Deep Rough

by A. J. Stewart

  The animal control guy wandered over. “Just gotta get my truck,” he said, as easy as you like. “Can someone sit on him for me?”

  I took a second to realize he was suggesting that someone sit on the beast just like he had. I don’t care how dumb it was—I wasn’t sitting on a gator for anyone. Then the guy looked at me.

  “Thanks, pal.”

  I cocked my head like he was crazy, and then I glanced either side of me and noticed that everyone had moved five paces back, except me. Even Danielle. It must have been something they learned at the academy. I shook my head and damned my luck.

  “Just sit tight. He shouldn’t go anywhere. But I don’t want him scooting back in the water and drowning.”

  All I heard were the words shouldn’t and drowning. I walked a wide berth around the animal. Our eyes connected. It was just him and me. Mano-a-gator. He had to be well north of twelve feet long. I stepped forward slowly. I didn’t want to spook him. Then I took a wide step like I was mounting a horse and I straddled the gator. I lowered myself down. It was like sitting on wet rocks. The gator gave a low guttural growl that I felt in my guts. I didn’t look up at the gathered crowd. I didn’t want them to see the fear in my eyes. And I didn’t want to take my eyes off the gator’s snout. The slightest hint that those teeth were coming at me and I was out of there. I rescinded my note to call up my University of Florida friends. I wasn’t that mean-spirited.

  The gator didn’t move. I wanted to believe it was a noble beast that knew it was beat, but I was focused on not soiling myself. Then I heard a beep beep beep and saw the tailgate of the animal control guy’s truck backing toward me. He got out and dropped the tailgate and then wandered past me. I glanced over my shoulder and watched him take a spray can and paint a long pink line along the animal’s back. Then he stood back and took a photo of the gator, including the pink spray and yours truly. Once he was done he stood before me.

  “You wanna ride him home?”

  I shook my head and jumped off. The guy grabbed the gator at the back of the head and lifted him up.

  “You wanna give me a hand here?”

  I dropped in on the other side and we lifted the gator from his front legs. He was heavy. It took every bit of effort I had to lift my side. I had deadlifted over two-hundred fifty pounds when I played ball, and my half of the gator felt every bit that heavy. I wondered what he had eaten to make him so hefty, and I regretted the thought immediately.

  We pulled him up and got the reptile’s head up on the flatbed and then together we pushed him forward like he was a stack of lumber. The guy closed the tailgate and thanked me for the help.

  “What’s with the pink?” I asked.

  “ID. Chain of custody.”

  “What happens now?”

  “We’ll need to check what he ate.”

  “How do you do that?” I asked.

  The guy drew his finger across his throat. So it wasn’t all beer and skittles for the gator. I hoped he enjoyed his last meal. Then I regretted that thought immediately as well. I really needed to stop thinking.

  The animal control guy pulled the pickup forward and off the course, and I walked up onto the fairway and the crowd starting clapping. Not hollering and whooping or anything. This was a golf crowd. It was restrained but it was applause. And it was for me. And it made me feel like an ass.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  A team from the medical examiner’s office had arrived while I was mounted on the alligator, and they had waited back with the crowd until the beast had been driven from the course. Then they stepped under the police tape and started setting up. A couple of guys in coveralls erected a canvas tent around the sheet on the ground. A woman directed them and then did the same with a skinny guy in black tights. He looked like the roadie in a college play. The woman trudged over to Prosser and they had words, and then she stepped over to Danielle and me. She smiled from a face that had seen too much sun, not just lately but over the course of her lifetime. She was probably Danielle’s age but looked like tanned leather.

  “Danielle,” she said.

  “How are you, Lorraine?”

  “I could still be shoveling snow in Chicago,” she said. She nodded to me.

  “Miami Jones,” she said.

  “Lorraine Catchitt,” I replied. “Like you do with a baseball, not what happens in cat litter.”

  She smiled. “You got it. You remembered.”

