by Tom Lowe
After more than a half-hour, after answering dozens of questions, when they were satisfied, the subject finally changed, the detective asking me about my background with Miami-Dade PD. “I guess you saw a lot of shit cases like this down there, pedophiles always on the hunt.”
“I saw too many. But it’s not unique to the big city. This is DeLand. It can and does happen everywhere, unfortunately.”
“Yeah, it does.”
He gave me his card. I read it. “Detective Jason Lawson. Do you know Dan Grant?”
“Matter of fact, he’s my partner. How do you know him?”
“Our paths have crossed on a couple of cases. He’s a good cop.”
“That he is. Dan’s up to his eyes investigating a weird damn case of a young woman found dead in, of all things, a mermaid costume.”
“I saw that on the news. I wish him luck. Is it okay to go now? Need anything else?”
“Not now. You’ll have to testify in court. Send that freak back to Raiford for life this time.”
“No problem. When you see Grant, tell him Sean O’Brien sends his regards.”
The detective squinted in the late afternoon sunlight, nodding. “Yeah, I’ll do that. Take care, O’Brien.”
TWELVE
I was driving back to my river cabin when I received a call that would prove to dramatically alter my life. It came from a number I’ve had stored in my succession of phones since I worked with Detective Ron Hamilton in the Miami-Dade Homicide Bureau. I answered, and he asked, “Hey, Sean … it’s Ron. How’s Wynona … how’s her health, emotional and physical?”
“Getting better all the time. She’s a remarkable woman. Thanks for asking.”
“She is a remarkable woman. I remember Sherri well, too, and I’ve had the chance to get to know Wynona. You’ve been lucky twice. Don’t blow it.”
“I don’t plan to. I’m taking Wynona on a sailing trip, down to St. Lucia.”
“When are you leaving?”
“In a couple of weeks.”
“It’s a good thing, and not just because it’ll be therapy.”
I knew Ron’s voice. Knew how he would often try to downplay something that was perhaps more ominous than he wanted it to seem. He didn’t like alarming people if the source of that alarm wasn’t real and imminent. He’d seen too many times when people, many for good reasons, thought the sky was going to fall and, yet, it turned into false alarms, time after time. “Ron, what’s on your mind?”
“You never know if these things are accurate or not. Jailhouse snitches are often looking for a deal. Some outright lie just to draw attention to themselves, usually wanting the get-out-of-jail card. That said, we did get word that the guy you helped bust, Timothy Spencer, with all his dough … has taken or is looking to take a contract out on you. Word on the street is that Spencer is trying to hire a hitman to pay you a visit.”
“I’m not too surprised.”
“So, whether it’s accurate or not, that sailing trip could give you a way to avoid something that may or may not happen, while giving us time to plant a wire, use the snitch and, hopefully, catch Spencer in the act of solicitation of murder. Then we’ll prosecute and tack more years on Spencer’s sentence if this stuff turns out to be the real deal.”
I said nothing, getting closer to my river cabin, the clouds in the western sky pomegranate pink, daylight lingering in the air as though it didn’t want to go.
“Sean, are you there?”
“Yeah, I’m here. This isn’t the first time I’ve had death threats, people trying to hire assassins to hunt me down. You know that.”
“But this is the first time you had someone estimated to be worth half a billion offering big money to people who can find the best of the best, or in reality … the worst of the worst.”
“Although this isn’t the first time, it is the first time I’ve had Wynona beside me, a woman I care deeply about, to be a potential target just because we live together. How valid is this threat? Do you know if Spencer has actually commissioned someone, or is the informant looking to cut a deal to find something on Spencer, assuming there’s something to find?”
“Spencer is in the general population of inmates inside Florida State Prison. The snitch is a lowlife named Frankie Costa … AKA on the streets as Owl. He’s said to have big, round eyes, long eyelashes, and he barely blinks. Costa is a habitual offender, long rap sheet. His latest stay at hotel Raiford is a ten year stretch for extortion and money laundering. He’s saying he overheard Spencer asking some of the more well-connected inmates about hiring a hitman, looking for a broker to pull the deal together. Costa, not the most upstanding fella in terms of honesty, is willing to do a deal with the FBI and state attorney’s office. He’ll wear a wire and testify to walk for time served.”
