Backwater Flats

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Backwater Flats Page 14

by Steven Becker


  I’d left my phone on the shelf above the helm, and turned it over as I eased away from the FWC boat. Robinson stood stoically at its helm, waiting while we drifted away. I pushed off, creating a gap between the two boats. As soon as it opened up, he slammed the throttles and took off downriver. I was alone now, and checked my phone. Justine had left two messages, one a smiley face emoji, the other a more urgent, CALL ME! Checking the time, I saw the second message was left less than five minutes ago.

  Crossing to the other, less populated bank of the river, I called her back.

  “What’s this about gunshots on the river?”

  I figured it wouldn’t take her long to find out there had been an incident. Any time her “coworkers” found out I was involved in something, they tossed daggers at my back by telling her. As my grandfather said, a little schadenfreude.

  “Hey. All good.” I tried to defuse the bomb before it went off.

  “Couldn’t just sit at home and wait, eh, kemosabe”

  The nickname assured me she wasn’t too angry.

  “You know how it is.” I idled forward, telling her the events of the past few hours as I traveled downriver.

  “I get off in an hour,” she said. “Got some results for you.”

  “I’ve got a small errand I have to run first.” I explained about my passenger. Fortunately, she got it.

  “Tuck her in and get back here asap. This is good stuff.”

  “Roger that. See ya soon.” Taking a deep breath, I looked at Susan, curled up in a fetal position on the deck. We’d done this dance before. Tomorrow would be another day with no recognition of tonight’s charity. Looking behind me, I checked my wake and goosed the throttle, trying to get a few more knots out of the engine without disturbing the boats docked alongside the river. The sooner this deed was complete, the better.

  I reached our marina on the river, and after securing the boat, got the truck and pulled it alongside. Susan hadn’t stirred at all on the ride. Grasping her arm, I slung it over my shoulder and lifted her from the deck. Somewhere along the way, she regained consciousness and slugged me in the stomach.

  “Easy, girl, it’s Kurt, just trying to get you home.”

  “Oh, Kurt!”

  She sounded manic. I wasn’t sure if she was laughing or crying and considered throwing her in the bed of the truck. Somehow, she sensed this and staggered to the passenger door, where I folded her in. then glanced at the seatbelt. Gritting my teeth, looking past her bulging blouse cut two sizes too small, I reached across her, trying to avoid contact, and successfully pulled out the seatbelt and secured it without touching her—possibly my major accomplishment of the day.

  By the time we reached her condo, she was somewhat coherent and able to make it to the door herself. Watching from the truck, I waited until she was inside. My work here was done, and I hightailed it back home to our condo.

  Two odors clung to me as I walked past Justine and headed for the shower: Fear and perfume. Fear has a distinct smell, and after the gunshot earlier, my pores had emitted it. Susan’s overpowering perfume concealed the fear, but I admit it was still there.

  After soaping up and rinsing twice, I stepped out of the shower, immediately feeling better.

  “Hungry?” Justine called out from the kitchen.

  I walked up behind her, glancing over her shoulder at the frittata browning in a cast-iron skillet, before I leaned in and kissed her neck. Elbowing me in the stomach, she pushed me back, pulled the pan from the stove-top, and slid it into the oven.

  “You’ve got five minutes until this bad boy is done. Talk…” She sat down at the kitchen table.

  I had other ideas, but there is no deterring a hungry woman.

  When Susan McLeash and gunshots get mixed together, my senses seem to go on full alert, my subconscious working overtime to memorize things I might normally never remember. As I recapped the details of the incident to Justine, I pulled out my pad of paper and started making more notes, knowing by tomorrow I would likely forget something.

  The timer on the stove dinged and interrupted me. Justine hopped up while I continued writing, and dished out two nice portions of her frittata. We fit well together in a lot of ways, and one of these was when eating. Always dining with someone who ate at a different speed—though this might sound nitpicky—could be extremely frustrating. Justine and I were silent eaters. The only conversation we had while we ate was to ask to pass the salt.

  Our meal complete, I took the dishes to the sink and rinsed them off.

  “Okay. Your turn,”I said to her.

  “Got a few hair and skin samples back from the gauges. Traces of blood, too.”

  “Evidence. Awesome.” It sounded good, until she added a qualifier.

  “It’s all worthless with nothing to compare them to. You’ve handled enough lobsters. What you’re calling evidence also could be considered normal. Those suckers can draw blood just by looking at them. I’d guess if you tested our gauges, you might get the same result.”

  My mind was racing through possibilities, searching for any hold to grasp. DNA and blood: It didn’t get any better than that. “Hayward’s and Scott’s are on one, for sure. But what if there was a third person?” I waited for her to disqualify my statement. There could easily have been ten people who handled the gauges. I was clinging to a thin strand of hope that Hayward would have been very careful in keeping tabs on his doctored gauges.

  “I can run what I have through a database, but you know the sample size is limited.”

  “Yeah, to felons and federal employees.” As I said it, I wondered if the state required that the DNA of their employees be kept on file. Flipping the pen in my fingers, I almost put it in my mouth, but then stopped and handed it to her.

