Dead Center (The Still Waters Suspense Series Book 2)

  A SWEET TEA PRESS PUBLICATION

  First published in the United States by Sweet Tea Press

  ©2018 Dawn Lee McKenna & Axel Blackwell. All rights reserved.

  Edited by Debbie Maxwell Allen

  Cover by Shayne Rutherford

  wickedgoodbookcovers.com

  Interior Design by Colleen Sheehan

  ampersandbookinteriors.com

  Dead Center is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters, are products of the author’s imagination. Any similarities to any person, living or dead, is merely coincidental.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Thank you for Reading!

  About the Authors

  for

  Matthew

  my littlest boy, but my biggest fan

  Dawn Lee

  for

  The guy who cut me off on I-5 one mile before the speed trap and ended up getting the ticket instead of me. Thanks.

  Axel

  ONE

  IT WAS EARLY SATURDAY MORNING, a late-January morning that many native Floridians considered frigid and dangerous, given that the mercury had barely crept up to twenty degrees. Even worse, the gleefully melodramatic weather forecasters proclaimed that it might get down to the mid-teens that night. This wasn’t unheard of that far north, but it was fairly rare. While the native Floridians bundled up and prepared to descend upon Wal-Mart to buy all the space heaters, the northern transplants shook their heads and vowed to stay off the roads.

  Sergeant Ruben Goff and Deputy Jimmy Crenshaw were heading out to do welfare checks on some of Port St. Joe’s older citizens, ensuring they had safe and adequate heating systems. Goff was a local, and he knew from past experience that they were going to get roped into looking at plenty of pictures of grandkids while they nibbled slightly stale oatmeal cookies.

  They got the call shortly after 8:30 in the morning. Apparently, a somewhat hysterical woman had called to report a body, and something about an alligator, in the pond behind the Presbyterian church. Dispatch had had a hard time deciphering the details, given the woman’s state of mind. The upshot was definitely a body, and maybe a gator.

  After letting dispatch know they were responding, Goff allowed a small smirk, which caused his silvery and rather impressive mustache to inch up toward his nostrils.

  “That’d be the Buck Griffin Lake, I figure,” he said. “And if she thinks she saw a gator in it, well, I got some land to sell her.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time a gator turned up where it wasn’t wanted,” Crenshaw said. He was originally from St. Pete, where, apparently, the gators were less respectful of their boundaries.

  “That lake’s man-made,” Goff said with a huff. “It’s in the middle of that park off Sixteenth. Nothing there to interest any gator.”

  “Well, if there is a gator, it could be real bad news. I see kids over there all the time,” Crenshaw said. “Carol said the woman on the phone was really upset, talking about lots of blood.”

  Goff turned onto Forest Park Avenue, which ran the length of the west side of the park. He could see a few people clumped together in the grass on the right, where a concrete path led to the footbridge that connected a tree-filled promontory on the west side to a grassy one on the east.

  “‘A lot of blood’ doesn’t necessarily mean much when a civilian says it,” Goff said. “Not compared to what you or I have seen.”

  He pulled the Sheriff’s Office cruiser to the curb and ducked his head to squint through the windshield at the group that looked pretty relieved to see them. They were two men in their seventies or eighties and a woman of about the same age. The woman had one hand to her eyes. The other hand clutched the leash of some miniature designer dog.

  “Well,” he said, as he and Crenshaw unbuckled their seat belts. “Let’s see what we got.”

  Goff slid out of the cruiser, stood up straight, and grabbed his overburdened belt to jerk up his pants. He was a blue-eyed, silver-haired wisp of a man who looked like a strong breeze could kick his ass, but this was a lie he had used to his advantage more than once.

  Crenshaw had been discharged from the army over a year ago, but the military haircut, physique, and mannerisms stayed with him. He pulled a police issue AR-15 rifle from the gun lock between the cruiser’s seats and slid out.

  Abel Starkey trotted across the grass toward them. He was in his late seventies and just about as round as he was short, wearing a plaid button-up shirt on top and Birkenstocks on bottom. His khaki shorts met his white socks at his knees. Goff knew him enough to say hello to at the store.

  “Hey there, Mr. Starkey,” Goff said. “What we got goin’ on over here?”

  “He’s down that way,” Starkey said, pointing down the path. “He’s on the bank over where the bridge starts.”

  “So, your wife’s the one that saw the gator?” Deputy Crenshaw asked. Goff could see him trying not to have a facial expression. “She’s not my wife, she’s with my neighbor, Richard,” Starkey said. “And I didn’t see any gator. Just the body. She came running back to the house—me and Richard were having coffee—dragging her little hamster behind her and screaming about some guy that got killed by a gator. Come on, come talk to her.”

  “Starkey,” Goff asked, as the two officers followed the old man. “You’ve been here a long time. You ever see an alligator in Buck Griffin Pond?”

  “I been here since before there was a Buck Griffin Pond, and of course I’ve never seen a gator in it. But I never saw a dead guy, either.”

