Backwater Flats

by Steven Becker

  Backwater Flats

  A Kurt Hunter Mystery

  Steven Becker

  Copyright © 2013 by Steven Becker

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  1

  The National Park Service, my employer, has a dual mandate: Protect our natural resources while at the same time provide opportunities for public use. Today I was part of the public enjoying Biscayne National Park. I made sure my daughter, Allie, stayed to the posted no-wake speed as she ran my park-service-issue twenty-two-foot center console. She executed a perfect entry into the canal leading to Bayfront.

  To the left, across a small lagoon, was a spit of trucked-in sand that made do as a beach here. The iconic white strip of real beach that ran down the east coast of Florida, ended at South Beach, just visible in front of the Miami skyline to the north. A good-weather Sunday drew a large crowd to the park and at the boat ramp. Weekend afternoons the park and canal were a zoo. That often meant problems for agents, but today was my day off. Lining up in the stream of traffic heading back to the boat ramp, I was fortunate our stop was instead the gas dock, allowing us to avoid the true logjam, just a hundred feet farther at the boat ramp.

  “Nice and easy. Cut the power and see what the wind and current do,” I coached Allie as she approached the dock. If we were going to enter the side channel leading to the park headquarters we would have switched positions. Not because she couldn’t handle the traffic, but to avoid my boss, Special Agent in Charge, Martinez, and his slew of surveillance cameras, spotting her driving my boat.

  “Dad—”

  Yes, my seventeen-year-old could drive a car and run a boat almost as well as I could, but that didn’t stop advice from pouring from my mouth. She skillfully read the conditions and coasted up against the rub rail of the fuel dock. Will, the attendant, came over to help with the lines.

  “Hey, Allie. Catch anything?” he asked.

  He wasn’t ignoring me, but rather flirting with my daughter. I let Allie enjoy the accolades. Will was in her age bracket, but she’d shown little interest in him other than as a friend.

  “Finally got a cubera.” She reached into the cooler, grabbed the fish behind its gill plate, and proudly held up the thirty-inch-long bucktooth snapper.

  “Nice one.” He came over and fist-bumped her.

  Though the boat ramp was bustling with activity, the fuel dock was quiet. One other boat, a trawler, probably a resident of the small marina located just past the ramp, occupied the long dock. With gas at marinas costing at least a dollar more per gallon than at gas stations, most boaters who trailered would fuel up along the way to save some money. Many were unaware of the ethanol they were pouring into their tanks, which was absent in the REC-90 fuel offered at marinas and at just a few gas stations. Although I got my paychecks from the feds, I favored neither political party and thought myself an independent. As I reached over and handed Will my personal credit card to pay for replacing the park service gas that I had used today, I wondered how many of those unknowing boaters voted for the guys who thought that adding ten percent ethanol to regular gas would save the world. To my knowledge, all it accomplished was to subsidize corn production and ruin small engines.

  While Will ran the card, I glanced back at a loud noise coming from the direction of the ramp. It was an odd feeling, being both in a pristine wilderness area and this close to a mass of humanity, many of whom were well over the legal limit for alcohol. Living on one of the barrier islands several miles across the bay, I needed little other than groceries from the mainland and, unless I had to, spent my days out on the water—miles from here.

  “I gotta go,” Allie said, laying the fish on the cooler and pulling a fillet knife from the sheath by the console.

  We generally split our catch, but, eyeing the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission boat sitting across the canal I thought better of filleting it onboard. The laws were clear that fish needed to be whole until brought ashore. My boss, Martinez, would have been delighted in my misfortune if I was cited.

  “Take it, I have plenty,” I told her.

  “You sure? Mom’ll be blown away. She usually just sees the fillets.”

  “No worries. But I wish I could enjoy it with you,” I said, feeling guilty the minute the words were out of my mouth. Allie lived with her mom during the week. It was a suitable custody arrangement that only had to last for another school year. I would have liked more time with her, but recognized her need for a stable home—one on the mainland, closer to civilization.

  Holding the fish under the gills, she stepped onto the dock and waved. Watching her walk away, I had a small anxiety attack as she opened the driver-side door of the Honda sedan and slid behind the wheel. The car started and I heard the bass booming from the speakers as she pulled away. It was a new thing, driving herself between Palm Beach, where her mom lived, and Homestead, where the marina was, something I wasn’t entirely comfortable with. It wasn’t her inexperience—she was a good driver—but rather the ninety miles of South Florida craziness separating her parents.

  I stood there until she was out of sight, then turned to watch the activity at the park ramp. All sorts of mayhem was ensuing as a steady stream of boats were being pulled from the water. I’d often thought municipalities could increase their revenue by adding bleachers and charging admission to their ramps. There are some things few people are good at, and one of those is trailering a boat. Done on your own, with no one watching, it’s not difficult to splash and retrieve a vessel. On busy days like this, when there was a line of boats in the water and trucks jockeying for position on land, it was like a trash can waiting for a match. Fueled by alcohol, it brought out the worst in people.

