I shook my head and smiled back. “No.” But I think I was.
I grabbed a cup of coffee, then added some sugar and powdered milk that we had found in Jack’s provisions. I don’t talk in the morning. Neither does Huck. But Cynthia seemed anxious to. So, we talked briefly about the morning and shared some dried fruit that she had found.
“So, let’s head upriver,” I said after we had cleared the table. Jack had a map of Shark River. So I laid it out on the small dinette table that sat in the center of the cabin.
“What do you think?” I said, studying the water depths and the smaller tributaries that ran off the river upstream. “We can break out the inflatable so we can get in closer to shore. Matter of fact, I think we’ll have to.” No reaction. “Anyway, let’s get underway. It’s early. We have the whole day to search.” They both nodded.
The morning was quiet. Most of the boats that had anchored for the storm still weren’t moving. Huck and I hoisted the Canyon’s anchors and Cynthia started the motors and pulled into the center of the river. It was around 8:30 a.m. Several sailboats now joined us but were headed for the mouth of the river toward the Gulf, away from the rising sun. We headed right into it, toward the heart of the Everglades.
We moved slowly upriver with Shark River Island on our left and the Everglades National Park on our right. In the center of the river the depths averaged ten to twelve feet, plenty of water for the Canyon. I relieved Cynthia at the helm so she and Huck could focus on Jack’s fishing spots. They swept the shores on each side, using glasses that Jack kept on board, as we moved ahead.
The sun had cleared the mangroves, blinding me. I put on my sunglasses and took off my jacket. The temperature was already close to 75 degrees and rising. I expected it to get into the 80s before the afternoon was over. The river maintained its own quiet flow beneath the low rumble of the Yamahas. Gators splashed into the water from the shore, the only other sound as we made our way upstream. As the river narrowed, I could see the brush along the shore more distinctly now. I steered the boat for a tangle of mangroves on the north side, following Huck’s arm as he pointed them out.
“We fished those waters,” he said. “Grouper pitch their tents over there in a hole near that marker,” he added, turning to the open water and pointing to the mouth of the river. “Might get some tarpon there too. I’m figurin’ Jack started fishin’ in the mouth of the river and then worked his way here.” Then he fell silent and scanned the forest of dead mangroves that stretched along the shore.
“Wilma kill those trees?” I said.
“Yep. Cleaned out this whole section of the island. It’s just now coming back.” He paused as he looked into the dense forest behind the graveyard of mangroves.
“Best way to do this is to find ourselves one of the fingers of the river that runs into the island and see if Jack got hisself hung up in there,” and he looked over at Cynthia as he said it, as if to say, sorry.
“Don’t worry about me, Huck,” Cynthia said. “I’m okay.”
I knew she wasn’t, but she wasn’t going to let us know that. So I suggested she take the wheel and let Huck and me look for Jack. She didn’t object, took the wheel and continued to let the boat idle slowly upriver past marker #5 and toward a small offshoot of the river on our port side. Huck kept an eye on the depth marker since we were nearing the shore.
“Why don’t we anchor here and explore some of this shoreline in the dinghy,” I said, looking up at the sun now at about nine-o’clock. “Where does Jack keep the inflatable?”
Cynthia handed me the wheel, went to a storage unit on deck and began to pull out a large bag. I shut off the motors and went to let out the anchor when I heard Huck yell over to Cynthia. “Let me help you with that, little lady.” I watched Cynthia as she stopped what she was doing, pulled her hair back away from her face, and looked his way.
“Do I look like a little lady?” she said, her eyes locked onto his. Huck froze. The two were quiet for a moment.
Then, “I sure am sorry, Miss Cynthia. You have to excuse an old tracker, raised in the swamp. I didn’t mean no harm.”
She nodded, obviously still pissed and went back to work on the canvas bag. Huck stayed where he was for a few moments, looked over at me, shrugged, and then went over to help. She let him, quiet the whole time.
