by A. R. Case
Books by A.R. Case
DeSantos trilogy:
Dead in the Water
Hope to Lie
Book 3 scheduled for 2020
Destroyers Series:
Down in Blood
Dreams in the Dark
Book 3 releasing in 2020
Available in Kindle e-book and print on Amazon.
DeSantos Trilogy – Book 1
A.R. Case
Dead in the Water
Published by A.R. Case
Copyright 2017 by A.R. Case
ISBN (paperback) 978-1977097392
ASIN (e-book) B079L4VTWZ
This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, events or places are coincidental.
Third printing edition 2019.
Dead in the
Water
Contents
Chapter one1
Chapter two11
Chapter three17
Chapter four27
Chapter five37
Chapter six47
Chapter seven53
Chapter eight61
Chapter nine71
Chapter ten81
Chapter eleven89
Chapter twelve97
Chapter thirteen105
Chapter fourteen111
Chapter fifteen121
Chapter sixteen129
Chapter seventeen139
Chapter eighteen147
Chapter nineteen155
Chapter twenty163
Chapter twenty-one171
Acknowledgements
This book was originally conceived during the 2013 National Novel Writing Month. If you are an author, want to be an author, or just curious, check it out: www.nanowrimo.org.
Before all of that however, there was my family. My two AMAZING girls who grew up amidst the insanity of a very part-time writer/full-time working mom. They embraced book night where we’d hang out at the local book store. They’d play games, I’d research.
In dedication, there’s two folks who must be named: My mother, who never got to read any of my books but gave me the start I needed to get to this point. My dad who taught me the value of working with my hands and learning new things. He showed me I could learn anything, and be anything.
Rounding out the list of family are my brother and my sister, who as the older siblings put up with me tagging along. (and they didn’t lose me either!) My sister’s loan of The Hobbit started this mess.
Next I’d like to say a HUGE THANK YOU to Brent - my first editor, first beta reader, and a VERY smart guy. He had to step outside the world of sci-fi and comics for this one, and I’m so grateful. Remember when Ms. Flores asked us to diagram sentences? At least YOU paid attention.
No novel would be written if it weren’t for the quiet corners of coffee shops, restaurants, and work lunch rooms. I vowed long ago, when eating lunch at Schlotsky’s deli that I’d say thank you to the ladies and gents behind the counter. You fuel creativity.
Because this book was written in 2013 and things have changed so quickly, the technology already seems antiquated. Apologies. Also any similarities in location, names, places, etc. is strictly coincidental and the contents of this book is from the writer’s imagination - aka fiction. All errors in police process, or bikes, or other stuff, are mine.
Chapter one
Jonathan Bauer, Jr., was in trouble. Not the standard, you stayed out too late and now Mom is mad teen trouble, but the run for your life because those four gangbangers behind you have a real grudge against you kind of trouble. Things were going to get bad, painful bad, real soon if Jonathan didn’t figure out how to ditch them. With that in mind, it really was a matter of life and death when he dipped through the gap under the twelve-foot protective fence that skirted the western edge of the Ventnor wetlands and fled down one of the game trails. The trail quickly got lost among the wash gullies and sea grass-clogged tide pools. Scraggly trees and lots of prickly bushes blocked him. They grabbed his clothes and poked through the heavy canvas of his sneakers.
At least the terrain covered his escape.
The pack had picked him up back on Victoria Street just before Wellington. By the time Jonathan had gotten to the Plaza strip mall on the corner, they were cat-calling him like jackals. Their red shirts ID’d them. Jonathan knew they weren’t wannabe rappers like some of the kids in school or the kind who’d leave you alone if you minded your own business. These were hardcore gang members, who’d been pushing hard against all the other gangs, and anyone else in their path. For Jonathan, this meant waiting twenty minutes for a bus to arrive was not an option. So he snuck into the drugstore on the corner hoping for safety in public.
The four just split into predatory pairs, one set at the checkout, giving the evil eye to the pitiful clerk who didn’t want to be robbed. The other set tracked him through the shallow cliffs of products. They were carefully arranged so the majority of the store would be visible, which made Jonathan visible too. He managed to hug tight to a family who’d just checked out in order to make it past the pair at the front. Unfortunately, that put him in the precarious position of being stuck outside when Radio Shack turned its sign to closed.
The gym wasn’t shelter either as the door was locked despite having lights on. He’d given it a tug as he ran past. The furniture store on the end had shut down months ago and the real estate office was dark. He poured on speed, cut through the overgrowth at the corner of the parking lot and baseball slid under the fence. His friend, Scott, had shown him that trick.
Now, in the wetlands, he picked his way slowly, keeping low on the harder, more dangerous paths to discourage pursuit. If he got lucky, he’d lose them now and not pick them back up again when he surfaced where Wellington abruptly turned into West End Avenue.
West End was the only land bridge across where swamp turned into backwaters on the east side and an inlet on the west. The main stream and its meandering branches got deep there. Fishermen and recreational boats used it on a regular basis.
