Riptide

Chapter One Biscayne Bay gleamed aquamarine in the late afternoon light, the sky above as clear and blue as a musical note. From his seat in the stern of the police boat, Horatio Caine could look one way and see the shining, skyscraping outline of downtown Miami; if he turned his head a few degrees, he was treated to an ocean view dotted with the low, dark-green bulk of mangrove islands, occasionally crested by a barrel-sized seabird nest. It struck him just how often he was treated to gorgeous vistas like this one on his way to viewing something unspeakably ugly. Payment, of sorts,he thought, then corrected himself.Not payment -- compensation. A consolation prize, at best. Detective Frank Tripp killed the engine as the boat glided up to the shore, crunching its way onto a narrow white-sand beach. "There you go, Horatio," Tripp said. "Go do your thing. I'm gonna stay in the boat for now -- not a lot of room in your crime scene." "Thank you, Frank," Horatio said. The hummock wasn't large, maybe a few hundred square feet of dense foliage, fifteen or so feet high, with a narrow strip of beach. Horatio stepped out carefully, then gave Doctor Alexx Woods a helping hand as she joined him. "You all right?" he asked. "Damn mosquitoes," she grumbled, swatting at one on her arm. "I don't know why they never seem to bother you." "After the first hundred thousand bites or so, you develop an immunity," he said absently, but his attention was already focused on the reason they'd come out to this tiny mangrove island just south of Miami: the corpse of a young woman. It wasn't a pretty sight. She lay on her back, wearing only a snorkeling mask. One of her arms was outstretched, tangled in the spiderlike roots of the red mangroves that covered the small island. The mask was completely filled with a white foam that obscured her face, and a mass of raw pink and red flesh protruded from her mouth. Alexx stepped carefully over the body. They both crouched down, one on either side. "Fisherman found her," Horatio said. "Looks like the tide washed her up." "She should be on the bottom," Alexx said. She reached out with a gloved hand and gently moved the jaw back and forth. "Temporomandibular muscles aren't in rigor, but -- " She took hold of the body's right wrist and lifted it slightly. The entire body rocked, the arm obviously stiff. " -- major muscle groups are. Skin is bluish and rigor is starting to break, meaning she's probably been dead around fourteen hours or so. Belly isn't distended and she wasn't obese, so refloatation shouldn't have occurred." Carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, methane; Horatio knew that the gastrointestinal tract of a decomposing body produced all of these gases, and that when enough of them had been produced the body would rise to the surface like an inflated balloon. But it was a process that generally took at least twenty-four hours and produced a bloated corpse. "That's not the only odd thing," Horatio said. "She's wearing a mask, but no flippers or snorkel. Not even a swimsuit." Alexx was examining the mass of flesh protruding from the mouth. "What's really strange is this..." She grabbed the body by the hips and gently rolled it to one side, exposing the back. Another mass of raw flesh extended from between the buttocks. "There's been some anthropophagy, probably by crabs and sea lice," she said, "but I can still identify these as parts of her alimentary canal. Horatio, something tore her insides...out." "And whatever it was also placed the body here," Horatio said. "Any ideas?" "Well, I can tell you that the parts of her esophagus and colon I can see are inside-out. That suggests that she literally blew up." "Explosive decompression?" "To this extent? If somCortez, Donn is the author of 'Riptide ', published 2006 under ISBN 9780743480581 and ISBN 0743480589.