Backwater Key

by Steven Becker

  I assumed the van had gone with them. It would have no choice but to follow Card Sound Road back to Florida City, which gave me a few minutes and I picked up my phone thinking it was safe to talk now. I opened Justine’s message. She must have just gotten to work and wanted me to call. I hoped she had been assigned to the truck that had been impounded this morning.

  “Hey,” I started.

  “You better make a date now, because I may never get out of here. That was quite the haul this morning.”

  “What’d you find?”

  “I’m just getting started, but there are all the usual suspects: drugs, guns, and ammo.”

  The only other pillars of criminal activity missing were prostitution and gambling, neither of which would fit in a tool box. “Want me to come down?”

  “I’m upstairs in the new lab. Too many people here for you to be hanging around. You’re buddy Dick Tracy’s been by a few times to look over my shoulder, too.”

  “What’d he want?”

  “Never got that far after I elbowed him in the stomach.”

  That’s my girl. “Okay, I’ll check in later. I’ve got to get some sleep.”

  “Cool, leave me to pick up after you again.”

  Even though she laughed when she said it, I wondered if there was any truth to it. I’d reached down to start the engine when I remembered Grace had wanted me to call her. Leaning back again, I hit her number and waited. Her calls often went to voicemail, but she answered right away.

  “Hey, Kurt. We processed those two thugs from this morning. Turns out they’re Outlaws. One of them wants to make a deal. We’re going to interview him in a few if you want to sit in.”

  “Can you hold that for a few hours? I’ve got something else I may be able to pass to you if you can give me some time.”

  “If it’s as good as this guy, I’ll take it. We can put him on ice. Probably get more out of him after he sweats it out in an interview room for a few hours. Just so you know—he asked for you.”

  12

  I leaned back against the console with the phone in my hand, waiting for an internet connection so I could track the van. I had only done this one time before, after Susan McLeash had gone rogue during a case, and once it connected it took me a few minutes to fumble through the screens. To make matters worse, my head was pounding and my bloodshot eyes were blurry. My brain was in a fog and my problem-solving abilities were fading.

  I finally navigated to what I thought was the correct screen, but when I entered my tracking number, I got an error message. Susan’s came back with the same result. A quick shot of paranoia fueled adrenaline brought my level of consciousness out of the gutter and I stared at the screen, wondering what had happened.

  I tried several more times with the same result. Anger is better than coffee, and my brain was starting to work again. I had to do something I usually avoided at all costs or my afternoon’s work would be in vain. I had another decision to make: Pierce or Martinez. The FBI would have the resources to track the chip from its barcode. Martinez certainly could and might be watching now. If I hadn’t seen Pierce with Susan earlier he would have been the first call. Instead, I dialed Martinez.

  He smelled the podium as soon as I explained the chip was attached to a van filled with drugs. Any repercussions I had been expecting for going off the reservation were on the back burner now. I had him hook, line, and sinker. If he knew the whole story of my going to the biker bar and the arrest this morning, he might have hesitated, but he was on a need-to-know basis—he didn’t need to know very much.

  He said he would get back to me and I set a course out of the canal for Adams Key. The noise from the engine took over my thoughts for the next thirty minutes as I cruised up the bay. The biker was on ice and Justine would be at work until midnight. Martinez was going to figure out where the van was headed. I would give Grace the call, and get a few hours of sleep and a shower. Heading to Miami in my present zombie state was going to do no one any good.

  I made it to the dock, and after the obligatory petting of Zero I went into the house and eyed the couch. But I realized it would have to wait when my phone vibrated. It was Martinez. He had located the van. The address was familiar, but I was not that intimate with Miami yet and had to enter it in the maps app on my phone. A red dot dropped in what looked like the same industrial complex that the biker bar was in. I texted Grace the address and went for the shower. I knew I’d never make it in time. The best I could hope for was that passing along the information would change my karma with Miami-Dade.

  It was well past my time for coffee, but there was no other legal way I was going to get through the next few hours. The first sip restarted my brain and I realized I had made a mistake in giving Martinez the information so quickly. There were few chances to get on the positive side of the ledger with my boss. I should have known better than to throw him a bone like this without asking for something in return. There were probably better things I could get out of him: vacation time, overtime, or even radar for the boat. The list could go on. Living out here, I actually considered my life a vacation and overtime money had no sway over me as long as Jane, my ex, kept things the way they were. Radar would be nice, but what I really wanted was to stay on the case, and that meant he would need to change my status from furloughed to active. There were provisions for federal employees engaged in life safety activities to be exempt from the furloughs, and I expected a biker invasion of the park would fall into this category. I dialed his number.

  “Got a team on the way,” Martinez said.

  “You know what you’re walking into? Those bikers are heavily armed and have been drinking all day.”

  “SWAT will handle it.”

  I was about to ask about the investigation, but he cut me off.

