Collateral Damage: A Matt Royal Mystery

DAMAGE

CHAPTER ONE

On the last morning of his life, Jim Desmond woke to the sound of the gentle surf lapping on the beach, pushed by the onshore breeze that barely rippled the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. Early light reflected off the water, the angle of the sun hanging over the mainland to the east giving the seascape a flat appearance, as if much of the color had been leeched out of the vivid hues that usually paint the southwest coast of Florida.

Desmond snuggled a little more deeply into the bed, a sheet and light blanket covering his naked body, protecting him from the cold air blowing from the air-conditioning vent in the ceiling. He knew it was already hot out on the beach, the June humidity lying like a damp shroud over the entire island.

A hand slowly reached over him, caressed his chest. He felt breasts snuggle against his back, a long leg cross his. Heard a slight snicker, felt a wet kiss on his shoulder, the warm breath of his wife against his skin. He turned toward her, kissed her smiling face, and began to make love to the woman he’d married the day before on the beach in front of the Hilton.

Later, they lay in the bed, her head on his shoulder, her blonde hair tickling his nose. They were sated for a time, their physical need for each other slaked. Two people on the cusp of the future, a long life of success and children and growing old together stretched before them. Happiness was their due, for they were the children of the baby boomers, the generation that had known tranquility in their world, enjoyed the fruits of their parents’ success, gone off to college and joined fraternities and sororities, partied and studied, and moved into the wider world where they expected no less than life as they had always known it.

Jim kissed his bride on the forehead and padded to the shower. He dressed in running shoes, shorts, and a white T-shirt bearing the logo of his alma mater, the University of Georgia. His wife had made coffee in the small coffeemaker provided each room. She poured him some in a Styrofoam cup, and standing nude, smiling, held it out like an offering to the god of love. He sipped the coffee, kissed her chastely on the mouth, and went out the door for his morning jog. She never saw him again.

CHAPTER TWO

My buddy Logan Hamilton and I were having lunch at Mar Vista, the bay-side pub in the Village on the north end of Longboat Key. The year-rounders, those of us who don’t go north in the spring and return in the late fall, know better than to sit outside in June. The heat and humidity, while not as bad as August, is brutal. Even the sea breezes that blow across our island don’t bring relief. It is just hot air. Logan said it reminded him of trial lawyers, my former profession. I never argue with him when he’s right.

We sat at a table next to a wall covered in currency of every kind, much of it American greenbacks. Many of the bills had messages scrawled on them from people who had left them along with their names and the dates of their visit. I wondered what made otherwise sane people tack good money to walls or throw coins into fountains. Like much of the human condition, it was a mystery to me.

Logan and I were planning a fishing trip for that evening. We thought we might have some luck after dark anchored off the north end of the Sister Keys just outside the channel. And if the fish weren’t biting, we had beer and a lot of lies to tell. We’d get to Moore’s Stone Crab Restaurant before closing and have a drink or two with Debbie the bartender. Maybe a nightcap at Tiny’s. Not a bad way to spend a hot evening in Southwest Florida.

I was having the Caesar salad with blackened shrimp and Logan had ordered his usual, deep fried scallops and a Dewar’s and water to wash it down. I felt the heat as the door to the parking lot opened behind me. Then, a voice. Matt Royal, there you are. Cotty Johnson. I turned and saw my eighty-something-year-old neighbor coming toward us. Hey Logan, she said.

Logan and I stood. Cotty pecked us both on the cheeks. Join us, I said.

No, thanks. Shirley Beachum is on her way. We thought we’d see how the vodka stock is doing.

I laughed. Sit until she gets here.

Cotty took the chair next to Logan, across from me. I guess you heard about the guy getting shot on the beach this morning.

I hadn’t. Cotty knew everything that happened on the island, and often knew it before anybody else. No one ever figured out how she knew so much so quickly.

Shot? asked Logan.

Yes. Apparently a high-powered rifle. The police think the gunman was in one of the condos just south of the Hilton. Got the guy right in the chest. He was dead before he hit the sand.

Who was he? I asked. A local?

No. Some guy from Atlanta. Got married yesterday. He and his bride were staying at the Hilton. He went out for a jog early this morning.

