Randy White - Dead Silence

“Delta. Right on time.”

“Then even if this person was right about seeing a boat, you were already on your way to the airport. Most folks want to be at security two hours before.”

“Not me,” I said. “I left Sanibel around five-fifteen, got to the gate fifteen minutes before we boarded.”

“That unusual for you?”

“Not unless the flight’s international.”

“And you own a flats skiff?” Before I could answer, he said to Palmer, “A flats skiff’s a small boat built for shallow water. No cabin or windows, just a low hull and a big engine. Sorry, Doc. Go ahead.”

I said, “Yes, I’ve owned flats boats for years.”

The man nodded, as if pleased I was telling the truth, then demonstrated why. “Gotta admit, I’ve seen that fancy Maverick of yours. I hear them Mavericks ride like a BMW. They can plane on dew and run in a rain puddle.”

“Unusual boat,” I answered. “Magic hull. I use it more than my truck.”

“Just what I figured,” Durell said. “Which brings up something else. This person I mentioned-the one lives near your marina?-this person claims to have recognized your boat. People see that Maverick on the bay so often, you know? But, hell, there weren’t no moon at that hour. It was a black night, and sort of windy, too. No fisherman in his right mind would be out on that tide.” He paused. “It was a low tide, that right?”

A subtle trap. I watched the man’s careful disinterest as I hesitated, then stepped into it. “Dead low tide,” I agreed. “New moon wasn’t up yet.”

Durell took a deep, satisfied breath and leaned toward the front again, speaking to the woman. “You wouldn’t understand, not being a water person, Shelly, but no one would take a small boat into the Gulf on that tide. Not at four in the morning, when it’s black as the inside of a cow. Too many exposed bars. Even in a shallow boat, you’d have to be a magician to find enough water, running blind, to get around the lighthouse.”

Implicit flattery-a nice touch.

He continued, “And even if someone saw a boat coming into Dinkin’s Bay, there’s no way a lawyer could prove it. It was too blame dark to make a positive ID.” Durell returned his attention to me, smiling now. “See what I mean about some of this evidence being weak? A judge would laugh it out of court.”

The man wouldn’t have asked about it if he didn’t think it could be proven. I said, “You’re being hard on your witness, Les. The person’s right. It was me.”

I watched Detective Palmer’s eyes staring at me in the rearview mirror as Durell sat back in his seat. “Doc,” he said slowly, “you want to run that past me one more time?”

I said, “That was my boat. I was in it. Three hours before dawn, Friday, January sixteenth. It was me.”

Durell said, “You’re telling me you was out in the Gulf in your flats boat, four in the morning, the same time the medical examiner figures Bern Heller was murdered?”

I said, “I don’t know who the beach walkers saw coming in from the Gulf. You’re right about that. Too many exposed bars, it would be stupid to go offshore. And why would I want to be in the Gulf anyway? But at four a.m., I was running into Dinkin’s Bay, four or five miles to the northwest. I didn’t notice anyone watching from shore, but I was out there.”

Durell stumbled, unprepared, but managed to ask, “Why?”

“I’d been running shark lines, a half dozen hooks on buoys. Sharks die if you don’t get to them quick, so I wanted to make a final check, then clear the hooks, before leaving for New York. I don’t keep the sharks. I do tag-and-release. There was one small bull shark, I tagged it and let it go.”

Durell said, “Tagged it?,” and I knew he was wondering if there was a way to prove I was lying.

I nodded. “And while I was out there, I stopped and checked one of the transmitters Mote Marine set near the channel. They’ve sunk about two dozen between Boca Grande and the causeway. It was buoyed, but it looked like it had drifted off-station. So I stopped.”

From the corner of my eyes, I was gauging Palmer’s reaction-guilty people get overtalkative-but decided it was okay to add, “Mote sets out underwater monitors to track fish they’ve tagged-sharks, snook, some others. The transmitter I pulled had some benthic growth but looked okay. So I towed it closer to shore, but not as close as I would’ve normally, because the tide was so low. I didn’t want to risk running aground and missing my plane.”

Time for Durell to study his clipboard again. I had just used the man’s trap to give credence to my story.

He cleared his throat and said loud enough for Palmer to hear, “Mote’s about as respectable as it gets in the fish-research business,” but he wasn’t ready to abandon his plan because he offered another easy out. “If you work with Mote, there’s no judge or jury would question what you was doing on the water at that hour-even if the scientists at Mote can’t confirm you checked their transmitter thing. What is it, sorta like an underwater antenna?”

I said, “Looks more like a shock absorber on a car. They’re called VM-2s. The tags we use, PIT tags, they’re miniature transponders. Check with Mote. They might be able to confirm it, even give you the exact time because I was carry a tag coded with a personal ID. The VM-2 should have transmitted the number automatically. You know, keeping track of who services the equipment.”

The man said, “You sure about this?”

“Unless there was a malfunction, my ID should be in their computers.”

“Maybe you already talked to them, said you was out there.”

I said, “Nope.”

All true.

The big man sat back and placed the clipboard on his knees. He mulled it over as if deciding to stop playing games. “Doc, let me ask you straight out. Did you kill Bern Heller?”

Heller had drowned. The Gulf of Mexico had killed him, not me. “Absolutely not.”

“Did you have anything to do with it?”

I said, “They found his body on Naples Beach, you said. That’s forty miles south of Sanibel. Couch the question any way you want but my answer’s not going to change. I didn’t kill Bern Heller. I wasn’t anywhere near the man, wherever he was, when he died.”

Durell said, “Then why didn’t you return the calls our people left at your lab? We been trying to get in touch for two days. You don’t check messages?”

I said, “At first, I thought it was because you wanted my opinion about how long Heller had been dead. Your department’s hired me five times as a consultant. But when I realized it was because you were actually thinking of me as a suspect, I decided, screw you, I’m not in Florida, I have more important things to do.”

Suddenly not so friendly, Durell said, “Did you, now?”

“That’s right. Finding a kidnapped boy takes precedence over answering questions about a dead man I didn’t like to begin with. But if you’re interested in my opinion, I’ll tell you-no charge.”

Unconvinced but wavering, Durell said, “Keep talking,” giving me more rope.

“A more reasonable scenario is that Heller, a convicted serial rapist and murderer who had a limited amount of time…” I let Durell see me thinking about it before I asked, “How long before they sent him back to prison, a few months?”

Looking into my eyes, Durell said, “A few weeks, no more.”

I said, “A convicted murderer who had a narrow window, he might have headed for Mexico. It’s only four hundred miles across the Gulf. So he either hired some lowlife to crew aboard his boat or he hired someone else’s boat and they pushed him overboard. Took his money and kept going. Can you tell me how he died. A blow to the head? Drowned?”