  “What about this?” I asked, gesturing to the pen.

  “What about it? You just buggered it all up.”

  “Robinson stuck the tip in his ear,” I told her.

  “That’s gross!”

  “But testing it is doable, right?” I asked her.

  “Got blood for me, too?”

  “If my hunch is right, you have it. It’s Hayward’s blood.”

  “You know, DNA tests take time, right?”

  “Tomorrow will be fine,” I said, and headed for the bedroom. The day had gone long and the adrenaline surge from earlier had worn off, leaving me drained.

  I smiled and fell onto the bed, only to wake up in my clothes several hours later as the dawn’s light barely filtered through the blinds. Justine was under the covers beside me, and I thought for a long minute about stripping down and joining her. But after the gunshot incident last night, I had a good idea I needed to do some damage control. Both Robinson and Susan would be spinning the story seven ways to hell.

  Sliding out of bed, I grabbed a change of clothes from my drawer, and headed for the shower. At most I’d gotten three or four hours of sleep, and I was feeling it. I wolfed down a large chunk of the leftover frittata while the coffee brewed, and a few minutes later, I sat in my truck with a stainless mug holding my coffee.

  The coffee gave me a jumpstart, and I quickly browsed through whatever I had missed on my phone. Still being the dark of night—or early morning, depending on your perspective—there were no new messages and only a few administrative emails. I set the phone on the seat next to me and quickly scanned my personal phone. With nothing there either, I took another sip of coffee and pulled out of the lot.

  Traffic seems to run in fifteen-minute intervals here. There was often a huge difference in leaving at six forty-five versus seven. I was already past that window at seven-thirty and paying the price. Brake lights reflected off the slightly wet road in front of me, too wet to be just dew. I suspected a small storm had rolled through while I slept. To most, the light coating of rain made little difference to their lives, but to me it was an evidence-killer.

  Justine would process Robinson’s DNA from the pen, but I knew better than to expect the results back for close to
a week. I wasn’t sure I had that long. Usually, when Susan started firing weapons, you could assume a situation had reached a tipping point. This was the time when suspects made mistakes, and I turned onto the turnpike’s southbound entry ramp hoping I would be there when it happened.

  It didn’t surprise me to see Susan’s truck already in the lot and, from the wet asphalt below it, I knew it hadn’t spent the night here. The woman recovered better than anyone I’d met, and I expected to find her in her office acting like nothing happened. With enough eye drops and pancake makeup, she would look like she did on every other day. It was eight-thirty already and Martinez’s car was here as well. Hoping I hadn’t missed any true confessions about the gunshot, or how she had spun the story so it was my fault, I hurried to the entrance and, after waving to Mariposa, took the stairs two at a time.

  Even before I reached his office, I could see Susan’s feet tapping nervously through the open door. Trying to be as nonchalant as possible, I approached, popped my head in, and said good morning.

  “Is it Hunter?” Martinez waved me to the inside chair. “Is it?”

  The space was tight enough that I had to brush against Susan to reach it. She glanced at me and looked back at our boss. I apparently had missed hearing her version of the story.

  “So, can you explain why the only times we have incidents with our department personnel is when you are present?” Martinez asked me.

  I wanted to answer that I was the only one doing any work, but that would only antagonize him. Instead I stayed silent, hoping he would reveal what Susan had told him.

  “It appears that you’ve once again overstepped your bounds, Hunter.”

  22

  When I was younger, I remembered tagging along to job sites with my dad. He had a way of diffusing customers with a simple line: “Whatever it is, it’s my fault—just tell me what I did.” That usually lightened the mood. Seeing the dour looks on Martinez and Susan’s faces, I thought, why not? and let it rip.

  “There’s no laughing your way out of this, Hunter. Shots were fired with two of our agents in proximity, and not even in the park.”

  I took another risk, figuring he had to know Susan was lying or at least bending the truth. I just needed to provide an explanation that would exonerate her without embarrassing either of them. Maybe then we could get on with our investigation.

  “The venue is unimportant. It is within our scope to pursue crimes committed inside the park outside of its borders.” It was in the manual.

  “Right,” he said, pausing to figure out what to do with the way out I had just given him.

  Susan seemed relieved as well.

  “We were working independently pursuing a suspect,” I added to reinforce the talking point to both of them. They quickly latched onto it and Martinez finally changed the subject to the investigation.

  Depending on whether Robinson filed a complaint or not, the gunshot incident might be over. It had been Robinson’s weapon that she fired. If I were a betting man, I'd wager that between Robinson's independent streak and his side business, we'd heard the last of the incident.

  Too bad, because one of these days Susan might actually hit something.

  Whatever Robinson did, Susan's ability to liaise with the FWC was compromised. Word would go out for his people to avoid her. Between Susan's new status as persona non grata, and Scott's firing, the lobster sanctuary idea was DOA. It had been a long shot anyway, though I had an idea to keep it alive. As much as the bureaucrats tried to bury ideas, those that cost little and made sense ended up eventually getting implemented despite them. Sometimes you have to be patient and wait. It was all good, except now I had to figure out what to do with Susan.

