The ocean resembled thick black oil sloshing around in a drum. It's undulating surface gave the appearance of some slick reptilian-like creature, stretching back muscles before an evening's hunt. The crescent moon arrived as a crooked smile off the Yucatan peninsula with bright shiny teeth that offered just enough light on the beach for the girl to arrange her diving equipment. A bead of nervous sweat trickled off spiky blonde hair, ran down the nape of slender neck; chased along a line of rigged collarbone then leaked into the small space between her breasts.

Pilfering the video camera and D.P.V. (Diver Propulsion-Vehicle or underwater scooter) from the Captain's shop had not been a smart idea. Scuba diving alone, and especially at night, was definitely stupid. Sneaking up on a Mexican fishing trawler to film the effects of illegal drift netting over a coral reef was ludicrous. Attempting sabotage is always risky. Unfortunately, as it turned out, this was a night when she should have stayed home.

She maneuvered the bright yellow D.P.V. into the water. The magnet strapped around her slim wrist turned on the electric motor, which in turn started the propeller twirling. The muffled hum of the machine offered the false reassurance of security that some women associate with things that vibrate. She gazed in fascination at the wild array of stars and planets that twinkled in the sky and off the ocean's surface. It was almost as if she were floating in space with brilliant lights dancing above and below her. The serenity of the scene was corrupted by the trawler's presence. Butterflies swapped punches in her stomach.

For three days the boat had been anchored precariously close to the reef which is not unusual in itself, but a net left unattended, snagging coral and indiscriminately killing anything unlucky enough to become tangled up in its path, was inconceivable.

With a heart of gold and a set of misplaced yet honorable intentions, she carried on with her mission: guesstimating where the monofilament lines might be snagged on reef, where the trawler's anchor may lie, the direction of the current and where the free end of the net might dangle. She pointed the yellow painted lubber line etched along top of the underwater compass towards the boat; then swiveled the bezel until the small double point marker clicked onto the correct heading. She pulled her facemask down, drawing the straps tight. Putting the regulator in her mouth she exhaled a puff of metallic gray air into the night. And then with the grace of an angel spreading open her wings for the first time, she slipped into the darkened sea.

Without a strong moon and with the D.P.V. now pulling her along at a speed close to a brisk walk, bioluminescent plankton showered around her in a neon green that sparkled and trailed like chips of meteor tearing through the stratosphere. Halogen lights mounted over the video camera reflected back the red eyes of shrimp and squid. It also attracted hundreds if not thousands of tiny coral worms and sea lice, the way a porch light beckons flying insects.

Her diving computer displayed twelve minutes submerged at a depth of twenty meters, meaning, she was close to the edge. At thirty meters, the coral and sand would end into a cliff, the top of a wall actually. A drop into the abyss. A 2000-foot deep crack trenched between the island of Cozumel and the mainland of Playa Del Carmen. Water channeled through this hollow runs fast.

Finally gaining enough speed to lose the annoying litter critters, she started to relax. Neutrally buoyant, she glided weightlessly across a rainbow of mounds and lumps. An oddly ironic thought crossed her mind: around 10 meters deep if you cut yourself you bleed green. Light becomes diffracted in water, so you lose color the deeper you go; and besides that, she was diving under the cloaked blackness of night. But because of the bright camera lights, she was seeing the true color of the corals. Truer than what divers in the daylight would see.

As she approached the drop, she passed through a thermocline, a thin invisible layer where cold-water refuses to mix with warm. The sudden change in temperature sent a shuddering chill through her bones. She banked hard right and followed along the wall's edge. At the current depth, her computer only allowed 9 more minutes underwater before she risked decompression sickness. Gases under pressure turn to liquid, the same way a soft drink is carbonated. When breathing compressed air at depth, nitrogen enters the blood stream at an excelled rate. Diving too deep--for too long--or coming up too fast is like shaking a Coke can and popping the top.

     At first sight, it resembled a giant spider web. Her emerald green eyes ogled the approaching net so intensely she didn't even notice the Portuguese Man-O-War directly in her path. Luckily, the surge created by her approach pushed its dome shaped head underneath her body. The Man-O-War has stinging tentacles that can dangle for meters, and every one of those deadly strings is the equivalent of a million tiny fishing hooks wired to an electrical socket. The thought of what she might find tangled in the nets made her face grimace the way one looks at an infected wound. Her hands ached from gripping the handles so tightly that it took a concentrated effort to hold onto the D.P.V. while starting the video camera, adjust the focus, and equalize the changing pressure on her ears.

