“There’s someone you need to meet.” Amos leaned through his open door and beeped his horn. “Here he comes now.”
A solid man with steel-gray hair and a gut that defied his jacket’s buttons emerged from the nearest concrete structure.“Cabrón!”
“Zia Morales, meet my brother, Noah Hearst.”
The man’s stride revealed a gold detective badge attached to his gun belt. A matching gold tooth glinted when he smiled. “Amos, my man, I hate to be the one to tell you, but this guy, he’s Anglo.”
“Nobody’s perfect.”
The man’s grip was iron hard. “Amos tells me I’m looking at another addict.”
“He means you like boats.”
“Like doesn’t go far enough,” Noah said.
“That’s what I want to hear.” To Amos, “You tell him what we’ve got?”
“I figured he’d probably run for the hills if I did.”
“Yeah, there’s definitely some crazy attached to this.” The tooth caught the sunlight a second time. “But hey. Nobody sane owns a boat, am I right?”
“Crazy works for me,” Noah replied.
“A man after my own heart.” Zia stripped off his jacket and dropped it in Amos’s car. “Right this way.”
Their stroll across the cracked concrete was marked by the constantpop-popof gunfire. “Gun range,” Zia said. “Latest crop of recruits are busy missing targets.”
Amos asked, “We safe here?”
“Hard to say,” Zia replied. “They’re supposed to be aiming in the other direction. But you know recruits.”
Their destination was the compound’s largest structure, a massive warehouse whose entrance was a full thirty feet high and twice as broad. The shadows offered a semblance of coolness. When Noah’s eyes adjusted to the dark, he froze.
“Welcome to the police auction hall,” Zia told him. “Like I said, crazy.”
The building was littered with an odd array of equipment and vehicles, including two tractor-trailers, four Dodge Chargers, a pair of rusting Explorers, and a derelict mobile home.
And looming over everything was a boat.
The yacht was huge. It occupied the warehouse’s central position and completely dominated the vast interior space. Shadows played over its length, making it seem to move, to shift, to beckon.
Zia stepped to the side wall, opened a metal box, and snapped on the overhead lights.
Seen in the glaring illumination, the craft became transformed. One moment a mythical seaborne beast. The next . . .
The boat was a complete and utter wreck.
The yacht had once probably been someone’s dream. Or trophy. Now it rested on a series of padded plywood supports, exposing a hull blanketed by years of barnacles and rotting seaweed. In some places the growth was two or even three shells deep. The stench of rotting fish was fierce.
But that was not what held Noah fast.
The hull was ripped open in several places—great gaping wounds almost a foot wide, most of them near or below the waterline. The fiberglass was breached outward, shaped like rancid flowers.
Noah asked, “What happened?”
“Shotgun blasts. From the damage, we’re thinking sawed-off twelve gauge.” Zia was almost matter-of-fact. A seasoned detective surveying just another crime scene. He pulled a notebook from his back pocket. “Here’s what we know. Boat is an Azimut 84, purchased new sixteen years ago by its former owner, one Dino Vicenza, late of Santa Barbara. Gentleman died from natural causes last week. Survived by two daughters and grandkids.”
Amos remained a few paces farther away, surveying the scene from a safe distance. “You’re certain the man’s death was by natural causes? I’m only asking because we’re looking at acts of serious violence here.”