  They stopped in front of the older couple. The woman was sniffing into a man’s handkerchief, and the dog was barking, his voice hoarse. Goff had little affection for puny dogs, and he guessed the thing had been barking since birth. He glared down at it, and it growled once for show, then shut up.

  Unlike Starkey, the second old man looked like ribs and twigs wrapped up in crumpled brown paper. He was almost as skinny as Goff, though he had that peculiar round belly that skinny old men sometimes did.

  “It’s about time you got here,” the second man cawed. “She’s a mess. I need to get her back to the house.”

  “What’s your name, sir?” Goff asked.

  “King. Richard King,” the man answered. He had a broad accent that Goff assumed was New York City, though he could have been from anywhere up north. They all sounded alike to him.

  “And your wife here is the one that called in?”

  The woman nodded, but King held up a liver-spotted hand. “She’s not my wife, she’s my girlfriend. She’s visiting.”

  The woman blew her nose and lowered the hanky. She had almos
t-yellow dyed hair, and at this early hour, she was in full makeup. “Delores Burns,” the woman said. Her hand trembled as she dabbed at her face.

  Crenshaw repositioned himself to gain a better vantage on the glassy lake, adjusting his AR-15 with practiced ease. “So, you’re the one that actually saw the gator?” His confidence with the rifle was counterbalanced by his disconcerted glances at the still water. Goff hadn’t brought a rifle. Whether that was because he doubted they’d find a gator, or because he figured his wheel gun would be sufficient, Crenshaw didn’t know.

  “I didn’t see the alligator, I just saw the man, the man’s body,” she answered, in an accent that was even thicker than her boyfriend’s.

  “She’s from Jersey City, what does she know from gators?” King asked.

  “I know what a body looks like! These, I’ve seen plenty,” Delores snapped. “He’s right there on the bank, half in the water, all bit up and bloody.”

  Goff jerked his head at Crenshaw. “Go have a look-see.”

  As Crenshaw moved off toward the bridge, Goff looked back at the clutch of old people. “So, nobody actually saw a gator.”

  “Never had no gators in the Buck Griffin,” Starkey said, matter-of-fact.

  “There’s a canal goes in and out of the lake. Could have been a bull shark, even,” King said.

  “Reckon it could,” Starkey affirmed. “Sometime back, this was way back, I think, we had us a big bull shark biting tourists all around here.”

  “Bull sharks are always biting tourists,” King said with the authority of a transplant. “They’re attracted to the coconut oil.”

  “This one I’m thinking of bit a bunch of tourists…all up an’ down this stretch of sand,” Starkey said, waving his arm in the general direction of the Gulf.

  “Otis,” Goff put in. “I remember him.” He glanced off to his right as he saw Crenshaw coming back.

  “Otis, that’s the one! Damn near forgot what we called him,” Starkey said.

  “Well, there’s a body down there,” Crenshaw said. “White male.”

  “Of course, there’s a body,” King said. “That’s what she just said.”

  “How’s it look?” Goff asked.

  “I didn’t go any farther than the path,” Crenshaw answered. “But it’s messy.”

  “All right, call it in, and get some units over to the other side of the bridge to keep people from walkin’ in,” Goff said.

  “We were just saying,” King said. “Those bull sharks, they’ve been known to come inland, you know.”

  “Yeah, Otis came inland a time or two,” Starkey added.

  “Land shark, huh?” Crenshaw muttered as he headed for the cruiser.

  “What are we, schmucks?” King asked Goff. “I said inland, not on land.”

  “Son of a gun was twelve feet long,” Starkey continued, seeming oblivious to his friend’s gripe. “Y’all want to see him, just head on down to Petie’s Speakeasy on No Name Road out by The Kink. Pete’s got him hanging on the wall.”

  “Reckon Otis has an alibi, then,” Goff said.

  Starkey glared. “But, Otis ain’t the only bull shark,” he said, “All I know is, if someone got bit in the Buck Griffin, it wasn’t by some gator.”

  Goff sighed, perching his hands on his hips. “Listen, y’all. So far, we don’t know for sure that anybody got bit by anything.”

  He looked around the park, all of it visible from where he stood. Thankfully, no one else was there. Too cold. Most likely, Cupcake, or whatever the snotty little dog was called, was the only reason Delores had been out.

  He turned to look as he heard a vehicle behind him. It was a St. Joe PD cruiser. Sgt. Bill Knight climbed out, and Goff met him halfway.

  “Heard you got a body,” Knight said.

  “Looks like,” Goff answered. “Can you help us out with some officers to keep people out of the park? We’ve got more SO folks responding shortly, along with Crime Scene.”

  “Sure thing,” Knight answered. “I’ll get another couple of guys out here, over on 16th, and at either end. Where’s your body?”

  Goff jerked his head. “Down by the water, over where the bridge starts. You care to get these folks’ contact information and send ’em home? I need to go have a look.”

  “Got it,” Knight answered as he keyed his radio and walked away.

  Goff looked over at Crenshaw, who was slamming the door of their cruiser. “Crenshaw, let’s go have a look.”

  The two of them crossed the grassy area and then the Port City Trail, a scenic, ten-foot wide, paved path that ran parallel to the park and wound four miles through the city. This brought them to the concrete path that led to the bridge.

