Backwater Tide

by Steven Becker

  I needed to start documenting things and glanced down at my watch that wasn’t there. My report was going to be missing some key information, like what time I had found the body. The medical examiner was a no-brainer, though, and I dialed the number from memory, thinking while it rang that having the coroner’s number in your head was not a good thing. Finally a man with a New Jersey accent answered.

  “Sid, Kurt Hunter here.”

  “Greetings, special agent. Been fishing?”

  I had found more than one body while fishing the backwaters of the park. “No, out racing.”

  “And let me guess—”

  “Yes, I found a body.” I answered before he could complete his sentence.

  “Of course you did. I wasn’t expecting this was an invitation to go fishing.”

  The duo working the morgue were an odd pair, bonded by their interest in dead bodies and fishing. It worked for me as well, making it easy to connect with them. Though senior in both age and experience, Sid was the night and weekend guy. Vance, the hipster, was the head examiner. Both had hinted in their own way that they wanted or maybe expected me to take them fishing. I had taken Vance on a quick outing once and he had landed some fish, but also a duffle bag full of drugs.

  My whole reason I had been assigned to Biscayne National Park was due to my passion for fishing. Previously stationed in the Plumas National Forest in Northern California, I had taken to explore the streams as I patrolled my area. Most of the action, at least during the warmer months, occurred around the water and I had carried a small collapsible fly rod with me, often stopping to cast to some of the trout in the streams. It was a great way to observe things and put my head in order.

  There was something about the rhythm of the cast and retrieve that gave me a different perspective and I was able to see things I otherwise would have passed over. I had often found submerged dredges stashed underwater by illegal miners and in one case I had discovered a small eddy with a current running back toward a rock. Suspicious, I had removed the rock and discovered a pipe that had led me uphill to the largest pot grow ever found on public land. The cartel’s response had been fast and hard, firebombing my house and breaking up my family. My posting here had been the park service’s version of the witness protection program.

  With my history of finding drugs and dead bodies, I doubted a fishing expedition with the Miami-Dade medical examiners was a good idea. “Can you get out here?”

  “Where is here?”

  I gave him the coordinates. “Maybe I can bring the body to you.” I didn’t want to keep the Coasties around too long and with no anchor, it might be easier to run the boat into Miami. This would also leave the Miami-Dade police, who would have to transport Sid to the site with one of their boats, out of it—a worthy goal in any event.

  We agreed on Dodge Island and I disconnected. “Okay if I call my daughter and I’ll let you go?” I asked the captain.

  He nodded. I looked down at the phone, trying to remember her number. I barely knew my own, but it came to me and I entered it into the dial pad hoping she would answer. The call went to voicemail and I left a brief message that I was okay and they should meet me at Dodge Island. A glance toward the finish line of the race showed the race was over except for a few stragglers. I knew Justine wasn’t one of them and had probably finished. I left her a message as well, this one with a little more description.

  After passing the phone back to the captain and explaining my intent, he ordered the crew to release the lines and I spun the wheel in the direction of the Miami Skyline, one of the two can’t-miss navigational features of the park. With its low mangrove-lined shores the cluster of skyscrapers and to the south, the twin towers of the Turkey Point power plant were easy to spot. Once my course was set, I pushed the throttles. The heavy boat fought the engines and I finally gave up trying to get it to plane out. Backing off the power slightly, I plowed toward my destination.

  The ride in gave me time to think. Sid would take the body, but after seeing the shredded anchor line, I needed a forensic opinion to rule out foul play. That was where Justine came in. My new wife worked the swing shift as a tech for Miami-Dade. I hoped to get her to have a look without getting her in trouble.

  The park service was notoriously slim on resources, which was one of the reasons Martinez and his budget-driven mentality flourished here. Without our own labs and techs we were reliant on the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and Miami-Dade for assistance. The FDLE’s closest lab was in Tampa, too far for anything time-sensitive. That left Miami-Dade, and the Ivory Tower had set down the law: there would be no work for Kurt Hunter without a case number to charge it to.

  I decided to take things one step at a time, safe in the knowledge that Martinez, unless he was listening to the VHF radio on the golf course, didn’t know what had happened. I would get Justine’s opinion and take it from there.

  Because of the wind, once I crossed under the Rickenbacker Causeway and entered the Intracoastal Waterway the boat traffic picked up. I wove my way through the afternoon cruisers until I saw the outline of two cruise ships that were moored at the port at Dodge Island. After finding an opening in the string of boats coming toward me, I cut through the traffic and headed to the small island.

  Sid was ready and waiting on the dock. Because it had been built for commercial vessels it was always a challenge to dock my smaller center console here, but the larger boat, with its twin engines, was much easier to maneuver. With Sid’s help, the boat was quickly tied off and secure.

  “What’cha got down there? Smells like tuna,” he called out over the engines.

  I shut down the boat and looked up at him. Hunched over, the sun caught his bald spot and reflected back at me. He got down on one knee and then sat on the dock before swinging his legs over the side. I extended a hand to help, but he brushed it off and pushed himself down to the deck. With a questioning look he asked where the body was. I pointed to the cabin.