Any witnesses?

Not really. There were a couple of people on the beach who heard the shot and saw the guy hit the ground, but nobody saw where the shot came from.

Any leads at all? Logan asked.

Not that I’ve heard. Bill Lester and that new detective J. D. Duncan are still at the Hilton doing whatever it is they do.

Bill Lester was the Longboat Key chief of police and J. D. Duncan was a detective who had recently joined the force after fifteen years with the Miami-Dade Police Department.

I felt another heat blast as the door opened again. Shirley came over to say hello and she and Cotty went to the bar and took seats. By the time they left, all the island gossip would be told and retold. As good a way as any to spend a hot afternoon.

Logan sipped his Scotch. What do you make of the shooting?

No idea. I wonder who the victim was.

The Chamber of Commerce isn’t going to like this. They’ll be afraid the publicity will scare the tourists away.

I don’t know. It’s not like people regularly get mowed down on our beach.

You’re probably right.

Our conversation turned back to fishing. We put together a plan that mostly involved the question of where to get the beer and bait. We decided on Annie’s in the settlement of Cortez across the bay.

CHAPTER THREE

My home is Longboat Key, Florida. More specifically, Longbeach Village, long called simply the Village, that takes up the north end of the island. My cottage backs up to the bay, giving me a view that brings real estate sales people to their knees. Tropical flowers are abundant in the yard, and I pay a guy more than I should to keep them blooming or whatever they’re supposed to do during any given season.

Longboat Key itself is small, about ten miles long and less than a half-mile wide in most places. It lies off the coast of Southwest Florida, south of Tampa Bay and about half way down the peninsula. Once you leave the south end of the key you cross some bridges, another island and end up in downtown Sarasota. On the north end you’ll cross the Longboat Pass Bridge, part of Anna Maria Island, then Cortez Bridge, and find yourself in the city of Bradenton.

The island is my slice of paradise. I’m not old enough for retirement, but I’d been to war as a young man, then college and law school. I’d practiced as a trial lawyer in Orlando for a number of years and despaired of the business that the profession was turning into. I began to drink too much and take myself way too seriously, plowing into the law practice with a single-minded devotion that left little time for the only woman I’d ever loved, my wife, Laura. She finally gave notice that our marriage was over. She moved to Atlanta, remarried and died a few years later.

I gave up, sold everything, and moved to Longboat Key. If I was careful, I had enough to live on for the rest of my life. I’d pretty much achieved my goal of becoming a beach bum, living in a small community with lots of friends and time for fishing, walking the beach, drinking in the salubrious bars that dotted our island. I’m not sure how healthy all that drinking was, but the lifestyle gave me a peace that I’d not been able to achieve in all the years before Longboat.

I stayed in shape, worked out with a martial arts instructor a couple of times a week, ran daily on the beach, and always found time for a round of exercises that kept me young. Or at least younger than if I’d become one of those people whose only daily exercise consists of moving from the TV to the beach, then to a bar and back to the TV.

I’m six feet tall and maintain the same one-hundred-eighty pounds I weighed when I was a soldier. Gray has not yet crept into my hair, and I have what I describe as a ruggedly handsome face. Most folks just laugh at me when I say that. They say that I’m, well, pleasant looking. Soldiers do not think of themselves as pleasant. Tough, rugged, even mean as hell, but never pleasant. Oh well, I am what I am, and I’m reasonably satisfied with that.

Logan and I sat in the cockpit of my boat, fishing lines out over the transom. We were off the main channel a few yards north of the tip end of the Sister Keys that separates part of Sarasota Bay from the north end of Long-boat Key. The twin two-hundred-fifty-horsepower Yamaha outboards purred quietly, idling in neutral. My anchor light was on and some illumination slipped from the small cabin. We were easily visible to any boat coming up the channel.

We were drifting slightly in the current as it ran toward Longboat Pass and the Gulf of Mexico. The tide was going out, but in our area of Florida the tidal range is not great and the outgoing tides are gentle. The engines were running in case I had to move quickly to dodge a sandbar or another boat.

