Fallen Tide: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 8) Read online

  Fallen Tide: Contents

  Fallen Tide

  Foreword

  Dedication

  Other Books by Wayne Stinnett

  Maps

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Epilogue

  More Jesse McDermitt

  Afterword

  Published by DOWN ISLAND PRESS, 2015

  Travelers Rest, SC

  Copyright © 2015 by Wayne Stinnett

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without express written permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Library of Congress cataloging-in-publication Data

  Stinnett, Wayne

  Fallen Tide/Wayne Stinnett

  p. cm. - (A Jesse McDermitt novel)

  Cover Photo by Teerapat Pattanasoponpong

  Graphics by Tim Ebaugh Photography and Design

  Edited by Clio Editing Services

  Proofreading by Donna Rich

  Interior Design by Write.Dream.Repeate Book Design

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Most of the locations herein are also fictional, or are used fictitiously. However, I take great pains to depict the location and description of the many well-known islands, locales, beaches, reefs, bars, and restaurants throughout the Caribbean, to the best of my ability.

  A lot of work by a lot of people went into this book. Many ideas for plot and characters came from my usual sources. My wife, Greta, heads that list as always. I couldn’t imagine doing this without her support and guidance.

  The underlying plot for Fallen Tide from the very inception of this book was the reunion at the end. The idea for that came from one of my readers, Cliff Barth, who lives in Tehachapi, California. Thanks, Cliff.

  Another reader provided so much help in the little details of one character that I made him the character. Dave Parsons is a real-life retired Army CWO4 and Special Agent with the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command. He currently splits his time between Massachusetts and California.

  Fellow author Paul Deaver is an active-duty Army helicopter pilot. The idea for the Predator suit was his. Watch for Paul’s first novel to be published very soon.

  Thanks also to my beta reading team, Alan Fader, Marc Lowe, David Parsons, Jeanne Gelbert, Dana Vihlen, Ted Nulty, Debbie Kocol, Charles Hofbauer, Mike Ramsey, Joe Lipshetz, and Tom Crisp. These folks have a ton of specialized knowledge and experience pertaining to details in my books. Without them, the reading experience wouldn’t be anywhere near as good or accurate. Your input has been extremely valuable in making this book better than it was.

  Dedicated to the men and women who make up America’s first responders. From the Coast Guard and National Guard, to our local law enforcement and firefighters, these brave men and women in uniform will move toward the sound of chaos, when everyone else is moving away from it.

  “Bits and pieces have to come together. I’m like a blue tick hound, running back and forth at the edge of the swamp, nose in the air, wondering if there is a trail worth following. And kind of hating going into the mud, snakes and gators.”

  - Travis McGee, Freefall in Crimson, 1981

  If you’d like to receive my monthly newsletter for specials, book recommendations, and updates on coming books, please sign up on my website:

  www.waynestinnett.com

  Jesse McDermitt Series

  Fallen Out

  Fallen Palm

  Fallen Hunter

  Fallen Pride

  Fallen Mangrove

  Fallen King

  Fallen Honor

  Fallen Tide

  Charity Styles Series

  Merciless Charity

  Ruthless Charity (Spring, 2016)

  Heartless Charity (Fall, 2016)

  It was the large number of lobsters clustered together that caught my attention, distracting me from my morning swim. Every morning, I swim the same three miles, looking at the same bottom. I know the contours of the sea floor and where to make my turn, without having to look up. But every morning it’s different. Every morning, there’s something new to see. Which is why I started wearing swimmers’ goggles a few months back. Lobsters are nocturnal, but occasionally during my swim I’ll see a late forager still out on the grass flats after sunrise. Sometimes I’ll see a nurse shark as well, still hunting for late-foraging lobsters. Usually, both are tucked away in the thousands of cracks, crevices, and ledges, or the many patch reefs in the back country of the Middle Keys where I live.

  The presence of so many lobsters, along with what appeared to be an equal number of crabs of assorted species and sizes, piqued my curiosity. I stopped to watch as the occasional damselfish or blue-striped grunt darted into the fray. A thick dead branch of what looked like staghorn coral stuck out from the roiling group of crustaceans and fish. Normally, a broken piece of dead coral wouldn’t get my attention. As I floated on the surface, I realized it wasn’t a coral branch at all. I knew this because staghorn coral branches rarely wear a wristwatch.

  Lifting my head to take a breath, I pulled off my goggles to determine my location. I was in about eight feet of water nearly a mile from my island on the edge of Harbor Channel, and there wasn’t a boat anywhere in sight. Knowing it was slack tide didn’t change what I knew I had to do. The tide would be rising very soon, meaning the severed limb would be carried away with the current. If a hungry shark didn’t find it first.

  Floating above the edge of the channel just a few yards away was one of Carl’s and my lobster trap floats, the trap itself set in twenty feet of water against the steep drop-off. Though I hated to do it, I knew what had to be done.

