Brigands Key Read online

  “Got us a body, Doc. Found out in the ocean by that dude from Gainesville. He radioed from way out and just now got to the dock. Randy’s bringing the body in, be here any minute.”

  “Know the identity?”

  Greenwood shook his head. “John Doe,” he said, relishing the phrase. Law enforcement in Brigands Key usually amounted to making high school kids ditch cigarettes. Discovery of an unidentified body was news on the order of Pearl Harbor.

  “I’m assuming you’ve got my AC going in the Icebox?”

  “Um, I had some leads to follow up, a bunch of them. I was fixin’ to.”

  Hammond hurried past, giving the deputy an anguished look. “You’re killing me, Tommy.”

  At the end of the hall, he fumbled with his keys and rattled open the ancient wood and glass door that was stenciled importantly with “Medical Examiner.”

  The Icebox belched a wave of warm air into his face. He flicked on the lights and twisted the thermostat. With a clunk, the old unit hummed and a breeze fanned him.

  He quickly set up his workstation, swinging lamps into play, rolling out trays of tools. He could set up for two bodies at a time, three in a pinch, but the place was never meant for this kind of work and a single cadaver was the number appropriate for the scale of the room. One is the loneliest number, his mind sang off-key. And the best number when it’s a stiff. Not a stiff, he reminded himself. A little sensitivity, if you please. Someone’s husband, boyfriend, son, father, grandfather.

  He glanced at the clock. Five minutes had passed and the room was reasonably chilled and neat. He looked over the small lab, satisfied that it was as ready as it would get, considering its limitations. All that was missing was the stiff. Damn. Did it again.

  A clatter came from the hallway. A moment later the door swung in. Police Chief Randy Sanborn pushed through, nodding to Hammond.

  “Welcome... to my laboratory,” Hammond said in an asthmatic Peter Lorre voice.

  “Got a customer, Jerry.”

  “A nonpaying customer.”

  “Glad you find it so funny.”

  Hammond swallowed his grin. Don’t joke with The Chief. Not today. Not when he had that look. Sanborn was too serious, too political and way too cozy with the Council and, like himself, a repatriated lifer on Brigands Key. The island had a habit of reeling back in those that strayed.

  Sanborn pulled a gurney in after him. A body bag lay upon it. The door swung back shut, but quickly reopened. Carson Grant looked in, hesitated.

  “Come on in, Grant,” Sanborn said. “Law enforcement on Brigands Key is not quite as formal as in the big city. Jerry, this is Dr. Carson Grant. He found John Doe.”

  “I’ve seen you around town,” Hammond said.

  “I suspect no one moves around here without drawing attention.”

  “That’d be right. Sit. I’d shake your hand, but despite this medieval lab, we’re not total hicks. Got to follow some protocols when doing forensics.”

  The gurney was wheeled in and parked adjacent to the operating table. The body bag was unzipped and Hammond and Sanborn transferred John Doe onto the table. Sanborn administered a thanks-for-your-big-help glance at Grant. Grant shook his head. “Uh-uh. I fished him out of the ocean and brought him ashore. I entrusted him to your capable hands from that point.”

  “Yeah, I’ve got some questions about that,” Sanborn said. “Mind if I work while you work, Jerry?”

  Hammond shook his head. He punched a button on a battered tape recorder.

  “Hell, Jerry, we bought you a laptop with voice recognition software. Why aren’t you using that?” The police chief was edgy, and it showed.

  “It never works. Give it back and get me a real lab and a beautiful assistant if you want to spend money.” Hammond glanced at his watch and announced the time and date for the recorder. “White male, age is a guess, early twenties.” He stretched a tape from head to toe. “Height, five feet, ten inches." He glanced at the digital scale readout. "Weight, one-seventy-one, maybe altered due to immersion in water. Need to do a bit of research on that.” He glanced at Grant. “You found him naked?”

  “Yep.”

  “Where?”

  “In a freshwater spring, twenty-two miles offshore.”

  Hammond made a small sound. “A spring? In the Gulf? Is that a joke?”

