Fallen Hero: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 10)

by Wayne Stinnett

  Inside, I paused for a moment, letting my eyes adjust to the lower light. The Thurman family had owned this land for generations, and the bar had been many things over those years. Out back, Rusty’s grandfather had made rum during the Prohibition years. The rum shack was now home for Rusty’s cook, Rufus.

  “Hey, you old coot,” I heard Rusty shout from behind the bar. “Drag your sorry ass over here.”

  Spotting a couple of empty stools near the far end of the bar, I took the furthest one, against the wall. Another old habit. There were a few more patrons than usual at this time of day, and everyone’s attention was glued to the TV, which was currently showing a commercial.

  “What’s going on?” I asked Rusty as he placed a cold Red Stripe in front of me and popped the cap off.

  “Weather channel,” he replied. “There’s a ’cane out in the Atlantic. But a course you wouldn’t a heard anything about that.”

  He was right. We don’t have television on my island, though I guess I could watch it in the Revenge if I were inclined. Which I’m not.

  “Bad?” I asked, taking a long pull of my first beer of the day.

  “Cat four,” he replied.

  Category four meant it was a major hurricane, with winds over a hundred and thirty miles per hour. Bad news any way you looked at it.

  “Last night it was heading in a straight line toward the Carolinas, but earlier today, it turned a little more westerly.”

  “How far out?”

  “A hundred or so miles north of Puerto Rico right now. Heading west by southwest, toward Cuba.”

  Double bad news. South of Cuba is the warm waters of the Caribbean and north of Cuba is the Gulf Stream, more warm water. The Florida Keys lie just north of the Stream.

  “Shit,” I muttered. “I was looking forward to some fishing.”

  “Ain’t gonna happen, bro. Rain bands’ll get here by morning. They keep saying it’ll move through the southern Bahamas on Sunday and make landfall on the northeastern Cuban coast some time on Monday. Weather here’s gonna be crapped out for a week. The governor’s already issued a state of emergency.”

  “You making any plans?”

  “Ordered a special beer delivery, that’s about it. Was gonna call ya to see what your plans were for the Hopper, but figured I’d see you before you saw your phone.”

  Right on that count, too. If I hadn’t lost it again, my phone was somewhere on the boat, probably with a dead battery.

  The door opened, and Jimmy Saunders walked in with his girlfriend Angie. Jimmy was my first mate for a time, and Angie was Carl’s daughter from his first marriage. The two joined me at the bar, Jimmy pulling out the stool for Angie.

  “Que pasa, Jesse?” Jimmy said, clapping a hand on my shoulder as Angie sat down next to me. “What’re you doing down here, dude?”

  “It’s Friday, Jimmy. I’m always here on a Friday.”

  “Friday already, man?”

  Rusty gave me a sad look. “About that. Kim called and said to tell you she was staying in Gainesville. Something to do with Marty having to work this weekend.”

  “Nothing to do now but have a hurricane party,” Jimmy suggested.

  “And speaking of that,” Rusty said. “Where you been? I thought you’d be here with that beer order a coupla hours ago.”

  “Sorry, compadre. We had to run all the way up to Islamorada to get everything. Seems you’re not the only barkeep with that idea, man. I’ll start bringing it in.”

  “Anything I can do?” I asked.

  “Help Jimmy?”

  I drained my beer and got up. “Sure,” I told Rusty. Then to Angie, I said, “Hold my seat for me?”

  “Sure thing,” she said with a smile, and I went out the back door after Jimmy.

  I caught up to him at Rusty’s old Chevy pickup. “Damn, that’s a lot of beer.”

  “Booze too, man. Rusty figured he might not get a chance to get more for a few days. ’preciate the help, bro.”

  Rusty’s big walk-in cooler had an exterior door, and Jimmy had the pickup backed in close to it. Since he knew better where to put stuff, I handed cases to him at the door and he put them away. We had the pickup empty in just a few minutes.

  Jimmy brought me a cold Kalik, the national beer of the Bahamas, when he came back out of the cooler. “Last of the cold Stripes is in the bar cooler, man. Those we just unloaded are warm.”

