A 30-minute Crime pilot. Drawn from Nova’s memory archive on: crime drama.
DEAD WATER
Episode 101: “Twelve Fathoms”
LOGLINE: A disgraced Miami homicide detective, reassigned to the city’s waterways unit as punishment, discovers that a seemingly routine drowning on Biscayne Bay is the loose thread connecting three unsolved murders, a ghost cartel, and the one case she was never supposed to solve.
SETTING & TONE: Miami, present day. Not the neon-soaked fever dream of postcard Miami — the other Miami. The one where the Biscayne Bay looks beautiful from a distance and smells like diesel and old money up close. Where the water hides things. Procedural in structure, literary in ambition. Every scene has one foot in the heat and one foot in the dark. Think Elmore Leonard writing a cop show he doesn’t entirely respect.
CHARACTER DESCRIPTIONS:
DET. MARISOL VEGA, 38 — Homicide’s best closer for six years until she wasn’t. Compact, watchful, permanently sunburned in a way that suggests she doesn’t care enough to put on sunscreen. She drinks exactly one beer more than she should. She was reassigned to the Marine Patrol Unit nine months ago for reasons the department calls “procedural violations” and she calls “being right.” She’s fluent in three kinds of silence.
SGT. DARNELL OKAFOR, 45 — Marisol’s new partner, Marine Patrol lifer. Six-foot-two, built like a man who was once built like a man and now carries it differently. Former Coast Guard. He knows every inch of this water and thinks Marisol is a liability until suddenly he doesn’t. Deeply principled in ways that inconvenience everyone, including himself.
ELENA COSS, 52 — Deputy State Attorney. Beautiful in the specific way that Miami politicians cultivate — expensive, tactical. She and Marisol have history that neither of them will name directly. She’s been trying to close a RICO case for four years. She does not like surprises.
OSCAR TADEO, 61 — Marine unit dispatcher, never leaves the dock. Has seen everything twice. Knows things about this city’s waterways that aren’t in any database. Dispenses information in fragments, like he’s been paid by the word and is spending carefully.
RAFAEL “RAFA” SOTO, 29 — A marina kid turned low-level CI who works the docks along the 79th Street Causeway. Nervous energy, beautiful face, a laugh that arrives before anything is funny. He’s working three angles simultaneously and has no idea two of them lead to the same place.
SERIES POTENTIAL: Every season, a new body in the water — and a city that built itself on the premise that what sinks stays sunk.
DEAD WATER
“Twelve Fathoms”
Written by Nova
FADE IN:
COLD OPEN
EXT. BISCAYNE BAY — PRE-DAWN
4:47 AM. The bay is black silk. Miami’s skyline burns orange on the western horizon, all that light going nowhere useful.
A PELICAN lands on a channel marker. Stares at something below. Lifts off again.
The water near the marker is disturbed. Not by wind. By something rising.
EXT. BISCAYNE BAY — CHANNEL MARKER 14 — CONTINUOUS
A BODY surfaces. Face down. Male. Mid-forties. Dressed for a dinner party — linen blazer, good shoes. One shoe.
He bobs gently, arms wide, as if measuring something.
The pelican returns to the channel marker. Looks down at him. Looks away.
INT. MARISOL’S APARTMENT — COCONUT GROVE — SAME TIME
A studio apartment that lost an argument with itself. Empty beer bottles arranged with unconscious precision on the windowsill. A corkboard above the kitchen table covered in photographs, strings, Post-its — but the strings have been cut. Case closed. Or case stopped.
MARISOL VEGA sleeps on top of her covers, still in yesterday’s clothes, one arm over her eyes. Her phone buzzes on the nightstand.
She doesn’t move.
It buzzes again.
She lifts the arm from her eyes. Stares at the ceiling. The ceiling offers nothing.
She picks up the phone.
MARISOL (answering) What.
OSCAR (V.O.) (through phone, unhurried) We got a floater. Channel fourteen, south of the Julia Tuttle.
MARISOL That’s Coast Guard jurisdiction.
OSCAR (V.O.) Coast Guard called us. Said it looked like something we’d want to see. Said that specifically. “Something you’d want to see.”
MARISOL Coast Guard doesn’t talk like that.
OSCAR (V.O.) This one does. Get Okafor.
He hangs up.
Marisol sits up. Looks at the corkboard with the cut strings. Looks at her phone.
Checks the time.
MARISOL (to no one) Sure.
EXT. MARINE PATROL DOCK — VIRGINIA KEY — 5:20 AM
The dock is functional, unglamorous. Three patrol boats in various states of readiness. A COAST GUARD CUTTER idles at the far end.
DARNELL OKAFOR is already there, in his patrol jacket, drinking coffee from a thermos. He looks like a man who was awake before the alarm. He always is.
Marisol walks up, sunglasses on despite the dark.
DARNELL You read the initial?
MARISOL I read: floater, channel fourteen.
DARNELL That’s not the whole initial.
MARISOL That’s all I needed to find the dock.
He pours coffee from the thermos into the cap, extends it to her. She takes it. They stand a moment.
DARNELL Victor Andrade. Fifty-one. Owner of Andrade Marine Holdings — that’s three marinas, a boat repair outfit, and a property management company registered in the Caymans.
MARISOL Okay.
DARNELL He’s been dead at least six hours. Examiners are on scene. Cause of death not yet established but the preliminary—
He pauses.
MARISOL But what.
DARNELL The Coast Guard officer said his hands were bound with fishing line. The kind had been cut, post-mortem. Someone tidied up before they put him in.
Beat.
MARISOL Someone wanted him to look like a floater.
DARNELL Someone tried. Coast Guard officer — woman named Reyes — she spotted micro-abrasions on the wrists. She used to be a detective. Baltimore.
MARISOL What’s she doing on a cutter in Miami.
DARNELL (getting in the boat) People end up places.
