Corruption in the Keys

by Matthew Rief

  After setting aside the sat phone, Ange grabbed the first aid kit and stepped over to us. She grabbed a roll of gauze and we tightened it around the woman who’d been shot to keep pressure on the Quick Clot. Then Ange put on a pair of rubber gloves and went about disinfecting the younger woman’s wounds and applying bandages as necessary.

  I thought about moving both of them over to the beach so they could be loaded into the helicopter faster. I had my dive knife and figured I could cut the Bimini top loose and we could use it to carry them. But my situational awareness put those thoughts to rest. We didn’t know the extent of their internal injuries and couldn’t risk making things worse, especially if one of them had spinal damage.

  Rising to my feet, I stepped aft and grabbed the sat phone. After making a quick call to the Key West Police Department to fill them in on the situation, I turned my attention back to the two women.

  Suddenly, Atticus started barking over and over again. I glanced over at him and saw that he was standing behind the stern of the Sunrunner. He was looking out over the water in the direction where the renegade boat had come from. I followed his gaze and spotted a second boat cruising straight for us. It wasn’t far off, maybe a quarter of a mile. From that distance, I could see the dark outline of a few guys standing, holding what looked like rifles across their chests.

  I darted across the boat, dug into my backpack, and pulled out my monocular and Sig. Ange was busy helping the older woman, but Jack glanced up at me, confused. I jumped onto the ground beside Atticus, placed a hand on his head, and zoomed in on the approaching boat. I’d been right—two of the four guys I spotted had rifles slung across their chests. And one of the others had a pistol in his hands. From a moment’s glance, it was easy to see that these weren’t a bunch of buddies out fishing.

  Within seconds of looking at them through my scope, one of the guys pointed straight at me and they opened fire. The sound of automatic gunfire tore across the air as bullets exploded into the dirt and sand around me.

  “Get down!” I yelled as I dove on top of Atticus and rolled us both behind the cover of a small sandbank.

  Rounds spat up sand around me, and a few struck the stern of the Sunrunner. During a brief pause in the relentless hailstorm of gunfire, I contorted my body and took aim just over the sand. One of the guys had jumped out of the boat and was heading toward us with his rifle raised. I put him right in my sights and pulled the trigger in rapid succession, sending two 9mm rounds into the center of his body. He jerked back on contact, blood spewing out as he lost control of his body and splashed into the shallow water.

  The other three quickly provided cover fire. I dropped back under the sand, and when I peeked up, I saw two of the guys hauling the one I’d shot back into their boat. I watched as, within seconds, they had his bloody body aboard and the engines roaring. I popped up and fired off a few more rounds, but they quickly turned around and took off back into the Gulf.

  The incident had lasted just a few minutes. With their outboards still loud over the horizon, I wrapped an arm around Atticus.

  “I owe you one for that, boy,” I said, petting him briefly before rising to my feet.

  He glanced at me, then stepped up onto the sandbank and stared down our retreating foes.

  “Who the hell was that?” Ange asked, rising from inside the boat.

  I shrugged. I hadn’t a clue who they were. As their boat grew smaller and smaller far out over the water, I climbed back into the Sunrunner and grabbed the first aid kit.

  “Good thing your Sig was in your bag, bro,” Jack said. “We would’ve been toast.”

  I tried my best to throw the incident out of my mind. There would be time to wonder about who those guys were and what they were up to, but we needed to focus on doing whatever we could to help the women.

  As I examined them, I noticed similarities in their features. The younger of the two had a slender build, dark red hair, and a pretty face that was covered in freckles. The older woman also had red hair, though it was lighter, and an attractive face with freckles and sunspots. They both had emerald-green eyes.

  Jack found a bag with their wallets inside and pulled out their IDs.

  “Maggie and Charlotte Fletcher,” he said. “They’re from Texas.”

  Ange glanced at the IDs, then leaned over the older woman.

  “Hold on, Maggie,” she said tenderly. “Help is on the way.”

