driven to Key Largo, where they’d dived the famous John Penneykamp underwater preserve and coral reef park. They’d taken two dives the first day, one beyond the barrier reef in rough, wild waters which were dangerous even for seasoned divers. She believed the sea captain who guzzled beer from the moment they boarded to the moment they returned to shore was not only a derelict but was derelict in his duties and responsibilities to the divers, most of whom had become too ill to dive in the waters beyond the barrier reef and did not enjoy themselves in the slightest. Jessica had ushered her party into the wild waters before seasickness could reach out and grab hold of her, and once in the water, everyone felt a hundred percent better, but diving was treacherous, the current a good thirty-plus miles an hour as seaweed and even sea life caught up in it went racing by Jessica’s mask, and the coral reefs were a hundred feet down.
Returning to the boat had been an exercise in frustration. It was near impossible to get back aboard, the boat’s ladder shifting like a wild schoolyard swing. Each diver had to time his jump onto the ladder exactly right, and most were thrown clear of it repeatedly before they could get a foothold, especially with their ungainly flippers in the way. The first mate stood at the back of the boat, coaxing the divers back on, doling out advice and warning them to keep their fins on lest they drop them and lose them for good. Meanwhile, the two-ton, bare-chested captain was on his ass at the bow, drinking more suds.
When Jessica had boarded, she’d decided to throw a scare into the fat-assed captain. She went forward, flashed her badge and said, “Take us to where we can all enjoy our dive, Captain.”
The bulging-eyed response had said it all. He tossed his beer into the big wastebasket and went straight to work. The second dive had been in calm, glass-clear waters, and everyone had a good time in a picture-perfect, thirty-foot- deep, magnificent coral reef. Reboarding, Jessica found that the captain had even donned a shirt for her. Looking back now on her last visit to Key Largo, Jessica had nothing but exciting memories of her earlier time here, but this afternoon, she was here for anything but a holiday. She and Quincey found the body dredged ashore in Key Largo at the local hospital morgue, where the pathologist friend of Dr. Coudriet’s, a colorful, stomach-protruding little man named Maury Oliver, led Jessica and Quincey past a handful of other corpses, old men and women from the look of them, people who’d lived a long life, retired to Florida and were now awaiting shipment “home”- wherever that destination might be. The pathologist joked, saying, “Here we have Florida’s largest export. You probably thought it was oranges and grapefruit, but no… it’s dead bodies. Ask any airport in the state.”
Jessica spent only a couple of hours with the more bizarre, more morbid case of the girl who’d washed ashore here, her body stiff as though rigor mortis had clutched her and would not relax its grip-as is normal after a few hours. But this body was stiff due to preservatives, and they had preserved the floater’s facial features and body far better than those of her sisters in death farther to the north.
The pathologist, a little man who resembled a gnome in a children’s storybook, smiled as he watched Jessica examine the body, saying, “There’re a few more surprises on the other side.”
“ Roll her,” Jessica asked of two attendants who stood nearby.
The men did so, each swallowing hard, still capable of some empathy with the hardened corpse.
“ Hell of a strange wound, wouldn’t you say?” asked Dr. Oliver, in his best Sherlock imitation, his hands rubbing, scrubbing over one another in teasing fashion. “Care to make any guesses?”She thought she saw slaver drip from the little man’s mouth, as if he found the wound a turn-on. Oliver continued, “It looks like some sort of hook, piercing here and returning here. Maybe wrapped around the spinal cord? We could tell in a jiffy, if you’d like a look inside at the bones?”
She conceded the ugly truth. “Right along the spine; just like he racked her to a wall.”
“ So, do you want a peek inside, at the spinal cord, or no?”
“ I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” she bluntly replied.
“ Coudriet said you were thorough, so I want to be sure we’re-”
“ I don’t think it’s necessary,” she repeated, losing her temper.
