Blood in the Water (eBook)

A Murder in Stiltsville

Brett Nichols (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
388 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
9798317802103 (ISBN)

Infos

BLOOD IN THE WATER, A Murder in Stiltsville, begins with the brutal murder of two friends. Detective Hahn is the lead investigator assigned to the case. The reader walks through the scene with him, learning what evidence is discovered and where it leads him. The story tries to show the logical steps a homicide detective would take in solving this case and the time commitment required.

I am a retired twenty-six-year veteran of the Miami-Dade Police Department. The county hired nearly a thousand officers after the riots in 1980. The times were crazy with drugs pouring into the city, cartel drug wars, and the Mariel boatlift. Murders were an everyday occurrence that kept the job interesting. After working as a patrolman for five years, I transferred to work major crime scenes. After nine years, and being assigned the lead in over three hundred homicides, I was approached to apply for the Homicide Bureau. I spent my last twelve years there before retiring. I bring a unique approach to crime solving with my experience as a trained Crime Scene Investigator and Homicide Detective.

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Blood in the Water has Miami-Dade Homicide Detective Max Hahn assigned to a new case in the waters of Biscayne Bay. His two victims were found murdered in one of the few remaining shacks in an area known as Stiltsville. He coordinates the investigation, which yields a few pieces of evidence, but nothing that points to the killers. Before leaving the scene, one of Hahn's team members spots something, a gold coin, in the water below the dock. He's unsure if it's related to the case, but it could provide a possible motive. By following the leads, Hahn locates and arrests one of the killers but is unable to find the other. He also struggles to explain a piece of evidence recovered from the scene. Through a series of events and good police work, Hahn figures out the last clue and solves the mystery.

Textauszug

Chapter One:

With its wings spread wide, the anhinga glided over the clear, shallow waters of Biscayne Bay in search of a meal. It flew over a man snorkeling near Stiltsville, tucked its wings back, and plunged into the water. Seconds later, the large bird returned to the surface with a small fish speared on its beak. After swallowing its meal, the long-necked bird lumbered back into the air, flew south, and landed on the roof of the old blue shack, spreading its wings wide to dry in the midday sun.

A large cloud moved over the shack that stood in the middle of the bay. The building was unremarkable except for being a mile from the closest shoreline. It resembled a double-wide trailer built on concrete pilings ten feet above the water, surrounded by a wrap-around porch. A set of stairs led down to a dock where an old boat was tethered to a cleat.

As waves lapped against the stilts, Roy, a yellow lab with white whiskers, lay on the floor inside the shack beside his owner’s feet, tapping his tail to the rhythm of a strumming guitar. The screen door opened, and Roy shifted his eyes in that direction.

Jerry’s hair was still dripping as he came in with a five-pound hog snapper and a netted bag with four almost legal-sized lobsters. He placed the bag on the counter and tossed the snapper into a cooler. “You ever gonna finish that song?” He grabbed two cold beers and handed one to Paul.

Paul stopped, ran his hand across his thinning hair, and quipped, “You should know that music and the ocean are very similar. The notes of my music are like drops of water. They’re small parts of something larger that fill us with wonder.” He took his beer from Jerry’s overly tanned and calloused hand.

“Notes of music are like drops of water? When did you get so philosophical?” Jerry popped open his can and guzzled half the beer. “I caught us some lunch.”

Paul looked up and smiled. “So, we’re having lobster thermidor?”

“Dang, I ran out of paprika and mushrooms.” Jerry chuckled. “I guess we’re having them boiled.” He went back to the kitchen and filled a six-quart pot with water. On another burner, he melted a stick of butter. When the water came to a boil, Jerry removed the lid and tossed the lobsters inside. High-pitched hissing sounded from steam escaping from the shells. “Two lobsters as usual?”

“I need two since the ones you catch are so small.”

“They’ll be bigger once they’re in season.” Jerry finished his beer and pulled the lobsters out of the pot once they turned bright red. “I guess you know what we’re having for dinner.”

“Let me guess, seafood?”

Jerry twisted the heads off each lobster and placed two on each plate. “The freshest seafood you can find anywhere.” He served Paul before sitting down, setting the pot of melted butter on the table between them.

Paul cracked open a lobster tail and dunked the meat into the melted butter. “I’ve never gotten tired of this place.”

“So, we’re on again for next week?”

“Definitely. I’m retired and this is what I look forward to each week.” Paul rubbed his belly and yawned. “I think it’s time for my nap.”

Jerry wiped his forearm across his mouth. “Perfect. That’ll give me time for one more dive before we pack up camp.”

