Backwater Flats

by Steven Becker

“Hey, Jim,” I called, as I positioned our boat gunwale to gunwale. We were not far enough along in our relationship for fenders, and, not knowing the level of his boating skill, I kept a good three feet between us. He did have enough experience to keep his bow into the current, allowing us to drift together.

  “Hunter. What brings you out here?” he asked.

  My initial reaction was to ask the same of him, but I thought that might be a touch suspicious. Finally, I eased my attitude, hoping his question was just a conversation starter. “Martinez has me patrol a quadrant a day.” I took the easy way out. While we talked, I checked out his boat, but everything seemed to be in order.

  “We got a call about some cracker shooting snapper.”

  “Did you find him?”

  “Nah, half the calls we get are smokescreens so the perps know where we are.”

  We both turned when we heard the unmistakable roar of a cigarette boat coming toward us. The bay is mostly known as a pristine wilderness area, but it is also protected water and, being just a few miles from Miami, is a hot-rodders paradise. We both stopped and listened. The decibels increased, telling me the boat was moving around fifty knots and approaching the pass. I dropped into forward and started to inch away from the FWC boat, hoping to create some distance between the two boats when the inevitable wake found us. We were ten feet apart when the go-fast boat came into view. Seconds later, paying us no mind, it was gone, its only legacy a large wake. Grabbing the stainless-steel supports of the T-top, I held on as the first wave lifted the boat. Fortunately, we were far enough apart now that the destructive wave was neutralized.

  But Scott was slow to react, and leaving the FWC boat only five feet away and drifting closer. Before the next wave hit, I slammed the throttle forward to avoid a collision. Just before we separated I looked over to make sure Scott didn’t have the same idea, and saw water sloshing out of the cooler. The incident ended our encounter, but I was curious. The only reason for a cooler to be filled with water was to keep something alive in it.

  I tried to remember if his boat had a live well. Mine did; it was probably standard equipment. Martinez was not the custom-order type of bureaucrat, a decision I supported until he got too cheap. The underpowered center console I drove could have used another fifty horsepower to relieve the strain on the engine. The few off-road vehicles we had to patrol the small land areas of the park were light-duty, two-wheel-drive ATVs. With the pancake-flat terrain here you might think that made sense, until you figured in the mud from the tropical climate that made four-wheel drive a necessity.

  Scott and I had met inside the lobster sanctuary and, with the water in the cooler, the pieces started to drop into place. It was too soon for Susan to have acted on my plan, but repopulating the confiscated wildlife was what they should have been doing all along.

  The wake had pushed both of our boats near the mangroves and, as I had accelerated first, I was first through the pass. Once I hit the open water, I slowed to look back, but Scott was done chatting and whatever else he had been here for. He waved as he passed and cut the wheel in the direction of Bayfront Park.

  Not wanting to follow him, I turned for Adams Key. As I turned, I faced a narrow band of dark clouds to the north. Watching the line for a minute, I could see they were pushing southeast. In front of the storms the wind had shifted, making for a bumpy ride back. By the time I reached the dock the waves had started to whitecap and perpendicular lines of spindrift told me the winds had reached twenty knots—enough for me to call it a day.

  Using an aft spring line in addition to the bow and stern lines to keep the boat from blowing forward, I checked the fenders and, dodging the first drops of rain, made a run for the house. Zero must have sensed the weather changes as well and barked meekly from the screened porch of Ray and Becky’s house. By the time I made it inside it was a full-blown storm.

  While I waited for my laptop to boot up, I checked the weather app on my phone. I already knew the storm was here now, but was more concerned with the long-term forecast. A rainy, windy weekend with Allie and her friend would be difficult. Entertainment was limited out here. With only the equivalent of dial-up internet, the demise of video stores, and with the closest Redbox miles away, there were few options. I liked to read, and that was the only thing that got me through some of the stretches of bad weather. Malls, bowling alleys, movie theaters, and restaurants were a long, wet boat ride away.

