“ Weird shit… unusual? Sick, man… this is sick. Yeah, Dr. Stephens is going to love this.” Mark slipped into his car and drove away with his notes.
THREE
Often an entire city has suffered because of an evil man.
Duval County, Jacksonville, Florida July 7, 2003
Less than an hour before a fantastic sunset had settled over the city of Jacksonville, but a river of clouds had poured in from the ocean and blotted out everything. The grim darkness had come on like an approaching army. Next came a light silver drizzle, the sort that warned of worse to come. The night sky masked the gray clouds of earlier, now creating a black blotter of the Heavens with only the occasional star winking through.
“ No stargazing tonight.” The hefty black officer named Lamar Plummet shoved his white partner while they sat eating a fast-food dinner in their cruiser. He had been talking about the beautiful sunset before, speaking of it in reverential tones, saying that only God could paint a sky like that. Sipping coffee and chewing on burritos, Duval County sheriffs deputies Wayne Bierdsley and Lamar Plummet groaned in unison as the police band announced a 911 call on a ten-26-cardiac/drowning/asphyxiation. They had just begun a meal break-but the call was for Venetia Wharf on the St. John's River, less than a mile away. Bierdsley tossed his burrito aside and picked up, radioing in a ten-4, adding, “Cruiser 44. We're on it.”
“ Whoa, damn it, Wayne,” muttered Plummer as the car pulled from the curb and coffee spilled over his lap. “Jesus.”
“ You're always complaining, Plummer.”
“ Whataya mean? This stuffs hot as hell.”
“ You just got through saying you were bored out of your gourd, so we get a homicide call and you're pissed?”
“ Just get me there in one piece. Where'd you learn how to drive?”
When they arrived, they found a rank old fisherman arguing with a uniformed harbormaster, who wanted the man and his shrimp boat out of the restricted area. “Abrams, you take that thing off twenty yards, the other side of the fence. Cops can find you there as well as here.”
“ Damn you, fool. Are you deaf? I've got an emergency here, a dead woman caught up in our nets.”
Climbing from their cruiser, the two sheriff s deputies laughed to see the two old men standing pipe to pipe, fists clenched. A third man, well dressed and stepping from one of the yachts joined them, shoulder to shoulder with the harbormaster, curious about Abrams's catch.
The well-dressed man said, “I'm Jervis Swantor. That's my boat there. Can I be of any service? What's the emergency?”
Other yachts-people living on their ships were now gathering outside, having been awakened by all the noise: men arguing, police sirens approaching and uniformed men in boots pounding down the seasoned planks.
“ E)ead girl's body come up in my fishing net, and when I saw what'd been done to her… I called nine-one-one. The poor thing's been robbed of her brain! Gin you imagine that? A hole cut clean through her head, here!” He indicated his forehead with his finger. “I screamed bloody murder, I did. And this old fool wants me to take her back out and come in proper on the other side, but now the deputies are here, they can give the orders, Mr. Harbormaster Blowhard.”
“ Mr. Abrams?” started Bierdsley.
“ Captain, son… Captain.”
“ That shrimper's where the body is?” asked Plummer, rushing ahead, Bierdsley following. Their boots beat an anthem as they rushed down the wooden platform ahead of Captain Abrams to where he'd illegally put his dilapidated shrimp boat in, nose first.
A strident warning from the old fisherman trailed the two Duval County deputies down the ramp to the old man's vesseclass="underline" “Prepare yourselves for the worst most horriblest thing I ever seen in this life. Prepare!”
“ Can I help here?” asked the lone yachtsman who had rushed out to try to get a look at the dead body. “I'm Jervis Swantor, boat owners' association, and we all pay dearly to use these spots. What's happened?”
“ I told you what happened!” Abrams shouted at the man.
It was the one truly dark spot along the wharf where missing lights added to the overcast sky. “Looks like she's beyond help,” muttered Lamar Plummer, the beefy black deputy.
Bierdsley, a moderately sized, plump white man, stood beside Plummer, still on the wharf. From where they stood, they saw the mermaid like figure caught up in the shrimper's netting. “Yeah, looks bad, and now it's getting crowded. Civilians starting to gather. We'll need back up just to keep them at bay.” He turned to Swantor and asked him to back off. Bierdsley and Plummer had seen floaters before. They imagined it was a suicide, so what was the old man ranting about? Some massive hole in the head? In the dark, they saw nothing of a bullet wound.
“ Let's see what kind of package the old man's got caught up in his net,” Bierdsley calmly said to Plummer as they boarded the bobbing boat.
Getting shakily aboard himself, Plummer asked no one in particular, “Is this boat tied secure? It's bouncing like a cork.” At the same time, Plummer pounded his flashlight in an effort to improve the beam. “Fucking Eveready.”
Behind them, they saw Jacksonville police cruisers lining up, their strobe lights challenging one another. “We beat the Jax boys this time,” said Lamar, laughing. Off to one side of the harbor, the well-to-do yachts-people huddled. Swantor promised the crowd that he'd get to the bottom of this hullabaloo for them all.
The old fisherman had scurried down behind them now, storming off from the harbormaster, and he warned again, “I'm telling you two, it's one awful, awful sight.”
“ Floaters always are,” agreed Bierdsley. “Worst kinda things happen to a body that's been in water too long.”
“ Not to worry, old man,” Plummer assured the captain, his black face becoming all smile as he winked at Bierdsley.
The deputies rocked on their boots aboard the fishing vessel, and from where they stood in their brown uniforms, they could see the broad expanse of US-295 where the bridge spanned the river, and they could see the Jacksonville Naval Air Station. In the opposite direction a patient skyline awaited the eye. A beautiful blue-lit city on the waters of the St. John's River.
Captain Abrams's boat was like any of a hundred others along the Florida coastal waters, plying a trade in the fresh fish markets that lined up to buy their goods. Going aft, the two deputies closed the distance between themselves and the body.
She lay in a curled position, her form seemingly cut into the square pieces of a gingham cloth due to netting she lay in. A few of the fish inside the net with the body remained fresh enough to flop from side to side. Obvious to the deputies, the fisherman's crew had worked to salvage what they could of the most profitable fish-red fin and grouper- leaving some pockets of cod and halibut in the net with the dead girl.
Lamar Plummer ignored the odors and went to his knees beside the crumpled body and net. “Least she's all in one piece and still has her skin, so she's not been in the water for too very long.”
Dark shadow obliterated the face. Wayne Bierdsley moved in closer and stared at the girl's drenched form; her dress had the look of a shrink-wrapped shroud, the net was like an oversized shawl. Then his eyes fell on the dark concave black portion of the white head. In the darkness of shadow, with only the harbor lights on, he didn't know what he was looking at or what to make of it when something strange happened. It must be a hallucination, Bierdsley thought a moment before Plummer said, “Jesus, Joseph and Mary… She's got a third eye, and it's looking right at us.”