Faye would have thought she’d be nauseated by such a sight but adrenaline seemed to be keeping her lunch in her stomach. The body, still dressed, was wrapped loosely in a blue tarpaulin. The skin was white and flabby. The throat wound seemed to have monopolized the attention of the fish and crabs attracted by this big tasty morsel of dead human being, which might have been a good thing and it might not. The medical examiner and the CSI people and Detective Overstreet had all commented on the corpse’s exceptionally good condition. “That brackish water in the Matanzas keeps a floater looking good for an extra day or so,” the medical examiner, Butch Benedict, had said. Sometimes, when Faye got all dolled up for an evening on the town, Joe whistled and said, “Mmmm, looking good…” She devoutly hoped that his definition of “looking good,” was night-and-day different from Butch Benedict’s. Not wanting to seem like a prissy girl, Faye leaned over the side of the boat one more time and took a good long look at something mind-bendingly terrible.
