by Matt Lincoln
Muñoz’s voice trailed off hopefully as she waited for the woman to answer, but she just shook her head.
“Sorry,” she said, giving Muñoz a small, sympathetic smile. “I haven’t seen or remembered anything new, and I’ve been watching. No one’s been back to pick up the drugs that I can see, except a few more pelicans flying off with the stuff. I’d hate to see what that’ll do to them. I hope they just use it for nesting instead of trying to eat it.”
“Yeah, that doesn’t sound like the best plan for the birds,” Holm said with a grimace at the thought.
“So, what about last night?” I asked patiently as I watched the sun out over the water. It really was beautiful, and the water was calm, with almost no waves that I could see in the harbor.
“Well, I came in early and saw the cocaine bags floating out in the harbor,” Penny explained. “You can kind of see them from here, though the sun’s blocking it a bit.”
She pointed, and I followed her gaze out into the water. I squinted and saw that there were indeed the tops of some plastic bags sticking out on the surface of the water.
“Why were you in so early?” Holm asked. “Is that a regular thing for you?”
“You could say I’m still on military time,” she laughed. “I like to get up before the sun, make sure things are prepared for the day. Then I go home in the late afternoon. Well, except for today. I got a late start, obviously, with everything going on.”
“Well, we’re glad we caught you before you left,” I said, smiling at her. “So you called Muñoz when you saw the cocaine?”
“That’s right,” Penny confirmed with a nod, glancing over at Muñoz. “I got her number when she talked to me earlier that day. I figured you guys would want to know about this since you’re working a drug case.”
“It seems like there’re always drug cases these days,” Holm sighed, shaking his head.
“Get a lot of those at MBLIS?” Penny asked with a small smile. “I can’t say I’m all that surprised. Lots of traffic on the sea and on the islands around the Keys, though we don’t have as much here in the Keys themselves as we could have.”
I was a little taken aback that she knew what MBLIS was, considering how many people didn’t, but then I remembered that she was formerly with the Navy and had lived on an island for much of her life, no less. Of course, she knew what MBLIS was.
“Yeah, we get quite a few drug cases,” I confirmed. “Especially lately, we’ve had a couple of crazy ones. So what happened when Birn got here? Muñoz said you offered to stay with him?”
“Yeah, I didn’t love the idea of him going on a stakeout like this alone, though obviously, I had no idea something like this would happen,” Penny said, giving a long sigh and shaking her head at the memory. “But he said he was fine and sent me home in case anything bad happened.”
“Which clearly it did,” I said darkly, shielding my eyes with my right hand and gazing out to the end of the dock where Bonnie and Clyde had said that blood had been found.
“Were you here when the police forensics team cased the area earlier today?” Holm asked, clearly thinking similarly as his gaze followed my own.
“No, I wanted to stay out of everyone’s way,” the woman explained, shaking her head. “But I went into the station later to give them a sample of my DNA and tell them everything I’ve told you.”
“We appreciate your cooperation,” Muñoz said with a small smile to the sailor.
“Of course,” Penny said, nodding to the female MBLIS agent. Then, leaning in closer to us as if she was afraid that someone else would hear her, “Do you think that the police are really on top of this? They’re a small department. I worried that they might not have the wherewithal to deal with something like this.”
“Our own lab techs have all the data and analyzed it this morning,” I assured her. “As for the rest, well, let’s just say that’s why we’re here now. Where the police department may have gaps, we’ll help them. Not to say that they aren’t doing good work, just that they’re not used to dealing with a situation on this scale.”
“Of course, they’ve got good people down at the station,” Penny clarified with a small smile of her own. “There just aren’t all that many of them. It’s a far cry from what I was used to in Key West.”
“I can imagine,” I chuckled. “Get a lot of crime over there?”
“Not a ton,” she said with a shrug, glancing back out over the water. “Nothing compared to what you guys have to deal with in places like Miami. But significantly more than here.”
“What about this drug traffic in the area?” Holm asked, shifting and placing his hands on his hips. “What can you tell us about that?”
“Not much, to be honest with you,” Penny said with a small laugh. “I don’t pay much attention to anything that doesn’t happen out on the water anymore. I’m retired for a reason.”
“I can understand that,” Holm chuckled, flashing me a wink as yet another reminder that life after MBLIS was on his mind, or at least taking a vacation of some kind once this case was over.
“You must have impressions of the situation, though,” I pressed her. “You were with the Navy for a long time, after all, and how long have you been here for now?”
“About five years,” she said with a nod.
“Exactly,” I said. “With your background, I doubt you haven’t formed opinions in that time, or at least made observations. That trained mind doesn’t turn off when you retire, I’d imagine.”
“No, no, it doesn’t,” Penny chuckled. “No matter how much I might want it to for some peace of mind.”
“I can sympathize with that, too,” I told her, thinking about how I would possibly cope if I ever retired. Probably not the best idea for my own sanity, I decided.
“Well, to answer your question, I have noticed an increase in… let’s call them shadier characters lately,” Penny admitted, hesitating as she tried to choose her words carefully.
