Clint Faraday Collection C: Murder in Motion Collector's Edition (18 page)

Clint went back home at three o’clock and was
tying the boat to the dock when his celular buzzed. He answered to
find it was Sergio, head of the police in Bocas Town. Some
snorkelers had found a body in the bay. It looked like a woman had
been snorkeling near the mangroves and had gotten entangled in the
roots and had drowned.

“
Why tell
me?” Clint asked.

“
It
doesn’t feel right. No one has been reported missing. She was a
tourist, I think, so wouldn’t have been there alone.”

“
Yeah.
That smells – and I haven’t even been out there yet. Where was
it?”

“
About a
quarter of the way from the mainland to Dolfin Point. We brought
the body in. There’s nothing to see there.”

“
I’ll
come to the station in the morning.”

Small Clues

“
Anything
new since you called?” Clint asked Sergio in the
morning.

“
Except
that there were no signs of violence on the body more than would be
natural for that kind of thing, no.”

Clint didn’t know where to go with no more
information. “Who was she?”

“
We don’t
know yet. I’m having her prints identified. They’ll have that from
her passport, I hope. Nobody’s been asking about a misper or
anything.”

“
No ID of
any type on the body?”

“
A small
tattoo on her left ankle. A four-leafed clover.”

“
Irish.”

“
Uh-huh.”

“
Well,
I’ll talk with Doc, then check around. Judi can find information
faster than we can a lot of the time so I’ll get her on
it.”

They discussed fishing a moment, then Clint
headed for the Golden Grill. None of the regulars had heard
anything about anyone going out and not coming back. That group
would know fairly quickly if anything such was being talked about.
They didn’t miss much, and that would be something the couple of
gossips wouldn’t miss. A woman who went out and didn’t come back.
They would have decided she was a tramp who crossed the wrong woman
over a husband, or she would have been a naive trusting sweet
innocent who was probably brutally raped, then murdered – and the
police would try to cover it up so they wouldn’t have to bother
with investigating anything.

This wasn’t getting anywhere. Clint went home
and asked Judi to ask around when she was in Bocas Town and
elsewhere.

“
I’m
going to Changuinola with Ana and Yveth. Maybe they’ll know
something there. She might not have been from here. Almirante or
Changuinola are the other main places she could have
stayed.”

There wasn’t much to do. Clint decided to
paint his fence. He would have to know more to decide if he even
wanted to bother with it. It did intrigue him because it was an
obvious murder. He would be called into it because of that. He
helped the police with any murder cases that came up, though they
were now getting very good at investigation on their own.

“
... that
there was a woman there with two men, sort of reddish auburn hair
and green eyes, very good figure, maybe five six or so. They went
somewhere and none of them came back. Nilsa, at the hotel, said
they were from Canada and had Canadian passports. She gave me the
numbers and names, James Besford, Charles Dennis and Shannon
O’Brien. I gave Serg the passport information. He said the woman
fit the description. They were all staying in San Juan, Costa Rica,
for a short while, O’Brien for several months. There may have been
some kind of trouble there that they were involved in, but that’s
just gossip, so probably doesn’t mean much.

“
That’s
about it for what I could find,” Judi finished.

“
Which
was a heck of a lot more than Sergio or I could find in the time.
It gives us a starting place, other than a body in the
bay.”

They chatted awhile about the people she ran
across in Changuinola, then she went home to clean up for a dinner
date. Clint cleaned up and walked into town to stop at the Toro
Loco before going to El Ultimo Refugio for a good meal. He met a
girl from Canada, they hit it off, she was on vacation to learn
about life and she was not a virgin, but not very experienced
either.

Besford and Dennis were from Canada. She had
stopped for two days in San Jose’ Costa Rica. Clint managed to
mention them in the way Judi taught him. She had met them once in a
bar and had talked with them about Canada. They were there with
some strange people by the name of Boucher, from France. There was
some hood who came in and they left with him. That was all she
knew.

