by K C Ames
Barca made sure the footpath was well maintained and clear, which was great for Dana, since it was officially on public land, so anyone could use it, much to Barca’s chagrin. He wanted the footpath to be used only by his guests. He tried to make that happen by filing a lawsuit against the town, but a Costa Rican court had disagreed with him and the footpath remained open to the public at large.
Dana ran up the footpath past the resort and onto the paved freeway, which she would then run on all the way back to town and then back to Casa Verde.
She also had her I’m-in-a-hurry route, which had her running out her front gate down to Main Street and through Mariposa Beach, where she would run about a mile out of town before turning back.
Then there was the I-have-the-time beach route, which had her running out her front door down to the beach, about half a mile through town, then she would run on the beach for two miles, avoiding the crashing waves from gobbling up her expensive running shoes, although it was usually inevitable that the Pacific Ocean wouldn’t have its fun in getting her running shoes wet anyway by unleashing a sneaky wave or two her way.
She would run on the shoreline until she hit the eroded limestone rocks that divided Mariposa Beach and Cielo Lindo Beach, which was the neighboring town to the south.
At that point she would turn back and run back towards Mariposa Beach and then she would finish by walking the last half a mile from the beach to her house. It was a good five miles in total, and it had been a few weeks since she had run that route, so she settled on it.
She slipped her mobile phone into a plastic protective pouch that was attached to an armband, which Dana slipped over her right arm. She plopped the white ear buds into her ears and continued listening to her audiobook.
She walked out her front door, waving at Ramón, her groundskeeper and property caretaker, who was chopping up yuca with a machete at seven o’clock in the morning.
She walked out her front gate and down the gravel road that connected to the palm-tree-lined Main Street past the trees favored by the howler monkeys that loved keeping her up at night. She waved at the monkeys, running out of the woods, past Ark Row and towards the Qué Vista Restaurant, which was closed, but she saw Julio, the head waiter and manager of the restaurant, and a delivery man who was unloading supplies from a semitruck that made weekly deliveries from San José.
She waved at them too as she ran past them.
She noticed the deliveryman ogling her, making her feel creeped out. She glanced over again, and she saw Julio give him a shove as if to tell him to knock it off. It made her smile.
He’s such a sweetheart, she thought.
She picked up the pace once she hit the beach.
Her feet sank into the loose sand from the berm, so she trudged down towards the shoreline where the high tide had left soft, dry sand to run on.
Dana ran until making it to the rocks, where she stopped to capture her breath and take in the view.
She looked around the mountainous peninsula with its heavily forested hillside to her right and the mountain ranges known as the Cordillera de Guanacaste off in the distance, lush green from all the rains. And directly in front, the vastness of the Pacific Ocean that would go on and on for thousands and thousands of miles towards Hawaii, eventually reaching southeast Asia. The world seemed so beautiful standing there that you could forget bad stuff could happen anywhere, even here.
She checked her time. Her run was turning into a nature hike. She removed her ear buds to listen to the lovely sounds of the waves crashing into the rocks. The wind was whistling, and she could hear a laughing gull out there somewhere.
She was about to head back when her attention was directed to something that had washed up against the rocks.
Oh, great, more trash washing up from who knows where, she thought, annoyed. Every month, a bunch of the townspeople hit the beach to pick up trash from the shoreline. It worried her that the trash would be swept back into the water, so she looked around and picked up a piece of driftwood so she could pluck the garbage from the rocks before the tides took it back out to sea.
Her plan was to get it as far away from the waves so she could come pick it up later to throw it away.
She walked up to the edge of the rocks with a piece of driftwood in her right hand. She climbed a large rock as a wave splashed water on her face. It felt good and cooling to her sweaty skin. She could taste the sea salt on her lips.
She looked down at the debris and flinched. It can’t be.
She got a little closer and the piece of driftwood that was in her hand fell onto the rocks below, but she didn’t even notice; she was transfixed looking at a body jutting out of the rocks as waves kept washing over it. The body swayed gently in a puddle of water left on the rocks by the waves.
She wanted to look away, but she was incredulous about what she was seeing, then she saw blonde hair floating around the head like moss in the water. That’s when she saw an arm twisted in a way that wasn’t natural, and still her brain tried to talk her out of what she was seeing.
No, that’s not a human body, silly. Until finally the cerebral cortex part of her brain took over and yelled at her, Yes, that is a body. Now, RUN!
She did as her brain told her and took off running away so fast that she almost stumbled and fell, but she recovered. Her body unleashed an adrenaline surge that she swore would have caused her to overtake Usain Bolt at that moment.
She ran up to the paved road, but she didn’t see any vehicles, so she kept running until she got back to Mariposa Beach, out of breath and heaving heavily.
She made her way back to the Qué Vista, where Julio and the deliveryman were still unloading the truck.
“Wow, that must have been some run,” Julio said, looking at her sweating profusely, panting, and her body trembling. It wasn’t until that instant that she remembered she had her mobile phone with her the whole time, so she could have called for help, but in her panic she ran straight into town at full speed. She was spent, bending at her knees, trying to catch her breath while trying to tell Julio what she saw.
