DEAD GONE a gripping crime thriller full of twists Page 3

CHAPTER THREE

  Blythe was gone from the beach. So were the couple who’d been sitting in the emergency blankets. Ramirez brought the boat in close and killed the engine. He splashed into the shoals, pushing it the rest of the way.

  There were even more cops around, a senior deputy giving instructions to a group wearing high rubber boots. The forensics van waited with the rear doors open.

  Tom approached Machado, who was watching the whole thing with an affable smile.

  “How did that go?” Machado asked.

  “Great. Nice way to start the day.”

  She stuck out her hand. “Felicia Machado. Crime scene bureau with County CID.” She glanced at Tom’s bare feet, toes squishing in the muck. “That must feel nice. Hot today.”

  “It is.”

  Small talk over, Tom watched Ramirez, the diver, Mills, and the two techs hoist the body bag out of the boat. Ward stood by the van, directing them.

  “No external signs of violence,” Tom told Machado. “But her face is a mess. Post-mortem, I guess, being in the water, maybe fish.”

  “Ugh. Poor thing.”

  The group carried the body bag to the van and loaded it in. Ward took a brush and swept out bits of sand from the van floor.

  “There was a distinguishing mark,” Tom said. “Butterfly tattoo on the inner forearm.”

  “Well, that’s something,” Machado said. The group closed the doors to the van. Ward got in the driver’s side. They pulled out of the lot and onto the dirt road, moving out of sight.

  Machado faced Tom. She had to look up at him. “I guess you’re off and running.”

  Tom was confused. “Sheriff’s Office isn’t going to take this?”

  “The people upstairs just told me a half hour ago that this was your show, state bureau all the way.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep. We’re here to help, we’ll do a lot of the legwork on the scene, doing door-to-doors — or whatever you’d call it out here in Mother Nature. The body will stay with Ward but your crime lab is handling trace evidence. Blythe said chain of custody is yours.”

  Tom continued to look for Blythe. “Was she nice about it, at least?”

  Machado had an easy laugh. She cocked an eyebrow. “Blythe? Be nice? You haven’t heard?”

  “Not really.” Tom got moving toward his vehicle and Machado walked beside him.

  “She was in the military. Did three years in the Middle East, then she was a trooper for the highway patrol. She worked her way into a special unit after several years pushing a cruiser. I think she was with the drug interdiction felony team. Then she switched to the FDLE and has been there with you guys since.”

  “So she’s earned her stripes, you’re saying.”

  Machado gave Tom a cunning little look. “Yeah, guess that’s what I’m saying.”

  He took the plastic bag out of his pocket and fished out his keys and cell phone. Ward had custody of the body. Tom felt a little stung that the man hadn’t even quickly debriefed before hightailing it, but he supposed time was of the essence. Once the body was out of the water, decomposition sped up.

  Tom opened the car door and leaned in. The interior was like a furnace. He turned on the engine, cranked the A/C and searched for a towel in vain. He sat down in the driver’s seat with his legs out and cleaned off his feet with a tiny napkin he found stuffed in the door. Machado was waiting.

  “Any cameras out here?” Tom asked.

  “There are a couple back at the Reserve building. Surveillance on the entrance. Nothing covering the water. It’s pretty bush league.”

  “Any vehicles found?”

  “So far, no. We’ve got a tire tracks specialist coming, but it’s rough out here, and we don’t know what we’re looking for — people drive in and out: kayakers, tourists, conservation officers.”

  “Well, I guess we can start with the tattoo,” Tom said. “Cross-reference with any missing person’s reports.”

  “Sure. I’ll reach out to Special Crimes, have them run it through missing persons.”

  “Maybe domestic violence reports, too.”

  “Got it. How far back you want to go?”

  The napkin he was using was shredded. He chucked it in the back seat. “Just start recent, a week or so, in the immediate area. Battery, assault. We’ll start there and see how far we want to widen out.” Tom looked out at the water. “No kayak was found floating around out there or anything, right? The decedent didn’t just capsize and drown?”