  I opened it and said, “Thanks.”

  “You mind?” Jimmy said, taking a small plastic bag from his hip pocket. Without waiting for a reply, he produced a rolling paper and quickly rolled a joint.

  “Why do you waste your money on that?” I asked, putting the tailgate up on the Chevy.

  “You never tried it?” he asked, lighting up and taking a long drag.

  “Not in this lifetime,” I said.

  “Well, you shouldn’t knock something you never tried, dude,” he croaked while holding his breath.

  Jimmy exhaled a cloud of blue-gray smoke, which drifted upward in the light wind. I caught a whiff of it, the smell strong and kind of sweet. I’d tried cigarettes once when I was a teen. Nearly expelled a lung. I knew others in the Corps who smoked regularly and it didn’t seem to diminish their ability to run or fight. Marijuana was completely out of the question, though. A Marine caught with even a small amount would be severely punished and probably discharged.

  “I’ll stick to beer,” I said, raising my bottle to him. Jimmy was a good man, the pot smoking notwithstanding. When he worked for me, he always arrived sober and never brought it on board. The one time he had, I’d snatched it from his hand and tossed it overboard.

  We sat down on a couple of upturned buckets, me drinking my beer and him smoking his pot. Ours was an unlikely friendship, but like I said, he was a hard-working man and very reliable—two things that are hard to find in the Keys.

  “What ever happened to that Linda chick?” Jimmy asked, licking his fingers and smushing the joint out halfway through.

  “She moved upstate. You know that.”

  “But what happened between you and her?” he prodded. “Seemed like you had a pretty serious thing going there.”

  “Yep,” I said, standing up and heading toward the door. “Right up to the point when I found out she was screwing someone else.”

  “Buzzkill, man,” Jimmy said, following me back inside the bar.

  “So, what are you gonna do about the Hopper?” Rusty asked again. Island Hopper is my vintage 1953 deHavilland Beaver amphibian, which I keep down by Rusty’s boat ramp.

  “Guess I ought to find a place to move her inside,” I said. “Or at least further upstate out of danger.”

  “Ain’t gonna find any empty hangar space in the Keys,” he said. “Best bet, fly her up to Billy’s place in LaBelle. Might be some hangar space there. I doubt the storm’s gonna make landfall here, but we will get some pretty strong blows come Tuesday and Wednesday.”

  “You up for a road trip?” I asked Jimmy.

  “No can do, man. Rusty’s got me for the duration. New class was supposed to start Monday, but we had to cancel on account of the storm.”

  “Can I borrow your—” I began. Rusty placed the old rotary phone on the bar. “Thanks.”

  I hadn’t talked to Billy in several months. He answered and said, “Rusty Thurman, how are ya, you old Conch?”

  “Hey, Billy,” I said. “It’s not Rusty.”

  “Well, hey there, Kemosabe,” he said. “What can I do for ya? Need some guns?”

  “I need to fly my plane out of here for awhile. Can I hire you to give me a ride back?”

  “Hell, no! But if you pay for the gas, I’ll come down and see how you whites handle a storm. Tomorrow?”

  “At the airport around nine?”

  “Done,” he replied. I heard a click and then a dial tone.

  “You’re bringing that crazy-ass Indian down here?” Rusty asked.

  “He’s mellowed out now,” I told him. “He can stay on the boat an
d go back after the storm.”

  Planning for a hurricane in the Keys is more of a waiting game than anything. Until you know where the storm’s headed, you just wait and pay attention to the weather experts. I glanced up at the TV, which showed the projected path of Hurricane Ike. The cone extended out west-southwest of the storm, passing over some of the islands in the southern Bahamas and then, depending on which side of the cone the storm took, it would either cross Cuba at the eastern end and go into the Caribbean, or skirt the northern coast. The line down the center of the cone had it crossing and then moving along the southern coast of the communist island nation.