  Just as we finished cleaning the wounds and bandaging them up, I heard the low thundering sound of helicopter rotors echoing across the water from the south. A familiar orange-and-white Jayhawk helicopter roared into view. Glancing at my dive watch, I saw that it had been only seven minutes since Ange had spoken to them.

  In less than a minute, the expert pilots swung the bird around and brought her down softly on the flat sandy beach a few hundred feet from the wreck. Wind from the rotors blew into us, gusting up sheets of sand and stray branches. As the engines slowed, the side door slid open and three Coast Guardsmen jumped out. Ange stayed with the two women while Jack and I ran over and helped them carry their two stretchers through the thick mangroves.

  I recognized one of the guys and filled him in with as much information as I could provide. Within minutes, they had both women secured and we all hauled them back to the helicopter. After loading them aboard, I handed the women’s bag, which had their wallets and IDs inside, to one of the guardsmen. They told us to stay on scene, then slid the door shut. We stepped back and watched as the rotors quickly picked up speed, lifting the rubber tires off the beach. We turned as sand stormed into us and within seconds, the bird was up and thundering back toward Key West.

  As the sound faded into the distance, I couldn’t keep my mind from racing.

  Who are Maggie and Charlotte Fletcher? And how in the hell did they end up in this situation?

  THREE

  The three of us stood side by side, with Atticus at our feet, as the Jayhawk quickly became nothing more than a dark speck on the southern horizon.

  “What do you think happened?” Ange asked.

  I shrugged. “We don’t exactly have a lot to go on.”

  I glanced over at Jack, who’d been silent since we’d carried the women to the helicopter.

  “Hey,” I said, patting him on the shoulder. “You alright?”

  He looked back at me, his eyes still wide.

  “This is bad, bro,” he said. “I don’t think the one who got shot is gonna make it.”

  I was surprised by his words. Jack was usually the light-hearted, optimistic one of the group.

  “We did everything we could for them,” I said. “I’m hopeful they’ll be okay.” Glancing back at the boat, I added, “Come on. Let’s go see what we can figure out before the police arrive.”

  Since the place was technically a crime scene, we did our best not to disrupt anything any more than we already had. We moved back over to the wrecked boat and peeked inside over the gunwales. Along with the bags and poly bottles, we noticed a broken microscope, two hardcases, a rugged laptop, and what looked like a camera in a waterproof housing.

  “Hardcases, poly bottles, a microscope. These women scientists or something?” Jack said.

  “Sure looks that way,” I replied.

  Ange knelt down alongside the starboard gunwale and wiped a thin layer of mud off the hull.

  “Hey, check this out,” she said. “Isn’t this the place you rented from?”

  Jack and I hovered over her and read a row of words she’d revealed.

  “Sure is,” I replied.

  “Mike’s Coastal Adventures” was painted in bold blue letters, along with the company logo. Mike’s was the company Kyle Quinn and I had used to rent a few kayaks from a month earlier. Kyle was an old comrade who’d been in a bad situation, and we’d used the kayaks to sneak up close to a retrofitted fishing trawler and take down the ruthless Russian mercenary Drago Kozlov.

  Half an hour after the Jayhawk disappeared over the horizon, a police boat
motored alongside the Robalo. It was an RHIB, or rigid-hull inflatable, and it was painted gray everywhere aside from its bright orange pontoons.

  Chief Charles Wilkes, the former sheriff and newly appointed head of the Key West Police Department, had been standing on the bow and approached our position, flanked on either side by fellow officers. Charles was a tall, lean black man who moved like a man much younger than his late forties. He’d spent a career in the FBI before migrating south, and we’d helped each other out a handful of times since I’d moved to the Keys.

  He quickly took over the scene along with a detective. We told them everything that had happened as they took pictures and put everything they could find in evidence bags. I liked Charles but wanted to get away from there as quickly as possible.

  “Did you get a good look of the attackers?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “They were far off. Cruising in what looked like a blacked-out RHIB. Maybe thirty feet long. I counted four and hit one with two shots to the chest.”

