Predator in the Keys

by Matthew Rief

  “Key Largo,” Ange said. “And I think you’re really going to like it.”

  We said goodbye to Jack, then headed down a short footpath, with Atticus taking the lead. We lumbered up the stairs of our stilted house and entered through one of the side doors. I dropped my bags in the bedroom, then stepped out onto the balcony and took in a deep breath. It felt good to be back.

  There’s something about coming home after a long absence. It’s a unique feeling, an experience that’s both new and familiar. It’s everything about it. The smells of the house, the sounds of birds and the wind through the surrounding palm leaves, the view of the channel through our living room window. And little things like the particular sound a door makes when you open it. Plopping your head down onto your own pillow. Dropping into your favorite spot on the couch.

  Ange stepped out beside me, and I grabbed her softly by the hand.

  “Welcome home, Mrs. Dodge,” I said, pulling her in close.

  We shared a long, warm shower. It felt good to wash off the sweat and stink from a day of travel. Once done, we each put on a fresh set of clothes, then packed a bag. We were only going away for one night, so we didn’t need much. I was looking forward to sleeping in my own bed again but was also excited for whatever Ange and Frank had planned.

  Once the truck was loaded up, we locked up the place and hopped onto US-1, heading east. It was a beautiful afternoon in paradise as we drove from one island to the next across my favorite stretch of pavement on earth. A hundred-mile drive of picturesque islands, quaint shops, and a horizon of blue surrounding us. With the mercury up over eighty degrees, we had the windows down and the radio blaring island favorites.

  Just over two hours later, as the sun was tickling the horizon, we pulled into a parking spot at our destination. I looked around and saw no sign of anything resembling a hotel. Ange still hadn’t said a word about where we were staying, so I leaned out the window and read the large white sign with blue letters.

  “The Largo Undersea Hotel,” I said.

  Ange patted me on the shoulder. “It’s the perfect place for an aquanaut like you.”

  I smiled. “This looks interesting.”

  After grabbing our bag, we headed inside to check in and settle into our room. The receptionist led us out back to a wharf alongside a calm lagoon filled with buoys and flanked on either end by docks. Peering over the edge, I spotted two submerged structures roughly twenty feet beneath the clear water’s surface. I expected there to be a staircase that led down into the underwater structure. But instead of stairs, the receptionist led us into a large room filled with scuba equipment.

  “You two ever dive before?” a guy wearing a white tee shirt with a red dive flag on it said.

  “A few times,” Ange replied with a grin.

  Within minutes, we were changed and geared up, with BCDs strapped over our bodies and air tanks on our backs. They even had a large plastic case to put our bag in for the journey down. I asked Ange what she’d planned to do with Atticus, but the diver, whose name we found out was Rick, provided a solution to that as well.

  “No problem, man,” he said. “My wife loves dogs, and we’ll watch over him. We live right above the office, so he’ll be here if you ever want to see him.”

  I thanked him, said a quick goodbye to Atticus by scratching under his ears, then Ange and I headed down a small set of concrete steps.

  “Scuba diving down into a hotel room?” I said as I stepped toward the edge with my mask hanging around my neck and my fins in my left hand. “Now I’ve seen everything.”

  Once properly weighted, we donned our fins and stepped into the water. Venting the air from our BCDs, we descended to the bottom alongside Rick, who referred to himself as the bellhop. The water had a slight green hue to it, but the viz was good. We spotted a handful of tarpon and a large stone crab as we finned under the cube-shaped structure, then broke the surface through a square opening. After climbing up into the room and sliding out of our gear, I grabbed a towel and handed it to Ange.

  “There’s a welcome book in the galley that should answer any of your questions,” Rick said from the water. He still had his mask on, so his voice was high-pitched. “Just give us a call to let us know what you want for dinner.”

  “Give you a call?” I said with raised eyebrows.

  “Yeah,” he replied with a smile. “We offer room service.”

