Last week, I talked about Mike Scott and his fictional origin story. I’ll share some more of that in a bit. (If you missed the first two chapters, here’s the previous post to get you started.)
This week I’d like to talk to you a little bit about the actual Mike Scott. Every so often I hear from someone who says I should change the name of my character because of the Michael Scott character on The Office. For what it's worth, I’ve never watched the show. The other question I get is it is me. It’s not, although we are similar in height and build. (I’m a little taller and my hair is straight, not wavy.)
My Mike Scott is based on a real person. Michael Scott Burnsworth was a friend in high school and at Marshall University. Mike loved cars and we ran the roads in his black Trans Am, singing along to the rock of the late 1980s with the T-tops out. We drank too much, laughed a lot and thought we were on top of the world. He left school after his sophomore year (he was a year ahead of me) and joined the Air Force.
Mike went through basic and tech school and was on his way to his first assignment when he discovered the lump. He had cancer. Mike lived about two more years. The cancer and the chemo was just too much and he died in April of 1989. He was Mike until the end.
Fifteen years later, when I started writing Cayman Cowboys, there was no doubt in my mind what the main character’s name would be. Do I imagine Mike would have become a diver and a journalist? Who knows, but doubtful. But I imagine he would have done something special.
Ultimately, this is my way of remembering Mike and offering a What if? His family has known about the books since they beginning and they approve.
Just a quick note in case you’re interested, I noticed Amazon has about half of the softcover editions of the Mike Scott novels marked down to half price. No idea how long this will last, but get one while you can.
Now for the next two chapters of the fictional Mike’s origin story.
Chapter 3
Sunset House
The next morning Mike was outside Sunset House looking over the dive gear he would need later that day. He had already met with his photo customers to discuss their photos from the day before. That afternoon, he would meet back up with the divers for their coaching photo sessions. The resort’s boats were out for the morning dives with their passengers, so things were mostly quiet.
Until he heard his Jeep entering the resort parking lot and coming down the slight hill toward My Bar. Mike would recognize that sound anywhere. It wasn’t unusual for Kelly to borrow the Jeep if he needed to go somewhere. The question was, why was it here.
Mike walked toward the parking lot as Kelly pulled into a space and jumped out.
“Glad I caught you, man,” Kelly said as Mike approached.
“What’s going on? Shouldn’t you be captaining a boat this morning?”
“I should, but something came up. Some fishermen out early this morning saw a body in the water. They said it looked like a diver. We were asked if we could go find it and bring it in.”
Even though they were in direct competition, the dive operations on the island generally supported each other at the same time. If a boat broke down, it wasn’t unusual for another operator to offer the use of a spare vessel to take care of a charter. Or to fill tanks when there was a problem with an air compressor.
When a diver died in the water, the more experienced members of the dive community came together to recover the body. The local police didn’t have any members that actually dove. But there was a small group of dive pros who had the training and experience to recover a body and when the report of a body in the water went out. The island phone lines lit up to determine who could go.
“Great,” Mike said. His voice indicated he was anything but excited about the duty. There was never a question in his mind if he would do it, though. It had to be done and he couldn’t push the duty off on someone else. “I’ll need to make arrangements for someone to cover my students this afternoon.”
“You’ve got a few minutes. Tom from Off the Wall is going to meet us here.” Tom was another member of the unofficial recovery team. His operation wasn’t using one of their boats that morning, so he grabbed the boat to take Mike and Kelly to the location where the body was last seen.
“Okay, good. Let me go make some calls and grab my gear.” Mike walked back toward the resort offices to tell the manager what had happened and where he was going to be for the next few hours.
Fifteen minutes later, Mike walked down the ramp toward the dock with his dive gear. Kelly was already loading his gear onto the boat waiting for them. This wasn’t the exciting or glamorous part of the job, but it was one they took seriously.
“Good morning, Tom.”
“Morning Mike. You ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
“Go ahead and cast off that line as you hop on. Let’s get this show on the road.”
Mike untied the boat’s bow line from a cleat on the concrete dock and jumped on board the dive boat. It was a move he had made hundreds of times in his time on the island. It was always strange, though, when there were only two divers on board the boat.
They headed north from Sunset House, past George Town Harbor and Seven Mile Beach with its high-end hotels and resorts. Tom pulled back on the dive boat’s throttles when they arrived at the dive site known as Northwest Point. A permanent mooring ball was in place, so Kelly moved to the bow and hooked the ball with a pole. He quickly secured the boat in place and Tom shut down the engines.
“What’s the story?” Mike asked. The threesome had been quiet on the run up the island. Tom had been running the boat wide open and it had made it difficult to talk. Plus, there wasn’t much to say. Recovering a dead body made it unlikely they would be in a joking or talkative mood.
