Donovans 03 - Pearl Cove

no one had been certain what to do with it. Four inches long, darkly iridescent on one side and sea-roughened cream on the other, broken at both ends, the shell was shaped like a clumsy, ruined knife. Even against its background of battered flesh, the death wound was obvious on Len’s ribs: it was a bloody, bruised mouth opened a finger’s width in shock. A knife would have left far less evidence.
    Archer shrugged off the soft backpack he wore. The sweaty patch of shirt beneath turned cold the instant air touched it. He didn’t notice, any more than he had noticed the chill of the room after the first shock. He reached into his backpack, shoved aside the laptop computer, special cellular phone, and fresh underwear until he found the pencil-slim flashlight he was looking for.
    Icy white light stabbed out, striking a gleaming darkness and rainbow colors from the oyster shell’s smooth inner surface. He picked it up and fitted it to the blunt, ragged, subtly curving wound between broken ribs. With only a slight pressure from his hand, he pushed the shell in; the previous wound was like a road hacked from a wilderness of intact flesh and bone.
    When the shell would go no farther without being shoved, Archer bent and lined up the flashlight with the angle of the shell. It was dead on for the heart.
    If Hannah was right that Len had been murdered, it hadn’t been an overhand shot, but one that had come up from under. Not the easiest way for a standing man to kill someone in a wheelchair. But if the target was lying on his back, it would be a simple enough maneuver, even for a diver with enlarged knuckles and a careful gait. For Flynn it would have been as easy as smiling.
    Archer’s fingers closed around the shell fragment and rocked it with tiny motions, loosening it from the ribs. Then he examined the chance weapon beneath the unflinching white blade of his flashlight. The shell indeed could have killed Len, if it was long enough.
    But it wasn’t. Barely an inch of the shell was bloodstained. That wasn’t long enough to reach the heart beyond the protective ribs.
    After a final look, Archer put the shell back where he had found it, resting against a dead man’s hand. He rummaged in the backpack again. This time he drew out what looked like a pair of blunt-nosed pliers. Various tools—screwdrivers, a file, a punch, knives—were tucked into the hollow handles of the pliers like blades into a jackknife.
    He tried one of the knife blades first. It went in between the ribs far enough to kill, and it went in without hesitation, without any force, following a path already made by a larger, broader knife.
    Hannah was right. Len had been murdered.
    Now that Archer had seen Pearl Cove’s isolation, he was betting that the murderer was known to Len, probably even worked on the pearl farm. Hannah certainly hadn’t mentioned any outsider staying through the cyclone. The murderer could still be there, secure in the general belief that Len’s death was accidental rather than deliberate.
    Archer looked one last time at what had once been his brother. The big ring Len still wore gleamed coldly in the harsh light. Archer lifted the cold hand and looked more closely. Len hadn’t worn a ring at any time in Archer’s memory. This ugly rendition of a rough oyster shell wasn’t a wedding ring—neither Len nor Hannah wore one. Nor was it valuable. It had the feel of stainless steel rather than silver or gold or platinum. In a fight, the ring could have opened a man’s face to the bone.
    He wondered if it was a present from Hannah, but rejected the possibility. There was no beauty in this ring, no grace, no value, nothing to recommend it to anyone but Len, who never looked at the world as other people did.
    Archer slid the ugly, oversized ring off, and put it on the keyring in his pocket. It wasn’t much to remember a murdered brother by, but it was all he had.
    He pulled the sheet over Len and left the building with long strides. The more he thought about Pearl Cove’s isolation, the less he liked Hannah being there alone. What was once her home had become enemy ground.

Six
    S itting in Hannah’s kitchen Archer looked at her computer and waved away a fly that circled lazily around his sweaty forehead. He doubted he would find anything useful on her machine, but she would think it odd if he didn’t even try. After all, Pearl Cove’s accounts were on the hard drive, and he was supposed to be an interested, if silent,