“Shadier characters?” Muñoz repeated. “What do you mean by that?”
“Well, you get to know all the locals around here after not too long,” Penny explained with another chuckle. “It’s a small island even with all the tourists, and without them, it’s minuscule. And you know, tourists have a certain look about them. You can usually tell which ones they are.”
“You can say that again,” Holm laughed, rolling his eyes.
“Hey, you’re a tourist down here,” I reminded him with a similar gesture of my own. “Miami tourists and Keys tourists aren’t all the same, though they’re probably equally easy to spot.”
“Fair enough,” he relented.
“So you were saying you can tell who’s a tourist and who’s a local,” I prompted, turning my attention back to Penny.
“Yes,” she said with a nod and a half-grin shot in Holm’s direction. “So basically, I’ve been seeing more people the past couple of months who I would say don’t necessarily fit into either group.”
“How do you figure that?” Muñoz asked.
“Well, they don’t look like tourists,” Penny explained with another shrug. “And I don’t know them, so they’re not locals either.”
“So you think they’re drug dealers, or at least drug-related,” I finished for her, and she nodded.
“Yeah, though I suppose they could be campers coming over from one of the more forested islands nearby,” she surmised. “That sometimes happens, even though Little Torch is more for a different brand of tourists looking for a resort vacation. That’s who I thought they were at first, anyway.”
“What made you change your mind?” Muñoz asked, taking a step closer to Penny as she waited for her to answer.
“Well, first I noticed that there were way more of them crossing over here than usual,” she reiterated. “As I said before, the camping types don’t cross over here too often. Boy Scout troops and the like don’t usually want to spend the kind of money it takes to hang out over here.”
“Are there kid
s with these people?” I asked. “You mentioned Boy Scout troops.”
“No, most of them don’t have kids with them, and the ones that do are probably the usual occasional camping types who make their way over here,” Penny said, shaking her head. “That’s another thing that tipped me off that something was up. Then I overheard a couple of them talking in a bar one night, and I realized that several of them didn’t have American accents. I started paying attention to that more and realized that most of these new people I was seeing seemed to be from the Caribbean and other neighboring islands.”
“The Caribbean?” I repeated, raising my eyebrows and then turning to Muñoz. “That’s where we think the drugs are coming from, right?”
“Yes, it is,” the other MBLIS agent said, giving me a nod. “The guy that Birn and I found in that parking lot wasn’t Caribbean, though. He was American.”
“They’re not all Caribbean, mind you,” Penny said quickly. “They seem to come in groups, and they’re usually a mix of Caribbean and American accents, which is unusual.”
“Since the Caribbean islands are so close, I imagine you do get some traffic from there anyway, all above board,” Holm pointed out. “What makes you think these people you’ve noticed are any different from the usual traffic from that region?”
“Well, we don’t actually get as much traffic from there as you might expect,” Penny clarified, shifting on her feet because the sun had moved as we spoke and was now shining uncomfortably in her face. “You have to understand, as I’m sure you do from cases you’ve had in the Caribbean islands, that they aren’t exactly wealthy there. Sure, some Caribbean people make it over to the Keys, especially looking for work, but that’s not what these guys are doing. And even Caribbean tourists don’t end up on the camping islands much for whatever reason. Those are just a few things I’ve noticed.”
“You know more than you let on!” I exclaimed with a chuckle. “Don’t underestimate your own observational skills, my friend.”
“Oh, I don’t,” she assured me, her eyes twinkling as she gazed back at me. “I was just being modest.”
“Alright, then,” I chuckled. “So these new folks who you’ve noticed showing up on the island lately, when would you say they started to appear?”
“Oh, I’d say about eight to twelve weeks ago,” she said, narrowing her eyes as she tried to remember properly. “No more than that. And that’s when I really started to notice it. There was a trickle before that, maybe for about two months? So four months overall, two months or more of really increased traffic.”
“And what do these people do when they’re here?” Muñoz asked. “You mentioned seeing a group of them in a bar earlier.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen them all around,” Penny said, shaking her head as if in confusion. “But they don’t come out on tours like the other tourists, or just stop in for dinner. Most of them stay in the cheaper hotels and patronize some more local spots to eat and drink since they’re less expensive than the more touristy places. Mostly, I just see them walking around, and they rarely stay more than a day or two. Most of them don’t even spend the night before heading back out to wherever it is they’re going. It’s kind of strange.”
“You could say that again,” Holm said.
“Have you ever tried to talk to any of these people?” I asked her. “Have any of them tried to talk to you?”
“I’ll admit I got a little too curious once,” Penny admitted with a small laugh. “But they didn’t say anything to me. It was a small group, just three of them, which was why I was more comfortable approaching them. They were walking near the shore by one of the big resorts. I asked them if they were staying there, and they said no.”
“Were they all Caribbean?” Muñoz asked, her brows furrowed together as she listened to the former naval officer’s account.
“Two Caribbean, one American,” Penny said. “The American had a pretty thick southern accent. One of the Caribbean men spoke some broken English, and the other one was pretty fluent. I asked them what they were doing here, and they just said they were camping on another Key and stopped over to see the beaches here before heading home.”
