by J K Franko
Roy untied the lines that held Harlan’s feet and dropped them on the body. Then he picked up the duffle bag and, starting at the feet, they began to wrestle Harlan’s body into it, tarp and all.
Eventually, the two of them managed to get the full body inside.
“Wait,” Susie said quickly, before reaching into the duffle bag and retrieving Harlan’s mobile phone. She tapped on the home button, then used Harlan’s right thumb to unlock the screen. She scrolled to recent calls. He had received two from:
Cruise Captain
“Goddammit. He created a contact.” She clicked on the icon to bring up the contact with the Seattle phone number:
206-576-1324
Roy looked over her shoulder as she hit “Edit,” changed the contact name to “Marty McCall,” and saved. Then she carefully wiped the phone down on Harlan’s shirt to remove her fingerprints and put it in the duffle bag next to him.
“Good catch,” Roy commented. “I forgot all about the phone.”
“Yeah. Okay, listen,” Susie said in her no-nonsense tone. “Why don’t you get the bags of Quikcrete up here? I can get the anchor chain wrapped around him.”
“You sure you don’t need help with the chain? It’s heavy.”
“I’ve got it, Roy. Just get the fucking Quikcrete up here,” she snapped, a bit more harshly than seemed necessary.
“Whoa.” Roy raised his hands defensively, stepping back.
“Sorry,” she added, changing her tone slightly. “Not trying to be bitchy. I just don’t want to have him here like this any longer than necessary. He fucking stinks. You get the bags. I’ll get the chain around him, okay?” It wasn’t really a question.
Roy went aft for the four bags of Quikcrete. In order to save time, he removed all four from storage before beginning the process of bringing them to the bow.
As he brought over each bag, Susie helped him place it in the duffle bag with Harlan. There was no need to open them as water would seep in and set the concrete inside the bags.
As they placed the bags, Roy noticed that the body now had the anchor chain wrapped around it, secured with padlocks and looped through the victim’s belt.
But Harlan was no longer on his back. The lower body was on its side, his upper body twisted even further, facedown.
“All secure?” he asked.
“Yeah. I had to do some twisting and such, but he’s tied up tight,” Susie said, casually, as if she was talking about prepping the Sunday roast.
Roy pulled on the chain. There was no slack. Of course, once the flesh rotted off the bones, the chain would loosen, but the body would still be in the duffle bag, which would still be weighed down by the anchor chain and, shortly, the Quikcrete.
After putting the Quikcrete in the duffle bag, Roy added the lines that had held Harlan’s legs, the three empty beer bottles, and the fourth untouched bottle that contained beer and Xanax, plus the Hefty bag. As he held the sides of the bag together, Susie zipped it almost shut.
“Final check,” she said.
“Yep.”
Roy went to the console and came back with a small piece of paper and a flashlight. He read from the paper.
“Duffle bag contents: Tarp?”
“Check.”
“Hefty?”
“Check.”
“Leg lines?”
“Check.”
“Anchor line?”
“Check.”
“Padlocks?”
“Check.”
“Quikcrete?”
“Check.”
“Beer bottles?”
“Check.”
“Sunglasses? Scratch that. He had his own shades.”
“Yep, check.”
“Phone contacts and phone in bag.”
“Check.”
“Ice pick?”
“Shit.”
They fumbled around for about a minute before they found the ice pick on the deck up against the base of the coffin box. It had fallen during the process.
They placed it in the duffle bag.
“Ice pick, check.”
“Burner phone,” Roy said, and headed back to the stern of the boat where he had left the Seattle phone on one of the seats.
As he placed it in the bag, Susie said, “Details, details.”
“No kidding. I’m glad we made the list.”
“Okay. That’s it,” Roy finished, and placed the list in the duffle bag. With the anchor chain, they had calculated that the duffle bag would weigh approximately 180 pounds fully loaded—not including Harlan.