  Ange and I dried off, changed, then relaxed in the living room. The room was small, probably just a few hundred square feet, but it had quite the view. Large portholes looked out into the ocean, allowing us to observe the various marine life from the comfort of our little home. I had to hand it to Frank, it was the most unique hotel I’d ever stayed at.

  Less than an hour into our stay, Ange looked over the menu and decided on a big pepperoni pizza.

  “Looks like dinner’s here,” Ange said half an hour later, pointing through the living room porthole.

  I looked through and saw Rick swimming just a few feet from the glass. His right hand was waving at us and his left was clutching a yellow hardcase.

  We strode over to the room we’d entered first, ducking our way through a small door. Rick rose up from the water and removed his mask.

  “Pizza time,” he said enthusiastically.

  He unclasped the hardcase’s hinges and opened it up, revealing the pizza. The smell filled the room and caused my mouth to water. We brought it back to the living room and ate the entire thing while we watched the fish swim by. It was delicious, and we washed it down with some fresh lemonade that had been left in the galley fridge.

  A few hours later, I was just about to open a bottle of wine when I heard a sound coming from back in the entryway. Ange heard it too, and we both moved swiftly back into the small room. We arrived just in time to see another diver grab onto the edge of the hatch. I’d accumulated a long enough list of enemies in my life. It caused me to be cautious and always ready for the worst. But as I strode across the room, my eyes scanning for a potential weapon, the diver removed his mask.

  “It’s me,” Jack said, letting the mask dangle under his chin and raising a hand.

  “Jack?” I said, shaking my head. “What are you doing here?”

  “Please tell me you’re delivering us some Key lime pie,” Ange said.

  I smiled at Ange’s remark, but my smile quickly died away when I saw the expression on my old friend’s face. He was the most laid-back and carefree guy I’d ever met. But at that moment, he looked defeated, his eyes filled with despair.

  “Hey,” I said, kneeling down beside him. “Everything alright?”

  He paused a moment, cleared his throat.

  “You know that guy the papers used to call the Glades Killer?” he said.

  His words caught me off guard. I hadn’t heard mention of the famous Everglades serial killer in what felt like ages.

  “I remember you telling me something about that,” I said. “But that was years ago. They caught the guy, right?”

  Jack shook his head. “No. And as far as I know, they’ve never been able to positively identify him.”

  He paused a moment, then climbed up out of the water and sat on the edge. He stared at the ground, water dripping from his hair.

  “What happened, Jack?” Ange asked.

  He took in a deep breath and let it all out. His solemn eyes trained up to meet mine.

  “It’s the Shepherds,” he said.

  His body was stoic, his tone grave. My heart raced at the mere mention of their last name. They were the retired couple I’d purchased the Baia from over a year earlier. They’d also saved my butt near Cay Sal in the Bahamas after an intense firefight with a Russian mercenary. The last time I’d seen them was three months earlier, at our wedding on Curaçao.

  “George and Rachel,” Jack continued. “They were sailing their cat along the opening to Whitewater Bay, heading back down across the Caribbean.” He paused a moment to clear his throat. “They’re dead. They were mu
rdered and their boat was set ablaze.”

  I sank down into a metal storage compartment as if a massive weight had just been dropped on top of me. My eyes widened and my head dropped. A strong resolution formed deep within me that quickly intensified into rage. I didn’t know who the hell was responsible, but I knew one thing: I was going to find them, and I was going to rain brutal justice upon their doorstep.

  THREE

  Ange and I cut our stay at the Undersea Hotel short. We quickly loaded up our bag, donned our scuba gear, and finned back up to the surface. Rick met us on the edge, with Atticus standing right beside him and peering down at us eagerly. We didn’t have the time or energy to explain what was going on. All we told Rick was that we had an emergency, and we thanked him for his hospitality as we changed.

  Just a few minutes after exiting the water, we were hopping into my Tacoma. I glanced over at Ange as I fired up the engine. She was just as angry as I was and needed no convincing to drop everything and plan an unexpected trip to the Everglades.