  “It’s a curse,” I said. I had crossed paths with Lorraine Catchitt a few years previous, when a girl I knew from a case was murdered and left in an irrigation channel for the alligators to dispose of. The body had been found by a maintenance worker before it was found by the wildlife.

  She said, “What is it with you and gators?”

  I shrugged.

  Catchitt had a morbid sense of humor, even more so than cops. I guess there was a scale to it. Cops saw things other than dead bodies—a forensic investigator with the ME’s office rarely did.

  “Prosser tells me you two have spoken to just about every person in this place over the past couple of days.”

  “Most everyone,” said Danielle. “Between us.”

  “Good. If you don’t mind I’ll need you to try to ID the victim.”

  “All you’ve got is an arm?” I said.

  “So we’ll start with that. But the divers are about to go in. They’ll find more. Gators like to take some of their meal and wedge it down at the bottom of the lake for later.”

  “This isn’t a bass lake. I don’t think there’s a lot to wedge anything under.”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  “Can’t you get fingerprints?”

  “Maybe. Depends on the water damage. And there’s dental, but that depends on the condition of the . . .” She looked at me. Last time we’d met at a crime scene, I had thrown up at what I’d seen. “. . . remains.”

  Danielle said, “Will the ME perform the necropsy?”

  “No,” said Catchitt. “We only do human autopsies. There’s a facility we use for animal necropsies. A veterinarian does that.”

  The skinny guy in black appeared again. He was still in black, but this time it was the color of his wetsuit. He wore a tank and a mask, and he wandered down to the lake, turned on a flashlight and cast himself out into water.

  “What if there’s another gator?” I asked.

  Catchitt shook her head. “If that big boy had a meal down there, he’s not letting anyone else near it. Gators are territorial like that.”

  The diver disappeared and Catchitt suggested we take a look at what she had. The guys had erected a plastic tent over the lost arm and then started driving stakes into the ground to create a perimeter. It looked like they were going to cordon off the entire lake.

  We wandered into the tent and Catchitt put a hand on the sheet. She looked at me again.

  “You okay?”

  “I don’t think this is someone I know personally.” It wasn’t the body that had shocked me last time I’d seen Catchitt. It was the fact that I had known the body when it was a living, breathing person.

  She pulled back the sheet like a magician. What lay on the grass was clearly an arm. It was fully intact. That’s not to say it was in great shape. It was more gray than blue and the skin looked like cling wrap. But there were no bite marks or anything to suggest it was related to a gator attack. Except the fact it wasn’t attached to a body. The arm extended all the way up to the shoulder. Then there was a ragged nub. I hated the imagery but Prosser was right. It was like a section from a giant chicken wing. The limb had been removed seemingly with care.

  “You recognize anything?” Catchitt asked.

  It was an arm. That was as far as it went. There were no tattoos, no obvious markings. I shook my head, and Danielle did likewise.

  “Worth a shot,” said Catchitt. “We’ll see what the divers dig up.”

  “It looks like a clean break. Did a gator really do that?”

  She looked hard at the shoul
der and nodded. “Probably. They don’t sever, not like a shark. They tear, they rip. They clamp down on something and shake and roll. It’s probable that this guy bit down at the shoulder joint and ripped the arm clean off. He was probably focused on the biggest piece and that’s why this bit floated away. He would have got to it eventually.”

  I shuddered. I left the tent and noted that a news crew had joined the fray. That’s the trouble with a golf tournament—there’s always a camera around. I turned my back and watched the ME guys wrapping their crime scene tape around the lake. I thought about Keith, and the tournament. That crime scene tape was going to put a crimp in the tournament preparations.

  We waited for about fifteen minutes until the diver started swimming back toward the bank. He had something with him. He got to the water’s edge, removed his mask and took stock of the gathered crowd, and then dragged his find around so that he could bring it directly into the tent out of the eye of most of the crowd, and particularly the cameras. Catchitt went into the tent and was in there about a minute. She stuck her head back out and waved us over.

