Hidden in the Depths

By Neal Chadwick

Hidden in the Depths

Thriller by Neal Chadwick

Archaeologists believe to find a skull from prehistoric times - and find that it is a murder victim of our time. Investigators must hurry, because an old story of guilt, revenge and ruthlessness calls murderers on the scene...

• Language: English
• Publisher: BEKKERpublishing
• Release date: Dec 24, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393919254

Book preview

1

Dr. Rick MacGregor suppressed a yawn while hanging the diving  suit out to dry. Then he glanced briefly over the New Jersey shore of Lake Tappan, a good thirty miles from New York. Six hundred years ago, the lake was a third smaller than today. And where archaeologist McGregor and his team had been diving daily for weeks, there was once the camp of a group of Algonkin Indians. I wonder if someone will take care of our garbage as meticulously as we do the Algonkin, grinned Eric Giles, a student.

Well, for archaeologists of the future, the Coney Island dumps would be a paradise!

Dr. MacGregor! Come here a minute! You have to see this, shouted someone from one of the tents that formed a semicircle near the shore. They were large army tents with firm ground and stand height. MacGregor left Giles and walked the few meters to the first tent and entered.

A man with thick glasses stood in front of a wallpapering table, on which several dozen pieces of mud, only poorly cleaned, could be seen - including a skull. So either we are facing an archaeological sensation here and the Algonkin have already crowned their teeth in pre-Columbian times or this dead man is from our time!

2

Reilly had just cleaned the skull and held it to Dr. MacGregor. Put on latex gloves before you touch anything. Otherwise the DNA tests we want to do won't be worth anything later!

MacGregor grinned.

If it turns out that the Algonkin Indians are descended from the Irish, our guild will at least have another sensation - and we can use it urgently. It's getting harder and harder to raise the necessary funds for projects like this!" 

You have your sensation, Dr. MacGregor!, Reilly clarified. But that's probably gonna mean the police are redefining the site into a crime scene. I found something else, by the way.

MacGregor followed him to another table with a plastic tub. There were some half-cleaned bones inside.

Reilly took a femur with a discolored piece of metal at the end.

He grinned.

Right from the Stone Age! he laughed. I'm not talking about the pre-Columbian Algonkin Indians, however, but the Stone Age of the artificial hip joint - and that was no more than 25 years ago!

MacGregor nodded slightly. His face had become very serious.

I don't think we can sweep that under the rug.

No, at least not if we want to get out of this without much trouble.

Trouble will get worse either way. I'm not even allowed to think that a bunch of clogs from the records department are destroying a unique archaeological site!"

3

The 4x4 Ford Maverick stopped in front of number 132 on Branson Road in Riverdale. This rather bourgeois part of the Bronx was characterised by pretty bungalows and single-family houses.

By New York standards, the plots were quite generous.

The driver of the Maverick looked through the window on the passenger side. Sunglasses with mirror lenses covered the eye area.

His face was angular. The hard lines seemed carved. He seemed nervous. Thumbs and forefingers of his right hand played around with a golden crucifix hanging from a chain around his neck. The shiny precious metal formed a strong contrast to the strongly tanned skin.

In the entrance of house number 132 stood a yellow Lamborghini.

Sonny D'Andrea's car, the gray-haired one knew it and had to smile. Even though this D'Andrea probably had millions on the high edge - his taste in cars was still that of a nouveau-rich upstart who wanted to show everyone how thick his wallet was.

Anyway, now I know you're home, the gray-haired guy thought.

He turned off the engine and got off.

The bright blouson bulged out a little under the left shoulder.

The grey-haired guy went straight to the front door and rang the doorbell.

A young woman opened up to him: a maximum of thirty years old, slim, dainty and with long, dark blond hair. She wore a tight blue dress and was only half the age of the owner of the house.

I assume you're from Rutherford & Partners, we spoke on the phone earlier.

I want to talk to Mr. D'Andrea.

She frowned. He's not at home. I'm sorry. You're not Mr Rutherford?

Do you want to sell the house? Isn't this a nice place?

The young woman tried to close the door again, but the gray-haired one was faster. His foot was in between. He stepped forward in a flash, reached for her neck and threw her against the wall. On her high shoes she lost her footing.

The gray-haired one kicked the front door into the lock with his heel.

The young woman was dizzy for a moment. When the gray-haired man realized that she wanted to scream, he dealt her a targeted blow that made her sink unconscious. She slid down on the wall and remained motionless.

D'Andrea, you rat!, it went through the greyhead's head. I guess I'm just in time before you want to go away forever!

He took off his sunglasses and put them in the side pocket of his blouson. Then he brought out an automatic with silencer. He then systematically went room by room. The grey haired man estimated the living kitchen of the bungalow to be about a hundred square metres. There was no trace of Sonny D'Andrea. Bedroom and bathroom looked as if no one had ever lived here.

He must have smelled the fuse, the gray-haired one thought. They didn't fool a man like D'Andrea.

The greyhead still searched the basement and attic. The house contained - almost no personal belongings. The phone was disconnected.

Eventually the gray-haired one returned to the hallway. He grabbed the woman lying on the floor under her armpits and dragged her into the bathroom. There he lifted her into the tub and ran cold water.

The young woman screamed. Her eyes were anxiously dilated. Blood was running from a laceration on the temple.

The gray-haired one turned off the water.

We need to talk, he said. It's up to you how painful this is!

4

Iturned off Franklin Avenue in Brooklyn into Union Street.

This must be the place, said my colleague Milo Tucker. Slow down. We can't go back!

Union Street was a one-way street and certain rules may only break G-men in an emergency.

But not if they didn't want to cause a sensation - and that was the case at the moment.

The call from a man named Sonny D'Andrea had reached our field office in the Federal Plaza. D'Andrea thought a killer was after him and hid in a cheap hotel. There he was now, waiting for us to help him.

D’Andrea didn't trust City Police. He was convinced that it would be enforced by his Mafia enemies.

Only the FBI had enough confidence in him to turn to him for help in this situation.

This did not lack a certain irony, because a few years ago he had regarded our field office as his worst opponent. Sonny D'Andrea had been part of the Damiani Syndicate, according to the judiciary. However, he had known when it was enough and had stopped in time. It had never been possible to harm D'Andrea in court and in the meantime he had safely invested his millions somewhere on the high edge and retired.

But our job is to fight the crime - and it doesn't matter whether the victim may have been on the side of the gangsters. We were obliged to