Payback by Keith Douglass Page A

Irwin looked at his boss and shook his head. “Didn’t play right for me, Chief. Sounded like the guy was trying to hide something. And why is he wearing a white shirt and a tie on a greasy, oily, smelly place like a drilling platform? I just don’t trust the guy.”
    Sheriff Kirkendol frowned. “I didn’t get that feeling, Nevin. He was smooth, maybe like he had worked over what he was going to tell us. But he answered your question off the top of his head and I bought it.”
    â€œMaybe I’m just suspicious. I have a hard time accepting that a scuba man, snorkeling instructor, and college swimmer is going to drown in an accident like that. What bugs me is that somebody went to a lot of work with that wire to make it look natural. Still, it held the man three feet underwater. Besides, the dead man complained to his boss about thatother platform. He may have been the kind of guy who decided he’d swim out there and take a look for himself. Do it at night when they wouldn’t see him. Can’t be more than five hundred yards, a warm-up for him.”
    The head man in the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department lifted his brows and shook his head. “Hell, right now your doubts are the only thing we have to go on. We’ve got a murdered man on our hands, and so far not a hope of finding out who did it. How many men on the 27 platform where the man worked?”
    â€œI saw a report that said it had about thirty men,” Irwin said.
    â€œOkay, tomorrow we’ll send out three of our detectives and they will interview every man. We might turn up somebody who had a grudge against Gifford strong enough to kill him. Whoever murdered Gifford must also have been a diver, or at least a good swimmer. Something to watch for.”
    â€œI’d like to go along.”
    â€œNegative, Irwin. Interviewing is not your strong suit. I have three men who are experts at it. They’ll go out tomorrow and do a good job.”
    â€œSo that leaves me to do what?”
    â€œYou watch for any signs of activity or problems in the water around that tower. Large boats coming there and anchoring. Next time one does that, we get the Coast Guard and we go out and inspect the ship on some pretext. You keep in touch with Pete Rumford, that platform boss on 27. Whenever he spots a freighter dropping anchor near that Platform 4, have him give you a ring.”
    â€œYes, sir,” Irwin said, reverting to his SEAL training. He could take orders even if he didn’t like them. He spent the rest of the day on routine calls, and just after dark, drove his two-year-old SUV to his favorite parking spot when he went diving. He put on his wet suit, cap, and boots and took out the new Draegr III. It was the latest underwater rebreathing device, and didn’t leave a string of bubbles. This one was programmed to mix the right amount of chemicals with the oxygen so a diver could go as deep as he wanted to and still get the right mix of air. It was the same type he had used in the SEALs. He locked the SUV, put the key in the small flappocket on the wet suit, and walked into the water off Goleta Point.
    Nevin swam toward the lighted oil-drilling rig. He figured it was about two miles, not even a warm-up. He went down ten feet and stroked toward the tower the way he used to in the SEALs. His blown-out knee had been replaced and worked fine in the water. It was the parachute drops hitting the ground at twenty-one feet per second with two hundred pounds of equipment and ammo that his new knee couldn’t take. He loved the water. Sometimes he felt more at home in the ocean than he did on land. He surfaced with just his face out of the water. He was dead on course. A small moon gave off its feeble light, but he didn’t need it. The required marine lights were on the tower, plus a few hundred more bulbs to make sure no wandering tanker or freighter crashed into the rig.
    Nevin went back down to