  “Offshore marine springs are real. There are a couple dozen known off both coasts of Florida.”

  “How's that?”

  “Florida’s only a third the size it was during the last ice age. The coastline was miles further out, the oceans several hundred feet lower, the water locked up in glaciers. Rainwater on land seeps into the limestone and sometimes flows out in springs. Some of 'em happen to be on what was once dry land.”

  “The springs are for real,” Sanborn said. “But I’ve lived here all my life and never heard about one anywhere near here.”

  “That’s because I just discovered it this morning.”

  “The fishermen hereabouts never discovered one.”

  Grant shrugged. “So?”

  “So how’d you manage?”

  “Satellite imaging. Wave of the future and all that.” Grant nodded toward the body. “Was it a drowning?”

  “Too soon to tell,” Hammond said. “No overt signs of trauma, no wounds. Maybe a heart attack.”

  “Know the guy?”

  Hammond cocked his head. “Nyet, Comrades. Never seen him before. Randy?”

  “Nope. Out of town sport fisherman, most likely. Probably got drunk and fell overboard.”

  Grant hesitated. “I don’t think so. He was wedged into a spring crevice, pinned in place by the out-flowing current. There’s no way a dead body or a drunk could wash into a spring, against the current.”

  “I know a little about offshore springs,” Sanborn said. “Some of them reverse flow with the tides.”

  “Not this one. Constant out-flowing water pressure.”

  “Could he be a diver? Could’ve swum into the spring and then died.”

  “If he did he did it in a cave thirty feet below the surface, with no gear. And no clothes.”

  “You didn’t see any other boats?”

  “I passed a few sport boats five miles out, fishing the first reef. A couple of commercial fishing boats a little past that. Nothing within fifteen miles of the spring.”

  “I’m going to need a fix on that spring.”

  Grant began to speak, stopped. “I’d rather not give it, but I’m guessing my preferences don’t mean much.”

  “You’d be guessing right. Your hole in the ocean is a possible crime scene. Why don’t you want us there?”

  “You’re law enforcement. You do crime scenes. I’m an archaeologist. I do archaeology scenes. The two don’t mix.”

  “You think we’ll screw up your site.”

  “I know you will.”

  Sanborn let the challenge hang in the air. His fingers drummed softly. “You’ve dicked around with a possible crime scene. Didn’t you stop to think about that?”

  “I did.”

  “And you dicked it anyway. I could lock you up right now.”

  “Arrest a good Samaritan? Doesn’t seem prudent. I could have just left the guy where I found him, don’t forget. I was worried he might drift free and never be seen again.”

  Another silence. “What kind of archaeology is done twenty-two miles out? Sunken ships?”

  “I’m looking for human habitation sites.”

  “Expecting to find Atlantis, are you?”

  “As I said, during the ice age that area was dry land. Florida was wonderful for ice age cultures. Lots of game, not bitterly cold like the rest of the continent, not buried under a mile-high sheet of ice like the Midwest and New England. A freshwater spring was prime real estate to Paleo-Indians. You had year-round, crystal clear drinking water.”

  “I need to see what you found.”

  Grant hesitated for the slimmest of moments. “Who said I found anything?”
r />   “I believe I did.”

  “I found rocks and sand.”

  “And a dead man. Let me ask once more. What else did you find in the Goddamn spring?”

  Grant studied him for a moment. He reached into his pocket, withdrew a cloth, and unfolded it, revealing a stone spear point.

  “Hey, your memory has improved. And you remembered a weapon. How about that.”

  “It’s an artifact, not a murder weapon.”

  “Who said anything about murder?”

  “That’s where you’re going with this.”

  Hammond glanced from Sanborn to Grant. Redirect them, he told himself. “At a glance, I’d say the body’s a day or two old. More or less. Randy, that’s your starting point.”

  “And your best guess as to cause of death?”

  “You want guesses, hire a bookie. I’ll open him up in a few minutes. You’re welcome to watch, but no one hardly ever sticks around for that.”

  “I hate to break with tradition.” Sanborn rose from his chair. “Get me some dentals if you can. I’ll be back in a bit to lift some prints. Dr. Grant, where will you be staying?”