EXT. BISCAYNE BAY — CHANNEL MARKER 14 — 6:05 AM
The sun is beginning to disagree with the darkness. Pink and ugly over the water.
The Marine Patrol boat idles beside the Coast Guard vessel. VICTOR ANDRADE’s body is now on a recovery platform, covered to the chin with a silver emergency blanket. A MEDICAL EXAMINER crouches nearby.
COAST GUARD OFFICER REYES, 40s, square-faced and precise, stands at the rail.
Marisol climbs across. Looks at the body.
MARISOL The wrists.
REYES Medical examiner confirmed. The line was cut with something serrated. Left a secondary pattern on the skin, here—
She indicates the inside of both wrists.
REYES (CONT’D) Monofilament. Heavy gauge. The kind used for deep-water fishing.
MARISOL Cause of death?
M.E. (not looking up) Officially, drowning. Unofficially—
He lifts the silver blanket slightly to show the left side of ANDRADE’s neck.
A small, dark bruise. Circular. The size of a pencil eraser.
M.E. (CONT’D) Injection site. We’ll know more when tox comes back. But I’d bet my certification that he was unconscious when he went in.
DARNELL (quiet, to Marisol) So they sedated him. Tied him. Put him in the water to drown. Then pulled him back up and cut the line.
MARISOL They wanted him to suffer. Not indefinitely. Just—
She looks at the bay. The water. Measures something.
MARISOL (CONT’D) Twelve fathoms here.
REYES Channel depth, yeah.
MARISOL Deep enough that he couldn’t touch. Couldn’t orient himself. If the sedation was partial—
Beat. Everyone on the platform has quietly stopped moving.
MARISOL (CONT’D) They wanted him to know he was underwater before he wasn’t conscious anymore.
Silence. Just the water moving under the platform.
DARNELL (to Reyes) Thank you for the call.
REYES There’s one more thing.
She produces a sealed evidence bag. Inside: a waterproof phone case. Inside that: an older smartphone, screen spiderwebbed.
REYES (CONT’D) Found it tied to the channel marker above him. With the same monofilament. Left on purpose.
MARISOL They wanted us to find it.
REYES They wanted someone to find it. Not sure they expected Marine Patrol.
Marisol looks at her. There’s something in that sentence.
MARISOL What does that mean?
REYES It means I called you specifically. Because of who Victor Andrade is. And because of who else has been asking about him.
MARISOL Who.
REYES State Attorney’s office. They put a flag on his name fourteen months ago. Any law enforcement contact, they get notified. They’ve been notified.
Beat.
MARISOL (to herself) Elena.
She doesn’t say it loudly. But Darnell hears it.
He says nothing.
SMASH TO TITLE CARD:
DEAD WATER
ACT ONE
INT. MIAMI-DADE MARINE PATROL — BULLPEN — 8:30 AM
The Marine Patrol offices are an afterthought stapled to the back of a Virginia Key harbormaster building. Drop ceilings. One window facing the water, which should be better than it is.
Marisol stands at a whiteboard. It’s clean. She hasn’t written anything yet. She’s been standing in front of it for two minutes.
OSCAR TADEO, 61, sits at the dispatcher’s desk, which is really just any desk with a radio on it. He has reading glasses on a chain and a Miami Herald crossword at a level of completion that suggests he’s been here since five.
OSCAR You got a look on you.
MARISOL What look.
OSCAR The look from when you used to be homicide.
MARISOL I’m always the look from when I used to be homicide.
She writes on the whiteboard: ANDRADE, VICTOR. 51. MARINA OWNER.
OSCAR His biggest marina is out on the 79th Street Causeway. Andrade’s Keys & Marine. The other two are in Aventura and up near Sunny Isles.
MARISOL Oscar. How do you know that already.
OSCAR (not looking up from crossword) Seven-letter word for “maritime commerce.”
MARISOL Oscar.
OSCAR I’ve been dispatching boats out of this bay for twenty-three years. Victor Andrade had his slip number in my logbooks since 2009. A man doesn’t own three marinas without dispatchers knowing who he is.
MARISOL And?
OSCAR And nothing. He was pleasant. Paid his fees. Occasionally the wrong kind of boats came and went from his slips at the wrong kind of hours.
MARISOL You reported that?
OSCAR I noted it. In my logs. As is procedure.
MARISOL And then.
OSCAR (finally looks up) And then the logs got subpoenaed by the State Attorney’s office about a year ago and I never heard another word about it.
He goes back to the crossword.
OSCAR (CONT’D) Shipping. That’s the word. Seven letters.
Darnell enters with two folders and a tablet. He sets them on the conference table — which is also the lunch table — and opens the first folder.
DARNELL Victor Andrade. Born 1973, Havana. Came over as a kid, ‘83. Parents were balseros — made it on a raft, which you don’t forget. Built up the marina business through the nineties. Clean record. Or clean enough.
MARISOL That means not clean.
DARNELL Two civil suits, both settled. One from a former business partner named Luis Garza who alleged that Andrade had used his marina as a pass-through for undisclosed cargo. Garza withdrew the suit in 2018.
MARISOL Withdrew or was persuaded.
DARNELL The withdrawal letter said he’d resolved his concerns through dialogue.
MARISOL (dryly) Love dialogue.
DARNELL The second suit was from a longshoreman’s union, unrelated.
He slides the second folder across.
DARNELL (CONT’D) State Attorney flag. Like Reyes said. Fourteen months ago. Case number’s redacted in the copy we got. All I can tell from the flag is it’s a RICO predicate investigation.
MARISOL Elena Coss.
DARNELL She’s listed as supervising attorney, yeah. You know her?
MARISOL (writing on the whiteboard) We’ve met.
She writes: S.A. COSS — RICO/PREDICATE — 14 MOS.
DARNELL You want to call her or should I.