If he wasn’t lucky, he’d be trapped on a loose gravel ridge. Forced to backtrack, he’d be exposed with no cover and they’d see him.
He had to be careful. In sections like the one he was in, there was nothing but power lines, skittish marine wildlife, and danger. Steep drop-offs eroded into non-negotiable stagnant water. These islands of muck floated on top of shifting layers of clay and ocean sand that gave way at random times, sucking everything on top down to a murky end.
On the other side of the wetlands, there was a triangle of civilization he and his mom called home. There he had options. He could continue on West End Avenue to the Vagabond Bar and Grill. The Vagabond was hopping most nights. Or he could cut across the lot by Bugby’s and run down to Annapolis. There was a church there where people would actually help someone. He could wait there until just after nine, and still beat Mom home. If he made it out of the swamp without detection, he decided to do that.
For the thousandth time, he got pissed his mom didn’t think it was necessary to have a cell phone. Nobody had land lines anymore, except his mom and her cheapskate cousin who shared her house with them. With one, he could have called a classmate who’d gotten their license already to pick him up. Or he could have hung with Steve, calling Mom to let her know that Steve’s dad would drop them off after the game finished. Of course, that would be after his Thursday curfew, but only by a half hour, so no big. Since he didn�
��t have a phone, none of that was going to happen, and life sucked.
He listened for sounds of pursuit. Nothing stood out as far as he could tell, so he breathed a sigh of relief. They’d given up the chase. Now he just had to get under the edge of the fence at the end of the drainage ditch between the sign shop and the shipping company. He’d come out on West End by the culvert. From there he could walk back to Ventnor Plaza to catch a bus. Or he could poke along the highway edge where it cut through the swamp and dipped off to the inlet bay on the other side. It was almost dark, so he’d not be noticeable except to passing cars and trucks. It was only a half mile or less at that point and just over three-quarters to home. That sure sounded better than going back on the hope that the gangbangers had left the Plaza.
The power lines had an access road. That sped things up a bit, but Jonathan kept low on the far slope so no one would see him. He had to find the low ridge that cut back to the west border. Otherwise he would be swimming his way home. The gravel gave way in several spots, threatening to dump him into the reeds below.
It wasn’t this bad last year when he and Steve cut across to visit each other. Then the hurricane hit and everything was covered in water for weeks. When things finally dried out, nothing was the same. They’d given up using the shortcuts after that. This was the first time since November that Jonathan had been back here and nothing was the same. He was relying on Steve’s warnings about what was wet and solid, wet and sucky, and how to detect the stuff that looked dry but was a fake dry with hollow underneath. It was challenging trying to tell the difference in the low light. What worried him most was trying to tell the difference between the lighter-colored dry stuff that looked like the dry hollow stuff, but was solid, and the hollow stuff. It was too easy to get fooled. There just wasn’t enough light left to really get a good look.
The road dead-ended ahead. It used to curve toward the road, but a big gulch was now cut into the swamp. This cut the last remnants of the road off from the rest. The bottom looked like a short creek terminated into a tide pool rather than swampland, so he slid down to cross a little closer to the slope which topped in the chain link fence of the sign company. He made it across the gulch without getting too wet and was scrambling diagonally up the ridge. You never went straight up. Doing that was too difficult and much too easy to knock something loose that would come down on top of you. The top was a mere couple of feet away when the ridge of gravel gave way, sliding Jonathan down about six feet. He managed to stay out of the tide pool below, but just barely.
Loose gravel kept falling below him, sliding into the pool and disappearing. That meant it was deep, not shallow like most of them. Probably a sinkhole or at least part of a hollow that dropped out. Above him finer dust and gravel trickled onto his hair and into his face. It blinded him because he couldn’t keep his eyes shut and watch his footing, and couldn’t keep them open without dust and small rocks getting trapped in his eyelashes despite his frantic blinking to keep them from getting overloaded. There was no question about burning a precious handhold to clear his face so he just kept his head down and blinked and blinked some more to keep his eyes from watering and stuff from sticking.
When the dust settled, literally, he spit the dirt out of his mouth and stayed very still so he wouldn’t knock anything else loose. He’d rather not find out how deep the water was, or if the shelf he was on was hollow underneath. It was a full minute before he even tried to move. First it was his right hand, moving a fraction up and to the right. Then he did a slow shift of his weight to his right foot, then moved his left, then the left hand, and then the right foot. It was slow going. More often than not, he had to freeze to halt the tiny rock slides he triggered.
There was a point about a dozen feet away where the ridge was lower and looked solid because it was covered in sea grass and scrub that forced its way through the gravel. He targeted that because the grass was still green, indicating water coming from underneath, not a dead dry hollow where the tide pushed up then retreated.
It took a good ten minutes or more before he got to his hands and knees on the slope and began breathing without holding his breath between shallow inhales. The tremors hit him starting in his thighs and quickly traveled down to his calves and feet then took over his shoulders and arms. Jonathan collapsed to his stomach again, and by this point, hating the taste and smell of dirt and gravel, he rolled to his back to ride it out.