  Fortunately, it looked like this was a fast-moving front. Tomorrow would be windy, but by Thursday the weather would be back to normal—good news on the child-rearing front.

  Settling down with a cold beer and my laptop, I started doing some random Google searches. My first attempt, what does the FWC do with shorts, resulted in a list of their uniform requirements. I had better luck the second time by changing out shorts to confiscated fish. Saved for evidence was the primary answer. I guess they froze the product and waited for trial. Mentions of donating fish and lobster to homeless shelters also appeared.

  My casual research had told me that neither of these possibilities was happening in this case. The officers had been handing out tickets for safety, registration, and licensing infractions. Warnings were given for the lobsters, which were confiscated. They were being sold and, for some reason, Hayward had been killed because of it.

  Just to verify my theory, I checked with several of the local homeless shelters. All six calls were negative, but one remembered a time several years ago when some fish had been donated to them. There was no need to check Robinson’s and Hayward’s employment records. I was sure that it happened before they were transferred here.

  I also needed to verify that Susan hadn’t already planted the idea in Scott’s head. When there was something she wanted, the woman was a dog with a bone. Instead of calling, I tried to text her, saving me the pain of hearing her voice. In response to my query if she had talked to the FWC, my phone rang. I had no choice and hit accept, then placed the device in speaker mode and set it several feet away from me, as if the distance would protect me from her.

  “A little pushy, Hunter.”

  “Just checking.” I didn’t want to tell her what I had seen. “So, you haven’t?”

  “It’s on the list, but I’ve got a stack of paperwork to get through first.”

  The image of her ensconced behind her desk, papers stacked high in front of her, was clear. I had seen this show before. “What about the employment and contact info? Have you talked to Robinson?”

  “Jeez, Hunter. Give a girl a break. I’ll get to it.”

  I heard the line go dead and, avoiding the urge to throw it against the wall, set the phone down. The noisy tattoo of rain on the metal roof got louder, and I looked outside. The sky had darkened and visibility was only about a foot. Turning back to the living room, I suddenly felt like a caged animal. Effectively a prisoner in my own house, I started pacing.

  I glanced at the mostly useless TV and over-stuffed bookshelves, my primary source of entertainment. Even though I worked many more hours than Martinez knew about, I still had a thing about calling it a day before “quitting time.” Back at my computer, I stared at the screen. I thought about opening a document to outline the case, but that would just be busy work. With so few facts available, I could easily hold them in my head. What I needed was a break in the case. Most investigations had them; you just never knew when they would happen. My usual process, an unrelenting effort to storm through the evidence until the case was solved, often forced the break to come. Stuck at home with the wind whipping around and rain coming down in sheets, making it idiocy to take my twenty-two-foot boat to the mainland, I felt helpless.

  Another beer did nothing to curb my anxiety. I texted Justine with a weather update, telling her we would likely be forced to spend the night in separate beds, which furthered my plunge into darkness. I thought about calling or texting Allie, but I didn’t want her to get a sense of my mood. A brilliant flash of lightning was followed by a loud crash of thunder,
bright enough to illuminate the interior of the house. The storm was directly overhead now, and I thought it might be a good idea to protect the electronics in the house. Even industrial-strength surge protectors are little defense against a direct lightning strike, and our houses, the lone structures for miles, were easy targets. Grabbing my rain jacket, I descended the stairs and made a run for the electric panel, where I flipped off the main breaker.

  Standing under the protection of the eaves, I looked out at the water. Squalls this intense could play tricks on your vision, but I swear I saw something move in front of the dock. I knew it could be an illusion, and remained where I was, trying to focus on the dark blur. It stopped by the dock, moved forward, then appeared again, like a cautious boater approaching a dock. My eyes tried to penetrate the nearly opaque curtain of the rain, but failed, and I thought maybe the shadow was moving away—until lightning flashed again, this time horizontal in the sky. The bright light revealed a boat—the same FWC center console I had seen earlier.