MARISOL I want to look at the phone first. What did forensics say?
DARNELL Still working on unlocking it. But here—
He pulls up the tablet.
DARNELL (CONT’D) The last cell tower ping before the phone went dark was at 11:47 PM last night. Tower near Watson Island. Which puts Andrade — or at least his phone — here—
He indicates a map on the tablet.
DARNELL (CONT’D) On the water. Already on the water. The Julia Tuttle Causeway is right there. He went into the bay within a half-mile window.
MARISOL So someone took him out on a boat. Drugged him there, or drugged him before and loaded him.
DARNELL Or he came willingly. Trusted whoever he was with.
They look at each other.
MARISOL He got on that boat at night, dressed for dinner. He knew the person.
DARNELL Or he thought he did.
EXT. ANDRADE KEYS & MARINE — 79TH STREET CAUSEWAY — 10:15 AM
The marina is nicer than it has any right to be out here. Freshly painted docks. A few serious sportfishing boats. An open-air office with a ceiling fan doing its inadequate best against the heat.
Marisol and Darnell walk the docks.
A DOCKHAND, 20s, is hosing down a deck and pretending not to watch them.
RAFA SOTO leans against a piling at the far end of the dock, eating a mango with a pocketknife, like a person who has decided mangoes are casual. He sees them coming and straightens — a fraction — and then deliberately goes back to the mango.
DARNELL (quietly to Marisol) He’s mine. CI. He works the docks here and up at Andrade’s Sunny Isles location.
MARISOL Since when are you running CIs?
DARNELL Since the Marine Unit needs eyes on the water and eyes don’t grow on the docks without cultivation.
Marisol gives him a look. He ignores it.
They reach Rafa.
DARNELL (CONT’D) Rafa.
RAFA (still eating mango) Sergeant Okafor. Didn’t know you had a partner now.
DARNELL Detective Vega. She’s with me.
RAFA (to Marisol) You were homicide, right? I remember your name from—
MARISOL From what.
RAFA Just around. People talk.
MARISOL What do they say.
RAFA That you closed a lot of cases. And that you closed one case you shouldn’t have.
Beat. The mango knife makes a small, deliberate cut.
MARISOL Tell me about last night.
RAFA I wasn’t here last night.
DARNELL Rafa.
RAFA (sighs) I heard. Okay? About Mr. Andrade. Word got around the dock at like seven this morning. Somebody found him in the bay.
MARISOL He was murdered.
RAFA (carefully) They’re saying drowning.
MARISOL I’m saying murdered.
Rafa looks at Darnell. Darnell gives him nothing.
RAFA If Mr. Andrade was murdered, that is… a significant piece of information.
MARISOL Sure is.
RAFA Because the thing about Mr. Andrade is that people who might want to… significantly impact his health… are not small people. You understand what I mean.
DARNELL Walk us through the operation here. Who comes and goes at night.
RAFA (pockets the knife) Legitimate business? Sportfishing charters, mostly done by six PM. Live-aboard tenants — there’s four of them, regular people, a couple who sail, retired guy, a woman who does yacht photography. After ten PM, this dock is supposed to be locked.
MARISOL Supposed to be.
RAFA Twice a month, something comes in. No name on the boat. No lights. Docks at slip B-7 — that’s the far slip, you can’t see it from the road. Stays maybe forty minutes. Leaves.
MARISOL What’s on the boat.
RAFA I don’t know.
DARNELL Rafa.
RAFA I genuinely don’t know. I’ve never been close enough. But the way the crew moves—
He pauses. Thinks about whether to continue.
RAFA (CONT’D) The crew is not locals. I’d say Central American, but I’m not specific. Two guys always, sometimes three. And they always carry something off. Not on. Off. Like they’re picking something up that’s been left.
MARISOL When’s the last time.
RAFA Thursday. Two nights ago. Around midnight.
Marisol and Darnell exchange a look.
MARISOL Victor Andrade was here Thursday night?
RAFA I… don’t know. I didn’t see him here. But Thursday is usually when he’s here.
MARISOL Did the boat come Thursday.
RAFA Yeah.
MARISOL And then Friday night, someone takes Andrade out on the water and puts him in the bay.
She looks at slip B-7. An empty slip. Dark water moving underneath.
MARISOL (CONT’D) Something went wrong Thursday.
She’s not asking anyone.
INT. STATE ATTORNEY’S OFFICE — CONFERENCE ROOM — 11:30 AM
A room that communicates authority through furniture. Dark wood, uncomfortable chairs that are expensive so you know someone chose them deliberately.
ELENA COSS stands at the window, looking out at the street below. She has her back to the door when Marisol enters. She doesn’t turn immediately.
ELENA Marisol.
MARISOL Elena.
ELENA (turning) I heard it was your unit on scene.
MARISOL Is that going to be a problem.
ELENA I don’t know yet.
She gestures to a chair. Marisol doesn’t sit.
ELENA (CONT’D) Victor Andrade.
MARISOL Victor Andrade. Who your office has been tracking for fourteen months.
ELENA We had an investigative flag—
MARISOL Elena. Don’t.
Beat. Elena closes the door.
ELENA Victor Andrade was a predicate witness in a RICO case. One of four. He was providing information — not formally, nothing signed, nothing submitted — about the financial infrastructure of a narco operation running through South Florida.
MARISOL Which operation.
ELENA You don’t have clearance for the specifics.
MARISOL I have a body. Body overrules clearance.
ELENA (measured) Not in a RICO predicate investigation, it doesn’t. This is a federal overlay. DOJ has partial jurisdiction on the financial components.
MARISOL So now I’ve got DOJ, RICO, and a dead informant in my bay.
ELENA He wasn’t a formal informant—
MARISOL He was a man passing information to your office about a cartel operation who is now dead and in the water. What would you call that.
Silence.
ELENA I’d call it a significant problem.
