Cuba Blue Read Free

despondent with his own thoughts, added, “I could damn sure use a beer.”
     
    In smoother waters now, outside the bay, Qui was first to spot the Sanabela II. “There she is!”
     
    Sergio asked, “How do you know that’s the one?”
     
    “See the Christmas tree lights?” she replied.
     
    “Yeah, so?”
     
    “I recognize them. Only on the Sanabela.” Quiana went on to explain the meaning of the lights.
     
    As she turned the boat toward the shrimper, Qui’s thoughts turned to her pending assignment aboard the Sanabela. Wanting this case to be by the book perfect, she reminded herself of each step in a successful investigation. In training, each lesson was learned in the company of other recruits, but now, although Tino and Sergio were here, she was the primary investigator, and any and all results depended on her competence. She steeled herself to deal with whatever lay ahead.
    Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of shouting. “Finally, somebody in authority,” bellowed Estrada. “I radioed when it was still daylight!”
    Noting the rebuke, Qui waved at him before aligning the cruiser with trawler, gently bumping alongside the Sanabela.
     
    “Help us tie off, Uncle!” Qui called to Estrada, who nodded to someone outside her line of vision.
     
    Lines were tossed and Tino and Sergio coordinated with Estrada’s crew to lash the boats together.
     
    From the side of the cruiser, Quiana looked up into the piercing eyes and the inscrutable face of Luis Estrada where he stood aboard the Sanabela. He looked older than the last time she’d seen him, still robust but pale and uncharacteristically grim.
    While Tino held the ladder steady, Qui handed off the evidence kit to Estrada. As she stepped aboard the foul-smelling fishing vessel, Qui immediately wished she hadn’t eaten that pork and rice lunch at the sidewalk café in the plaza.
    “So Uncle, what sort of tragedy do we have? Accident?”
    “This way. See for yourself.”
    He maneuvered easily across the deck, while she cautiously picked her way past fishing paraphernalia and other obstacles. Streaked with an enormous yellow-brown stain, the deck had forty years of smeared and ground-in fish guts and tobacco. He suddenly stopped ahead of her, and she looked up. What she saw made her gasp and wince, her hand flying to her mouth. Suspended before them at eye-level dangled a heavily burdened net that slowly twisted with the shifting winds and seesaw motion of the boat.
    Incrementally, by degrees, her brain made sense of what her eyes dared tell her, that the grid of the net held a mass of entwined bodies.
    “Que horror…” muttered Sergio, beside Quiana, slipping a flashlight into her hand.
     
    Tino joined them, standing stone-like, as fascinated as he was repulsed.
     
    Estrada said, “I count three heads.”
     
    For once Estrada had not exaggerated a situation. No one could exaggerate this. This was real, and in real life bodies smelled and tore at one’s senses like hungry ghosts screaming at the living.
    The three officers began examining every nook and cranny of the net and visible portions of the bodies.
     
    “Obviously, no accident,” muttered Sergio.
     
    Tino added, “Pure chance…a trawler out here, raising the dead.”
     
    “Curse of the Sanabela,” Qui muttered. As if to punctuate her words, more half-dead eels and crabs dropped from the net, scuttling slowly into the shadows near the railing.
    Tino lifted a camera and began taking photos, saying, “Still life takes on new meaning.”
    Estrada shook his head at the words. Qui said to him, “Uncle, it’s how we deal with traumatic death. Bad jokes.”
    Qui took a deep breath, her nose already de-sensitized to the odor. She stepped closer to the winch and held onto the solid metal to mentally ground herself. The death net continued to sway ever so slowly below the hoist and hook, making a high-pitched, irritating sound—sandpaper against raw nerves. A sound that made Qui