Swamp Bones Read Online Free PDF

Jims.
    “When did she last check in?” I persisted. The investigation was not my turf. But I’m impatient by nature and the wait was making me churlish.
    “You’d have to check with FWC, the state fish and wildlife commission,” Lundberg offered. “The contest is their show. But it couldn’t have been that long ago. She’d have had bounty to register. She was leading the pack. By a good margin.”
    My guess was nine days.
    “Who’d want to kill her?” I switched tack.
    Yellen gave a humorless snort. “Only about fifteen hundred people.”
    “Tell me about her.”
    Yellen turned his aviator shades full on me. I held his stare. On the road above us, a pickup rattled by, belching black exhaust.
    Finally, the lawman sighed. “For a little lady, James packed quite a punch. She was determined to win the whole damn shooting match.”
    “How much cash is involved?”
    “With private sponsors sweetening this year’s pot, the prize tops out at thirty thousanddollars.”
    “That’s a lot of money.” And a lot of motive.
    “You bet your sweet ass it is.” Yellen’s thoughts were obviously traveling the same path as mine.
    “With that many hunters out in the swamp, wouldn’t people be falling all over each other? Someone must have seen her.”
    “Well, hell. Wish I’da thought of that.” Yellen’s sarcasm did nothing to calm my nerves. “You sayin’ I should have my boys canvas the entire gun-and-machete redneck family reunion?”
    Lundberg interpreted. “As an FWC python permit holder, Kiley could harvest snakes in several state-managed areas. Her FWC permits were as broad as one can possibly obtain. She was also on the Nature Conservancy’s Python Patrol, and was one of the volunteer agents participating in the Everglades National Park’s python program. The latter permit holders are authorized to use our roads and trails to look for snakes.”
    “So she could hunt anywhere.”
    “No. Harvesting for the FWC challenge isn’t allowed in the national park.” Apparently Pierce had been awake and taking in every word. “She could only collect in the park for us.”
    “And we don’t call it ‘hunting’ in the park.” Lundberg hooked air quotes. “Funding restrictions disallow use of the term.”
    Before I could respond, an ME van, a cruiser, and a Miami-Dade crime scene truck pulled to the shoulder above us. After a short briefing, the two CSS techs boarded the airboat for the trip to the hammock. Pierce and Lundberg joined those going to the Hammocks district station in the cruiser. Yellen and I secured the torso in the back of the van in a small plastic tub and climbed in.
    The ride passed in silence. Despite our grim mission, I was looking forward to a visit to Miami’s famed ME facility. I’d been there on previous occasions and knew it to be the Taj Mahal of morgues—23,000 square feet of shiny and modern, including a grand total of fifteen autopsy stations. When we arrived, I was the first out of the van.
    A lab-coated death investigator named Elvis helped us log the remains in to the computer, then led us to a separate “decomp” building behind the main morgue. We were assigned one of the two autopsy rooms, down the hall from a cooler large enough to accommodate seventy-five bodies.
    I knew the fridge storage size because Elvis was a frustrated tour guide at heart. By the time we’d gathered around the autopsy table, I also knew that, along with the four main coolers, the facility could store as many as 555 bodies. Why 555? Exactly the capacity of a 747 jumbo jet.
    You’ve got to love Florida’s sense of mortality. And the state’s willingness to pony up funding for a state-of-the-art death investigation system.
    Elvis even found a lab coat in my size.
    I’d barely slipped it on when a staff pathologist stepped into the room. Jane Barconi. We’d met, but I’d never worked with her.
    Splatter on Barconi’s lab coat and apron suggested she’d been interrupted while cutting and