Square Snapper (Detective Inspector Burgess)

Square Snapper

Deborah Middleton

Chapter 1

The girl’s body lay entangled in the shallow water of the mangrove swamp, tendrils of hair swirling like tentacles of an octopus around her bloodless face, the arrow of a spear gun protruding from her chest. The two boys had been clambering in and out of the mangrove roots on their way to their hidden tree house when they spotted her. Shaking fingers had dialled 911 on their cell phones.

Detective Inspector Leon Burgess of the Bermuda Police’s Serious Crimes Unit calculated that it had taken no longer than ten minutes to reach Shaw Park from the time the hysterical calls had come in from the boys. One had been able to pull himself together long enough to give coherent information to the 911 switchboard operator and the Police had pulled out all the stops to get there in a hurry. Thank God for kids carrying cell phones. Burgess looked at the two boys, lips blue, teeth chattering from shock. He knew this was something that would wake them from sleep for the rest of their lives. He had a few crime scene images himself that were forever burned into his consciousness. They came with the territory after several years on the police force and, from time to time, would surface unbidden in his dreams. He sighed as he waited for the police photographer to finish recording the scene and for the pathologist to arrive. The day was just too beautiful to be dealing with death. It had dawned fair and the morning sun beat down and sparkled on the water. The familiar briny smell of the shallow water evoked childhood memories of happy afternoons fishing off the rocks at Spittal Pond with his father, nylon line wrapped around a small piece of wood and a bucket of squid for bait. The yellow breasted kiskadees were in full chorus, having taken over from the chirruping of the nocturnal tree frogs as the sun had begun its climb through the sky. It was not even ten o’clock and it was already sweltering despite the gentle breeze. The humidity must be through the roof. Wiping his closely shaven head with a clean white handkerchief, he let his mind roam. Who could have done this? What type of person would kill in such a way? He liked to survey a crime scene and look at all the hypothetical angles. Was this a domestic gone very ugly or something more sinister? Would she have been in the water when it happened? He found himself intrigued by the choice of weapon.

D.I. Burgess, “Buddy” to his friends, was a stickler for detail. His large frame and languid movements belied a sharp mind. He continued to survey the crime scene and, taking out his notebook, began recording every detail with slim, brown fingers, all the while allowing sights, sounds and smells to imprint themselves on his brain. He could easily have been mistaken for a lightweight with his elegantly cut suits, razor-sharp creased pants and latest colognes. “Metrosexual,” he would reply with a laugh when his colleagues gave him a hard time - and that was never very often. His whole demeanour commanded respect. Never one to speak without thinking first, his team looked to him in a crisis as a calming influence. Once, after he had talked a drug-crazed, machete-wielding teenager into giving up his weapon, he was asked how he had remained so cool in the face of such danger. In his typically modest way, he had replied that he was a little like “a duck swimming on a pond”; while he might look serene on the surface, underneath he was paddling like crazy. His self-deprecating manner and dry wit had endeared him to his colleagues on the force as well as inspired a fierce loyalty in his team in the Serious Crimes Unit. He was acknowledged as someone who was a rising star for his leadership as well as investigative skills. This popularity was not without its drawbacks; naturally there were those who also envied him and resented the relationship he had with his team. Such were the politics in any hierarchy and the police force was no exception. Burgess endeavoured to steer clear of them and stay focused on the job. Right this minute he found himself battling with his emotions. A part of him was outraged at the horrific death this young girl had suffered but another part of him, of which he felt almost ashamed, relished the thrill of the chase – the chance to test his investigative skills and find the murderer. He knew his colleagues would probably react the same way. They were never more united - or more productive - than when they had a tough case to get their teeth into. They would leave no stone unturned until they got their man… or woman. Burgess wondered if the murderer could have been a woman. Somehow, he could not believe that a woman could do something so brutal to another. He knew, however, that he must keep an open mind and make absolutely no assumptions that could lead him off track. At this point, he must rely solely on evidence and put aside any gut feelings. Experience had proven that preconceived ideas were dangerous which, as a rookie, had sometimes led him down the wrong path. He was now a seasoned detective and had learned those lessons well.
Stay objective and keep all avenues of deductive reasoning open,
he reminded himself.
Stick to facts and rely on the evidence. Keep your eyes and ears open.
His mind was whirling and his pulse racing as outwardly he calmly continued his notations.

An officer in uniform approached. “Their mothers are on the way. The boys are really shaken up.”

“Take them back home and get their statements but question them as gently as possible. Tell their mothers to give them something hot and sweet to drink, maybe tea; should help with the shock. You might want to suggest they think about engaging a child psychologist to help with the trauma. There’s bound to be some emotional fall-out from this.”

“Yes sir.”