  I wished I could’ve been of more help, but the truth was that none of us had much of anything to go on. A ghost boat appeared out of nowhere, crashed into the island, then a group of guys attacked as we did our best to help them. Seeing that we weren’t pushovers, the attackers retreated, then the Jayhawk arrived a few minutes later.

  After fifteen minutes of questioning, Charles said that we were good to go but asked to meet up with us again later.

  “Any update on the two women?” I asked.

  “They’re at Lower Keys Medical Center,” he said in his low and powerful voice. “Both still unconscious.” He looked over at the wrecked boat, then added, “We’ll be in contact with you about this. Thanks for taking care of them and calling this in.”

  “It was the least we could do,” I said. “Just happened to be in the right place at the right time.”

  “A common occurrence with you. I’ll see you later, Logan.”

  I nodded, then the three of us trudged back to the beach and waded out to my anchored Robalo. We cruised back over near Snipe Point and grabbed the bag, bucket, and fishing gear we’d left on the beach. I brought us up on plane, heading into the Gulf, then cranking the helm to port once in deeper water. We passed the wreck and saw that a few more boats had arrived at the scene. I put us on a southwesterly course, heading back toward the marina.

  “What are we gonna do about this, Logan?” Ange asked. She was standing beside me in the cockpit. “Those guys shot that woman in cold blood.”

  She was pissed off, as I was. There was a part of me that wanted to fly out into the Gulf right then and chase after those guys. But we needed to be smart about it. We had no idea who the two Fletcher women were, let alone who’d attacked them and why. We needed answers, and we all knew where to find them.

  “We’re going to the hospital,” I said. “One way or another, we’re getting to the bottom of this.”

  FOUR

  At 1600, I killed the engine of my black Toyota Tacoma 4x4 in the parking lot right next to the main building of the Lower Keys Medical Center. After mooring back at the marina, Ange and I drove over to my house on Palmetto Street to shower and change. On the drive to the hospital, I got a call from Charles, letting me know that he needed to speak with me about something they’d found and that his boat was on the way back. I’d also made a quick call to CIA Deputy Director Wilson and asked if he could give me information on Maggie and Charlotte Fletcher from Texas. He told me he’d get back to me as soon as he had something.

  Ange and I walked through the double automatic sliding glass doors in the main entrance. The receptionist, a warm middle-aged woman, greeted us. Her expression turned south when we told her who we were there to see, and she directed us down a nearby hallway to the Intensive Care Unit. I hadn’t been there in almost a year, not since I’d been shot by Cuban gangsters on Loggerhead Key in Dry Tortugas.

  We moved down the hall, past a few nurses, a guy in a wheelchair, and a doctor scribbling something on a clipboard. In the ICU, the guy at the desk refused to give us any information since we weren’t family.

  “Mr. Dodge,” a familiar voice said just as Ange was about to turn on her charm.

  I looked over my shoulder and saw Dr. Patel walking toward us. He was a short gray-haired Indian man in his early fifties who wore a white lab coat and glasses. He was the doctor who’d helped me after I’d been beat to hell by Benito Salazar and his Cuban gangsters. Usually, when I’d seen him at the hospital or around town, he was cheery and relaxed. But as he met Ange and me at the counter, his eyes were focused and his tone serious. It was clear that he was in work mode.

  “Hey, Doc,” I said.

  “It’s good to see you both,” he said, patting me softly on the shoulder. “I’m surprised to see you. Is there something I can help you with?”

  “Those two women,” Ange said. “How are they?”

  Doc looked back and forth between us, asking us with his eyes how we even knew about them.

  “We watched their boat crash over near Snipe Point,” I said. “Helped them as best as we could and called it in.”

  He nodded, then motioned over his shoulder.

  “Please come with me,” he said.

  We walked alongside him down a quiet hallway that was devoid of people. About halfway down, he stopped, turned, and faced us.

  “The older woman, Maggie, she didn’t make it,” he said flatly.

