Backwater Cove

  Backwater Cove

  A Kurt Hunter Mystery

  Steven Becker

  The White Marlin Press

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  1

  I sat on my back porch, watching what was being billed as the last cold front of the season pass through. There were sure to be more, but the natives claimed that February in South Florida was it for winter. Rain beat down on the metal roof covering the raised, screened-in patio while lightning flashed to the south. It illuminated my backyard enough to see the freshly cut grass. Although I lived on an island, my park service-issue house was inland and had no water views. That was fine with me. As a special agent for the Biscayne Park, I spent my days on the water. Sipping my beer, I watched the palm trees bend, fighting the north wind. The supple trees are hurricane resistant, with the trades generally out of the southeast, and the north wind rubbed against their grain.

  It rubbed against my grain, too, which was surprising since I had spent most of my thirty-eight years in Northern California near the Plumas National Forest. At five thousand feet of elevation and a latitude that matched New York, we got a real winter there. Here in South Florida, fifty degrees had the locals in down coats and boots. I wasn’t quite that bad yet, but anything colder than seventy-degree water felt unnatural. The sounds of the storm were interrupted by Zero, my neighbors’ dog, who sat at my feet snoring loudly. The way he sidled up to me, I thought he felt the same way.

  My blood hadn’t thinned to the point that I ran for the down, but I did have on a hoodie and decided to make the switch from beer to bourbon. I had just gotten off the phone with Justine, who got a good laugh out of my complaints about the weather.

  Adams Key, the island refuge that Ray’s family and I shared with the small day-use area kept me isolated, something that came naturally to me. It was harder to see Justine, but that was the only thing I missed besides my daughter. Thinking of Allie made me sad and I realized it had been over a year since I had spoken to her. I hoped to resolve that soon. For me, this job was kind of like the witness protection program of the park service. It was lonely when I had nothing but my routine patrols and Justine was at work, but we were well along to a commitment I never thought I would make again.

  My life had been turned upside down a little over a year ago, when on a patrol in the Plumas Forest, which usually involved fly fishing the streams, I had found a hidden inlet to an irrigation system. Following it had led me to the largest pot grow ever found on public land. Things got ugly for my family when the cartel came after me. They did what they usually do and resorted to violence when I refused to change my testimony. The attack came in the form of a firebomb. Our house had been destroyed and the next day, I found myself in front of a judge at an emergency custody hearing. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the outcome of that; I hadn’t even bothered retaining a lawyer.

  Allie was taken away by her mother. I had suspected they were now living near Orlando with Jane’s sister. After nearly a year and with quite a bit of prodding from Justine, I had finally done something about it. A month ago, I contacted an attorney and finally made it onto his schedule for an appointment tomorrow. I was apprehensive about it and my expectations were low. I’d really felt like I was a danger to them after the explosion, but now things had settled down and if I could see her for a few weekends and holidays, I’d call it a win.

  Just as I returned from the kitchen with my two fingers of bourbon, I realized the rain had stopped. Zero raised his head and cocked it toward the screen door. I downed half the drink and went to let him out. It wasn’t a long way up for the pit bull mix, who always reminded me of Petey from the Little Rascals, but he made it to his feet and wandered to the door, waddled down the porch stairs, and sniffed the air before setting a tentative paw on the wet grass. I set my glass down, slid my cold feet into my flip flops and followed him onto the large lawn that separated the two houses on the island.

  While he took care of business, I turned to Ray and Becky’s house and saw what could have been the last weak flash of lightning before the storm tried to break the invisible tropical barrier to the Florida Keys, just to the south of the park.

  Geologically, Biscayne National Park was the true beginning of the chain of islands stretching to Key West and beyond, but Key Largo, just to the south was the official start of paradise. It might have been the proximity of the park to Miami, just ten miles to the north, or the menace of the two chimneys of the Turkey Point nuclear power plant to the southwest that excluded us from the Keys, but we were what we were.

  Zero barked and I turned to look over at Becky and Ray’s house, hoping he hadn’t woken Jamie, their three-year-old son. The house stayed dark and I assumed there would be no complaints if Zero stayed at my house for the night. After years of listening to him bark, they said that they were immune to it. I couldn’t imagine that.