A school of Yellow snappers, a few medium-size jacks and a rather large Hawksbill turtle were among the first casualties. Shiny silver fish scales reflected the camera's lights, like a disco ball in some hideous dance club. Smaller scavengers darted in and out of the net's extrusive threading, nipping at juicy morsels of softened meat. Everything killed for nothing. The net had been left in the water long enough for a thin, slimy coating of bile-colored algae to form. That was strange because borrowing Mad Mike Morgan's binoculars she observed a lot of shipboard activity. A crew of stanky-looking sperm heads, not seamen, as she preferred to call them, fluttered about the ship like honeybees around a flower farm.

If they weren't hauling in fish then what the hell were they doing for the past three days? Her body stayed on as her mind drifted off course. She mused about her first covert operation rescuing several rabbits from a cosmetic company's research laboratory. Why are people so stupid? Clear cutting rain forests, toxic dumping, poor recycling habits. And it always seemed to be men causing the problems. She especially hated any form of animal abuse. She thought about a joke Murdock had teased her with, insisting fake fur came from teddy bears. The thought worked into a grin. Sometimes Murdock pissed her off.

Thoughts and feelings played ping-pong in her head. She contemplated revenge on these dinks that screwed up the environment so effortlessly, not thinking twice about it. She just didn't understand people. How could anyone hurt or kill defenseless creatures? God's creations. The only thing she ever hunted was a chocolate mousse. She was determined to get footage of this blatant disregard of Mexican fishing laws. Environmental rules were all too often overlooked or non-existent. With tape, in theory, evidence couldn't be ignored.

     Suddenly an object, egg-shaped appeared, bigger than a breadbox yet smaller than a rock star's ego. No animal of this proportion roamed these parts. What the hell is that, she wondered? Then, like looking at one of those 3D pictures with the funny dots, the blurry figure snapped into focus. Claustrophobia set in. Breathing became akin to sucking honey through medical gauze. She continued filming despite every instinct warning her against it.

     It was a submarine.

     The sour flavor of stomach bile burned its way up her throat. What came into view was clearly a one or two person submersible, attached by a long thick black cable that seemed to be connected to the bottom of the fishing trawler.

    This didn't make sense. The fishing net surrounded the whole thing like a cocoon. She snorted and squinted even harder as if doing so might help her comprehend. She scanned the craft from stem to stern, swimming as closely as she dared, afraid of becoming entangled herself. A propeller shrouded in a protective housing dangled from the submarine's rear end. A mass of exposed wires and other assorted submarine parts floated about. Two large torpedo-shaped cylinders ran perpendicular along the starboard side of the small ship. The left side remained out of view. Slowly, she inched her way closer. She saw glass; it had to be a porthole. It was. She stared into the eyes of a man just as astonished to see her, as she him.

     Something bumped her from behind. Not a gentle bump but a violent shock that forced the air from her lungs, popping the regulator out of her mouth and breaking free her grip on the handles of the D.P.V. For the first time in ten years of diving, she threw up underwater.

Frantically, she grappled for the regulator. Locating the purge button and mouthpiece she created a wall of air bubbles that went streaming into her face. Swallowing gulps of air she inhaled seawater. She coughed and spat, puked some more, her pallid features blushing backwards into a "redrum" red like someone suffering a stroke. And then there it was - a bright white light, the brilliant luminosity at the end of the tunnel. The light grew stronger, beckoning.

     It is said that everyone glances back before crossing the pearly gates. She turned. Electric eels squiggled across a blackboard, imprinted from the powerful glare. She never saw what the light source actually was. Nor did she see the mechanical gripping arm attached to a repair sub's hull with its vice grip fingers clanking frantically away. The man controlling the probe was well trained and dedicated to his work. The dull clunk of the metal hand clamped onto her scuba tank. The pilot pushed forward on the dual control sticks, plunging the submarine straight down. Forty meters, fifty, fifty-five, the force of rushing water pulling her arms back, preventing any chance of equalizing the dramatically increasing pressure on her ears. Pain like a red-hot iron rod pushed through one side of her head out the other. At sixty meters eardrums imploded. Seventy meters, chest wall compressed. Pulmonary tissue shredded off the walls of the pleural cavity like cat scratched wallpaper. Lungs deflated like two worn-out balloons. Amazingly, the regulator she managed to recover stayed in her mouth even when her teeth started to crack. Mercifully, nitrogen narcoses, caused from the extreme depths, anesthetized her mind from registering any of this.

