A Cold Copper Moon (The Cooper Series Book 3)

by Richard Conrath

  “Oh yeah, right,” as though he was recalling. “And this is him?”

  “Maybe.”

  “She up to coming aboard and identifying the body?”

  “I would say no, and for two reasons. First, this is not a good time. Too early. Second, the body is in really bad shape. I think she would have a better chance of identifying him once he’s in the morgue.”

  The ranger nodded, pulling at his mustache. “Okay, so let’s get this show on the road, gents.” He made a call on his SAT phone. When he got off, “I suppose you boys been down below from the way you’re dressed.”

  “We have,” said Dawson.

  “I think we’ll let the medical examiner take ’er from here,” he said. “We’ll stand by ’til she comes. About a half hour,” and he looked out over the inlet toward Shark River. “It’ll be dark pretty soon. The Everglades is not a good place to be in the dark. Maybe you should take Miss Hayward back home. It’s hell to pay with those crab traps along the shore. Better to take the long way.” He was still looking out towards the river as he spoke.

  I was anxious to get out of there. I had been in the backwaters of Shark River several times, but not commonly at night. It’s never good to be on the water at night. A lot can happen even to a seasoned boater on the water in the night. So Huck and I hoisted the dinghy back up on the Canyon, and we tucked it away as Cynthia charged up the motors. I watched her pull away, leaving Jack to the cops, to the dark, to the quiet of the Great Swamp. That’s where he worked and where he now lay dead.

  I was getting attached to Jack Hayward and felt like I knew him. I wished I really had gotten to know him. And I could feel Cynthia’s pain—it was all over her eyes. She was steering the Canyon carefully through the inlet into the deep of the river, staring straight ahead. But I could see that she wasn’t looking at the river. Her eyes were on something else—probably Jack.

  Chapter Ten

  Under the Copper Moon

  Tuesday Night, November 29

  It was almost a full moon. And I could see shades of copper spread along its face.

  And the Yamahas roared while the moon followed us, playing hide and seek through the clouds, baiting us for a race. Thunderheads loomed in the west and I felt the edge of a cool breeze, the kind that ushers in a storm.

  I nudged Huck and pointed to the sky. “No worries, boss; we’ll have this baby tucked away long before that ka’ino catches us.” Hawaiian? Huck is a wonder.

  “Can you take the wheel?” said Cynthia as she steered from the mouth of the river into Ponce de Leon Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. “I don’t like to drive through a storm.”

  And I took the wheel and watched her go below. I nodded to Huck to follow her. He did. She was going to have a hard night.

  I drove with the running lights along the open waters of the Gulf, trying to avoid the crab traps that lined the shore. And I watched the moon hurrying behind me, and I took the bait and raced the moon, and raced the storm, past Middle Cape, then East Cape, until I swung once again into Florida Bay, still staying in open water, and headed south-southwest toward Snake Creek. And then the storm broke, rain lashing at the Canyon like an angry loser, and it did us a favor driving us into Snake Creek and pushing us faster than we would have moved at idle speed. I could hardly see Snake Creek Marina, the rain slashing into the windshield in steady sheets, easing up only occasionally for me to catch the lights off the shore. Not a good night to be on the water. Then it stopped—suddenly—and we were in the Straits heading north toward the Pilot House Marina and safe harbor.

  “She’s asleep,” said Huck, standing next to me as I eased the Canyon through the canal toward the marina. The rain started up again and the moon, which a few minutes ago had appeared briefly in the Straits, disappeared once again. It was still raining when I backed into the slip. Huck hurried to tie the Canyon down.

  “Let’s get outta this weather,” he said as he secured the lines.

  I went below and woke Cynthia. She followed me up the ladder, catching my belt for balance. Then Huck helped her steady herself off the boat onto the dock, then walked her to the marina. It wasn’t open so we settled on a bench that was sheltered from the wind and rain and sat there quietly for a few minutes. And I stared out into the dark of Lake Largo and thought about the photos Cynthia and I had found in Jack’s house and wondered where that little rig was. And I could feel my eyes tire and my head nod, in the wet of my clothes, in the chill of the night, sitting alongside Cynthia and Huck who also huddled from the rain, and I wondered why we were not somewhere warm...