  11

  Unsure if it was the percussion from the thunder or my own legs shaking, it felt like the dock was moving underneath me. Another flash of lightning illuminated the FWC boat with Scott at the helm. Between the driving rain and pounding thunder, I had to yell across the ten feet of water that separated us to be heard. Docking in this kind of weather in a protected marina would be difficult; out here with no protection and the strong currents running through Caesar Creek, it was sketchy at best. A twin engine would have made the task simpler, as would a structure not built from concrete, but we had neither. The park service had a thing for permanence and so had built the dock—piers, structure, and surface—from concrete. A small rub-rail was installed horizontally, but it only worked if the combination of the boat’s lines and the tide coincided. I yelled for Scott to put out whatever fenders he could, then jumped into my boat to grab mine too.

  With the wind blowing the boat away from the dock and the current pulling it forward, Scott manipulated the single engine, pushing ahead to close the gap, then spinning the wheel and reversing to bring the stern in. He was doing everything right, but the conditions were against him and he knew that coming in too hot would damage the boat. To make matters worse, the outgoing tide was near its bottom, and it appeared as if his boat was going to slide under the dock.

  A solution occurred to me. Not one I favored but, faced with the circumstances, it was the best option. Tossing my fenders over the outboard side of my boat, I waited for him to close the gap, then caught the lines he tossed over. Several minutes later, with four lines tethering the boats together, we ran for the house.

  It would have been an awkward encounter under better circumstances, but with the power out and with his boat holding mine prisoner, it was even more so. I knew that more often than not, murders were committed by someone the victim knew well; Hayward’s partner fit that bill nicely. I hope I didn’t.

  “Come on upstairs,” I called back to him without stopping to make sure he followed. It wasn’t the rain that pushed me forward, but the sky flashed every few seconds, the lightning striking the outer islands. Once inside the screened porch I relaxed and removed my rain gear.

  “Thanks, man. Don’t know if I could have done that myself. What the hell were you doing out there, anyway?” Scott asked.

  I thought if anyone should be asking that question it should be me. “No problem. I just went outside to shut off the main breaker. An ounce of prevention.” The sky turned a brilliant blue for a fat second and we both turned to watch the latest strike.

  “What were you doing out there?” I asked.

  “Saw a waterspout near the park. Figured this was the best choice.”

  A tornadic waterspout is harmless when cruising over the water, until something gets in its way; then they are every bit the damaging equivalent of their land-born cousins.

  Water dripped onto the tile floor from Scott’s saturated clothes and I wondered why he didn’t have rain gear. But then I remembered the boat rarely left the channel. Eyeing him up, I figured he was about my size and, potential murderer or not, I offered him a change of clothes. From the linen closet I handed him a towel and went back to the bedroom and found a pair of shorts and shirt that might fit. Handing them over to him, I waited my turn while he used the bathroom.

  Once we both dried off and changed, I invited him into the kitchen and opened two beers. We sat at the counter watching the storm, each of us wondering what to say to the other.

  “That neighbor of yours still running traps?” he finally asked me.

  “You know Ray, he’s got saltwater in his blood. Family life is pushing him to the mainland, though.” Something in his expression changed and I started to wonder if quizzing me about Ray was the reason he was here.

  “What’s your interest?”

  “Curious is all. Trying to get a feel for what goes on around here.”

  Robinson was, and Hayward had been, fixtures in the FWC. Scott was newer to the area than I was. “How long’ve you been stationed here?”

  “Just short of six months. Came across from Tampa.”

  “Like it?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Takes some getting used to. Miami’s a whole lot different, and not in a good way. I hear everyone wants out of the Keys, so maybe that’ll be my next stop.”

  I felt his pain. Robinson had to be every bit as difficult to work for as Martinez. I’d also heard that FWC officers hated the Keys. Along with the myriad of canals and public boat ramps, many hotels and marinas had private facilities, making the island chain difficult to patrol.