  Machado shook her head. She glanced at Susan Libby, who was down at the water’s edge with Ramirez and a diver. “None of her inventory anyway. We asked her — or, I think she volunteered the information when we first got here.”

  “What were their names, the guests she had with her — Joe and Linda VanCott?”

  “Yeah. I’m headed in to get their formal statements. Do you want to be there for that?”

  “I want to check in with Blythe . . .”

  “Agent Blythe is down the road at the Reserve building.”

  So Blythe was around after all. He found it strange that his supervisor had left the scene — even after word came down it was officially their investigation. The divers were still out in the water, Everglades deputies had been dispatched to comb along the shoreline. Was he supposed to wait? She hadn’t left him with much instruction. Maybe he was just overthinking. Maybe this was how the real world worked.

  Machado was watching him. “How old are you?”

  The question surprised him. He pulled on his socks and shoes. “Me? Thirty-one. Why?”

  “No reason. You look young.”

  Great, he thought. Another person having fun with the greenhorn. And he was just starting to like Machado.

  “Where’d you go to school?” she asked.

  “Florida State.”

  “Yeah? Criminal justice?”

  “Double bachelor’s. Criminology and Sociology.”

  Her eyes widened. “Well, well,” she said. Then she winked.

  He supposed he should expect reactions like Machado’s. He was new, and he’d been a detective applicant with no prior police experience or military background. He’d gone to school, and he had a mountain of debt to prove it.

  Machado said, “So, no external evidence of violence. But nothing like a kayak to signal accidental death by misadventure, or something, either. We’re going to need a big brain like yours on this.”

  “There are no other kayak tours like Susan Libby’s? What about people just coming out on their own?”

  Machado shook her head. “They had kayak tours which ran November to May up until two years ago. Now they do boat tours only. Libby’s little outfit here, Paddle Creek, that’s it. She had to jump through all sorts of hoops to be able to do it.”

  “But people could still sneak in, I mean—”

  “Yeah, they could. It’s not too heavily guarded, I guess. Rebnar patrols regularly, though.”

  “Rebnar . . . you mean R-B-N-E-R-R — Rookery Bay National Estuarine . . .”

  “. . . Research Reserve,” she finished. “You got it. Yeah. They’re on top of it.”

  Tom glanced at Ramirez who was now backing his boat trailer toward the water. They weren’t exactly on top of it, he thought. Not if someone accessed the preserve, either died of natural causes, overdosed, or was murdered — and then floated for three to five days. On the other hand, Susan Libby said the place was a hundred thousand acres. That was a lot of territory to cover. He wondered how many people worked for the Reserve. Probably quite a lot.

  * * *

  He arrived back at the small building ensconced in the mangrove, turned in and saw Blythe coming down the steps. The camera Machado had mentioned hung over the door, aimed down the walkway. Blythe drew near and got in the vehicle holding a slim, zipped case.

  “So?” she asked. “What’ve we got?”

  He gave Blythe the same details he’d given Machado, adding a little bit about Ward’s disposition as well as the emotion
Susan Libby had displayed during the body retrieval.

  Blythe listened, then nodded toward the building. “This outfit is mostly scientists. Biologists, botanists. They get grants, do their research, work to save the mangrove and wildlife. That’s the ‘research and reserve’ part. About twenty of them, but at any given time, there might only be a few working here. Enforcing things are eight conservation officers, two per day shift, twelve hours, one on at night.”

  “That’s it, huh?”

  “In addition to patrolling and maintaining they also run the Natural History Museum down the road. There are more employees there, a couple running the administration, selling tickets, and then they have the ornithologist who comes and does the bird show, and the lizard specialist — I forget what he’s called.”

  “Lizard man. And none of the conservation officers saw anything, heard anything?”

  “Well we won’t know until we talk to each of them.” She unzipped the case in her lap and pulled out some papers. “These are the employee records.” She handed him the two top sheets. He saw names, addresses accompanied by thumbnail images. He quickly scanned the images, ignoring the males, dismissing older staff. There were three women aged roughly nineteen to thirty, the range he guessed for the woman in the water. He pointed at one of them and looked at Blythe.