  I wasn’t keen. But I went. I wasn’t playing chicken if Danielle was okay with it. We ducked into the tent. The arm had been covered again. What lay next to it was a mess. It appeared to be another limb. But this one wasn’t an arm. My excellent detective skills told me it was a leg. It didn’t look like a leg. It looked like a Twizzler you might buy at the cinema snack bar. It was twisted and mauled. But it had a boot on the end of it. That was the giveaway. And it was clothed, sort of. The white fabric had been ripped and slashed, so it was hard to make out. Catchitt used a gloved hand to turn the part over. It wasn’t pretty. It didn’t look human. But it was. There was something familiar about it. Not as a limb. I don’t have a degree in anatomy. And this thing wasn’t even recognizable as a body part.

  “You see anything?” Catchitt asked. “You see this footwear before?”

  Danielle shook her head. So did I.

  Catchitt dropped the limb down and stood. “Oh, well. Worth a try.”

  I kept looking at it. Catchitt noticed me and went to say something but stopped herself. She knew what I was doing. She had probably done it herself a thousand times during an investigation. Trying to capture a memory that was floating on the air. There was something there, something in the twisted mess of flesh and white fabric.

  Then the memory landed.

  “The fabric. Right there—that’s a pocket.” I looked at Catchitt. “A utility pocket. It’s coveralls. This belongs to a caddy.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  We reconvened in the clubhouse. The crowd mostly dispersed when we put the word out that every caddy was to present themselves to the briefing room for a prepractice orientation. Caddies began wandering in from the locker rooms, and off the course. They congregated in the room where I had first met the board. The concertina wall was open and the entire space was filled with chairs.

  Lorraine Catchitt remained at the crime scene and Danielle and I went to Keith Hamilton’s office. It wasn’t a big room, but it was private. Keith was waiting. We were joined by Ron, and then Martin Costas and Barry Yarmouth. Dig Maddox was the only board member absent. Another guy came in to make it nice and cozy. He was a lean guy who looked like he might have been a golfer once, although I didn’t recognize him. When the door closed Keith spoke.

  “Danielle, Miami, this is Kent Andrew. He is the tournament liaison for the PGA Tour.”

  We nodded and he did likewise.

  He said, “You think it was a caddy?”

  I shrugged. “It’s not positive ID, but it looked like a caddy’s coveralls. I don’t see anyone else wearing them around here.”

  “We’re getting them all together. We’ll take a roll call, do a head count.”

  “Danielle,” said Keith. “What does this mean? For the tournament. Do you have sense of how long the Pacific will be roped off?”

  “I think you’ll need to get that information from the investigators, Keith. This has gotten beyond my pay grade.”

  “Best guess?”

  “If I had to say, I think the area will be off-limits until well into the weekend, maybe a week or more.”

  Keith’s face flushed. “That’s ludicrous. Today is practice.”

  “I don’t know, Keith,” she said. She was using her preschool teacher voice, but it wasn’t helping. “There might not be any practice. They’ll need to sweep the entire lake, and they may want to keep the adjacent areas like the fairway and greens clear. It might have been an accident, but until it’s shown one way or the other, they’ll consider it a possible crime scene. Plus I don’t think the ME’s team will want to be in the firing line for errant golf balls.”

  Keith looked primed for an aneurysm. He looked around at all of us, unable to focus on anyone. “You see, I told you. Someone has it in for us.”

  Martin Costas spoke. He seemed calmer than the rest. “Kent, what is the tour’s position?”

  Kent shrugged. “The tour has no position. I’ve never seen anything like this. A tournament course as a crime scene?” He shook his head. “We need to get a better grip on how long the police need, and whether we are missing a caddy.”

  “But the show must go on, right?” said Keith.