  “I’m calling this a life safety threat to the park. You’re back in the saddle. Meet me in my office in thirty minutes.” He disconnected.

  I should have remembered my Art of War. Two thousand years ago, Sun Tzu had written: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

  If I had been thinking clearly, I would have known that in my current state I was clearly in the last category. Instead of being smart, I was counting on forward momentum to keep me going.

  Now that I was back on the job I dressed in my uniform. Hoping to stay at Justine’s tonight, I packed a backpack with enough clean clothes to replace the dirty ones stuffed to the side of my new drawer in her dresser. It was one thing to get the drawer; another step entirely for her to do my laundry. Just before I left, I called Grace and gave her the address Martinez had provided of the van’s location.

  The ride across the bay was uneventful, and I backed into my slip at the marina by headquarters. I noticed Susan’s boat was back as I walked down the gangway to the sidewalk that led to the entrance.

  The door was open and I glanced over at Mariposa’s empty desk. Missing my only ally here, I walked upstairs and did a double-take when I reached the door to Martinez’s office.

  “Hi, Kurt,” Susan McLeash said from her usual seat.

  She was dressed in her too tight uniform and had a smug look on her face. Martinez cleared his throat.

  “This is going to take more than you. Susan has been reinstated as a special agent. You two will be working together on this.”

  For the second time in an hour, the proverb from Sun Tzu hit me in the forehead. I hadn’t thought at all about my enemy. Trying to keep the shock from my face, I turned to him. “When’s the raid?” I was here for one thing and that was all he was going to get. I didn’t need to ask the question; a glance across the desk revealed he was dressed in his podium uniform. Whatever happened had gone down already. I needed answers and wanted out of here. Martinez was probably grateful for the excuse to get back on the payroll
and the face time with the media. Susan was in it for whatever she could get out of it. I wasn’t sure what that was yet, but I’d have my eyes wide open.

  “I’ve got some leads to run down,” I said, rising from the chair.

  “I’ll expect a full report by tonight,” Martinez said.

  “Why don’t you have Susan do it? She knows as much as I do.” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. I knew I had to get out of there. Anything else that I said was sure to be used against me. I turned and left. Martinez’s memory was very short when he had TV time.

  Without looking like I was running away, I walked to the truck and hit the road. I kept one eye on the phone and the other on the traffic ahead as I drove west toward the Turnpike. Finally, when I turned onto the northbound entrance ramp, I relaxed. With the bust out of my hands, now I had to decide what to do about Pierce.

  I had liked him immediately; probably my first mistake. There was no actual evidence of wrongdoing, but the indicators were pointing that way. Exhaustion started to take over again after the short-lived anger from my meeting with Martinez and Susan faded. By the time I reached the Don Shula Expressway my eyes were starting to close. I knew I was in no condition to tangle with Pierce. I stayed left and the minute I hit the Palmetto, I skidded to a stop. Rush hour brake lights were stacked in front of me. I was hoping a few kind words with Justine would get me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Now I just hoped I could make it there.

  If it was rush hour, I realized the news would be on as well. Living on the island had a few drawbacks. I wasn’t a TV junkie—far from it—but there were some shows I watched and I liked sports. This had led me down the path of internet TV and I had several apps on my phone. Opening one that streamed the local channels, I switched between them until I found what I was looking for. Martinez was at a podium next to the Miami-Dade police commissioner and another man in a blue blazer, probably a Fed. They were all smiles, shaking hands and patting each other on the back. I knew it was just for the TV. The minute the red light on the camera went off, the knives would come out.

  To the side of them was the contraband recovered from the arrest. I’d seen this show before. The evidence was placed for maximum exposure with baggies of white powder, shotguns, and ammo covering the table. In front were the same packing boxes I had seen being loaded into the van. I almost slammed into the car creeping in front of me when I took my one eye off the road and stared at the screen. There were only about half the amount of boxes I had seen sitting there. You could always count on the set being staged for maximum impact. In the past, I had seen empty boxes stacked to enhance the bust. What I was looking at was the opposite. Either they hadn’t recovered all the drugs or someone on the inside had taken them.

  The brake lights ahead started to blink and then went off intermittently as the traffic finally started moving. After exiting at the NW 36th Street exit, I made my way to the forensics lab. It was almost six and the lot was fuller than usual for this hour. Usually, the day shift techs made a beeline to whatever happy hour bar offered the best specials, but not tonight. I pulled into a space near the back of the lot and texted Justine that I was here. Since she had been forced to move upstairs into what she called the big girl lab, there were often other people around and we no longer had the same privacy as we did when she worked by herself downstairs. I think I would have been just as happy if she’d told me to go home as to come in.

  She gave me the okay, and I got out of the truck. I felt more energetic now, but knew each time my nervous system was assaulted with another turn in the road, the highs were shorter and the crash deeper. I needed to find a bed soon.