  “On my boat.”

  “Wrong answer. Your boat is hereby impounded. Get yourself a room at the Morrison and don’t think about leaving. At the moment, I have a few questions. And I want straight answers. Let’s go chat.”

  Grant shook his head, a look of disbelief on his face, and headed for the door.

  Hammond watched them go and turned back to his subject. He was now alone in a cramped, dismal lab with a pale John Doe, a recently deceased mystery man. The creepiness of the lab—quiet, gloomy—began to press in on him. The body stared at the ceiling, eyes like fogged glass. Found in a submarine spring.

  Something was wrong with this picture. Dreadfully wrong.

  He lifted John Doe’s right arm, drew the hand close. He felt the palm, squeezed it, felt its cool pale flesh dent and refuse to return to form. He spread the pliable fingers, bent them forward and back. Where was the rigor mortis? A day or two old, he’d told them. Best guess. But what was whispering in his ear that he had no idea?

  * * *

  The spear point lay upon a towel on Randy Sanborn’s desk. Sanborn hovered over it with a magnifying glass. He picked it up, held the glass close, hoping to coax some kind of clue out of it. Hoping to see evidence that it was a fake. He thumbed the blade’s edge, surprised at its jagged sharpness. He occasionally flipped through a book on Indian arrowheads and spear points, holding Grant’s point close to the pictures, comparing. He didn’t know what he expected to find. Maybe an inscription saying “made in China.”

  The piece was evidence of a sort. Not necessarily an alibi for Grant, but at least a good excuse. Maybe. Undersea Indian villages? Okay, that idea was too bizarre to be a lie. Grant was an archaeologist and here was the fruit of his supposed labor. But he’d been stubborn and shifty right up until he realized Sanborn was going to invade the spring, like it or not. Then he described all manner of bone chips, hooks, and potsherds littering his magical spring. It would have been nice if Grant had brought them in, but the guy claimed he couldn’t screw with “context.”

  Sanborn knew a couple guys he could call and check out the story. And he sure wasn’t going to take Grant at his word.

  His radio chirped. “Randy, Julie Denton would like a few minutes,” Jackie said.

  Sanborn sat up straight and sucked in his stomach just a bit, feeling like Pavlov’s dog. “Send her in.” He surveyed his office, did a quick straightening of the papers on his desk, squaring them up. He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a worn paperback copy of Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not and set it on the edge of the desk, nice and square. Julie loved Hemingway and there’s no way she could miss it. He’d already finished reading it, a couple of weeks back. It was good stuff, island stuff, rumrunners and all, and reminded him a lot of Brigands Key. Julie would only care about a really literate guy and he’d been devouring books lately. If this was what it took...

  He suddenly felt pretentious and scooped the book back into his desk drawer.

  The door opened and Julie entered. “I hear you’ve got something,” she said.

  Not Hemingway, he thought sourly. “Word gets around. I barely had time to get back to my office.”

  “Inconvenient?”

  “Julie, we always have time for our friends in the media.”

  “The ‘media,’” Julie said with a narrow smirk. She took a seat opposite his desk without waiting to be asked, moving with feline grace, leaning forward as was her habit. She pulled a beaten Rays baseball cap off her head, letting her dark brown hair cascade waves that glowed in the afternoon light. She tucked a strand behind her ear. Sanborn swallowed.

  “Randy, you’ve got a John Doe.”

  “We have an unidentified adult male. It’s a bit too soon to go melodramatic.”

  “The news highlight of the week on this rotten island was Old Lady Cole backing into Hammond’s mailbox. You’ve got a body; that’s the biggest story in five years. It’s five-thirty now, but I’m not leaving and my paper isn’t shutting down tonight until this story is written and printed for tomorrow morning.”

  “Like I said, we haven’t got anything yet.”

  “Right. You got the word this morning and the body before noon. You’ve been all over town talking to people, calling people. You’ve got story. Even dead ends are news when it comes to dead bodies.”

