Fallen Hero: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 10)

by Wayne Stinnett

  “No, sir. I figured you’d want to have a look first.”

  “Why’d you figure that?”

  “When I tied off, there was a Kong tether attached to a jack line.”

  Ben glanced over at Marty. Kong was one of the more popular tethers that sailors used to keep from being lost at sea if they fell overboard while single-handing a boat in a storm.

  “And?” Ben asked.

  “The other end was in the water, sir. I figured you’d want to be first on scene, especially so close to the sub-station. Those guys won’t turn out for an abandoned boat report; it happens all the time.”

  Marty slowly idled across the flats at the end of the canal, instead of following it on around another turn to the deeper channel and open water. He looked at Ben, a serious expression on his face. “Jim Isaksson’s body is attached to the other end of the Kong.”

  Once the bottom dropped away, Marty brought the patrol boat up on plane, turning south into Pirate’s Cove, then east past Gopher Key and into Kemp Channel.

  Ben could see the salvage boat on the other side of the bridge. It was listing, and obviously stuck on the bottom. It would be several hours until the tide refloated it.

  Marty quickly tied the patrol boat off to the forward part of the much larger vessel, and the two men stepped over onto the canted deck. “Right over here, Lieutenant,” Marty said, walking to the stern.

  “Pull him up,” Ben said, looking down at where the tether disappeared into the water. It was already dark, the only light provided by a half moon directly overhead.

  Marty went to the helm and, after a couple of seconds, he flipped a switch that turned on two spreader lights attached to the structure around the aft deck of the salvage boat. He then began pulling the tether up. It was made of an elastic material that kept it short and out of the way. Stretched to its full length, it would extend to ten feet if the wearer needed to move around while connected to the jack line.

  A man’s body broke the surface, rolling face up, bloated from the buildup of internal decomposition gas. A weight belt around the man’s waist had probably kept the body from rising on its own. The man’s skin was pale and stretched around the weight belt. There was a puckered hole just above the man’s right eye, and both his eyes were missing.

  “He didn’t attach that tether,” Marty said. “He’s not even wearing a harness, and seas are flat, so there’d be no reason to wear one.”

  “This pretty much how you found him?” Ben asked. “The tether attached to his weight belt?”

  “Yeah,” Marty replied. “No reason for him to do that.”

  “What about his eyes?” Ben asked, to see how sharp the kid was.

  “Scavengers go for the soft tissue first,” Marty replied. “I doubt the bullet hole had anything to do with his eyes being gone. There’ll probably be more soft tissue damage, too.”

  “Apparent bullet hole,” Ben corrected him. “Aside from the fact that this might be another homicide, what makes you think this is related to the dead girl?”

  “Dwight called me a month ago,” Marty replied. “Said that Jim’s deck hand had up and quit, and how Jim had just landed a big salvage contract. Wanted to know if I was interested.”

  “What’d you tell him?”

  “That I’d think on it,” Marty replied. “I have a couple of weeks’ vacation time due me and thought I might be able to help him out until he could hire someone. The next day, when I got the okay to take the vacation time, I called Dwight back. He told me that Jim had already hired a diver. A woman named Jenny Marshall.”

  “You gonna ride it out here?” Rusty asked me, once Billy and I had sat down at the bar and the two had caught up on things.

  “Probably.” I glanced at the TV. Any time there was a hurricane, Rusty kept the TV on the Weather Channel. Hurricanes being what they are, the Weather Channel ran nearly continuous coverage, especially if it appeared to be heading toward the U.S. “Still too far out to say. If it stays on that course through tomorrow, the Revenge will be safe here. If it turns a little more westerly before then, I might consider bugging out for my hurricane hole.”

  Just about every large boat owner in the Keys has a hurricane hole, a place they could run their boat to and take shelter from a storm. Mine was up in Tarpon Bay, several miles inland on Shark River, which flows out of the Everglades. I’d hunkered down there a couple of times.

  Or I could just go home. My stilt house was more than capable of withstanding even a category three hurricane and the dock area was completely enclosed. The downside would be the storm surge. The top of the Revenge is just a foot below the floor beams of the house on a spring tide. If a hurricane arrived then, the accompanying surge could raise the Revenge right through the floor. Or, more likely, crush the fly bridge and push her under.