With the anchor set I joined them. The dinghy was a Santa Cruz 10’ Air Floor Tender Boat. It was designed almost like a pontoon boat only much smaller, about ten feet from stem to stern. It took about a half hour to inflate the boat and mount the 9.9 HP Johnson. After securing the Canyon, we dropped the Santa Cruz over the side and headed for shallow water that abutted a long line of mangroves that jutted into the air like skeletons, black as Halloween, their bark stripped by the winds. I watched Cynthia as she only half searched the shoreline, the glasses hanging unused around her neck.
“I don’t know if I should have come,” she said to no one in particular. “I don’t think I could stand finding my father in this place.”
I didn’t say anything. The motor churned the water as I steered the Santa Cruz into a small inlet that probed the depths of the mangrove forest. There was no sound on the river, only the chug of our Johnson as we moved upstream at ten knots.
“This where you fish?” I asked Huck.
“Sure. There are some nice bass along these banks. Jack got himself a shark about 100 yards from here,” he said, pointing to an overhang of mangroves up ahead. Then he fell silent, staring at the spot he had just identified.
We motored slowly upstream and I felt the day slide by. Gators lay along the shore, some drifted toward us just yards from the dinghy, egrets stood motionless in the water not far from the gators—as if they didn’t exist—and the skeletons of mangroves now gave way to a forest of green, their branches choking off any path to the interior. So, we drifted, the sun dropping lower in the sky, and another hour passed, the quiet of the stream adding to the drowsiness of the day, and I thought of what Cynthia had said—that she shouldn’t have come—that she wouldn’t want to see her father in a place like this, and Huck gave me a break, guiding the dinghy upstream, and I drifted off...
The day was getting shorter, the noise of the car putting Maxie to sleep, as country towns, some of them with a hardly more than a store, slipped into the rearview mirror, the driver, watching the Boy, seeing him nod off. Did the driver feel sorry for him? I wondered. And he tapped the wheel as the tires hummed against the asphalt, county roads for the most part, once in a while state highways. They stayed off the main highways, where the cops might be looking…and the Boy stirred. Did he wonder where he was? And then he nodded off again, resigned to the day, to the men, to the road as it ran by, to the destination, wherever that might be. And I tried to read the road signs as they flashed by—too quickly. Was that a state road? What was that number? I strained to see. If only…but no. The landscape—it was thick and green. Trees, full bloom, huddled together like shivering giants, blocked any view, and the hills, they seemed to be getting taller as the car sped into the afternoon—and I tried desperately to keep up with it. That’s my boy you have there! I tried to scream, but couldn’t, couldn’t get their attention, couldn’t rap on the window to let the Boy know I’m here. Are they in Pennsylvania? West Virginia? How long had they been driving? I couldn’t remember. One full day?
Lights were appearing in the distance—from farm houses far off the road, from gatherings of buildings in small towns they passed through. It was getting warmer, and Maxie was thinking, “What did my father tell me? About being out after dark?” And he had done two things today that his dad would be mad at. He had gotten into a car with strangers—though they said they knew his father, so it wasn’t really his fault— and he was not going to be home by dark. And I tried to tell him, It’s okay! Just come home safely…please don’t worry. Just come home. And then...
Had I fallen asleep? Huck was staring at me, Cynthia lost in her thoughts—probably about Jack.
“It�
��s time to turn around,” I said, “after an entire day of cruising, and with evening closing in…?” Then I saw a frenzy of birds, thrashing in the trees just ahead.
“There,” said Huck, as he pointed to the center of the noise. “Maybe a dead animal.”
“Maybe,” I said. Cynthia sat hushed.
Maybe, I thought, and maybe not, and Huck moved the boat toward the sound, slowly, so as not to get caught in roots, and I watched the birds land in nearby trees, waiting for us to finish our work. The forest of mangroves was darkening as the sun began its descent into the west. I used a spotlight to scan the area where the birds had gathered. A powerboat sat in a tangle of mangrove roots about thirty feet from where we were. The stern was jutting out from the underbrush. Parts of the cabin were visible through the trees. As I eased the dinghy up closer, birds cleared once again from the branches overhead. The word Canyon was painted in vivid red across the port quarter of the boat, the lettering clear even in the faded light of early evening. I wanted to warn Cynthia but she was already at my shoulder. She stared at the boat, her hand tightening around my arm.