  Over the next couple of days, folks here would just watch and wait. We’d experienced many hurricanes here. Or I should say, others had. I’d only lived here for nine years and was still considered an outsider by most Conchs, the people who were born here. Everyone had their own plan, in the event of a hurricane and everyone always had provisions laid up at the start of the season. For Rusty, I knew that no part of his plan involved evacuating. He and his family had weathered the worst that Mother Nature could throw their way, and they’d survived. Most Conchs had the same mindset.

  “Reckon what he’s doing here?” Rusty said, pointing with his chin out the windows along the west side of the bar. I followed his gaze and saw Mac Travis tying up at the gas dock.

  “A couple of Red Stripes,” I said to Rusty.

  He pulled them out of the cooler, popped the caps off and handed them to me. I carried them out the back door, and when I reached the dock Mac was just stepping up onto it.

  “Mac,” I said, extending a beer bottle.

  He took it from my hand and sucked down a third of it. “Jesse.”

  We walked out to the deck behind the bar. The sun was still high in the western sky, but big white clouds had it partially blocked. Sitting down at one of the tables, away from the few people who were enjoying the cooler air, Mac took his sunglasses off and laid them on the roughhewn table. His face was dark-tanned, with little lines around his eyes. What the sunglasses covered was less tanned, giving him a raccoon look.

  “Figured you’d be here today,” Mac said.

  “Guess I’m getting too predictable. Carl said you stopped by yesterday.”

  “Gotta leave for a few days,” he said. “Was wondering if I might ask you to keep an eye on Wood’s old place.”

  Bill Woodson used to live on an island not far from mine. The terms of his owning it were shady at best, but he’d built a little stilt house out there, not much different from my own.

  “Wouldn’t expect you to be one to evacuate.”

  “I’m not,” Mac replied. “Just got some business to tend to.”

  “Wood’s island belongs to Mel now?”

  “She don’t want nothing to do with it,” Mac replied. “Or the Keys, for that matter. But yeah, it’s hers. I’ve been kinda looking after it, while she’s up in DC.”

  Melanie Woodson is an attorney. She and Mac had once been an item, up until Wood was killed. Mac turned to lobstering then, doing occasional salvage work during the off-season to get by, and Mel went off to play environmental advocate. An unlikely pair, at best.

  “I can see the island from my deck,” I offered. “And can hear anyone out there for miles around.”

  “I appreciate it. Doubt there will be any trouble this time of year. I just finished boarding everything up, it should ride the storm okay, even if it’s a direct hit.”

  “How long will you be gone?” I asked taking a long pull from my beer bottle.

  “A week at most.”

  “I’ll buzz over after the storm and make sure everything’s okay.”

  Mac offered his bottle, and I clinked mine against it. He stood up and looked out over the long backyard toward where the Hopper sat, near the boat ramp.

  “I expect you’ll be moving that?”

  “Flying up to LaBelle tomorrow,” I replied. “But I’ll be back by mid-afternoon.

  He picked up his sunglasses and put them on. “Appreciate it. And thanks for the beer.”

  “Don’t mention it,” I said.

  “See you around.” He turned and walked back down to the dock. A moment later, he was idling down the long canal toward open water. His house was over in the maze of canals along Sister Creek, near Boot Key Harbor, about ten minutes away by boat.

  “What’d Mac want?” Rusty asked, when I went back inside.

  “Asked me to keep an eye on Wood’s place. He’s going out of town for a few days.”

  “Hope he’s going up to DC to make nice with Mel,” Rusty said. “Those two need each other and she don’t belong up there.”

  Ben and Devon arrived at the ME’s office in Marathon early the next morning. Doc Fredric had been working on a particularly troublesome case there and had taken the female victim’s body there, instead of Key West. It meant a drive for the two detectives but getting out of the city, even for just a day, was always a welcome diversion for Ben.

  “Look, I know this is your first possible homicide case,” Ben said as they approached the door. “But, you have witnessed an autopsy before, haven’t you?”

  “Five. Relax, Lieutenant, I’ll be fine.”

  “Good.” Ben opened the door and walked inside. “We don’t want a repeat of yesterday.”

  Behind his back, Devon did her own impression of Dreyfuss, giving Ben the finger then hooking her pinkies in her mouth and wagging her tongue at him.

