The Marina, A Mark Winters, CID Novel

The Marina, A Mark Winters, CID Novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is coincidental.

Smashwords Edition

Text, cover, cover photo, maps, Copyright © 2017 by Wolf Riedel – All rights reserved.

Excerpt from The Beach, A Mark Winters, CID Novel Copyright © 2017 by Wolf Riedel – All rights reserved.

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eBook Smashwords Edition ISBN 978-1-926521-05-3

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CONTENTS

Copyright

Also by Wolf Riedel

Glossary

Prologue

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Epilogue

Author’s Notes

Acknowledgments

Excerpt from The Beach

About the Author

ALSO BY WOLF RIEDEL

The Allies Series:

Anaconda – A Novella

The Inquiry

The Trial

The Rivers

The Mark Winters, CID Series:

The Bay

The Gulf

The Coast

The Marina

The Beach (coming 2018)

— § —

For Bill and Leila

GLOSSARY

AO - Area of Operations

CENTCOM - Central Command (aka USCENTCOM)

CFSOCC - Combined Forces Special Operations Component Command - forward deployed sub-headquarters of SOCCENT (aka SOCCENT FWD)

CG - Commanding General

CID - US Army Criminal Investigation Command (formerly Division)

CJSOTF-A - Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force – Afghanistan

CJSOTF-AP - Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force - Arabian Peninsula

CO - Commanding Officer

IED – Improvised Explosive Device

ISAF - International Security Assistance Force

JAG - Judge Advocate General

JTF 2 - Joint Task Force 2

JSOC- Joint Special Operations Command

KAF - Kandahar Air Field

LAV or LAV III - Light Armored Vehicle (aka Stryker in US)

MBITR - AN/PRC 148 Multiband Inter/Intra Team Radio

MVT - Medium Value Target

NDHQ - National Defence Headquarters

PB - Patrol Base

Ranger - member or element of U.S. Army 75th Ranger Regiment

RCR - Royal Canadian Regiment (aka Royals)

RPG - Rocket Propelled Grenade

SF - Special Forces – members and elements belonging to a SFG(A) – not to be confused with the term SOF – special operations forces which refers to the wider community to which the SF and other units such as Delta, SEALs, JTF 2 etc belong

SFG(A) - Special Forces Group (Airborne) (aka Green Berets)

Strats - Lord Strathcona Horse (Royal Canadians) - a Canadian Armored Regiment

Taliban - armed Islamist militants (aka Tims, Timmies)

TF - Task Force - a military element or unit specifically configured for a given task

USACIC - United States Army Criminal Investigation Command (aka CID)

SOCCENT - Special Operations Command Central

SOCOM - US Special Operations Command (aka USSOCOM)

THE MARINA

A MARK WINTERS, CID NOVEL

— § —

PROLOGUE

— § —

Seabreeze Marina Inn, Tampa, Florida

Friday 11 Sep 92 0228 hrs EDT

The effects of the alcohol in his body were quickly fading. It’s probably the adrenaline, he thought. It’s driving the fucking booze right out of me. The flickering light from a defective bulb in the washroom caught his attention. Like a moth drawn to a flame, he stepped in, ran cold water into the sink and splashed it across his face several times trying to push away the remaining haze. He stood, braced on the vanity with both hands, stared at the mirror and looked himself over: naked, a few droplets of her blood flecked his hairless chest. He nervously wiped them away with wet toilet paper. Can’t leave any bloodstains. Have to flush it all away.

He lifted his head well back, glanced up at the ceiling, sniffed in the faint odor of mold, sighed deeply and then returned to the bedroom to sit on the foot of the bed.

The girl lay on the threadbare carpet in front of him. Lifeless now. Her head was bent backwards so that while her body—dressed only in a pair of panties—lay on its chest, her face was turned unnaturally upward. A few drops of blood were splattered from her mouth onto her right cheek.

She was . . . had been a pretty little thing. Just a few years younger than him. Short, with a proportionally light figure. Blue eyes that sparkled under dirty blonde hair she would tie back in a ponytail when not wrapped up into a—regulation dictated—tight bun. The first time that she had let it fly loose was when he’d been smitten by her; his own young bride back home, conveniently forgotten.