  Martinez had returned his attention to his screens and, without any attention being thrown her way, Susan rose and left the office, allowing me a path to escape at the same time. I was on my way to the door when I heard my name.

  “Sit, Hunter. And close the door.”

  Martinez wielded the intimacy of a private conversation like a sharp blade, and in this case, I had to assume I was going to get cut. I sat and waited.

  “These interagency squabbles can be tricky and when investigations seem to drag on, things can get ugly.”

  Crossing, then uncrossing, my legs, I sat silently, hoping he would elaborate. The murder had occurred less than a week ago; I would hardly classify that as a “long time.” I knew he was after information I didn’t want to divulge at this point, but I was playing chicken with a master and finally caved.

  “I’ve got some leads. DNA mostly, but the results won’t be back for about a week.”

  “It’s a start, but I’d like this wrapped up ASAP.”

  And I would like the murderer to present him or herself and confess. Neither of us was going to get what we wanted. I was burning through suspects: Scott was still there, but I could find nothing to pin him to the actual murder. I’d seen first-hand that he was hot-headed and impulsive, but was he so far gone he would kill his partner in the park service parking lot? It didn’t make sense. I’d taken Scott off my radar for a day after his termination. Now I thought it might be a good idea to check in with him.

  “I’d like to talk to Scott again, but I haven’t seen his personnel file yet.” There was no way Martinez was going to throw Susan under the bus, and I waited while he decided how to handle my request.

  He placed his hands together under his chin in a subconscious prayer position. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “I need his address, to start. That would help. Maybe checking out how things are in his private life, too. And a DNA sample couldn’t hurt, either.” Martinez’s eyes flirted with his screens. He had lost interest. At this point I would be lucky to get an address. Visiting Scott at home might give me a chance to grab something for Justine to test. So far none of the evidence I’d brought her was admissible in court, but if she found anything that pointed me in the direction of the killer, I’d find something legit.

  “Hayward’s file, too.”

  “That I have.” He swung around to face the trio of monitors on his side desk and moved quickly through several windows. “Here. I’ll text it to you.”

  My phone pinged. After yesterday’s close call, I had changed his ringtone back to the standard issue. I swear, he looked upset when he heard it and, avoiding eye contact, I glanced at the screen. His contribution to the investigation, however small it was, seemed to lift his mood, and when he continued to work the windows on his monitors, searching for some indiscretion that might have happened during our meeting, I rose and left, sure I heard him humming the Star Wars theme song on my way out.

  Passing Susan’s closed door, I figured it must have been nap time in McLeash land. How else could she survive?

  Mariposa called me over just before I hit the door. Thinking it was something about Saturday, night I crossed the lobby to her desk.

  “I got a hit on one of the inquiries I made.”

  I took a second to remember the bacteria and her calls to urgent-care facilities and hospitals. I’d asked only yesterday, but a lot had happened in the interim. She handed me a piece of paper with the information.

  Pulling out my phone, I compared it to the address that Martinez had sent. I had a working knowledge of Coral Gables, an older Miami neighborhood known locally as just “The Gables.” I thanked her and headed out to the truck feeling better than when I got there.

  Hayward wasn’t going anywhere, and I could get access to his house with a phone call. That made Scott’s house my top priority, but when I entered all three addresses—Hayward’s, Scott’s, and the urgent care—into my map app to get a feel for their locations, the urgent-care center came up equidistant from the two men’s residences, and surprisingly close to Susan’s condo. Knowing who they had treated and for what could prove important, but with the myriad of HIPAA laws now in place, breaking down the barrier of patient privacy was an obstacle.

  But after creating a plausible explanation for Sus
an being on the Miami River last night—and shooting at people, no less—Martinez owed me one. I called and asked if he could help get the medical information. He promised he’d make some calls and see if he could get the patient file. I wanted the information before I saw Scott, and decided on a slight detour to kill some time. Hoping the Wetlab was open, I headed toward the Rickenbacker Causeway to see what the waterway under the bridge looked like in daylight.

  The Wetlab was just about to open, and my uniform earned me early admittance. Promising I’d order lunch, I walked out to the pier from where I had seen the boats last night. Gazing out at the bridge, I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, just hoping something would strike me. Around the water, things look different during the day, and this was no different. The first thing I noticed was how sketchy the approach was that the bait boat had taken to reach me last night. Had I known, without someone’s life being in jeopardy, I never would have put them in that position.

  The second thing I noticed was the construction of the bridge itself. The wide platform cantilevered over the supports below and was set close to the water with no high span for sailboats. Consequently, the water under the bridge was deep in shadows. A quick Google search showed the bridge had been restored about five years ago. In the process piers were added, making the support structure even more cluttered—ideal for a discreet rendezvous. There was no chance of being seen from the roadway above and little from the approaches. My current location was probably the best point to observe the goings-on.

  Without a span for taller boats, Bear Cut got only a fraction of the boat traffic the main span of the Causeway received. Another plus for its varied uses. I had all but eliminated the buyers from my list of suspects, and the physical properties of the bridge only confirmed their dismissal. If I were in their position and wanted to kill someone, I would have chosen this venue over the parking lot at headquarters.

 

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