Black Coral

by Andrew Mayne

  Kell keeps pulling, struggling harder now. The black water begins to move as something is pulled from the bottom and dragged slowly ashore.

  A broken tree limb surfaces, and the edge of something covered in mud and dead grass begins to poke above the water. Kell gives a mighty heave, and the thing cuts through the water and slides up onto the wet grass.

  We stare at it, trying to make sense of it all. It’s a three-foot cube . . . more precisely, a cage. Filled with dark-brown . . . bones.

  Hughes aims his light at the round curve of a human skull.

  The cage is filled with them. Lots of bones. More than one person.

  He walks over and kneels to get a closer look. We stare at the bones, stripped of all flesh, and a thousand questions come to mind.

  SPLASH! We jump as Kell’s alligator hook sinks into the pond again; then our attention returns to the remains, trying to get a count of the skulls.

  I think I spot at least two more. That means three more victims. This plus the four kids and the body in the ditch makes eight people we’re sure of.

  Eight people.

  “Hey, guys?” says Kell.

  “What is it?” I ask, still staring at the bones.

  “I think I hooked another cage . . . and I’m pretty sure it bumped into another one. We might have a bunch of them down there.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  SQUAD GOALS

  Walter Denton, FBI special agent and director of the South Florida serial homicide task force, walks to the podium of the small auditorium in the FBI’s Miami office and addresses the various law enforcement departments in the room. He’s in his late forties and has a shaved head and a serious demeanor. His reputation, according to George, is that of a solid investigator. He’s methodical but not particularly imaginative, which can be a good thing in many cases.

  He sets his portfolio down. “Ladies and gentlemen, let me be very, very clear. There will be absolutely no leaks out of this investigation. Those of you who have to report to superiors, make this one hundred percent clear to them. If they have a problem, they can speak with me. If any of you have to report to a superior who you don’t think possesses appropriate discretion, then speak to me privately and I will have a conversation with them.” He looks around the room. “If you feel that I’m being insulting, or assuming that you lack professionalism, let me reaffirm that is not the case. I am speaking from experience. Just last year, we were on the verge of closing in on a suspect in Indiana wanted for the murders of three women. We had an eyewitness description and a suspect under surveillance. A local sheriff decided to get on the five o’clock news and essentially describe our suspect, out of what he said was a matter of public safety and nothing to do with his reelection campaign. That suspect fled, and it took us three months to catch up with him in Iowa, where he’d killed four more people. Four people because one man couldn’t keep his mouth shut.”

  I think I like this guy. George is sitting to my left with no expression, while Hughes is on my right, already taking notes. Should I take notes? What am I supposed to take notes on? Should I look at Hughes’s?

  Relax, Sloan. This isn’t high school.

  Denton continues, “Now, I’m aware that there’s been a little turf war regarding this case because of local politics.”

  Oh crap, he means us.

  “But that’s going to stop, right now.” Denton stares directly at George.

  George simply nods. Either he doesn’t take that as an insult, or he’s going to punch Denton in the parking lot. I put the odds at fifty-fifty. Personally, I’m no longer a fan.

  “Okay, that’s out of the way. We’re all here because of the excellent work of the Underwater Investigation Unit, headed up by George Solar, who I believe you all know. George, we’re glad you found a way out of retirement.”

  This gets some applause from the fifty or so people here. Huh, interesting. Denton seems to be a showman disguised as a cop.

  “Yesterday, following a lead, they uncovered a dumping site in the Florida Everglades. A preliminary count puts the total number of remains at around thirty people. Forensics has only started, and we haven’t made any identifications yet. Now, here are the two important takeaways. Please make note of this.”

  Hughes sits ready to do so.

  “One, tomorrow, we’re going to make a statement to the press. Currently there is a lid on that. If anyone leaks before then, I’ll know it came from this room. We’re going to tell the media that a tracker working for the park found the remains while doing an alligator count. The reason for this is that we do not, under any circumstances, want our suspect to know what led us to this crime scene.” Denton stares directly at me. “This is all because of Detective Sloan McPherson’s work on the Pond 65 case. We strongly believe there is a connection between these two sites, and we do not, I repeat, do not want our suspect knowing we know.

  “Why? Because we believe he’s an active serial killer with a routine. He wakes up every day in the same place. He drives the same car. He goes to work in the same place. If we’re going to find him, that’s how. But if he gets spooked and decides to leave South Florida, what could take a week may take years.

  “Marybeth and Stanton Waldrop, Jepson Rivers, and Marcie Norris. Remember those names. They’re dead because one asshole in Indiana couldn’t keep his mouth shut. Am I clear?

  “Whoever is behind this is in our midst. Catching him could be just days away if we do things right. His next victim could be saved if we proceed cautiously.”

  A hand goes up in front of me. Denton calls on the man. “Yes, Detective Upton?”

  “I understand the need for discretion, but what are we going to tell the public? They’re going to know something is up.”

  “Fair question,” murmurs Hughes.

  “We’re going to tell them that we found human remains. We’re going to tell them that the killer may still be active in South Florida.”

  “What about the description? I understand we have one,” asks Upton.

