Square Snapper (Detective Inspector Burgess) (4 page)

He greeted a few people along the corridor and made his way towards the bank of elevators near the cafeteria that would take him down to the morgue.
Things will definitely be quieter down there
. He got in with a school girl dressed as a “Candy Striper”. These were young volunteers so called for their red and white striped uniforms.

“Good afternoon,” she addressed him politely.

“Hi, How ya doon?” he replied, drawing out the last vowel sound in the typical Bermudian way.

Once in the basement area, he squared his shoulders, pulled down the back of his jacket and made his way through the double doors into the domain of Dr. Jacintha Brangman. He did not look forward to the morgue, its smells and sights, but he would come down any time if the lovely pathologist summoned. He spotted her in her office behind a glass partition.

She pulled the girl’s body out of a refrigerated drawer and removed the sheet. There was the mandatory Y incision in the girl’s chest that had been neatly re-sewn. Dr. Brangman was also an artist when it came to putting the dead back together again, noted Burgess.

“Our girl, Rhonda Mayberry, is a well-nourished, female, five feet four inches tall…well you know all that. Let’s cut to the chase. The spear gun was shot at point blank range, I’d say she was running away at the time and he managed to grab her. See this faint bruising on her left shoulder? Those are finger marks.” She stepped behind Burgess. “I reckon he grabbed her from behind like this.” Burgess felt her hand on his left shoulder and held his breath, fervently hoping she had not noticed the electrifying effect of her touch. “He then harpooned her with the spear gun like this.” He felt a slight stab in his back. Returning to her position beside the gurney, he saw that she had something in her hand that looked like a knitting needle. She turned the body on to its side and inserted the needle into the wound in the victim’s back pushing it straight through the chest. “The spear entered at a thirty degree angle, just so. Burgess, squeamish at the best of times, did his best to remain impassive. “What I am showing you, Detective… Buddy… is that her assailant was right handed, at least six feet tall which is why you have the slight downward angle of the wound. The spear pierced the left lung. There is also substantial internal tearing where she was brought up short by the cord on the spear. All in all, a very ugly death for such a lovely young woman. She would have bled out.”

“Any signs of sexual assault?”

“None at all. I have nothing to suggest that she may have known her assailant. I’m hoping forensics might come up with something on the arrow or remnants of the cord.”

Jacintha gently removed the needle and arranged the body back on the gurney. Placing the sheet over the young girl’s face and body, she pushed her back into the drawer. Burgess was grateful that was over.

“Come here, there’s something else I want to show you.” She beckoned him over to her desk where he could see something pink and white in a small, plastic evidence jar. He recoiled at the thought of what it could be.

“It’s okay,” she said. “Nothing gruesome. In fact, something rather nice.” She unscrewed the jar and placed the object in the palm of her hand. He looked over and saw it was a delicate pink and white striped seashell. It was still in its original butterfly form.

“Not often you see one of these still intact. Where did you get this?” He queried.

“Strangely enough, when I was removing her top, I found it caught in the fabric against her chest. It must have become lodged in her clothing when she fell. Luckily, she didn’t crush it. It’s obvious to me, judging from the sand on the body and in the wound, she was killed on a beach.”

“Yeah… but not just
any
beach. This has got to have come from a very sheltered beach where there is little or no wave action. Most of the beaches have waves that pulverize the shells into sand. It’s unusual to see one like this.”

D.I. Burgess was right. Anybody who has ever visited a Bermuda beach will know that the sand is pink because it is made from crushed coral and shells. You have a hard time brushing it off as the tiny particles tend to stick to your skin. Evidently, some of the sand had clung to the body, even though it had been in the water for several hours. The shell was a windfall.

He pulled out his cell phone and dialled.

“Sergeant De Souza? Are you still over at Shaw Park? Any small, sheltered beaches around that way… There is? Close to the house? I’ll be right over. Stay where you are.”

He turned to the pathologist with a grin from ear to ear.

“Thank you, Jacintha. You have just handed us our first real break in this case. I owe you a dinner.”

“I’ll be sure and take you up on that,” she replied with a dazzling smile that made him want to turn around and skip out of there.

Chapter 8

The island was in an uproar. The two heroin deaths were front page news of the Bermuda Gazette with the headline: “Accidental Overdoses or Serial Killer?” The People’s Corner radio show had a record number of callers complaining about the state of the country, declining morals and speculating everything from suicide pacts to a serial killer on the loose. According to public opinion, no-one was safe in their bed, the police were not visible enough, and the drug dealers should all be hanged - after a public flogging, of course. Decidedly, there was no place in Bermuda for such goings on and the people were not happy.

Pamela Zuill was still on duty at the Police Station. Burgess had put her to work analysing all the catalogued anonymous tips to Miami’s Crime Stoppers number and, as she had the office to herself, she had turned on the radio quietly to listen to the comments on the People’s Corner. The show’s host was having a hard time controlling his callers. Many made reference to the old case of the murdered Canadian boy and she noted that there was little confidence in the police’s ability to catch the criminal. She sighed. She knew how hard her colleagues worked and how hard it was to get people to talk to them. Witnesses inevitably kept silent, for fear of reprisals or just because they could not be bothered to get involved. She really hoped they could find the girl’s murderer quickly. She was not particularly worried about the heroin cases. Personally, she thought they were just a coincidence.

D.I. Burgess was over at Shaw Park. He had received approval for a team of forensic scientists from Canada to fly in and assist and he was glad for the fact they would arrive later that afternoon.

