“Not exactly,” she replied with a smile as she carefully began to insert the end of the tiny cable into the artery. “I did study at King’s College of London, majoring in life science and medicine. But in my fourth year, I discovered I preferred working with dead people, rather than trying to keep the living from becoming one.”
She glanced up at him and smiled again. “Does that seem odd to you?”
“Odd?” Marty asked as Meg slowly and carefully moved the cable into the arm, a fraction of an inch at a time, while watching the screen on the little TV. “Nothing odd about trying to help others, even if it means doing unusual things to help solve a crime.”
“Here,” Meg said. “Come round to this side and have a look.”
Stepping around the table, Marty leaned over close to Meg’s face in front of the little monitor. “The end of my arterial endoscope is into the ulnar artery now, just past the branch in the elbow.”
Marty wasn’t sure what he was looking at. It resembled the inside of a pink straw, with the end pinched closed. Meg looked at him, their faces only inches apart.
“I’m, uh, not really sure what I’m supposed to be seeing.”
“The artery is collapsed, no clotting of blood,” she said, softly. “Your victim was indeed very much alive when this arm was removed.”
Marty stood up straight. “What would it look like if he’d been dead?”
“When a person dies,” Meg replied, slowly removing the endoscope tube, “the heart stops pumping and the blood will almost immediately begin to coagulate, forming tiny clots that get larger over time. A liver probe is the best way to determine time of death, but a look inside the arteries works as well. If the body isn’t moved, livor mortis will set in, blood will pool in the most dependent, or lowest, part, and you’ll see what appears to be faint bruising in that area.”
“So there’s no doubt about it? This man was killed with a chain saw?”
“Perhaps,” Meg said, removing the smaller hemostat and placing it with the other. “Without the rest of the body it’s impossible to tell. This man may have had this arm cut off and while he was still alive his attacker might have shot him in the head. The bullet would be the cause of death then. Or perhaps he died when another limb was removed and that would be the COD.”
“How long could a man live after having his arm hacked off with a McCulloch?”
“McCulloch?”
“It’s a popular chain saw manufacturer, here in the States.”
“Ah, of course,” Meg said. “I thought I’d recognized the name, but this wasn’t done with a McCulloch. To answer your question, not very long without medical attention. The brachial artery isn’t as large as the femoral artery in the leg, but without medical attention, the victim would die from exsanguination, blood loss, within fifteen minutes or so.”
“You can tell what company manufactured the saw that was used?” Marty asked.
“Not in this case, but the kerf marks are not from any American manufacturer, and well over half the chain saws used in the world are manufactured in the United States. I can’t say for certain, but the kerf marks resemble one of a number of saws that are manufactured in Eastern Europe.”
“What if we find the saw? Any way to match it to the kerf marks?”
“Possibly,” Meg replied, wheeling the cart to a sink to clean her instruments. “If the chain has been sharpened, or if it’s been well used, there’s a very good chance that microscopic tool marks or scratches on either the cutters, the depth gauge, or even the drive links might be matched to marks on the bone. Do you have a saw in evidence?”
“No,” Marty replied. “Not yet.”
“A positive attitude. I like that.”
She turned and began washing off the instruments, then dried them carefully before putting everything away in her case and peeling off the gloves.
“Anything else you can tell me?” Marty asked.
“Yes,” Meg replied with a smile. “I’m quite famished. I thought you mentioned breakfast before we were to come here.”
“Oh jeez, I’m sorry, Meg. I was just so anxious to get some information.” Glancing at his watch, he realized it was already past breakfast, and his own stomach was rumbling. “How about an early lunch?”
“Brunch would be wonderful. Is there a local place that serves good fish? I’ve heard so much about the fishing here.”
“Sure, the Rusty Anchor is just before we get back to the resort. Old Rufus is known all over the Keys for his blackened hogfish.”
Ten minutes later, they were sitting at the outside bar with several locals, watching Rufus perform. His antics over the grill and stovetops was one of the many reasons people came to the Rusty Anchor. His delicious concoctions were all the other reasons.