  Doctor Fredric stood just inside the doorway and grinned at her display. “You’re much too young to have seen that.”

  Devon’s cheeks colored as Ben turned to face her. He turned back to the ME and said, “Seen what?”

  “Oh, nothing,” Doc said, turning toward the hallway leading back to the morgue in the rear of the newly built structure. “I have the preliminary autopsy findings. Follow me, please.”

  They paused at the reception desk, where the two detectives signed the log, then Doc led them further down the hall and stopped in front of a large doorway. He tapped some buttons on a keypad next to the door and Ben heard a gentle whooshing sound as the door opened, breaking the airtight seal.

  Doc went straight to his desk and picked up a clipboard, then went to one of two cadaver tables in the middle of the room and pulled back the sheet from the body.

  Ben felt bile rising in his own throat. The woman’s face was horribly disfigured. Devon stepped up closer to the body, eager to learn the precise cause and manner of the victim’s death.

  “The tox report hasn’t come back yet,” Doc began. “But, judging from her overall physique and appearance, I’d wager it will be negative. The scrapings from under her fingernails were indeed skin and blood tissue, along with two strands of hair. But of course the DNA results will take even longer.”

  Ben approached the other side of the table. The woman’s body had been opened up. A Y-shaped incision had been made from each shoulder to a long lateral cut from between her breasts to her navel. She’d already been sutured back together, but there was little Doc could do for her ruined face. The right side wasn’t as bad and, looking at her profile, Ben could see that she’d been a beautiful young woman, probably in her late twenties. She’d had medium-length hair, turned a light golden-brown by the sun. Aside from the incisions and sutures, she had an exceptional body, he noted. Fit and athletic.

  “Nothing out of the ordinary with her heart and other organs, but as I expected, her lungs were filled with sea water. I also found bits of biological material and fine, powdery sand in her lungs.”

  “Biological material?” Ben asked.

  “Some type of algae or sea grass. I sent samples to a colleague at Mote Marine Lab, up island for identification.”

  “Death by drowning?” Devon asked, sounding somewhat disappointed as she bent to examine the wounds to the victim’s face more closely. The woman’s left cheek had literally been torn from her face, and hung on by a small thread of skin below the left ear. Her left eye socket was
empty.

  “She probably would have died from wounds incurred anyway,” Doc said. “Drowning was faster. Her scuba tank had nearly a thousand pounds of air and I found nothing wrong with either the first or second stage of her regulator.”

  “You dive, Doctor?” Devon asked.

  “Please don’t be so formal,” Doc said. “Everyone just calls me Doc or Leo. Yes, I have a master scuba diver rating and I’m also certified in equipment repair and testing.”

  “So, if she had air, how’d she drown?” Ben asked.

  “Note the bruising on her breasts?” Doc picked up a round Styrofoam cylinder about the size of a scuba tank and walked around behind Devon. “If I may demonstrate?”

  Devon turned her head and nodded. Doc placed the lightweight cylinder against her back and stepped closer. “Raise your left arm, please.”

  When Devon lifted her arm, the ME wrapped his arms around her, sandwiching the make-believe scuba tank between them. He was careful to keep his hands away from her breasts, though.

  “With the cylinder on her back, her attacker was unable to clasp his hands together for a proper bear hug. So, he grabbed what he could. Holding her breasts and squeezing, he fractured her right humerus, wedged at her side. He’ll be a very powerful man.”

  When Doc put the prop back on the table and looked at Devon, her face flushed. She quickly recovered and bent to examine the victim’s breasts. “Yes, I see bruising in the pattern of a hand on both breasts, and scratch marks. Possibly from his fingernails?”

  “Exactly!” Doc said.

  “The left breast seems a bit more deeply bruised.”

  “Very observant, Devon,” Doc said, smiling. “Once her right humerus was fractured, he released his hold on that side and pulled the second stage of her regulator from her mouth. It all happened in a matter of seconds.”

  He opened the woman’s mouth to show several crooked teeth, the front ones in both the upper and lower jaws were pointing slightly outward, one on the bottom was missing. Other than that, her teeth were pearly white and straight.