“Did your dad name the boat?”
“No. He just called it ‘my boat’ because that’s the one he went out in alone.”
“Well, we’ll have to get closer and have a look-see,” I said. “But I’m not sure you want to do this.”
“I need to,” she said. “That’s why I came. If something happened to Jack, I want to be there with him.” And she was determined, but her cheeks had lost their color.
A gator slid into the water toward us. I pulled my Glock and fired in his direction.
“You can’t shoot gators, Coop. It ain’t the season,” said Huck maneuvering the boat in closer to shore.
“Let’s see if we can get up next to the Canyon, Huck. Bring us around.”
Huck pulled out into the water again and got us up next to the grounded boat.
I could hear Cynthia draw in breath, and she grabbed my arm once again, her tenseness catching hold of me.
I studied the boat quietly. Then, “Is this your father’s boat?”
Cynthia didn’t answer right away, but I could feel her body shake as she pulled herself next to me and I put my arm around her, holding her tightly, and asked again.
“I think it is...yes...it is...” Then, “I hope Jack is okay...” and she buried her head in my shoulder, as if to protect herself from what she dreaded, but already I could smell the foul odor of rotting flesh.
Then, “I can’t take you back to the Canyon—where you should really be now—so I’m going to ask Huck to let me off here and take the boat out to the middle of the stream. There’s no way you should board this thing...okay?” It was more like an order than a question.
Cynthia nodded and Huck pulled her away and I boarded the Canyon. Huck idled the dinghy into the middle of the stream away from Jack’s boat.
The first thing I noticed were holes scattered along the hull and across the helm and console.
Someone shot at him. Obviously.
There was no sign of a body on deck. But the stench of death was overwhelming. I covered my mouth and nose so I could breathe. It didn’t help much.
I stepped over some branches and debris that had fallen on the deck, checking for the source of the stench. My nose guided me to a hatch on the starboard side. It was ajar. The hatch provided entry to the lower level of the Canyon. The lower deck is small: a stand-up shower, a sink and a head. Not a good space to hide a body. But whoever had killed Jack made no effort to hide him. What I saw when I pulled open the hatch was a body, lying face down, wedged between a sink and some cupboards.
I descended the ladder and leaned over the body to get a closer look, holding the handkerchief hard against my mouth and nose. It was hard to tell if it was Jack or not. Nature had already begun its dirty work. There was no evidence of rigor mortis, meaning that he had to have been dead for at least three days. The odor was the result of cells decomposing. Bacteria had invaded the body and were wreaking their havoc on it.
The green substance that was oozing from the skin and the fluids that were seeping from the nose and mouth were the result of this end-of-life process. And I choked as my lunch tried to come up. And the maggots—they were there too—crawling out of every orifice of Jack’s body. And that’s all I needed. I scrambled up the ladder and over to the side of the boat where I threw up everything I had eaten this morning. Everything.
Then I called Huck to pick me up. Enough already.
When he pulled the dinghy up against the stern of the Canyon 306, a boat that had taken Jack to his last fishing trip, I said, “We need to call the Coast Guard.”
Cynthia didn’t move from where she sat. But she watched me, like a terrified child looking for a sign from a parent that everything was all right. I shook my head.
She didn’t cry—at first. She just stared out over the water and into the mangroves that tangled their way along the shore, then turned to me and slowly her eyes began to redden and she started to cry, gently, like she knew all along what the result was going to be, and just murmured, “Oh Jack,” over and over again, shaking her head and bobbing back and forth. I slid over next to her and pulled her into my arms.
Chapter Nine
The Body in the Swamp
Tuesday Afternoon, November 29
When we got back to the Canyon, I radioed the Coast Guard. The guardsman who answered told me to hold on. Then, “So, Cooper, it’s you again.” A familiar voice.
“Cap’n Welder?” I said.