“Some fishermen saw the body on the surface near here, between this location and the beach,” Tom said. “They said the body was on the surface and could see the dive gear, but the diver appeared to be unconscious. They motored over to him to see if he needed any help, but the body sank, and they didn’t have any way to catch it.”
“Any idea who it is? Has anyone been reported missing?” Kelly asked.
“Nope, not so far. At least not that I’ve been told.”
Without saying it, the divers ran through the possible scenarios they might encounter. Since no one had reported the diver missing, it meant he hadn’t gone off a dive boat with a group and gotten lost. It could simply be a diver who made a shore entry by himself and got in trouble. The alternative, which they had seen more than once, was a diver who decided to commit suicide. A diver dons dive gear and swims deep; deep enough that nitrogen narcosis takes hold and the diver simply runs out of air at depth without even realizing it.
“Okay, this is a strange one, but we’ve seen stranger,” Mike agreed. “Conditions are pretty good. Let’s enter here and swim toward shore. Spread out enough to be able to keep an eye on each other, but far enough apart that we cover a wide area. Slow and steady.”
Mike and Kelly geared up and entered the water without any further fanfare. Mike brought his underwater camera along so he could give the evidence to the police. Tom untied the boat and planned to motor along with the two divers. He would scan the surface to see if the body had floated back to the surface or was floating in shallow water. The divers would swim about 30 feet underwater and watch for the body on the bottom or in the coral.
Mike descended to the boat’s port side and Kelly on the starboard. Time to get to work.
Diving every day, even on his days off should have numbed Mike to the spectacular scenery in front of him, but he never got completely used to it. He often told himself when that happened, it was time to leave. Still, today wasn’t a cause for sightseeing.
Finding a dead body underwater was never a pleasant experience. In truth, it didn’t happen that often. But it did happen. And someone had to deal with it.
Mike glanced to his right and spotted Kelly swimming just ahead of him. They maintained a position about 30 feet off the bottom so they could see clearly all around them. Neither man moved quickly. They were looking for anything out of the ordinary or that didn’t seem right.
The explosion of coral and fish below them would make it difficult to pick out a body on a good day. Especially since they didn’t know if the diver was in a wet suit or what sort of dive gear to look for.
They began their search in deep water and moved slowly toward land. The body had been sighted closer to the island, but they didn’t know if it had drifted with the currents. Mike saw Kelly descend to get a closer look at something. He hoped their search was over, but then he saw Kelly shake his head and swim back up to search depth. Searching the bottom like this reminded Mike of flying above the earth, in a plane or helicopter, watching for activity below them.
They were getting into shallower water and close to the shore when Mike finally spotted the body. They were nearly a half an hour into the dive and he was beginning to wonder if they had the wrong search area, or if they were going to have to send for more divers to widen the search. At first, it looked like a shadow on the reef, but then Mike realized he could see a tank. Looking closer, he could see the man’s arms drifting back and forth with the wave action. He was caught in a crevice on the coral.
Mike checked his depth gauge as he descended toward the body. They were in approximately 30 feet of water. He rapped his knuckles on his tank to get Kelly’s attention. Glancing up, he saw his friend was already heading his direction. Before he touched the body, Mike took several photos to show where they found the missing diver.
When he reached the body, Mike was relieved that the man hadn’t been underwater too long. He didn’t appear to be bloated and nothing had begun to snack on him. The man’s body was almost entirely covered in a wetsuit and his mask was still in place. His regulator had long-since fallen out of his mouth, though.
Mike took the man by the arm and turned him around. Nothing seemed out of place. He reached down to the man’s waist and released his weight belt, leaving it on the bottom. Someone else could bring it up if they cared to come back for it.
Out of habit, more than expecting it, Mike tested the inflator on the man’s BCD that held his tank in place. He was surprised to realize there was air in the scuba tank. He added air to the buoyancy jacket to make the man float and began swimming him to the surface. As he began to ascend, Kelly arrived and took the dead man’s other arm to help guide him up.
Seeing their air bubble trails converge and then stay in one spot from the surface, Tom maneuvered the boat around so they wouldn’t have to swim the body to the stern. He knew what was happening below him. Shutting down the boat’s engines, he threw out a line with a float attached so they could bring the body on board.
On the surface, the three men worked together, without saying much, to pull the body on board. Kelly climbed onto the boat and ditched his dive gear to help Tom pull the body out of the water. Mike stayed in the water to push from below. As soon as his two friends had the diver on board, Mike climbed out of the water himself.
“Anyone you know?” Tom asked. He had pulled the deceased diver’s mask off. A couple hours underwater, at least, left it looking pale and slightly bloated, but still recognizable.
“I’ve never seen him before,” Kelly said. “I know it happens sometimes. Divers panic underwater and drown, but he still had air in his tank.”
