Long Shadows

Chapter 39

Back at his hotel room Decker sat down on the bed and opened the file Kasimira Roe had provided him on her father.

There was a photo of Kanak Roe included. He looked to be about sixty at the time the picture was taken. His face appeared like it was cast in marble with steel accents. A formidable, perhaps indomitable man. He had come to this country with nothing and built an impressive business. To do that you had to be tough and resilient and maybe ruthless, too.

He learned about the man’s stint with the Secret Service, his guarding of multiple presidents. And then, instead of pulling his full time with the Service and locking in his pension, Roe had left and come down to Miami to start the protection business that would eventually become Gamma.

From the file Decker learned that the business had grown rapidly, and Gamma had a long list of impressive clients. And Kasimira had taken it to ever higher levels.

He then turned to the day that Roe had vanished. The man had left his boat slip in Key West for what apparently was planned as a day cruise.

The boat had sleeping quarters belowdecks and a small kitchen. Kasimira had told him that her father normally would go out in the early morning and return well before dusk to his home in Key West. But that day he hadn’t come back.

He did wonder why a terminally ill, and presumably weakened, man would head out by himself to go deep-sea fishing. Decker had never done any deep-sea fishing, but he had watched people do it on TV. It took a helluva lot of strength and stamina to fight some of the big fish and land them. And to do so by yourself was difficult enough even if you were young and healthy.

But maybe, as his daughter had suggested, he just wanted to take the boat out one last time.

He hadn’t been clear on why Kasimira would allow her father to do that, but in a note in the file she had explained that she only found out about her father’s plans the next day, when he didn’t return to the slip. As she had mentioned during their meeting, apparently the only person who knew what he was planning was an old fishing buddy of Kanak’s, who had not been there that day, and thus didn’t know his friend had failed to return.

There was no information on exactly what terminal illness Kanak had, but Decker wasn’t sure it mattered. The man had been given a death sentence, regardless of the cause.

He briefly imagined Roe setting off in his boat and heading out into the open ocean knowing he only had a few months left.

Will I come to that point, sooner than I want to? And what will I think about when the days grow short?

Decker believed he would think about his wife and daughter. About possibly seeing them again, if there really was life after death.

But Kasimira seemed to have been very close to her father, thus Decker deemed it unlikely that the man would leave her in the lurch like that. So had someone else prevented him from coming back from that trip?

He closed the file, sat back on his bed, and picked up his phone. He punched in a number that had been in the file. It was Kanak Roe’s friend, the one he had told about taking the trip. His name was Daniel Garcia. The men had become friends, not over business, but over their love of fishing. It was late enough that he didn’t expect anyone to answer.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Garcia?”

“Yes?”

Decker explained who he was and why he was calling.

“Yes, Kasi told me you might be phoning. How can I help you?”

“You can tell me what you know about Kanak Roe heading out that day.”

“If I knew he wasn’t coming back I would never have let him go.”

“I understand that. Do you know what his illness was?”

“Pancreatic cancer. Nasty shit. They almost never catch it until it’s too late. You got about a year to live after a stage-four diagnosis. Kanak had about three months left. He was on all sorts of meds and painkillers.”

“Was he in any shape to take the boat out by himself?”

“I mean, the crap he was on, he could function. Yeah, he was in pain, but if you saw him you wouldn’t know he was dying. Look at the Jeopardy! guy, Alex Trebek. He was working pretty much right up to the end. One tough dude. Same with Kanak.”

“But did you really think he was going deep-sea fishing? I mean, that’s not easy to do even when you’re healthy and strong.”

“Look, if I really thought he was going fishing on that boat I would have gone with him. That’s at least a two-person job. No, he just wanted to take the Kasi out maybe one more time.”

Decker had learned from the file that Kanak Roe had named his boat after the nickname he used for his daughter.

“I see.”

“The Kasi was a great boat. A thirty-eight-foot Scout with a twelve-foot beam. Triple Yamaha engines. Had a beautiful cabin, where most deep-sea fishing boats are bowriders. Sleeping berth, stove cooktop, flat-screen TV, shower, sink, and toilet, even an AC unit. And with the tri-engines that baby could really go. I’ve been out on it a bunch ’a times with him.”

“And when he didn’t come back?”

“I had to head out of town that day. I didn’t get back until later the next day. Went down to the marina. The Kasi is two slips over from my bucket. Saw the slip empty and then started raising the alarm.”

“Surprised no one did it before then.”

“People come and go at all hours from that marina. And they don’t have folks there twenty-four seven monitoring who comes and goes. But I called Kasi. She jumped on a chopper and flew down straightaway. Along the way she tried but couldn’t reach her father. I went over to his house in Key West, but the place was empty. His SUV was in the garage. He must have taken a cab or Uber to the marina.”

“Did he usually do that?” asked Decker.

“Sometimes, when he didn’t feel like driving.”

“So, his daughter didn’t talk to him every day, then?”

“She usually did. But she had just gotten back from a business trip. In fact, she had just returned to her place in Miami when I phoned.”

“She said there were smugglers out there,” said Decker.

“There are, but they don’t do their thing during the day. And why would they bother another boat? Just make trouble for themselves.”

“He might have seen something he shouldn’t have out there.”

“Maybe,” Garcia said in a doubtful tone. “But then what happened to the Kasi? Hard to hide a fifteen-thousand-pound boat. And they never found any sign that it sank, blew up, or was scuttled. And it’s hard not to have something hit the surface. Oil slick, debris. You can’t pick up every piece.”

And a human body, Decker thought.

“When was the last time you spoke with Kanak?”

“Two days before he went out. He talked to me about the trip. That’s when I knew he wasn’t going fishing. He knew better than that. I mean, you really got to have somebody at the wheel while you’re fishing for the big boys. You use all sorts of different equipment, an array of poles and lines all over the place. And different baits, including surface, weighted and kite, downwind, upwind, teasers, dredges. Lot of stuff going on.”

“How far out would you go?”

“Well, the marlins, sailfish, and yellowfin are usually at least fifteen miles out, that’s been my experience anyway. That’s why they call it deep-sea fishing. We would go out about twenty to twenty-five miles. Water gets really choppy and bad weather can spring up, but Kanak was an old hand. We’ve ridden out many a storm together. Hell, we almost got blown to Cuba once. That was an experience. But the day Kanak went out there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.”

“But with his physical condition, weren’t you worried about him?”

“To tell the truth, I didn’t believe he was going out any more than three or four miles. Just to see the ocean up close one more time.”

“What do you think happened to him, then?”

“Damned if I know. It’s like he rode that boat all the way to heaven.”