He cleaned up, went down to the dock, and gathered his gear. He slipped on a set of fins, strapped on a scuba tank, and secured his mask before easing himself off the dock into the warm, clear water. He wouldn’t need his tank yet, so he moved across the surface breathing through a snorkel. The lighthouse was a landmark to find his secret honey-hole. The swim usually took about ten minutes during slack tide, but this would take twice as long as he fought the incoming current. On his way out, Jerry routinely checked for barracuda that followed him at a distance.

Once at the shallow target, Jerry switched to his scuba tank and explored the site he had discovered almost two years before. He would stay submerged for over an hour, fanning the sand away and carefully searching for more of what he’d already pilfered over the past year. Spotting one and then another, he carefully placed each item into his zippered pocket. When his air supply ran out, he returned to the surface and snorkeled back to the shack.

It was late afternoon when a yellow twenty-one-foot Donzi cruised across Biscayne Bay toward Stiltsville, blaring AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” over the stereo. A thick, middle-aged man was behind the wheel and looked the part of a boat captain in his long-sleeved Guy Harvey shirt, tan khaki shorts, and Oakley sunglasses. Rojo wore a ski cap that covered his ginger hair and deformed cauliflower ears.

At Rojo’s side, dressed in a tank top and compression shorts, was his cousin Macho, whose name fit his tall, muscular build. Macho’s girlfriend sat scantily clad on the bow, looking back at them through her large-frame sunglasses.

Rojo turned to his cousin. “Wish you hadn’t brought her. I thought we were watching the place while we fished.”

“She insisted when she overheard us talking about fishing.”

“She doesn’t know anything?” Rojo asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Nah.” Macho waved a finger in front of himself. “I promise.”

Macho studied the map displayed on his phone. He nudged Rojo and pointed to an old fiberglass boat tethered beneath one of the shacks. There were no boats docked at the other five shacks as far as he could see. Macho placed a hand on Rojo’s shoulder as he turned down the music. “That has to be the place.”

They were nearly two hundred yards away from their target when Rojo pulled the throttle back and slowed down. He pointed to the bow. “Get the anchor ready.”

Macho hurried to the front, got the anchor from its storage compartment, and held it over the edge. “Say when.”

Rojo slid the throttle back into neutral and coasted into position. “Go ahead.”

Macho released the anchor overboard and held the rope until it snagged on the sandy bottom. Once the rope was secured around a cleat, Macho grabbed binoculars from his gym bag. “I’m pretty sure that’s the boat, but I can’t read the hull number from here.”

Cariña’s eyes scanned the area. “That’s got to be it. There’s no other boat around.”

Rojo shot Macho a hard look. “How does she know about that boat?”

Macho put an arm around his cousin’s shoulder. “I may have told her a few things. Don’t worry, Cariña wants the same thing as us.”

Cariña flashed a smile and peeled off her shirt and shorts. The buxom brunette stretched out in a floral print bikini across the cushions. Rojo’s gaze was fixed on her ample cleavage as she rubbed on sunscreen.

Macho grinned as he elbowed his cousin. “Beautiful, aren’t they? I paid a lot for those melons and feel they're worth every penny.”

Rojo nodded; his eyes still focused on Cariña’s rack. “How did you afford them?”

“We got a plan.” Macho smiled and lay low across the captain’s chair with his binoculars, watching for any movement at the shack across the channel.

Rojo baited several lines and positioned the poles in the boat’s rod holders. Standing on the rear baitwell, he cast his favorite spinning rod and waited as the baitfish gently tugged at his hook.

Nearly forty minutes later, Macho leaned forward, his binoculars fixed on the shack. “We got movement. Looks like Jerry, tan and wiry, but I can’t see what he’s doing.”

Rojo squinted at the shack. “Hard to tell, but it looks like he’s got a scuba tank.”

Cariña and Rojo turned their attention to the shack. They saw the small figure of a man walking across the dock with a scuba tank.

Cariña gave a thumbs up. “You think he’s there by himself?”

Macho shrugged. “Not sure.” He adjusted the focus on the binoculars.

The tan man disappeared when he stepped down into the old boat and reappeared on the dock several minutes later without the tank. He turned and looked across the channel.

“Geez, he’s looking this way,” Macho said.

“You think he can see us?” Cariña asked.

“Nah, I think he just sees a boat with a few guys fishing.” Macho watched Jerry make several trips between the shack and boat, tossing in a sack or two each time.

Rojo stepped in front of Macho. “You’re hiding something from me. What do you two have planned?”

“We don’t want to wait. We’re going to confront Jerry tonight. She’s an extra set of hands in case we need help.”

Cariña spoke up. “Looks like he’s loading up the boat.”

Macho got to his feet. “We better make our move over there before he leaves.”

The sun was setting as Rojo reeled in his line. Rojo returned the rods to their holders and had Macho pull up the anchor. Cariña shimmied into her shirt and shorts.

Macho stepped closer and firmly grabbed...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 25.4.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror
• ISBN-13: 9798317802103 / 9798317802103