Cracked to Death

The early morning light was teasing the birds to welcome the day as a young couple strolled down a narrow beach with their chocolate Lab, Charlie. His puppy energy was focused on catching and fetching the driftwood stick the young man threw out into the shallows of Boca Ciega Bay, the intracoastal channel that separated the main peninsula of St. Petersburg from the barrier beaches of Treasure Island.

Charlie lost interest in the stick when he got a whiff of something that captured his attention. He lifted his nose high and sniffed great gulps of salt air to find the prize. Spying a dark shape in the soft dawning light, he galloped down the beach a hundred yards to sit beside the source of the fascinating scent. He was puzzled by the reaction of his owners. They didn’t seem at all happy to find the lifeless diver lying facedown at the edge of the water. Not happy at all.

* * *

“Are you the couple who found the body?” Officer Boulli’s substantial bulk stood over the couple who had found a small bit of driftwood to sit on in a tiny bit of shade. Charlie was lying on the sand, panting like a steam engine. They were about twenty yards from the activity around the diver.

The young man nodded. “Yes. My wife and I were on our regular early morning walk with Charlie.” He looked over at his wife, who was drip feeding water from her bottle into Charlie’s lapping mouth. “We live a few houses down the street. We’d like to go home and get Charlie out of the heat.”

“Okay, okay.” Officer Boulli opened a tattered notebook and pulled a pen from his white uniform shirt. “Your full names?”

Standing up, the young man said, “My name is Paul Wedlake, and this is my wife, Julie. We live in the second Mediterranean Revival house over there on Park Street.” He pointed to their house and waited until Officer Boulli had lifted his head and noticed which house before telling him their full home address. “We were taking Charlie out for some exercise when he found the diver.”

“Did you touch anything?”

“I turned him over to see if there was any sign of life, but it was obvious he had been in the water for a long time.”

Officer Boulli scribbled in his notebook. “How did you know? Are you medical specialists?”

“No, we’re not medical specialists. We’re certified divers and have experience in researching sea life using robotic surface and underwater vehicles.” He paused and inhaled a shallow breath. “Crabs don’t feed on the living.” He looked down the beach toward all the activity. “Can we go home now?”

“Give me a contact number.” The officer wrote it in his notebook. “Most likely, the homicide detective will be along to get statements from you.” He put his pen away, pulled out a wrinkled handkerchief, and wiped his face before handing them a business card. “Until he gets your statement, don’t leave your house.”

* * *

Homicide detective David Parker arrived at the crime site at the same time as Coroner Sandra Grey. They both parked on red brick–lined Park Street, near an enormous, three-story Mediterranean Revival mansion.

“Good morning, David. It looks like we got the call at the same time.”

“How are you?” His smile brought out the small dimple in his chin. “I haven’t seen you in a while.” Only Sandra could look sensuous in the white forensic coveralls. They fit her curves perfectly. He wondered if she had had them tailored for her petite form.

“That’s because the city of St. Petersburg has been strangely silent on murders lately.”

“It’s the dog days of summer. Most of those who can afford it are now cooling themselves in the mountains of North Carolina. The rest of us are too hot to get up to much.”

They followed the yellow crime-scene tape back to the narrow beach area behind the mansion’s garden and screened-in pool. A portable canopy with view-blocking panels on three sides had been erected to discourage onlookers.

The tide had gone out, and the body was faceup and fully outfitted in diver’s gear, with one flipper missing and no sign of a tank. Sandra knelt beside the diver’s face.

“He’s been struck . . . a single blow.” She glanced at the hands. “It doesn’t look like he put up a fight, so we might not get DNA from his fingernails.”

“His diving knife is also missing from its sheath. Time of death?” Parker had been scribbling away in his notebook.

“You know I don’t like to speculate on TOD prior to the autopsy.”

“I do know that. I also know how much experience you have.” He raised an eyebrow and smiled as winningly as he knew how.

“Okay, okay. You can turn off the charm. It looks like he died sometime after midnight and probably before two a.m. He’s been in the water at least a few hours. Sufficient?”

Detective Parker nodded. “Before the body is taken away, can we look in his dive bag?”

“No problem. We can do it now.” Her gloved hands untied the blue mesh bag, the size of an eight-by-ten-inch sheet of paper, from the diver’s weight belt. She pulled open the top and removed a key ring and what looked like fragments of a broken deep blue bottle. She held one of the larger fragments, which appeared to be the bottom of the bottle, up toward the rising sun. “It looks odd.”

Parker tipped his head so he could also take a look through the fragment. “Difficult to tell with so much grime and growth.” He placed his hand on Sandra’s and turned her hand ever so slightly. The new angle revealed the broken edges of the glass. “This is a recent break. You can see the clear color of the glass, without any evidence of it being underwater.”