Things were just never going to be the same again.

They’d been on a road trip during the last month. Twenty of them all told; engineers and their staff from Jacksonville sent down to work at Homestead Air Force Base a few days after Hurricane ANDREW had torn across the southern tip of Florida. Two weeks they’d spent there, living in the most austere conditions. He’d previously had some brief contacts with her in Jax but it was at Homestead that they had really gotten into each other and had taken every opportunity to go off to be by themselves; well away from the others.

The attraction had been mutual and quick, fueled mostly—at least, on his part—by the physical component. As pretty as she was, he was equally handsome in a rugged way. There had also been the forbidden fruit aspect; he was a lieutenant while she was a sergeant. She’d admitted to him how turned on she’d been to be making it with an L-T and, quite frankly, he had felt a thrill going through him to be—as he called it to himself but not out loud to her—slumming it.

He’d had a fairly good life as an army brat. His father, a Vietnam veteran and now a colonel in the field artillery at Fort Sill in Oklahoma, had steered him to an officer’s career. He’d done his part too—studying hard and seriously and winning a position at West Point. He’d excelled at sports, graduated high in his class and gained his commission as an officer. Like so many of his classmates, he’d immediately married his high school sweetheart and they’d moved to his first duty assignment. He was on his way to the top.

He’d never concerned himself much with the girl’s background. Truth to tell, they hadn’t spent much of the time they’d had together talking to each other about their pasts. Their time away from the others had mostly been spent drinking, groping and quick tumbles wherever the opportunity allowed. He’d only known that she had come from the south—and that only from her accent—and that she had joined the army right out of high school. Hell, he hadn’t even found out if she’d actually graduated. It had been fun. And then everything had gone sideways.

After two weeks at Homestead, half of the team had gone home and the other half had gone on to other tasks on the west coast of Florida ending up in Pinellas County. They had been temporarily split up but, as the various elements of the team had finished their inspections late on the 10th, they had decided to overnight in Tampa before heading home as well. The officers had stayed at the Seabreeze while the civilians and drivers stayed a short drive away.

Being separated hadn’t stopped the two of them, however. She’d taken a taxi to join him at his hotel where he’d already laid in a stock of beer and wine.

They’d gotten hammered quickly—perhaps too quickly—and their respective performances during the evening had deteriorated rapidly in direct proportion to the amount they’d had to drink.

He still wasn’t exactly sure what had gone wrong. As he sat there on the end of the bed looking down at her body he started to think that maybe, just maybe, he’d misunderstood her and had over-reacted. There had been something she’d said. His head was still foggy and his thoughts muddled. The more he thought about it now, however, the less he could remember exactly what it was that she had said. As best as he could recall she had said something about telling his wife about the two of them. Maybe she had only been teasing. Maybe there had been too much alcohol. But there was no maybe about one thing; he had struck out at her in a fit of anger.

It had been one of those circumstances that you couldn’t have planned out if you had wanted to. His right hand swung in a backhand blow which connected with her right cheek with exactly the optimum force of impact needed to sent her ass-over-tea-kettle sprawling backward into a chest of drawers. He had been stunned almost as much as she had been but she came out of it first—spitting venom along with the blood—and all at once, through the fog as she yelled at him, the thought hit him. A thought that had only sat beneath the surface during all of his time with her. The clear understanding that he had been committing adultery and that, in the Army, adultery was a court martial offence. If word of this ever got out, his career was fucking toast.

The snarling woman that had faced him was no longer teasing but had turned to overtly threatening to call the MPs and report both the assault and the adultery.

And he had snapped.

As she had come off the floor swearing at him he had grabbed her by the neck with both hands and with surprisingly little effort had snapped it.

She had dropped forward onto her stomach like a stone; the head twisting sideways.

