The Mockingbird Murders - A John Riley Novel

Chapter 1 - Prologue

Underwater, no one can hear you scream.

Sixty feet beneath the ocean waves was the worst place Angie Greaves could choose to panic. Breathing was already difficult in the scuba mask and now became next to impossible as the panic set in, pounding at her head in a desperate attempt to take over her entire being as she fought to escape the horror in front of her. This was no ordinary panic, the kind you get when you realize your laundry has been in the downstairs dryer for the past two hours; this was the oh my god I'm going to die type of panic, the headache-inducing, hyperventilating, heart-rending type. She thrashed in the water, her ragged breathing resulting in a cloud of bubbles that surrounded her, obscuring her vision from the rotting corpse that stared back at her from only two feet away.

Breathe, she thought, desperately trying to calm herself, nobody is trying to hurt you. Breathe. Somewhere in the back of her skull

(skull)

was the knowledge that breathing too fast from the oxygen tank not only depleted the air faster but that it was also life-threateningly bad for her. It was something the instructor had told her several lessons ago and hadn't really seemed that important. She was supposed to be going on a relaxing scuba dive looking at fish and sunken ships underwater. What she wasn't supposed to be doing was finding a rotting corpse inside of a statue at the bottom of the ocean.

Her new friend, Panic reared its corpse grin again, eager to take hold of her mind, always ready to produce screams that nobody would hear--

Puppies and kittens, Angie thought desperately. Puppies and goddamn kittens!

Somehow that seemed to work. She could already feel her heart slowing down, and her breathing returning to as close to normal as she could get it.

Finally calm, Angie Greaves opened her eyes. The corpse's face stared back from the broken concrete statue in front of her. The empty socket was unmistakably human. She could have almost thought it a clever prop, a terrible joke of sorts, if not for the stringy water-logged flesh that floated in loose patches from the skull. Those patches of skin surrounded a deep gash in the skull about four inches long.

That's what killed her.

The thought came out of nowhere, a great leap of logic, and with it came a wave of sadness that was almost physical. A chill swept through her body, and she pushed backward through the water with one slow kick of her flippers.

The statue was a dark green, covered with moss or whatever other sea life there was on the reef. It was of a young woman, one hand at her side, the other reaching for the surface high above, her neck craned so she looked upward. The statue was chained to the ocean floor, but it was the heavy concrete block under her feet that helped to secure it to the limestone rocks.

She might have floated there forever in the water, just a girl in scuba gear staring at the statue with a body inside

(rotting flesh)

but some distant thought was pulling at her, begging for her attention. She realized then how it might have looked to anyone watching from a distance. It was exactly the type of macabre scenario that her sister would have loved to paint, her oils swirling to give depth to the scene, adding threat to the shadows--

Movement from the corner of her eye caught her attention. Angie turned in the water, her thoughts still not completely in the moment. She had to blink a few times before she realized what she was seeing.

Roger, a slim black man with lean muscle, her guide and diving instructor, waved at her from about fifty feet away. He floated in the water, his arms spread wide in a question.