The shock came when he wiped the steam from the mirror and saw a smeary old man, blotchy skin, gray hair pasted to the skull, ashen whiskers sprouting from deep pores. He had apparently gone a decade or two without paying attention to mirrors.
Fair enough, if they insult you this deeply. He slapped some cream on the wrinkles hemming in his eyes, dressed, sucked in his belly, and refused to check himself out in the mirror again. Insults enough, for one day. Growing older he couldn’t do much about, but Buddy Johnson was another matter.
At dawn he quite deliberately went fishing. He needed to think.
He sat on his own wharf and sipped orange juice. He had to wash off the reels with the hose from the freshwater tank as waves came rolling in and burst in sprays against the creaking pilings. He smelled the salty tang of bait fish in his bucket and, as if to tantalize him, a speckled fish broke from a curling wave, plunging headfirst into the foam. He had never seen a fish do that and it proved yet again that the world was big and strange and always changing. Other worlds, too.
He sat at his desk and shuffled paper for the first hour of the morning shift. He knew he didn’t have long before the Ethan Anselmo case hit a dead end. Usually a homicide not wrapped up in two weeks had a less-than-even chance of ever getting solved at all. After two weeks the case became an unclaimed corpse in the files, sitting there in the dark chill of neglect.
Beyond the autopsy you go to the evidence analysis reports. Computer printouts, since most detectives still worked with paper. Tech addenda and photos. All this under a time and cost constraint, the clock and budget always ticking along. “Investigative prioritizing,” the memos called it. Don’t do anything expensive without your supe’s nod.
So he went to see his supe, a black guy two months in from Vice, still learning the ropes. And got nothing back.
“The Feds, you let them know about the Centauri connection, right?” the supe asked.
“Sure. There’s a funnel to them through the Mobile FBI office.”
Raised eyebrows. “And?”
“Nothing so far.”
“Then we wait. They want to investigate, they will.”
“Not like they don’t know the Centauris are going out on civilian boats.” McKenna was fishing to see if his supe knew anything more but the man’s eyes betrayed nothing.
The supe said, “Maybe the Centauris want it this way. But why?”
“Could be they want to see how ordinary people work the sea?”
“We gotta remember they’re aliens. Can’t think of them as like people.”
McKenna couldn’t think of how that idea could help so he sat and waited. When the supe said nothing more, McKenna put in, “I’m gonna get a call from the Anselmo widow.”
“Just tell her we’re working on it. When’s your partner get back?”
“Next week. But I don’t want a stand-in.”
A shrug. “Okay, fine. Just don’t wait for the Feds to tell you anything. They’re just like the damn FBI over there.”
McKenna was in a meeting about new arrest procedures when the watch officer came into the room and looked at him significantly.
The guy droning on in front was a city government lawyer and most of his audience was nodding off. It was midafternoon and the coffee had long run out but not the lawyer.
McKenna ducked outside and the watch officer said, “You got another, looks like. Down in autopsy.”
It had washed up on Orange Beach near the Florida line, so Baldwin County Homicide had done the honors. Nobody knew who it was and the fingerprints went nowhere. It had on jeans and no underwear, McKenna read in the Baldwin County report.
When the Baldwin County sheriff saw on the Internet cross-correlation index that it was similar to McKenna’s case they sent it over for the Mobile ME. That had taken a day, so the corpse was a bit more rotted. It was already gutted and probed, and the ME had been expecting him.
“Same as your guy,” the ME said. “More of those raised marks, all over the body.”
Suited up and wearing masks, they went over the swollen carcass. The rot and swarming stink caught in McKenna’s throat but he forced down the impulse to vomit. He had never been good at this clinical stuff. He made himself focus on what the ME was pointing out, oblivious to McKenna’s rigidity.
Long ridges of reddened, puckering flesh laced around the trunk and down the right leg. A foot was missing. The leg was drained white, and the ME said it looked like a shark bite. Something had nibbled at the genitals. “Most likely a turtle,” the ME said. “They go for the delicacies.”
McKenna let this remark pass by and studied the face. Black eyes, broad nose, weathered brown skin. “Any punctures?”
“Five, on top of the ridges. Not made by teeth or anything I know.”
“Any dental ID?”
“Not yet.”
“I need pictures,” McKenna said. “Cases like this cool off fast.”
“Use my digital, I’ll e-mail them to you. He looks like a Latino,” the ME said. “Maybe that’s why no known fingerprints or dental. Illegal.”
Ever since the first big hurricanes, Katrina and Rita, swarms of Mexicans had poured in to do the grunt work. Most stayed, irritating the working class who then competed for the construction and restaurant and fishing jobs. The ME prepared his instruments for further opening the swollen body and McKenna knew he could not take that. “Where… where’s the clothes?”
The ME looked carefully at McKenna’s eyes. “Over there. Say, maybe you should sit down.”
“I’m okay.” It came out as a croak. McKenna went over to the evidence bag and pulled out the jeans. Nothing in the pockets. He was stuffing them back in when he felt something solid in the fabric. There was a little inner pocket at the back, sewed in by hand. He fished out a key ring with a crab-shaped ornament and one key on it.
“They log this in?” He went through the paperwork lying on the steel table. The ME was cutting but came over. Nothing in the log.
“Just a cheap plastic thingy,” the ME said, holding it up to the light. “Door key, maybe. Not a car.”
“Guy with one key on his ring. Maybe worked boats, like Anselmo.”
“That’s the first guy, the one who had those same kinda marks?”
McKenna nodded. “Any idea what they are?”
The ME studied the crab ornament. “Not really. Both bodies had pretty rough hands, too. Manual labor.”
“Workin’ stiffs. You figure he drowned?”
“Prob’ly. Got all the usual signs. Stick around, I’ll know soon.”
McKenna very carefully did not look back at the body. The smell was getting to him even over the air conditioning sucking air out of the room with a loud hum. “I’ll pick up the report later.” He left right away.
His supe sipped coffee, considered the sound-absorbing ceiling, and said, “You might see if VICAP got anything like this.”
The Violent Criminal Apprehension Program computer would cross-filter the wounds and tell him if anything like that turned up in other floaters. “Okay. Thought I’d try to track that crab thing on the key chain.”
The supe leaned back and crossed his arms, showing scars on both like scratches on ebony. “Kinda unlikely.”
“I want to see if anybody recognizes it. Otherwise this guy’s a John Doe.”
“It’s a big gulf. The ME think it could’ve floated from Mexico?”
“No. Local, from the wear and tear.”
“Still a lot of coastline.”
McKenna nodded. The body had washed up about forty miles to the east of Bayou La Batre, but the currents could have brought it from anywhere. “I got to follow my hunches on this.”