  I rolled down the window and told Jack we’d meet him at Pete’s later that evening. He nodded, then climbed into his Wrangler and followed us as we drove down the side street and cruised onto US-1. Time was everything if we were going to figure out what had happened to the Shepherds. The colder a crime scene gets, the harder it is to figure out what happened. As we were donning our scuba gear, Jack had said that the incident had occurred the previous evening, which meant that we were already behind.

  We kept quiet for most of the drive. I was deep in thought, and I could tell that Ange was as well. It was like a rotary switch inside me had instantly been turned from level one to ten. My mind was firing on all cylinders, thinking of everything we’d need and how we should go about the task of finding who was responsible.

  As we cruised across the Seven Mile Bridge, Ange placed a hand on my knee.

  “Hey,” she said. “Are you okay?”

  I relaxed a little and nodded. I couldn’t get their faces out of my head. George had spent a career as a surgeon, while Rachel was a teacher. They were as innocent as could be, but someone had decided to kill them.

  Why would anybody want to kill them?

  I knew that if a serial killer was responsible, there wouldn’t even need to be a motive. I’d read and watched enough about serial killers to know that they were sick, unstable human beings who often ended lives just for the hell of it.

  It was just after 2200 when we pulled into the seashell lot in front of Salty Pete’s Bar, Grill, and Museum. I parked along a wooden fence beside a gumbo-limbo tree and hopped out. From the outside, Pete’s looked like a renovated old-style house. It was two stories, with a small porch with a door in front and a large balcony out back.

  Atticus trotted over to his usual spot in the grass beside the door. Jack’s headlights scanned over us as he pulled in, and he parked alongside my Tacoma.

  “I called Pete.” Jack stepped out and jogged over to us. “He and a few other locals are upstairs waiting for us.”

  A bell rang as we entered. The place was dying off for the night. A handful of people at the bar and a few small groups in booths, but that was it. Clearly there was no live band playing that evening. If there was, there’d be a packed house.

  “Hey, we’re closing up the kitchen, the—” a man’s voice said from back in the kitchen.

  It was Osmond, Pete’s massive Scandinavian cook. He was wearing his dirty white apron and had a towel over his left shoulder. His words trailed off as soon as he stepped out and laid eyes on us.

  “Oh hey, guys,” he said, stepping toward us. “You here for drinks? I could whip some food up too if you want.”

  “Not tonight, Oz,” I said, motioning toward the staircase at the back of the room. “We’re just here to see Pete.”

  Oz told us Pete was out on the balcony as we headed upstairs. The second story of the restaurant was the museum part, with rows of glass cases and various artifacts from around the Keys covering most of the floor space. We stepped out to the balcony through a sliding glass door and saw Pete look our way from the center table. He was in his early sixties and had a short, stocky build and a hook in lieu of a right hand. He ushered us over to the table where a few others were seated beside him. As we approached, I realized that it was Frank Murchison and Harper Ridley.

  When we reached the table, Pete slid his chair back, rose slowly, and strode over to us. His hands were coated in a faint layer of grease, his tee shirt had black blotches all over it, and he had a dirty rag sticking out of the back pocket of his shorts. I remembered him mentioning a few weeks earlier that he was restoring his dad’s ’69 Camaro with a mechanic friend.

  “Nice to have you back.” He gave Ange and me both a big hug. “It’s good to see you both. Though I wish I were seeing you tomorrow, and under different circumstances.” His eyes glanced toward the floor, then darted back up. “You two must be hungry.”

  “Just two Key limeades will be fine,” Ange said to Mia, who was standing beside the table.

  The head waitress, a pretty woman in her early thirties, came over and gave Ange a hug before shuffling inside.

  The four of us sat down, filling in all of the empty chairs around the table. Frank, a brilliant professor who’d migrated south to teach at Florida Keys Community College, kicked things off.

  “Wasn’t exactly the wedding present I had in mind,” he said. He had an eloquent and articulate way of speaking that matched his style. “But at least you had three months to soak in some quality time.”

