The Best American Mystery Stories 2018

William Dylan Powell THE APEX PREDATOR ^{From Switchblade}

The layoff. The divorce. The gradual erosion of my 401(k). Getting that call from the Houston Police Department to help with the Buffalo Bayou vehicle recovery felt like a birthday present. Especially now, when the economy seemed to be made exclusively of bloodsucking lawyers, bakers of fru-fru cupcakes, and soulless tax collectors.

But as I swam around that ’87 Camaro, peering through the muck, it was hard to get too excited.

The car was covered with silt, reminding me of the drilling mud they use in oil-field drills. That’s my normal gig. Offshore oil rigs. Underwater. I ran my glove along the hood, leaving a bloody scar across the algae, revealing the vehicle’s original crimson.

Above me in an aluminum fishing boat an HPD officer named McCleary and Stephanie, the cute paramedic, sat moored to an oak tree. The police have their own dive team, but if they can go cheaper contracting guys like me, they’ll do it every time.

All week it had been the same: The computer nerds marked the location and vehicle’s general orientation. Trustees from Harris County Jail cleared brush from the bank, and the city brought a winch truck. Then I made sure the vehicles weren’t stuck on anything, found a solid connecting point, and signaled the all-clear with my radio. Up and out they went.

The older ones rusted to skeletons; the newer ones retained their shape but lost their bones. Low-rider Chevys with fancy wheels long since tarnished. Minivans with toys floating around inside. Muscled-up Mustangs and staid company sedans still containing office files disintegrating upon touch. Frozen little time capsules of someone’s everyday life on the move.

The job was scary and sad and strange when the underwater cars were occupied. More complicated too. HPD’s crime lab got involved. More paperwork. The dive felt dirtier—the water connecting you with the dead, both of you just floating objects. Each night of the assignment when I lay down to sleep I smelled the sour, earthy small of the bayou, even fresh out of the shower.

The Camaro in question was wedged into the bank. Moving in slow motion like an astronaut, my rebreathing apparatus making me sound like Darth Vader, I worked my way around it.

No fallen trees near; that was a relief. Cottonmouths nested in them, their bodies tangling like ramen noodles in boiling water—hence the paramedic in the boat. I saw an unintelligible bumper sticker on the back of the car and ran my hand across it to clear off the algae. “Luv Ya Blue,” with a Houston Oilers helmet. I should have known it held nothing but heartache.

I shined my flashlight into the driver’s side window. The bayou’s current, seeping in through various imperfections in the vehicle, tumbled everything inside like a clothes dryer—though with no open windows or doors everything seemed to stay contained. Along with the murky brown water something light blue brushed across the window, then more brown water, then an empty can of Big Tex beer, then something blue again, then a plastic grocery bag. It was like peering at a slot machine before it landed on a lemon or BAR or cherry. Only the next thing that came up wasn’t a cherry or lemon. It was a badge.

The shield ticked against the window as it slid across on its tumble cycle, along with the light blue cloth of a uniform. I stared into the chocolate murk, waiting for it to come around in the current, but the next thing I saw wasn’t a badge but a hundred-dollar bill. Then the Big Tex can again.

Opening the downstream door would cause everything to float straight down to the Lynchburg Ferry, then Trinity Bay and eventually the Gulf of Mexico itself. I told myself that it was the badge I was following up on, not the hundred-dollar bill.

Fighting the current, I opened the upstream door. A cottonmouth slithered out of the back-seat area and snapped at me, its teeth striking my hard plastic diving mask.

A man likes to think he knows where he stands within the food chain of predators and prey; even among other men. But underwater everything gets all shuffled, your awkward limbs and limited breathing placing you much lower in the hierarchy. As I stood catching my breath and feeling the mask for holes from the snake, I saw the hundred-dollar bill float out of the car and shoot downstream toward the Gulf. Damn.

Shining my light inside, a skull stared back at me. Its grin floated across the car’s interior, rotating its head like a model at a photo shoot. A chill danced up my spine.

I’d closed the door and had my hand on my radio, as this was a crime scene now, when another hundred-dollar bill floated past the car’s window. I took my thumb off the radio button. Watched a flathead catfish wiggle along the bottom.

In the days of $147/BBL oil, a hundred bucks wouldn’t last an hour for me at the Pumpjack Pub on Eldridge. I used to find hundred-dollar bills in my truck or wadded up in the laundry hamper every time I was home from offshore. One month on, one month off.