It was nearing ten o’clock in the evening. An onshore breeze brought the scent of the Gulf’s brine, a pleasant tinge redolent with the hint of the beauty of the ever-changing water that lapped gently on our beaches. The lights of Dulcimer, a dinner cruise boat owned by a local restaurant reflected off the dark surface of the bay as she made her way slowly north toward home, full of satisfied diners who’d taken the evening dinner cruise. Dulcimer was one hundred-ten-feet-long and twenty-eight feet on the beam. She was big and slow and stately and looked like an old Mississippi River steamboat. She was powered by diesel engines and the paddle wheel at her stern was just for show. She was about two hundred yards south of us, running the narrow channel to the west of the Sister Keys, chugging along at ten knots or so. As she neared, strains of music floated across the water, a pleasant counterpoint to an almost perfect evening.

The channel that runs north and south along the western edge of the Sister Keys doglegs around a sandbar that has pushed out from the lagoon that separates Longboat Key from Jewfish Key. The captain on a northerly course must turn about thirty degrees to the east and then back to the west. We watched as Dulcimer made the turn to the east. She kept coming. No turn back to the west. She was on a collision course with my boat.

I jumped to the helm and pushed the throttles forward, moving swiftly across the bow of the oncoming vessel. I knew there was a sandbar lurking just behind where we’d been fishing, and if the captain didn’t get back on course in the next few seconds, he’d be piling up on the bar.

I turned to my left, paralleling the course of the larger boat. The pilot house was dark, but the decks were lighted. I could see people sitting at the tables, walking around with drinks in hand, leaning against the railings of the open upper deck. The music was still playing, an old rendition of La Vie En Rose. I wasn’t sure if it was Edith Piaf singing, but it sounded like her.

As I passed amidships of Dulcimer, she went dark. The lights and the sound quit at the same instant. No lights on the decks, no running lights. Nothing. A ghost ship was slipping by my port side, dark and foreboding. The sounds of surprised guests getting louder as panic set in.

The boat came to a shuddering halt. It had found the sandbar. I heard tables and glassware shifting and breaking. Screams of panic and pain drifted over the water. I’d been reaching for my radio microphone when the lights went out. "Mayday! Mayday! Coast Guard Cortez, Coast Guard Cortez, this is Recess."

The radio jumped to life, a calm female voice at the other end of the ether. "Recess, this is United States Coast Guard Cortez. What is your emergency?"

"This is Recess. I’m at the northern tip of the Sister Keys. The Dulcimer dinner boat just ran hard aground. I can hear screams coming from the passengers. It looks as if several are in the water. I’ll try to pick them up."

"I’m sending boats, Recess. Stand by on channel sixteen."

"Recess, standing by sixteen."

I was shining my spotlight on three heads bobbing in the water. I eased Recess toward them, put the engines in idle, and drifted. Logan was at the stern, the transom door open, the ladder down, a boat pole in his hand. He helped bring the waterlogged people aboard, told them to sit down on the cockpit floor. Logan dug into the bag of towels in the cabin and gave one to each of our passengers.

I kept the spotlight moving, but didn’t see any more heads. Some of the passengers had apparently gone overboard from the open deck when the boat ran aground. Several of them were standing near the bow, the water up to their knees.

The Coast Guard is coming, I called to them. Stay where you are.

Less than ten minutes after my radio call to the Coast Guard, I heard sirens whooping in the distance. I looked to the north and saw two boats, blue lights flashing, racing toward us. The Coast Guard station was only a couple of miles north of our position.

I picked up my microphone. "Coast Guard Cortez, this is Recess."

"Recess, this is United States Coast Guard Cortez."

"Coast Guard, this is Recess. I have three people aboard, no casualties. I’m standing by near the stern of Dulcimer. I see your boats approaching."

"Standby, Recess.

Roger, Coast Guard.

I turned to the people we’d brought aboard. What happened?

I don’t know, said a middle-aged lady, shivering in a towel-draped sundress. We were on the top deck when the lights went out and the next thing I knew, we were in the water.

The other woman and the man with them murmured agreement.

I watched as the Coast Guard boats pulled alongside Dulcimer. Men in blue uniforms boarded carrying flashlights. I waited, playing with the throttles, keeping Recess in the middle of the channel, awaiting orders.