The sight of the wound at the back, where obviously she’d been “hooked,” as it were, made Jessica think of Lopaka Kowona, the Hawaii serial killer she had run down and helped put an end to two years before. He had had a rack on the wall in his black hole of a bungalow overlooking Honolulu from the mountain foothills-his deadly killing ground. Kowona’s rack was made of bamboo, and his victims were tied by rope fashioned from hair taken off previous victims. Kowona had been a fetishist and a cutter, using blades of various sizes and shapes to carve his victims slowly, methodically and ritualistically while they helplessly dangled from his rack. The similarity was in the trophy-making. Kowona always’held on to something belonging to his victim, and Jessica believed the same was true of Patric. His was the work of another trophy maker, and if what Dr. Oliver was surmising was true, then the body itself had become for Patric the ultimate trophy, so that now he sought to preserve his victim in her entirety. Obviously, he’d given up when the stench had become too overpowering and he’d realized he’d failed in the preservation attempt.
“ It reminded me of a mark I saw once made on a sailfish, one of those giants. It was done on the side turned to the wall, to create a hook to fasten it to the wall,” said the pathologist. “ ‘Course, it was a botched job, and ‘course this ain’t no fish… or is it?”
“ Have you taken photos of this wound?”
“ Of course.”
“ I’d like a full set, the wounds along with the woman’s features.”
“ Sure thing, Dr. Coran.”
Something about the man reminded her of C. David Eddings; she wanted to get away from him as soon as possible.
“ Will you be doing a complete post-autopsy? I understand you do a lot of that.”
“ And how long have you and Dr. Coudriet been friends?” Jessica countered.
“ We go on the occasional fishing trip when he blows through on his way to Key West or some such glamorous point. Key West… now that’s some place. You mustn’t miss it. Most expensive place in the nation to lay your head. Did you know that? On average, cost of a bed is a hundred fifty dollars a night if you figure year-round, so just imagine how astronomical it is during the height of tourist season.”
“ I don’t think we’ll be going to Key West,” she replied, thinking their next stop would be Lower Metacumbe Key. “That’s too bad. You’ll miss the Hemingway Festival, the Hemingway home, his cats!”
God, this guy’s as annoying as Gilbert Gottfried, she thought.
He pressed onward. “And the sunset street festival, performed every night as a kind of semipagan, almost tongue- in-cheek tribute to the sun god. And the place has such charm, if you can overlook the tackiness, the human misery and filth, and if you can stay focused on the cute trolley cars and the boutiques and street vendors and perform-”
“ Where on this island might we locate the electronic capability to get photographs of this new Jane Doe’s face, along with a detailed description, sent to authorities all along the coast, north and south?” she asked, ignoring his Key West chamber of anti-commerce prattle.
“ We’ve got a state-of-the-art scanner, fax and modem setup right here, just upstairs. Dr. Coran,” he countered with a rakish grin. “We’re not Miami or D.C., but we aren’t without our electronic gizmos and-”
“ That’s perfect.”
“ The pictures are in my files. I’ll get them for you.” Soon Jessica was sending a detailed photographic depiction of their latest Jane Doe to every law enforcement official in the state, asking Missing Persons departments across the state to seek a match. Given the condition of the body, Jessica had little doubt that this one would soon be identified.“Sad business,” said Quincey, sounding as if someone had let the air out of him.
“ You’ve been a rock throughout the investigation, Quince,” she volunteered.
He managed a smile. “I’ve watched you, Dr. Coran. You… now you’re a rock.”
“ Hardly. How far’s Matecumbe from here? Can we reach it tonight?” It was already dark out.
“ Sure, no problem.”
“ Then let’s push on.” When they arrived in Lower Matecumbe Key, it was pitch-black out, so dark in fact that the sheen of the waters all around the enormous Florida Bay to their west and the Atlantic on their east were brighter than the night sky. The darkness of the heavens was due to low-lying clouds, and not a star could be seen in the heavens. Water surrounded them on all sides as they made their way along U.S. 1, the Overseas Highway, spanning what seemed one interminable bridge after another.
The sand-laden land mass they drove across narrowed to a strip of ribbon fronted by an occasional gas station, a boat rental and sales office, a wharf surrounded by patient vessels of every size and type, a surprising