They retrieved the two four-foot, 2x6 pieces of wood from storage and placed them between the coffin box and the side of the boat, creating a small ramp.
Then, between the two of them, they heaved the duffle bag up and across the two boards. They shuffled it to the edge, and paused to look at each other before giving it a shove into the water. It sank immediately.
Both knew that the ocean depth below them was approximately 2,000 feet. That was exactly how they had planned it.
* * *
The trip back to Bimini took just under an hour. Roy pulled up about fifty yards from the beach where he had picked Susie up that morning. There were no other boats around. Susie, now wearing a wetsuit, kissed her husband before lowering herself into the water via the swim ladder. Roy handed her the backpack containing their two mobile phones in a Ziploc bag.
Roy waited until he saw his wife make it to shore. Then, he started up the engines and headed back to Miami.
* * *
It was almost 11:00 p.m. by the time Susie reached the Sunseeker. She took a quick hot shower and emptied the backpack. She put her wet clothes out to dry and hung the wetsuit in one of the showers. Then she went down to the galley, taking the mobile phones with her.
Though they had location services turned off, any calls that they made or received would register with the mobile carrier based on where they were located. That was why both phones had been switched off since they’d left Bimini. Susie now switched them both back on and plugged them in to charge.
As per their plan, she used Roy’s phone to call her mother. Although she didn’t answer—she’d probably already taken out her hearing aids and gone to sleep—that made no difference. Susie didn’t even leave a message.
But now, somewhere in AT&T’s database, there was a call placing Roy’s cell phone in Bimini on the night of Harlan’s disappearance at 11-ish p.m.
Meanwhile, Susie was famished. She pan-fried herself a small tuna filet and steamed some broccoli. While the broccoli cooled, she popped open a bottle of red and ate at the dining table.
It was done.
And if Susie was completely honest with herself, she had expected more. She hadn’t expected to feel joy or happiness, but something. Vindication maybe. Satisfaction. Or at least some kind of sense of relief. She had imagined the whole thing would be much more dramatic. That she would maybe have said something like, This is for Kristy or This is for Camilla.
Yet, when the moment came, she’d been much more concerned with making sure that no air got in through the Hefty bag, and that he didn’t manage to somehow fight his way off the coffin box. In fact, as she thought about it, she had expected more of a struggle. Again, more drama.
Nothing.
She blamed the drugs.
When she’d tightened the Hefty over his face, she’d tried to time it with an exhalation, so that there would be less air in his lungs and he’d die more quickly. She hadn’t done that to spare him any suffering… just to kill him with less risk of him getting loose somehow. Once she had put the Hefty over his head, she’d counted to ninety-eight before he’d stopped moving.
He had struggled some, but less than she’d expected. With Roy sitting on top of him, he hadn’t had much room for maneuvering.
And with his legs tied to the rail—that had been Roy’s idea—the guy hadn’t stood a chance. His legs had been Harlan’s only point of leverage. When he’d tried to pull with them, he’d just lifted his face up into the Hefty and his body up into Roy’s.
Susie confessed to me that what they’d done felt very clinical to her. Heartless. Without emotion. She had no sympathy for the victim, but no joy at the killing, either. It was an empty feeling.
Though maybe, in a way, the feeling was appropriate. What they had done was about punishment. Punishing Harlan for what he’d done to Kristy. Making something that was so very wrong right again. It was, in reality, an execution.
And execution, if done correctly, is about the executed, not about the executioner.
The whole thing felt very anticlimactic. Maybe her feelings would change over time. However, then and there, at that moment, she just wanted to unwind and forget about everything.
Susie opened the wine fridge and reached into the back left corner. Voila! A full pack of Marlboros. She took the pack with her up to the flybridge and lit up. Susie smoked and tried to clear her mind. She didn’t want to do any more thinking that night.
She was sitting in the back corner of the flybridge on the sofa, sipping wine and smoking. As she exhaled a giant plume of smoke and watched it dissipate in front of her, a voice startled her.