  “So, why make the move?”

  He stared out the window and took a long sip of his beer. I could see the conflict on his face. I knew that look.

  “Needed to make a change after busting a bluefin-tuna ring. Sons of bitches threatened my family.”

  It appeared Officer Scott and I had more in common than I had thought. My transfer here had been akin to a witness protection program for park rangers. My family had been threatened as well. Busting the pot-growing ring in California had cost me my home, which the cartel had firebombed, and my marriage. It was only in the last year that I had been reunited with my daughter, and that was more because of Justine and Daniel J. Viscount, my five-figure attorney, than me.

  “I hear you. Same thing happened to me.”

  Tipping my beer at his near-empty bottle, he nodded and I got two more. We exchanged stories over the next twelve ounces until the storm finally moved on.

  “Looks like the weather’s gone.” He finished the last of his beer and set the empty bottle on the counter. “Appreciate the hospitality.”

  I walked him out to the dock and helped cast off the lines. Staring at the dark line of clouds moving south and at the wake of his boat moving west, I thought about our encounter. The similarities in our stories were striking and I had to admit I felt a bond with the man, totally the opposite vibe from when I first thought I was drinking with a murderer. Now, looking back at Ray’s house, I wondered what the FWC’s interest in him was.

  As far as I knew Ray played by the rules, though I suspected he was close to the edge. He ran his stone crab traps right on the border between the park and public water, in areas no commercial fisherman would dare. When the difference between an expensive ticket or being legal was a random line on a chart, it wasn’t worth the risk for most. Those waters were under-fished, and he often doubled and sometimes tripled the averages the commercial guys were bringing in. Commercial licenses were hard to come by, and I didn’t think Ray had one. A residential license allowed five traps for each family member, and I’m pretty sure he counted Zero and the unborn baby in his calculation. Spiny lobster traps were not permitted without a license, but he knew the hot spots and scored a limit every time he left the dock. Same thing. Take the family, if they had residential fishing licenses, and whether they dove or not, their half-dozen counted toward the bag limit. On our salaries, raising a family on one income defini
tely needed some supplementation. I’d always assumed he sold the catch, but it didn’t concern me..

  I was about to turn back to my house when I heard a screen door open and Zero’s nails click-clacking as he plopped down the stairs. Ray followed behind him and I guessed the question before he asked it.

  “What’s that prick doing out here?”

  “Said he saw a waterspout out by headquarters when he was heading in. Decided this was safer.”

  “Maybe it wiped out that prick Martinez. He have anything to say for himself?”

  I had no intention of telling Ray that the FWC was interested in him. “Nah, we just had a few beers and exchanged war stories until the storm passed.”

  The investigator in me took control and I asked him, “How’s the house hunt going?”

  “It’s tough. Homestead ain’t what it was.”

  Evidence of what the town had looked like twenty years ago still remained. The economy then had been based around agriculture, both consumables and decorative plants, and Homestead Air Force Base. Now, the fields had been replaced by subdivisions and strip malls and the base was a reserve facility. Homestead had lost its independence and become a bedroom community for Miami. Serviced by the ever-widening turnpike, the price of homes had increased exponentially.

  “You guys gonna do it?”

  “Not seeing I have any choice. Gotta do what’s best for the young’uns.”

  We stood silent, looking at the ground and shaking our heads. Most men knew the feeling of having their wings clipped. “If you need any help—” I started.

  “We’re good. Got my traps out most of the season and the fishing’s been pretty good in between.”

  Lobster season ran August through March, with stone crab starting in October and ending in the middle of May. June and July, the mahi-mahi, locally known as dolphin, ran in large schools not too far offshore.

  “Guess you need that income now.” There was no evidence of his living a larger lifestyle than was apparent, and I suspected he was hoarding the profits from his operations for a down payment on a house. I wondered how to tell him that he was a person of interest to at least one FWC officer. Buying a big house was going to be pretty visible.