Right on cue, the white Subaru of the pathologist pulled up and out she stepped. Burgess surveyed her covertly. It never ceased to make him wonder why such an attractive woman would choose such a grim profession. There was an ethereal quality about her. Jacintha Brangman was a striking, petite lady of slim build and delicate proportions who had a well-earned reputation for competence. Burgess liked working with her. She was thorough, professional and did not allow herself to be intimidated by lawyers or those they defended. He had seen her in action on the witness stand and admired the way she handled herself. Her testimony and forensic evidence had helped him put away more than one criminal and he considered her a valuable part of any investigation. He also had to admit to himself that it helped that she smelled of Chanel, not formaldehyde, and was an intelligent, beautiful young woman.

The doctor immediately produced her kit – a black bag, almost like a tool box, from the trunk of her car. Donning yellow wellington boots, she waded in alongside the body. The Detective Inspector followed as closely as possible, careful not to wet the cuff of his pants. Both were consummate professionals, walking only where they would do the least damage to the newly cordoned off crime scene.

With a gesture belonging more to a concert pianist than one who wielded a scalpel, Jacintha pushed her sunglasses on to her head to anchor her long black hair and snapped on her surgical gloves.

“Looks like she’s been here a few hours.”

She was all business and appeared oblivious to the fact she had disturbed a school of black and yellow striped Sergeant Majors swimming amongst the dead girl’s hair. Burgess felt repulsed and tried to erase the image from his mind. He had seen the damage that fish could do to a body immersed in water.

“Liver temperature indicates she’s been dead at least thirty-six hours. I’ll need to factor in the water temperature to give you a better estimate, but rigor mortis has dissipated confirming this and, since she’s a well nourished individual with a normal body weight, I would expect rigour to have progressed normally. You know, the body remains rigid for up to thirty-six hours after death and then becomes pliable again. Rigour may have been speeded up by the high water temperature but, I’m pretty sure this time frame is close.”

“She’s got a lot of cuts and abrasions.”

“Yeah, probably from snagging on the coral and mangrove roots.” Her accent was more American than Bermudian with southern overtones, evidence of her childhood and education in Atlanta, Georgia. “Not too much damage from fish and I don’t see any defensive wounds. I would guess she didn’t get near enough to fight off her attacker. Most probably she was attacked from behind. I’ll be able to tell you more once I get her back to the lab.”

“Any way to tell if she was speared in the water or on dry land?”

“I’ll be able to give you a better idea when I’ve done the autopsy. Obviously, she didn’t die here. Look at the pooling of the blood on the front of her body. She must have been lying face down when she died.”

Burgess reluctantly stepped in closer to have a look at the bruising while Jacintha lifted the body on to its side so he could get a better view without having to get his feet wet.

Jacintha gently laid her back down. “Poor girl, what a horrible way to go. I’ve never seen anything like this before. I’ll also do a rape kit and let you know the findings.”

“How did they get here so fast? No, don’t bother answering that. This is Bermuda after all. It’s going to be all over the island in no time and God only knows what rumours will come out of this one.”

He left Shaw Park when he saw the ambulance arrive and back at the station sat reviewing his notes, adding details here and there as they came to him.

“Hey, bro’, what’s happening?”

Burgess looked up smiling at the sing-song Bajan accent of his colleague, Detective Sergeant Archie Carmichael. Archie was the result of a police recruiting drive in Barbados and was as dark and heavily muscled as Burgess was brown skinned and wiry. They were total opposites in so many ways, yet the best of friends. Burgess admired Archie’s quick wit and breezy personality yet he’d seen him handle himself very physically with some real hard cases. Not for nothing did he lift weights with a professional trainer down at a gym on the North Shore.

“Lookin’ fly in those shorts, Arch.”

Archie’s dark round face split into his ladykiller wide grin. “You know me, Buddy, never too shy to show off the knees!” No matter what time of year, Archie loved to dress in the traditional pastel-coloured Bermuda shorts and knee length socks. As a concession to the summer heat, he had on a short sleeved open-necked shirt. In the winter, he would sport a navy blazer which would tend to emphasize, rather than hide, his biceps. Nobody, with the exception of Burgess, would ever dare to comment on his attire. “What’re you working on?”

“It’s not good, Arch. Girl shot through the chest with a spear gun. No leads yet. No tyre marks or footprints near the crime scene so I don’t think it was a dump job. We found her over in the mangroves in Shaw Park; probably not the original crime scene. My guess is that she floated there.”

“Don’t know. No ID. She’s blonde, I’d guess about twenty-five or so but it’s hard to tell when they’ve been in the water a while.”

“Interesting murder weapon. I wonder if we can get any leads off that.”

“Right now I’ve got to get a grip on the winds and currents last night to see if I can figure out where she may have been killed. Where’s Pamela? I need her to talk to the guys at the Bio Station and Harbour Radio.”

Chapter 2

Later that evening, Burgess pulled up to his small apartment beneath his grandmother’s typical stone Bermuda house. Its immaculate white-washed roof and white shutters contrasted sharply with its joyfully vivid turquoise walls. He loved the view of the South Shore from his home. Tonight was especially clear and he could see the waves breaking over the reefs, the ocean changing colour depending on the depth of the water. Must be low tide, he mused. It made him wonder if Pamela would have a report on wind, currents and tide on his desk in the morning.