The Stone Monkey

downward. Looking beneath her into the darkness. Things were swimming around inside the room. Jesus . . . She shivered and remained where she was, hovering in the narrow corridor.
    But Lincoln Rhyme’s voice, as clear as if he’d been speaking through her headphones, sounded in her thoughts. “It’s a crime scene, Sachs. That’s all it is. And searching crime scenes is what we do, remember? You grid it, you search it, you observe it, you collect evidence.”
    Okay, Rhyme. But I could live without eels.
    She let some air out of the BCD and dropped slowly into the room.
    Two sights made her gasp.
    In front of her a man floated in the black space, eyes closed, his jaw down as far as it could go, arms outstretched, his coat billowing out behind him. His face was white as paper.
    The second thing she saw was less macabre but farstranger: what must have been a thousand hundred-dollar bills floated in the water, filling the room, like flakes in a plastic souvenir snow globe.
    The bills explained the man’s death. His pockets were filled with money and she deduced that as the ship started to go down he’d run to the cabin to get as much of the Ghost’s cash as he could but he’d been trapped here.
    She eased farther into the room, the bills swirling in her wake.
    The money soon proved to be a major pain in the ass. It stuck to her, it obscured the scene like smoke. (Add this to your book, Rhyme: excessive money at the crime scene can make searches extremely difficult.) She couldn’t see more than a few feet past the cloud of bills. She grabbed several handfuls of the money for evidence and put them in her collection bag. Kicking her way to what was now the top of the room—originally the side—she noticed an open attaché case floating in the thin air pocket. She found more currency inside—Chinese, it seemed. A handful of these bills went into the collection bag.
    Clank, clank.
    Jesus, this is spooky. Darkness around her, unseen things caressing the wetsuit. She could see only a few feet in front of her—the tunnel of dim illumination cast by the tiny spotlight on her head.
    She then located two weapons: an Uzi machine pistol and a Beretta 9mm. She examined them closely and found that the Uzi’s serial number had been etched out. She let this weapon drop to the bottom. There was a number on the Beretta, though, which meant it might yield some traceable connection to the Ghost. She slipped it into her evidence bag. A glance at her pressuregauge: 1800 pounds of air. God, she was going through it fast. Breathe slowly.
    “Come on, Sachs, concentrate. ”
    Right, sorry, Rhyme.
    Clank, clank, clank.
    I hate that fucking sound!
    She searched the body of the corpse. No wallet or ID.
    Another shiver. Why was this scene so horrible, so eerie? She’d processed dozens of bodies. But then she realized: the corpses at those scenes had always lain like broken toys on the ground, pulled, inanimate, to the concrete or grass or carpet by gravity. They weren’t real. But this man wasn’t still at all. As cold as the heartless water around him, white as snow, he moved like an elegant dancer in slow motion.
    The stateroom was very small and the body would interfere with her search. So, with a respect that she wouldn’t have felt anywhere outside of this horrible mausoleum, she eased the body upward into the corridor and pushed him away. Then she returned to the Ghost’s cabin.
    Clank, clank  . . . clank.
    Ignoring the spooky moans and the clanking, she looked around her. In a tiny room like this, where would one hide things?
    All the furniture was attached to the walls and floors. And there was only one small dresser. Inside were Chinese-brand toiletries, nothing that yielded any obvious evidence.
    She looked for anything hidden in the closet but found only clothes.
    Clank, clank . . .
    What do we think, Rhyme?
    “I think you’ve got, let’s see, about fourteen hundred pounds of air left. I’d say if you don’t find something soon, get the hell out.”
    I’m not going anywhere yet, she thought. Hovering, she looked slowly around the room. Where would he hide things? He left his guns, he left the money . . . . That means the explosion took him by surprise too. There has to be something here. She glanced again at the closet. The clothes? Maybe. She kicked toward it.
    She began to go through them. Nothing in any of the pockets. But she kept searching and—in one of his Armani jackets—found a slit he’d