Next, capillaries started bursting; her heart strangled by its own arterial web. Cartilage and bone structures on the collapse. Ribs snapping, caving inward, their spiked ends pierced internal organs. An array of body fluids and seawater mixed into a gothic cocktail. At eighty-five meters, the pilot leveled off, slowed the craft to match current speed then disengaged the clawed hand. Slowly her disfigured body, minus a few pints, drifted free, slipping silently into the black.

  Fifty meters above the grisly scene, the "Fish Cam", as Mad Morgan had nicknamed it himself, continued filming. Without someone at the controls, it swam in lazy circles, and would continue doing so until the batteries ran dry.

*******

ONE

Randy-Armando-Gregoreo Salvez is a good man. He likes his job. Loves his wife and cherishes the kids. He enjoys scuba diving. Life in Playa Del Carmen was much better than it had been in Mexico City . His six children would grow up playing on clean sandy white beaches instead of the rubbish piles back home. Here they wouldn't learn games like spin the broken bottle. A salary of $500 per month didn't go far, but his family had food and the kids had shoes.

     Each morning Randy awoke at 5:30 a.m. , seven days a week. He helped his wife, Maria-Sandia-Margarita-Salvez, fix breakfast. Together, they fed the kids then they fed themselves, then they fed the rooster, the chickens, and finally the house's zoo of stray cats and dogs. With that completed, Randy's next chore was to clean up a whole lot of animal poop. Following that, he watered whatever it was around the house that needed to be wet. The morning ritual ended by kissing the cheek or scuffling the hair of each child as he saw them off to school.

     As usual, the forty-five minute bus ride from downtown Cancun to Playa Del Carmen took an hour fifteen. The rickety transport spewed toxic gray fumes the entire way. On the outskirts of Playa, Randy transferred to a Collectiva, a smaller ricketier van, packed shoulder to sweaty shoulder. Twenty minutes later he was dropped off about two miles (as a Mexican seagull flies) from Captain Morgan's Scuba World Dive Center . He didn't mind the long walk. The beach was generally void of people this early, and the air smelled of humid salt and crusty seaweed. Besides, the time alone gave him a chance to think and daydream. His Papa always said, "A man without a dream was just someone wide-awake."

     The moment the shop key slipped into the lock, he knew something wasn't right - felt it in his gut. Something one of the loco gringos did was about to get him into trouble. Stepping inside confirmed that prediction.

    "Ay caramba." Morgan's pride and joy, the under-water electric scooter. It was gone. Along with a full set of gear, a scuba tank, the Sony digital 8 TRV-0ne-10 Handy Cam and some blank tapes. Mad Mike was going to be really fucking mad.

     On the floor next to the display stand, where the scooter had been, was a faded black JanSport daypack. The entire contents consisted of an empty mineral water bottle, a black cotton hooded pullover, dark blue sweatpants, a fairly new pair of girl's Nike running shoes, white ankle socks with pink stripes, and the cellophane wrapper from an organic whole wheat, fat free, low sodium cookie.

*******

My Story

Have you ever loved someone so much, you've caught yourself spelling their name while eating alphabet soup? I have, and not just one person, but two.

They're both dead now and it's my fault.  I wanted to watch sports. The 1989 World Series.

Today is the anniversary. It was my turn to pick Trish up from day-care, but I'd sweet-talked Chance with the promise of a strenuous day's yard-work in exchange for which I swore to perform within a rational amount of time. We were living in Oakland, California in a tiny one bedroom, A½ bath, art deco flat whose designer had apparently been a fore-father of the 60’s peace-love-smoke dope revolution, as well as an avid member of the Grateful Dead cult. Jerry Garcia's face had been meticulously hand carved into the thick Humboldt oak wood of the front door.

Trisha's school was across the Bay Bridge in San Francisco . We both worked in the city, better money, and lived where it was cheaper. The commute was a bitch but when you're a parent you do what's got to be done. My life's duty was thinking of my family's future. I faked cramps and left the office early that day, around 3:30 , so I'd be home in time for the start of the game.

At 5:01 on the afternoon of that seventeenth day in October, just as the game was underway, the electricity blacked out and the earth below my house began to tremble. Words like magnitude and Richter scale came unexpectedly into play. They call it the Loma Prieta earthquake.

My wife Chance was driving her car, an 85 Toyota something or other, dark blue, fake leather interior in admirable condition, five-speed. I imagine the heater was running at full blast with the front windows rolled half-way down. Her favorite, Carly Simon, playing in the tape deck, Chance singing along to "Haven't got time for the pain" or maybe "You're so vain" hands flogging the dash-board and steering wheel to the beat, rear-end bobbing around in her seat as if it were on fire. That's how she always drove. Trish, my three-year old daughter, securely strapped into her safety-seat, would have been mimicking mommy, getting most of the words right, learned from repetition, giggling with delight at just being alive.