  Denton nods. “We have a person of interest. We’ll circulate the image.” He holds up a line drawing of an average face with sunglasses. “He looks like half the faces in front of me. I don’t know how helpful this’ll be.”

  Denton doesn’t mention the image of Sleazy Steve from the concert photo. I’m sure he discussed this with George. But is not releasing it the right move?

  “As far as strategy is concerned, we need every resource at our disposal. We’ll be assigning different aspects of the case according to capabilities. Right now, our best evidence is probably in identifying the victims. We have our forensic teams from Atlanta and Washington flying in to assist. If we know who was killed, it might help us figure out who killed them.” He checks his watch. “The clock’s ticking. Let’s get to work.”

  “So, what now?” I ask George.

  “I figure we have about twelve hours before all hell breaks loose. The media storm is going to be big. Real big.”

  “I’m just glad they’re keeping our names out of it for now,” I reply.

  George shakes his head. “That won’t last.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  STAINED

  I’m standing in Lara Chadwick and Eric Timm’s kitchen in a small, pillbox-shaped house just north of where Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale was located. For the last eight years, this house has been the center of a local mystery, while the navy airbase, now gone, has been the center of an enduring mystery for over seventy years.

  The air station was where the infamous Flight 19 took off, never to be seen again, except in movies and stories concerning the Bermuda Triangle. Dad has his theories on what happened, but, needless to say, the mystery has grown into folklore.

  More recently, Lara and Eric’s disappearance had neighbors wondering and police baffled. While it remained an open case, the local theory was that Eric murdered his pretty spouse and then fled with the body.

  The fact that both their cars were still in the dri
veway required the assumption that Eric had an unregistered vehicle or an accomplice.

  Another theory was that the two were involved in some drug deal and had to leave town.

  Yet another was that they were the victims of a serial killer, a theory the police refused to validate.

  After Kell pulled the crab cages full of human remains from the Everglades, the old theories vanished like Flight 19, and we now understand at least part of their fate.

  The police were frustrated by the lack of forensic evidence. If Lara and Eric had been murdered in the home, there was no sign of it. No blood. No bullet holes. They had simply vanished.

  If it had been a domestic dispute resulting in Lara’s death, then there should have been some forensic evidence. Blood is almost impossible to completely get rid of. That’s why I sold my old boat.

  We now know that after vanishing from here, the young couple’s bodies ended up underwater in the Everglades. How they got there is the question Hughes and I are trying to answer, along with every other cop in South Florida.

  Lara’s skeleton was largely intact. The animals that could make their way through the cage had devoured most of the flesh, but even the occasional battering from alligators was unable to break the trap open.

  Eric’s body, along with those of a dozen other men, had been dismembered into multiple pieces. Because the police were unable to find blood in his house or in the backyard, it suggests that he was cut up elsewhere, making the location of Steve’s butchering operation yet another mystery.

  “Swamp Killer,” says Hughes as he flips on the light to the dining room and looks at the empty room.

  That’s the name the media has given Sleazy Steve.

  “He didn’t kill them in the swamp,” I reply.

  “True. But I think it’s a better name. ‘Sleazy Steve’ sounded like we were looking for a flasher.”

  “Yeah, but that was his nickname. Assuming Steve is his name, our chances of finding him were better when that’s what we were calling him,” I explain. “If someone else knew him by that name, they’re much more likely to come forward.”

  “Sure. But officially there’s no connection between him and the Swamp Killer. Nobody has seriously suggested they’re connected. The public doesn’t even know that the kids in Pond 65 were murdered,” he replies.

  “I’m not sure how I feel about that. I’m worried that Denton’s investigational advantage may be a hindrance.”

  “I see both sides,” says Hughes. “Right now, I’d like to see a connection. Why did he select Lara?”

  “Right. Why did he select any of the women?”

  Hughes kneels and examines the lock to the back door. “No sign of forced entry.”

  “That’s why police thought it might have been Eric or someone they knew,” I tell him. “But I’m not sure I buy it.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “I think we put too much emphasis on signs of forced entry sometimes. Are all the doors in your house locked all the time?”

  “I hope so. But I get your point.”

  I lean over and examine the lock. “How hard is it to pick a lock like that?”

  “We check for that,” replies Hughes.

  “We check for amateur attempts to pick a lock. Plastic picks don’t leave scratch marks. It’s like when I yell at Jackie to clean up her room. If she doesn’t look at the mess in her closet, it doesn’t count.”

  “I’m not sure I track,” replies Hughes.

  “She likes things simple. If she can pretend her closet isn’t her room, it doesn’t count. If investigators can pretend the only way for a stranger to get inside is by breaking in, then you’re going to rule out a stranger when you don’t find forced entry,” I explain.

  He stands back up. “They’re smarter than that.”

  “I’m sure they are. They’re smarter than me. Jackie is smarter than me. But the thing about smart people is that they can be the most intellectually lazy of us all.”

  “Great to hear an anti-intellectual talking point from a woman holding down a full-time job and working on a PhD in archaeology. Did I mention I played Fortnite for five hours last night?”