  “So, Jesse says the food here is pretty good,” Billy said.

  “Pretty good?” Jimmy scoffed, coming out of the walk-in cooler behind the bar. “Best you’ll ever eat, dude.”

  I introduced the two, and Billy asked Rusty what he recommended.

  “Rufus—he’s my chef—he can cook just about anything, and do it better than anyone else.” Rusty turned to Jimmy and said, “Go see what he’s got that’s fresh.”

  “Heard from Julie lately?” I asked Rusty as Jimmy disappeared through the back door.

  “They’ll be here later this evening, as a matter of fact. Same reason, run the James Caird up to Tarpon Bay if it looks bad. Either way, they’re taking a few days aboard the Whitby.”

  “Both of them?”

  “They are married, bro.”

  “I meant, both of them are taking time away?” I said.

  “Yeah,” Rusty replied. “Deuce says things are slow and he has an announcement.”

  “Married?” Billy asked. “Your little girl’s married?”

  “Ya gotta come down here time to time,” Rusty said. “Julie’s a grown woman. She and Deuce Livingston been married for a coupla years now.”

  Billy laughed. “Guess we’re all getting long in the teeth. Last time I saw her, she was a skinny little thing, no higher than a buck key deer. He a nice guy?”

  Rusty grinned. “Couldn’a picked a better man to be my son-in-law. Used to be a Navy SEAL, now he works for the government. Julie’s a petty officer in the Coast Guard and works for the same agency.”

  The back door opened and Rufus came in. “Rodney jes drop off some snappah, Mistah Rusty. Dey still alive and Jimmy be cleaning dem. How yuh doin’ Cap’n Jesse mon?”

  “Right as rain,” I replied. “Rufus, meet an old friend of ours, Billy Rainwater. Billy, this is Rufus.”

  “Please ta meet yuh, Mistuh Billy,” Rufus said, extending his hand, an odd look on his face. “I and I nevuh met an Indian before.”

  Billy bypassed Rufus’s hand and gripped his forearm. “And I never met a Jamaican man before. You got a last name, Rufus?”

  I suddenly realized that, while I’d known the wiry old Jamaican for quite a few years, I never knew his last name.

  “A course,” Rufus replied, with a gap-toothed grin. “Everbody got a last name. So, yuh be wantin’ some a dat fresh snappah? How yuh want it cook?”

  “Surprise me,” Billy said.

  Rufus’s eyes widened. “Dat I and I can do, Mistuh Billy.” Then he turned and went back out through the door to his kitchen.

  Rufus’s kitchen was built onto the back of the bar and had three big roll-up windows on two sides. Locals came and sat on stools to watch him cook. It had become sort of an attraction to the local islanders, and quite a few live-aboards at the marina.

  I leaned over the bar. “So, what is Rufus’s last name?”

  “No idea,” Rusty replied. “Never bothered to ask.”

  Just then, the front door of the bar opened and I instantly recognized Deuce and Julie as they stepped inside and made their way to the bar. As they approached, I couldn’t help but notice that Julie’s belly was much larger. An announcement?


  Introductions were made, and I glanced down at Julie’s swollen mid-section. “Is there something you guys haven’t told me?” I asked Deuce.

  He just grinned. When I looked across the bar at Rusty, he was grinning, too. “You’re going to be a great-uncle,” Julie said.

  “Get out! Really?” I gave her a big hug and looked at Rusty, still grinning behind the bar.

  “She didn’t want Rusty to tell you until she could do it herself,” Deuce said. “Russell the third will arrive in February.”

  My eyes began to sweat a little. Deuce’s father and namesake had been my and Rusty’s platoon sergeant when we were stationed in Okinawa way back in the eighties. Russ had been murdered nearly three years ago, and Deuce had come down here to spread his dad’s ashes on a reef—and also to find his dad’s killer.

  That killer became responsible for my wife’s death before he was brought to justice. His bleached-white bones are scattered on a little island not far from my home.

  “A boy?” I asked, my voice catching a little.