“Mistah Mahtee,” Rufus said as he turned around and noticed the two newcomers to his outdoor kitchen. “What can I and I make for you, mon?”
Marty looked at Meg, and she just shrugged. “I’m quite easy to please. Whatever you recommend.”
Rufus smiled at her. “Yuh a long way from home, missy. Chiswick, what I and I be guessin’.”
Meg smiled broadly at the old man. “Yes! You have quite an ear, sir.”
“Ah, don be callin’ old Rufus sahr, missy. I and I are just a cook. Nuting mwore.”
“Then please call me Meg, Rufus. I love Jamaican food, and the spicier the better.”
“Yuh like di tings dat fly through di air, di ones dat crawls on di groun’, crawls on di bottom a Muddah Ocean, or swims?”
“Di ones dat swim in Muddah Ocean, mon,” Meg said with a gleeful smile, fully enjoying herself.
Rufus winked at her and turned to Marty. “Jest get some fresh hogfish in, Mistuh Mahtee. Dey was swimmin’ just two hours ’go.”
“No need to even ask, Rufus,” Marty replied.
The old man spun back around to his grills and burners, flipping burgers and chicken with a spatula in one hand and taking pinches of herbs and spices from several bowls with the other, to sprinkle on the meat.
“What a sweet old man,” Meg whispered.
“And the best chef in the Keys,” Marty replied, leaning closer. “He retired from a five-star restaurant in Jamaica quite a few years back and works part-time here for Rusty now. Some say he’s a mystic.”
“That would explain his familiarity with regional accents. We Brits travel to Jamaica quite often.”
It was past noon when Marty pulled out of the Anchor to take Meg back to the resort. As he approached the turn, his cellphone vibrated in his pocket. Pulling it out, he didn’t recognize the number, but answered it anyway.
“Marty, it’s Kim. We’re out on the Stream, and you need to get out here quick. We found a leg!”
By the time the Coast Guard cutter Key Biscayne arrived from Key West, Marty had already secured the scene. He’d arrived with a young woman, who he introduced as Meg Stewart, a forensics specialist from England who was working with him on the severed arm case.
With Linda and me helping, we carefully searched the entire yacht. There were no more bodies or body parts to be found. A boat this size would have to have a crew of at least four, I figured, working in shifts if they’d planned any kind of long cruise, and it’s not the kind of yacht the owner would pilot himself. Only the dead couple in the forward guest stateroom could be found.
“My guess is the crew members were murdered on the sundeck,” Marty told the young Coast Guard lieutenant in command of the Key Biscayne. “Their bodies were cut up with a chain saw and thrown overboard.”
“Easy speculation,” Lieutenant Spears replied. “But what I’d like to know foremost is why a Monroe deputy is first on scene.”
“I’m friends with Captain McDermitt,” Marty replied.
“And I called him first,” I said, playing the dumb charter boat skipper. “I knew he was working a case up in Marathon involving an arm.”
“You think this is related?” Spears asked Marty.
“I’d bet on
it,” Marty replied. “Miss Stewart says the femur has the same kerf marks as an arm that was found up in the Content Keys just yesterday. Both seem to have been made from a chain-saw-wielding assailant. And there are indications that both were done ante mortem.”
“Ante mortem?” Lieutenant Spears asked.
“As in before they died,” Rusty chimed in.
“You can tell that from the cuts?”
“Not so much the cuts themselves,” Meg replied. “Though I am one hundred percent certain both amputations were made with the same saw. The arm I examined this morning was definitely removed while the man was alive and breathing. Judging from the amount of blood on the yacht’s sundeck, I feel certain that it happened there while the victim was still alive. If it was done post mortem, there wouldn’t be nearly as much blood. Even from four victims, as Captain McDermitt has mentioned would be needed to run this yacht.”
Spears visibly shuddered. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered.
“I have a towboat on the way, Lieutenant,” Marty said. “But, since we’re outside U.S. territorial waters, and both Agent Rosales and I are well beyond our legal jurisdictions, I need your permission to move the yacht to the Marathon City Marina, where our crime scene investigators can gather evidence.”