Thoughts rushed through his mind in a whirlwind every bit as strong as ANDREW had been. None of his options looked good. What had at first been a career ending situation was now a life ending one. Not her life though; his. He paused for a moment with the dawning realization that her life really didn’t matter to him. Not at all. That fact actually surprised him. He had always thought of himself as an empathetic person but it appeared that, when push came to shove, his interest far outweighed hers. Not that she really had any interest anymore. It’s not like calling an ambulance at this time would do her any good; she was dead, pretty much dead.

She’s not only merely dead, she’s really most sincerely dead, he giggled to himself and then shook himself out of it. Have to think. Have to come up with a way out of this.

He walked over to the window, parted the curtains slightly and stared out into the black night. Nothing blacker than a Florida night, he thought. In the near distance lay Old Tampa Bay and at the edge of the bay, next to the hotel, sat a small marina. And then he smiled. In the dark, between the hotel and the dimly lit marina, lay what he felt sure was the answer to his problem.

— § —

PART 1

CHAPTER 1

Seabreeze Marina Inn, Tampa, Florida

Thursday 02 Oct 08 0943 hrs EDT

Squawking seagulls soared overhead before circling the site and descending in a flutter of feathers; more of the flying rats perched on the ground and on any available outcropping of the broken building that had once stood here. Baumgartner wondered if they had always been here during the hotel’s heyday or whether they were here solely as curious spectators to the activity now taking place near the seawall.

Detective Sage Baumgartner looked to be in her late thirties albeit in reality she had crossed over into the dreadful forties just a handful of years before. While of average height for a woman she was significantly shorter than her male companion. She favored a comfortable, rumpled grey pantsuit and soft soled leather shoes that clothed a strong musculature and tenacious aggression with uncooperative assholes of both sexes. Her typically firm handshake hinted at the fact that she was a woman who could bring more power to bear than the average perp would ever give her credit for. Her brown hair was cut into a short bob and there was only a hint of make-up about her face leaving her green eyes as its most striking component.

Her partner, Detective Ben Whitlock, had the look of a stereotypical cop; tall and robust in his mid thirties. A full head of dark hair—albeit cut very short—and a healthy tan made his already sparkling white teeth appear even brighter than they actually were. Glinting blue eyes and a perpetual smile left a positive first impression that he was probably a very likeable guy.

They had come to the scene in separate unmarked cars and now stood at the edge of a large abandoned parking lot of grey crumbling asphalt whose every crack and crevice had been invaded by clumps of sprouting weeds. The lot was surrounded by the remnants of untended, run-amok tropical vegetation and a rickety temporary chain link fence which, on its best days, looked totally incapable of keeping out anything.

The focus of their attention was a three-storey structure which, in its heydays, had been a seaside hotel serving a small marina community. It had been built on the east shore of Old Tampa Bay in 1960 concurrent with the construction of the Howard Frankland bridge which connected Hillsborough County—where the city of Tampa was located—with Pinellas County and its main city, St Petersburg. By the time that the bridge’s capacity was expanded by a new second causeway built next to it in 1990, the hotel had already started to slide into obscurity. An attempt to refresh the facilities with a new patio, pool and poolside bar in 1992 had merely been an exercise in pouring good money after bad. By 2000 the hotel was on its last legs and not long after was shuttered down to stand abandoned ever since.

A developer had recently bought the property and was razing the old structure while he shuttled his plans for a new high rise condo complex through the labyrinth that was the Tampa’s Planning and Development Department.

Sage could see that, for the most part, the southern half of the building still stood while its northern end was merely a pile of rubble surrounded by several pieces of orange construction equipment. They had parked next to two patrol cars pulled close to the front center of the old building.

This way, said Whitlock gesturing to a low valley running through the midst of the pile of rubble. Sage followed along picking her way through the broken chunks of stone and lumber and rebar until she could finally see a small cluster of men next to a mid-sized backhoe. A circle of yellow crime scene tape surrounded the backhoe and a twenty foot area around its front centered on the spot where the bucket on the end of its boom arm rested on the ground. Two cops in short-sleeved, dark-blue uniforms—one a black woman the other a young white man—stood amongst the group. As Sage and Whitlock approached the scene, the woman detached herself from the group and headed their way.

