information.
“Did you see anything that looked out of the ordinary?” he asked.
“You mean other than a hundred-ten-foot boat running hard aground and throwing passengers into the water?”
“You know what I mean,” he said.
“If you’re asking if I saw any bodies, the answer is no.”
Jacobi looked hard at me for a moment. I suspected he had practiced that stare in the mirror, the better to intimidate witnesses. I wasn’t impressed. I looked back passively, waiting for another question. He broke eye contact, looked over at J.D., shrugged.
“One of the victims was the husband of the woman you fished out of the water,” J.D. said.
“What do you know about them?” I asked.
“The husband was a fifty-two-year-old lawyer from Jacksonville named Peter Garrison,” said J.D. “The other victim was a twenty-five-year-old woman from Charlotte, North Carolina.”
“When did you find them?”
J.D. took a sip of her coffee. “A few hours ago. When the Coast Guard got Dulcimer back to the dock, we let the passengers off. No reason to hold them. The paramedics brought the woman you picked up,” she paused, looked at her notes, “Mrs. Betty Garrison, from Moore’s over to Dulcimer’s berth. She couldn’t find her husband. It seems she’d gone to the upper deck to have a cigarette and left her husband in the dining area on the second deck. She was leaning on the rail and when the boat hit the sandbar, she was tossed into the water.”
“Where were the bodies?” I asked.
“Washed up on Sister Keys, right near where Dulcimer went aground.”
“Who’s the young woman?” I asked.
Jacobi broke in. “According to her driver’s license, she is Katherine Brewster, single, lived with her parents. I had to break the news to them about thirty minutes ago.”
“Any connection between the girl and Mr. Garrison?” I asked.
J.D. leaned forward in her chair, reaching again for the cup sitting on the coffee table. “We haven’t had time to establish anything except that Mrs. Garrison never heard of her. Katherine had come to the area by herself and was staying at a small bed and breakfast on Anna Maria. We found the key in her pocket. We’ll check all that out.”
“How did you know she was missing?”
“We didn’t,” said Jacobi. “We found her body while we were looking for Garrison.”
“Any evidence on the boat?” I asked.
“The crime-scene unit from Manatee County is going over it as we speak,” said J.D. “I doubt they’ll find much with all those people tramping through it.”
“You said the bodies washed up on Sister Keys. Do you think they were in the water when I was picking up those three people?”
“I doubt it,” said Jacobi. “It actually looks as if they were thrown overboard and may have been washed up on shore by the movement of the boats trying to get Dulcimer off the bar and underway to her berth. They weren’t in the water very long.”
I sat for a beat, thinking. “Do you see this as a crime of opportunity, random, or what? It seems awfully coincidental that the grounding gave the murderer the opportunity to strike in the confusion.”
“We agree with you,” said J.D. “The medical examiner will do an autopsy on the captain today. He may not have died of natural causes.
“Look,” she continued, “I know you didn’t see the bodies, but give me a minute-by-minute description of what you did see. There may be something there that’ll give us a lead.”
I took her through the minutes from the time I saw Dulcimer making her way up the channel until I pulled into the dock at Moore’s.
J.D. was quiet for a moment. “You said the pilothouse was dark before the other lights went out. Isn’t that unusual?”
Jacobi and I both shook our heads. “No,” he said. “The captain would have kept the pilothouse dark so that he could see better outside. His instrument lights glow red, so even they wouldn’t have been visible from Mr. Royal’s vantage.”
J.D. nodded her head, accepting the explanation. “How long after the lights went out did the boat run aground?”
“Seconds,” I said. “No more than a minute. I was still running alongside at idle speed. She was moving at maybe ten knots. She would have gotten by me quickly if she hadn’t hit the bar. When she stopped, I was still beside her, back near the fake paddle wheel.”
“Was she still moving at the same speed?”
That stopped me. I sat upright in my chair. I was thinking about the exact second when Dulcimer grounded. It had been quiet except for the