  Putting my goggles back on, I arched forward and dove. When I reached what I now knew to be a detached left arm and hand, the lobster and all but a handful of tenacious crabs scattered. I grabbed the arm at the denuded end, where the bone stuck out, and returned to the surface, the last couple of crabs dropping off as I rose. Dangling my grisly find, I sidestroked to the float and took a deep breath before submerging and pulling myself along the trap line, one-handed. The irony of that set in. I had a third hand, but was only using my own right.

  It was only twenty feet to the bottom, but I had to pause several times to equalize the pressure in my ears, trying not to drop the arm or let go of the rope for long. Reaching the trap, I quickly opened the top and tipped the concrete-based trap on its side, releasing a half dozen lobsters, before thrusting the arm inside and closing it again. At least the arm would still be here when I returned in my skiff, but it was a damned shame to let all tho
se lobsters go.

  Swimming quickly back to the north pier, I dried off as I hurried toward the foot of the pier. Spotting Carl working in the aquaculture garden, I called out to him as I jogged toward my house and the dock area beneath it.

  Carl and his wife, Charlie, are the caretakers of my little island in the Content Keys, north of Big Pine Key. He’d been a shrimp boat captain until a couple years ago, when the two of them came to work for me and built a small house on the west side of the island. Carl still owns the shrimp boat, but no longer goes out, content to fish, dive, and work on projects around the island. His former first mate, who worked for me for a short while, now skippered the Miss Charlie.

  “Carl, drop what you’re doing and call the sheriff. Have them send a boat out to where the number four trap is located.”

  Carl looked up as I ran past. “Poacher?”

  Trap poachers were common in the Keys, but rarely ventured this far north. My island is six miles from the nearest road, and nearly double that taking all the cuts and channels to get here.

  “Not unless he’s missing an arm,” I shouted back. “Tell them to hail me on the VHF.”

  As I disappeared under the house, Carl headed up the steps to the deck, the only spot on the island where a cell phone can get a signal. While I untied and jumped aboard my Maverick Mirage flats skiff, I heard him talking on the deck above my charter boat. Punching the button on the key fob, I activated the release on one of the large doors, and it slowly began to swing open on giant spring-loaded hinges.

  The outboard started instantly, and I idled out from under my little house and into Harbor Channel, just a few yards to the south. Turning sharply into the channel, I brought the little boat up on plane and steered a rhumb line toward where I knew our trap was located. Approaching it, I stood up at the helm and looked all around. There wasn’t another boat in sight and it’d been several days since we’d heard or seen one.

  Coming off plane, I approached the trap’s green-and-yellow float, then reversed the engine and came to a stop, drifting in the still water right next to it, and shut down the outboard. I quickly tossed the anchor in the direction of the spot where I’d first seen the arm and let out a good twenty feet of rode. It was still half an hour before the current would start picking up, the tide carrying nutrient-rich water from the Glades through the long archipelago known as the Florida Keys, and into the Atlantic, renourishing the reef that thrived there. I was pretty sure the sheriff’s office would want to know exactly where I’d found the arm.

  As I was pulling up the trap, a familiar voice came over the radio. “Deputy Phillips hailing MV Gaspar’s Revenge.”

  After hoisting the trap and its grotesque contents aboard, I grabbed the mic. “I’m on the skiff, Marty. Go to sixty-nine.”

  Deputy Marty Phillips was dating my daughter Kim, who was in college up in Gainesville. Maintaining a long-distance relationship wasn’t easy for them, but they seemed to be handling it well. She came down here once a month and he went up there just as often.

  When I’d changed frequencies, Marty hailed me again. “Carl called something in and told dispatch to hail you. What’s up, Jesse?”

  “Do you have a diver with you? I found an arm.”

  There was a moment of silence. “Did you say you found an arm? You mean like a human arm?”

  “Roger that,” I said, opening the lid on the trap and examining it more closely. “Looks like a man’s. Severed at the middle of the upper arm, and the bone’s cut pretty clean.”

  “I’ll have another boat with divers aboard on the way in a few minutes. Where are you exactly?”

  “Northeast of my house about a mile,” I replied. “On the north side of Harbor Channel, just across from Cutoe Banks. Tide’s slack right now, but it’ll change in less than an hour.”

  “I’m not far. I’ll be there in ten minutes. Have you moved it?”

  “Well, yeah,” I replied. “I spotted it on the bottom during my morning swim and thought you guys might want to have a look at it before a hungry spinner came along and stole it from the crabs and lobster that were feasting on it. I stuck it in one of my traps and just hoisted it on deck. I’m anchored over the spot where I found it.”

  “That’ll have to be good enough. See you in a few minutes.”

  “Roger that. Back to sixteen.”

  Switching the radio back to the hailing frequency, I sat down at the helm and studied the thing in the trap. What was left of the arm was nearly bare bone from where it was cut off to just below the elbow. The flesh on the forearm moved, giving me a start. Then a small spider crab wiggled free and fell between the two bones of the upper forearm, just below the elbow.

