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tank.
    Ransom lit a cheap cigar. He usually did at scenes where a body was no longer fresh. Rick always said it was difficult to discern which was worse, the stench of death or Jim’s big stogie.
    Rick and the young marine patrolman pulled on rubber gloves, dragged the dead man clear of the roots, counted to three and rolled him over. The body had obviously been in the water for some time, yet sea life had done little damage, even to the eyes and face. The usually voracious fish and crabs had found this corpse unappetizing for some reason.
    Rick hunkered down to scrutinize the body, then looked up with a wry half smile. “We lucked out, Jimbo. There is a God, after all.”
    â€œWhat the hell?” Ransom lumbered closer, aching back and queasy stomach forgotten. “Just what we don’t need,” he mourned. “Another whodunit. We’ll never get to go home.”
    A fact of death is that the more sudden it comes, the longer it takes to sort out the facts and clean up the mess.
    â€œWhat does that look like to you?” Rick asked. A half-inch hole gaped at the left of the man’s navel, just below the ribs.
    Jim stared in the fast-fading light. “Like about a .45-caliber.” He frowned at Rick’s positive expression.
    â€œOnly if the killer screwed it in. Look closer.” The young Cuban cop stood openmouthed. Uniforms closed in around the body.
    â€œSon of a bitch,” Ransom said squinting. “You’re right.” The hole in the man’s body was ringed by thread marks. “What do you wanna bet that it’s that damn Morningdale Mortuary again?”
    â€œThis is no homicide. The guy’s been embalmed,” Rick told the others, as he rocked back on his heels, elbows resting on his knees. He used a pencil as a pointer. “See here, no bullet made that hole, it was a trocar, an undertaker’s tool. It’s attached to a pump that sucks out the body fluids. Embalming solution is forced in. Then they plug it up. The plug is obviously missing.”
    â€œBut what’s he doing out here, Sarge?” The young officer looked bewildered. “How come they didn’t bury him?”
    â€œThey did,” Ransom said. “At sea. Probably … six, eight months ago. That damn Morningdale is still screwing up. Six months sitting in saltwater, on the bottom, the casket falls apart around him and he just pops up.”
    â€œI’m surprised nobody spotted him before now,” Rick said. Shadows and reflections of the water dappled his tanned face. “They must have missed the Gulf Stream when they dropped him in, otherwise he would have gone north. He must have floated back in south of Fisher Island, between Stiltsville and the reefs and Soldier Key, completely across the bay.”
    â€œLike a homin’ pigeon,” Jim said, forming the words around the cigar still clenched between his teeth. “This guy’s done some cruising.”
    â€œCaskets,” Rick told the rookie, “are built to be put in the ground, that’s the problem.” In a proper sea burial, the casket is weighted, holes drilled in the top and the lid secured with strapping iron. Tricky business, just uncommon enough to baffle the inexperienced help at some funeral homes.
    On the way back to the dock, Rick entertained the young marine officer with the story of another Miami funeral home’s maiden attempt at a sea burial. Mourners had sung a farewell hymn as the casket was slid over the side of their hired vessel into the Atlantic, a mile east of Government Cut. It had not sunk. The box had bobbed about on a choppy sea until the lid came off. Waves had wafted the body up and out. Wind and current had carried the corpse, dapper in a dark blue suit and a tie, into the lanes used by big cruise ships out of the port of Miami, and into the path of the Song of Norway . In response to a cry of “man overboard!” hundreds of Caribbean-bound