The Last Breath

by Danny Lopez

  “True. But you know how you asked me for the clippings on that drowning?”

  “Yeah, you got them for me?”

  “We did nothing. It was just a few sentences lifted directly from the Sheriff’s report.”

  “Really?”

  “We have no staff.”

  “What do they pay Kirkpatrick for?”

  “Fuck if I know.”

  “What a way to run a business,” I said.

  “But listen. I just heard on my scanner that they found a floater down by Blackburn Point Road.”

  “What?”

  “A body floating in the Intracoastal. I’m headed there now.”

  * * *

  I got off the key, drove south on the Trail, and turned right on Blackburn Point Road, toward Casey Key. As I came to the bridge, I could see the flashing blue and red. First responders were staged at the park on my left just before the bridge. Two Sheriff’s cruisers blocked the entrance to the parking lot.

  I pulled over on the right side of the road where there was a marina, and made my way back and across the street to the park. No cordon had been set up, but the park was crowded with cops, divers, and an ambulance.

  In that part of the Intracoastal the water made a small bay that separated the park in two. The first responders were on the large section that was more of a paved parking lot with a wide boat ramp. That’s where I was headed.

  Running parallel to the road, a walkway led to a smaller unpaved little park. I could see Rachel on that side. She was standing between a row of Australian pines at the water’s edge, taking photos. Two sailboats and a large cabin cruiser were moored a few feet out.

  One of the deputies on the scene saw me when I was halfway to the walkway.

  “Hell no,” he said in a deep, commanding voice. “Can’t be here. This is an active crime scene.”

  “I’m with her.” I pointed at Rachel.

  He looked me up and down. “You press?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Let me see some ID?”

  I pulled out my wallet. I had no press ID. “I forgot it,” I said. “I heard the call and ran out on dinner with the folks.”

  “Right,” he said and pointed to the other side of the road. “Find someplace else to go and let us do our job.”

  “Who’s in charge of the investigation?”

  The deputy nodded toward a group near the water’s edge by the boat ramp. And there, in the middle of the crowd of uniformed men and women, was a heavyset old man with a squat hat and a handlebar mustache. Detective Fenton Kendel of the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office.

  The deputy spread his arms and then pointed to the road. “Now back it up, buddy.”

  “Can I talk to Detective Kendel real quick? I want—”

  “I said, back it up. I’m not gonna say it again.”

  I backed away, keeping my eyes on Kendel, just in case he looked my way.

  He didn’t.

  I stood under a streetlight, crossed my arms over my chest, and watched Sarasota’s finest do their work. They had already raised the body and bagged it. It was lying on the small dock next to the boat ramp where Kendel and a handful of officers were standing, shooting the breeze with a man and two kids, maybe early teens.

  I could see why Rachel went to the other side of the park. She had a clear shot across the water. When the officers put the body in a gurney and rolled it away to one of the ambulances, Rachel set down her camera and started back across the walkway to our side of the park.

  I waved to her. “Rachel!”

  She turned. So did one of the EMTs and two deputies standing near the ambulance. It was a big group of officers for a drowned person. But then again, maybe it was a slow night.

  Rachel came over. “What’s up, Dex?”

  “I just got here.”

  She bowed her head and browsed through some of the images on the back of her camera. “Looks like a couple of kids were fishing and caught a body.”

  “From here?”

  “Yeah, I guess they were casting out from the end of the dock.” She nodded in the direction where the investigators stood. “They ended up pulling the body up. They called the cops.”

  “Anything on the victim?”

  She set her camera down and glanced at me. “Listen to you, you sound like a real live investigator. You working for the police now?”

  “Don’t fuck around,” I said. “Do they have anything?”

  She shook her head. “Looks like a homeless guy. No ID.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “He was already bagged when I got here.”

  “Do they have any idea how long he was under?”

  “Maybe two days. But the medical examiner’ll make the call.”

  I looked past her at the group of cops on the dock, talking. Then refocused on Rachel. “Can you ask Kendel to come talk to me?”