  It was evening now and the men weren’t talking anymore and the Boy was quiet, pretending to be asleep. But he wasn’t asleep. He knew he needed to be awake because he didn’t really believe that these men knew his mother and his father, as they claimed, because he had asked if he could call them, and the driver, the man with the strange marks on his neck, like scars, told him there would be plenty of time for him to do that when they got to where they were going. And the Boy asked him where that would be—the destination, that is—because he wanted to be sure that they understood exactly what he was asking so there would be no misunderstanding, even though he was only seven—he was a very bright boy—and he knew it.

  The road slipped by quickly into the night, heading to wherever they were going, and he wished he knew where, but he didn’t. He knew this wasn’t right—that these men, whom he didn’t know, knew his father—and he was now pretty sure that these men whom he had never seen before, were the bad men that his mother and father had warned him about. And that thought frightened him, sent funny feelings through his stomach, made it hurt. Then he looked back—through the rear window— through the darkness—to see if a blue Volvo was following. He hoped it was. But it was too dark to tell, and the lights from the following cars prevented him from seeing anything. And he had that urgent fear that there was no Volvo behind him—at all.

  Then, he took a deep breath, stared through the side window, and saw himself—staring back. He watched himself and studied his face—the boy in the window—who imitated his every movement—of his mouth, of his hand as it moved up to his face, of his cheeks, as he filled them with air and sighed the air out. He fell asleep as the face looked on. The Boy, the disobedient one. And he dreamed of his parents reminding him of what he had done wrong, and the nightmare continued all night as the car carried him further and further away from his home, that beautiful home in Muskingum, Ohio, where he played with his baseball in the yard and where his mother and father watched him so carefully, the place he would never see again. He was sure of that now. The nightmare told him that.

  Chapter Eleven

  Midnight Drive

  Wednesday Morning, November 30

  My nightmares were continuing, even as I nodded off for what was probably only moments, in the rain, outside the marina. I felt like I was reading his thoughts, feeling his fears, worrying with him in that car that was heading only God knows where.

  “Come on let’s get out of here,” said Huck, rising and jostling me awake. “Let’s go to your place,” he said, pulling me up.

  The rain was hell to drive through, especially since we had just come off a long boat ride. I was very tired. But I drove anyway. Had to. Cynthia had crawled into the back seat of the Volvo and had fallen asleep—we left her Jeep behind. Huck climbed up into his Ford pick-up and followed, his lights hanging over the rear of the Volvo like two angry eyes. We got to my house off Midnight Drive around 2:00 a.m., give or take. I parked, climbed the steps to the porch, holding onto Cynthia who was still not quite awake, and sat her on the swing while I reached down and scratched Sammy who was waiting just outside the screen door. Huck, who was right behind me, headed for the swing and sat next to Cynthia.

  “Where are we?” she said, as she cleared her eyes with the back of her hands.

  “My house. Let’s get you to bed.” I helped her up and through the screen door, Sammy watching us and purring. Basically, he wanted food
.

  Huck helped me get Cynthia into my bed. We took off her shoes. She stretched out and was sleeping, her right hand pulling a pillow up against her head before I turned off the light. I closed the door and Huck and I went to the kitchen. My home office. It’s a good place to work. The wine is just a few feet away in the fridge—and the crackers and the cheese.

  Huck settled into a chair across from me, shaking his head. “Poor girl. She just lost her daddy. For good.”

  “She was hoping he wasn’t…too bad,” I said.

  “Jack Hayward was a warrior, Cooper. He will cross over like a fighter and find his horses waiting for him.”

  I must have looked confused.

  “His boats, man. His horses are his boats. The boats are like an extension of his life. They live...”