  I watched several bungled attempts by one couple until a blinding light caught my attention. Across the water, the FWC boat’s light bar flashed as it pulled over one of the incoming boats. I’d seen this show before. Instead of patrolling the waters looking for infractions, they set up what amounted to a roadblock in the canal just before the ramp, checking every sixth or seventh boat. I’d heard grumblings about the officers issuing safety citations, as well as confiscating shorts. “Not my department” was my general opinion, and I did my best to get along with the officers—except for Pete Robinson, the head of the local team. I’d found him to be on par with my boss, Martinez.

  Checking my phone, I sat on the leaning post and with a half-hour to kill until my wife, Justine arrived, I watched the show. While I waited, I observed several marital disputes, one altercation that a pair of county officers fortunately were on-hand for, and one truck that slid door-deep into the water. Across the channel, the FWC officers were busy harassing the fishermen and had pulled over no less than four boats.

  “Hey, what’cha thinkin’ about?”

  Realizing I was more interested in the drama around me than I thought, I turned and smiled, seeing Justine standing on the dock. My wife of half-a-dozen months, her arms laden with grocery bags, and with the sweetest smile I could ever hope for, leaned in and handed me several of the bags.

  “Permission to come aboard?”

  “Anytime.” I took the groceries, set them on the deck, and though she didn’t need it, I offered a hand. She launched herself into my arms and we held a long, passionate kiss.

  “Allie got her cubera! Saw a post on Instagram,”
Justine said.

  I was proud enough of my daughter to ignore the fact that she must have posted it while driving, and Justine must have seen it while she was on the road, too. When that dawned on me, I promised myself to bring it up later—with both of them.

  “Didn’t want any problem with the officers.” I nodded my head in the direction of the FWC boat across the way. “So I gave her the whole fish.”

  “Your ex is going to love that.”

  I hadn’t thought about Jane not knowing what to do with a whole fish, and the cubera snapper with its two fangs was frightening-looking. I smiled, taking a small pleasure in her discomfort.

  “You ready? No worries on the fish. I got some nice steaks for dinner,” Justine said.

  “You bet.” Anticipating a red-meat dinner, I turned to the wheel while she freed the lines. Living on the water, we had fresh fish most nights. I avoided the boat ride to my truck on the mainland and the subsequent drive to the grocery store like the plague. As a result, we rarely had meat.

  I glanced across the canal once more, seeing the officers pick a new victim from the stream of incoming boats. I used the gap created by the detained boat to back into the canal, letting the boat turn around before pushing the throttle forward. Obeying the no-wake speed limit, I idled toward the markers leading toward open water and my island.

  Adams Key, six miles to the southeast, was my government-issued home. From the mainland, the island was a small blur on the horizon—on a good day. Although it grew in size as we approached, at only a few acres and with only two homes, the island never seemed large. Most days there was a certain romance associated with living on an island this far from the mainland. This was not one of those days. Caesar Creek, one of the few well-marked passes connecting Biscayne Bay to the Atlantic, lay alongside Adams Key and had a continuous stream of boats passing through. Each one threw its wake against the long concrete dock that serviced our island. It was mostly empty, used only by my neighbor Ray, me, and a few park visitors to a little-known day-use area.

  The water was disturbed enough that I had to wait for a suitable gap between the boat wakes before I could dock. When I did, I heard Zero’s toenails click as he rumbled down the concrete dock and skidded to a stop. The greeting was not for me. Zero, Ray and Becky’s pit bull mix that reminded me of Petey from the Little Rascals, and I were buddies, but his real love interest was Justine. Hopping onto the dock, she squatted down to his eye level and rubbed his jowls.

  While they communed, I carried the groceries and her backpack up the stairs of my stilt house. Setting the bags on the counter in the kitchen I went back to retrieve my wife, but it was too late.

  “Nice work. Justine said you got Allie on a cubera.” A cold beer extended from Ray’s hand, which, although I had other activities in mind, I reluctantly accepted. Their toddler, Jamie, was now garnering Justine’s attention. With two hands holding her very pregnant belly, Becky came over to greet me. We chatted for a bit until Ray got tired of the girls’ talk and retreated back to their house. Zero remained undecided when Becky took Jamie back home, eventually following Justine upstairs to our house. With a loud moan, and an eye on the grocery bags, he crashed to the cool tile floor in the kitchen.

  Zero had a longer wait than he might have wanted. Once the door was closed, I grabbed Justine and headed for the bedroom. Though we’d been married almost six months, the logistics of our jobs required us to be apart several days a week. Justine was a forensics tech for Miami-Dade and still kept her old condo in Miami. With the run across the bay it was a too-lengthy, unreliable, and complicated commute to try on a daily basis.

  “Go on and light the grill. I’ll get the steaks ready,” Justine said a half-hour later, almost tripping over a snoring Zero still crashed in the middle of the floor.

  Just as I stepped onto the porch and lifted the grill’s cover, I heard the distinctive Darth Vader ringtone from my work phone. Martinez calling on a Sunday night was a very unusual occurrence. Reaching the counter just as it stopped ringing, I waited for the inevitable voicemail. The ding came seconds later and I put the phone on speaker so Justine could hear the call. If it was what I suspected, she would be involved as well.

