Crossing The Centerline by Allan Ansorge

Chapter 1 - Things Do Go Click In The Night

It wasn’t what Detective Michael McCaffery heard that woke him, but rather what he didn’t. Something familiar was gone. He had been living on this boat for three weeks now. The groans of the lines, the squeaks of the dock bumpers, and thumps of the hull had given him many sleepless nights. By now he was used to all he should have been hearing and wasn’t.

He lay in the queen-size bunk in the aft cabin and tried to figure out what had changed. Mike really didn’t want to brave the dew before the sun was high enough to drive the chill from the air. There was something wrong, though; he could feel it.

Mike was a transplant from New York’s Hells Kitchen, a true Irish copper. He claimed to be what his grandfather called Black Irish, which prompted most people to think he was Italian. Whatever his inherited traits were, they did not include a love of the sea. He never cared much for water of any sort, especially if it wasn’t in a glass and couldn’t be called a chaser. But when a friend asks you to keep an eye on the one thing left in his world he truly loves, you compromise.

For the last month someone had been vandalizing boats in marinas up and down the Lake Michigan shoreline from Port Washington to Kenosha. The timing couldn’t have been worse for Mike’s friend Carl to leave his boat unattended for a month.

Carl was enrolled in a Coast Guard Auxiliary course in Florida, studying for his captains license. He was hoping to start a new career on the water. His last job, Mike’s partner on third shift as a sheriff’s deputy, ended abruptly a year and a half ago. A stolen semi-tractor demolished his car, his right leg, and the lady he planned to marry.

Carl was, after all, Mike’s oldest and best friend, depending on how you measure them. He did know Carl would risk his life for him and had. You don’t say no to a guy like that, even if it was to baby-sit his dumb-ass boat for a month or more.

Mike wrested himself from the bunk and crossed the cabin floor with an ear tuned for anything unusual. There was nothing at first; then the boat moved with the wake from an early morning charter boat going out. Instead of hearing the air squish out of the big white bumpers between the boat and the dock, Mike heard a click. Now where did that come from? Thought Mike. Did I leave something loose on the deck?

“This damn thing better not be sinking,” he yelled as he bumped his head on the companionway hatch for what seemed like the five hundredth time. “Damn small doorway,” he cursed. Mike never considered maybe through the years, all forty of them, he had gotten a shade wider and perhaps a bit less agile. In the cockpit, he bent over, swearing under his breath. While he held the top of his head with both hands, he felt through the thick black curls for seeping blood.

“Son of a bitch, damn, damn, damn,” and then the click.

There was nothing loose on the deck; Mike waited for what seemed to be a damp, cold forever, then click. It was behind him; no beside him. It seemed to be coming from the boat itself. It was louder out here than below; it had to be here and close.

Mike took one last tender touch of the growing lump on his head. Quietly, he stepped off the boat to the edge of the dock and waited. Another boat passed, the wake hit, and then click.

The click came from the back of the boat. Carl always backed the boat into the slip. He called it the Mediterranean style of tying up. When Mike moved toward the stern he found the source of the noise was plain to see. Tangled in one of the lines was a denim-covered leg, and Mike presumed the rest of the body was below the water line. His years of experience in law enforcement left no doubt in his mind, this leg was dead.

Train well and the game is easy…. unlike detectives on TV, a real detective calls the cops even if he is one himself. Mike dove into the cabin, clearing the head-bruising hatch by at least a quarter of an inch. He started the search for his always-misplaced cell phone. Finding it really didn’t matter; as usual, the battery was as cold as the water around the body outside.

Exiting the cabin didn’t go as well as entering, Skull Bump Two was well into development as Mike entered the bait shop at the end of the pier. Dialing the sheriff’s office on the pay phone, Mike appeared to be the only one not to notice he was wearing a baggy pair of boxers and nothing else.

Because the dispatcher recognized Mike’s voice, the call for an ambulance and investigating team took but a few seconds. By the time he got back to the boat, everyone within a city block was standing between him and suitable apparel. He had to get some clothes on before all his peers showed or he would never hear the end of it.

Fortunately, no one else went in the water trying to catch a glimpse of the leg. Some even voiced their disappointment at how little there was to see.

Mike had dressed before the rescue squad arrived. He also managed to produce a pot of coffee for the people he normally worked with, who were now crowding the dock.

Gallows humor flowed about in an effort to ease the tension officers always felt when dealing with death. No one wants to be near death, even those who train and get paid to endure it.

“So Mike, is this some angry husband who found out, or just someone you owed money to? Ha ha . . . ” came from somewhere in the group. Mike ignored it.

He knew he was going to have to call Carl and it wasn’t going to be nice. Carl would realize, of course, it wasn’t his fault, but he was pretty particular about his boat. Someone dying on it wasn’t going to go over well; Mike could sense it.

Suddenly the word liability popped into Mike’s head. He started looking around to see if there was something he had done to contribute to the demise of old dead leg over there. All though he wasn’t a religious person he heard himself say, more as an expression than a prayer, “Oh God, don’t let someone sue old Carl. I don’t think he could take a shot like that right now. He was just getting his shit back together, please just leave him alone.”

The shift commander touched his arm. “Were you talking to me, Mike?”

“No, Cap, I was just thinking out loud.”

Just then, the firemen lifted the body up onto the pier, and the medical examiner moved in. Time seemed to drag on forever; Mike felt the sun touch his face.

Everyone was doing his or her job in turn. After the medical examiner came forensic, then the detectives. Not that there was a lot for them to do. The first thing they found in their effort to identify the body was an overabundance of identification. The only thing worse than no ID, in the process of putting a name with a body, is finding too much. This body was carrying five drivers’ licenses with five different names on them. They all knew then this wasn’t going to be a simple case of drowning.