  He stuck his head inside. “That’s a big fish you got there, Hunter.”

  Three

  Sid emerged from the wheelhouse. “There’s no ID on the body.”

  I had chosen to wait in the fresh air on deck while he worked. I stopped short of commenting that I hadn’t noticed any pockets in his wetsuit. “Are you ready to move the body?”

  Like a windshield wiper in a downpour, he brushed the sweat from his brow onto the deck. “Okay, smart-ass. Maybe we’d better get some pictures and a time of death first—just in case.” Beads of sweat had reappeared and his glasses slid down his nose as he gave me a look that meant I should be more respectful. “Care to join me?”

  “I don’t have my phone.” I patted my boardshorts. He reached into his pocket, removed an oversized smartphone, and handed it to me. I pressed the home button and the screen lit up. “You really should have a password.”

  Again, his look answered me. “Just take the pictures.”

  I took several deep breaths and entered the wheelhouse. Moving from left to right, I started photographing the area where the body lay. Studying the scene through the phone’s screen gave it a different perspective, allowing me to see things I had missed earlier. I carefully documented everything, noticing what looked like blood dripped on the floor. It was dry and looked old—probably fish blood—but I knew after being around Justine that any detail could be important. While I continued to document the site, Sid inserted the temperature probe into the man’s liver.

  “Okay?” I asked, handing Sid his phone as we exited the wheelhouse. “What’d you get for time of death?”

  “Pretty fresh for one of your cases. I would estimate between three and four hours. The heat in the cabin might skew things a little.”

  That put it between eight and nine this morning. While I had been getting ready for my race, he had died. “Ready to move him?”

  “Me and you? That’s a big boy in there.” He grasped his lower back with one hand as he said it.

  Sid had become a fa
ther figure and mentor to both Justine and me, and I never thought of him as old; more like a Yoda who defied age. From my inspection of the body, I estimated the man was over two hundred pounds—more than I could manage myself. We would need help and I looked around the docks. Because it was a Saturday, there was no one here; just the row after row of stacked cargo containers. There was probably someone across the island over by the cruise ships, but I wasn’t sure I wanted a stranger involved. Sid gave me a questioning look, like I was holding him up from something important.

  My choices seemed limited to calling Miami-Dade or waiting for Justine. Just as I was about to ask Sid to call for assistance, I heard the sound of a vehicle approaching and saw her car with the single board on top.

  “What’cha got?” she called out of the open window.

  My girl likes dead bodies. Not all that unusual for a forensics tech, but her fascination sometimes worries me. Allie leaned across her, anxious to see what was going on. That was going to be a problem. Her mom had been clear that I was to keep her away from my work.

  I cocked my head at Justine. She understood and left the car. There was a smile on her face and a large medal on a white ribbon hanging around her neck. This was going to be a good day for her. Not only had she placed in her race, but now she had a dead body.

  “Hey! Awesome job.” I lifted the medal from her chest, admiring it and wondering if I would ever get one of my own. “My race kind of got cut short. Got a body in the wheelhouse.” I could tell from her smile that this was indeed turning out to be a banner day for her.

  “Dad.” Allie leaned across the driver’s seat and called out the open window. “What’s going on? Why didn’t you finish?”

  “Ran into a little problem.”

  “Is there a dead body on that boat?” she asked.

  I had to figure out a way to deal with my teenager’s morbid fascination. Lying was out of the question. She had been close to death before, when we’d been within a few hundred yards of the Highway 41 bridge collapse several months ago—but not this close.

  “Yes. Why don’t you wait there while Justine and I load it in the van?”

  “I can help.”

  That wasn’t going to happen. “We got it. Just hang out there, okay.” It was a statement, not a question.

  Justine was already aboard, duplicating my efforts with her own phone. “You have a body bag?” I asked Sid. He came back with one and I brought it aboard. With Justine’s help we bagged the body and carried it onto the deck. It was a bit of a struggle to move it up to the dock, but we did the best we could to preserve whatever dignity was left. A few minutes later the corpse was loaded into the medical examiner’s van.

  “See ya at the autopsy,” Sid called out the window of the van. He assumed a hunched-over position, with his nose nearly touching the windshield, and accelerated. The wheels spun, kicking up the loose gravel in the lot, and he was gone.

  I was glad Justine and Allie were here, if for no other reason than I didn’t have to drive with him. Playing the Uber lottery was safer. With a squeal of tires, the van made a sharp turn and disappeared behind a stack of containers. The three of us stood there for a minute, staring at each other. “Can you have a look at something?” I asked Justine and motioned to the foredeck.

  I followed as she hopped back down to the deck of the boat and we made our way around the wheelhouse to the bow. Allie was out of the car now, watching us. “Stay up there, okay. Don’t want to contaminate the scene.”

  “Thanks, Dad,” she snorted sarcastically and went back to the car.

  I glanced back and saw her face buried in her phone. “Here.” I reached down and grabbed the end of the anchor line.

  Justine came toward me and pulled out her phone, taking a few pictures before she took the line from me. Slowly she turned it and brushed the frayed ends.