“I’ll grant permission, once I get the okay from my superiors. Shouldn’t be a problem, since Marathon is much closer. But I know I’ll be ordered to escort the yacht in.”
“Why?” Linda asked. “The Coast Guard doesn’t usually investigate murders.”
“We’ve been searching for this yacht since Thursday evening, Agent Rosales. The owner is a military contractor.” Turning back to Marty, he added, “Don’t be surprised if one or more alphabet agencies isn’t waiting at the dock to take over your investigation, Deputy. I’ll let you know what my superiors say.”
With that, the lieutenant and two petty officers boarded their tender to head back over to the cutter.
“Guess there’s nothing left to do here but wait for Sea Tow,” Rusty said.
We’d left the Obsession adrift and moved away from the yacht after the search so it was downwind. It’d been a couple of hours since we’d found her, and whatever Rufus had put in that little bottle had worn off after exactly one hour. Using it a second time did nothing.
“Y’all don’t need to hang around,” Marty said. “The towboat’ll be here in about ten minutes.”
“Hell, we come this far,” Rusty said. “There’s plenty of ice on the fish we caught and I’m curious what all this government stuff’s about. I vote we hang around.”
“I know how we might be able to get a little more information,” Linda offered.
“Chyrel!” Kim said. “If she can’t dig something up, there’s nothing buried.”
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s all go in the salon and see if she can come up with anything.”
“If it’s alright with you, Jesse,” Marty said, “I need to keep the crime scene in visual contact. Mind if I sit on your bridge?”
I whisked my hand toward the ladder. “Be my guest. I can open the intercom and you can hear anything Chyrel digs up.”
“I’ll keep you company,” Kim said as she started up the ladder.
“Care to join us inside, Miss Stewart?” I asked. I’d seen the way Kim had bristled when Marty pulled up with the English woman on his patrol boat. “You can’t ask who it is we’re going to talk to, though.”
In the salon, I booted up the laptop and clicked on the “Soft Jazz” icon. This actually opens a direct video feed to Chyrel Koshinski’s office in Homestead. Or wherever she has one of her computers turned on. I don’t know how the hardware works with satellites, but it does. She’s one of Deuce’s team members, and a former CIA computer analyst who could hack into any computer system devised by man or machine.
After a minute, a window opened to a plain white background and the corner of a desk. It jiggled and turned away from the corner, then Chyrel stepped into the screen and sat down.
“Hey, Jesse. Been a while. Sorry for the delay. I had to set up my laptop. The PC went down just as you called. What’s up with you?”
“Hi, Chyrel,” I said. The woman was always bubbly and upbeat, enthusiastic about life itself. “Your PC went down? Why am I having trouble with that?”
“Shit happens,” she said with a grin, her short blond hair pulled back in a sloppy ponytail. “I don’t build ’em, I just make ’em do more than they were designed to.”
“Hey, look, we’re out here on the Gulf Stream and came across an abandoned vessel.”
“We?”
“Yeah, I brought Linda, Jimmy, Rusty, and Kim out fishing.”
“So, you’re halfway to Cuba and find a derelict boat. Not real unusual in that area, is it?”
“This one is, Chyrel. It’s a large luxury yacht with a dead couple on board. The Coasties are just off our starboard side, waiting for a towboat. I was hoping you might be able to shed some light on who owns the boat.”
Interlocking her fingers, she extended her hands palm out, cracking her knuckles. “What’s the name of the boat?”
“Obsession, out of Miami,” I replied. “It’s a seventy—”
“A seventy-six-foot Pershing,” Chyrel said, interrupting me. “Owned by Darius Minnich and his wife Celia, the CEO and CFO of a company called CephaloTech in Coral Gables.”
Raising my eyebrows, I leaned toward the computer in disbelief. “You’re fast, Chyrel, but not that fast. How’d you know it already?”
“Are you kidding? Every agency from the Miami dogcatcher to the CIA has been looking for it for almost two days. CephaloTech is working on a top secret project for DoD.”
“You hear that, Marty?” I said in the direction of the intercom. “Your case has national security implications.”