MARISOL I’d call it a murder. And I’d call it mine.
Elena studies her.
ELENA You’re Marine Patrol now, Marisol. Your jurisdiction is the water.
MARISOL He was in the water.
ELENA Homicide will take this.
MARISOL Homicide will take this in forty-eight hours and lose it in sixty-four because they don’t know the docks, they don’t know the bay, they don’t know who goes in and out of which slip at what hour. I do. Or I will.
Another silence. Elena is thinking. Marisol watches her think.
ELENA The other three witnesses.
MARISOL What about them.
ELENA If Andrade was killed because of what he knew—
MARISOL Then someone knows who the other three are. Which means—
ELENA They may be at risk. Yes.
Beat.
MARISOL Give me the case.
ELENA I can’t give you a federal RICO predicate—
MARISOL Give me the murder. Your office leads on the RICO. I report to you. You loop in DOJ on what they need and not one thing more.
ELENA You’d be comfortable reporting to me.
MARISOL No. But I’d do it.
Elena looks at her for a long moment. Something passes between them that has history in it.
ELENA There’s something you don’t know about the case.
MARISOL There are many things I don’t know about the case.
ELENA About why the flag was placed. About what Andrade told us.
She opens a folder on the table. Turns it to face Marisol.
Inside: photographs. Three of them. Three different crime scenes.
ELENA (CONT’D) Eighteen months ago. Three murders in forty days. A longshoreman named Beto Fuentes. A port inspector named Susan Tadgin. And a private aviation dispatcher named Marcus Webb.
Marisol leans in.
ELENA (CONT’D) All three were ruled—
MARISOL Accidents. I remember Tadgin. She was—
She stops.
ELENA She was on Homicide’s board. Before they closed it accidental. She fell from a parking structure.
MARISOL Tadgin was shot.
ELENA The ruling was—
MARISOL She was shot with something small enough to look like a blunt force impact in the initial. I know because I flagged it and my lieutenant told me to close the case. Which is why I—
She stops. Looks at the photos.
MARISOL (CONT’D) (quiet) That’s the case. That’s the case I wasn’t supposed to close the way I closed it.
ELENA Marisol—
MARISOL You had information that Susan Tadgin was killed and connected to a narco financial network and you let Homicide close it accidental.
ELENA We had to protect—
MARISOL I got transferred to the boat unit, Elena. Because I wouldn’t close it the way they told me.
ELENA (carefully) You were transferred because you shared your case theory with a journalist.
MARISOL I shared my case theory with a journalism professor who is also my sister, at our mother’s birthday dinner—
ELENA It leaked.
MARISOL It—
She stops. Breathes.
MARISOL (CONT’D) What did Andrade tell you. About Tadgin and the others.
ELENA He told us they were all pieces of the same infrastructure. A supply chain. Fuentes managed off-book cargo at the port. Tadgin inspected it — or didn’t. Webb arranged the private flights. The whole network was serviced through Andrade’s marinas. He was the hub.
MARISOL And he talked to you fourteen months ago. And now he’s dead.
ELENA Yes.
MARISOL Who killed those three.
ELENA We believe a mid-level enforcement arm connected to an organization called La Doce. Los Doce Metros. The Twelve Meters.
Marisol is very still.
ELENA (CONT’D) They operate primarily through maritime routes. Based somewhere in the Yucatán, but their South Florida presence—
MARISOL Is through the marinas.
ELENA Through Andrade’s marinas. Yes.
MARISOL Who runs the South Florida side.
ELENA That’s what Andrade was supposed to help us find out. That’s what died with him.
Marisol looks at the photographs. Susan Tadgin’s face looks back at her from the file.
MARISOL Not necessarily.
She straightens.
MARISOL (CONT’D) The phone. The one left tied to the channel marker. They left it on purpose.
ELENA Who did.
MARISOL La Doce killed Andrade. But someone tied that phone to the marker. Someone who knew what it contained and wanted it found. Someone else was on that boat, Elena.
ELENA (slowly) A second party.
MARISOL Or Andrade himself. Before they sedated him. If he was conscious when they brought him to the water, if he had the phone—
ELENA He tied his own evidence to a channel marker.
MARISOL Twelve fathoms down. He knew where he was. He’d been on that water his whole life.
Beat.
ELENA Then God help us, that phone is everything.
MARISOL Where is it now.
ELENA Forensics. They’re trying to unlock it. But the encryption—
MARISOL I know someone.
EXT. 79TH STREET CAUSEWAY — RAFA’S CAR — 1:15 PM
Marisol leans against the passenger door of Rafa’s extremely underachieving 2008 Honda. He’s in the driver’s seat, door open, leg hanging out.
RAFA La Doce.
MARISOL You know it.
RAFA (long pause) I know of it. The way you know of a hurricane that’s still offshore. Like, you’re aware it exists and you hope it keeps going north.
MARISOL Who runs their Miami operation.
RAFA I don’t know that. I’m not — Detective, I’m a marina kid. I tell Sergeant Okafor when weird boats come in. I’m not connected to—
MARISOL The boat Thursday night. B-7 slip.
RAFA Yeah.
MARISOL That boat is La Doce.
RAFA (very quiet) Okay.
MARISOL They were picking something up. From the slip. Something Andrade left for them.
RAFA Okay.
MARISOL What if he didn’t leave it Thursday. What if he left something else. What if he knew Thursday was his last meeting and he left them something they didn’t expect.
RAFA Like what.
MARISOL The pickup went wrong. The boat came back Friday night. With Andrade.
Rafa stares out at the water.
RAFA There’s a guy. Name is Pescado — it’s not a real name, obviously, it’s what people call him. He coordinates the slips. Not Andrade directly — like a layer between Andrade and the actual—
MARISOL Where is Pescado.
RAFA I don’t know that I want to be the person who answers that question.
MARISOL Rafa.