“Yes sir. I understand you have a problem.” He had sent the Guard out twice before. Once when I was chasing smugglers through the Ten Thousand Islands, and another time when I tracked a Russian ship that was hauling human cargo into Cuban waters. He listened now as I explained what we had found.
“Since this sounds like a homicide,” he said, “I’ll have to inform the Park Police. Then, as if studying the situation by staring into the river, he added, “We’ll have a chopper here in an hour or so.”
Darkness settled over Shark River like a pall as we waited for the noise of the copter. Then it came. Roaring over the inlet, throwing its floods over the river like a gunship, lighting up the Everglades like the towers for a Saturday night football game. The pilot settled on an inlet about a hundred yards from us and cut the motors. I ran the dinghy over as two Guardsmen climbed out of the cockpit and stepped onto a pontoon.
“Lieutenant Dawson,” said one as he handed me a duffel bag. I introduced myself and gave him a steadying hand as he climbed off the pontoon and into the dinghy.
The second guardsman followed Dawson, trying to get balanced on the rubber sides of the boat. “Phew,” he said, finally settling into a seat. “Ensign Mendez, sir,” he said, extending a hand. “Not much room, is there?” he added as he scooted over to make room for me to grab the steering arm.
We were back to the Canyon in just a few minutes where Huck and Cynthia were standing on the aft deck, waiting to help the Coast Guarders climb around the Yamahas.
“A Coast Guard ship is headed this way,” said Dawson as he stepped onto the deck. “It’ll be here in several hours. The Park Service is right behind.” Then, he turned to Cynthia, bowing slightly. “You must be Miss Hayward.”
After a pause, almost like he was apologizing, he added, “I knew your…sorry, know…your father,” looking down then back up at her—embarrassed. “Let’s hope it’s not him on that boat,” he said, like he was talking to the swamp itself, where Jack’s boat lay like a wounded animal, caught in the mangroves.
Cynthia bit hard into her lower lip, bracing herself against crying, hope now a dying ember in her eyes.
I was about to introduce Huck when, “How’s your father, Mendez?” said Huck. “I haven’t seen him in…how many moons?”
“That’s because he’s ailing, Mr. Crow,” said Mendez. “He got hurt trying to haul his boat out of the water a couple months ago—alone.” He paused. “Bet he would welco
me a call,” and they shook on it.
“You and Cynthia follow us in the Canyon,” I said to Huck, breaking in. “There’s only room for three or four on the dinghy, but it’s deep enough in the center of the inlet to pull in pretty close behind. The water is about four to five feet there.”
Dawson and Mendez put on masks, special clothing, and booties as I steered us to Jack’s boat.
“If you want to come along, put on these,” said Dawson, tossing me a bundle of the same stuff they were wearing.
The two Guardsmen climbed on board first, checking out the deck, then motioned me up. I took them around to starboard and opened the hatch. The odor blew out like a hurricane of bad breath.
“Damn it, Cooper,” said Dawson, holding a hand over his mask and nose.
“Body’s been here a while, I would guess,” I said. Dawson started down the ladder.
“It smells like it.” He looked up at the sound of a boat nearing.
“Must be the Park Police,” he said. “Might as well meet them,” backing out of the hold, climbing up the ladder, and looking relieved.
The Rangers had pulled up to the stern of the Canyon in a Boston Whaler. It had the signature hardtop to block the sun. Not that it did much good for the ranger who introduced himself.
“Jamie Bogart,” the tall ranger said. He was thin and worn and deeply tanned, like a cowboy out on the range too long. The grey mustache made him look older than he probably was. He didn’t bother introducing the other ranger, he just grabbed the rail of the Canyon and climbed around the motors while his partner steadied the Whaler.
Dawson reached out his hand and introduced himself. “If you want to go below, we got some extra gear,” he said.
Bogart nodded. Then, “Who discovered the body?” he said.
I told him I did.
“Okay. And who are you?”
I told him I was a PI and that Cynthia—I pointed at the Canyon where Cynthia was watching us—had hired me to investigate her father’s disappearance.
A Cold Copper Moon (The Cooper Series Book 3) Page 5