Hi'ya Evelyn, said Sage as they neared. What have you got for us today. Sage knew Sergeant Evelyn Weeks well. The two had come up through the ranks working in Tampa PD’s District 1 before Sage had made her bones as detective and been assigned to the Major Crimes Bureau downtown. From there she had eventually worked her way up to be assigned as one of the handful of detectives assigned to the Bureau’s Homicide Squad.

How you doing, Sage? Got us what looks like a skeleton here, she said as she turned to lead the way back to the site. The contractor’s been tearing this old place down when one of their backhoes here dug up some bones. Gave us a call. Officer Downs here came to take a look. He figured they’re human and called it in to get me and you guys rolling.

Looks like he got the place secured.

Yup. But the boss here wants to get on with things.

Don’t they always? She looked around and saw one white helmet on an older, clean and stocky white man amongst a smattering of other colored helmets sitting on generally younger, dust and dirt covered Latino ones. That him?

Yup. That be him. Weeks looked into her notebook. Matteo Galletta, demolition site supervisor for Penfield Construction. She held her book out to Whitlock who copied Galletta’s particulars as well as the ones for the backhoe operator and one of the construction workers into his own.

Let’s go say hi, said Sage.

Galletta, like most supervisors at work sites, was much more interested in his schedule and in getting everyone back to work than the fact that bones had been discovered. When can we get back to work? he demanded by way of introduction.

As far as I’m concerned, said Sage, everyone not involved in digging up the bones can get back to work. What I want is a reasonable amount of area around this position and any of the debris taken away from here kept clear.

We can do that, he said. If we take away debris from over there, he pointed to the far north end of the site, and started demolition on that end, he pointed at the far south end of the building, will we be okay as far as you’re concerned?

That’s good for me, said Sage. It goes without saying that if you hit any more of these you’ll stop there and call us in.

If it goes without saying, then why did you say it? grunted Galletta.

Sage smiled. Call it a cop thing. Go tell your guys what to do but then come back and talk to us, okay. Galletta nodded and took off. Let’s go talk to that worker and the backhoe operator.

The situation had been pretty simple. The backhoe, run by a rotund middle-aged worker who hadn’t shaved in a week, had been pulling up slabs and chunks of concrete. They’d been breaking up the footings of a short retaining wall and a patio bar which had surrounded the hotel’s outdoor pool in order to create manageable chunks that could be loaded into dump trucks. The young Latino worker—Mateo Cruz—had stood by with a bolt cutter and a grinder with a cut-off disc in order to clear any entanglements of wiring or rebar.

The backhoe had dug into the far side of a slab of footing and given it a strong tug which freed it from the ground and caused it to partially tumble over. Two segments of rebar into the adjoining slab, however, had hung it up.

When Cruz went in to cut the rebar, he noticed some strange objects poking through the gravel that had been disturbed under the slab by the teeth of the backhoe’s bucket. He knelt down, brushed some of the gravel aside, and gave one of the objects a tug only to find himself holding what he was pretty much sure was what he called a leg bone—You know. The big one. From the top of the leg. A little more digging in the area had shown what looked to be a skull and other bones partially exposed in the gravel. They’d stopped and called the boss who, reluctantly, had called the cops.

By the time they had finished interviewing the two workers, Adrianna Buckner, one of the department’s crime scene technicians, had arrived at the site. Buckner was young—barely twenty-five—slight and burdened down by the weight of the various boxes that made up her gear. Sage watched her flounder her way across the mound of rubble and chuckled. Buckner’s struggles always brought out the internal conflicts amongst the younger patrolmen who had to restrain themselves from rushing over to give her a hand. In this business, people had to pull their own weight. But still, Buckner was cute . . . and single.

Buckner stopped in front of Sage and dumped the boxes at her feet. Bones I hear, she said.

So they say, stated Sage. Let’s go have a look,

The three of them, with Cruz under Whitlock’s close supervision, ducked under the crime scene tape and let the young man point, from a small distance, what he had found and what he had and hadn’t touched. Buckner took several cautious steps forward and placed numbered yellow evidence photo markers at each spot. When they were sure that they had all that Cruz had seen, they had him retrace his steps away from the scene while Buckner took a few quick photos. Okay. Let’s go see what we have here.