RAFA (genuine) Detective, I want to help you. I do. But if La Doce is the thing we’re talking about—
MARISOL Then there are three other people connected to this network who are still alive and might not stay that way. And I need to find them before the people who killed Andrade do.
A long silence. Seagulls. Traffic on the causeway above.
RAFA There’s a boat repair shed. Little River Canal, just off 36th. Pescado does business out of the back. But—
He stops.
MARISOL But.
RAFA If I tell you this, that’s… a commitment. On my part. That’s not just watching boats.
MARISOL I know.
RAFA I want something.
MARISOL What.
RAFA There’s a case. Open warrant, Broward County. Not serious, but it’s there.
MARISOL I can make calls.
RAFA And I want you to tell me the truth. About what’s going to happen. Don’t tell me it’ll be fine. Just—tell me the truth.
Marisol looks at him. This is not a kid asking. This is someone who’s been lied to by authority figures enough to have preferences about it.
MARISOL The truth is that Pescado is going to know someone found him. He may run. He may go quiet. He may come after whoever sent me.
RAFA Will he come after me.
MARISOL (honestly) I don’t know. I’ll do everything I can to make sure that doesn’t happen.
RAFA That’s not the same as no.
MARISOL No. It’s not.
Rafa looks at the water.
RAFA Little River Canal. Shed’s called Palmetto Marine Repair. You’ll see a blue tarp over the side entrance. Go around back, there’s a gate. He’s there most afternoons.
He pulls his leg into the car.
RAFA (CONT’D) That’s the truth I’m giving you. Hope yours is worth something.
He drives away.
INT. MARINE PATROL — FORENSICS AREA — 3:00 PM
A tech named BRITO, 30s, is working on the recovered phone. It’s connected to a laptop running decryption software.
Marisol and Darnell stand behind him.
BRITO The encryption isn’t even that sophisticated. It’s a third-party app, the kind civilians use for privacy. Photo vault and message archive. The issue is the screen damage — the primary input is compromised.
DARNELL Can you get in.
BRITO I got in twenty minutes ago.
He turns the laptop.
On screen: a photo archive. Dozens of images. Marisol leans in.
The photos are of documents. Financial documents. Spreadsheets. Wire transfer records. Dates and amounts and account numbers, photographed with someone’s phone, poorly lit, slightly blurred but readable.
And beneath the document photos:
A series of text messages. Between Andrade and an unsaved number.
Marisol reads.
MARISOL (reading) “Thursday is the last. After Thursday I’m out.”
The response: “You don’t get to decide that.”
Andrade: “I have everything. All of it. If something happens to me, it goes to people who will know what to do with it.”
The response: “Then make sure nothing happens to you.”
Then, two hours later, Andrade: “I know who you are. I know what you put in the water and I know where to find it. Same place you’ll put me.”
No response after that.
DARNELL (quiet) “What you put in the water.”
MARISOL He’s not talking about the drugs.
She scrolls back to the documents.
MARISOL (CONT’D) Brito. The dates on these transfers.
BRITO The ones highlighted in yellow?
MARISOL Yeah.
BRITO Eighteen months ago. Concentrated in a forty-day window.
Marisol goes very still.
DARNELL The same window as the three murders.
MARISOL He was documenting payments. To whoever ordered those killings.
She straightens.
MARISOL (CONT’D) He kept this for eighteen months and didn’t give it to Elena. He held it back.
DARNELL Insurance.
MARISOL And when he knew they were coming for him, he put it on the phone and tied it to the marker. (beat) He planned this. Even dying, he planned this.
She looks at the last message again.
I know where to find it. Same place you’ll put me.
MARISOL (CONT’D) (to Darnell) We need a dive team.
DARNELL For what.
MARISOL Channel fourteen. Twelve fathoms. He said “same place.” Something is down there.
DARNELL Marisol—
MARISOL He knew they’d dump him at that channel. He knew his water. He’s been sailing Biscayne Bay since he was eight years old, Darnell. He knew exactly where they’d take him. And he told us something is down there.
DARNELL (slowly) Or he told them something is down there. To protect himself.
MARISOL Maybe both things can be true.
EXT. PALMETTO MARINE REPAIR — LITTLE RIVER CANAL — 4:30 PM
A sun-beaten shed at the end of a service road. One boat on sawhorses outside, half-painted. A blue tarp over the side entrance exactly as Rafa described.
Marisol and Darnell approach from the canal side, on foot. They’re not in uniform. Marisol has her badge clipped inside her jacket.
DARNELL (low) We don’t have a warrant.
MARISOL We’re making a contact.
DARNELL You want to define that more specifically.
MARISOL We’re introducing ourselves to a person of interest in an open investigation and asking him some questions.
DARNELL And if he doesn’t want to answer.
MARISOL Then we learn something from that.
They go around the back. The gate is open. Behind it: a man sitting on a milk crate, talking on a phone, shirtless, eating sunflower seeds with mechanical precision.
PESCADO is 40s, compact, forearms covered in old tattoos that have bled into blue-grey blurs. His actual name is probably something else. His eyes are the first things that move when they enter — everything else stays relaxed.
He ends his call.
PESCADO Help you?
MARISOL Victor Andrade.
PESCADO (pause) Never heard of him.
MARISOL That’s interesting. Because your name came up in connection with the slip coordination at his marina. B-7.
PESCADO I do contract work for various marinas in the area. That’s not a secret.
DARNELL He was found dead this morning.
Pescado looks at Darnell. A real look. Not surprise, exactly — something more controlled than surprise. He’s calculating something.
PESCADO That’s terrible. What happened.
MARISOL We’re trying to find out.
PESCADO I wish I could help. Like I said, I didn’t really know him.
MARISOL You coordinated deliveries through his slip twice a month.
PESCADO I coordinate a lot of things.
MARISOL What came through B-7 on Thursday night.
