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I cocked a brow. Lost on Musgrove, as she wasn’t looking at me.
“That, however”—she pointed up the beach—“Iwasexpecting.”
Musgrove was indicating a CSU truck, a coroner’s van, and aJeep—this one much larger than the Wrangler that had brought us. Its broad flatbed and roomy crew cab suggested a model name like, say, the Shazam or the Godzilla. I later learned it was a Gladiator Sport.
A rubber Zodiac lay beached on the sand directly opposite the two boats. A black-and-white pop-up tent had been erected at the same spot.
Three men and one woman stood beside the tent. The men smoked. The woman just stood.
“What surprises you?” I asked, handing back the binoculars.
“I was anticipating migrants.”
“Illegals?”
She nodded. “Human trafficking is a problem throughout the Caribbean. And things often go awry. A few years back, fourteen bodies were found on a sloop adrift off Tobago, another seven on a vessel off Grenada.”
I didn’t interrupt.
“In 2021, twenty corpses turned up in an open boat a mile off Grand Turk Island.”
“Where do they come from?”
“The Turks and Caicos are a magnet for Haitians desperate to flee the gangs and the poverty in their homeland. The day following the recovery of the twenty dead, marine branch agents intercepted another vessel carrying forty-three Haitians.” Her eyes met mine. “A forty-foot open boat driven by a single engine. Think about that.”
We both fell silent, imagining the horror of such journeys.
“But TCI isn’t usually the intended destination,” Musgrove continued. “Human traffickers from everywhere use this region as a transshipment point. For example, the Tobago authorities determined that the vessel they towed ashore had been stolen in Mauritania.”
“In northwest Africa.”
She nodded.
I thought of the many articles I’d read about bodies discovered locked in the backs of vans and trucks. Men, women, and childrendead of heat stroke, dehydration, and starvation, abandoned by thecoyotesthey’d paid to smuggle them north.
“And these bastards get away with it.” I struggled to keep the loathing from my voice.
“Not always.”
Musgrove raised the binoculars and returned her gaze to the boats. “If I’m not mistaken, that’s a twenty-seven-foot Sea Ray SDX 270, probably a 2019 model.” She could have told me it wasThe Oracleand I would have believed her. “Inboard Mercs, fiberglass hull, retractable swim platform. That baby cost at least a hundred grand.”
“Not your typical human trafficker rig.”
“Definitely not. I expected an open craft of some kind, a dinghy, maybe a small sloop.” When I said nothing, she added, “A sloop is a single-masted boat, usually with a fore and aft mainsail and jib. Never mind.”
“So why the dead bodies?”
“Let’s find out.”
Returning the binoculars to Gardiner, Musgrove headed down the dune, cut toward the ocean, and strode up the beach, keeping to the hard-packed crescent left beside the water at low tide. I rolled the cuffs of my jeans, tucked my sandals into my shoulder bag, and followed. Rigby chugged along at my back, Gardiner behind her, breathing hard.
Musgrove introduced the man and woman by the tent as Constables Stubbs and Kemp, the CSU team. Both wore navy polos tucked into cargo pants. The polos had the now familiar RTCIPF patch.
Stubbs was the shorter and darker of the two, her long black hair secured by a coral barrette almost as large as her head. Fleetingly, I considered the logistics of wearing a hat.
With his butterscotch complexion and sunny, eager-to-please demeaner—lots of smiling and nodding—Kemp brought to mind a golden retriever. All but the panting and dangling tongue.
The other member of the trio was the coroner’s investigator, Iggie Bernadin. Bernadin had very dark skin and very bad teeth.
