The sour taste crept up the back of my throat again.
The Coastie’s radioman sounded almost excited when he came back on the air with his mundane questions. I didn’t want to spend any more time than was necessary on the radio. It was possible the killer was still aboard. The very thought made me swivel my head around and check out the windows on all sides of the bridge. I felt so exposed. I kept glancing over my shoulder as I listened to the Coast Guard. The killer must be gone, I told myself. If he had wanted to kill me, there had been plenty of opportunity as I’d wandered around shouting earlier.
Besides, the big boat felt utterly empty. Maybe it was stupid to trust a gut feeling like that, but my intuition and instincts had kept me alive before. Finally I interrupted the Coast Guardsman, identified myself, and got straight to the point.
“Coast Guard Lauderdale, there is a fatality here.” At the time I said it, I wondered at my own words. They sounded official and self-assured even if they were at a slightly higher-than-normal, breathy pitch, and yet I felt everything but. The girl was dead, as in cold, white, plastic-looking, no longer a human being. Is that why cops withdraw into that silly techno-speak on the TV news all the time? Because to use the real words conjures up that slide show on the mind’s big screen, and it doesn’t matter if you looked only once, it’s going to replay over and over again.
I had seen dead bodies before. In six years working as a lifeguard on Fort Lauderdale’s city beach, I’d pulled one heart attack victim out of the surf, there had been several drownings, and I’d found that girl who overdosed, sitting up, back to a palm tree, facing the sunrise. And long before any of that, there had been my mother. But seeing it doesn’t make you get used to it. Besides, this one was different. This was no accident. Someone had intentionally thrust that blade through her skin. Although the hot sun shone brightly through the bridge windows, I shivered.
The boat rolled almost thirty degrees on an oversized swell, and a Heineken bottle crashed over on the console. I jumped back, my hand at the neck of my T-shirt, as the amber liquid spilled across the teak, wetting a chart folded back to reveal about a ten-mile stretch of coast. Weighting the chart down was a copy of Bowditch’s Practical Navigator. I looked more closely at the blue clothbound book, and I realized it was my copy of Bowditch—I’d loaned it to Neal several months before.
That was when I noticed the gun for the first time. It was on the console next to the depth sounder: a black handgun. I had no idea what kind it was. There were some holes in the instruments on the console, too. Obviously the gun had been fired. Then my ankle rubbed against cool flesh.
“Shit!” The sound of my own voice frightened me, and I knew I had to start doing something to get both myself and the Top Ten under control. The yacht was rolling worse, which meant she was getting into shallower water, While Gorda drew only four feet, the draft of a yacht like the Top Ten was closer to eight feet. I couldn’t let either boat touch bottom. Out the port-side windows, the morning sun reflected off the glass and white plaster of the condominiums several thousand yards away. A crowd was gathering at the water’s edge, retirees out for their morning walk and swim, now delighted at the prospect of their daily ritual being livened up by the chance to see a multimillion-dollar yacht about to go into the surf line.
I reached for the engines’ starter switch, but nothing happened. Either the engines needed to be started down in the engine room, or the damage here on the bridge had shorted out some necessary connection. I wished B.J. were here. He would probably be able to get these engines started. If not, at least he would have helped me get a line on this boat. Hell, it felt more like a ship. There was no more time to take the chance that the engines might not start.
I didn’t want to have to step over the body again. Dropping the mike onto the dashboard, I slipped out the port side of the bridge. My boat shoe slid on the deck, and a quick glance down revealed a red smear. I’d slipped on blood. More droplets led aft, and there was a good- sized dark puddle in front of the port ladder. Beyond, I could see the line of breakers, now no more than a couple of hundred yards off.
On the bow I found some yacht braid dock lines. I tied several of them together with hasty bowlines and ran the line from the Top Ten’s bow, outside everything, back to the stern. Abaco yelped and wiggled like a pup when she saw me. I could tell from the tension on the line between the two boats that there was no way I could pull up the Gorda by hand. Fortunately, the Top Ten had an Ideal warping capstan on the stern. I assumed the winch was hardwired directly to the ship’s batteries, but I still breathed a soft “thank you” when I hit the button and the drum started turning. I was able to winch the line in until the two boats were banging together. Gorda's aluminum bow was munching the big yacht’s teak swim step a bit, but it was nothing compared to what a few hours in the surf might do.
I tossed the Top Ten’s bowline onto Gorda’s foredeck and pulled myself up onto the tug. Abaco licked my face once as I came aboard, and then she stood back, out of the way. After untying the line that secured us to the big yacht’s stern, I tossed that line into the water. I wasn’t going to have to worry about Top Ten’s props getting tangled on the line; her engines were out of commission.
I walked the line that was tied to Top Ten’s bow back to the stern of Gorda and tied it to the tow bit. From the wheelhouse, I brought the tug around in a half circle to the seaward side of the Top Ten’s bow, careful not to foul the towline on my own prop. If the Top Ten didn’t touch bottom before I swung the bow around, she must have been missing by just inches. As we pounded our way offshore, away from the breakers, I noticed Perry circling in Little Bitt, probably praying my towline would bust. Then I heard the siren and saw the blue flashing lights of the Fort Lauderdale Marine Police Unit and, behind them, the Coast Guard cutter.
I smiled to myself. A little late, boys.
III
“You’re the one who found her.”
I wasn’t sure whether he was asking me or telling me, or even if he meant the girl or the boat. “Yes.” I stuck out my hand. “Seychelle Sullivan.”
He looked at my hand for a moment as though he were being offered a dead fish. Then he reached out and shook it in one brisk stroke.
“Detective Victor Collazo, Fort Lauderdale Police.” Long black hairs curled out from the cuffs of his white shirt, and though it was only midday, his face was already darkened by coarse black stubble. “Tell me about it,” he said.
“When I got there, the boat was unmanned and adrift. No captain, no helmsman, nobody. Nobody alive, at least. The vessel just missed going on the beach by minutes, but then I got a line on her and towed her in.”
“You just happened by.”
“No. I heard the mayday call on the radio. Towing is what I do.” I handed him a business card from my shoulder bag. “Sullivan Towing and Salvage. I’ve always got the radio on.”
We were sitting on the bright tropical-print sofa in the Top Ten’s main salon. With no generators and no air, the atmosphere in the boat was like an overheated engine room. He glanced at my card and dropped it in his coat pocket.