  “I have a deadline, man.”

  “Please.”

  She shook her head and walked toward the dock. She stopped by the crime scene van and talked to her friend, Dana, her on-and-off girlfriend. She placed her hand on her arm for a moment and then walked on to where the officers were huddled. She interrupted whatever was going on, took out her notepad. She pointed at one of the deputies with her pen, nodded. Wrote down a few notes. Then she pointed at me. Kendel and two other officers glanced my way. Kendel shook his head and turned back to the officers. Rachel walked back to the crime scene van and showed some of the photos she had taken to Dana. Then she came to where I was standing, waiting.

  “And?”

  She shrugged, shoved her notepad in her back pocket. “Nothing.”

  “What the fuck?”

  “I told him and he looked over and then went back to whatever he was yapping about to his admirers.”

  “Jesus fuck.”

  “Okay, I gotta go file. What’re you doing later?”

  “I don’t know, sleep.”

  “You owe me a drink.”

  “I know. Tomorrow.”

  “I’m filing this and then going to the Shamrock on Ringling in case you change your mind.”

  I nodded toward the crime scene van. “She going, too?”

  “You jealous?”

  I smiled. “Maybe.”

  She smacked my arm and walked past me to her car.

  “Dexter Vega.” Detective Fenton Kendel was walking toward me. He was a big man, wore a baggy short-sleeve shirt, jeans, and a regulation Glock strapped to his wide waist right next to a shiny Sheriff’s gold star badge. He was older, gray with a bushy handlebar mustache, small wire-rim glasses, and his trademark black leather pork pie hat that had seen better days.

  “Detective Kendel,” I said. “I’ve been trying to reach you all week.”

  “I am aware of that,” he said. His voice was raspy with a touch of angry southern. “Is that why you’re here?”

  “Rachel Mann gave me the heads-up.”

  He took out a square of nicotine gum, unwrapped it with his thick fingers, and tossed it in his mouth. “What can I do you for?”

  “Whatta you got here?”

  “Drowning. Male, mid-thirties, five-five, hundred fifty pounds.”

  “No ID?”

  He shook his head just slightly, chewed his gum like it tasted good. “One of the deputies says he’s a bum—hangs around Siesta Beach. Goes by Jaybird.”

  CHAPTER 18

  I DROVE STRAIGHT to the Old Salty Dog and parked myself at the bar. Tessa glared at me, then ignored me. I didn’t fret. Besides, my mind was reeling—stunned. In shock.

  Kendel had said they were looking into the drowning as a murder. It appeared Jaybird’s body had been tethered to a cinderblock. Someone had drowned him.

  After a few minutes, Tessa came over to the end of the bar where I was sitting. She looked pissed. “What can I get you, sir?” Her voice was sharp, lips pursed, and the sir came out of her like she wanted to spit.

  “Two beers, pints. Make it that Bi
g Top IPA you have on tap.”

  “Two?”

  I nodded.

  She shook her head, picked out two glasses, and poured. She came back and set the beers in front of me. “You’re an asshole, Dexter.”

  I grabbed a beer and downed half the pint in three long gulps. Then I looked at her, my eyes quivering. “Jaybird’s dead.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah …” The words came out of me slowly, like bits of shattered glass. “Someone … killed him.”

  Her eyes locked on mine. Her lower lip trembled. Then she stepped back, slowly brought a shaking hand to her mouth, covered it just as it opened. I thought she was going to cry, scream. But she just stood there in the middle of the bar, one hand over her mouth, dark brown eyes welling up, staring at me as if they were collecting all the information through telepathy.

  “Why?” Her voice was barely audible.

  “I don’t know.”

  “How?”

  I hesitated. I didn’t know how much to tell her. At least at the moment, in this place, it was too ugly to get into. I stared at my half-empty glass, the white thin foam clinging to the rim, forming the hole I was falling into.

  “Someone tied him to a cinderblock and tossed him in the middle of the Intracoastal.”