“How long has he been in there?”
“Five of the ten years.”
“But we don’t know if Spencer has already found a broker and hired an assassin.”
“No, we don’t. That’s another reason your sailing trip would be a good idea.”
“Ron, you know if there’s a standing contract with serious money, it’s just a matter of time before a pro in Miami, New York, Jersey or anywhere in between, will take the job.”
“I’m sorry to have to give you bad news. Are you going to tell Wynona?”
“The timing couldn’t be worse. She has a lot on her mind … her health. Her future … what she wants to do. I’d love for her to be able to focus only on that. If Spencer manages to commission a hitman, I’ll have to deal with it and do whatever I can to keep Wynona safe.”
THIRTEEN
I’ve always taken risks. Calculated risks. In the military, working in law enforcement, it was often part of the job. I had the scars to validate how close those risks had taken me to death. And now, I was taking a risk with my heart. Scars can’t be seen there, but the biggest risk comes from the heart because the pain of loss is the absolute worst when it comes from your core—your soul. My love and concern for Wynona’s health and safety was now guiding every decision that I made.
As long as Detective Ron Hamilton, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the FBI, and state prosecutors were laying a trap for Timothy Spencer, I felt better. Spencer was serving a twenty-year prison sentence. And I was the one who put him there. But as long as he was in prison, I knew his real chance to contact, hire, and actually give a hitman a deposit, was minimal. I thought about that as I drove Wynona and Max in my Jeep to Ponce Marina.
As far as the Amber Alert was concerned, I’d told Wynona everything that had happened from the moment I saw the alert on my phone to the last questions the chief deputy and the detective had asked me. Wynona and I discussed it at length. And now we were more than ready for time alone with each other and time away. I chose not to tell her about Detective Ron Hamilton’s call and possible threat against my life. At some point, I knew I might have to so she could play a role in her own self-protection. However, the majority of the time the threats you hear about are never carried out. It’s the ones you don’t hear about that are like a poisonous snake coiled in a dark corner of your home. Regardless, I’d wait a bit to see if something concrete surfaced about the rumor.
If liquid therapy existed, and I believe it did, I thought it could be found for Wynona aboard Dragonfly. The sailboat was almost forty-two feet long, and I kept it moored at Ponce Marina on Florida’s east coast. As we pulled my Jeep into the marina parking lot, Max in Wynona’s lap, I was thinking about what we’d need to do before setting sail on Dragonfly. I’d make a list of provisions—food and water, along with a to-do list before we hoisted sails and set out for the Caribbean.
I parked in the shade of a gumbo limbo tree and canary palms at one edge of the gravel lot and shut off the motor. “Well, aren’t you excited,” Wynona said as Max stood on her hind legs in Wynona’s lap, tail a blur, poking her head out the open window, wet nostrils sniffing the scents from the Tiki Bar. Wynona smiled. “Max definitely kn
ows where she is now.”
I laughed. “She has her own form of GPS. One whiff of blackened grouper, and she knows we’re at the marina. I believe Max’s idea of doggie heaven would be to hang out at the Tiki Bar all day chowing down on shrimp poppers and hushpuppies. Be careful when you open your door because she makes a mad dash toward the back entrance to the Tiki Bar. I always have to make sure there are no cars moving in the lot.”
“Well, it appears to be all clear.” Wynona opened the Jeep door, shifting her purse strap across one shoulder, holding Max in her arms. “I’ll get my suitcase.”
“I’ll get it for you. If you can be Max’s escort, she doesn’t like the title of dog wrangler, I can grab our suitcases.”
Wynona nodded and smiled. Max grinned. “Beyond stocking Dragonfly, what do we need to do before setting sail?”
“She’ll need an oil change. Also, I want to have a diesel mechanic tune up the engine. It’s been two hundred hours since the last tune up. I’d much rather have it done here than to find someone down in the islands.” I picked up the luggage and locked the Jeep.