  “Jackie plays that game too. My point is that we like to shove things into convenient boxes, even when we know they won’t fit. When all the leads dried up on Lara and Eric, the police should’ve thought of that. Same as the kids in the van. I don’t mean the investigators had to spend their whole lives trying to track them down. I just mean they should have made a bigger noise and said something.”

  “Like what?” asks Hughes.

  “I don’t know. How about holding a press conference and saying, ‘We really have no fucking idea what happened; if you have a theory, come on down and tell us’? You know?”

  “I don’t think that would instill confidence,” says Hughes.

  “How confident do you feel now? At least three dozen people went missing in the last decade, and nobody noticed. Do you think the neighbors feel confident? How about Lara’s mother when she got that call?” I try to calm myself but fail. “What kills me, poor choice of words aside, but what really, really drives me up the wall is that the single most honest and credible person we’ve spoken to is a meth addict living in a bush.”

  “Rafferty?” says Hughes. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

  “Nobody listened to him back then, and people like Aguilló are too afraid for their reputations to speak up. Maybe we’re listening to the wrong people.”

  “Maybe we’re not going to find anything here,” says Hughes.

  “I’m not looking for a bloody hammer or a confession on the ceiling in ultraviolet ink. I wanted to come here to understand it all.” I point to his feet near the back door. “Sleazy Steve, aka the Swamp Killer, stood right where you are. Forget how he got in here or what he did. Why here? Why her?”

  “Back to our main question. Okay. Why her?” Hughes replies.

  “That’s easy.”

  “How so?”

  “She was pretty. All of them were. Did he see them in the supermarket? How did he find them? He started before people put pictures online, so he had to have another way to see what the women looked like.”

  “Maybe he saw them at the mall.”

  I shake my head. “Let’s go out to the car. I want to show you something.”

  I take a folder from my backpack and lay it on the hood of the SUV. It’s full of aerial shots of the seven houses we’ve identified so far as belonging to Steve’s victims.

  “What are we looking at?” Hughes picks them up and scans them.

  “What do all the houses have in common?”

  “Middle-class? Nice neighborhoods?”

  “Okay, that tells us something. No one ever reported a particularly suspicious person who stood out around the time of each murder. That means Sleazy Steve managed to blend in.” A delivery truck rolls by. I point it out. “He could be in one of those, and you’d never notice.”

  “I think people would get suspicious if it was parked in front of a home all night.”

  “I’m not saying it was. Just that he managed to blend in. But that’s not what I’m pointing out and why I don’t think he found these women at the mall and followed them home. Look closely.”

  Hughes flips through the photographs. He seems confused, then his eyes narrow. “Huh.”

  “Yeah. See it now? The cops didn’t know these cases were connected at the time; that’s why they never thought about this feature that was common to all the victims’ homes.”

  The first obvious feature on the satellite photos is that all the homes had pools, but that’s not a rarity in South Florida. What sets them apart from their neighbors is that each house was at the end of a dead-end street or on a corner and thus enjoyed more privacy.

  “So, Swamp Killer likes pretty women who live in secluded houses,” says Hughes.

  “Which means he’s probably not just selecting random women and showing up,” I reply.

  �
��He finds out where they live before deciding to target them.”

  “Or, an alternative theory.” I point to the delivery man dropping off a package and hopping back into his truck. “He finds the houses, then discovers who lives there.”

  “So now what?” asks Hughes.

  “We need to tell Solar, then Denton. If we’re right, the next dozen or so bodies they identify are going to follow the same pattern, and the theory will gain credibility.”

  “Makes sense,” says Hughes. “Can I float a radical theory of my own?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Maybe you’re more of a killer hunter than you realize.”

  “Hey, I’ve only found bodies. I haven’t found a killer yet.”

  Not counting when they’ve found me first.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  ROGUES’ GALLERY

  Craig Latrelle’s unshaven face glances into the camera, then back to the interviewer. His shirt is wrinkled, and he has the look of a man who was rousted out of bed, which is pretty much what happened. FBI task force chief Denton pauses the video playback as Hughes and I take seats at the conference room table where he and the other agents are going over the videos of all the suspects that have been rounded up.

  “What do you think, Hoyle?” Denton asks the agent sitting across from him.

  She turns from the widescreen television and glances at us. “Nervous.”

  “They’re all nervous,” says Detective McCurdy, a senior detective from Broward County. “They’re being questioned.”

  “Yes, but the way he looks at the camera. He’s talking to us,” she replies.

  “That’s because he knows the routine. Whenever there’s a sex crime, he gets called in to explain his whereabouts.”

  The name Latrelle sounds familiar, but I don’t know who he is. At the risk of embarrassing myself, I speak up. “What’s his background?”

  Another Broward detective, Anthony Wesley, gives me a surprised look. “Latrelle?” He shrugs. “You were probably in kindergarten. When he was sixteen, he pulled a girl off her bicycle, raped and killed her, then left her body in the woods at McFarland Park. The judge ruled it temporary insanity; he did three years in a mental institution and then did almost the same thing again when he was twenty. Same judge as before. She decided it was the mental institution and the state’s fault for not properly treating him. He did five years more in a hospital and then was released to supervision. We haven’t caught him doing anything since then—the operative word being caught.”