  Deuce slapped me on the shoulder. “And they say you Jarheads aren’t very bright.”

  Jimmy came back in, carrying a platter of what I immediately recognized from the scent as blackened snapper. Rufus carried a large bowl of steamed vegetables with little chunks of sausage and crawfish, which he calls janga. They’re actually the freshwater crawfish we raise in the aquaponics system on the island. In Jamaica, the locals call them janga and consider them an aphrodisiac. I didn’t put a lot of stock in such claims. Jimmy took over for Rusty behind the bar as we all sat down to eat.

  “Looks like I’ll be looking for a job soon,” Deuce said after we’d wiped out the platter of fillets.

  “A job?” Rusty said, nearly choking on his last bite of sausage.

  “The writing’s on the wall. In a few months, we’ll have a new administration in the White House. And he doesn’t much like the DHS.”

  “That who you work for?” Billy asked.

  Deuce gave me a quick glance, and I nodded slightly. Just like with his dad, Deuce and I could express volumes to one another without really saying a word. With just a glance, Deuce asked if Billy was good and I’d informed him that he was someone I would trust with my life. And I have.

  “Yes,” Deuce replied. “I’m the head of a counter-terrorism unit under Homeland Security.”

  “So why not just go back to the Navy?” I asked. “You only have, what, eight years to retirement?”

  “I was under contract all through college,” he said. “Less than five years left. Scuttlebutt says the Navy will be offering early retirement to a number of officers and upper enlisted men. I asked Colonel Stockwell and he made sure my name was on the short list. I’ll be retiring just before Trey is born.”

  Stockwell is Deuce’s boss. A former Army SpecOps officer, he’d taken the position of Homeland Security’s Associate Deputy Director, Caribbean Counter-terrorism Command over a year before.

  “What kind of job will you be looking for?” I asked.

  “You remember what I told you just before you retired, Jesse?” Rusty asked.

  I grinned, remembering the conversation we’d had just before I left the Corps. Turning to Deuce, I said, “Never mind. Just get down here, and we’ll find out what kind of hustle you’re best suited for.”

  “Well, I kind of already have an idea,” Deuce said. “Security and personal protection.”

  “Not a lot of need for that down here, I wouldn’t think,” Billy offered.

  “He’s right,” I said. “Maybe in Key Weird, working for the cruise lines or something.”

  “We were thinking up island,” Julie said. “Since I’ll be going back to the Coast Guard Reserves, I’d want to be near the station in Islamorada. From there it’s a short commute to Miami, where Deuce could have an office.”

  “Deuce?” I asked. Julie was never big on nicknames.

  She put a hand on her belly. “Well, I can’t very well call my husband and my son ‘Russell.’ I think Ace would approve of Deuce and Trey.”

  Ace. I grinned at her. Russ would have loved being called that. He’d have loved taking his grandson fishing and diving for lobster, too.

  “It’ll be a struggle at first,” Deuce said. “But I’m sure I can make it work.”

  I took a pull from my beer bottle. “No, it won’t. I want in.”

  “No way, Jesse,” Deuce said, holding up both hands, palms out. “I didn’t come here looking for a handout. Besides, we have a pretty good nest egg, remember?”

  Some time back, Deuce had played a pivotal role in helping locate a couple of lost treasures, one of which was what had gotten his dad killed. Against Deuce’s protestations, Rusty and I had insisted on Russ getting an equal split, in the form of a savings account for a grandchild Russ would never know.

  “That wasn’t meant to be used for start-up capital,” I said. “It’s for Trey’s and some possible siblings’ futures, and for you two to retire on when you’re old like me and Rusty. Besides, I’m not offering a handout. When I said I want in, I mean as a partner. A working partner or silent partner, I don’t care. But I get a percentage.”

  “You want to work in the security business?” Billy asked.

  “When you stop having fun, you start dying,” I replied, clapping a hand on the back of my old friend’s neck. “Your words, man. Besides, I know a good investment when I see one.”

  Deuce and I talked about it for a while longer and came to a tentative agreement. I’d foot the bill to get his new venture up and running, and in return I’d receive twenty percent of the net profits for two years or until I earned back my initial investment plus ten percent, whichever came first. I’d also be available for any kind of consult work that I might be suited for, on a per-piece basis.