They moved forward to what Cruz had described as a leg bone and hunkered down close to it.

What’d’ya think? asked Sage. We got us a human bone here?

Buckner looked at it without touching it. Yeah. Looks like. Let’s go look at that skull. They took a few paces to the side and looked at a few inches of exposed bone shaped like an upside down bowl. Buckner leaned in close. Yeah, I think so. Looks too big to be anything but a human skull under all that and I think I can even see some wisps of hair in there. I think we got enough here to get the ME rolling.

Within the next three-quarters of an hour the population at the scene had expanded significantly. A second crime scene tech had arrived as well as Doctor Madeline Riche of the Hillsborough County Medical Examiner’s Office and her technician Kelly Hartman. The two had taken charge of the site and were cautiously unearthing more bones from the gravel.

Sage watched the technicians who had very little to do during this stage other than to photograph whatever the MEs exposed. There were no fingerprints to take, no blood splatter to collect and analyze, none of the usual evidence collection that they were used to.

Similarly there was little that either she or Whitlock could do except to gather a little of the history of the site. Except for the Cruz and the backhoe operator, there were no witnesses to canvas nor any relatives to notify and interview in order to get pattern-of-life statements. Their job would really only start once the ME nailed down the probable cause and time of death and maybe, if they were lucky, some physical features which would help narrow down who the victim might be.

There had been one good suggestion that Whitlock had made. If the body had been buried in the gravel under the footings of this structure then it had to have been buried after the gravel was placed and before the footings were poured. Knowing when that happened could really help narrow down the time of burial and with that the probable time of death. Sage agreed and sent him off to Tampa’s Planning and Development office to see if he could find the pertinent permits and plans, the names of the owners at the time and maybe the contractors that did the work.

Sage!

Sage took a few steps over to stand next to Riche. You have something?

Yeah. It’s a ring on the proximal phalanx of the third finger of the left hand.

Sage looked down into the shallow hole where Riche and her tech had been slowly exposing arm wrist and finger bones. Still wrapped around one of the bones was a dull grey ring.

Can you take it out? asked Sage.

Give me a second. Adrianna! The tech looked over at Riche. Bring your camera and stuff. I need you to photo and collect this.

The tech placed a marker next to the hand and took a series of shots from several angles. Got it, she said.

Riche gently lifted the bone and slid the ring off and dropped it into a clear evidence bag that Buckner held open for her. Buckner closed the bag and marked it before holding it out to Sage.

Sage handled it carefully. The ring was clearly a metal commemorative one, probably silver from its color, and in relatively good condition. On its face was a narrow abbreviated enameled American flag superimposed on a map of Iraq on a yellow background. The words Desert Storm were inscribed in raised letters across the top of the map. On the right hand side of the ring as one looked at it was inscribed the word Veteran. On its left the dates 1-17-91 and 2-28-91. There was no inscription inside as far as she could see.

Anything? asked Riche.

I think we need to call the Army on this one.

CHAPTER 2

James West Army Reserve Center, Lakeland, Florida

Thursday 02 Oct 08 1149 hrs EDT

There were shouts coming from one of the two interview rooms down the hallway as Mark put down the phone. He looked in that direction as Watts’s face peaked around the edge of the door.

Problems? Mark asked.

Nah. Slight disagreement between two witnesses. Tony and Saoirse are getting them separated.

What’s the disagreement?

Just which one of them’s the seller and which one’s the buyer. Seems we got a a little drug deal gone bad.

You clear for the afternoon?

I can be. What have we got?

Sage has got some old bones at a construction site that could be one of ours.

I’ll get my gear.

I’ve also got a meeting scheduled with Sambrook at his house to do some review for the court martial. Take maybe an hour. You want to take separate cars?

"Nah, not for an hour. I wouldn’t mind sitting out by the shore. If it looks like it’ll go long I’ll give Roxy a call. I don’t think there’s anything on our schedule for tonight except for watching Survivor and CSI. I’ll grab The Pig and meet you out front."

