I reconnected the wires, got out from the depths of the bilge and switched on the power. The pump hummed, and a steady pulse of water splashed into the marina bay. Within a few minutes the bilge was dry.
A slight breeze moved across the mangroves on the western side of the bay, and I could smell the saltwater rising in the tidal flats. The tide was creeping up on the oyster beds, spider-legged mangrove roots and sandbars.
I went below, shucked off my T-shirt, faded swimsuit, and was soon soaping up in the shower next to the master cabin. The warm water beat against the back of my neck. It’s easy to remove the dirt, but how do you wash away a mood?
With my eyes closed, I could see her face. Her unharmed eye looking at me. Looking into me. I let the water run over my head and closed my eyes for a full minute. Something in my mind popped to a pixilated image, a subliminal portrait of another victim now blurred by time and fatigue. I tried to frame it before the image faded like fireworks in the night sky. Gone. There was something about this girl that I’d seen somewhere else. What was it? Where? I tried to concentrate on each detail I saw at the crime scene.
I could still feel her weak pulse on the tips of my fingers. Under the drone of the shower, I heard her labored breathing. The frantic weight of her struggle dropped around me like black soot.
I visualized her beaten body. Face. Swollen jaw. The bruise in the shape of a U. The nose. The lips. What was it? What had I seen somewhere else? I pressed my forearms against the shower walls, steadying myself and keeping the walls from enclosing around me. The shower now sounded like a roaring waterfall.
I dried off, put on fresh shorts, a clean T-shirt, and pulled a Corona from the farthest and coldest ranks of the soldiers in the fridge. I found an aspirin bottle, shook out two of the little white gods, and tossed them down with a swig of beer
I punched in a stored connection on my cell phone. My former Miami PD homicide partner, Ron Hamilton, picked up the phone with his customary greeting.
“How the hell are you, Sean?”
“What did you ever do before caller ID?”
“It’s got its pluses and minuses. Tips are way down. Nobody wants to get involved. Nobody wants to leave a trail. But the nuts still call. They don’t give a shit.” He paused for a moment. “Why haven’t I heard from you in what…four months?”
“No real reasons, you know, still trying to put the pieces back together again. I’m hoping I’ll figure it out before I’m broke.” I paced Jupiter’s salon.
Ron was one of the few friends I had left inside Miami PD. He and his wife Alice had been there through Sherri’s illness, death, and funeral. They helped take care of arrangements. All I did was to honor Sherri’s wishes and scatter her ashes at sea.
I told Ron about the beaten girl, described her features and what she was wearing. I filled him in on what I knew of Joe Billie.
“Think Joe Billie is the perp?” he asked.
“Don’t know. Guy’s a little odd.”
“So are you, Sean. For Christ's sake, you’re supposed to be moving on with your life. Let the locals handle it. You made a promise to Sherri.”
“And I made a promise to the girl I held today. I said I’d find who did it.”
“Just walk away, Sean. Okay?”
“She almost died in my arms. She might be dead for all I know.”
“The more you get involved, and I’ve seen it a dozen times, the more obsessed you get. I’ve heard you say that someone has to speak for the dead, the unsolved murders. The shear volume is like being in a war, maybe like some of that shit you went through in the Middle East.”
I said nothing. I could hear him breathing hard into the phone.
Ron said, “I’m not a psychologist—”
“That’s right. You’re not.”
“You were a damn great investigator. You take justice personally, but it doesn’t work that way, bro. I saw how this tore you apart from people in your life. People who are or were alive. Sherri and — screw it! You are who you are. Sorry, Sean. Just let it be old buddy.”
I let Ron cool off of a few seconds before I responded. “You ever hold a dying girl in your arms?”
“No.” His voice was flat.
“I do get obsessive when I see a human being victimized that way, and I feel the investigation is a lot weaker than the perp who did it. You know it’s the first forty-eight hours that shape it. I don’t think the lead detective up here has a sense of urgency. But I held her for God’s sake. Did everything I could to keep her alive. Her life and, if she died, her death, do take on a personal priority.”
Ron’s voice was softer. “In homicide, we aren’t called to the scene before they die. Must be damn awful to stumble on one alive…barely.”
“There was something about this girl…something I’ve seen before.”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t know. I can’t place it because I was trying so hard to save her life. The usual details I always scrutinized became a film shot at high speed though adrenaline. And I'm having a hard time playing it back in slow motion. Maybe it was something she said. The way she looked. Exotic and fragile. She said something in a language I didn’t recognize. She said, ‘Atlacatl imix cuanmiztli.’”
“Wonder what it means?”
“Not sure. She might be here illegally, smuggled. Maybe connected to the migrant camps, but I don’t think the vic had spent an hour in the fields. No calluses on her hands. The way she was dressed. Maybe it was a lover’s quarrel that got way out of hand, or something with deeper repercussions.”
“What do you mean?”
“Not sure yet.”
“I’ll check missing person’s reports. Might want to touch base with the feds. ”
“And I might want to try bungee jumping.”
Ron laughed. “You remember Lauren Miles in the FBI’s Miami office?”
“We’ve crossed territorial paths.”
“That’s her. Too bad, she’s such a looker. Easier to dislike if she wasn’t.”
“What about her?”
“The Herald ran a story on one of her investigations a few months ago. She’s investigating missing persons, mostly young women, or at least she was. Florida’s kinda the epicenter for runaways and people that simply vanish.”
“They vanish because their bodies are never found. Others are stolen, maybe sold in some human trafficking ring. And they might as well be dead, too.”
“Yeah, Sean, but unless they’re somebody’s neighbor, they become yesterday’s news real fast.”
“They’re all somebody’s daughter. I owe you one.”
“You owe me nothing. You do owe Sherri, God rest her soul, a promise to do something else with your life. Sounds like you stepped in a big shit hole. Ask yourself if it’s worth it. Remember the price you paid.”
Ron was gone, but his words lingered in the salon like foul cigarette smoke.
SIX
I had to get some fresh air. I tossed my phone on the sofa in the salon, went out the sliding glass doors leading to the cockpit, and climbed the ladder steps to the fly bridge. This was the perch I liked most. I unzipped and folded up the isinglass, exposing all four quadrants of the bridge to the coastal breezes. I sat in the captain’s chair, swiveled around, propped my feet up on the console and sipped the beer. Another hour and the sun would be setting beyond the expanse of estuaries and flat, tidal marshes. A half dozen brown pelicans sailed effortlessly across the marina.
I held the cold bottle to the left side of my forehead. The alcohol and aspirin seemed to work in unison, the throb becoming less of a pain and more of a state of mind. I looked across the marina toward the wide Intracoastal and thought of the last time I sailed with Sherri. I closed my eyes and could hear her voice.