Now, at $30/BBL oil and three years of divorce, I didn’t think twice. I reopened the door, plucked the hundred from the water, and shined the light around inside the Camaro like I meant it.

Bones floated without gravity, like pens in those videos from the space station. Another skull bumped up against the steering wheel and two pale blue HPD uniforms drifted around the seats—angular, irregular shapes. A school of perch flitted past me, one of them nibbling on bone that looked like a fingertip as it passed.

That’s when I saw it. There, in the shotgun seat floorboard—a canvas bag. It took up the whole floor on that side of the car. I wedged a finger into the zipper and opened it, shining the light inside. Bricks of banded cash, seemingly luminescent on the pale green—loose edges floating in the current just begging to be set free.

I did it all so fast, without missing a beat. As if there were no actual decision to be made. No hesitation. No internal debate. I just… did it.

Untying some paracord from my wrist, I zipped the bag back up and floated it out of the car, walking it upstream. Then I wedged it in the mud between a cypress tree and the bank, tying it off. Looping an extra length around the bag and my ankle knife, I jammed the knife into the tree. Then I swam back and clicked three times on my radio.

A minute later I heard a pop and groan. The Camaro pulled free of the bank, swayed in the current, then disappeared into the sky above.

“What the hell took you so long, I’ve got ’stros tickets!” screamed Officer Cleary as I made my way into the boat. The cop and the paramedic made room for me as I fell inside awkwardly.

“I’m fine, guys, really, thanks,” I said. I was trying to keep the conversation light, but my mind raced. If I hadn’t been wet all over, they’d have seen me sweating.

“Seriously, that wasn’t no five minutes,” said the cop. “That was more like twenty! First pitch is at seven and it’s the Rangers.”

I unbuckled my air tank and leaned back against the side of the boat, catching my breath. “I’ve got bad news,” I said in between panting. “I ran into a few of your colleagues.” Just then Cleary’s radio crackled.

“Eighty-two, dispatch.”

Cleary craned his neck to speak into the radio clipped on his shoulder. “Eighty-two.”

“Eighty-two, Sergeant Mills says pack up Aquaman and go wait by the tow truck for the lab guys. It’s going to be a long night.”

“Eighty-two, copy,” he said into his radio. And then to us: “Well, shit, there goes the Astros game.”

“They never beat the Rangers anyway,” I said, squinting into the shadows at the cypress stumps, tangled oaks, and black mud on the banks to find landmarks of some kind, any kind, as the boat puttered away from the scene.

At 3 a.m. I gave up on sleep and threw back the covers. During the best of times, life at the Oaks of Davenport Apartment Homes held little peace. Each apartment was part of a single building split into fours. So it was flushing, thumping, fucking, cooking, bathing, and screaming all night every night. At least in the navy or out on the rigs everyone was equally tired and therefore equally quiet.

Tonight one neighbor was coughing like active tuberculosis was a real possibility and another was watching Matlock so loud I’d already figured out who’d done it. But I couldn’t have slept no matter how quiet: I was planning on walking out that filthy door today and never coming back.

I shuffled over to my coffee maker and put in a new filter, added fresh grounds. Stood at my breakfast table looking out at the bleak apartment parking lot outside, at the beat-up pickups and Big Tex bottles and fast food wrappers and nervous cats as the coffeemaker gurgled and hissed.

Just past the parking lot, with a lack of zoning for which Houston is notorious, spread the wide verdant lawns and flickering gas lamps of the Oaks of Davenport neighborhood. Resembling my little stainfest apartment complex in name only, the comfortable and quiet, large-lot homes stood with darkened windows and peaceful lawns.

Flags fluttered in the night breeze. BMWs gleamed in driveways, azaleas bloomed twelve months per year; its residents seemed entirely composed of men in golf shirts and women in capri pants with their hands in their pockets laughing at jokes while standing in their driveways each evening. In the early ’80s my apartments housed successful oil execs while their palatial homes were being built in the Oaks of Davenport neighborhood next door. Now the apartments’ only upside was letting residents get away with saying they “lived in the Oaks of Davenport” and simply leaving it at that, letting others assume success without knowing that somehow, somewhere in their lives, something had gone horribly wrong. It wasn’t the money I was so excited about, per se. It was the prospect of more laughing driveway moments like the guys in the neighborhood next door had, and fewer 3 a.m. episodes of Matlock heard through an asbestos-laden wall.