Then the double-decker bridge began to sway. Cars started swerving and crashing into one another. Traffic came to a shuttering halt as car piled into car. The passing wave of vibrations caused by the shifting of tectonic plates climaxed, shaking the strung bridge as if it were a beach towel being shook free of sand. A few cars were tossed over the side of the bridge, plunging more than 500-hundred feet into the chilly water of the San Francisco Bay . Others fell to their death when sections of the suspended road disappeared.

The top half of the bridge is for traffic from Oakland into San Francisco . The bottom is for returning. When portions of the top of the bridge collapsed, cars below were crushed. A chunk of cement weighing thousands of pounds landed on top of the Toyota and the roof of the car was smashed flat against the floorboards.

I'm no longer the same person I was. I don't know who I am. I'm hollow on the inside again and again, a spirit discarded like the molted shells of a lobster that just somehow keeps pushing on. I'd decided to commit suicide. But I don't have the balls to do it all at once, so I'm taking my time about it.  My name is Tec Murdock, which I know sounds like the character of some literary, mainstream, mass-market, detective-police-crime, mystery-suspense, thriller-espionage type, action-adventure novel, or maybe a doctor/lawyer in a trashy daytime soap. Truth is, I'd just like to find happiness without a Prozac prescription. Problem is, shit keeps happening.

I believe in a "drug-free life" because nobody likes paying for them. After Trish and Chance died I ingested enough narcotics to change the economy of a third world nation. I snorted cocaine so I could go to work. I went to work to pay for the cocaine. Pills dulled the world's sharp edges, alcohol filled the gaps, nicotine patched the cracks. Years worth of gut-wrenching depression, guilt, self-pity and psychotherapy lead to an ever-darkening despair that lead to the concentrated consideration of killing myself and so I went out and purchased a gun, but I never bought any bullets. I figured if it ever came down to it, I'd just club myself upside the head with the damn thing. Considering the idea of what I was considering made me consider a drastic change in life style. There had to be a better way to die or at least a better way to pass the time until then.

Falling down isn't a crime, but not getting back up is pussy.  I blew off my job at the dot com, making sure I'd qualify for unemployment. I spent two large of my dwindled savings, learning to become a scuba diving instructor with PADI, the Professional Association of Diving Instructors, the largest scuba diving teaching organization in the world. I renounced hard drugs and stopped drinking anything stronger than beer. I sold everything I wouldn't be needing, then cashed in my investments: two 5-gallon Arrowhead Mountain spring water bottles worth of pocket change which I traded in for paper at the bank. I bought a one-year open-end ticket to Bangkok, an extra large Coleman backpack, Squalo swim trunks, a new pair of sunglasses, Tevo sandals, a floppy cotton khaki-green fisherman's hat, packed it all up and then called dial-a ride. I haven't been back to the States in more than ten years. My blood pressure has dropped 20 points. I think differently about life and death. Nothing worse could ever happen to me then what already happened and now I have something to look forward to when I die. A family reunion.

     I spent six years traversing South East Asia until circumstances way beyond my control forced me to evacuate. But that's a different book. Before I can explain how I got involved with the murder of one of the world's most notorious serial killers, I want to tell you what happened in Mexico .

    When I'd left Asia I was pretty spun. Without any direction I bobbed around South and Central America until eventually I found my way here – Playa Del Carmen, a post-card perfect stretch of white sandy beaches splattered along the Yucatan peninsula, part of the Mayan Riviera. The plan was to stick around a few months, learn me some Spanish, then move on.

    However, that's not how things worked out.

     I was minding my own business as usual, hanging outside the bus station chain smoking Marlboro lights, as I waited for a ride into Cancun to go shopping and get an extension on my visa when a funny thing happened: I got shot in the ass. Actually, it wasn't funny then and it still isn't now. I was shot by the Governor of the state of Quintana Roo, who was in a rather bad state of his own.

Even in Mexico, a chief political figure getting shit-faced on tequila and falling down--thereby causing his military dress sidearm to accidentally misfire and thus capping some poor tourist in the butt - - was considered a rather embarrassing blunder. The price for my silence: working papers and twenty acres of crispy lettuce green jungle with a crystalline sweet water lagoon and creek that trickled into the Caribbean . Venus and Mars had aligned just right. Pluto got behind Uranus (be careful turning your back to a strange dog). During the days, I worked on building a small hut and the beginnings of a humble dive shop. At night, I slept in a hammock dangled amongst an abundant flourish of coconut trees.

