Mortal Remains A Medical Thriller

Chapter 1 Monday, October 22, 10:00 a.m. Near Hampton Junction in the southern Adirondack Mountains Mark Roper followed sheriff Dan Evans down, staying so close to the man's flippers that they occasionally brushed his face mask. But he didn't want to get too far behind the tunnel of light from Dan's headlamp, which led them ever deeper into the darkness. Unable to see anything but black outside its range, Mark couldn't tell up, down, or sideways unless he focused on the illuminated streams of algae streaking at them. Like snow against a windshield, they heightened his sense of speed. The cold penetrated his hood, giving him a doozy of an ice-cream headache; it burrowed through the vulcanized rubber of his dry suit and a double layer of thermal underwear, then through skin, muscle, and bone to settle directly into his marrow. Despite diving gloves, even his fingers threatened to freeze up, but he kept his grip on the safety line, kicking and propelling himself ever lower, moving hand over hand. God, when would they get there? he wondered, repeatedly having to pinch his nose through his mask, then blow to relieve the painful pressure in his ears. He'd been down this deep before, but in the warm blue ocean off Hawaii. Here he might as well have been swimming in ink. Though the water was clear, the mountain lake, nestled in a steep gorge, was so narrow and deep that it swallowed most of the sunshine from the surface. Other dives they'd made in the district were shallow, but with this one claustrophobia pressed in with smothering force. He couldn't let himself get far from Dan, who carried the big handheld spotlight. If he ended up alone, his own headlamp would be too feeble at this depth, and Mark wasn't at all sure that he'd be able to hold panic at bay. A dangerous situation, because down here cold and disorientation were killers. Already he was breathing too hard, the sound rushing loudly through his ears, and he made a conscious effort to slow it down. A white cord trailed out in front of them to nothingness. If it hadn't been there, the end abruptly marking where the bottom lay, they might have hit the thick layer of silt and muck that covered the lake's floor and thrown up such a cloud of debris they'd be in a virtual blackout that not even a lamp could penetrate. As it was, their arrival kicked up plumes of dirt that hung suspended around them like giant gray fronds. Dan looked at the dive computer on his sleeve. Mark did the same, barely able to read the screen. According to the numbersmeasurements of the cold, the pressure, the depth, the altitude of the lakethe calculation told him they could only stay about fifteen minutes before having to head back. Their ascent would be no faster than a half foot per second, and they would have to make a three-minute safety stop fifteen feet from the surface to allow the release of excess nitrogen from their bloodstreams. The clinical consequences if he got it wrongmultiple emboli, pneumothoraces, mediastinal emphysema, subcutaneous emphysema, all of them air bubbles where they shouldn't bewere nasty enough that he'd die screaming. As county coroner, in the last four years Mark had seen three dive victims with just such injuries, and he sure as hell was going to be careful. With so little time, he wanted to get going. But the silt remainedin fact, seemed to grow worsemaking it impossible to see at all, cutting him off from Dan. Waiting for it to settle felt like an eternity, and he began to doubt his senses, unable to make out even his own bubbles or tell if the rope in his hand led to the surface or the bottom. Stop! Think! Act! he said to himself. It was the diver's credo to stay out of trouble. He breatClement, Peter is the author of 'Mortal Remains A Medical Thriller', published 2003 under ISBN 9780345457783 and ISBN 0345457781.