Read Online Payback by Keith Douglass - Free Book Online Page A

world who can beat us.”
    â€œWe can’t say for sure he was killed in the water,Commander. He might have been drowned first, then stabbed, or the other way around.”
    â€œStill, it would take an extremely skilled and trained man to do it to Irwin. If that’s so, you may be dealing here with something more than a shiv fight at a tavern.”
    The sheriff shifted in his seat, took a sip of his coffee, and stared at Murdock over the rim of the cup.
    â€œCommander, I don’t know just how much to tell you. Irwin wasn’t on a water assignment the night he was killed, but we had been talking about another water death of an oil-rig worker. The man had been snorkeling and became entangled in wire around one leg of his diving platform three feet underwater. He drowned. The wire hadn’t been there the day before.”
    â€œYou have any suspects?”
    â€œNot for sure. The platform boss where the man died said the worker had been curious about another drilling platform. Said curious things were going on out there. Gifford, the drowned man, was a scuba instructor and led kids on free-diving tours. He was an expert in the water. The coroner’s report says he was clubbed on the head and then drowned.”
    â€œSo, Irwin wanted to check out that other oil platform?” Murdock asked.
    â€œWe did. Went on a safety inspection. Everything seemed normal. She was drilling, nothing out of order.”
    â€œBut Irwin wasn’t satisfied. You guess that he parked his car on the point and swam out to the other platform.”
    The sheriff frowned. “I’m not sure of anything. But that is a strong possibility. Irwin wasn’t easy to get off a project once he got a sniff of something rotten. I’d bet my last twenty he swam out there the night he was killed.”
    â€œWhat could they be doing illegal on that drilling rig?” Murdock asked. “It’s too small to store drugs on there that they took off some ship. They could be smuggling diamonds, but that would be a lot of extra trouble. What could be going on?”
    â€œWe’ve had reports of merchant freighters stopping at the platform,” the sheriff said. “Some stay a few hours, some overnight. Makes no sense to me.”
    â€œA question. If they killed the first man and tried to makeit look like an accident, why didn’t they do the same with Irwin? If they couldn’t, why would they let the body wash up on shore when it would be obvious he was murdered?”
    â€œBothered us here too. Our best ideas are that in the fight the other man might have been wounded and had to go for aid, or maybe he simply lost the body. It would sink right after being killed, and at night at even a hundred feet a black-clad body would be tough to find.”
    â€œMakes sense, Sheriff. This is sounding more and more like something highly sensitive is happening on or near that tower. The ships stopping is puzzling. Were there many Orientals on that platform?”
    â€œYes, now that you mention it. The man who toured us around said they had a lot of foreign workers. They didn’t care what nationality they were if they were good at their jobs.”
    â€œOrientals? Chinese?”
    â€œI’m no expert telling Chinese from Japanese from Koreans, but I’d guess there were ten or fifteen Orientals out there who I saw.”
    â€œHave you made a report to any other agency?”
    â€œJust the Coast Guard. I reminded them that I have jurisdiction on the platforms, but they might want to keep an eye on them.”
    â€œI was thinking more like the U.S. Attorney General’s office or the FBI.”
    â€œOh, hell, no. Why would they be interested?”
    â€œI don’t know, just wondered.”
    The two men looked at each other for a moment. Then the sheriff shook his head. “I can’t let you go out there, Commander. I lost one good man to whatever it is out there. I don’t want