It was a very good night. In the morning,
after Eileen had gone to meet her traveling mates, Clint went to
the police station to see what Sergio had learned. There was an
alert out for the two men. They hadn’t left the country, according
to immigration. Their passports had not been used or stamped at
exit. They were being checked in Canada, information from which
would come in about eleven. If they weren’t staying in a hotel and
didn’t go past any of the checkpoints, they were probably still in
Bocas del Toro Province. Possibly Chiriqui Grande or Punta
Peña.

Clint said he would ask around about it. He
had a lot of friends in that part of the archipelago who might have
seen something. He went back, got his boat and headed for Tierra
Oscura, Isla Popa, Isla Pastore, Shark Hole and the Crawl Cay end
of Bastimentos. One Indio family who were out between Dolfin Point
and Isla Pastore saw who might have been them. They had a white and
green fiberglass boat, 16', with a 50 horse four stroke Yamaha.
There was one woman with dark reddish hair with two men, one blond
and one dark-haired. The dark man’s hair was a little long and the
blond might have had a pony tail. The men were in their early
twenties or so and were tall and strong. The dark-haired one had a
tattoo on his left shoulder of a tiger and on the right just a
pattern in red, green and blue.

The Indios can give excellent descriptions if
you know just what – and how – to ask. This was a combination of
the father, who noticed the woman particularly, the mother, who
noticed much about the men and the three children in their early
teens who noticed little points here and there. The oldest son was
gay and noticed everything about the men. They were built like
bodybuilders, but maybe a little bit slimmer. They were attractive,
in a way. (The Indios take that as a matter of course, also.)

They passed about six meters just at the
point. The boat was headed into the bay. The Indios were headed out
around the point. The whole family worked the finca there. The
mother said she thought she’d seen the boat before on the
mainland-facing side of Isla San Cristobal.

Clint went to the little marina on the
mainland facing side of San Cristobal and found that a woman named
Shannon O’Brien had rented the boat for the day two days ago. He
had her passport number and so forth. It was the same as Sergio
had. An Indio brought the boat back just before dark and said the
people in it paid him to bring it back because they had to hurry to
get to the Panamá City bus that took on passengers in Almirante.
The Indio was Daniel Santana, who Clint knew.

Clint went to Almirante and found Daniel, who
said there were two surfer-type men in the boat. They said they had
to get their bags and so forth from the Hotel San Francisco and
back to the station to get the bus and couldn’t depend on getting
back in time so they gave him ten dollars to take the boat back.
They seemed in a hurry.

“
What did
they have in the boat? Surfboards or fishing tackle or
what?”

“
Just
some snorkeling stuff and two box ice chests. The chests were heavy
and the men were strong, but it took both of them to take the boxes
from the boat. They put them in the back of one of the small truck
taxis and went toward the hotel. I took the boat back. I usually
only get six dollars so it was a good day!”

“
Did you
notice which taxi it was?”

“
I think
from Changuinola. It wasn’t from here. I only saw it once or twice
before. They had a lot of money. Hundred dollar bills. I told them
I couldn’t change a twenty, much less a hundred. They had a ten and
gave it to me to take the boat back for them.”

He didn’t know anything else.

Now Clint was curious. A woman was dead and
her two companions had gone off with two large boxes. What was in
those boxes could be damned important.

Clint went to the bus terminal. The two
didn’t take a bus from there to anywhere local. They didn’t take
the David bus, either. The passenger manager would have definitely
noticed them. The boxes would have cost extra if they were that
heavy.

So. They had a taxi from Changuinola waiting
– or did they call one? Did they take a taxi to David or
elsewhere?

That would be between eighty and a hundred
dollars. They had a lot of hundred dollar bills. Clint was
suspicious about those boxes. He had a sneaky suspicion that they
were packed with hundred dollar bills. There was a lot of drug
money in cash around the area that was in transit for laundering.
Had they found a couple of boxes with millions in cash and one of
them ended up dead while the other two escaped with the money in
Styrofoam boxes?