  I shook my head.

  “What?” he said. “Animism,” he continued, ignoring my looks. “We are all the same, amigo, plants, animals, humans. We’re all part of the earth. Ol’ Jack is just like that sawgrass,” he continued, pointing out over the back porch. “Only thing is, when Jack talks, we understand. We don’t know how to listen to the grass.” Huck, the philosopher.

  “Pansychism,” I said.

  He looked at me. Puzzled.

  I didn’t explain. Primitives—thousands of years before Huck—subscribed to the same thinking—saw the world differently than we do. It was a simple place. Everything shares a common soul: rocks and dirt, people and flowers. Pansychism. Everything thinks and senses.

  Huck continued, “When Jacko’s body’s turns into turnips and strawberries, he’ll be seeing us—not from the goddamned Happy Hunting Grounds that you white men think we believe in, but from the ground that he’s become part of, from his toes to his nose.” Then he halted his lesson.

  We were silent for a while as I looked through the back door, through the darkness of the late night, where the Big Swamp stretches out for fifty miles or more and wondered how many dead had already become part of the grasses, the trees, the groundwater that flowed through the Everglades, and whether or not they sensed us as we passed by.

  Huck got up, headed for the fridge, and got a beer. He looked at me. I nodded. Sammy crept into the room and sat, staring at me, like he might like one also.

  Chapter Twelve

  The Mission

  Huck hadn’t said a word since he said “toes to nose.” I hadn’t either. It must have been five, maybe ten minutes before I broke the silence,

  “You know what we have to do, right?”

  “I do.”

  “Just to make sure…”

  “We need to go back and check out that dad-burned boat again,”—Huck hates to swear—“check for clues.” He looked over at me to see if he got it right. Huck has been bugging me to get him a PI badge—he wants one badly.

  “Think you can handle it, Huxter?” I paused. “The boat will be gone, you know. Evidence.”

  “No problemo,” he said. “If it’s gone, the scene will still be there.” And we both stared out the back into the darkness, probably thinking of different things.

  Then after a few moments, “Good. I’m going to drive into Miami, visit the morgue,” I said. “Check on Jack.”

  Huck nodded.

  “Let me know if you need any help on your reconnaissance,” I said.

  Huck smiled. He loves that word.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Medical Examiner's Office

  Wednesday Afternoon, November 30

  It was early afternoon when Cynthia and I pulled into the parking lot behind the Medical Examiner’s office. Down the street was Jackson Memorial Hospital, the teaching hospital for the University of Miami. It’s a tall building, steps leading circularly up to a wide set of glass doors. We stopped at reception and were buzzed into the morgue itself. I pulled out some Vick’s Vapor Rub packets and offered one to Cynthia on the way in. She shook her head. I told her she would need it. She took it.

  It was Jack Hayward all right. The entire five-foot ten inches of Jack, naked under the white covering, waiting for Cynthia—who was still in the hall outside the morgue—not wanting to enter. Cynthia, tearing at first, then, braving the room, walked steadily—almost steadily—through the door into the morgue. She stood next to me, gripping my arm. Dr. Wann, hesitating, waiting for a sign that she was ready—which she gave with the same hesitation—slowly pulled back the sheet. She passed out. I grabbed her—like in a game of trust—and struggled to hold her up. Wann lunged forward to help, and the two of us guided her to a chair outside the room.

  “It’s okay, Miss Hayward,” Dr. Wann whispered, bending over. “It happens to everybody.”

  She sat for a few minutes, then looked up and nodded.

  Wann motioned me aside. We walked into the hall away from Cynthia who was lost in her thoughts.

  “It’s good to see you, Cooper. How are you?”

  Wann and I had known each other from my time as a homicide detective with MPD. He was a thorough, meticulous, careful, and a maddeningly slow analyst. But he was good. So I got to like him, even though he would take weeks where others would have results in days. It was for that very reason—his thoroughness—that made him world famous as a pathologist. But he also had a lot of advice for me—more than I needed most of the time.

