Backwater Cove

by Steven Becker

  “Yeah,” she said, turning away from the glass partition.

  I followed her down the hall and upstairs. We left the building and went to our separate vehicles. Driving back to her apartment, I considered the bombshell that she’d just dropped and how it affected me—or if I should even be factored in her decision. I decided that it was not my place to influence her and vowed to only offer support. I did allow a caveat that I could cross my fingers when we spoke about it.

  We drove back to her apartment. I thanked the gods for the wine that she offered and cursed myself for not buying any. Our moods soon returned to normal and we both fell into bed together. It was just before three and I knew I should close my eyes and go to sleep, but when Justine slid up next to me, that was the furthest thing from my mind.

  * * *

  Even with her blackout blinds, there was no need for an alarm when I stayed here. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought that Martinez had a sixth sense, though it had nothing to do with ESP— it was technology. He knew how to do three things with his computer prowess: track me, update his spreadsheets, and make it appear the he was a busy man through CCs and BCCs on his email. I felt Justine kick off the covers next to me and I reluctantly answered.

  “Can’t get enough of Miami, Hunter?”

  I knew he was baiting me. “Got a lead on the Stiltsville case.”

  “I saw your buddy Grace Herrera locked up one of those recruits last night. Looks like it’s back to patrol for you.”

  I knew where he was going. If there was to be no glory for him, there was no case for me. “I think they’ve got the wrong guy.”

  “Oh, and you know better?”

  This was turning into a pissing match I didn’t want to get into. I needed a closer, something that would look good for the park service as well as work toward his personal agenda. “I’ve got some forensic evidence and a theory that Dequan was set up.” My theory was a little half-baked but had percolated overnight. It might not pan out, but if I could match the diamond found at the club, I could keep the case open. His silence was my permission to continue. “If we keep this investigation open, Miami-Dade loses face and Stiltsville remains closed as a crime scene.”

  “Make it happen,” he said and disconnected.

  I knew his response was a temporary reprieve—probably just for today. And standing in front of me was my first decision. I realized there must be something wrong with me when Justine came out of the bathroom and moved toward the bed, and I considered getting up. Fortunately, I came to my senses.

  After showering together, I went to my drawer and pulled out shorts and a dress T-shirt. I smiled when I looked at my stuff. I quickly stuffed the newly granted space with a clean uniform, a few pairs of shorts, and a couple of T-shirts. Granting her the same space at my house was easier and she had half the dresser.

  It was a half-hour later when we were having coffee, that I asked her to come with me. If I was on a short leash, having the world’s best forensic tech tagging along would hardly hurt; and I needed her on my arm where we were going.

  “Look at you in your civvies,” she said.

  “Got plans?”

  “Nope. I’ve been training pretty hard. Could use a day off. Whatcha got in mind?”

  “Recruits are doing an open combine type day out at the U. Any interest?”

  “Back to the old alma mater. Sure, as long as you don’t break out that stupid chain.”

  I wasn’t going to make that promise. “Let’s get some breakfast and head out.”

  We took Justine’s car. If I was going in plain clothes, I didn’t want the park service truck to give me away. I was also hoping the switch was going to send Martinez for his antacids. Justine, knowing the area a lot better than I did, drove.

  We passed through Coconut Grove and entered Coral Gables. The practice facilities were on the south end of campus off South Dixie Highway by Red Road. The parking lot was about half full and several news vans were near the entrance. We parked near the back and walked hand in hand toward the gates. When we entered the practice field, I was in for a surprise.

  I’d had a mediocre high school football career in a small town in Northern California where other things were more important. But from Texas down through Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida, football was everything. The recruits had been issued Hurricane practice gear and were working their way through the same drills run on every field in America. I knew them well enough to jump in if I had to. What I immediately noticed was the level that these kids were on. They were bigger, faster, and better than anything I had ever seen at this age. The arrogance and cockiness, with the exception of a couple of players, Billie being one, was gone; there was work going on here.