  There weren’t many trees in the park, and most of those were on the spit of land that jutted into the lake on this side. They stood on either side of the path, along with a decent amount of shrubbery, before the path opened onto the bridge.

  The area at the foot of the bridge was completely open, all well-manicured grass. Goff and Crenshaw were still a good twenty feet from the bridge when Goff saw the first sign that they had a real problem on their hands. At the base of a mature tree, the last one before getting to the cleared area around the bridge, Goff spotted some matted grass and divots of dirt that looked like the scene of some kind of struggle, along with several large spots of blood. The spots led out past the trees, toward the lake.

  Goff pointed at the blood, and Crenshaw nodded as they followed the trail but stayed well to the side of it. As they neared the area where the grass began to descend to the lake, Goff spotted a good deal more blood; on the grass, and on the rail at the end of the bridge. Goff walked close enough to see down the embankment, and there he saw a man facedown on the bank, his head and one shoulder in the yellowish water. The man was wearing a bright blue tracksuit and athletic shoes. There looked to be some blood staining on the back of the jacket, but Goff couldn’t see any obvious source.

  From where they stood, the coppery smell of blood tainted the cool air. Crenshaw scanned the shoreline for irregular shapes or threatening ripples. Nothing stirred but a few dragonflies. The park was silent, though off in the distance they heard sirens approaching.

  “Maybe it was a shark,” Crenshaw said half-seriously.

  “If it was a shark, it must have been the walking kind,” Goff snorted.

  “Landshark?” Crenshaw asked, dubiously.

  “Candygram,” Goff said, in a childlike voice that the younger deputy barely recognized.

  “What?”

  “Candygram,” Goff said. He looked like he was about to explain, but then just said, “Never mind. Guess you weren’t born yet.”

  “Guess not,” Crenshaw said. “Evan’s probably gonna want to be called. I’m going to have to say it wasn’t a shark or a gator that did this.”

  Goff blew a sigh through his mustache and hooked his thumbs over his utility belt. “Yep. If this was an animal attack, I’ll eat the leftovers.”

  Sheriff Evan Caldwell had been standing in the same spot for almost ten minutes. Piggly-Wiggly had four shelves devoted to nothing but an amazing variety of cat food, and Evan had picked up and glared at almost every item. The handles of the red basket he held were starting to cut into his hand, laden as it was with coffee, bottled water, and a few navel oranges. With a sigh of exasperated resignation, he lowered the basket to the floor and picked up a can so small it looked like it was meant to feed Barbie’s cat.

  He spun it in his hand and frowned at the ingredients list. Okay, so the ingredients were all natural, but natural to whom? Since when did cats eat carrots or rice? In all his years of watching Wild Kingdom, he’d never seen a tiger sneak up on a patch of kale.

  He slapped the can back down on the shelf, then looked up as he heard someone laugh. A red-haired woman in her late fifties was shaking her head at him. There were two bags of dry food and a pile of cans as well in her cart.

  “You sure are giving it a lot of thought,” she said, smiling as she g
ave him a discreet once-over. Six foot one, with nearly black hair, an abundance of long lashes, and bright green eyes, Evan got the once-over quite a bit, though he usually failed to notice. It used to be that Hannah would laugh later, and point it out to him. She also used to say that the thin white scar that ran from his lower lip to his chin was the only thing that saved him from being too pretty.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “The cat food. Are you looking for something in particular?” she asked him.

  “Food, I guess,” Evan said, shrugging one shoulder. “Something I actually want to buy that he’ll actually want to eat.”

  “Picky, is he?” The woman nodded knowingly. Evan noticed she had a sticker on her purse that declared cat people to be happy people.

  “He likes to throw up a lot,” Evan said. “After reading these labels I can see why.”

  “Well, I don’t buy it because it’s too expensive for my blood, but these refrigerated ones are supposed to be the best,” the woman said, gesturing at a small cooler behind her.

  “Huh,” Evan said, walking over to inspect the cooler. He opened the door and pulled out what looked like a tube of liverwurst. On the label, a very serene-looking cat sat on what was surely an organic field of grass. Evan turned it over to read the ingredients. “Lamb, chicken, chicken broth, sweet potatoes and rice.”

  “Yeah, all whole foods,” the lady said.

  Evan looked up at her. “But it’s people food,” he said. “I might as well just cook up a big batch of chicken for him.”

  “Well, can you cook up a batch for my brood, too? I’ve got five.”

  Evan almost shivered as he put the cat food back in the cooler. Five. He’d take a firing squad first. He smiled at the woman anyway.

  “You must really like your cat,” she said. “He’s a lucky boy.”

  “He’s a jerk,” Evan said as she started to move along. “I just think it’s ridiculous that I have to choose between chicken genitals and overpriced people food.”

  The woman’s smile faltered just slightly, and Evan was about to think of something more acceptable to say when his cell phone rang. He shrugged at her like he was sorry to end their conversation and pulled it from his back pocket. The number told him it was his office assistant, Vi Hartigan.