The undercovers walk over to Detective Levine, who responded after Macon called it in.
“No. I’m working on my doctorate in archaeology. I prefer my bodies to be long dead.” I regret the joke immediately. It’s fine for hanging out with friends over beers. Here, maybe not so professional.
Macon gives me a half smile. “So, you dive mostly? Just for your department?”
“They loan me out a lot. Lauderdale Shores has the highest number of canals and waterways per capita of any city in America,” I reply, giving our rote response. We’re a tiny community that most police departments barely know exists. “We also have three bridges and a mile of canal in a high-trafficking zone. It was cheaper to put me on the payroll than keep hiring me freelance to pull guns and evidence out of the water.”
“So I guess this isn’t your first body.”
“Sadly, no.” Macon’s a nice enough man, and I decide to give him a fuller answer. “Remember that small jet crash six years ago in the Everglades? That was my first.”
“Mercy. Eight people died, right? That had to have been horrible.”
“The worst part was the jet fuel and the gators and snakes. I had to wear a dry suit. It was hot that summer.” I omit the part where I passed out from dehydration and the only thing that saved me was inflating my buoyancy compensator at the last minute.
I’d pulled a dozen more bodies from the water since then. Some only hours dead, others in such advanced stages of decomposition that I had to wrap them in plastic so parts didn’t fall off.
Today’s body is the latest addition to that morbid list—if you don’t count the people I rescued lifeguarding and spotting dive excursions. They’d all lived.
But today, I could tell the moment I saw her that she’d been killed recently. Maybe within hours.
Her. It’s the first time I’ve thought of the body as anything more than a body.
After dragging her to shore, I’d torn off my dive gear and tried mouth-to-mouth in case there was hope. The coldness of her lips told me it was too late. But I had to try.
Grandpa Jack used to tell stories about men being pulled into the boat who seemed like goners, only to be revived after a heroic bout of CPR. He had lots of stories like that. Fighting off pirates, giant squid, hammerheads with vendettas. Some were probably even true.
The woman I’d pulled from the water today looked to be about twenty-three. She was wearing denim shorts and a T-shirt and had a smattering of post-millennial tattoos and hair dyed dark red.
The most distinguishing mark on her was the angry red gash across her neck.
Her throat was so badly crushed I could hear a faint wheeze as I tried to force air into her lungs. But I’d kept trying anyway.
It’s what I would have wanted if it had been my . . .
Don’t go there, Sloan. Don’t go there.
The detective in charge, Ruiz, walks over to us. He’s got a stocky build, a thick head of hair with silver streaks, and a goatee. We’d spoken briefly when he first came to the scene.
“Do you have an ID on her?” I ask.
Ruiz squints at me for a moment, then recognition dawns on him. “Right. You’re the deputy for Lauderdale Shores?”
“Yes.” I’d explained this to him a half hour ago.
“Did you know her?” he asks.
Suddenly he sounds like a cop talking to a person of interest. Something weird is going on here.
“I don’t believe so. Have you identified her?”
He ignores my question. “What do you mean you don’t believe so?”
I count to three and spare him the legendary McPherson temper. “She doesn’t look familiar.”
Ruiz nods and jots a note on a pad. “And you were underwater when it happened?”
You want to cop me? I’ll cop you back. “When what happened?”
He gives me an incredulous look. “You were underwater when the girl was killed?”
“How would I know that?” This is frustrating. It’s not what you’d normally ask a witness. It’s what you’d ask a potential suspect.
Macon is watching us closely, sensing the tension. He tries to defuse the situation. “McPherson’s the one that pulled the bodies from that plane crash in the Everglades we all had to respond to.”
“I know who she is,” Ruiz replies dryly.
I almost sensed a what in his response, implying that he knows my family history—including about my uncle Karl, currently serving time for a drug-trafficking-related parole violation.
I point to the body and ask again, “Do you know who she is?”
“No, we don’t. Not yet.”
I nod at the cops scattered around the scene. “I’ve pulled my share of bodies from the water. I’ve never seen . . .” I count all the jackets now on the scene. “DEA, Customs, FBI, BSO, PBSO, and Miami-Dade all show up for one. That’s a little unusual. Don’t you think?”
Something changes in his demeanor. I wouldn’t quite call it relaxing, but his focus shifts slightly. “Yeah. It’s odd. The field examiner took a temperature reading. She estimates the victim died about seventy minutes ago.”
He watches the expression on my face as my body turns as cold as the victim’s.
She wasn’t only dumped here . . . I was in the water when she was killed. Perhaps in this exact spot.
“You okay?” asks Ruiz.
“I’m managing.”
His tone softens slightly. “There’s nothing you could have done. If they’d seen you, they would have just taken her somewhere else to kill her.” He adds, “I don’t think you were ever in any danger.”
My attention goes to the knife still strapped to my leg. “I wasn’t worried about me.”
Ruiz turns to Macon. “Will you get a copy of her driver’s license and contact information?”
“Do we need the suit?” Macon asks, pointing to my dive suit, which I forgot I’m still wearing.
“I think we’re okay,” Ruiz replies.
This comes as a relief. If he thought I’d killed the woman, he’d want it as evidence.
“Where are you parked?” asks Macon.
I point to my Explorer on the side of the road behind a row of bushes. “There.”
He glances at the truck, then back to the water, probably noticing what I did: it’s not visible from the road.
Ruiz returns to the other cops while Macon walks me to my truck.
“Let’s be careful,” he says, pointing to a muddy patch.
Forensic techs are already cordoning off the area so they can try to get footprints and tire tracks. Hopefully it’ll be enough to find the killer if they already have leads. Hopefully.
At my Explorer, Macon waits while I rummage through my backpack. Half the contents are already spilled on the floor. I’d dumped it out when I raced back to get my phone to call 911.
“Here you go,” I say as I pull my wallet from the pile, then freeze.
Something is wrong.
“McPherson?” Macon asks. “You okay?”
I turn my wallet toward him so he can see the spot where I keep my driver’s license.
It’s empty.
“Shit . . . ,” he says. “You don’t seem like the kind of person to forget that.”