Although Gavin had been fortunate in his years on the team, he appreciated the extra precautions. While today was fairly smooth going, he was well aware things could change in a minute.
The waters here at Hell Gate were actually a tidal strait, with the confluence of the New York Upper Bay, the Long Island Sound and the Harlem River contributing to the unceasing churn of the water. And the reality of the conditions was that high tide was bad, but low tide only reversed all the flow that had built up pressure in the passage, pushing the water right back in the opposite direction.
They’d deliberately selected this early afternoon window for having the least amount of tidal pressure in the day, but they needed to move. And with the rains of the past several days as well as the water’s already roiling currents, the evidence they were attempting to recover could be anywhere.
“Needle in a haystack, friends,” one of their leads up above in the police boat advised through the comms. “But you’ve cleared twelve quadrants so far. Hayes and Trumball, move west, and Doyle and Houston, move south. We’ll cover one more swath before you ascend. Submersible’s capturing the area north of the bridge.”
Their briefing before they’d descended matched Wyatt’s description the day before in the conference room. Someone had tossed a gun off the RFK Bridge with its estimated landing closer to the waters beneath Hell Gate Bridge. Although they hated to miss any evidence recovery, the perp was already in custody and two cops were eyewitnesses to the gun being tossed off the bridge, with body cam footage to back it up. It wasn’t ideal to leave the evidence at the bottom of the river, but the overarching effort had to be weighed against the benefits.
An odd counterpoint to the clanging reality of his life at the moment. Which was also a clear example of effort versus benefit.
Sera had assured him she would have told him about the baby. But would she?
She’d made several quick assurances now that they’d met again, but if they weren’t working the task force, how would she ever have found him?
That thought had haunted him all night and into the morning. What would it be like? To have a child of his walking around without him ever knowing?
He needed to keep his head on straight—they had met up again, and he did know—but the reality of what might have been haunted him.
“Hayes!” Wyatt’s voice was garbled around his mouthpiece, but Gavin got the general gist, made even more specific when Wyatt grabbed his calf. They had a variety of physical signals they were all trained on, but this one was pretty straightforward.
He stopped his forward movement, allowing Wyatt to move up beside him. The water was murky, but their headlamps as well as the bright sunshine above gave him a decent view of his dive partner’s face.
Gavin pointed toward the floor of the river, turning his hands up in an empty motion.
But it was Wyatt’s face, visible through the clear veneer of his mask, that had Gavin doing a double take. The man held up a gun, the shape more than clear in the murky water, before waving him on.
And although his voice was garbled when he spoke, Wyatt’s instructions were clear.
“Wait until you see what I found.”
What they found was a cache of weapons that they’d be hauling up for hours, Gavin thought as he stared at what they had laid out on the floor of the police boat.
No weapon was designed to shoot flowers and sunshine, he admitted to himself, but these were some of the worst. Retrofitted guns designed to do maximum damage, all with serial numbers removed.
They’d called in a second dive team, who was working the scene now while he, Wyatt, Kerrigan and Jayden took a break.
“What a mess.” Wyatt shook his head as he got to his feet. He’d called in for reinforcements, and even now Gavin saw Detective Arlo Prescott, a fellow officer and one of the most decorated detectives at the 86th, stepping onto the police boat after being ferried over.
Arlo and Kerrigan were dating, and Gavin saw them briefly speak, his hand tenderly rubbing her shoulder, before Arlo continued on to the cache spread out on the deck. The man let out a low whistle before crouching down in the same pose Wyatt had just come up out of. “This gives new meaning to evidence recovery.”
“You’re not kidding.” Wyatt pointed toward the three sawed-off shotguns at the edge of the area. “Got a hit on the metal detector, but as soon as I saw the butt of that first one, I realized what we had. And not one damn serial number among them.”
Arlo glanced up, frowning. “Kerrigan’s talked often enough about hating to dive Hell Gate, but you all are still down there pretty regularly. How long do you think these have been there, unnoticed?”
“Forensics will do some testing,” Gavin put in. “But based on some of the decomp on the metal and the state of a few of the barrels we’ve looked at, I’d say well over six months. Maybe a bit more since much of that would have been winter.”
“You think we’ll get any prints?”
“We’ve been careful bringing it all up.” Gavin shrugged. “But that’s hard to say.”
They had been careful, well aware with this much evidence it would be more than possible they’d get a hit on some careless act like fingerprints or a partial serial number.
And still...
Something gnawed at him.
“Something this big?” Gavin finally spoke. “Whoever did it would have to realize they were going to attract attention once everything was found.”
Arlo glanced over from staring at the cache of weapons, a faint smile on his lips. “You’re assuming this was done by a party of masterminds. Panicked people do stupid things. It’s why we get our fair share of cases that wrap up with minimal fuss.”
“Maybe—” Gavin let his thought die off. Something about this troubled him, beyond the broader issue of such a large criminal act, but he hadn’t quite worked it through in his mind. But there was something.
“Tell me what has you bothered, Gav,” Wyatt pressed. “Is it the way we’re handling the evidence?”
Despite the display currently on the floor of the police boat, there was a team en route shortly behind Arlo to quickly manage both the chain of evidence as well as the more sensitive aspects of handling the weapons. The Harbor team was well trained in basic recovery to ensure as clean a sample as possible, but they always breathed a bit easier once it had moved on to the folks actually responsible for evidence handling.
“No, not that. We’ve done this by the book. It’s just the volume of it. The location. Whoever did this knew what they were doing.” He shot a look at Arlo and offered a grim smile of his own. “These weren’t run-of-the-mill criminals or a group of lackeys low on the food chain. Destroying evidence like this? And up at Hell Gate? It feels to me like whoever is responsible has knowledge of our work.”
Arlo and Wyatt both stared at him, their gazes focused as they gave consideration to his assessment.
“Knowledge how?” Wyatt asked.
“The tides, for one. Hell Gate doesn’t just have a scary name. That channel’s always been difficult, and we have protocols specifically for diving there.”
Wyatt nodded, his mouth grim. “I can still see you circling. Keep going.”
And that was when he hit on it.