Sal had the black, 2006, 3/4 ton GMT800 Suburban drawn up near the front entrance of the building by the time Mark had made it down. The Pig came complete with a police pursuit push bumper, grill wraps, a radio and light package, working air, all-wheel drive, and a 496 cubic inch Vortec V8. It had been a welcome replacement for a broken down Piece-of-Shit Crown Victoria Police Interceptor that had been their ride for longer than anyone wanted to remember. While it had come to them from the factory brand new, the last year and a half had already racked up over a hundred and fifty thousand miles cruising their beat in the Florida Peninsula. Nonetheless it was still Watts’s favorite vehicle in the detachment and he’d pretty much convinced all the other agents at the US Army’s Criminal Investigation Command’s Lakeland sub-office that their lives would be forfeit if any of them took it without his permission or, God forbid, if granted permission it came back either damaged or even dirty in any way.

Mark sat back in the passenger seat and instinctively pressed the radio’s preset for a classic oldies station known for its high rate of play of Credence Clearwater Revival. CCR wasn’t on but they were just into the keyboard intro for The Who’s Baba O’Riley so everything was good.

Chief Warrant Officer 2 Mark Winters was the CID special agent in-charge of the Lakeland sub-office which was collocated in the James West Army Reserve Center with the headquarters and headquarters battery of a Florida National Guard artillery battalion as well as the Army Reserve’s 383rd CID Detachment.

Watts was Staff Sergeant Salvadore Watts—Sal—also a CID special agent and essentially Mark’s senior Non Commissioned Officer and his second in command. While Watts generally had wider responsibilities for running the office, Mark liked partnering up with him whenever the case involved a homicide. When he did so he left the management of the rest of the office with Tony—Staff Sergeant Tony DiAngelo who ran the office’s drug suppression team.

Their office, which reported directly to the CID battalion located at Fort Benning, Georgia, had responsibility for all the felony investigations concerning US Army facilities or personnel within the Florida Peninsula. Their jurisdiction included all US Army Reserve and Florida Army National Guard personnel and installations in southern Florida as well as all Army elements at each of US Central Command and US Special Operations Command in Tampa, and US Southern Command in Miami—CENTCOM, SOCOM and SOUTHCOM respectively.

Traffic from Lakeland to Tampa along the six-lanes of the I-4 and I-275 had been moderate. They’d covered the fifty miles in a little over an hour unlike the usual hour and a half it took when the traffic got busy and trickled along like blood in a clogged artery.

By the time they’d parked near Sage’s car, the sun stood high in the sky and the temperature had risen to eighty. A gentle northeasterly breeze kept things comfortable, however. Mark decided that his windbreaker needed to stay in the car. Having grown up in New Hampshire, Mark was convinced that Florida called for shorts and short-sleeved shirts. CID dress regulations dictated otherwise and the most he could get away with were casual tan slacks and an open-necked, short-sleeved light-blue shirt. It was still better than the local street cops who had to wear armored vests under their dark-blue shirts which sucked in the sun’s rays like heat sinks.

Sage said that they were just on the other side of this rubble pile, he said to Watts. Leave the gear for now, he added when he saw Watts go to the back of the truck. I don’t think we’ll have anything to do here . . . on second thought bring a camera.

Mark paused at the top of the pile and surveyed the scene. Directly in front of him was a smaller pile of rubble with a backhoe surrounded by yellow tape. Beyond that was a small inlet about the size of a football field with a number of small motorboats and sailboats tied up in their slips. To the left—the south—on the other side of the inlet were a number of private waterfront homes each showing him their respective—and obligatory—boat slips and swimming pools. Beyond the inlet was a narrow passage leading into Old Tampa Bay and a series of commercial buildings, multi-storey condos and private homes squeezed into a narrow peninsula of land that paralleled the I-275 bridge into the bay for maybe a half a mile.

This is quite the spot, he said to Watts as he caught up. Once this old hotel is gone you can put up a hell of a lot of condos here with a great view of the bay.