Mike finished putting his gear down on a bench and turned around to look at the body they recovered.
“Holy crap!” Mike said.
“What is it? You know this guy?” Kelly asked.
Mike moved closer and looked the man squarely in the face.
“Know him might be a bit of a stretch, but I’ve met him. Last night at Lone Star in fact. His name is, was, John Calhoun. He was a reporter working on a story.”
Chapter 4
My Bar
“You met this guy last night?” Kelly asked.
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s him, anyway.”
“Where was I? I don’t remember seeing him.”
“The only thing you were paying attention to last night was the blonde Russian girl Tatyana.”
“I heard that,” Tom agreed. He had been at the table. Kelly wasn’t a stranger to meeting women or romancing tourists, but his reaction to Tanya was different than the others.
“Okay, okay, so I was a bit focused. There is something special about that one,” Kelly said. He wasn’t sure why he felt the need to defend himself, but the conversation quickly made him uncomfortable.
“Did you get anywhere last night?” Tom asked.
“She kissed me good night, but that’s it.”
“Maybe that’s why he is so defensive,” Mike said to needle his friend. “The mighty Kelly isn’t used to striking out.”
“Can we get back to the dead body? Please,” Kelly asked.
“Tom, radio ahead that we found what we were looking for. Don’t want to announce we found a body over an open channel on the radio. And then let’s head toward the docks. Have the authorities meet us there,” Mike said.
“Will do.”
“Kelly, let’s check out his gear and see if we can figure anything out. The medical examiner will want to know if everything was in place when we found it. If you think you can focus on the situation,” Mike said. He couldn’t resist on last jab.
“Very funny,” Kelly said.
Both expert divers themselves, Mike and Kelly began examining the dead man’s dive gear. They had already noted there was air left in his tank. They quickly determined that the gear wasn’t assembled properly. The regulator was mounted upside down. The gear would work, but it would be difficult to use. The hoses would all be pointing the wrong directions. Mike took more photos to help the police out with their investigation.
“Whoever put this gear together didn’t have a clue what they were doing,” Kelly said when they finished their examination.
“Agreed. The strange thing, when I met this guy last night, he told me he was scared to death of the idea of diving. So, what would make him leave the bar, grab some dive gear and make a solo dive. It doesn’t make any sense.”
Just then, they felt the dive boat begin to slow down as Tom navigated their way into George Town Harbor and they approached the docks. An ambulance and the police were waiting on them to take possession of the body. Mike and Kelly gave their reports describing how they found the body and how it looked underwater. They also reported their findings from their examination of the dive equipment. Mike promised to process the film and send the slides to the police station as soon as he could.
It wasn’t until an hour later, back at Sunset House, that Mike and Kelly got a chance to discuss their morning again. Mike pulled into the parking lot and parked the Jeep.
“Come on, man. I’ll buy you lunch. After the morning we’ve had, I know I need it,” Mike said.
“Agreed. Is it too early for a stripe?” Kelly asked. He was referring to Red Stripe beer from Jamaica.
“Not for me, it isn’t. My afternoon charter is covered so I’m done for the day, too.” The dive operation manager at Sunset House understood what Mike was doing and how all the dive operations on the island worked together. He had gotten the day off with pay to do what needed to be done.
The two men took a seat at a table overlooking the water at My Bar and ordered fish sandwiches and beers from the waitress.
“Tell me again how you knew that guy. You met him last night?” Kelly asked after he took a long drink from his beer.
Mike explained that he had moved to the bar to give Kelly some space and then struck up a conversation with the guy. John.
“He told me he was a reporter working on a story about drug money being laundered through Cayman.”
“And he told you he wasn’t a diver?”
“No, he told me he was afraid of the water. I’ve seen that look before, too. There was nothing that could have gotten him in the water.”
“Then what was he doing there?”
“That’s the $64,000 question, isn’t it? I’m guessing someone put him there. Probably after they killed him. Or at least after they knocked him unconscious.”
“So, this whole thing is a set up?”
“It sure feels that way to me. Like I said, there was nothing going to get him in the water. And his gear was all messed up. Whoever put him in it didn’t know what they were doing either. Last, he still had air in his tank. I mean, he could have panicked and drowned, but none of the rest of it adds up.”
“Did you tell the police?”
“I told them about the gear and the air. I also told them I met the guy the night before and he said he wasn’t a diver. But I didn’t go into the rest of it. You know this place. The last thing they want is for a dive fatality to make the news. They will want this to go away quickly and quietly. The official story will be he was a tourist on vacation who went diving on his own and made a mistake. That way they can spin it as a safety lesson. Don’t dive alone. Don’t dive without proper training.”
“I hear you. Makes sense to me. So?”
“So, what?” Mike asked.
“So, what are we going to do about it?”
More next week…