We walked toward the rustic bar adjacent to the marina, Max uttering a slight whine. Wynona stopped, looking around. “The coast is still clear. Okay, Maxine. I’ll let you use your own little legs. Just don’t run so hard you go right through the screen on the door.” Wynona set Max down, and we watched as she bolted toward the back entrance, following the rich smells of blackened fish and garlic shrimp on a hot grill.
The Tiki Bar was a rustic hybrid—part restaurant and a full-time bar. It was perched on large pilings the size of utility poles and sat about eight feet above the high-water line in the marina. The roof was made from dried palm fronds—a favorite roost for pelicans when the sun set over the marina and turned the sky fiery red and orange. The Tiki Bar’s exterior was built with aged timber—railroad crossties, driftwood, and planks from a barn that spent ninety years in the Georgia sun between fields of cotton and peanuts.
Today, the plastic isinglass on two sides of the restaurant was rolled up, allowing the breeze to visit, carrying the smell of garlic shrimp across the marina. Max paused at the screened door and looked back over her shoulder at us. If a dog’s eyes had the look of “hurry up,” it was hers. Wynona laughed and adjusted the purse strap on her shoulder. She looked at me as we approached the backdoor and said, “I’m glad they don’t mind dogs in the restaurant.”
“Restaurant is a generous term, although the food is good. Regardless, Max never considers herself a dog any more than Garfield ever thought he was a cat.”
“I can see that. Little Max, with her playful personality, is more of a raconteur, able to tell stories through the expressions on her face.”
“Maybe the word, emotions, is even a better way to describe it.” I opened the door and Max scurried inside, the tune of David Gray singing Sail Away, coming from the vintage Wurlitzer jukebox in one corner. I estimated there were at least two dozen customers sitting at round tables. The tables were originally large wooden spools the utility companies used to store wire. In their new life, the spools were shellacked, turned vertical and scattered around the restaurant. Three people at the bar. Most of the customers were tourists. Some nursing sunburns, and many were sipping beer, wine, or tropical drinks.
We walked across the stained wood floor, following Max toward the bar where Flo, the owner, was pouring a draft beer for a customer, a sixty-five-inch TV behind the bar, a used car commercial on the screen.
Flo, in her early fifties, salt and pepper hair pinned up, smiled with her brown eyes. “Hey Miss Max. We haven’t seen you here in a while.” Flo set the beer in front of a deck hand sitting at one of a dozen barstools and looked up at me. “Good to see you, Sean. And it’s good to see you, too, Wynona. It’s been awhile.”
Wynona smiled. “I had breakfast in here a few months ago, but I believe you were out running errands. The breakfast was excellent.”
“That’s always good to hear. It’s hard to mess up breakfast. Can’t say the same for lunch and dinner because the biggest mistake some folks make is a tendency to want their fish, or their meat, well done. We sell a lot of fish, and it has to be done right. Overcooked fresh fish takes the freshness and flakiness right out of it. And, if you overcook meat, it’s as dry as can be. Medium is always best, but medium well … that’s as far as one should go.”
“I’ll remember that.”
Movement to the right caught my eye. I looked through the bar, the open breezeway, and the raised isinglass to an unobstructed view of the marina. There were dozens of sailboat masts against the cloudless, blue sky. I recognized both people approaching. One was Rex Nelson, his daughter walking beside him. In less than five seconds, they entered the Tiki Bar. Savannah saw me first, flashing a wide smile.
Her father didn’t smile. I knew that he was about to tell us why.
FOURTEEN
Detective Dan Grant returned to the morgue, removing his dark glasses as he closed the door behind him. The medical examiner, Doctor Baird, looked up from the autopsy. “Almost finished, Detective. Allison has a photo of the girl’s face for you to show the parents for identification.”
The assistant removed her gloves, walked over to the desk, picked up a file folder and handed it to Grant. “Here you go,” she said. “When is the family coming?”
Grant looked at his watch. “Sometime within the hour.”
The assistant walked back to the autopsy table, putting on her gloves.
Grant glanced at the photo and looked up at Baird. “Anything you can tell me so far as in the cause of death?”
He grunted, lifting the mask from his face. “She appears to have been raped, or at least sex was involved. I’m not sure if it was before death or after it.”