Ever since I had seen that bag of money, my mind was like a computer trying to process something big and getting stuck at every attempt at simple tasks. I kept calculating how much money would fit in a bag that size, plus or minus a few floaters. Ten thousand? One hundred thousand? More? I hadn’t seen more than a couple hundred bucks at once in a decade. Everything was direct-deposit, auto-pay, and then just a handful of ashes at the end of the month. And that was when I worked steady.

Pouring my coffee into a thermos, I threw on a T-shirt and jeans, then stepped out into the Texas night. Driving my beat-up truck toward Buffalo Bayou, I rolled the window down and lit a cigarette. Glanced at my watch: 3:47 a.m. Johnny Cash was on the radio with “Sixteen Tons.”

The air was hot and muggy even driving with open windows. The chirping of crickets and croaking of bullfrogs replaced the sounds of car horns, police helicopters, and rap music usually filling the streets of America’s fourth-largest city. At the park, where we’d removed the car, a pop-up tent lab had been erected—lit up like the Astrodome and crawling with HPD officers, men in cheap suits, and workers in reflective vests. I slowed for a closer look.

The Camaro sat parked on the grass with its doors, hood, and trunk open. A canopy had been erected over the vehicle, with generators and floodlights blazing up the scene.

Crossing the bridge over the bayou, I turned into an unmarked, unlit wooded drive along the bayou. Shutting off the truck, I dug a waterproof flashlight out of the glove box and changed into my wetsuit. Not bothering with scuba gear, I settled for just a snorkel and mask. Then I picked my way down to the roiling blackness of the water.

Tangles of swamp chestnut oak, flame-leaf sumac, bald cypress, river birch, passionflower vines, and trumpet creeper meant nobody across the way processing the vehicle could see me wading in. Buffalo Bayou’s gumbolike water swept me along like a slow train. I pushed hard for the far side, holding my breath and swimming hard until I saw purple and blue spots and thought my lungs might explode.

After catching my breath on the other side, I bobbed up and down the bank, running a hand through the slime along the way. After twenty minutes of feeling nothing but mud and algae and cypress stumps, something bit my finger. I shined my light onto the banks, expecting to see a cottonmouth or catfish with razor-sharp barbs. Instead I saw the gleam of my diving knife and the paracord snaking back to the huge duffel stuffed into the roots of the tree. Houston, the Eagle has landed.

I’d just hauled the bag out of the water and was drip-drying against a cypress, trying to catch my breath, when a white light blinded me.

“Who the hell are you?” someone said in a knife-hand voice. A deputy in a cowboy hat shined a flashlight point-blank in my face, resting his other hand on his sidearm. My stomach clenched as I held a hand out to shield my eyes.

“I’m Derrick Stevens, the diver,” I said, pointing at my snorkeling mask. “I did the recovery this afternoon.” The truth was all I could think of. I stepped toward the light as my brain raced, switching the bag to the opposite hand.

People think that fighting is the most valuable skill you learn in the military. Nope. My time in Uncle Sam’s navy imparted the most useful tactical skill ever developed by humankind—and it’s not swimming or fighting or tying knots. It’s the art of bullshitting someone so you don’t get in trouble.

I stepped to the officer and did my best official voice. “Sir, it’s standard operating procedure for all Harris County contract divers to undergo a mandatory environmental reclamation of the recovery zone, making sure all of the ropes and hooks and flags and towels and things are picked up at the dive site,” I said, raising the duffel bag for emphasis. Water still poured from the bag, and I prayed a hundred-dollar bill wouldn’t slink out in the stream of dripping water.

“At four in the morning?” he said.

I shook my head. “No, I’m slated to do it at nine a.m. But I was hoping to take the wife to Pedernales Falls later today.”

The officer turned off his light and stared at me, his square jaw chewing tobacco and his chest puffing like a gorilla’s. He waited to see if I said anything else. I didn’t.

“Stop creeping around in them damn bushes,” he said finally. “You gonna get your ass shot.” He turned without saying another word and walked up the hill toward the Camaro and surrounding makeshift crime lab. I followed.