  Ange sighed and looked away.

  “And Charlotte?” I asked.

  “She’s stable. But she’s still unconscious. We’re keeping a sharp eye on her. She’s suffered a fairly serious head injury along with a broken arm. The mother also had a serious head injury, but she died from the gunshot wound.”

  “What caliber was the round?” I asked.

  He sighed.

  “It was a nine-millimeter. There will be an autopsy and we’ll find out more then. You two been hired as detectives without my knowing about it?”

  I shook my head. “No, we’re just interested.”

  “Right. Well, they’d be smart to hire you. But from what I know about you, Logan, you’re pretty fed up with government work.”

  A nurse called Dr. Patel from down the hall. He told us he’d see us around, then turned toward the nurse.

  “Doctor,” Ange said as he started to walk. He turned back to face us, and Ange continued. “Can we see her? Charlotte, that is.”

  He nodded. “Second door on the right. I’ll tell the nurses it’s okay.”

  We walked down the hall and looked through a large window on the right. Charlotte was lying on a hospital bed, rubber tubes connected to her arms and a screen beside her displaying her vitals. On the far side of the room was a window that looked out to a blue sky and palm trees. There was another door that looked like it led to an adjoining room, and as we looked Charlotte over, a petite nurse entered through it and did a quick check before disappearing back where she’d come from.

  After a few minutes, Ange shifted her gaze and her eyes met mine.

  “Who were those guys, Logan?” she asked. It was a rhetorical question that she knew I couldn’t answer. “They murdered that woman.”

  As she spoke, my mind went to work. I’d been thinking it over ever since we’d first seen them unconscious. There’s a key factor to crimes, and especially murder: motive. Who were those guys, and what did they hope to gain by getting rid of these two? In order to answer that, I needed to know more about the women themselves. Judging by their equipment, they were scientists of some kind. But what were they doing in the Keys?

  Ange and I headed back to the waiting area. I got us each a cup of coffee from the hospital’s café. As I was walking back, I took a quick sip, but it was much hotter than I expected. I tipped the cup away from me as the blazing liquid burned my tongue.

  “Shit,” I said, holding the other cup out for Ange. “Be careful. That coffee’s about a million degrees.”

  Ange grinned slightly, then pointed at a d
rinking fountain down the hall. It was just a few doors down from where Charlotte was being kept, and when I reached it, I took a few big gulps of the ice-cold water to soothe my singed tongue. My thirst quenched, I kept the water running and poured some into the coffee cup to make the temperature bearable.

  As I put the lid back on the cup, a back door opened at the far end of the hall to my left, allowing a flash of blue sky to appear amidst the taupe-painted walls. It was a guy wearing scrubs, and he was walking casually in my direction. I caught a whiff of tobacco smoke as he moved past me and entered through a door beside the water fountain.

  Just taking a smoke break, I thought.

  There was something unusual about him, though, something in his face and mannerisms that I couldn’t put my finger on. He looked different than anyone else in the hospital. Slightly out of place.

  I kept an eye on him as I headed back toward Ange in the waiting area. She made eye contact with me, rose to her feet, and strode in my direction. I motioned toward the cup on the table beside where she’d been sitting.

  “You want me to cool yours down as well?” I asked. “Or do you enjoy cruel and overheated punishment.”

  “Did you see that guy?” she said, her eyes wide.

  “What?” I said, turning. “You mean that big guy in the scrubs? Looked like a nurse or maybe a—"

  “That’s no nurse,” she stated. She placed a hand on my back and we moved casually toward the window beside the door he’d entered. “Look at his shoes,” she said quietly, pointing at him as his back was turned to us.

  Shit.

  Instead of the white sneakers that all the other medical professionals were wearing, this guy was sporting a pair of black leather boots under the pant legs of his light blue scrubs. It caught me off guard and surprised me that I hadn’t noticed it when he’d passed me. But how often do you really look at another man’s shoes?

  “Logan!” Ange gasped as the nurse turned around.