  We strolled in front of the low bleachers as if we belonged and I studied the crowd. I found what I was looking for near the fifty-yard line. Dressed in full Cane’s swag, Alex had attached himself to two other coaches like a remora sucking up to a shark. He was deep in conversation, pointing to one of the players running pass patterns with a small group of receivers. I recognized the one he was pointing at from the docks the other night.

  “That’s Billie Smith-Jensen. One of the guys he’s recruiting.”

  There were no tickets or restrictions for the practice. It was coaches and players only on the field, but the sidelines looked like open territory. I led Justine close enough to where Alex was holding court to see and hear what was going on, but at the same time, tried to stay obscured by the bleachers. I happened to look back and saw Donna in the stands, sitting with several women who looked like the recruits’ mothers. Our eyes caught and held for just a second too long—she had remembered me. I glanced back, trying not to stare, but she was looking right at me holding her phone to her ear.

  From where we stood, Alex was only about five yards away and I could hear his phone ring. Donna was clearly warning him and I had to decide whether we should stand our ground or head out before he saw me. I felt Justine squeeze my hand, sensing something was up.

  “Dequan would have caught that no problem. This legal crap is temporary,” Alex told the coach before pulling the phone from his pocket. “I can assure you of that.”

  20

  We ducked deeper into the framework of the bleachers using the slatted aluminum seats to cover our exit. I didn’t expect any trouble, but neither did I want Alex to see us. Though Donna would confirm I was there, he was so focused on the field, I doubted that he’d remember unless he saw me with his own eyes.

  We made our way back to Justine’s car and left the facility. “We need to call Grace and let her know Dequan was set up. Alex is trying to use the arrest and his sway here to limit his options. The other schools won’t touch him with this hanging over his head.”

  “You better refine your theory first. Once he’s released, it’ll be on the news and the real killer will get a heads-up.”

  I knew she was right, but the thought of a high school kid sitting in jail, thinking his dreams had ended before they began, turned my stomach. “Let’s go find the real killer then.”

  “Okay . . . “

  My watch said it was just before noon and there would be a few hours of school left. “Can we go by your office?” I had an idea of how to confirm the dockmaster was our man.

  “I’m off today and that new lab is creeping me out. What do you need?”

  “Just a computer monitor that we can use to blow up a few pictures.”

  “We’re just as close to your headquarters.”

  The second-hand monitor passed down to me sitting on the desk in my office wasn’t big enough, but I knew where the perfect one was. There was just one problem. I picked up the phone and pressed the button for the reception desk at headquarters. Mariposa answered.

  “Hey, Kurt. Boss is looking for you, but I guess that’s nothing new. Without Susan around, he’s a bigger pain. I guess she did serve a purpose after all.”

  If that were all she did, I’d come babys
it him. “He around?”

  “He’s upstairs. I can hear him pacing.”

  She couldn’t, but I got the message. “We’ll be there in about twenty minutes.”

  “We?”

  “I’ve got Justine with me.” Justine waved from the driver seat. I declined to pass along the gesture and disconnected. For the next twenty minutes, Justine drove while I formulated my plan and decided what I’d tell my boss. The answer was—as little as possible.

  We had just reached the headquarters building and were walking toward the entrance when a gust of wind came across the water from the north, taking me by surprise. On a typical day, the first thing I did after getting out of bed was to check the weather. My job depended on learning to read between the lines of the forecast, something I had refined working out west. There, the problem was snow. The last thing you wanted was to be caught out on a foot patrol with a storm blowing in. They called it Sierra Cement and the heavy, moisture-laden snow brought in from the Pacific accumulated fast. Thunderstorms and squalls were the problem here and could come out of nowhere with little warning. I looked over the water at the hazy skyline of Miami where the wind was blowing and wondered if it were an omen. Dark clouds were gathering on the horizon and the first white caps had started to form on the bay. The weather gods were about to go to war.

  “Looks bad,” Justine said.