  I heard him rooting around back in the mangroves to the north of the clearing where the two houses sat and called for him, hoping he hadn’t gone too far into the brush. The island was small, only a few acres and mostly left to nature. The day-use area and the two homes were located on the well-manicured southern tip of the island. The large open area was unique to these islands; a left over from the old Cocolobo Cay Club. The Key was accessible only by water, and via a long concrete dock set into Caesar Creek. The well-traveled pass from Bayfront Park near Homestead took hundreds of boats a day past my front door. Zero barked at most of them, but now he was heading into the swampy interior.

  I called for him, and heard him again, preoccupied by something. He started barking and after a quick glance at the dark house next door, I guessed it was up to me to figure out what he was up to.

  Using my phone as a flashlight, I started down what would have been a game path, if there were any game out here. That wasn’t exactly true. There were all kind of creatures living on these islands, including crocodiles. Bred out of the cooling canals at the power plant across the bay, the
American Crocodile frequented these waters, but most somehow knew the boundaries of the Crocodile Lake National Wildlife Refuge located about twenty miles to the south in Card Sound where they were protected.

  Once in a while, one found its way here, but not for long enough to create the well-worn path. My Alabama-bred neighbor would take care of that. I flashed the light toward the ground every few steps to avoid any bombs the creator of the path might have left and continued after him.

  The track grew softer as I walked and I could see Zero’s paw prints clearly now. They glistened in the moonlight and, with little water in them, I knew he had just passed. The ground turned to a quicksand-like muck as I continued, and every few steps I had to pause to pull my flip flop out of the mud. The rainy season had not really started yet, and the storm, although violent, had been like most of the cold fronts that made it this far south—short and hard. The ground I was walking through was a saltwater swamp, and I knew my feet and ankles would be laced with bites from the micro critters that lived here.

  Trying to ignore my misery, I called after Zero. There was no response. He was intent on something and ignored me. Continuing after him, I soon found myself at the edge of the island looking across a short channel at Elliot Key. The three-mile-long island, along with Adams Key and several others on the other side of Caesar Creek, are loosely known as Islandia. Created by a group of ambitious developers in the 1930s, they had never gotten much further than dredging a few deep-water canals that led to nowhere and building a small club here. Originally, Adams Key had been named Cocolobo Key and Islandia had a nice ring to it, but like most of the get-rich-quick schemes so common in South Florida, it had failed as well. Whatever was still standing in 1992 had been destroyed and washed out to sea when the eye of Hurricane Andrew, packing 150-mph winds, passed directly over where I stood.

  Cursing the dog and the swamp, I continued, now following only the sounds of his movements through the bush since his paw prints were no longer visible in the ankle-deep muck. I heard him stop and start snorting. My hand went to my belt, searching for my gun. It wasn’t there and, again, I cursed myself. There was nothing good in a swamp at night.

  I heard a strange noise, almost like a whisper that I tried to separate from the rustle of the palm trees. Whatever it was, it was faint and I stopped, trying to eliminate any unrelated sounds. The wind was still blowing, making it hard to discern if it were really a human. The only way to find out was to move forward.

  The voice became more clearly defined as I approached. It was definitely human and as I moved closer, I could tell it was a woman. If Zero hadn’t been there, I would have figured her for crazy, but I soon recognized her nonsensical words as the baby talk people use with dogs. There wasn’t enough light to make any kind of evaluation of her. If she was armed, the last thing I needed was to barge in and get shot. If she wasn’t, I didn’t want to scare her. I announced my presence by calling for Zero.

  Purposefully, I rustled the branches of the mangroves as I approached to let her know which direction I was coming from. I reached the last bush and saw her bent over the dog, talking to him in her singsong voice. It took a few minutes for her to notice me, and when she looked up, I saw her tear-streaked face.

  “Name’s Kurt Hunter.” I stood five feet from her with my hands in my pockets, not wanting to appear threatening. “I’m a ranger out here.” I preferred ranger to Special Agent, my actual title, in many circumstances.

  She slowly rose. “My name’s Misty,” she said.

  Her voice broke when she tried to talk.

  “Misty, do you need some help? Are you alone? Are you hurt?” I asked, trying to keep the questions to a minimum, but I had a lot of them.

  “I’m kind of okay, and yes, I’m here alone.”

  She was clearly not okay by the look of her. Wearing a torn sundress that looked expensive even to my uneducated eye, she was wet, covered in mud, and trembling. “I live out here. Why don’t you come back to my place and we can get you cleaned up and see if we can find your people?” Only a brave person would be out here alone in a storm at night. She didn’t look that brave and she was dressed for a party, not an expedition.