  He drummed gently on his desk. “Okay, but be gentle with me.” He related the pertinent facts in chronological, intentionally boring order. No embellishment, no speculation. It was a lesson learned the hard way in Tampa, back when he was wet behind the ears, back before he learned the hard way about big-city law enforcement. Back before he came home and begged for a spot in the Brigands Key Police Department.

  Julie Denton, he had told himself a thousand times, was not the reason he returned to Brigands Key.

  Julie listened closely to his report, scribbling furiously. When he finished, she glanced up. “That’s it?”

  “You’ll be the first to know when I get more.”

  “We both know that’s not true. I’ll get the story out first but within a day you’ll be getting calls from every big paper in the state. I’m not stupid. This is a big, bizarre story at any level. If I don’t get the scoop now, I never will.”

  Sanborn shifted uneasily in his chair. “The mayor won’t be too crazy about this.”

  “The mayor’s in line for a quote. Probably composing it as we speak.”

  “All right. Can we talk off the record?”

  Julie set her notepad and pen down. “Off the record. For the moment. I’ll let you know when that changes.”

  “See this?” Sanborn motioned to the spear point.

  “I was waiting for you to bring it up.”

  “This is what Grant says he was after.”

  “You don’t believe him?”

  “Let me put it this way. The odds against a lone diver finding a fresh body in a cave no one has ever seen before, almost two dozen miles out to sea, stretch credibility way beyond my limits.”

  “What do you know about Grant?”

  “Not enough. I’ve got this, though. Trouble follows him. He used to be a rising star in archaeology then threw it all in the toilet with some ridiculous claims. He took a sabbatical, returned to work, and led a disastrous expedition to Guatemala. People died and no satisfactory explanation ever came forward. He shows up in Brigands Key and—surprise, surprise—we have a mysterious death.”

  “Mysterious? I heard it was a drowning.”

  Sanborn said nothing, and realized that his fingers were still drumming. He willed them to stop.

  Julie picked up her notepad. “Now we’re getting somewhere. On the record. Let’s start from the top.”

  * * *

  Julie glanced at the clock in the printing room. Two a.m. Wednesday already? She rubbed her eyes, more to clear them than to keep awake. The cl
ean smell of newsprint and ink were coffee enough, and she was not stopping until the morning edition was stacked and ready to roll.

  She didn’t have much. Randy was evasive, true to his nature. Hammond, even more so. But they’d told her more than they’d realized.

  She’d pushed at Randy to let her see the body. She could run a photo, help them identify John Doe. No dice, he said, claiming some obscure rule or other. That would be a last resort; she knew what buttons to push if it came to that.

  The press hummed and clattered, and the sheets slipped through with satisfying rapid-fire clicks.

  She glanced at the headlines of yesterday’s edition. Fishing report. Weather report. The never-ending squabbles between the City Council and Gulf Breeze Properties, the hotshots down in Tampa pushing the Bay View project. The Council making veiled threats about Mayor Johnson’s pension. Small-town politics. Small-town crap.

  She exhaled slowly, and skimmed her writing. Satisfactory at best. It was hard to get excited about crap, and her prose reflected it.

  Now she had something she could sink her teeth into. She was going to give it her best and not get scooped by the biggies. The crap stories could wait. The fishing report was essentially the same every day and no one gave a flip about the mayor’s pension except the mayor.

  The first copies of the morning edition rolled off. Julie picked one up, smelled it, felt it. It was hitting the street in three hours. She tossed the paper back onto the stack. Hitting the streets, indeed. There were four hundred homes on Brigands Key. How many streets could there be? She should count them some day. When she had a spare three minutes.

  She returned to her computer and uploaded the story to her online edition. After the papers were delivered, she’d fire off an electronic copy to Associated Press. She’d have a byline that would be circulated to newsrooms all over the state, maybe all over the country.

  Some editor somewhere would have to notice.

  Chapter Three

  In her dreams, Kyoko Nakamura is lost in a pueblo, in the dark...

  She walks through low dim rooms. Dirt floors, rough walls. Following the sound of crying, searching. The sick and the dead all about. No sound but the crying of an infant.