Bullet River (The Garbage Collector 2) (2 page)

Wind ruffled the surface of the water and bent the tall reeds back toward the river bank.

I popped off the cap of a beer and drank half of it in one long pull, set it between my legs, grabbed the paddle, and leaned forward.

The kayak shot ahead with a smooth, balanced power. I paddled all the way down to where the river opened up onto the Gulf of Mexico. The trip took me twenty minutes. I celebrated by draining the rest of my first beer and opening the second.

I took a more leisurely paddle on the way back, upstream, aided by the fact that the tide had stopped going out and the water was in a relatively neutral state.

My second beer was only half-finished when I came around the bend in the river. The house I was watching still loomed high above the mangrove plants.

I steered the kayak into a little area of backwater surrounded by tall grass to finish the rest of my beer before I loaded the kayak back onto the dock.

There wasn’t a stitch of breeze in this little protected spot.

I rested the paddle across my thighs, casually checked for alligators. (I’d been told there really weren’t any around this area anymore, but I refused to take anyone’s word for it.)

The beer came to my lips, and I saw a glow of white off to my right. I emptied the beer and put it back into place on the floor of the kayak.

I put the paddle back in the water and gently stroked the still water, sending the kayak toward the glow of white.

There was the possibility it was a turtle shell; I’d heard they show up from time to time and are valuable.

As I got closer, I realized it wasn’t the shell of a turtle.

It was a woman.

Or at least, what was left of her.

I stopped the kayak from getting any closer, but a small wave I had created pushed up against the corpse, and she lolled slightly toward me.

A ravaged face turned toward me.

The sight froze me, sent a shaft of ice through my insides.

Not because of the horrors of death. And not because of the ravages inflicted by death, time, and the river.

The face shocked me for a very simple reason.

It was a face I knew.

2.

I had no choice but to leave her there.

Like anyone associated on some level with crime, cops, lawyers, and all of the bullshit that goes with it, I knew from experience that irrational decisions could lead to some pretty horrible results.

The fact was I desperately wanted to free her from her soggy grave, even though I knew it was a terrible idea. But in my business, you have to be able to shut off emotions like you’re blowing out a candle.

So that’s what I did.

I didn’t feel good about it. In fact, I felt like a piece of shit. But she was already dead. Her dignity . . . well, not much left of that either.

Instead, I paddled back to the dock, got out, tied the kayak to its mooring rack, carried my empty bottles inside the apartment, and put them in recycling.

Next, I left the apartment and did a perimeter walk of the property. It was my job now, after all. But I really did it because it gave me time to think. And because I also couldn’t help but wonder if there were any other surprises nearby.

The stairs from the pool led up to the second-floor lanai. I checked all of the sliding doors and the little pass-through to the kitchen. Everything was locked up tight.

Back down the stairs, I used the screen door off one end of the pool area and stepped into the yard. I walked the property from the river all the way down the long, rectangular lot to the street. Then I returned on the other side of the property.

Nothing was amiss.

I let myself back in via the screen door on the other side of the pool, then sat in the white plastic chair outside the sliding door to the apartment.

The girl’s face, I had instantly recognized. No doubt about it.

I knew her.

In fact, I had known her quite well.

I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and held it in my hand.

The screen was clear, just a hint of reflection from the water in the pool.

I took a deep breath.

Then called the cops.

3.

There wasn’t a whole lot to Estero, Florida. It didn’t have an actual “downtown.” Or a Main Street. It was essentially a stretch of road along, and just off, Highway 41.

Because it was unincorporated, the law enforcement agency responsible for Estero was the Lee County Sheriff’s Office.

One of their cars pulled up the driveway.

“Afternoon,” the cop said. “Nice place.”

There was a look of not-so-subtle skepticism on his face. He knew instinctively that I didn’t own the house or the property.

“Thanks,” I said.

“You live here?” he asked.

“I’m staying in the apartment,” I said, nodding my head toward the back of the house.

He nodded back.

“Did you call about a body?” he asked.

Before I could answer, paramedics in a Lee County vehicle roared down the driveway.

“Yeah, I called 911,” I said.

The paramedics screeched to a halt.

“You’re not going to need them,” I said.

“Show me what you saw,” the cop said.

“You’re going to need a boat.”

“Got one coming,” he said.

“All right, this way,” I said, and turned back toward the house. I skirted the main building, cut through the grass, and walked around the pool to the dock.

I walked out onto the dock, went to the far right corner that looked out over the river.

The little backwater area was barely visible. I pointed toward it.

