Air Dance Iguana (Alex Rutledge Key West Mystery) - Hardcover

Chapter One 

A cockatoo’s screech pierced the dead man’s silence.
 
I scanned the home across the canal, its second-story porch, then checked the morning sky. A high-coasting turkey vulture had spooked the caged bird. Moments later a yachtsman eighty yards to windward began dock-testing his unmuffled outboards. An oily blue cloud drifted down to shroud the suspended corpse. I knew that the body deserved more respect, that Ramrod Key should go quiet until the medical examiner lowered it from the boat-lift davit. On a deeper level, I hoped that people would treat my death with brief dignity if they learned that I had died, even if I’d been strung to a winch before dawn and hung like fresh-caught fish in a waterside market.
 
The cockatoo screeched again.
 
I switched lenses and went back to photographing the victim. In contrast to the late-June warmth, he looked trapped in midwinter with his blue, frostbitten hands.
 
Bobbi Lewis raised her voice to beat the outboards. “What the hell happened to his left shoe?”
 
“He wore out the toe fighting for altitude,” I said. “The killer dangled him just high enough to offer hope.”
 
“But no chance to survive.” She sipped from a lidded Styrofoam cup. “Are you done here? Someone on the forensic squad said you might be dawdling.”
 
“You should fire me,” I said.
 
“Talk to Sheriff Liska. He might create a part-timers’ retirement program. Meanwhile, I like the way you work.”
 
“My long career of evidence jobs?”
 
“Don’t belittle yourself. You’ve got a mind for this game. But I really meant two mornings ago with sunlight sneaking between the miniblinds.”
 
Once in a while she softened her hard-cop demeanor.
 
“This early sun is screwing me up right now,” I said. “I need to take some insurance shots with fill flash.”
 
“You’re right, Alex. This is not the place for romantic chatter.”
 
“We have our jobs to do.”
 
“Darling, that’s wonderful and insightful. The scene techs want to do theirs today.”
 
 
When my phone rang at 6:40 that morning, I knew that one of the overlapping jurisdictions—either Monroe County or the City of Key West—needed help. The rude wake-up was my own damned fault. Several years back, after fifteen years of freelance ad agency and magazine work, I had started accepting crime-scene gigs for extra cash. But I kept stepping into crap that I couldn’t scrape off my shoes, and I had come to dread the sight of my own camera. I’d never wanted to be a cop, yet every time I saw a victim up close, I wanted justice.
 
That’s not exactly true. My job wasn’t justice. I wanted revenge in the spirit of decency, contradictory or not. I had invented a few versions and barely survived. Revenge almost always claims two victims.
 
Dawn calls were never a good sign. I let it ring through to the answering machine.
 
One minute after the ringing stopped, my cell phone buzzed. I was awake enough to be curious, so I reached for the nightstand. No surprise: the window identified Detective Lewis of the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department, my lover for the past four months. Somehow, on our amorous roller-coaster ride, we had managed not to mix our personal lives and our jobs. Now she had broken a rule, had dialed my unlisted cell number to hire me for work she knew I wanted to avoid. In spite of a long list of reasons to ignore it, I took the call.
 
It summoned me to a hanging next to a canal. I found it tough to decline, especially since Lewis’s persuasive manner didn’t invoke whining.
 
I consoled myself with ten minutes in my outdoor shower before I left the house.
 
 
Lewis moved to shade under the victim’s elevated house. She wore crisp khaki slacks, clean sneaks, a star-logo-emblazoned white polo shirt, and, clipped to her belt, the Monroe County badge. At five-eight, with the shoulders of a competitive swimmer, she looked capable but not powerful. I wished I had a dollar for every man—criminal or not, and including other deputies—who had made the mistake of thinking he could bully or belittle her.
 
She studied the dead man, glanced over, and caught me staring. “What?” she said.
 
“Are you zoned-out?” I said.
 
She shook her head. “You know what I see?”
 
There would be no correct answer. “What do you see?”
 
“A prehistoric praying mantis that spit out a one-string marionette.”
 
“Very creative,” I said.
 
“Can you top that?”
 
I looked at the stanchion, the swing arm, and the cranelike davit’s on-off switch, well out of the victim’s reach. I considered the noose and restraints and, as if part of the man’s punishment, the spectacle. “To me, it’s a professional hit,” I said. “Thought out, drawn out for cruelty, and foolproof.”
 
“Good start,” said Lewis. “Go farther.”
 
On what scale of analysis? I took a stab at animal simile. “I see an iguana with a hemp necklace.”
 
“Where’s your action verb?”
 
“An iguana dancing on air for his breakfast.”
 
“That’s what you see?” she said. “An air dance iguana?”
 
“It beats an upchucked marionette.”
 
“Now you’ve twisted my creativity.”
 
The neighbor up the canal revved and shut down his twin outboards. A last thick cloud of fumes drifted toward us.
 
“Have you put a name to this guy?” I said.
 
“Plumb Bob.”
 
“What did you smoke this morning?”
 
Lewis lowered her voice. “His name was Jack Mason. People called him Kansas Jack. With your new escape from downtown, Alex, you’d have been his neighbor. You could have bonded with him, shared a few beers.”
 
“That’s the third time you’ve called it an escape, Bobbi. You make it sound like I’m running away from you, and I’m not. I’ll be one island up, a mile from here. What does that do, put our homes eighteen minutes apart instead of fifteen?”
 
She shrugged. The phone on her belt buzzed. She unclipped it, suppressed a grin, and strode away.
 
The cockatoo screeched again.
 
We ought not reveal this weapon to the Third World.
 
 
Morning sunlight sparkled on the canal’s surface. Cool yellows enveloped Kansas Jack Mason’s drooping body. His eyes bulged—hence my iguana impulse. He wore shorts and black socks. His shoes were utility specials, the black oxfords I had sworn off on leaving the military. His lean face and muscular arms suggested a man who might have shoveled coal in his youth, or snow, or manure. His belly bulk supported Bobbi’s assumption that he was a drinker. He’d probably done little labor of late beyond bending his elbow.
 
The breeze finally offered me a favor, turned the corpse so that my camera caught reflections in the duct tape over his mouth. I tapped the shutter button six times, at different angles, then zoomed and focused on the rope around his neck. In my childhood I’d seen a diagram of the correct way to structure the knot. A person today would be investigated, hounded...