After a few minutes I heard a motor turn over, the sound coming from Dulcimer. Then the lights came on and music again played over the water. One of the Coasties had gotten the generator working. The music stopped. The gay evening was over. Time for the work to begin; to find out what happened.

I heard a siren and saw a boat coming from the south, blue lights announcing another law enforcement vessel. It was the Longboat Key Police boat. The cop at the helm recognized my boat and pulled alongside.

What the hell happened, Matt?

I told him what I’d seen and that I’d picked up the three passengers from the water.

I’ve been listening on the radio, he said. I’ve got ambulances coming to Moore’s. We can offload any injured at the docks there.

You’ve got some people in the water up by the bow, I said. They’re going to start getting cold.

I’ll go get them. Why don’t you get these folks names and take them to Moore’s so the paramedics can take a look.

He went around me and moved slowly into the shallows to pick up the people on the sandbar. I crossed the channel running almost due west, past the southern tip of Jewfish Key and across the lagoon to Moore’s Stone Crab Restaurant. I saw a sea of flashing blue lights in the parking lot. I maneuvered into the dock and cut the engines. Logan and I helped our passengers off the boat and turned them over to the paramedics.

You ready for a drink? I asked Logan.

Damn right.

I picked up the microphone. "Coast Guard Cortez, this is Recess."

This is United States Coast Guard Cortez.

"This is Recess. I’ve dropped my three passengers off at Moore’s with the paramedics. I’ll be inside in case your people need to talk to me."

"Recess, did you get their names?

I gave them to her, told her my cell phone number, signed off, and headed for the bar.

CHAPTER FOUR

It was late by the time the Coast Guard accident investigator called me. He’d had to drive down from St. Petersburg. He told me that they’d inspected Dulcimer and didn’t think there was any structural damage. Just a bit of bottom paint scraped off the bow where it ran up on the sandbar. They’d kept the passengers aboard and were going to tow the boat back to its dock at the restaurant. Other than a few scrapes and bruises, there did not seem to be any casualties, except for the captain. He’d apparently had a heart attack or a stroke and died at the helm. The investigator said he’d call me the next day and come by and get a statement.

It was midnight and my friend Debbie the bartender was trying to kick us out. Logan and I had been joined by a few other villagers who were interested in all the commotion out on the waterway. We filled them in on what we knew, and after I talked to the investigator, they all knew as much as I did.

Logan paid our tab and we walked down to the dock and boarded Recess. I pulled away from the dock and threaded my way around the sand-bars and idled toward my cottage. We could see the activity over on the Intracoastal where two small towboats were hooking up to the bow of Dulcimer. They’d see her home.

I wonder why they don’t just take her home under her own power, I said.

Gotta pay the towboat captains anyway. Might as well make them work for their money.

Probably makes it easier to justify calling them out in the first place.

The bureaucratic mind, said Logan, never fails to amaze me.

I slid Recess into her home berth, tied her off, and told Logan I’d wait until morning to wash her down and flush the engines. I need sleep.

Me too, he said. I’ll check in with you tomorrow.

Logan went to his car, and I opened the back patio sliding glass door and went in to bed.

My cell phone rang, waking me from a troubling dream of soldiers falling off boats into subtropical waters. Daylight was creeping through my windows overlooking the bay. I looked at my watch. A few minutes after six. I rolled over and picked up the phone.

Matt, a soft voice said this is J.D. May I come by with the Coast Guard investigator and talk to you?

Sure. When? I was puzzled as to why she was calling me so early.

"Now. There’s been a bad turn on the Dulcimer grounding."

I sat up in bed, a little surprised. It had seemed pretty routine last night.

Give me ten minutes to jump in the shower and put some coffee on.

We’ll be there in fifteen, she said, and hung up.

J. D. Duncan was my friend and Longboat Key’s only detective. She’d spent fifteen years on the Miami-Dade police force, ten as a detective, and the last few as assistant homicide commander. When her mom died and left her a condo unit on the key, she’d decided to leave the stress of Miami and join us in paradise. She’d gotten the job with the Longboat Key Police Department a few months before and had quickly become part of our island community.