“It looks like the entire bottle is in the dive bag.”

“Well . . . ,” he began, then quickly released Sandra’s hand, as if it had a mind of its own. “I know a young woman who knows a lot about glass. I’ll give her a call and see if she can help identify the bottle.”

Sandra put the key ring and the bottle fragments back in the dive bag, pulled its string tight, and placed it on top of the diver’s chest. She rose and signaled for the technicians to prepare the body for transport to the morgue downtown. “I’ll start the autopsy immediately. We’re going to need some luck with this one, David.”

“I’m going to need more than luck. Thanks.” After admiring Coroner Grey’s retreat, Detective Parker spotted Officer Boulli and waved him over.

“Where are the witnesses?” the detective asked.

“Oh, they’re a young couple with a dog who live right in the neighborhood, so I sent them home to wait for your interview.”

Detective Parker lifted his eyes to the sky and growled low. “What if they were not telling you the whole truth, Officer? What if they wanted to escape, perhaps? You certainly gave them an easy way to leave. You had better hope they are honest citizens. Now, give me the address, and you stay here and keep people out of the crime scene.” Under his breath Parker continued, “And out of my way.”

The walk back toward the street gave Parker the small bit of time he needed to recover from his temper. Officer Boulli could frustrate a monk, but he always managed to perform his job minimally—not in any way proficiently, but not badly enough to be dismissed or reprimanded.

The witnesses’ house was indeed only two doors down from the body of the diver. Detective Parker rang the doorbell, and a fierce barking instantly followed. He could hear the owners telling their dog to quiet down. The barking instantly stopped, and then the door was immediately opened.

“Good morning.” Parker showed his badge. “I’m Detective David Parker, a homicide detective from the St. Petersburg Police Department. My colleague Officer Boulli gave me your information. Are you Paul and Julie Wedlake?”

“Yes. Please come in.” Julie said.

The young couple led him through the sparse but beautifully furnished house to the huge screened-in lanai, dominated by a sparkling pool with an unobstructed view of the water. The carefully placed landscaping gave the illusion of privacy. Julie waved her hand at a large sectional, with a low table the full length of the sofa, facing the water. On a short outdoor kitchen counter to the side were an electric kettle, a small sink, and a selection of clear canisters filled with loose tea and ground coffee.

“Make yourself comfortable. What would you like to drink? I have regular and decaffeinated coffee, but I also have green tea and herbal tea,” Julie said.

“Black coffee please. Regular would be great.”

Julie nodded, deftly filled a French press with ground coffee, poured hot water into it, and brought it, along with an empty cup, over to the low table and placed them in front of Detective Parker.

“Thanks.”

She grabbed her green tea from the table and sat with her hands folded around the ceramic mug. “This is an upsetting situation. I crave my comforting routines. You must be used to it.”

In a low voice he said, “I hope I never get used to a violent end to life, Mrs. Wedlake. Never.” He pulled out a notebook and pen from his inner suit pocket. “Now, as clearly as possible, can you describe how you came to discover the diver?”

* * *

Back in his office, Detective Parker opened the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out a new manila folder. With a perfectly sharpened pencil, he wrote “John Doe–Bottle” on the tab. Although most modern-day investigative information was stored on the St. Petersburg Police Department’s secure server, there were still bits of paper that needed wrangling with even after they were scanned.

Sandra Grey leaned into his office, waving a few sheets of paper. “Would you like to see my preliminary autopsy report?” Without waiting, she plopped the report in the center of his desk and sat down in the nearest of the two guest chairs. “It’s not complete, of course, but there’s enough for you to start.”

“That was fast.” He scanned through the pages with a practiced eye, then looked up from the report. “He didn’t drown?”

“Nope. I thought you might find it interesting.”

“How? It wasn’t obvious at the beach.”

“Well, we were hampered by the wet suit. It covered a massive trauma to the spine. He died in a matter of seconds.”

“Any indication of what type of weapon was used?”

“Sorry.” She shook her head. “I’ve noted the ubiquitous blunt instrument, but it was the same shape as the injuries we saw on his face.”

Detective Parker sat staring at the last sheet of the preliminary report.

Sandra sat forward and waved a hand slowly in front of Detective Parker’s face. “Earth to Parker. Where are you?”

“I’m trying to visualize where he might have been in order to be attacked. He was wearing a complete wet suit.”

She tilted her head. “It would be uncomfortable in this heat, but it offers excellent protection. A friend of mine is a frequent cave diver in the natural springs up around Ocala, Florida. She says she wouldn’t even think about not having a full suit.”

“So you’re thinking that he considered this dive to be dangerous?”

She paused. “It was.”