Between deep gasps for air, she said, wheezing, “Call... police... dead.. body... on... the... beach... rocks.”
Seven
In the few months that Dana had been living in Mariposa Beach, she had noticed that the police presence in rural Costa Rica was sparse, and that was being very kind.
The town was in the Nosara District, which was part of the Guanacaste Province. Unlike the United States and other countries where most towns had their own police force, Costa Rica had a national police force, the Fuerza Pública—Public Force—which was under the Ministry of Public Security.
The Public Force operated on a geographic command basis not down to the town level, so they had a much larger ground to cover than a typical city police department or a sheriff’s department working at the county level back in the States.
But like a city police department in the United States, the police officers of the Public Force handled the day-to-day law enforcement duties on the ground like providing security, law enforcement, protecting citizens, etc.
The closest police presence to Mariposa Beach was a tiny substation in the town of Guiones Beach that was about twice as large as Mariposa Beach and about twenty miles away.
Since there were many more hotels and resorts in the coastal area of the Nosara District and tourists flocked to the district like moths to a light bulb, the substation in Playa Guiones was part of the Tourist Police Unit.
The National Public Force was divided to serve the different law enforcement needs of the country such as traffic control, vice, and narcotics, and since tourism was the bread and butter to the economy of the country—especially on the coast—the Public Force had a dedicated squad of police officers to serve and protect tourists.
The substation was staffed by a handful of police officers with the Tourist Unit that zipped up and down the coast in motocross bikes.
Because of the twenty-mile d
istance between Guiones Beach and Mariposa Beach, it would take around twenty to thirty minutes for them to make their way down to Mariposa Beach, longer if it was a busy day.
Complicating things, in Costa Rica, the National Police couldn’t investigate crimes or charge suspects with crimes. Only the elite Judicial Investigative Police—known by its Spanish initials for Organismo de Investigación Judicial: OIJ—could do that.
Its agents were a cross between a police detective in a department like the NYPD or the LAPD and an FBI agent.
The closest OIJ station was almost fifty miles away in Nicoya. So the tourist police officer from Guiones Beach would arrive to secure the scene and provide a modicum of security for the residents as word began to spread through town that Dana had found a dead body. But then everyone had to wait until the detectives who could investigate crimes arrived from Nicoya.
Officer Freddy Sanchez was one of the police officers in the Tourist Squad that were assigned to cover a large swath of area from Guiones Beach down to Samara and everything in between, which included Mariposa Beach.
Twenty-six minutes after Julio had called the police, Officer Freddy Sanchez came roaring down Main Street on his Honda motorcycle with its blue siren flashing. Pretty quick response time around these parts, Dana thought.
He came in fast, leaning into the motocross bike sideways like he was riding in the Motorcycle Grand Prix. He slid the bike into a full stop in front of the Que Vista restaurant, kicking up dust and dirt.
He got off his white and blue motorcycle and removed his helmet and replaced it with a baseball hat with the word POLICIA emblazoned on the front of the cap. He wore black pants and a white short-sleeve polo shirt with “Policía Turista”—Tourist Police—emblazoned on the back of his shirt and the Public Force emblem embroidered on his breast pocket. It was the uniform of the Tourist Police.
“Where’s the body?” he asked, looking around as if he were expecting to find it lying somewhere near the restaurant.
“It’s a couple miles from here. Over by the rocks,” a shaken Dana replied.
She had recovered from the mad dash to the restaurant and was now speaking normally thanks to the two bottles of water Julio had given her to calm her nerves and clear her parched throat.
Benny arrived in his SUV a minute later. Dana had forgotten she had texted him but was relieved to see him pull up.
“Are you all right?” he asked, putting his arm around her.
“I’m fine. But there is someone over by the rocks on the beach that is not.”
“Let’s go over there so you can show me the body,” Officer Freddy ordered.
“I’ll drive you,” Benny said.
“I’ll follow you,” Officer Freddy said, jumping back on his motocross bike and starting it.
Dana climbed onto the passenger side and shivered from the blast of the air conditioner from Benny’s SUV.
“Are you really okay?”
Dana nodded. “Unfortunately, it’s not my first rodeo in the finding a dead body arena.”
It had been a few months since Dana had found the dead body of the local eccentric, Barry Shy, in her bookstore coffee shop days before its grand opening.
“Oh, boy, I think the word has reached the Gossip Brigade. Doña Amada is heading our way.”
“Ugh,” Dana said, watching the gossipy old lady making her way over spryly towards the SUV, waving her hands in the air.
Benny and Dana waved at her, playing dumb as Benny tossed the SUV into gear and pulled out from the restaurant’s parking lot and down to the beach, leaving the old lady standing there with her arms on both hips.
“You will have to pay for that,” Dana said with a laugh.
Benny drove down the road and then onto the actual beach, Officer Freddy following him. He had to maneuver the SUV carefully on the soft sand until the tires hit the hard sand of the splash zone and he sped down towards the rock formation, which was the town limit of Mariposa Beach.