  “Hunter. We’ve got a body.”

  2

  We both stared at the phone, listening to Martinez command my presence at the crime scene. His order meant something different to each of us. Justine’s face showed her excitement; mine was a more pensive look. Not that her job was easy, but it had defined lines. The Park Service’s limited budget, controlled to the penny by Martinez, didn’t allow for the infrastructure to work crimes in-house. We were beholden to Miami-Dade or the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for support. My preference was the FDLE, but with their closest lab five hours away in Tampa, it wasn’t a practical option. Instead, I was saddled with the bureaucracy and politics of Miami’s finest. The bright spot in the quagmire was Justine. She would check and evaluate the crime scene, then process the evidence. The only pressure was to not make a mistake that would render a crucial piece of evidence inadmissible, and affect a trial. As one of two special agents assigned to the park, the lines on both my jurisdiction and my ability to work crimes were vague.

  Jurisdiction was an issue. With only a handful of permanent residents, crimes committed inside the park rarely ended there. The 270- square miles that made up the park were ninety-five percent water, leaving my landlubbing boss restricted to the remaining five percent. The other special agent, my oftentimes nemesis, Susan McLeash, preferred her air-conditioned office to the waterways, leaving me free to roam the top of the Florida Keys ecosystem alone. Geologically, the Keys start with the northernmost boundary islands in the park, well northeast of Key Largo, and end seventy miles beyond Key West in the Dry Tortugas. With over two-hundred islands extending over that many miles, there are plenty of places for both recreation and nefarious activity. It’s easy to get lost in the maze of islands, and the Keys reputation as a smuggler’s paradise remains intact.

  “He did say the body was found near headquarters, didn’t he?” I asked. Justine nodded, but I pressed the button to repeat the voicemail just in case.

  “Guess the steaks are going to have to wait,” Justine said, as she returned to the bedroom to put on something more appropriate.

  “Glad we had date night already.” Thankful for our earlier rendezvous, I followed her in and changed into my uniform. “You think we might stay at your place tonight?”

  “If the body is on the mainland, it might make sense,” she said, repacking the few items she had brought in her backpack.

  We both had full wardrobes and personal items here and at her condo, but there was always something to be dragged back and forth. Removing my gun belt from the hook placed high enough in the closet to keep the weapon out of reach in case Jamie visited, I slung it around my waist, fastened the buckle, and took one last look around. After replacing the steaks in the refrigerator and turning off the grill, we were followed down the stairs by a disgruntled Zero. Sensing his night out was over, Zero parted ways with us where the walk split, ambled up to the stairs at Ray’s house—a mirror image of ours—where he stopped and barked. The screen door opened and he waddled up the stairs without casting a look back.

  Riding across the bay into the setting sun would have been enjoyable except for what awaited us on the mainland—Martinez wouldn’t have called if this was as simple as a natural death. The boat traffic continued to be heavy as we entered the channel, and I fought to restrain myself and stay in line. After almost two years in the park I knew which markers were surrounded by deep enough water that I could cut inside, but knowing the recreational boaters would see me and then think it was okay, I stayed within the lines.

  Passing the ramp, I noticed the FWC boat was gone, allowing the boaters one less thing to worry about as they left the water. I turned to the right and entered the small marina in back of the headquarters building. Pushing my boat envy aside, I passed a Johnny Wells qua
d-powered 39’ Interceptor and then the FWC, twin-engine, rigid-hull inflatable boat. I pulled into the slip reserved for my more modest single-engine center console and killed the power.

  There were no first responders in sight as we walked down the dock, and I held onto the hope that whatever had happened had occurred just another hundred yards past the docks, outside of the park’s boundaries. Soon it was clear that wasn’t the case. Rounding the building, we saw an ambulance and several Miami-Dade cruisers in the parking lot. Crime-scene tape was already strung across several parking spaces. As we approached I was relieved when I didn’t recognize either of the officers—I had few allies in the Miami-Dade ranks.

  Introducing myself, I lifted the yellow tape and scanned the scene. A small river of blood led me around the FWC truck to a body. Prone on the ground was one of the officers who had been working the channel earlier. Turning back to see where Justine was, I noticed her talking on her cell, probably getting approval to work the scene. There are steps and procedures for a death, starting with the Medical Examiner’s arrival. It was no surprise when I heard the squeal of rubber against the hot asphalt. Usually working an active crime scene is a hurry-up-and-wait affair, but not today. The Miami-Dade Medical Examiner’s van sped straight toward us. Hunched over the wheel with his head almost pressing against the windshield, Sid flew across the lot and screeched to a stop just outside the taped-off perimeter. The door opened and the older man stepped out onto the hot asphalt. Working the kinks out of his back, he hobbled over to me.

  “Hunter, you’re a shit magnet,” he said. His gaze shifted past me and, ignoring my outstretched hand, he hugged Justine. Finally, he returned his attention to me.

  “I didn’t find this one,” I said, trying not to sound too defensive. During my first few months here I had found several bodies while fishing. The reputation still haunted me.