  “Looks like you might have a crime scene,” she said.

  I couldn’t tell if she was excited or upset that it had ruined our day. “What are you thinking?”

  “It’s cut for sure. It looks frayed because it unraveled in the water, but the ends are clean. If it had snagged on something they would be jagged. I’d say it was cut with a sharp knife.”

  I didn’t know whether I was excited or upset. This was the first time we had all been together since our wedding. It had been a surprise and with Allie, Justine, and me floating behind the Interceptor after finishing a dive, Johnny Wells, my buddy from ICE had married us. The last few weeks before school started, and then Labor day, were busy weeks in the park, and Allie had asked for a few weekends to hang out with her friends. It had been hard to schedule time off together so we hadn’t taken an official honeymoon. We had even talked about a family trip, but nothing had come together yet. A murder in the park would ruin what was left of what we’d expected to be a relaxing weekend.

  I looked over at Allie and then Justine, trying to decide what to do. Generally I believe that momentum solves cases and I usually run full bore until they conclude. This tactic had gotten me in trouble with my family more than once, and I kept promising that I was going to put life before work. This appeared to be the perfect time to do that.

  “It’ll wait until Monday. I don’t think anyone is going to mess with the boat here over the weekend and Sid has the body. Besides, we don’t even know if a crime has been committed.” I tried to justify my actions with the part of my brain that was ready to charge forward with an investigation.

  That whole thought process was wasted when I saw the Miami-Dade Contender coming toward us with their light bar on. From a hundred yards out, I could see the man at the wheel and cringed. There was still enough time to get out of here before they arrived, but when I looked at Justine, she shook her head.

  There was no love lost between the crew and me, and I remembered how they had leered at Justine. “If you want to disappear for a few, I’ll handle these guys?”

  I was both surprised and relieved when she agreed. Justine backs down to no one, sometimes to her detriment, but I got the feeling right now she was doing this for Allie and silently thanked her. A minute later her car pulled away and I turned back to the water.

  The police boat approached the dock and slid in behind the converted sportfisher. I was a little envious of their approach until I remembered that they had a bow thruster, which made the maneuver easy. There was no point in being antagonistic right from the start so I walked over, ready to receive their lines.

  Once the boat was secure, the captain disembarked with one of the crew—probably to reinforce his thug status.

  “Well, look who it is, Ranger Rick,” he said loud enough that the two other crew members still aboard could hear. “You ought to know better than to talk on the open airwaves.”

  There was no point in telling him that I’d had no choice. “What can I do for you?”

  “Looks like you have a crime scene here. A little out of your jurisdiction, isn’t it? And being that you’re docked inside the city limits and all, that makes me curious.”

  “Found her adrift inside the park boundaries. Brought it over to make things easier on Sid.” I regretted not hitting the Man Overboard button on the GPS to mark the location when I had come aboard.

  “And where’s Doey? Heard y’all got married.”

  I ignored the comment wondering if Justine was going to change her last name to mine to lose the nickname. Doeszinski could be a mouthful and the shortened versions were not flattering.

  “Gotta follow procedures, Ranger boy. Should have left her where you found the boat and called it in.”

  “The anchor line was cut. I’ll call over and get it impounded if it makes you feel better.”

  “You know who this boat belongs to?”

  There had been no ID on the man or time to find his identity. I had done a brief search for his phone and come up empty. Reluctantly I answered that I didn’t. I did guess from the name Reale and the blowers hanging from the transom that it belonged to a salvor.
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  “That’d be Gill Gross.”

  He must have seen the blank look on my face.

  “Treasure hunter. Been on TV and all for some of his finds.”

  And the answer to my question of why they were here was answered. I knew it was a work vessel from the boat’s condition and from the way it was outfitted. By the way the two crewmen that had remained aboard the police vessel were eyeing the boat, I understood that there was more than a passing interest about Gross’s demise and what might be aboard. Now that I knew who the dead man and owner were, the boat had to be protected, and I remembered the black chunks on the deck. I needed to get the crew out of here now.

  I used the only card I had. “Grace Herrera has been notified and is on her way over.”

  “Could have said that up front.” The captain backed away.

  Grace was one of my only allies at Miami-Dade. We had worked together with some success on several other cases. She was level-headed, smart, and a knockout. She also had enough seniority to outrank this crew. The only problem with her was the friction between her and Justine that I couldn’t figure out.

  “If the she-monster is coming we better get on our way,” he said loud enough that his crew heard.

  The man standing behind him went for the lines and a minute later they were gone, idling away as if in defeat. The light bar remained off and their swagger seemed gone. Now I had to call Grace before my lie unraveled.

  When Justine and Allie pulled up a minute later I retrieved my phone from my backpack. I heard the sounds of the approaching rotors of a helicopter and squinted into the sun. Even from this distance I could see the logo of one of the local networks on its sides. My call on the open airwaves of the VHF had been my only option at the time, and I realized that this case was not going to wait until Monday—it had just worked its way to the top of the priority ladder. Looking down at the screen, I found Grace Herrera’s number and hit the phone icon.