“Did they say anything else to you?” I asked.
“Not really,” she said, shaking her head. “They kind of rebuffed me after that. I tried to talk to them some more, even offered them a free ride on my sailboat while they were here, but they got away from me pretty quickly after that. It was clear they didn’t want to talk, which was probably the most suspicious part of the whole thing.”
“Did you ever see those men again?” I asked. “Are there a lot of repeat offenders in this group of non-tourists, non-locals you keep running into for the past few months?”
“I never saw those specific men again, no,” Penny said, shaking her head again. “I’ve seen a few of them multiple times, but never within a couple of weeks of each other. That is to say that when I do see a familiar face, it’s been a few weeks since I saw them last. And they’re mostly new faces each time. There’s never more than one group on the island at a time, either, that I can tell, though obviously I can’t be everywhere at once, and I haven’t been keeping tabs the way a current law enforcement official would be.”
“I think you’ve been keeping tabs just fine, whether you like to admit it or not,” I chuckled. “You may be getting more bored with retirement than you’re willing to admit.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Penny said, though her eyes sparkled as she smiled back at me. “It’s just like you said. You can never really turn that trained mind off with things like this.”
“Is there a way we can get closer to the drugs, look to see if there’s a shipwreck out there somewhere?” Holm asked Muñoz, turning his attention back to the floating bags of cocaine in the bay.
“I can take you out,” Penny said quickly, and I detected a hint of eagerness in her tone. “I have my ship right here, and I know these waters better than anyone. I’d be happy to escort you.”
“We might just have to take you up on that offer,” I said, grinning back at her.
10
Penny
As Penny led the MBLIS agents to her sailboat, she noticed that one of the men, Ethan, lingered his gaze on the edge of the dock, and right when they were about to climb aboard the ship, he crouched down to study the dock more closely.
“What are you looking at?” she asked, peering over his shoulder and unable to keep her own curiosity at bay. Maybe Ethan had been right about her getting a bit bored in retirement. Just a bit.
As she looked down, she squinted to try to see whatever the MBLIS agent was looking at, but all she saw was a regular old dock and regular old bay water. There were no cocaine packets that had drifted quite this far into shore yet, given the low tide and absence of waves on a calm day like that one.
“Nothing, apparently,” Ethan said almost bitterly, reaching down and running his fingers across the surface of the water just below the edge of the dock.
“While you’re at it, I’m just going to take a look around the area,” the other male agent, the one named Robbie, said.
“I’ll join you, but I did the same earlier,” the woman, Sylvia, said, following him back down the dock.
“What were you hoping to find, then?” Penny asked, turning her attention back to Ethan. Yeah, she had to admit she was a little more curious about all this than she wanted the others to believe, more than she wanted herself to believe, even.
“The police department’s forensics team found some blood right on the edge here,” Ethan said, tapping the side of the dock to illustrate as he spoke. “The swabs were with the data sent over to our lab techs earlier today.”
“Really?” Penny asked, raising her eyebrows as her curiosity piqued even further. “Was it from your missing agent?”
Agent Birn had seemed nice enough when Penny met him, if dismissive of her offer to stay and help with the stakeout since he was alone. Even so, she didn’t begrudge him that. He was
there to do his job, and he didn’t know her from Adam. She probably would’ve done the same if she was in his shoes. Still, she wished she’d been there to help fend off whoever had shown up to take him. Maybe they would’ve gotten away with two of them to fight these people.
She hoped he was alright, wherever he was, and that he wasn’t dead yet. She could already see the worry splattered across his partner’s face, which had been so calm and confident just a day earlier when Penny had first met her.
“No, it wasn’t,” Ethan said, shaking his head, and Penny breathed a sigh of relief as she bent down next to him to examine the area for herself.
“That’s good to hear, at least,” she said as she squinted down at the edge of the dock. “Maybe he got a good hit in before whoever it was hauled him off.”
“Here’s hoping,” Ethan said, giving her a grim smile. “You see anything that I don’t?”
They both peered back down at the dock together, but Penny shook her head.
“No, I’m coming up empty, too,” she said, rising and brushing her hands on her jeans. “Sorry.”
“That’s alright,” Ethan said, getting up himself and smiling at her for real this time. “Our lab techs said that the sample itself was pretty eroded already, anyway, and that it would probably be gone by the time we got here. I just wanted to check in case the police department missed anything.”
Penny couldn’t help but notice that he had a really nice smile and a sparkle in his blue eyes that had an almost boyish quality to it, though otherwise, he had the look of a distinguished military man. She met his eyes, and the glint in his eyes only intensified.
“I’m assuming you didn’t get any hits from the database, then?” Penny asked. She realized that her own eyes had lingered on his for a bit too long and shifted them away from him, taking a sudden interest in the water at her side.
“No, unfortunately not,” he said, dropping his own eyes and clearing his throat a bit. “They said it’s only a partial profile. They’ll keep running it, though.”