Pescado eats a sunflower seed. Spits the shell.
PESCADO I think I’d like to stop talking to you now. No offense.
MARISOL None taken. (beat) We found a phone.
That lands. Micro-movement around his eyes.
MARISOL (CONT’D) Andrade left it for us. Full financial records. Transaction histories. Eighteen months of them.
PESCADO (very careful) Good for him.
MARISOL Good for us, actually.
She takes a step back. Casual.
MARISOL (CONT’D) We’ll be in touch.
She and Darnell leave through the gate. As they round the corner of the building—
Darnell grabs her arm. Points.
Through a gap in the shed wall: Pescado is already on his phone.
They watch. He’s not talking. Texting.
Marisol pulls out her phone. Texts Brito: SUBPOENA CELL CARRIER. NUMBER FOR “PESCADO” AT PALMETTO MARINE REPAIR, LITTLE RIVER. WHOEVER HE TEXTS IN THE NEXT TEN MINUTES.
Brito responds: WILL NEED ELENA FOR THE SUBPOENA.
Marisol responds: SO CALL HER.
ACT TWO
INT. MARISOL’S APARTMENT — COCONUT GROVE — 7:00 PM
She’s at the kitchen table with the case spread in front of her. The real corkboard — not the one with the cut strings. A new one, propped on the chair across from her.
Photos: Andrade. Fuentes. Tadgin. Webb. The channel marker. The phone screenshots. A map of Biscayne Bay.
She’s connected them with red string. The original kind.
Her phone rings. Oscar.
MARISOL (answering) Yeah.
OSCAR (V.O.) The dive team went down to channel fourteen.
MARISOL And.
OSCAR (V.O.) They found something. Waterproof case, secured to the channel bed. Rigged with a weight and a quick-release — someone who knows how to pack a dive kit.
MARISOL What’s in it.
OSCAR (V.O.) Cash and a hard drive.
MARISOL Cash.
OSCAR (V.O.) About eighty thousand. And the hard drive is — they say it’s professional grade. Encrypted.
MARISOL He put it down there himself. Before they took him. He put it in the channel he knew they’d bring him to.
OSCAR (V.O.) One more thing. The cash — it’s banded. Bank bands. Not from any Miami institution.
MARISOL From where.
OSCAR (V.O.) Cayman routing stamp. Same bank as one of Andrade’s holding companies.
Beat.
MARISOL He was going to run.
OSCAR (V.O.) Looks that way.
MARISOL He told them Thursday was the last. He was actually going. He had the cash, the documentation, and he was going.
OSCAR (V.O.) He almost made it.
Marisol looks at the corkboard. Susan Tadgin’s photo. Dead now for eighteen months, filed as an accident, unavenged.
MARISOL Oscar. In your logs. The wrong-hours boats at Andrade’s marina. Did you note specific descriptions.
OSCAR (V.O.) I noted what I observed.
MARISOL If I asked you to testify to those observations—
OSCAR (V.O.) (long pause) That would be a different kind of question.
MARISOL I know.
OSCAR (V.O.) Then ask me again when you have something to attach it to.
He hangs up.
INT. STATE ATTORNEY’S OFFICE — ELENA’S OFFICE — 8:45 PM
Elena is still at her desk. She’s always still at her desk.
Marisol lays out the full picture: the phone, the documents, the channel cache, the cash, the hard drive.
Elena listens without interrupting. This is noted. Elena always has something to say.
When Marisol finishes:
ELENA Pescado’s texts.
MARISOL Brito got the subpoena through emergency review. Pescado texted one number within four minutes of us leaving. Burner, but the tower puts it in Coral Gables at 4:38 PM.
ELENA Coral Gables.
MARISOL Expensive zip code for a cartel signal.
ELENA (quiet) Marisol. What you said earlier. About Tadgin. About your transfer.
MARISOL I said what I said.
ELENA My office—
MARISOL Made a choice that protected your RICO case and cost me my unit. I know. I’m not asking for an apology. I’m asking you to let me finish what I started eighteen months ago.
Elena stands. Goes to the window.
ELENA The hard drive. If it contains what I think it contains—
MARISOL The identity of La Doce’s South Florida coordinator.
ELENA Then this isn’t about three murders anymore. This is about dismantling an entire financial apparatus that runs from Miami to the Yucatán. And whoever that coordinator is, they are significant.
MARISOL How significant.
ELENA (carefully) When I said DOJ had partial jurisdiction on the financial components—
MARISOL Yeah.
ELENA I mean that they flagged a domestic target. Someone on the U.S. side who facilitates the financial movement. Someone who has—
She stops.
MARISOL Elena. Say it.
ELENA Someone with government access.
The room sits with that for a moment.
MARISOL That’s why Tadgin’s case got closed. That’s why I got moved.
ELENA I cannot confirm—
MARISOL That’s why the logs Oscar kept went into a subpoena file and died. Someone pulled the plug on this from inside.
ELENA We don’t know who.
MARISOL But Andrade’s hard drive might.
ELENA Yes.
MARISOL Then we need to crack it before whoever got Pescado’s text realizes what we have.
She’s already moving toward the door.
ELENA Marisol.
She stops.
ELENA (CONT’D) Be careful.
MARISOL (dry) I’m Marine Patrol. I’m always careful.
EXT. MARINE PATROL DOCK — VIRGINIA KEY — 10:30 PM
Darnell is waiting at the dock. He’s not alone. REYES from the Coast Guard is there.
MARISOL Why is she here.
DARNELL Because she has something to say.
REYES The recovery of the channel cache.
MARISOL You know about that already.
REYES I put the dive team there, Detective. My dive team. On my authority.
Marisol looks at Darnell. He gives a small shrug: I know. She did.
MARISOL Okay. Say what you have to say.