  “Already checked with all employees while you were out there,” she said. “It’s not one of them.”

  “But we’re going to talk to them all?”

  “Yes. Hank Bloom is going to work with County. He’s human resources with the Reserve. Hank is a friend of mine. He knows what to do, and the Sheriff’s Office can filter through those.” She pulled out a thicker sheaf of paper and passed it to him. “And these are the three-hundred-plus volunteers in addition to the Reserve staff, assisting with all the research and resource management projects.”

  “Oh, Jesus.” He whistled.

  “The decedent could be a volunteer.” Blythe’s gaze was stony. “That would explain how she was in the estuary without drawing attention. Hank Bloom is also getting us a list of ongoing projects and the volunteers assigned to them.”

  Tom felt overwhelmed as he leafed through the volunteer profiles. So many faces, lots of them women, lots of them young. “Maybe she’s homeless,” he said.

  “Maybe.”

  “What about her drifting in from somewhere else? With the tide and all that?”

  “It would have to be fairly close by.”

  “Susan Libby indicated Stopper Creek was where she usually takes clients on the sunrise tour. Best views, or whatever. Could explain why she didn’t come across the body sooner.”

  “Let’s start in the center, and work our way out,” Blythe said, tapping the file.

  “What about tattoos?” he asked, looking closer at the pages. There wasn’t that kind of detail in the descriptions. Like the employee list, it was just names, phone numbers, addresses and headshots. “There’s got to be an in-depth volunteer database, somewhere we can filch through the data, narrow it down.”

  She shook her head. “By project, maybe, there are better records. Right now there’s no big ongoing project — everything is on hold while this relationship with the Reisen Group gets off the ground. In the meantime, volunteers come and go.”

  Tom looked at the stack of papers, feeling more confused. “So what are we doing with this?”

  “We, as in you and I, aren’t doing anything except passing it to Everglades County.”

  Tom felt relieved. It would take days to go through all the records. He was glad they were working with a huge law enforcement body like Everglades County. It was also a lot to be in charge of. Typically, the state bureau provided services upon request to law enforcement agencies. Sometimes the FDLE wanted in on something, and such overtures were made higher up by the commissioner, or by regional commanders.

  “So the Sheriff let Turnbull turn this over to us?”

  Her mouth was a grim line. “They’ve reached an agreement about jurisdiction.”

  She seemed reluctant to explain any further. He caught a whiff of her alluring perfume, glanced at her long legs then quickly away. He knew it was ridiculous to be checking out his supervisor. There was something about her, though.

  “You, Lange, are going to stick with the body.”

  Tom must’ve made a face because Blythe gave him a look.

  “Everglades County is used to working with the Medical Examiner’s Office which is the closer, better fatality collection point.”

  “What about Ward? He any good? Seemed a little . . . I don’t know.”

  She glanced away. “He’s meticulous.”

  The district medical examiner handled the biology, DNA, chemistry, toxicology of a body. You’d have to be meticulous.

  “We want him to be thorough,” Blythe said, “but we don’t want to drag our feet. So you’re going to be there, keeping an eye on him. Autopsy should take two days, max. External today, internal tomorrow. We’ll have the clothing go up to our lab for trace analysis, share the burden.”

  She checked the mirror. Tom turned around as a van bounced past on the dirt road, going too fast, as he had earlier. He glimpsed “Channel 7” on the side. The media were here.

  “I’ll talk to them.” Blythe got out of the car. “You’d better get going.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The office of the district medical examiner looked deceptively pleasant from the outside. The building was a simple concrete structure adorned with palm trees. An entryway extended out toward the parking lot, with a translucent roof that let the sunlight shine through.

  Tom walked into the lobby. Threadbare carpeting, industrial gray, led to a long counter. After he’d signed his name on the register, the receptionist handed him a small bag. “Your first time here?” She was young, round-faced, smiling up at him like he was at Disney World.

