. A neatly nestled fit.
Up on the flybridge, Darlene Braswell stood beside her husband, watching her daughter closely. A tall, black-haired woman with shadowy Italian eyes. A violinist with the Miami Symphony till she’d met and married A.J. Braswell. Now a vigilant mom. Too vigilant. She and Morgan hadn’t spoken for days. A bitter standoff. Last week, coming into Morgan’s room, staring at her for a full minute in prickly silence. Morgan knew what it was about, but didn’t think her mother had the nerve. She held Morgan’s eyes and finally spoke, voice neutral, asking if anything was going on she should know about. Going on? Morgan playing dumb. You know what I mean, Morgan. Is something happening between you and Andy? Morgan said nothing, glaring into her mother’s dark eyes. Okay, her mother said, if you won’t discuss this, then I’ll talk to Andy. One way or the other, I’m going to find out. You go ahead, Mom, talk to Andy, but if you do, I’ll never speak to you again. Never. Now get out of my room. Morgan pointed at her door, kept pointing till her mother turned and walked to the door and stood there a moment waiting for Morgan to open up. But she didn’t. She wasn’t about to. Her mother wouldn’t understand. Never. Not in a million years.
From up on the flybridge her father yelled at her to pay attention.
‘A little more before you hit him. Ease off on your drag, this is a big girl.’
She picked her moment, then yanked back on the rod, sunk the hook, and in the next instant the fish showed itself. Forty yards behind them, its long bill broke through, then its silver head, holding there for several seconds, its wild eye staring back at Morgan as if taking her measure. The fish shook its head furiously and flopped on its side and was gone. Sounding, diving down and down and down, the reel shrieking, the rod jumping in her hands as if she’d hooked a stallion at full gallop.