  She gasped. The lines in her face were sharp as she winced, eyes shut tight. Then she turned away.

  I closed my eyes. And in that small parcel of darkness, I saw Jaybird. I opened them. Took another drink of beer.

  “I don’t believe it,” she said sharply. “Where did it happen?”

  “Blackburn Point Road. By the little park there.”

  “Jesus.”

  In the background, Bob Marley was singing one of his uplifting tunes, something totally incongruous. One of the customers at the other end of the bar yelled at the ball game on the TV.

  A waiter walked up to the corner of the bar by the steps and glanced in our direction. He must have sensed something was wrong, probably from Tessa’s expression or body language. He turned his eyes on the other customers at the bar, then down at his tray where he had his order written on a pad.

  Finally, Tessa whispered, “But why?”

  I was as lost as she was. A part of me wanted to laugh at the ludicrous hours we’d spent looking for him. I thought of when I went out on the kayak to explore what Liam might have done that fateful night. And when I came back, Jaybird was gone from the couch. That was the last time I’d seen him, tired, stoned Jaybird asleep on the couch, cockroaches crawling out of his blond dreadlocks.

  What if I’d stayed in the house?

  “Order up,” the waiter finally said. Tessa and I jumped, turned to look at the man leaning forward on the counter, smiling at us. Tessa hadn’t shed a tear. She turned her eyes to me. I could tell she was working hard to hold it in. It made me imagine the moment when she got the news of Liam’s passing. We’d never talked about that—how she learned he was dead. It must have been tough. Did she break then?

  She moved away, went to the end of the bar, forced a smile for the waiter, and took a long time reading the order. She poured two pints of Guinness, her movements completely mechanical as if she was running on autopilot. She set drinks on the round tray in front of the server, went back to the cooler and fished out three Coronas, used a large opener to pop the tops, set them on the tray, fished out three lime wedges from the condiments tray at the end of the bar, set them on three-pint glasses, which she set on the tray with the other drinks. She smiled again, but this time it didn’t come off right. Her lips twisted and her eyes narrowed. Then she came back to me, grabbed one of my beers, and drank.

  I did the same.

  I set my empty down. Tessa held hers up and forced a grin. “Here’s to Jaybird.”

  I watched her drink, her throat moving up and down. She offered me the glass. I took a long sip.

  The customers at the end of the bar were staring at us. It was a rare sight to see a bartender drinking on the job.

  Then Tessa laughed one of those fake chuckles to prevent her from crying. “Joey,” she said and wiped her lips with the back of her hand. “Joey, the manager. He was just bitching about Jaybird, how he was going to fire his ass.”

  I had no words. The only two people to drown in the Intracoastal in at least a decade were Liam and Jaybird. No one could tell me it was a coincidence.

  When I spoke with Detective Kendel earlier, I asked him about Liam’s case. He didn’t seem pleased. Asked me if I was a licensed investigator.

  “The case is closed,” I told him. “I’m just going over it for his father. It seems there was a witness—”

  “Where’d you hear that?” he barked.

  “Deputy Norton said you spoke to a witness.”

  “The fuck does he know?” he said, his fat face chewing hard on the nicotine gum, his little beady eyes staring at me—almost daring me to cross him. Me, I didn’t have an issue with Kendel. He was old school and respectable as far as I knew. And I’d known him for years. His behavior at the moment was surprising.

  I said, “He was there.”

  “Kid’s a goddamn rookie,” Kendel said.

  “Was he your witness?” I asked nodding toward the ambulance.

  “Who, Norton?”

  “No. Jaybird.”

  “Hell no.”

  “Well then, who was?”

  His eyes were cold, his expression hard. The mercury vapor lights of the park and the street cut nasty shadows across his old tired face. For a moment, I was a little afraid of him. But then his little round eyes softened. It was difficult to tell if he smiled because his mustache shielded his mouth.

  He nodded to the side of the park. “Let’s walk.”