  Tom found a face mask and gloves in the bag. “Yes,” he said.

  “Great. I’ll show you in. Right this way.” She led him out of the lobby and back outside into a breezeway.

  The breezeway included several small gardens bearing lush plants. There were pipes overhead, and a machine running he first took for air conditioning. The receptionist caught Tom looking at it. “Odor control.”

  She pointed to the doors on the other side. “The main autopsy room and the infectious morgue suites are there.” Then she nodded at the bag. “You’ll want to put those on.”

  It seemed the facility made every effort to keep death at bay. He slipped the mask over his face and pulled on the gloves.

  After the ritual, she gave him a long look. “Got a sensitive stomach?”

  “I’ll be alright.”

  “May I?” She fished a small tube out of the bag, scented cream to apply under the nostrils. “These masks are for contamination — they don’t do much for the smell.” She held the cream up.

  “Maybe later if I need it.”

  “Okay.” She opened the first door, inviting him in.

  He stepped through.

  The smell hit him like a wave, a gag-inducing blend of formaldehyde and decay, and he felt his stomach clench. The receptionist closed the door behind him with a hollow bang.

  A row of windows spanned the length of the back wall and his eyes went there, grateful for a view of the outside world. Three separate work stations had fixed dissection tables and sinks. Scales hung beside the sinks, resembling the kind for weighing fruit in a grocery store. In the back of the suite was a stainless steel refrigerated storage room. The floor was tiled like a restaurant kitchen. The whole room, in fact, looked like a kitchen. Only the work lights, suspended over the stations on mechanical arms, dispelled the illusion.

  The storage room door opened and Ward walked out, pushing the body on a mobile gurney. He glanced up at Tom but said nothing.

  “Afternoon,” Tom said.

  Ward rolled the body to the middle of the room. The pathologist was wearing a rubber apron, gloves, and a facemask.
The body was draped with a white sheet. Tom expected Ward to choose one of the three work stations, but instead he headed for a door. Tom followed him into an adjoining room, much smaller, and windowless — a single autopsy suite. He felt the choke of claustrophobia as soon as Ward closed the door.

  “So, the external examination will take us through several steps.” Ward rummaged around in a drawer. “We’ll inspect and take samples.”

  Ward handed a packet of papers to Tom. Tom read the first page: Body Identification Sheet. He scanned the information — Name, Method of Identification, Location Found, Time Found, Personal Effects, and so on. The sections had been filled out and the document was signed by Ward.

  Tom flipped through to the Terminal Episode History, Decedent Mental Health History and Social History, which were blank.

  Right now, he had nothing. Not even a name.

  Ward was laying tools out on a tray beside the draped body. Tom thought an assistant would ordinarily prepare the tools, but perhaps Ward was fussy in this way. It would fit with what he’d seen so far. Then Ward paused and looked up at Tom. “Do we know if there is any religious objection to the autopsy?”

  Of course Tom didn’t know. It was rare, but he’d read about cases where a victim’s family balked at an autopsy for religious reasons. Usually, a medical examiner could work around it — it just meant more paperwork, sometimes getting a judge involved — but in this case, the deceased person was a Jane Doe. Tom didn’t know if she was Buddhist or Hare Krishna.

  “We can’t wait for our first post-mortem in case evidence,” Tom said.

  Ward held a glimmer in his eye, but nodded soberly.

  There was a knock on the door and Tom’s heart flipped. A dour-looking young woman appeared wearing a white lab coat. “This is Andrea, my assistant and autopsy photographer,” Ward said. Andrea closed the door and Tom’s claustrophobia tightened.

  Andrea clicked on a recorder and placed it on the tray next to Ward while he pulled on a pair of goggles. Then he took the top of the body sheet and carefully rolled it down.

  The decedent’s face hadn’t gotten any better in the past hour. The hollow eye sockets were particularly disturbing, like a mangled doll staring into oblivion. Andrea started taking pictures.