Officer Freddy zoomed past him on his dirt bike, unable to resist the urge to pop a wheelie as he zoomed towards the rocks.
“He must have figured out the spot,” Dana said, watching him speed away.
“It’s a small town. Everyone knows where the rocks are,” Benny explained.
It only took a couple minutes to get there. Officer Freddy had already gotten off his bike as Benny parked on the beach right behind the motorcycle.
“Over there?” the cop asked, pointing towards the rocks.
“Yes,” Dana said. She began to tremble again, picturing the body in her head.
“I don’t want to go over there again, but if you go up and over those rocks, you’ll see the body down there.”
“I understand. I’ll be right back,” Officer Freddy said as he removed a roll of yellow police tape from his bike’s side pouch. He headed over to the rocks and climbed onto a large boulder that was wet from the waves crashing into it. He climbed up the rocks carefully. Dana figured he wanted to make sure not to disturb the crime scene and not to slip on the slick rocks.
After a few seconds, she heard him shout out, “I see it.”
Dana could see him standing on top of the boulder. He looked around carefully before he dropped to the other side of the rocks where he was no longer visible to Dana and Benny.
They stood there for a few minutes, giving each other confused glances before Officer Freddy popped back up from the other side of the rocks with a trail of yellow tape that he continued crisscrossing until he had cordoned off the area.
Eight
Dana and Benny waited for about ten minutes as Officer Freddy did whatever police work he had to do in order to secure the scene for the detectives, who were on their way from Nicoya.
Dana had been under the notion that the poor woman ended up dead because of some accident. Drowning always took its share of tourists and locals around the coast.
The skies darkened, and the temperature dropped. Dana looked up, and she felt a few raindrops hit her face and arms gently. It was as if Mother Nature was giving her a little nudge of warning to go for cover because she was getting ready to open up the floodgates from above.
Officer Freddy sauntered back to where Dana and Benny were standing, holding each other in an embrace, but really it was Benny who had wrapped up Dana into his arms.
Officer Freddy looked up at the sky, worried. He knew what Mother Nature was about to deliver.
Dana had watched enough true crime shows to know that rain is a crime scene’s worst enemy. But then again, she thought, the body was in the water already, so she doubted any evidence would be in pristine condition. She reminded herself that she didn’t even know if a crime had been committed.
Officer Freddy interrupted Dana’s internal conversation.
“I need to ask you some questions.”
“Um, sure,” Dana said, not thinking she could be of any help.
He asked her the usual stuff they asked on those TV shows: what were you doing out here? How did you spot the body from where you were? Did you recognize the body?
She answered his questions. “I was on a run. I stopped to rest and take in the amazing views when I saw something floating from the corner of my eye. I didn’t look too close, but she was floating facedown, so I don’t who it is, but I noticed she was a blonde.”
“How do you know she was a she?”
“The long blonde hair and the silk pink pajamas,” Dana replied. She was surprised she had spouted that off, not having realized her brain had kept that information.
In her head, she glanced over for a second, saw a dead body, and went posthaste back to town. But she must have gotten a better look than she wanted to admit.
Officer Freddy jotted down notes with a black BIC pen on a pocket notebook, then turned to ask Benny a few questions about how he fit into everything. He answered his questions.
It was all friendly enough. The area was small enough that you got to know everyone that lived nearby on a full-time basis.
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Officer Freddy was the cop that was usually sent to Mariposa Beach when the police was needed to deal with the small stuff: a pickpocketed tourist, thieves that stole a swimmer’s bag from the beach while they were in the water, a rental car that was broken into, or two drunks getting into a shoving match at the bar.
Dana had gotten to know Officer Freddy pretty well since she moved to town. She thought he was a good cop. Honest. Diligent. Fair. A nice guy.
He was thirty, but he looked like a scrawny teenager.
“Can you tell me what happened to her?” Dana asked.
Officer Freddy seemed to mull the question over in his head like he was debating how much to share with them.
“Well, that will be up to the detectives and the medical examiner to figure out for sure, but from what I can tell, I would think her death was not an accident.”
Officer Freddy’s words shocked Dana. She looked at Benny, and his face was also in dismay.
“What makes you believe that?” Benny asked.
“She’s floating facedown in the water. I saw severe trauma to the back of the head. But it’s way too early, she could have just fallen and hit the back of head.”
The rain began to come down, but it was still light. Like a mist.
“It will take the detectives over an hour to get here from Nicoya, and the rain is going to get worse. Can I take Dana back to her house?” Benny asked.
Officer Freddy mulled it over again. It seemed he always thought before speaking, which was actually a smart habit to have, Dana thought.
“Sure. No need to stand out here in the rain waiting for their arrival. I know where to find you.”
Officer Freddy was being nice, but the way he said that gave her goose bumps. I know where to find you.
Since arriving in town, Dana’s interaction with the OIJ detectives so far hadn’t been as pleasant as it had been with Officer Freddy of the Tourist Police.
This was true especially with the lead detective, Jorge Picado. She hoped he wouldn’t be the one coming to town. They must have other detectives they could send down, she hoped.