  “Thanks for the gift,” I said.

  “It really was a nice place,” Ange added. “Even if we only had a few hours to enjoy it.”

  I nodded, scanning around the group. “Right now we have other business to attend to.”

  Mia came over and filled two glasses with Key limeade. I turned to look at Jack.

  “You mentioned that serial killer—why? What makes you think he was involved?”

  Jack shrugged. “I don’t know for certain. But Mitch Ross was the one who called me. He was the first guy on scene, arrived just before the Coast Guard did. He’s the head park ranger in the Everglades. He said there didn’t appear to be much to go on but that it looked like the work of the notorious killer.”

  “How long has it been since he murdered someone?” I asked incredulously. “I haven’t read anything about him for years.”

  “Tough to say,” Jack said.

  “People go missing in the Glades,” Pete added. “Over a million people come from all over the world to visit those swamps every year. A small number never leave. It can be a very dangerous and unforgiving place, due to its nature. But I’m sure this predator has kept busy over the years.”

  I leaned back into my chair, wrapped my hand around my chilled glass, and took a few sips of the delicious concoction.

  “So, let me get this straight,” Ange said. “This well-known killer has been murdering people in the Glades for years and no one’s been able to do anything about it?”

  There was a short pause.

  “They’ve tried,” Pete said. “Back in ’03, local authorities mounted one of the largest search parties in Florida history. They numbered over fifty strong, and they were all well-armed. These weren’t city cops either. These guys knew the swamps and they knew how to hunt.”

  “Not well enough, I guess,” Ange said. “They find any clues at least?”

  Pete shook his head. “Not that I know of. Though a Seminole Indian friend of mine was part of the search. He told me the killer was more of a spirit than a man. That he moved with the wind, seemingly disappearing at times and reappearing someplace else.”

  The table fell silent for a few seconds. Pete’s words didn’t sway my resolve in the slightest. I’d dealt with cold-blooded, hard-nosed, highly trained killers for much of my life. Somebody had to do something, and I was never one to back down from a challenge.

  “A spirit, huh?” I said. “Well, I guess I’ll have to see about
that.”

  “We’re gonna have to see about that,” Ange corrected me.

  Pete nodded solemnly. His eyes scanned back and forth between us, then trained on Jack.

  “They’ll need you too,” Pete said. “You know the swamps, Jack. And I’ll call my Seminole friend. See if he can offer any assistance. You’re a tough trio, not saying otherwise. But you guys are gonna need all the help you can get.”

  I killed the rest of my Key limeade, then glanced over at Harper. Harper Ridley was a reporter for the Keynoter, a local newspaper. She looked younger than her forty years and had been silent since we’d arrived. But she’d been hanging on every word and made a few notes on a notepad in front of her. I’d known her for years and trusted her, but it was surprising for her to be there.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, Harper,” I said, “but what exactly are you doing here? This is a private matter and shouldn’t be in the paper.”

  “I called her,” Pete said. “Asked her to come by.”

  I scratched my head.

  “Why would you—”

  “Because I have this, Logan,” she said, cutting me off. She reached into her satchel and pulled out a photograph.

  She handed it to me over the table. It was worn and the image was faded. I looked closer and saw that it was a picture of a swamp and that there was a human figure in the corner. The person was far away, his back to the camera, and most of his body was covered by tall sawgrass.

  “So far as I know, that’s the only picture ever taken of this guy,” Harper said. “And this,” she added, grabbing a small stack of papers from her satchel, “is a record of the various incidents surrounding him.”

  I grabbed the papers and riffled through them.

  “These span over ten years,” Ange said, leaning over the table in front of me.

  Harper nodded. “It’s believed that he’s responsible for nine murders in that time. But, as Pete said, a lot of people go missing in the Glades. The actual number could be a lot higher.”

  “Is there any correlation between these murders?” I said. “Any hint as to what his motive might be?”