I took a quick shower, put on a clean T-shirt and cargo shorts, and set the coffee dripping. My doorbell rang. I opened the front door to find J.D. standing next to a tall man in civilian clothes whom she introduced as Chief Warrant Officer Jacobi. The Coast Guard accident investigator.

The detective was in her late thirties, stood five feet seven inches tall, and wore her dark hair just short of shoulder length. Her green eyes could stare down a criminal or crinkle in happiness. She had a smile that made you just want to get up and dance, a straight nose, laugh wrinkles bordering her eyes, and a complexion that could only have been the result of good genes and skin care products. She was slender, small waisted and long legged with full breasts that could not quite hide beneath her clothes.

I invited them in and poured coffee for each. We sat in the living room. Jacobi was a couple inches taller than I and weighed thirty pounds less. He wore civilian clothes, was about forty years old, had a head full of brown hair with some gray starting to show at the temples. His nose was a bit small for his angular face and his chin had that tucked in look that you get with a large overbite. A chipped left upper incisor would have given him an odd smile. He seemed to be a serious man and I doubt that he smiled much.

"We’ve got two murder victims on Dulcimer," J.D. said.

That brought me upright. Murder victims?

Yes, said Jacobi, his voice rumbling in the deep register I’d heard on the phone. They were both knifed and thrown overboard.

What’s going on? I asked, trying to get my head around this new piece of information.

Did you see anything that looked out of the ordinary? he asked.

You mean other than a hundred-ten-foot boat running hard aground and throwing passengers into the water?

You know what I mean, he said.

If you’re asking if I saw any bodies, the answer is no.

Jacobi looked hard at me for a moment. I suspected he had practiced that stare in the mirror, the better to intimidate witnesses. I wasn’t impressed. I looked back passively, waiting for another question. He broke eye contact, looked over at J.D., shrugged.

One of the victims was the husband of the woman you fished out of the water, J.D. said.

What do you know about them? I asked.

The husband was a fifty-two-year-old lawyer from Jacksonville named Peter Garrison, said J.D. The other victim was a twenty-five-year-old woman from Charlotte, North Carolina.

When did you find them?

J.D. took a sip of her coffee. "A few hours ago. When the Coast Guard got Dulcimer back to the dock, we let the passengers off. No reason to hold them. The paramedics brought the woman you picked up, she paused, looked at her notes, Mrs. Betty Garrison, from Moore’s over to Dulcimer’s berth. She couldn’t find her husband. It seems she’d gone to the upper deck to have a cigarette and left her husband in the dining area on the second deck. She was leaning on the rail and when the boat hit the sandbar, she was tossed into the water."

Where were the bodies? I asked.

"Washed up on Sister Keys, right near where Dulcimer went aground."

Who’s the young woman? I asked.

Jacobi broke in. According to her driver’s license, she is Katherine Brewster, single, lived with her parents. I had to break the news to them about thirty minutes ago.

Any connection between the girl and Mr. Garrison? I asked.

J.D. leaned forward in her chair, reaching again for the cup sitting on the coffee table. We haven’t had time to establish anything except that Mrs. Garrison never heard of her. Katherine had come to the area by herself and was staying at a small bed and breakfast on Anna Maria. We found the key in her pocket. We’ll check all that out.

How did you know she was missing?

We didn’t, said Jacobi. We found her body while we were looking for Garrison.

Any evidence on the boat? I asked.

The crime-scene unit from Manatee County is going over it as we speak, said J.D. I doubt they’ll find much with all those people tramping through it.

You said the bodies washed up on Sister Keys. Do you think they were in the water when I was picking up those three people?

I doubt it, said Jacobi. "It actually looks as if they were thrown overboard and may have been washed up on shore by the movement of the boats trying to get Dulcimer off the bar and underway to her berth. They weren’t in the water very long."

I sat for a beat, thinking. Do you see this as a crime of opportunity, random, or what? It seems awfully coincidental that the grounding gave the murderer the opportunity to strike in the confusion.

We agree with you, said J.D. "The medical examiner will do an autopsy on the captain today. He may not have died of natural causes.

Look, she continued, I know you didn’t see the bodies, but give me a minute-by-minute description of what you did see. There may be something there that’ll give us a lead.

I took her through the minutes from the time I saw Dulcimer making her way up the channel until I pulled into the dock at Moore’s.