  “I can’t say, Keith. I’ll need to confer with my people. With the sponsors and broadcasters. I’m not sure how keen they will be to go on. Association with a death like this? It’s not the kind of branding the sponsor wants.” Kent took in the room and breathed deep. He seemed to be pretty cool in a crisis. “Let’s all talk to the folks we need to talk to. I’ll postpone practice for this morning. It’s not the end of the world. We get rained out of practice now and then. The guys can still use the driving range. That’s nowhere near the crime scene. Let’s convene at noon and see where we stand. Maybe we can get a practice round in this afternoon. Or tomorrow morning. Before the pro-am.”

  Keith nodded but said nothing.

  “What about the dead guy?” asked Barry.

  I don’t know why, but everyone looked at me.

  “Let’s find out if we’re missing a caddy.”

  * * *

  We were missing a caddy. And that wasn’t great news for the tournament, or the club. Or me. As luck would have it the missing caddy was the knucklehead Englishman I had punched the previous night. I would have to fess up to that because Danielle was with me, so I couldn’t forget the whole thing or delay telling anyone. That would reflect badly on her.

  There were also witnesses. The two other caddies. But oddly they didn’t mention our altercation. They said they had enjoyed a few beverages with their colleague and then stumbled out into taxis. They had gotten separate cabs as they were staying in different locations, so they couldn’t say whether he had actually left the course. They couldn’t actually say for sure whether he had indeed left to get a cab with them, or whether they had left him at the bar. What they could say was whose bag the big guy carried. It turned out he was Heath McAllen’s caddy.

  As we were leaving the briefing room a guy in a natty suit turned up. He looked like an FBI agent. He was square-jawed and broad-shouldered, and he had a shave that was so close it looked like it had been performed by laser. He introduced himself to Danielle.

  “Pete Nixon,” he said. “Florida Department of Law Enforcement.” He flashed a badge that could have belonged to the sanitation department for all I knew.

  Danielle introduced herself.

  Nixon said he knew of her. “You did some work with Special-Agent-in-Charge Marcard, of the FBI. He speaks highly of you.”

  “Thanks. This is Miami Jones.”

  He shook my hand. He had a good grip. “Nixon,” he said.

  “Like the president.”

  “You got it. Only I get subpoenas for my wiretaps.”

  I nodded. He’d probably heard that line a thousand times, so his answer was well-practiced and rolled off the tongue. But he delivered it like it was the first time, and he was easy wit
h it. He went up a notch in my book. Cops in suits don’t start very high up the pole with me. Especially nice suits. But this guy started well.

  “What’s the FDLE doing on this?” Danielle asked.

  “As of now, we’re not. This is a county matter. I’m not here to step on toes.” Stepping on toes was a big thing with law enforcement. There were city police, and county sheriffs and state investigations, and then the FBI. They were all either very careful not to ruffle each other’s feathers, or they did so on purpose. There never seemed to be any middle ground.

  “The governor’s office got wind of the situation and called the commissioner. So here I am. You know how it goes.”

  “Why is the governor into this?” I asked.

  “A gator attack? On a golf course? During the practice for an internationally televised tournament? I’d be asking what took so long.”

  “Where are you out of?” asked Danielle.

  “Miami field office. I know what you’re thinking. How’d I get here so fast. The answer? I was already here.”

  “Already here?”

  “Like I say, this is a high-profile event. We’re at all such events. It’s a target, right? For terrorists, for whomever. The politicians up in Tallahassee are touchy about any negative press. A blip on the PR radar can cost millions in lost tourist revenue. So we’re in the background. In case we’re needed.”

  “Are you needed?” I asked.

  “You tell me. What’s going on?”

  “Let’s walk,” said Danielle. She shared the short version of what had been happening since we arrived, starting with the wedding and the green damage and ending with the body in the lake.

  “So can you add anything?” she asked as we got to the dining room.

  “Maybe. Like I say, we’re in the background on this one. Let me tell you what I know.” He looked at me. “This is delicate.”

  I got the impression he didn’t completely trust me, which didn’t hurt as much as it might have.