REYES When I was in Baltimore. Homicide. I worked a case that looked a lot like this one. Supply chain, port workers, private aviation. Someone moving product through legitimate infrastructure.
MARISOL How’d it resolve.
REYES (beat) It didn’t. A witness died. The case closed.
MARISOL And you ended up in Miami on a Coast Guard cutter.
REYES People end up places.
(off Marisol’s look)
The case that closed in Baltimore — the financial coordinator we were looking at. I ran her name again last month when I saw the flag on Andrade. Different city, different network. Same signature. Same account structures.
MARISOL What do you mean same signature.
REYES The way the money moves. It’s almost architectural. Someone who designs financial networks the way you design buildings. The same person — or the same method — is at work here.
MARISOL You think the coordinator is the same person from your Baltimore case.
REYES I think there’s a pattern. And I think the hard drive will confirm it.
MARISOL You’ve been working this in parallel.
REYES I’ve been watching. Because I didn’t want to end up in another city with another dead witness and another closed case.
Marisol looks at her. Measures her.
MARISOL If you had information relevant to this investigation—
REYES I have information relevant to every investigation connected to this network, and I have watched that information die on desks in two cities. So yes, I’ve been watching. And waiting for someone to show up who wasn’t going to file it away.
DARNELL (carefully) She’s right, Marisol. She called us first. Not Homicide. Not the State Attorney. Us.
Beat.
MARISOL Why us.
REYES Because Marine Patrol is the most boring unit in the Miami-Dade PD. Nobody watches you. Nobody thinks you matter.
MARISOL (small, involuntary smile) That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me this year.
INT. FORENSICS — 11:55 PM
Brito, alone with coffee and equipment that hums. He’s working on the hard drive.
His phone buzzes. Text from an unknown number.
It reads: STOP.
He stares at it.
His phone buzzes again. Same number: OR WE STOP YOU.
Brito picks up his phone. Calls Marisol.
BRITO (into phone) Detective Vega. Someone knows I have the drive.
INT. FORENSICS — MINUTES LATER
Marisol, Darnell, Reyes. All three crowd around Brito’s station.
Marisol looks at the texts.
MARISOL (to Brito) How close are you.
BRITO An hour. Maybe less.
MARISOL Then you have an hour.
BRITO They know where I am.
DARNELL We’re here.
MARISOL Can you work faster.
BRITO I can try stupid things faster. That’s not the same.
MARISOL Try smart things faster.
BRITO (turning back to screen) I hate this job so much.
EXT. FORENSICS BUILDING — SAME TIME
A car is parked on the far side of the lot. Engine off. No movement inside. Just sitting there in the sodium-vapor dark.
We don’t see who’s inside.
INT. FORENSICS — 12:47 AM
BRITO Okay.
Everyone leans in.
The drive is open. Files and files of documents, messages, photographs. And one folder labeled: NEXO.
Nexo. The link. The bridge.
Marisol opens it.
Inside: a name. A face. Government ID photograph. Department affiliation.
She stares at it.
Darnell reads over her shoulder. Goes very quiet.
Reyes reads it. Her jaw tightens.
REYES (barely audible) That’s the same—
MARISOL From Baltimore.
REYES Yes.
DARNELL (reading the ID) That’s a federal badge.
MARISOL Yeah.
DARNELL Marisol. That’s a federal badge from a specific federal agency and we are—
MARISOL A marine patrol unit with the most boring jurisdiction in Miami-Dade. I know.
She looks at the name on the screen. The face.
MARISOL (CONT’D) (to Brito) Copy everything to a secure server. Not the department server. External only.
BRITO That’s against—
MARISOL I know.
BRITO You know what keeps happening to people who are trying to do the right thing with this case.
MARISOL Yeah. I also know what happens if we put this on a department server tonight.
Brito looks at her for a long beat.
He starts copying to external drives.
EXT. FORENSICS BUILDING PARKING LOT — 1:15 AM
Marisol walks to her car alone. It’s the quiet part of the Miami night. Even the highway sounds distant.
She gets in. Sits.
Looks at the external drive in her hand.
Her phone buzzes. Text from a number she doesn’t recognize.
It reads: ANDRADE SAID TWELVE FATHOMS. NOW YOU KNOW WHY. DON’T LET IT STAY BURIED.
She looks at the text.
Then at the lot around her. At the car that was parked on the far side. It’s gone now.
She starts her engine. Doesn’t move yet.
She texts Elena: WE NEED TO MEET. TONIGHT. NOT YOUR OFFICE.
Elena responds in forty seconds: WHERE.
Marisol thinks. Types: ANDRADE’S DOCK. B-7.
A pause.
Elena: GIVE ME TWENTY MINUTES.
EXT. ANDRADE KEYS & MARINE — SLIP B-7 — 1:40 AM
The marina at night is a different animal. Boats moving on their lines, a sound like the bay breathing.
Marisol stands at the end of the dock. Elena arrives in two minutes, not twenty.
MARISOL You drove fast.
ELENA Tell me.
MARISOL The hard drive has financial records tracing La Doce’s South Florida coordination through a shell structure to a federal government employee. Specifically —
She says the name.
Elena’s face does something complicated.
MARISOL (CONT’D) You know it.
ELENA (carefully) I know the name. I know the agency. I don’t—
MARISOL Elena.
ELENA I don’t know what this means yet. A name on a drive is not the same as—
MARISOL There are wire records. There are communications. It’s not a name on a drive, it’s an architecture. Reyes ID’d the same financial signature from a case in Baltimore that also closed under circumstances—
ELENA Marisol. If this is who Andrade’s drive says it is. If this is a federal actor coordinating for a narco network. Do you understand what it means if we make a move that doesn’t land?
MARISOL Yes. We end up like Tadgin.
ELENA Or we end up like Andrade.
A beat. The water moves under the dock.
MARISOL And if we don’t make a move.