Whatever, this was definitely the kind of
thing he liked to investigate.

He headed back to Bocas Town to report on
what he’d found and what he suspected to Sergio. Sergio said they
were watching four people who they suspected were involved in drugs
right there in town. Vincento Salares, Georgio Mendez, Samuel
D’Alesandro and Noko Itumi. Itumi was, of course, Japanese. Clint
had seen them around.

Clint went back to his house to work with the
computer to check on all the names he had so far. Very little came
up, except Itumi. He was in and out of trouble in Colombia and
Mexico a lot before he moved to Venezuela, where he managed to stay
reasonably clean. His contacts and suspected crimes were mostly
petite. Vincente Salares had only one conviction of carrying an
illegal weapon, a switchblade with a twelve centimeter blade. He
was fined and spent three days in jail in Santa Marta, Colombia. It
was looking like a drug money case, more and more. That would make
it pretty hard to ever prove anything he did find. He would
certainly give it the old college try, if it was that.

Clint went into town, but the four were out
in a boat for the day. Enrique had taken them out. They were scuba
diving the inner reefs. They went out two or three times a week to
the same area. They said they were studying the fish on that kind
of reef to write a book about them to sell to tourists who wanted
to know about the different blah, blah, blah. Put that together
with the rest. They had stashed some boxes of cash under a little
reef in an area that almost nobody visited. The Canadians visited.
They found the money and took it. The reason the boxes were so
heavy was because they were weighted.

That fit, but why not dump the weights when
they moved it? That didn’t fit what he was thinking.

Maybe it did! Maybe the weights were worth
more than the money! Gold or silver bars.

So? Why was Shannon dead? If it had been the
foursome they would have made it obvious she was “executed” for
screwing around with their money. The two Canadians would be acting
very differently than they were. They wouldn’t be leaving a trail.
They would have made some kind of a move to get protection for
themselves.

Clint went back to Almirante to ask about the
taxi. No one knew much. It wasn’t a local. Maybe he could find
about it in Changuinola.

Clint took a bus to Changuinola. A couple of
people had noted the truck. One said he saw the woman in it two
times and one of the men, the blond one, once. It wasn’t a local
taxi.

Clint had an idea and went to the police
station. They knew him and would cooperate.

The taxi had been noted and checked on
because the driver made local pick-ups and was overcharging. The
locals knew the legal fares, but the tourists, particularly
gringos, didn’t. Two locals made complaints and the driver was
forced to return their money and was warned that he was breaking
national law and would end his crooked ass in jail for thirty days
the next complaint they received. They didn’t receive any more.

Clint had the taxi number and checked it on
the computer. Veraguas? That was a long way and on the Pacific
side. Now there was a very good reason for suspicion!

Bigshots sometimes rented a taxi to take them
anywhere. The taxi would take the fare where they wanted to go for
un-regulated prices. They charged a lot for such trips because they
too often didn’t find a return fare and had to take short-hop fares
all the way back. They didn’t hang around a town hundreds of
kilometers from their base. They got back as fast as they
could.

That was one big question. It might give him
a starting point for an investigation. It was more than a little
strange.

Follow That
Cab!

Clint decided to have Sergio put out a quiet
information request about the movements of that taxi. It would be
noted at any checkpoints along the way. They’d had plenty of time
to go to Veraguas or anywhere else, but he could hope they were
being careful not to be noticed – which generally meant they were
noted everywhere. He then went to his house to check his e-mail and
such, then took his boat out to the area where the body was found.
It wasn’t the kind of place where people often went diving. The
water was deep there, but it was in a sort of cove that didn’t
flush well so the bottom was mud, if deep, and there were just too
many jellyfish in that kind of place. Some of them could give a
painful and dangerous sting. There were no reefs in there. The
reefs were outside of the cove and around the end of the peninsula.
The mangroves there had plenty of roots hanging in the water, but
they were generally not attached to anything below because of the
steep drop of the bank. If a person were to get tangled in them he
or she could easily get to the surface by simply pushing them
aside.