  As a paddler, she knew how to read weather and water as well as I did. It was one thing to be caught in a twenty-foot boat, another on a paddleboard. At less than thirty inches wide and twelve and a half feet long, the dimensions were similar in scale to a toothpick. “Yeah,” I responded and held the door for her. Mariposa came out from behind her fortress and gave her a big hug, which was returned enthusiastically. They’d only met once, but there was a connection there—probably at my expense. Mariposa motioned me upstairs with her eyes, dismissing me.

  I had my phone in hand, ready to make this as short as possible and entered Martinez’s office without the standard wait while he finished his latest urgent phone call.

  “Decided to come to work Hunter?” he asked.

  I sat across from him and looked at the empty seat usually reserved for Susan McLeash. I almost asked if she was guiding a tour this afternoon, worried that she didn’t have the sense to check the weather. Instead of asking Martinez, I decided to check with Mariposa on the way out. It wasn’t her safety I was concerned with, but her tour group. My boss stared at me across his empty desk. Handing him the phone, I asked him to pull up the images from the dock party.

  “Got all that,” he said, leaving the phone on the desk. He turned to the space where his dual monitors had sat.

  Apparently, they’d had a baby and there was a third now. I immediately named it Susan. I couldn’t help but look up at his shelf of generic golf trophies, wondering if the same thing had happened. Within a few seconds, he had the pictures up and spread across the screens. I moved closer, leaning over the desk. “That one,” I said, pointing to the kid at the helm of the Temptress. “Can you blow up the head?”

  Martinez manipulated a few buttons and the face of Kyler, the dockmaster filled the screen. It was his right side, and I could see the earring clearly. It held a diamond the size of the one taken from the club manager’s neck. I needed to see the other side. “We need a better angle?”

  Martinez scrolled through the pictures. There was one that just had the back of his head, but nothing of the left side. I sat there for a second wondering what my next move was going to be when a familiar voice blasted through the speakers of the VHF base station on the back of his desk. I cringed—it was Susan.

  “We’ve got a mayday situation out here,” Susan’s voice echoed through the room.

  I’d seen first responders in action and had accumulated enough training in my years with the parks service to qualify as one. From what I’d seen, there were good and bad ones. Martinez was instantly out of his element

  I looked at him and he nodded. Walking around his desk, I took the microphone off the stand. “This is Special Agent Hunter. Please state your situation and position.” Despite being on a first name basis with Susan, I used my title for the benefit of any of the tour group listening.

  “We’re about a half-mile south of Boca Chita. Big swells and a headwind. Can’t go forward and too far to go back.”

  After almost a year here, having learned the ins and outs of the park, I instantly understood where the group was and how they had gotten there. It had been through fishing that I had learned the nooks and crannies of the miles of shoreline surrounding the park. Things tended to happen in what I call transitional space. In the forest, with a hundred thousand acres of land and just a few streams running through it, most of the action had been near water. Biscayne National Park was the reverse, and here it was the land that mattered.

  “Hold on for instructions. We’ll get help on the way.” I released the talk button and looked at Martinez. “She must have gone out from the campground at Elliot Key and hugged the shoreline, but there’s nothing but mangroves there. Nowhere to land.” I saw the look on his face. He had no idea what to do. “What have we got for assets?” I figured he’d know the answer to that.

  “Got your boat and Susan’s. Ray’s out at Stiltsville cleaning up that mess from the crime scene. “

  “That’s it?”

  “You know the budget constraints we’re under.”

  It was his answer for everything. “Call the Coast Guard. I’ll see what I can do.” I moved to the window behind his desk that overlooked the small park service marina while he called the Coast Guard. Sitting side by side were Susan’s and my twin center consoles. At twenty-two feet, they could get there, but the groups generally ran between eight and twelve people. It would take both boats to rescue them. I already knew he was going to insist on us saving the kayaks as well.

