A False Dawn

NINETEEN

I found exactly what I needed at a Radio Shack less than twenty minutes from the marina. Within two hours, I had installed and tested the hidden camera I had placed between stacks of books in the master cabin, its fish-eye lens pointed at the bed. The trap was set.

After I finished, I called Dave over to show him my handiwork. “I’m setting the laptop up here on the table in the salon. I’ll go back into the master cabin and walk around. You can watch it on the laptop. All wireless.”

“Essentially like television,” he said.

“Picture isn’t as ready for prime time, but it’ll work for crime time.” I stepped down into the master cabin and heard him applaud.

“Sean, I can see the entire cabin. You have a certain flair for the covert.”

I came back up to the salon. “How’d you know about covert activities?”

Dave only smiled.

“We can stow that laptop on Gibraltar. Signal will go the distance.”

Max did one of her half barks and half whines, which added up to a total command. “Max is ready for dinner. You hungry, Dave?” I was hoping to bounce some thoughts off Dave’s brow.

“Let’s eat,” he said.

“I’ll leave a note on Nick’s boat. Maybe he’ll be back in time to join us.”

I turned the camera on, locked Jupiter, left a note on Nick’s door, set the laptop on Dave’s, and we walked toward the tiki hut with Max following us.

Although the fish was cooked over hardwood to perfection, I had very little appetite. Max had a small hamburger patty served medium well. She ate from a paper plate on the wooden floor next to our table.

Kim brought us fresh Heinekens and said, “Max has better table manners than most of the people I serve.” Max cocked her head and seemed to nod. Kim beamed. “Coffee?”

“Grey Goose over ice and a squeeze of lime, Kim,” Dave added.

I said, “Coffee sounds good. It’ll keep awake for the drive home.”

Kim almost frowned. “You have a perfectly good boat to sleep on, at least I imagine it’s perfectly good for sleeping. Why the hurry?”

“I’m expecting visitors.”

After she left, Dave said, “I think she likes you.”

“Maybe. Maybe she’s just a little lonely. We know for sure Kim likes Max. She gets the free meals.” I sipped the Heineken. “Do you know much about human trafficking?”

“Big market overseas, especially in the sex trade. The women are stolen or duped into believing they are getting legitimate jobs in more prosperous countries. They incur false debt for transportation. They’re forced to work it off, on their backs.”

“It’s happening right here in America.”

“No doubt. You think this is somehow related to the girl you found?”

“I do.”

“How?”

“I think she was connected to one of these migrant camps because some soil in her shoe smelled like chemicals — fertilizers — something with a high phosphate count. But she wasn’t used as a farm worker. Maybe she was forced into prostitution and ran.”

Kim brought Dave his drink. He swirled the vodka and ice in his glass. “Modern day slavery, forced prostitution, human trafficking, right here in the land of the free.”

“I think this murder, and the one that came a few days later, is the work of the same killer that’s cutting one out of the herd when he feels the urge.”

“And they’re the least likely to be reported missing,” Dave said.

“The victim I found, she was just a kid. I think she was in the area and running from someone, maybe bolted from the perp’s car. She escaped and ran toward the river. He caught her. Probably thought he’d killed her on the banks of the river.”

“She was barely alive when you found her. Maybe she played dead and he left. Or perhaps someone scared him off.”

“I investigated some similar cases in Miami. The perp was called Bagman because he asphyxiated his victims with a plastic bag during the rape. There was duct tape near the victim I found. This tells me it was probably planned. I never caught Bagman. Now I know there have been at least fifteen sexual murders of Hispanic women in Florida, rural areas, starting after the Miami murders dwindled down to nothing.”

Dave stirred his ice. “The duct tape could be a similar MO, but maybe not.”

“You translated the words the girl whispered to me. ‘He has the eyes of the jaguar.’ The only victim to survive Bagman said she could never forget his eyes. She said they were like the eyes of a wildcat.”