  I stepped beside him, and we made our way slowly to the little bridge that led to the other section of the park where Rachel had been taking her photos. Then he stopped and turned to face the water, leaned forward, forearms resting on the wooden rail.

  “There was no witness,” he said quietly.

  “Then how did you know he was out on a kayak?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “But the report said—”

  “Fuck the report,” he said and turned his head to look at me. “This is between us. Off the record.”

  “Go on.”

  He ran his hand over his mouth, his thumb and index fingers pressing down the sides of his long mustache. “I got four months left,” he said. “Retirin’ in December. Thirty-two years in the Sheriff’s office, twenty-one of those as a detective. That kid we fished out a couple weeks ago checked out as an accident, plain and simple. There was nothin’ to indicate any different. I called it how I saw it.”

  “So, what, you just invented the kayak?”

  “What difference does it make if he was on a kayak or if he just’d gone out and gotten drunk and fell off a pier or one of them stand-up boards?”

  “Maybe someone pushed him off,” I said and nodded to where the first responders were wrapping up their work. “Just like this guy.”

  “Not the same.”

  “You surprise me, Kendel. You’re a good detective. Why do this?”

  He leaned back and stretched his left arm out, rubbed his shoulder with his right hand. “Son, I’m looking over the fence. Four months from now my day’s gonna be filled with golf and fishing.”

  “So you shoved Liam Fleming’s case in the accident pile.”

  “It was an accident,” he said and tapped his chest with his thumb. “I know for a fact.”

  The smug motherfucker. I nodded at the place where the ambulance was backing up, flashers off. “What about Jaybird. Is he an accident?”

  Kendel smiled. “You can’t win them all, can you?”

  “It gets worse,” I said. “The guy you found two weeks ago was living in the same house as Jaybird. They were roommates.”

  He eyed me suspiciously. “How do you know that?”

  “Because I spoke with him a couple days go. I was at the cottage on Midnight
Pass Road when he disappeared. Wake the fuck up, Kendel. Liam Fleming and Jaybird were murdered.”

  CHAPTER 19

  TESSA SERVED ME another pint and gave me a short, empathetic smile. Then she walked off to take care of the handful of customers at the bar. They looked like regulars, older, scruffy fishermen with gray hair, unshaven, sun-faded t-shirts. She went about the transactions in a robotic way, pouring the rum, filling a glass with Coke, twisting open a Bud Lite and handing it to one of the men.

  “What is it?” she said when she finally came back to where I sat.

  “Nothing.”

  She took a short sip of my beer and narrowed her eyes. “I can see the wheels turning in your head, Dexter. What’s going on?”

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “Why would someone want to kill Jaybird?”

  “Why would anyone want to kill anyone?”

  I held her stare for as long as I could. But there was too much hurt in her eyes and too many lies in mine. I wasn’t telling her everything I knew—what Detective Kendel had confessed.

  The deaths of two people close to her took its toll. I could see her struggling to hold it together. A part of me wanted to walk across the counter like a ghost and put my arms around her and hold her tight, tell her it was okay to cry. And yet another part of me was not as sympathetic. Instead, I withheld information because two people close to her had been murdered. I knew nothing about Tessa. She could be anyone. Yes. She could be—a killer.

  “Thing is …” I said, thinking carefully of what I wanted to say. “At first I thought Liam was killed for money. Maybe his partner wanted to take over the company. People are greedy like that. But why Jaybird?”

  “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “My other thesis was totally different,” I said. What had been a job, a gig, a quick buck, had turned into a nightmare. I couldn’t imagine Jaybird being drowned that way. And I couldn’t—or didn’t—want to imagine Tessa or any of the people I’d met in Siesta Key being involved in such a horrible crime.

  “Was?”

  I took a deep breath. “When we saw Brandy Fleming and Keith at the Ritz, I got it in my head that maybe it had been Keith.”

  “But they were all friends. Liam and Jaybird and Keith.”

  “I get it. But maybe Liam knew about their affair and was going to tell his father.”