“See that little offshoot of the river over there? Looks like it goes back into a lagoon or something?” I said.

The cop looked along the direction of my finger.

“Yeah,” he said.

“That’s where I saw a body, looked like a woman, about twenty minutes ago,” I said. “I was kayaking.”

On cue, a Lee County sheriff’s boat putted around the bend in the river. The cop thumbed the little mike on his shoulder.

“Adam, stop, go into that little backwater right there. That’s where the body supposedly is.” The cop shot a little sideways glance at me letting me know he assumed there was a fairly good chance I would turn out to be full of shit.

Not a bad assumption, actually.

“You been drinkin’ today, sir?” he said.

“Sure have, Officer,” I said. “I had a few of my friends from Holland over.”

He just looked at me.

“Heinekens,” I explained. “Just a few, sitting by the pool.”

“Any while you were out on the water?”

I wasn’t sure what the rules were in Florida for that kind of thing.

Lying to the cops is something I’ve certainly done my share of, but it’s not first on my list.

Nonetheless, I said, “No, sir.”

He nodded, clearly not believing me.

A blast of static erupted from somewhere on his uniform or belt, I couldn’t tell where.

I did understand the message that followed, though.

The guys from the boat had confirmed what I’d found and added one little detail with just one word.

Homicide.

4.

I sat in the interrogation room, euphemistically labeled a “conference room.” Two guys, one old and tan, the other young and tan, sat with me. We were having our own little “conference,” law-enforcement style. We’d gone over my story several times. Why I was in Florida, who I was, and how I’d found the girl.

“Pretty big coincidence, don’t you think?” the young one said. He had sunglasses, Maui Jim’s, pushed back onto the top of his head. He had a peach-colored goatee that was so thin I almost felt sorry for him.

“What do you mean?” I said. Young & Tan shot a look to Old & Tan.

“Well, you move into that apartment, and bam, we got a floater,” he said.

I just shrugged, perhaps a bit too dismissively because his face got flushed, and I could see the skin turn pink underneath his Noatee.

“Tell me again what brought you here,” Old & Tan said.

“A job.”

“And you do what for a living?” he said.

“I’m a security consultant.”

“Yeah, right,” Young & Tan said, scoffing it out of his mouth like a hairball.

“What were you hired to do?” the old one said.

“Security on the estate where I’m currently staying.”

Young & Tan rolled his eyes. His hand went to his sunglasses like he wanted to drop them onto his nose, but then he remembered he was indoors, so he scratched his girl stubble instead.

Old & Tan spoke again. Clearly, he had wanted the younger one to lead the interview, but that hadn’t gone very well and so he finally just took over.

“Tell us again why you were on the river, and how you managed to find the body,” he said.

By now, telling the story again felt like reciting a poem I had had to memorize in elementary school. I repeated it the same exact way I’d told it the first seven times.

Young & Tan looked at the ceiling, clearly bored with me.

“Know a girl named Crystal Stafford?” Old & Tan said.

I thought for a moment. “No. If he was talking about the girl in the river, well, I knew her all right. I just didn’t know her as Crystal Stafford.

O&T tapped a pen against a blank pad of paper. Clearly, my answers hadn’t been worthy of a lot of note-taking. I took a little bit of pride in that.

“When is this security project expected to end?” he said.

Y&T laughed outright at that one.

“I don’t get how you can say shit like that with a straight face,” he said to his partner.

“He’s a good cop; that’s why you don’t understand it,” I said.

Y&T almost stood up like he was going to throw a punch at me, but the older one waved him down.

“We’ll be in touch,” he said to me.

5.

I grew up in a world without religion. In fact, when I was younger and perfecting my skills at hurting people, I was always somewhat amused when they called out for God to help them. Begging for Jesus. Praising Allah, etc. As far as I could tell, those benign beings never helped out any of them.

Maybe they didn’t want to mess with me.

So even though I’ve never set foot in a church my whole life (except that one time to kill a pedophilic priest, which probably doesn’t count) I felt a little guilty doing so much lie-telling.

Because unfortunately, the correct answer to the detectives’ question would have been, “I don’t know Crystal Stafford, but I sure know who that girl in the river is.”

But they hadn’t asked me that, in those exact words. Nor did they tell me not to leave the area.

Which explained why I was on Delta Flight 1419 as it touched down at Detroit Metro at about seven o’clock. By eight, I was in a rental car headed for a strip club called the Bermuda Triangle on the infamous 8 Mile Road.

Okay, continuing on the religion theme: I have a confession to make.