  Johnny Wells’s thirty-nine-foot Interceptor was gone from its slip. I would call him and see where he was, but the ICE crew generally spent their days further offshore. The FWC inflatable was next to my boat and I reached for my phone to call Pete Robinson. Inflatable was the wrong word for the thirty-foot, soft-sided boat. It could hold the entire group and the twin Yamaha 250s would get us there quickly. His call as usual went to voicemail.

  “Coast Guard says they have two situations already with the storm coming up. They’ll be an hour,” Martinez said.

  “You coming, Hunter?” Susan’s voice blared over the speaker.

  We didn’t have an hour with her in charge. A bead of sweat dropped from Martinez’s brow and I looked at his face. He was out of his depth. This was mine to handle. “It’s going to take both boats. Justine’s downstairs—she can take one and I’ll take the other. Stay tight with the Coasties and call Johnny Wells with ICE.” I gave the orders and left before he could comment. Taking the stairs two at a time on my way out, I called Ray’s cellphone. I knew his radio was probably off and he had a policy about answering his phone when Martinez called—voicemail.

  “Wassup, boy? Get on them snapper I told you about?”

  “Hey. Got a couple. Listen, it’s gone to hell here and I need your help.” I explained the situation and he agreed to leave Stiltsville to meet us. He sounded grateful for the distraction.

  “He go off on you or what?” Justine asked.

  “We’ve got an emergency. Martinez can barely find his way from the green to the next Tee box. I need your help.”

  “I’m here for you, Kemo sabe.”

  “Whatever I can do from here,” Mariposa said.

  I gave her the same directions I had given Martinez and asked her to keep an eye on him. At least I could count on her to do what I asked. “I need the keys to Susan’s boat.”

  Mariposa reached below the desk and tossed me the key tied to a floating chain formed to look like big red lips. “She gave me a gas receipt before she got kicked down the dock. Should be ready to go.”

  “Why her boat?” Justine asked as she followed me out the d
oor.

  “We’re going to need both. Can you handle hers?”

  “You bet.”

  I tossed her the key as we split up, each taking the finger pier to our respective boats. Having only four lines out, I was first to leave the slip and idled into the turning basin while Justine untied the half-dozen lines Susan had used. Within a few seconds, we were both idling out of the channel.

  I had a few minutes until we reached the end of the channel and thought about Dequan. Grace should know and I pulled out my phone to fill her in, but the call went to voicemail. I left a brief message, thinking that at least I’d done what I could, and turned my attention to the boat traffic.

  Several boats were cruising in, running faster than the idle speed only zone, totally disregarding the park service boats as they tried to reach the safety of their trailers before the storm hit in earnest.

  Ignoring them, I picked up speed and after passing the last marker, turned toward the northeast, and pushed down on the throttle. Checking every minute or so to make sure Justine was still behind me, I crossed on the port side of the #2 marker for the Turkey Point Channel and corrected course for the barely visible lighthouse rising just above the landmass of Boca Chita Key.

  From the look of the whitecaps, the wind was blowing at twenty knots and the seas were building. I worked the trim tabs and the engine tilt, but it was impossible to get enough speed for the hull to plane out. Barreling forward at twelve knots with the bow jutting out of the air and guzzling gas was not the ideal way to travel, but heading into the three-foot waves, we had no choice.

  21

  I saw them bobbing in the waves just beyond the point at the end of Sands Key. The group was dangerously close to Lewis Cut, a narrow and dangerous pass leading to the open waters of the Atlantic. Susan’s mistakes were compounding. First, she should have cancelled the trip, or changed the plan to remain in protected waters. Second, she was going the wrong way. If she had taken a moment to figure out the wind and current, she might have realized that if she rafted the kayaks together, they would be pushed right into Sand Key. Instead, she had decided to plow forward and try to reach Boca Chita Key and the promised destination. From where the group was, the lighthouse seemed much closer, but they were fighting the wind and seas. With an inexperienced group, in the park service’s sit-on-top kayaks, they would never reach it. At least she had called for help.