After the call from Sergeant De Souza, he had immediately driven down to the tip of Shaw Park where the empty house had been found. He had joined the sergeant down on the beach and, together with several uniformed police, they were combing the beach for evidence. He noted that the beach had a lot of small shells, many similar to the one the pathologist had found, so he was hopeful they would find something to show this as the scene of the crime. As they were combing the beach, there was a shout from one of the officers. “Inspector, over here!” He was further along the beach and much further inland.

Burgess crouched down to inspect the marks. “From the width of the tyres, looks like a truck or SUV was here. We’ll need to ask the forensics team to get measurements, plaster casts and analyse these further. What are these tracks?”

“Looks like something was dragged along the sand and then maybe put into the back of the truck,” offered De Souza. “Look, there are two sets of footprints on either side. Do you think it could have been her body? Maybe they dumped it after all.”

“I’m not sure, Sergeant.” Burgess was intrigued. “I think the marks are too wide and too shallow. Look, it’s more like the object skims the sand. Anyways, cordon off this area, Officer and get a tent put up in case it rains. We don’t want to lose this evidence.”

“Sir, over here.”

D.I. Burgess and Sergeant De Souza both turned at the sound of another officer’s voice. He was further along the beach, much closer to the water’s edge.

“Sir, I think this may be blood.” Burgess and De Souza all but sprinted over to him. The three of them surveyed the area and instantly realized that they had hit the jackpot.

“Good work,” said Burgess. “If my thinking is correct, she must have been walking along here. Look, aren’t those paw prints? I bet she was walking the dog when she ran into her killer or maybe she saw something and he killed her for it. The forensics will be able to tell us much more. They can fill in any blanks for us. Make sure nobody walks here, Officer. We have got to preserve this. I wonder when the next high tide is. Clearly, she must have fallen here where the tide could not reach her. I imagine she must have tried to crawl away from here but got disoriented and too close to the water. By the time the tide came in, she was unconscious and got washed away, poor girl.”

D.I. Burgess’s cell phone rang.

“Burgess,” he replied. “Yes, Pamela. Really? That may be something. Good job. I’ll be back at the station in about twenty minutes. You can brief me then.”

He turned to the other two men. “That’s one of my team. She says an anonymous tip went into Crime Stoppers to say they had seen a boat in the water off Shaw Park the night before last. They were coming back from fishing and almost hit it because it didn’t have running lights. They think it may have been an inflatable dinghy with an outboard.”

“That’s significant,” said De Souza. “That could be what was dragged to the truck. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Yeah, Square Snapper!” exclaimed Burgess.

Now the pieces were falling together. Square Snapper was the name given to drugs that were wrapped in waterproof packaging and dropped into the ocean from a plane or boat. The package had a GPS signal so that it could then be located and picked up.

“I’ll bet she was walking the dog when she interrupted them. There was probably more than one of them. Have you ever tried to manage a zodiac by yourself? It’s not easy. Okay, this is good. Now we’re cookin’. I have to get back to the station. Keep me posted.”

“Yessir,” snapped back the reply from both policemen, clearly pleased to have been part of a breakthrough in the case.

Chapter 9

Detective Sebastian Gonzalez was puzzled. It was a sweltering day in Florida’s Dade County and the last thing he wanted was to be out of his air conditioned office. He had been called down to the Salvation Army shelter by one of the volunteers who had involved the police because three of his “regulars” had been missing from the food line. He had found out from their associates, not the most reliable for telling the truth, that they had all apparently died from a drug overdose. While he assured Gonzalez that the life span of most of those who frequented his shelter - or just came over for food - was pretty short, it was the first time he had lost three in one week.

Detective Gonzalez said he would look into it and check with the Dade County Coroner to see if they had indeed been taken to the morgue. At least, that way, they could find out if they hadn’t just picked up and moved on. He finished taking down their names and descriptions in his notebook, secretly looking forward to picking up a plate of carne mechada and fried plantains and a “marroncito”, one of those strong Cuban coffees which was a secret vice of his, and going back to the cool of his office where he could work the phones. While he said nothing to the volunteer, alarm bells were going off in his head. These three new deaths would bring the week’s toll to over thirty. The Coroner had already started examining some of the bodies and had found they had all died from heroin laced with strychnine. He bet that the three reported by the kindly Salvation Army volunteer would fall into that same group. Somebody, somewhere, was selling poisoned dope - as if it weren’t poison enough already - and the addicts were dropping like flies. He had seen drugs cut with all sorts of chemicals from PCP, which made them crazy and violent, to talcum powder and household cleaners. Sometimes his job really shook his faith in human nature, especially when he saw some of the heinous acts perpetrated on the vulnerable and desperate. He wondered how long it would be before the press got wind of it all… and what they would make of it.

Later, back in his office, he learned that the three Army shelter junkies were “cooling off” down at the morgue. He was talking to the Coroner’s secretary on the telephone when his colleague tapped him on the shoulder.

“Hey, Gonzalez.”

“What’s up Hofstein?” Gonzalez covered the mouthpiece with his hand.

“I overheard your conversation. One of the guys from Vice just came back from a vacation in Bermuda. He said they’ve had three deaths there. Two of them were drug overdoses. Heroin, I think. Any chance this could be connected?”

“Hey, Sharon. Thanks. I’ll call you back.” He replaced the receiver.

He turned to his colleague. “Dunno, but it’s worth checking out. Maybe I’ll get an all expenses paid trip to Bermuda! Can you find out who’s handling the case?”

“You can just look up the Bermuda Gazette’s website. That’s their largest newspaper. It’ll probably have his name in the article. If not, we can go through the regular channels.”

“Thanks, Hofstein. That’s helpful. I’ll let you know what I find out. Might be worth checking some of the other county sheriffs too to see if they’ve noticed anything like this in their neck of the woods.”