  The rest of the arm was fairly intact, just a few scrapes and cuts, probably where it’d been dragged and rolled across the bottom with the current. Looking south, I could see in my mind’s eye how the current flowed through the back country. We’ve had stuff wash up at low tide that obviously came from the Atlantic, floating more than ten miles through the several natural cuts and channels.

  Looking back at my grotesque find, I noticed that the fingers were thick and meaty, the nails trimmed short. There was part of a tattoo left on the top part of the forearm, though it looked to be old and faded. The watch was cheap, but waterproof.

  Marty arrived a few minutes later, cutting across the flats from Spanish Channel into Harbor Channel, his blue lights flashing. As it slowed, the big center console came down off plane and he idled up alongside. I tossed a couple of fenders over and helped him tie off.

  “Divers will be here in twenty minutes or so,” Marty said as he stepped over the gunwale and looked down into the lobster trap. Squatting, he looked at it more closely and then glanced up at me. “Where exactly did you find it?”

  Looking at my anchor line and over the side at the bottom, I pointed off to the north. “Just a few yards beyond the edge of the drop-off.”

  Sitting back on the casting deck, Marty removed his sunglasses and dipped them in the water before pulling a handkerchief from his pocket and wiping the water off. “Sure looks like a clean cut on the end of the bone, but the coroner will be able to tell for sure. You make anything of the tattoo?”

  “Some kind of tribal design, maybe. Black ink, faded to gray. I don’t think it’s military.”

  “Could be a gang tat,” he offered. “But yeah, it looks to be older.”

  “What do we do now?” I asked.

  “Wait for the divers and coroner, I guess. I just respond to calls and write tickets to people breaking the law.”

  Stepping back over to his boat, he lifted the seat in front of the console, took two water bottles out of the cooler, and handed me one.

  “Thanks,” I said, taking the bottle and drinking half its contents. “Any other body parts wash up lately?”

  “Nothing that I’ve heard,” Marty replied. “But, like I said, I’m not an investigator.”

  Minutes later, hearing the distant whine of an outboard, I stood up and looked to the east. “Looks like your divers.”

  Marty and I watched as another sheriff’s boat pulled alongside, with a deputy and two divers aboard, already suited up. As one of the divers started to tie off to Marty’s boat, I said, “Best if you drop your own tackle. We’re on mine, and once the current picks up, it won’t be big enough to hold all three boats in place.”

  I recognized the deputy at the wheel, but didn’t know his name. I’d never seen the two divers before. “Did you find it in that trap?” the deputy asked.

  “No, I found it a few yards that way,” I replied, pointing in the direction of my anchor. “Idle around us and drop your hook near mine. That’s pretty close to where I found it.”

  As the deputy maneuvered around us, another boat crossed the flats and headed toward us. It was a larger center console, with blue lights flashing. On board were another deputy in uniform and two more divers, still struggling into their equipment. Two more men, both dressed in gray coveralls, were with t
hem. One was older than the others by several decades.

  “That’s Doc Fredric,” Marty said. “He’s the chief medical examiner, lives in Marathon.”

  “Seen him around,” I replied.

  Minutes later, after Marty scrambled and added his anchor close to where mine was, all four divers rolled backwards into the water to begin their search for the rest of the body.

  “Mind if I step over?” the doctor asked.

  I nodded by way of reply and moved toward him to give a hand. But the old man easily stepped down to my skiff by himself. His hair was snowy white and his skin was tan and weathered. Squatting down, he pulled on a pair of blue rubber gloves and examined the arm in the trap.

  “Pass your back board over, Marty,” Fredric said without looking up.

  With the back board on the deck, Fredric lifted the limb from the trap and placed it on the board. It looked a lot more out of place there than in the trap. He then lifted the board up onto the casting deck and examined it from end to end.

  “How long ago did you find it, Captain?”

  “Less than an hour ago, Doctor. Just call me Jesse, everyone else does.”

  He looked up at me, over the top of his glasses. “Jesse McDermitt?”

  “Yes, sir,” I replied.

  He fluttered a blue hand around. “Just Leo or Doc, Jesse.” Then with a half smile he said, “I’ve heard of you. This isn’t your handiwork, is it?”

  The glint in his sharp blue eyes told me he was pulling my leg. “Might have been,” I replied with a crooked grin. “Hard to keep track.”

  The older man laughed and then motioned me over. When I squatted beside him, he produced a small magnifying glass from his pocket and handed it to me. “Look close at the proximal end of the humerus.”

  Guessing that he meant the end where the bone was cut, I held the glass close to it and leaned in. The end of the bone was cut straight across and fairly smooth. “A saw of some kind?” I asked.

  “Look just to the left of the end. See that notch?”

  About a quarter of an inch down the bone, there was indeed a straight notch, probably a quarter of an inch wide and a fraction of that deep. It was on the side of the bone where the biceps would be, if that muscle were still there.