I was now on the side of the bayou where we did the recovery; where the car was being processed, and not the side where I’d parked. But Officer Gorilla had already seen me; it would be weird to backtrack. So I walked straight through the worksite. In my mind the bright white work lights made the bag transparent, and the hammering of the power generator become incoming fire as the officers saw the money and sent warning shots over my head—or, worse, gave no warning shots at all. I imagined Officer Cleary, who did the dive with me, being there too, complaining about missing the Astros game and wanting to see what was in the bag. Or the cute paramedic wanting to know why my finger bled.

But nobody noticed the bag. Or me. Cleary wasn’t there; neither was the paramedic. Just past the Camaro I gave a casual wave to the deputy. He ignored me, spitting into a Dr Pepper can and talking to his colleagues. With my head held high, I walked by them all as if my car were parked just ahead, turned onto the street just past the officers’ field of view, and vomited on the sidewalk.

My haul for that morning’s dive was $642,120.

The discovery of the policemen’s remains never made it to the papers, not even the Houston Press. And I never did discover how two uniformed cops wound up with that much cash in a personal vehicle, dead in the bayou. But somebody knew. Somebody had to know; someone always knows when that much money goes missing.

Stealing makes most men edgy. Stealing from a gang? Worse. Stealing from a gang of cops up to no good? Mainline paranoia. Every time I saw an HPD cruiser I was sure that was my day. Whenever a cop pulled up behind me my knuckles went white and I saw those skulls in the underwater Camaro swirling like bull sharks; imagined a rapturous pit of cottonmouths slithering through my floating bones until they drifted into oblivion.

Figured I had no choice but to get ready for them when they came. Sure, those two were dead. But was there a third or fourth? And whose money was it originally? No way somebody wouldn’t connect the dots, even if a few years had passed. Somebody ruthless. Somebody who’d want me to pay compound interest in blood.

The only question was, would I really be ready for them when they came? Would I be strong enough to keep what I’d found? Where would I be on the food chain then?

I always imagined what life would be like when I retired. Golf. Movies. Spending more time with my daughter, Jenna, who I’d hardly seen since the divorce.

But I didn’t do any of those things. Not once. Instead I spent my time getting ready for the day when whatever sketchy group knew about that money finally caught up to me.

For the first year my preparations centered on the house I’d bought in the Oaks of Davenport—the real Oaks of Davenport—on the opposite site of the neighborhood from my old rundown apartments. I figure, who comes looking for a man right by where they were? But I didn’t spend my time laughing at jokes in my driveway; I was a busy man.

Floor safe, over-the-top outside lighting, a security system straight out of Mission Impossible, and enough guns to overthrow a small African government. ARs, AKs, M1911s, Glock 9mm’s, thousands of rounds of ammo—all strategically placed around the house so I could tactically funnel threats as needed. Crooked cops would be armed and I had to be ready, no bullshit. I dropped $50K on guns and security, easy.

After the house, it was all about me. Guns are worthless without training, so I invested in formal classes and long afternoons at the Artemis gun range. Then Krav Maga, the hand-to-hand system of the Israeli special forces. I spent evenings punching, kicking, grappling, and getting a reality check regarding what actual fighting is like as a middle-aged man. Where I stood on the predatory scale against other men. It was ugly, but I put in the work. I even made it a point to spar with different body types, from short fireplug fellows to huge knuckle-draggers. I’d work the heavy bag, putting my hip and full body weight behind combinations of hook punches, uppercuts, jabs, and elbows until the bag was slick with blood, all the while envisioning an army of skeletons in police uniforms waiting for me in the shadows. Never blinking. Never resting. Just waiting to attack.

On the day I finally found my place in the food chain, I’d walked to the Starbucks on Dairy Ashford and Ubered to Global Security Conversions to pick up my new truck. The Ford F350 had just 702 miles on it and had been taken apart and reassembled with armored plating, bulletproof glass, run-flat tires, and industrial brakes. The service technician, a thin man in blue overalls, whistled as he slid me the final invoice. “I don’t know who you’re scared of, but they’ve already fired the first shot,” he said, chuckling as he lit up a cigarette and counted the stacks of bills I’d piled on the coffee-stained counter.

