A False Dawn (3 page)

FIVE

It was late in the afternoon when I finally arrived at the Ponce Marina.  Finding and buying the right bilge pump took longer than I expected.  Now it was less than two hours before sunset, and the posts on the marina docks cast long shadows toward the east.

Five months ago, at a DEA auction, I’d bought a 38-foot Bayliner for ten cents on the dollar.  The boat was ten years old.  It had an ample cockpit for fishing, dive platform, two cabins, salon and fly bridge.  I’d picked it up not long after selling
Eternity.
  Sailing was a love, but sailing without the woman I loved was no longer fun.

My new, “old” boat was called
Jupiter.
  I had it hauled, painted, and the zincs replaced before I piloted it up the Intracoastal to Ponce Marina in Ponce Inlet. 

Today I wanted to work with my hands—to center my thoughts on something other than the girl I’d found.  I twisted bolts and did some minor rewiring on board
Jupiter
as I tried to will the bilge pump into place.  Every time I refocused on the job at hand, my thoughts would shift to the girl.  Was she going to be all right physically?  Maybe.  In her heart, never.  Who was she?  How’d she get to the river?

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.

“Hey Sean!  Got a minute?”  It was Dave Collins, standing on the bow of his boat, rinsing off the swim platform.
            “Sure.”

Dave Collins wasn’t one of the boomers who dreamed of sailing around the world.  Before retirement, he was employed by American oil companies.  He’d worked in countries like Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Israel.  He had been in “human resources, ” a recruiter, so he'd said.  Dave had two daughters and one grandson living in Michigan.  His boat,
Gibraltar
,
a 42-foot trawler, was a few slips away from
Jupiter.

Dave shut off the water and put away the hose.  In his early sixties, he was silver-haired and broad-shouldered.  No beer belly in spite of his love of dark beers.  Like me, he’d lost his wife, but his loss was because of divorce.   

As Dave stepped onto
Jupiter’s
cockpit, I said, “Get a beer and come on up.”

He whistled as he rummaged down in the galley and then climbed the bridge ladder, beer in hand, with the agility of someone half his age.  “You had a visitor.”

“Who?”

“A detective.  Said his name was Slater.”

“What else did he say?”

Dave sipped his beer.  “Are you in some kind of trouble, Sean?”

“By default.”  I told him about finding the girl.

Dave sat the beer in the cup holder.  “I saw a little piece on the news.  They didn’t have much.  Said an unidentified woman was found beaten and stabbed near the St. Johns River.  The reporter said police are questioning a ‘person of interest.’  By the detective’s line of questioning, I bet you’re that ‘person of interest?  You think this Joe Billie did it?”

“Wish I knew.”

Dave made a slight grunt and sipped his beer.  “Tell me again what the victim said, the words she uttered to you?”

“
Atlacatl imix cuanmiztli
.” 

Dave wrote it down on the back of a napkin.  “Wonder what it means?”  He folded the napkin and placed it in the pocket of his Hawaiian-print shirt.  “If English isn’t her first language, what is?  Where’s home?”

“She looked exotic, similar to the people I’ve seen in areas of Central America.  I’d held her hand waiting for paramedics.  There were no calluses.  Nails were painted, lipstick smeared, she wore tight jeans and a blouse.”

“What are you thinking?”

“I’m wondering if she made it.  Who’s her family?  Where’s she from?”  

“Sean, this detective Slater is curious about
you
.”

“What else did he say?”      

“Didn’t seem like your typical sleuth.”

“How?”

“Poor listener.  Knew answers to questions before he finished asking them.”

“What sort of questions?”

“The usual.  How much time did you spend on your boat?  Did you ever bring women here?  Any rough stuff or noises?   He was trying to see if you fit a profile.”

“What’d you tell him?”

“I told him you were a loner and came to the boat only on the night of a full moon and on a high tide.”  Dave chuckled and swallowed the last ounce of his beer.  “I didn’t tell him a damn thing, really.  Nothing to tell.  You’re one of the good guys, Sean.  A burnout, but one of the good guys.  Seen my share of the bad ones.”

“Bet you have.”

“Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

“Thanks, Dave.”

“Maybe I can catch you for eggs and issues in the morning.”

Dave never referred to the morning meal as ‘breakfast.’  It was always called ‘eggs and issues’ because it was when he liked discussing the morning newspaper.

“Tiki bar at eight a.m. for breakfast,” I said.

#

THE ROAR OF A DOZEN
Harleys carried across the marina.  The bikers seemed to parade through the marina’s gravel parking lot, disembarking in front of the Bayside Bar and Grille.  Black leather and jeans stepping from the shiny chrome, like cowboys tying up horses in front of a saloon at sundown on a Saturday night. 

I could smell the smoke from blackened Florida redfish coming from the Bayside, which was an outdoor tiki bar with a roof of dried palm fronds.  The hangout catered to tourists, boaters, bikers and a few vagabonds that fell between the cracks and landed on barstools.  The tiki bar sat on stilts over the water.   

Maybe I’d stay on
Jupiter
for the night, make sure the bilge was performing well. As I debated whether to make the drive home, I thought about Max and her tiny bladder. 

So it would be an evening with a wiener dog.  I’d call Dave and cancel breakfast.
   

I CROSSED THE DUNLAWTON BRIDGE
just as the sun was painting the Halifax River in shades of flattened copper and deep merlot reds that simmered across the water like a river of blood.  The day’s events seemed a lifetime ago.  Was the girl okay?  No, she wasn’t okay.  Never would be.  But was she alive?    

Then I turned my Jeep around and drove fast toward Halifax Hospital.