Assuming that there’s some solid bedrock under here. Sal looked to the north. Man you can almost spit to the FBI offices over there. He pointed to the land on the north side of the I-275. Wish we had a budget that let us build nice new buildings right by the waterfront . . . I think that’s Sage waving us over down there.

Mark and Watts shook hands with Sage. Mark gave a cheery What’s up doc, to Riche. He quite liked the doctor whom he’d first met on a case involving the brutal torture and murder of a Russian major general and a US Army major in Tampa. Riche looked up and gave him a casual wave and smile. Nothing as bad as the last one, I’d say, but I think it’ll be harder to solve.

There wasn’t too much about the last one that was easy as far as I recall, replied Watts. The case involved chasing a subject all the way to Canada only to have him killed by a Russian FSB sniper at the moment of his surrender. What have you got, so far?

Best guess is a young female, probably white with some injuries to her neck and face. I’ll need to have a better look at her once I get her back to the office and maybe call in some help. Off hand the damage doesn’t appear to be done by the backhoe but, like I said, I’ll need to look much closer at all this. She made a gesture with her arms encompassing the area around the dig.

But a homicide? he asked.

Yeah, I think so. Biggest clue is she was buried in gravel under the concrete. Someone put into her the gravel before the concrete was poured.

Mark turned to Sage. That should give us a pretty good idea as to when she was killed.

I’ve already got Ben looking into that. With luck he’ll know that by the end of business today, she said. Anyway, the reason I called you guys in is this. She pulled the plastic evidence bag out of her pocket. That looks to me like an Army ring.

Mark took it and looked at it closely turning it form side to side. Not Army issued. These type of things come from various manufacturers that turn them out every time we do anything noteworthy. Ring’s kind of small. Looks like it was made for a woman. Either a female soldier or a soldier’s wife.

Watts looked at it. "Probably wouldn’t be inscribed Veteran if it had been for a wife. More likely it was a female soldier."

Did a lot of women deploy on Desert Storm? asked Sage.

Shit, yeah, said Watts. We must have had about seven hundred thousand troops there for that. I think around forty thousand were women.

Man, she said. I’d hoped for a lot less than that.

We’ll be able to narrow that down if we can find the manufacturer of this ring and see who he shipped to, said Mark. Can we keep this?

Sure. I guess we’re doing a joint investigation again until we can narrow down what happened here. You’ll just need to transfer the evidence with Buckner. Watts, as the team’s evidence custodian, nodded and took the ring with him to arrange that.

So besides the ring and the construction work, what else do we have going?

Not so much, said Sage. Once Ben gets the construction data we’ll check for missing persons at that time and start interviewing whatever folks had anything to do with the hotel and the construction job at that time. You?

I guess we got the ring and we’ll see if there are any AWOL females from around that time that were on Desert Storm. I’ve got a court martial going on at CENTCOM next week that will take me out of the loop on this a bit, but Sal will stay on it.

This one’s going to be a son of a bitch, she said.

Mark thought the same. Old cases; few clues. They were going to be spinning around just trying to figure out who the victim was before they could even consider getting anything that might solve the case. Lots of time, lots of effort, and only a tiny chance that they’ll ever solve it.

Yeah. Ya got that right.

CHAPTER 3

Gulf Blvd., Redington Beach, Florida

Thursday 02 Oct 08 1658 hrs EDT

A warm and steady offshore breeze came through the wide deck doors to Phil’s second storey bedroom. The room was large and took up the entire back side of the house facing the Gulf. An open deck stretched beyond from one side of the house to the other and extended some twenty feet over the lanai below. Large glass sliding bi-fold doors stretched the entire width of the room and were currently opened up to make a thirty-foot wide opening facing the surf. Phil sat at large glass desk—which itself sat in the middle of the room facing the sea—his feet up on the desk. His attention was focused to the side of the desk where Colonel Kurt Richter and Special Agent Winters were reclining on a davenport. Below, near the pool, Marie and Watts were relaxing on two lounge chairs with a member of Sambrook’s close protection detail.

At forty-one, Brigadier General Phil Sambrook, commander of SOCCENT, the special operations component command of CENTCOM, continued to maintain his weight at 185