Red sky at night, sailors delight; red sky in morning, sailors take warning.

Three weeks into construction and sunrise arrived like an unexpected menstrual flow. Followed by a tempest that blew in over the coast, releasing a torrent of driving rain that pelted the land with Mike Tyson punches that nearly bit off my ears. Waves crested at 5 meters/15 feet. The shoreline was pummeled, molded like clay. Remodeling work that would have taken years was completed overnight and that was most fortunate for me because I hate hard work so much I once turned down a hand job. The creeks' banks were stretched wide, creating a brackish river. The jungle and ocean wrestled for hours. The ocean won and in its retreat, a filet of prime rib beach was left behind. Neptune slapped Mother Nature on the ass.

Three days worth of cleaning after the storm had passed and I was wading beer-belly-button deep in the lagoon, clearing out palm leafs, loose branches and a wide-ranging assortment of garbage when, just out of arm's reach, two dark, shiny, triangle-shaped dorsal fins broke the water's surface. In what appeared as practiced unison, the pair began swimming in opposing circles, then as quietly as they had emerged, the fins receded into the murky water. The word SHARK was spray-painted across my mind like gang graffiti tagged on a freeway's overpass. I instinctively cupped my nuts and started spinning around, looking all about. Without warning, two glossy black projectiles exploded from the water, shooting straight upwards as if each one had a skyrocket up its ass. A good distance above me the two passed one another in mid-arc, splashing back down head first into the lagoon, reappearing moments later as they cruised the water's edge.

That was the day I was adopted by two orphaned, juvenile Atlantic bottle nosed dolphins I named Revo and Sierra. After the deaths of my wife and daughter, I'd refused to get emotionally attached to anybody or anything ever again. I learned from experience there's no transplant for a broken heart. However, the tough guy act didn't last long. It was only a matter of minutes before the pair won me over. The dolphins are near grown up now and completely free to come and go and do as they please. They enjoy swimming with divers and snorkelers, which of course is great for business. Most of the time they hang around Shangri-La annoying me, and entertaining customers by getting into as much mischief as possible. Then they disappear for days on end, and I'm worried sick until they decide to return.

Dolphins are amazingly intelligent and perceptual creatures and they know how to work a crowd. A few clicks and whistles, a couple of tail walks or somersaults and an unemployed Tuna fisherman can't help feeling a few warm fuzzies. Scuba diving along the Mayan Riviera has its moments and can be fairly impressive with its colorful corals and bounty of sea creatures to admire. Large collections of fish attend school. Endangered turtles species flourish. The sun shines most of the time and birds are often overheard singing. Life here is good.

It was another passing day in paradise and I was lying in the hammock on my balcony watching the sunset. An ice-cold Corona in one hand, a fat spliff in the other. The thick skunky aroma of marijuana smoke permeated the air. Peach fuzz blonde, orangutan orange, lemon yellow sun, Corvette candy-apple red and Lolita pink stains were splashed across a Viagra blue sky. The turquoise jewelry colored sea lie smooth and placid. A symphony of crickets, frogs and cicadas were getting warmed up before the evening's performance. Fat puffy cotton ball clouds drifted slowly overhead imitating deranged circus clowns and soggy animal crackers.

     One of many local dogs, a small bronzed, never-had-a-haircut poodle named Snnufy stopped by on his evening rounds for a short social. Normally I think of poodles as being little doggy transvestites but this little guy is okay. He has the unique ability to sleep standing up. Having received a mandatory ear scratch and after snubbing his nose at my offer of a piece of stale bread he seemed to suddenly remember a more pressing engagement and quickly trotted off to perform some covert canine operation. I watched as he zigged and zagged his way along the catwalk, over the lagoon that connects the bungalows together, sniffing out and downloading other doggie's P-mail messages. Following Snnufy off the trail and along the beach started me thinking that something concerning my world appeared different and it wasn't just because I was stoned. Something important had changed and that's when I noticed the fishing trawler that Tabatha had bothered me so much about, the one that had been disrupting my view for the past several days, was gone. In its place, the last remaining shafts of sunlight glimmered along and off the ocean surface, creating the illusion of dancing silver shadows. One shadow gleamed brighter than the rest, it seemed to resonate with a musical aura before taking on the sullen shape of a large fledgling with broad cherub wings reaching upwards, and suddenly I got a sinking feeling that bad things were about to happen.

*******  

click here to go back