  “Say, when you gonna get married again?” Like I need a woman to keep me living a long life. Advice like that.

  I shrugged. “I’m not ready.”

  “How about that Detective Delgado? She’s a very pretty woman. I think she might be good for you,” nudging me.

  I shook my head.

  He threw up his hands like I’m just trying to help. Then, “So…” Wann began, as if he were going to tell me something else I wanted to know. “I will be doing an autopsy soon on Mr. Hayward. I suppose you are wanting me to fill you in,” he added, leading me on.

  “I would,” I said, taking the bait.

  “Interesting,” he continued. “I did a prelim—”

  “And…?”

  “Funny thing. I found some oily residue on his skin.”

  I gave him a look.

  “You found him in the Everglades,” he continued. “Where is there oil in the Everglades?”

  I nodded, checking on Cynthia who was now looking our way. “Maybe he was working on his motors. Gas…oil…you know, spillage.”

  “Maybe. You check it out. You’re the detective, Cooper. Meantime, I’ll have this crap analyzed. Maybe two weeks.”

  I nodded. Oil in the Everglades?

  I asked Wann to let me know when he had the results.

  “Always,” he said.

  We walked back to Cynthia who was now standing and watching us. “Anything I need to know?” she said, worry sneaking across her face.

  “No. Just catching up,” I said.

  “We need to get some breakfast somewhere,” I said to Wann. “Know someplace close?”

  He was checking his cell phone. Then, as if realizing I had just asked a question, he said, “Yeah. There’s a Wendy’s just across the street from the hospital—on Northwest 10th Ave.” I must have looked unsure. “Look, you can almost see it when you walk out the door—cross the street and bingo—you’re there. Okay?” He was playing with me.

  “Okay,” I said, “thanks for the advice,” hoping he would take the hint.

  “Not advice, Coop. Directions.”

  I shook my head and sighed. “Um-huh. Call me...” and he cut me off with a no-problem wave. Cynthia and I headed for breakfast with Dave Thomas.

  She was still in semi-shock. So we walked in silence along a palm-lined stone pathway that skirts a large parking lot and toward the traffic and noise of NW 10th Avenue, the heat of the autumn sun picking up. We passed young men and women in blues as they were heading to and from the hospital and over to Wendy’s where I figured we could get some coffee and something that was close to breakfast—a muffin maybe. It was late afternoon—but I hadn’t eaten yet today. So, breakfast had to come first.r />
  “I’m not hungry,” she said, as she settled into a seat.

  “Coffee?”

  “No,” she said. I didn’t get any either. I just watched her. She began to cry, quietly, her head in her hands. We were sitting behind a wall that screened us from the counter. Then she looked up and stared out the window—in the direction of the Examiner’s Office.

  “I can’t believe Jack is in there.” She paused for a few moments. “I can’t believe I left without him.” She shook her head and began to tear up again. She looked around to see if anyone was watching. Then she wiped her eyes with her sleeve and settled into a stupor, staring out the window at the parking lot across the street where a steady stream of cars filed into the hospital lot and circled, looking for a spot.

  “We need to search your dad’s house again. We may have missed something,” I said, breaking into the silence. She didn’t react. I waited for a few moments, then, “Problem?”

  She shook her head. “But, why bother? He’s dead. We’re not going to bring him back. It’s like we’re stirring up his spirit. Maybe we should just let him rest and be done with it,” she said, looking back into the direction of the morgue.

  I didn’t blame her. She was right. The problem was Jack was murdered. No way to let that go.

  “Jack was trying to help you, Cynthia,” I said. “I think we owe him.”

  She nodded, reluctantly. “Yeah. Maybe so.” After a few minutes tiptoed by silently, she spoke. “And those pictures—they’re bugging me. Why and where?” she added. Just like a reporter.

  “There’s an important story here—one that Jack was working on. Think of it as part of his legacy,” I said.