His voice came back over the speaker. “Yeah, I heard. Now they’re gonna yank it.”
“Chyrel,” I said, turning back to the laptop, “Marty’s working on a murder case involving a severed arm I found up near my island. From the looks of things, that arm might have been one of the Obsession crew members.”
“Yikes!” she said. “What is it with people down there?”
“Hey, it’s not us,” I said with a grin. “Outsiders. We go by the live-and-let-live rule.”
“So, what is it you want me to find out next?”
I thought for a moment. “Coast Guard’s already called it in. By now, I’m sure word is out to all the interested parties. Can you find out who’s gonna take the case from Marty? And if the dead couple are the owners?”
“That’s easy,” she replied. “I learned about the disappearance of the boat and its owners while surfing JDISS, the Joint Deployable Intelligence Support System. Something I do when I’m bored. I already have a little bit of information. Apparently, this CephaloTech outfit is working on a really sensitive, high-tech camouflage system, under a DoD contract awarded by the Assistant Secretary for Army Acquisitions, an Air Force general by the name of Clyde Bottoms. So, Marty, your first guest will most likely be Army CID. The usual turf war will be waged between them, FBI, CIA, and probably a few more.”
“Damn,” I heard Marty mutter through the intercom.
“But, then again,” Chyrel said with a grin, “the whole alphabet soup falls under the oversight of one agency. Not the Army, though. Want me to see if I can pull some strings?”
Turning to Rusty, I said, “There’s something I wasn’t supposed to tell you, bro. But if this conversation goes another minute, you’re likely to find out. Stockwell’s taking his old job back.”
Rusty stood up. “What the? What about Deuce? I thought he was doing great up there.”
“Long story,” I replied. “I’ll tell ya more about it later. But Deuce and Julie will be home tomorrow afternoon. Act startled, okay? For your daughter’s sake? She wants to surprise you.”
The grin on my old friend’s face grew wider with each passing second. He hadn’t seen his only living relative, h
is daughter Julie, in several months now, and the two had been inseparable since the day she was born. “Yeah, sure, I’ll play along.”
Turning back to the laptop, I said, “Tell Travis that I’d consider it a personal favor if Marty can at least remain on the case in some capacity.”
“Will do, but he’s gonna want quid pro quo,” Chyrel replied with a grin of her own.
“The Cay Sal Bank?”
“You can almost bet on it,” Chyrel replied with a wink.
“Well, don’t offer it to him. But can you fax me everything you have on it, without anyone knowing?”
“Oh, please.”
“Okay,” I said with a chuckle. “Send me what you can, before you ask him. Then I can decide if the kid’s worth me sticking my neck out for.”
“You got it, Jesse,” Chyrel said. Two photos appeared side by side on the screen. A man in his late fifties probably, with salt-and-pepper hair and a wide face. The other picture was a younger woman, very attractive, with piles of blond hair past her shoulders.
“Is this the dead couple?” Chyrel asked.
“Definitely not the woman,” I replied. “And the dead man is only slightly gray around the temples, maybe ten years younger than what the guy in the picture looks to be.”
“Probably guests of the owners,” Chyrel said.
Marty’s voice came over the speaker. “That means either the owners are dead and fed to the fish, or they’ve been kidnapped.”
“Thanks, Chyrel,” I said. “Let me know what Travis says.”
“I’ll call Linda,” Chyrel said, grinning. “Your phone’s probably in the freezer or somewhere like that. Bye, y’all.”
The window closed and the desktop screen returned. I closed the laptop and looked around the salon. “Grab a cooler and some drinks, will ya, Jimmy? Let’s go up to the bridge.”
Parson’s was at the CephaloTech gate the next morning at nine. His interview Friday evening with Miss Juarez and Captain Waldrup lasted several hours, and he came away from it convinced that neither was involved and fairly certain it had nothing to do with anyone in the company, since the two of them were the only ones that had known the missing couple’s travel plans. Today, he planned to dig into the background of anyone else close to the couple.
Fallen Tide: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 8) Page 8