  The front door was still open, but the receptionist was gone for the day. I let myself in the security door with the visitors’ code Justine had given me. Walking down the hallway, I reminisced about the old days, when I used to watch Justine swaying to her music for a few minutes through the glass partition in the hallway to her old office. There was still a glass partition, but it wasn’t the same. Running floor to ceiling the smoked glass did little to dim down the glow of indicator lights from the equipment sitting on gleaming stainless steel tables. I entered through the glass door and found Justine bent over a machine near the back corner of the lab.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey back.” She stayed focused on the computer display. “Maybe you should see this.”

  13

  Trying not to let her warm body distract me, I looked over her shoulder at the oversize monitor. It might have made sense to her, but I stared at the screen not sure of what she was so excited about. “You’re going to have to help me out here,” I said. What I really wanted was to touch her, to hug her, and fall asleep next to her. I could see two of the day techs who were still at work glancing over at us. None of what I wanted was going to happen here.

  “You’re exhausted. Why don’t you go back to my place.”

  “No; I mean yes, but go ahead and tell me what you’re seeing.”

  “The guns are generic. We’ll probably get some prints and maybe ballistics will come up with a match to a cold case. The drugs are cut seven ways to hell. There’s acetone, sucrose, talcum powder, and baking soda. With all that crap, you might as well skip the dope and snort the rest. It’d have about the same effect.”

  This sounded common for street level drugs. The combination was actually pretty tame compared to what the meth heads out west used to cut their product. Rat poison, caffeine, and painkillers were all common there. Hunter Thompson’s laundry list of drugs from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas came back to me. The last line was memorable:

  There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge.

  I imagined the same applied to many of the items on the list of additives she called out. There was one at the bottom that I wasn’t familiar with. “What’s this?”

  “There are traces of propionates. Probably the same chemical makeup that was found on the vest.”

  I still wasn’t sure where she was going. I already guessed they were tied together; this just helped prove my theory.

  She must have seen the look in my eye. “If I can isolate the propionate, I can find the source or at least what type it is.” Her tone softened. “You really do need to get some sleep.”

  I wasn’t going to disagree. As if I was a lost child, she ushered me out of the lab and walked me to the truck, making me swear I would go directly to her place and not wait up. There was no more kissing in the lab, but out here it was fair game. We embraced and held a long kiss for anyone watching. I got into the truck and realized that Grace was expecting me. I reached for my phone and called her.

  “Can you hold him until tomorrow morning?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I kind of figured you got tied up. Got a little surly earlier. There’s supposed to be a lawyer coming, but we only have another few hours before we have to either formally charge or release him.”

  I made plans to meet her at eight in the morning at the county jail. That seemed to be the best time for interviews; after the prisoners had eaten and before the population was awake enough to become unruly. With more guilt than I should have felt, I headed to Justine’s and was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

  With Justine’s schedule, the blackout shades were required. She worked late, paddled early, and often napped in the early afternoon before starting all over again. They were enough to hold off the inevitable morning light, but weren’t enough to keep out Martinez. I had forgotten to set an alarm, but as often as not, when I was on a case and stayed here, Martinez would call early.

  I quickly shut off the ringer, rolled out of bed, and ran for the bathroom in an attempt to avoid waking Justine. Glancing over my shoulder to see if she was awake, I saw the bed was empty.

  “Morning, Hunter,” Martinez said. “Sleep well?”

  He knew altogether too much about the minuscule details of my life. I held the phone away from my ear
and saw it was after eight. “Got an interview in a few minutes.”

  “Didn’t think it was a good idea to report the bikers’ visit to Adams Key the other night?”

  I wasn’t only covering for myself now. I had to protect Ray, who probably should have reported the incident.

  “I wasn’t there.”

  “You might want to inform your neighbor that it is a violation of his contract not to report such events.”

  Whatever almost came out of my mouth, but I stopped myself. It sounded like we were going to get off with a warning.

  “I have pictures. I’m working on enhancing them now, then I’ll send them to your phone.” Of course he had a camera on our dock. “I think one of them is being held at county.”

  “That’s where I’m headed.”

  “Maybe you should take Susan. I want to make sure you understand I meant it when I said that she was working with you again. This shutdown has been hard on her.”

  Martinez and Susan had a different kind of employer / employee relationship. They’d never been caught doing anything, but the signs were all there. With the case opening up the park’s payroll, he had included her so she could get a paycheck. It didn’t take a special agent to figure out he favored her. Now, on top of everything else, I had to find something for her to do. “I’ll text her some instructions.”

  “You do that. And that report you promised me?”

  There had been no promise. “Yeah, I’ll get on that.” It seemed the appearance on the news from last night had already worn off. “I gotta go,” I said, and disconnected. I sat on the edge of the empty bed. When I went to set the phone on the night table, I saw a notification. It was a text message from Sid. I was kind of surprised the night-time coroner was text savvy, but thanked him for not calling and waking me. The message said to call at four p.m. when he got in. At least I had some time.