J.D. was quiet for a moment. You said the pilothouse was dark before the other lights went out. Isn’t that unusual?

Jacobi and I both shook our heads. No, he said. The captain would have kept the pilothouse dark so that he could see better outside. His instrument lights glow red, so even they wouldn’t have been visible from Mr. Royal’s vantage.

J.D. nodded her head, accepting the explanation. How long after the lights went out did the boat run aground?

Seconds, I said. No more than a minute. I was still running alongside at idle speed. She was moving at maybe ten knots. She would have gotten by me quickly if she hadn’t hit the bar. When she stopped, I was still beside her, back near the fake paddle wheel.

Was she still moving at the same speed?

That stopped me. I sat upright in my chair. I was thinking about the exact second when Dulcimer grounded. It had been quiet except for the nervous chatter of the passengers. When the music died, so did the engine sounds. That was the reason I thought of her as a ghost ship as she was sliding by me. The big diesels were quiet.

The engines had been shut down, I said.

When? asked Jacobi.

I don’t know. Let me think.

I closed my eyes, trying to get back to the very moment that I became subliminally aware that the engines had shut down. Just as I crossed her bow, I heard the engines race, as if someone was pouring the fuel to them. Then, just as suddenly, they stopped. Somebody shut them down. She’d gotten a little burst of speed, and then drifted onto the bar. She hit pretty hard, though, so she had some speed on.

How much time elapsed between the time the engines were shut down and the boat went dark? asked Jacobi.

Immediately. Or almost immediately. I think whoever shut the engines down did so by turning off the ignition and probably reached over and turned off the generator. It was that fast.

And how long before the Coast Guard boarded and fired the generator back up? asked Jacobi.

"Let me think. I radioed Cortez as soon as the lights went out. In the few seconds it took to get a response, Dulcimer grounded and the screaming started. I’m not sure I even got the transmission off before she hit the sandbar. I think it was probably ten minutes before the Coasties arrived on scene and boarded. Somebody apparently went to the pilothouse and kicked over the generator. I’d say fifteen minutes tops, but the Coast Guard log will probably give you a better time line."

I’ve already ordered that, said Jacobi. We’ll match the log to your recollection.

You might want to talk to Logan Hamilton, I said. He was there the whole time.

We will, said J.D. Anything else, Mr. Jacobi?

He shook his head. I think we’re through for now. Thank you, Mr. Royal.

They stood, shook hands, and left.

CHAPTER FIVE

I took my paper and coffee onto the patio. It was getting warmer as the sun rose higher. I was starting to feel a sheen of sweat brought on by the high humidity. Soon it would be too uncomfortable to sit outside. It was time for my morning jog on the beach.

I was just tying my running shoes when my cell phone rang. The caller I.D. told me it was J. D. Duncan.

Good morning, again, I said.

You had breakfast yet?

No. I was just going out for a run.

If you’ll join me at the Dolphin, I’ll buy.

Does this include Chief Warrant Officer Jacobi?

No. He’s gone back to Cortez to finish a preliminary report or something.

You’re on. What time?

Right now. I’m just pulling into the parking lot.

See you in five.

I put on a ball cap and drove out to Broadway, took a left on Gulf of Mexico Drive, and rode south. The royal poinciana trees that lined the road were in bloom, providing a canopy of red blossoms that brightened the island, a neat juxtaposition to the foreboding cloud that had encapsulated my paradise.

I turned into the Centre Shops, a small plaza set among seagrape trees, bougainvilleas, banyans, and other local flora. The Blue Dolphin Café was housed there and during the summer served mostly the local population. In the winter, during what is known as The Season, snow-birds flocked there for breakfast and lunch giving the place a buzz that was absent in the doldrums of summer.

J.D. was in a booth near the front door. She stood as I approached. She was wearing a short-sleeved blouse, blue slacks, and low-heeled navy pumps, what she called her detective uniform. Her hair was pinned back from her ears and she was smiling. Her belt held a holstered Glock 19 semiautomatic pistol, a small case for her cell phone, and the gold detective’s badge. A handheld police radio sat on the table.

She gave me a perfunctory hug, the kind that our islanders almost always give, a