This was worse than the Dragster in Sandusky. His dad talked him into riding it when he was barely over the height restriction. Somewhere deep down, he knew the difference between a safely restrained free-fall for four hundred feet versus a no rope, no hope, drop of ten or maybe more into black water where no one would hear him yell for help. One was a thrill, with belts and padded harnesses and backup safety systems, the other was flirting with death. His body knew this. The shakes were normal, but they still sucked.
The sky was starting to turn purple and dark blue. The sun must be setting behind his head. Jonathan stretched his head back in the dirt and looked. Sure enough, the western sky was pink and orange, but no yellow or the brighter gold that indicated the sun was still up. Of course he was still under the edge of the hill which meant he couldn’t see the actual sunset, but it would be dark soon. In September the darkness fell really fast.
The cold seeped in through his coat reminding him he needed to move. He needed to suck it up and be a man. He nodded, psyching himself into action. He rolled to his left and repeated pushing to his hands and knees before attempting to stand up. His thighs still shook a little. Since his position was solid, he figured he’d live.
Something glinted by his right foot. He grabbed it. It was the chrome coated business end of one of those novelty flash drives that fit in a key fob. It was wet with seawater and crusted with salt and sand. He stuck it in his pocket. A little ethanol and a bag of rice should fix it. Maybe there was something cool on it.
He’d just straightened again when he looked back down the slope and saw something else at the water edge. At first he didn’t understand what he was looking at. The colors were all wrong, being pasty white and purple-black which didn’t register. What looked like a cluster of two round buoys bobbed closer to shore, but whatever covered them looked like underwear. That’s when the complete picture flashed through Jonathan’s mind. What he was looking at was a dead man, stripped to his underwear, and his head hung somewhere below the surface of the stagnant tide water. One limb bobbed in the seaweed. Around the wrist a metal chain glinted in the dark water, giving Jonathan a clue that he was looking at a hand. At least it looked like a hand but it was freshly missing a couple of fingers.
Jonathan scrambled up the remaining slope and threw up.
The body was fish white in some places and purple black in others. Luckily Jonathan couldn’t see the head, he was sure the face would be gross and zombie-peeling-off like in the movies. That triggered more dry heaves. Only the formerly white tighty whiteys stood out amidst the darkening mud, sand, and murky water.
He spit on the ground one last time and scrambled through the thorny scrub to the fence line. It didn’t matter if the ground was solid or not, he just wanted to be on the other side as soon as possible. He ducked under the first gap he found and popped up on the other side in the middle of the sign company’s backlot. There were large trucks with cranes and buckets attached, parked semi trailers, scrapped metal, and old billboards piled on edge against a row of dumpsters.
A dog was barking crazily. Jonathan froze. Luckily it came with a guard attached so Jonathan wasn’t eaten. He had only been standing there a moment before the guard’s flashlight blinded him.
“Who’s there?” The guard yelled. The flashlight bounced in the darkness once before locking on Jonathan. “What are you doing here?”
Jonathan fell to his knees trying to keep from puking again. He couldn’t stop his body from shaking.
“Da-don’t shoot.” He
tried and failed to get his hands up on his head and just knelt there. His hands and knees stayed planted while he tried very hard not to think about anything and everything.
“You okay?” The guard moved a step closer which set the dog off again. “Quiet, Fritz!” He shook the leash. The dog stopped barking, but continued voicing his displeasure with a low, rumbling growl that didn’t end.
“Stay there for a sec, gonna tie Cujo here up, don’t move, ‘right?” He finished. Then stepped over to the dumpster and hooked the leash around a pipe. He kept his flashlight trained on Jonathan as much as he could, but it didn’t matter. Jonathan wasn’t going anywhere.
He lost track of the guard for a moment because when he spoke next to Jonathan’s head, it caused him to nearly jump out of his skin.
“Jesus!” Jonathan scrambled away and fell on his ass. “You scared the shit outta me.”
“Well, considering you’re the one who shouldn’t be in here, I’d say the same. How’d you get in?” From the guard’s tone, he was losing patience.
“Through the fence over there.” Jonathan pointed.
The guard frowned. “Trespassing.” He pulled his radio off his belt, and put it to his face.
“Wait, I didn’t mean to. There’s a body…” He pointed again, back toward the swamp and the fence. “I got scared and…”
The guard stopped moving. “A body?”
“In the water, down there.” He gagged again and whispered. “Fuck fuck fuck.”
“Hang on, okay. I’m going to place a call... or two.” He switched out the radio for a cell phone. Right after he left a message for someone named Tony, he called the police.
“Right.” Jonathan sat on his ass and looked around. He was royally screwed. Mom was going to kill him. Right after the cops booked him for trespassing on the nature reserve and this guy got done pressing charges for breaking into the sign company lot. Yup, screwed.
“Come on, we’ll wait inside.” The guard motioned toward the building. The back door and surrounding alcove was lit by an exterior flood light.