  “What about the rest of the team?” I asked. I’d grown close to most of them and enjoyed having them pop in and out on occasion.

  “Most will either be absorbed into other jobs in other agencies, or return to the jobs they came from. Andrew said he’s going back to the Coast Guard. He’s only a little more than a year from full retirement.”

  “Tony and Art?”

  “Art already has orders. He’s heading to Coronado as an instructor in two months, and shipping over for his last tour. Tony and Tasha moved up their wedding and flew off to Vegas two weeks ago without telling anyone. They got back last Wednesday, and I sat down with him and Chyrel yesterday. He’s up to ship over in December, and she’s already said she won’t be going back to the CIA. They’re my first employees.”

  At midnight, the little party broke up. Julie and Deuce went down to their little ketch, and Billy and I headed to the Revenge. There was no change in the storm’s status. The forecast models all showed it crossing eastern Cuba some time the next night. From the ripples in the turning basin, I knew from experience that the waves were really starting to build, out beyond the end of the canal.

  “Where’s the nearest sand beach?” Billy asked, as we sat down with a couple of beers on the couch in the salon.

  “Sombrero Beach is just a few miles from here. You really want to surf in that chop?”

  “Storms are the only time waves build up in the Gulf,” Billy replied. “And we are gonna ride a few.”

  “You might be riding a few,” I said, with a sideways grin. “Me? I might fall off one or two.”

  Ben and Devon arrived at the Medical Examiner’s office in Marathon early the following morning. Way too early on a Monday, after working most of the weekend, Ben thought. Doc Fredric ushered the two detectives into his work area. Neither James Isaksson’s body nor any other was in sight.

  “My findings were quite conclusive,” Doc said, walking over to the stainless-steel doors of the reefer and pulling one open. He slid out the cadaver tray; Isaksson’s body lay composed and peaceful on the cold steel. Doc indicated the gunshot wound. “A single GSW to the forehead was the cause of death. No water in the lungs. Death was instantaneous.”r />
  “No exit wound?” Devon asked.

  Picking up a small plastic bottle from his desk, Doc handed it to Devon. “The murder weapon is a .38 caliber revolver.”

  “How can you be sure it wasn’t a semi-automatic?” she asked, handing the bottle to Ben, who examined it closely.

  “Did you know that ballistic forensics go back nearly eighty years?” Doc asked Devon, as Ben continued examining the bullet. “A man named Calvin Goddard first used his new invention, the comparison microscope, to examine ballistic evidence in the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre in 1929. The results of his tests proved that the Chicago Police had no hand in the shooting, and that it was a rival gang member by the name of Fred Burke.”

  Ben handed the bottle with the bullet in it back to Devon. “The gun that fired this bullet has a left-hand twist, most likely a Colt.”

  “Indeed, Ben,” Doc said. “That narrowed the search considerably, since Colt Firearms are one of a very few manufacturers that use barrels with a left twist. The striations the gun barrel imparted on this particular bullet have a twist rate and groove spacing consistent with only one firearm: the Colt .38 caliber Cobra.”

  “Thanks, Doc,” Ben said. “Anything else you can tell us?”

  “Stippling around the entry wound suggests that the fatal shot was fired from close range. No more than a foot away.”

  Ben frowned. “Execution style,” he muttered. As if the murder of the girl weren’t enough. It took a special kind of killer to hold a gun to someone’s head, look them in the eye, and pull the trigger. Add to that the sick circumstances of Jennifer Marshall’s murder, and a really deranged psycho was loose in the waters around Key West.

  As Ben and Devon left the building, her phone rang. She answered it, listened for a moment, and then said, “We’ll be there within an hour.” Turning to Ben, she said, “Forensics recovered a clear set of prints on the cash box and got it open. There was an ounce of cocaine inside. Walt’s running the prints through IAFIS.”

  Walt Cantrell had been with the Department much longer than Ben and now worked only part time, only on major crimes, as the lead forensics technician. In his late sixties, he no longer collected the evidence in the field, but was very much respected among the field technicians who did.