Sweat ran down my back as the hot blast from the truck’s air conditioner hit my face when I cranked the engine. I cracked the windows so some of the summer heat could escape. I’d never ridden in a bulletproof vehicle before, and I’ve got to admit that it felt good. Felt safe. Felt like I could relax a little. Hell, I sort of felt like causing trouble. It’s only natural. All the training. All these new resources. I felt ready for anything. Bring. It. On. Bitches. I was literally bulletproof. I turned on the radio and listened to Willie and Waylon’s “Pancho and Lefty,” whistling as I drove and taking the long way home.

Back at the house I locked the door behind me, checked the security system, and reset the video feed. Opening my safe room, I took off my shoes and plopped down into the leather desk chair. A former master bedroom, the safe room was now my armory and operational security center. At my desk a half-dozen police scanners were set to different frequencies—HPD, Harris County sheriff, constables—squawking out various goings-on around town. As I listened to the drone of the cop talk saying things like “10-32” and “welfare check” and “disregard,” I sipped black coffee and cleaned a Glock .40 while glancing at the TV screens showing my home from dozens of different vantage points.

I was just about to put the gun back together when a face appeared in one of those screens. A woman’s face.

Bespectacled and no more than five feet tall, she wore khaki slacks with clunky brown shoes and an ill-fitting blue blazer. She wore her hair in a tight bun, but strands had broken free and stuck to her chubby face in clumps. Her mouth came together in an expressionless dot as she checked her smartphone and adjusted her glasses before ringing the doorbell twice. She held only the phone and a business card.

In the frame of the camera, you could see her standing in front of my sign reading WE’RE TOO BROKE TO BUY ANYTHING. WE KNOW WHO WE’RE VOTING FOR. WE HAVE FOUND JESUS. GO AWAY. I’d thought the sign hilarious, but she merely glanced at it and returned her stare to the door, as if she’d seen it a thousand times before.

I set the Glock down and wiped my hands. Tapping the keys of the security system a few times, I got a 360-degree view of the house, street, and backyard. No cars around save a dented white Toyota Prius out front. Nothing but squirrels out back. I opened up the bedroom window and listened. No helicopters in evidence, just the chik-chik-chiking of a neighbor’s sprinkler. Hey, I know that sounds crazy, but you never know.

Picking up my coffee, I padded down the hall toward the door. My legs were killing me from an early-morning run, my biceps destroyed from a brutal sparring session at Krav Maga the previous night.

Scrunching my face into the most annoyed look I could muster, I threw open the front door and said nothing, merely raising my eyebrows.

“Derrick Stevens?” asked the woman. She had a lisp, and my name came out like “Thtevenths.”

“Yes?”

She handed me her card. In hindsight, I’d rather have faced a dozen crooked cops with AR-15s and armored Strykers. Or actual ninjas with poison throwing stars. Or rabid pit bulls. Hell, I’d rather she’d have just shot me in the face then and there.

“Mr. Thtevenths, I’m Agent Abigail Larson with the Internal Revenue Thervith,” she said. “I need to talk to you about some glaring overthights in your most rethent Form 1040.” She adjusted her glasses and awaited a reply. I stared down at the card, trying to process what the woman was saying.

All the 7.62mm rounds I’d put through my AK-47. All those nights at Krav Maga. All the cameras and protocols and lights. Five-foot-tall Abigail Larson, lisp and all, wielded the might of the federal government like the sword of a Viking berserker, starting with that very conversation. The lawyer’s fees. The court dates. The asset forfeiture and garnishing of any future wages. Then, finally, the Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville.

In hindsight, I should have run. Run far away to a place with great diving and no extradition, like Indonesia or São Tomé & Principe. If I thought the bayou was murky, taking on the IRS offered more snakes and snags than even the worst underwater nightmare. And I’d spent so much money on security, I couldn’t have afforded a decent attorney even if they hadn’t found what was left.

Huntsville is even louder than the Oaks of Davenport Apartment Homes, what with the clanging and coughing and dubious grunting of my fellow incarcerated citizens. Between the noise and the thin, scratchy blankets, I’m right back where I started not sleeping very well. And when I lie down at night, I still smell the stink of the bayou on my skin and see the visions of snakes and skeleton cops lurking in every shadow to demand their money at gunpoint. In the waking world, however, I no longer worry about the money’s original owners catching up with me—not even stuck here in Huntsville, so easy to find. The money is gone, and gone for good. And anyone who ever comes asking about it could damn well take it up with Abigail Larson. But I wouldn’t recommend it.