He still looked as if he wanted to protest, but he lowered his head for a moment and then nodded.
“Of course,” he said. “I’m just going to talk to Liam quickly—see if he has anything. Tell him what we’re doing.”
Ten minutes later they were on their way. Dallas and Logan seemed to hit it off immediately, chatting while Logan drove and Kelsey sat with him.
Hannah sat in the back of the rental SUV with Dallas and wondered how she could feel that she already knew him so well and why she wished she knew him even better.
*
After dropping off the women, Dallas and Logan made good time up to Marathon, where Dirk Mendini met them in front of the coroner’s office looking harried. After Dallas introduced him to Logan, Mendini said, “You know, two murders in two days. That’s a lot when you’re not looking at a big city.”
“So she was murdered,” Dallas said.
“Yes, that’s what I’m putting in my report. Murder by person or persons unknown.”
“What makes you think it was a homicide?” Dallas asked him.
“The bruises. Come on. See for yourselves,” Mendini said. “You can grab a mask on the way in.”
Dallas remembered talking to the young woman who was now lying naked on the stainless steel table, being sewn up. He was very glad that Hannah wasn’t with them.
“See what I’m talking about?” Dirk asked them as he lifted her right arm. Bruises had formed on her flesh—bruises that clearly came from the grip of forceful fingers.
“She drowned?” Logan asked.
Dirk nodded. “I believe she was drawn into the wreck and held there. Based on bruising and the water in her lungs, her killer ripped the regulator from her mouth, held her—and watched her drown.” He shuddered.
Dallas touched the body, his sympathy rising for Yerby Catalano. He was glad that Liam had been the one to tell her family she was gone.
He lingered by the body, hoping to get a sense that her spirit was lingering. He felt nothing, but that didn’t mean she was really gone, not after such a horrible death.
Logan also touched the body, under the pretense of studying the bruises.
“We know, of course, almost exactly when she died, since she was on a dive,” Dirk added. “It’s like hell come to paradise.”
“It has to be stopped,” Logan said quietly.
“And it will be,” Dallas vowed, then he turned to the M.E. “Did you get any trace evidence? Anything under her nails?”
“She tried. She fought,” Dirk said. “We’re a long way from any possible answers, though. She had a few fibers caught in her nails. They look like they belong to a run-of-the-mill dive skin.”
Dallas shook his head. “Not many people go down in wet suits. Not at this time of year.”
“Some do,” Dirk said. “I know a lot of people who wear them year round. Helps if you brush against fire coral or run into a school of jellyfish.”
That was true. But it was still going to be easier to ask witnesses about someone wearing a wet suit, because most people stuck to bathing suits in the summer.
“Liam is canvassing the dive boats in the area. Maybe he can find out something,” Dallas said. “Any little detail can help.”
“Of course. But you have to remember, she was under the water for at least an hour and a half before she was found. Seawater does a number on a corpse, even in a short period of time,” Dirk reminded him.
“Her bathing suit and dive gear?” Dallas asked.
“Forensics is already working on them,” Dirk said.
Yerby Catalano’s eyes were mercifully closed. She looked small and frail, her once lovely body now scarred by a wicked Y-incision.
She was gone. And there was no way in hell they could have known that they needed to save her.
As they left the medical examiner’s office, Dallas noted the breeze of the early evening. The sky was nearly crystal-blue, with light puffs of clouds riding across it. Even here, just off US 1, they weren’t far from the water.
They got in the car to drive back to the dolphin research facility where they’d left Kelsey and Hannah. There were plenty of cars on the road. The news was out about the deaths, but as far as the general public knew there was no connection between them, so people were still heading south, on their way to Key West. They would, Dallas knew, feel no connection to the victims. As far as they knew, Jose Rodriguez had been a drunk who hung around with the wrong crowd. And as for the tragic death of Yerby Catalano, well, it was sad, but some people insisted on trying dives that were too difficult for them or didn’t follow their divemaster’s rules.
“You know,” Logan said, “it could be we’ll find out they were killed by two different people.”
“Maybe, but I can guarantee you they’ll both be connected to Los Lobos. That gang is nothing but a bunch of snakes, like Medusa’s head,” Dallas said. “I want whoever killed these two—and I want them to pay. But more than anything I want to find the Wolf.”