  She nodded and took a step toward me. I wasn’t sure what to do. Should I reach out for her, or just let her follow? I chose the latter. She had obviously been through something traumatic and I didn’t want to scare her. I took a few tentative steps and we moved inland with Zero picking up the rear, snorting like he was all kinds of proud of himself.

  I heard her crying again and stopped just before we reached the clearing. Turning to face her, I saw something in her eyes. Not sure if it was panic or shock, I paused.

  “My friend…”

  That was the last thing she said before crumpling to the ground.

  2

  We were about a hundred feet from my house when she fell. I knelt in the mud beside her, felt for a pulse and then, laying her on her back, checked her more thoroughly. I put my hand in front of her face and felt her warm breath, a little uneven, but strong. She was showing signs of hyporthermia, dehydration and exhaustion, I decided she would be better off inside.

  Placing her over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry, I hurried back toward my house, hauling her up the back stairs to my porch. She was lighter than I’d expected and I set her gently on one of the chaise lounges. Turning on the lights, I once again checked her pulse and breath. Leaning forward, I gently squeezed her between her neck and shoulders. Her eyes opened and she coughed. I studied her and noticed some fresh bruises on her face and neck.

  She was clearly alive and her condition didn’t appear to be life threatening. Over the years, I've had a fair amount of training in first aid and CPR, not to the level of an EMT, but I felt my original prognosis was accurate.

  Living seven miles from the mainland made me look at some of the services most people took for granted in a different light. 911 was one of them. It would take a long time to get a boat out here with qualified EMTs and equipment. I decided, against this, ignoring the constant reinforcement from the NPS lawyers that every incident, regardless of how minor, needed emergency personnel to be called. There was no need to waste resources in this case. Provided I was right about her condition, Martinez would approve of my budget conscious decision.

  Fortunately, when I got back with the blood pressure cuff, her eyes were open. I could see them follow me as I approached and wondered what she remembered of our encounter.

  “Water,” she said.

  I nodded and went inside. Returning with a glass, I handed it to her, relieved when she was able to sit upright and drink.

  “Thanks,” she said, draining it.

  She was shivering and I went in to get her a refill and a blanket. My phone was on the counter and I thought about calling this in just in case. When I saw her standing in the door, I decided to wait. She appeared freaked out enough and I wanted some answers.

  “Misty,” I started, trying to gauge whether she remembered our conversation. Her last line about her friend had not been far from my mind.

  She nodded. “I think you told me your name, but I don’t remember.”

  “Kurt. Kurt Hunter,” I said. “You mentioned something before you passed out about a friend?”

  She looked down as if she had done something wrong.

  “It’s alright. I’m here to help you. I work for the National Park Service,” I said, trying to reassure her.

  “I lost her when we had to swim.”

  I’d wondered how she had gotten here. There was a channel around most of the island deep enough for a low draft boat. Someone could have dumped her, which was not likely as anyone in these waters knew there was a ranger stationed here. There was also the chance that she had fallen overboard. That seemed the most likely scenario. Though these were tropical waters, with the current temperature in the mid-seventies, even a minimal exposure, would result in signs of hypothermia. That matched her condition as well as anything, and also opened an ocean o
f possibilities. I realized I was still holding the blanket and handed it to her.

  She entered the house, put it around her shoulders, and sat on the couch. “I don’t remember much.”

  “What was your friend’s name?” I needed something to go on. If there was another woman out there, I needed to act.

  “Heather.”

  “And Heather was in the water with you?”

  “She didn’t make it.”

  There was no point in questioning her further. I had to do something now. Looking at the girl sitting across from me, shivering, with tears running down her cheeks, I knew I couldn’t just leave her here alone. I would have to go look for her friend, but unsure of her mental state, Ray and Becky were my best option.

  “I’m going to go after your friend, but first we need to go next door.” She didn’t respond, but got up and followed me out the door. Zero found us about halfway to their house and fell in line. We climbed the stairs to the front porch, and I knocked on the door.

  It took several attempts, but finally a light came on. Becky cracked the door open.

  “Come on, Zero. You live here, you know,” she said, opening the door wider and looking at me. “Damned dog likes you more than me.”

  Zero brushed past us and into the house. “I need some help,” I said, before she closed the door.

  “Sure thing, hon. What can we do for ya?” Her Alabama accent sounded sleepy.

  I turned to Misty. “Zero found her on the backside of the island. She says she has a friend that’s missing. I need to go have a look. Can you keep her company for me?”

  “Sure thing. Y’all come on in.” She stepped away from the door.