Page 77 of Identity Unknown
“What would be her reason?” I come right out and ask.
“She probably has more than one,” Lucy says. “Including luring us into something.”
“If she’s tied in with Ryder Briley, then it very well could have been an attempted hit on Dana Diletti,” Tron suggests as we near our destination.
The sky is empty and bright over the deep blue water of the bay on our left. People are sunbathing on the sandy strip of Outlook Beach, others strolling and jogging along the boardwalk. They stare at the emergency lights flashing about a mile offshore where boats have gathered while a Coast Guard helicopter searches.
We drive past the massive stone walls of the Fort Monroe former military installation, now an upscale residential community with acres of hiking trails and parks. Crumbling batteries, cannon emplacements, the moat go back to the early 1800s when the hexagonal fortress was constructed to protect the Chesapeake Bay from enemy ships.
We pass street after street of brick apartments that were barracks, the writer Edgar Allan Poe famously staying in onewhen he was stationed here. He would have lived in a cramped brick room with creaking wooden floors and a fireplace casting shadows after dark. No doubt it fed his spooky imagination.
Tree-shaded mansions now turned into condos have sweeping views of the bay, the distant shore of Norfolk a sliver on the horizon. I imagine generals back in the day standing on their grand front porches looking out at battleships and submarines offshore. Long before that it would have been frigates in full sail and men at the oars of barges.
An abandoned airstrip is off to our left, then the Old Point Comfort lighthouse looms ahead, bright white in the sun. Across from the marina on a grassy knoll is the Hampton police department’s redbrick marine unit. Tron slows down, a paved lane leading around to the back of the one-story building. The parking lot is practically empty, just an SUV, a van and a Zodiac boat on a trailer.
“We’ve been given permission to change here, and I’m leaving the car so no one will mess with it.” Tron stops near the back door. “Most of the officers are out in boats at the crash site or doing other things related. So there shouldn’t be anybody much around.”
The building dates back to an earlier century and is in poor repair, the paint peeling on white window frames, the gray slate roof missing tiles. An air conditioner rattles loudly from a window with a cracked pane of glass, and the boxwoods flanking the back door haven’t been trimmed in years, I’m guessing.
Tron rings the buzzer, and we’re let in by a woman on crutches, one foot in a cast, the other in a rubber Birkenstock. Dressed in tactical shorts and a baggy Tommy Bahama shirt,she has a lot of sun damage for someone her age. In her twenties, I estimate. Not much more than that. A chatterbox with a chip on her shoulder, and I often forget that local police tend to resent the feds.
“You can see why I’m not out in the boat with everyone else,” she’s saying boisterously, and I can tell by her accent that she was born and raised around here. “Never fails when something big goes down.”
We follow her through metal desks arranged with laptop computers and video displays, the chairs parked haphazardly as if officers left in a hurry. A workbench is cluttered with dive computers, regulators, a speargun and a takeout fish sandwich partially eaten.
“I know you’re not supposed to wish for things to crash, right?” Only she pronounces itcresh. “But when it happens in the water I want to be there. Anyway, I’m Sergeant Walker. You can call me Dixie. As inthat Dixie Chick. Go ahead and make the joke. Everyone else does.”
She swings herself along a hallway as we follow. I can tell she’s been in the cast for a while, the leg muscles atrophied.
“What did you do to yourself??” I ask her.
“Shark attack.”
“This isn’t a good time to hear that,” Tron complains.
“I hope it wasn’t in the bay,” Lucy adds.
“There are sharks in there for sure, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise,” Dixie says with all seriousness. “Supposedly even an alligator now and then, but I’ve not seen one of those. I tell everyone a shark got me just to see the look on their face. Truth is, I slipped while walking my boyfriend’s dog. Busted my anklein two places and tore my Achilles. He wasn’t worth it, either. The boyfriend, not the dog.”
She stops at the locker room, opening the door for us. It’s little more than a bathroom tiled and painted institutional green. Inside are four metal lockers, a toilet stall and a shower. Sunlight seeps through the slats of the dusty Venetian blinds in the only window. On a shelf next to the sink are a blow dryer, a hairbrush, a large bottle of baby powder.
“Give me a holler if y’all need anything else. I’ll be in the kitchen eating lunch,” Dixie says as we set down our bags. “Maybe next time, I’ll go down with you. I know where some of the old shipwrecks are.”
“You don’t really see sharks in the bay.” Tron is back to that.
“All the time.” Dixie nods her head. “The bull sharks are the worst, aggressive as hell and can swim up rivers.”
“That’s not really true.” Tron laughs uneasily.
“It’s true,” Lucy answers as Dixie swings back down the hallway on her crutches.
“Shit.” Tron digs inside her backpack. “I’m one of those who sawJawsand never got over it.”
“What’s to get over? Shark attacks really happen,” Lucy says. “I won’t swim in the ocean.”
“Yet you don’t mind diving,” Tron points out.
“Down there it’s a level playing field because I can see what I’m doing.”