ELENA (quiet) We end up like me. Filing flags and subpoenas for fourteen months while the network operates and the witnesses die.
Silence. The bay.
MARISOL Tell me what you need to prosecute.
ELENA I need the drive certified by a lab that isn’t compromised. I need witness testimony from someone living — which means Pescado, if he’ll flip.
MARISOL He’ll run before he flips.
ELENA Then we pick him up before he can. But that requires a warrant and a warrant requires showing probable cause to a judge without—
MARISOL Without tipping off the federal actor.
ELENA Who may have relationships with certain judges in this district.
They stand there. Two women at the end of a dock in the dark, holding a problem that is somewhat larger than the dock.
MARISOL There’s a federal judge. In the Southern District. Older, semi-retired, hears duty matters.
ELENA Faraday.
MARISOL He’s not in anyone’s pocket.
ELENA How do you know.
MARISOL Because he ruled against my department twice and against the State Attorney’s office once and against DEA once. He’s an equal-opportunity inconvenience.
ELENA (small, tired smile) I can be at his house at six AM with a sealed application.
MARISOL I can have Pescado located and under watch by five.
ELENA And the drive?
MARISOL Goes somewhere that isn’t here tonight.
She holds it up.
ELENA Marisol. Who sent you the text.
MARISOL (pause) I don’t know yet.
ELENA The anonymous text. “Don’t let it stay buried.”
MARISOL I said I don’t know.
ELENA Could Andrade have had an associate. Someone who knew what he was doing. Who was on the water Thursday night and—
MARISOL And stayed out of it until they knew the evidence was found.
ELENA Or someone in the network who wanted out. Who helped us without helping us, if you follow.
MARISOL There’s a fourth witness. You said Andrade was one of four.
ELENA Fuentes. Tadgin. Webb. Andrade.
MARISOL All dead.
ELENA All dead.
MARISOL But the flag. You said Andrade gave you information fourteen months ago. Before that, you had to have had a reason to build a predicate investigation. What was the original tip.
ELENA (slowly) Anonymous. Came through the tip line. But the detail in it—
MARISOL Whoever gave you that tip built this case for you. And then fed Andrade to you as confirmation.
ELENA I assumed it was a rival network. Informing on La Doce.
MARISOL Or someone inside La Doce. Someone who wants to burn it down from the inside and needs law enforcement to be the match.
They look at each other.
ELENA Episode two.
MARISOL What?
ELENA Nothing. Thinking out loud.
(re-focusing)
Tomorrow. Six AM, Judge Faraday. I’ll call you from the courthouse steps.
Elena leaves. Marisol stays at the end of the dock.
She looks at slip B-7. The dark water underneath. She thinks about Victor Andrade, who was eight years old and came over on a raft and built three marinas and died where he’d lived his whole life, in the water.
She thinks about Susan Tadgin.
She thinks about the text: Don’t let it stay buried.
TAG
INT. MARISOL’S APARTMENT — COCONUT GROVE — 3:00 AM
The new corkboard. The red strings. She adds new photographs: the federal badge ID from the hard drive. The name. A new string from Andrade to this name, running straight and red across the board.
She steps back.
She looks at the original board — the old case. Cut strings. Tadgin’s photo. The stuff from eighteen months ago.
She reaches up and takes that board off the wall. Sets it next to the new one. Lines them up.
The strings from both boards, lined up together, tell a story.
She puts a new piece of string between them. Connecting both boards. One long through-line.
She’s been on this case for eighteen months. She just didn’t know it.
EXT. ANDRADE KEYS & MARINE — SLIP B-7 — 3:20 AM
The marina is empty. The water is black and quiet.
Then: a light. Small. Moving on the water.
A boat — no navigation lights — coming in toward B-7.
It idles. Sits.
After a moment, a figure stands at the bow. Looks at the empty slip. Looks up at the dock.
We can’t see the face.
The figure stands there a long moment. Then, slowly, the boat reverses. Backs out into the dark bay.
The marina is empty again.
On the dock, one thing: a small waterproof case, zip-tied to the dock cleat at B-7.
It wasn’t there before.
INT. MARISOL’S APARTMENT — COCONUT GROVE — 3:22 AM
Marisol’s phone buzzes.
Same unknown number.
YOU DIDN’T FIND IT ALL. B-7. FIRST CLEAT. DON’T COME ALONE.
Marisol stares at the screen.
Then at the corkboard. The strings. The face from the drive.
She picks up her keys.
EXT. ANDRADE KEYS & MARINE — SLIP B-7 — 3:40 AM
Marisol on the dock. She’s not alone — Darnell is ten feet back, hand on his weapon, watching the water.
Marisol crouches at the first cleat. The waterproof case is there, zip-tied neatly.
She cuts the tie. Opens it.
Inside: a burner phone. And a handwritten note, the paper laminated. Three sentences, in handwriting she doesn’t recognize:
NEXO HAS A PARTNER. DOMESTIC. MORE DANGEROUS.
THE DRIVE SHOWS YOU THE MONEY. I CAN SHOW YOU THE BODY.
MY NAME IS MARISOL TOO. I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU.
Marisol reads it twice.
DARNELL (from behind her) What does it say.
She looks at the bay. The dark. Somewhere out there, a boat without lights is moving through the water.
She stands up. Holds the note.
MARISOL It says this gets worse before it gets better.
She looks at Darnell.
MARISOL (CONT’D) Call Reyes. Tell her we need eyes on every marina in Miami-Dade by dawn.
She looks back at the water.
MARISOL (CONT’D) (quietly, to the bay) Okay.
SMASH TO BLACK.
END OF PILOT
DEAD WATER — Series created by Nova
Episode 102: “The Laminated Note”
Episode 103: “Domestic”
Episode 104: “What Went Wrong Thursday”
FADE OUT.
Written by Nova. Source domain: crime_drama. Pilot #6.