Grant said nothing, looking at the body on the table, the girl’s head elevated on a rubber block. After a moment he said, “Really? The more I think I have a handle on the crazies, the more I realize I’ve just scratched the surface. So, what killed her?”
Baird pursed his lips. “She drowned. We found water in her lungs. And it’s not saltwater.”
Grant glanced down at the body, and then looked directly at the medical examiner. “Well, that says a lot. She didn’t drown on the beach.”
“Indeed. I can tell you how she died, but I can’t tell you if it was accidental or intentional. There are bruises on the back, between the shoulder blades. Looks to be from a handprint. We took photographs of it. Blood lividity after death helped bring the marks to the skin’s surface. Was she forcefully held under water? Most likely, the answer is yes.”
“You mentioned looking at something under a microscope. What was it?”
Baird glanced at his assistant. “Allison found two tiny bits of rubber in the vaginal area. Green in coloration.” He gestured to a large microscope on a nearby table. “The material is still on the slide. But you can see it with the naked eye. Little bits of rubber … looks like polyurethane. You said the body was found with a mermaid tail attached to it, right?”
“Yes.”
“No doubt your department and the crime lab will do a thorough forensics investigation of that tail. When you first found the body, did you happen to notice a possible opening in the mermaid tail, perhaps in the area of the hips or groin?”
“The tail was layered in what looked like fish scales. Some appeared to have been missing, and in an area between the thighs, yes.”
Baird nodded and cleared his throat. “I know this will sound weird, but a lot of insane stuff happens in the sadistic world of violent homicide. The killer may have tried or possibly had sex through the rubber mermaid costume, meaning there would have been some sort of an opening.”
Grant reached in the pocket of his sports coat, lifting out the plastic bag with the piece of rubber resembling a fish scale. He stepped closer to the table and held it near the overhead lights so the ME and the assistant could get a better look. “Is this the color of the bits of rubber you found?”
<
br /> The woman nodded. “Yes, it appears to match. Forensics, of course, can tell us exactly.”
Baird removed the clear mask from his head. He looked at Grant. “We know she was alive when she entered the water. I imagine it might be a challenge to swim with a mermaid tail strapped on your legs and torso. Did someone try to turn this poor kid into a mermaid and the attempt went too far, or did he toss her into the deep and say swim?”
Grant took a deep breath, the odor of chemicals—formalin and death in the cold air. “What do you estimate as the time of the girl’s death?”
Baird crossed his arms, glanced back at the body and then at Grant. “Based on what we have to go on, I’d estimate she died at least eight hours before the body was first discovered on the beach.”
Grant said nothing.
Baird nodded. “What does that tell you, Detective?”
“That, Doctor Baird, tells me the girl on your table was murdered and then taken to the beach where she was left in a morbid display.”
FIFTEEN
We sat at a table in one corner of the Tiki Bar with a view of the marina. Rex Nelson and his daughter, Savannah, joined Wynona and me for coffee, Max sitting on the floor between us. Rex was a tall, wiry man in his early fifties, face and arms tanned, leathery from years in the sun working as a fishing guide. He looked at me. “It’s a helluva sad situation, Sean. That poor girl Savannah found on the beach. I can’t put it all into words.”
I nodded. “Wynona and I saw some of the news reports. It’s tragic. We feel deep sorrow for the girl and her family.”
Wynona looked across the table to Savannah and asked, “Did you know her?”
“No. I’d never seen her before. And now I can’t stop seeing her face. It’s been hard to sleep. I wake up at night hearing the crash of waves and a voice I can’t make out because it’s never louder than the sound you hear when you hold a seashell to your ear.”
Rex sipped a cup of coffee and then said, “We don’t know if the girl somehow drowned in the ocean or if some crazy person killed her there. We’re hoping they get the results back from the autopsy soon.” He shook his head. “We heard movie producers are casting for people to be in that movie, Atlantis, lookin’ for girls to play mermaids and whatnot. I wonder if the girl that Savannah found was doing some kind of practice or rehearsals to get a part or to keep it, if she’d already been cast in a role.”