“Hey there!”
She followed the direction of the sound down to the bow of the boat in the slip next to theirs. It was a woman. There wasn’t enough light to really see her, or gauge her age, class, or anything useful, yet Susie found herself responding, “Hey!” into the darkness.
“You got an extra smoke?” the voice asked.
“Um, sure,” she replied, gathering her thoughts as she tried to extract a smoke from the pack. She also realized it was taking her a bit too much effort to pull out a cigarette.
Clearly, I’m a little drunk.
“Can I come up?” the voice questioned.
“No problem,” Susie replied, forcing a smile into her voice when she really wanted to tell the stranger to fuck off. She wasn’t in the mood for guests and she was feeling imposed upon. She put a cigarette on the table and waited.
A head and then a pair of shoulders appeared at the top of the stairs to the flybridge.
“Hi. I’m Toni,” the woman said.
Susie didn’t get up. “Hi Toni. I’m Susie.”
Susie’s new unwelcome friend picked up the cigarette and lit up.
She was a fiftyish looking woman. Chunky, attractive in a “used to be athletic but gave in to crème brûlée” sort of way. She wore shorts and a long-sleeved boat shirt. Barefoot, as boating protocol demanded, with a little ankle bracelet on her left leg.
“Thanks,” she said. “Thought I had another pack, but I was wrong. Must have smoked more yesterday than I thought.”
“No worries.”
“I’ve seen you guys before. Up at Compass Cay. Few years back. You have a daughter, right?”
Susie recalled the trip. The summer before Camilla died. She didn’t feel like correcting Toni and opening a can of worms, though.
“Yep. That has been a while. You have a good memory.”
“Beautiful boat—Lady Suze—hard to miss. I guess you’re Suze?” Toni took advantage of the question to take a seat across from Susie.
Susie smiled. “A nickname my husband uses.”
“We’re in I Sea U.” Toni made a face that said, He didn’t name her after me. “Roland’s a surgeon.”
“Got it. Cute.”
They paused for a moment.
Smoking.
“You look tired, girl,” Toni commented.
Susie let out a short laugh. “Wow… that’s pretty direct.”
“No offense. I just mean that I’ve seen you around the last couple of days, and today, you look tired. Up since early this morning, no? Like 4:00?”
Susie’s heart skipped. Toni knew way too much about their business. Like the proverbial duck that paddles frantically beneath the surface, Susie’s face remained impassive.
She couldn’t have seen anything. She didn’t see anything.
“Yeah,” she said, “Rough night last night. At dinner yesterday, Roy—my husband—ate something. Bad sashimi, we think. It hit him around 2:00 a.m. this morning.”
“Ugh. Vomirrhea?”
Susie nodded.
“That’s tough on a boat. Close quarters.”
“Tell me about it. Around four, I couldn’t take it anymore. So, I went out to get some air.”
“I hear you. Roland—my husband—snores. It’s not the end of the world given that I’m a bit of an insomniac. I’m awake a lot anyway. I read a lot. Romance novels mainly. Thrillers. But the nights are long and sometimes he’s so loud I can’t concentrate. So, I go out for walks too.”
“Right. It’s pretty quiet around here, isn’t it? I thought there would be more activity when I went out this morning. But hardly anyone was around,” Susie offered in an attempt to find out if the woman had seen anything.
“Oh, you’d be surprised,” Toni said provocatively.
“Oooh. Tell me,” Susie answered, scooching a little closer. “I love gossip.”
The woman proceeded to give her host a night owl’s perspective on the last few days. Three days earlier, on Sunday, the husband and wife two boats down had gotten into a shouting match at about 3:00 a.m. On Monday, some suspicious characters loitering around turned out to be maintenance guys—Toni had called marina security on the VHF. And just last night, there was a couple making out—really making out—on the bow of the Benetti docked port side.
“Man,” Susie said, “It’s amazing. All that going on while the rest of us are sleeping.” She paused. “I hope we haven’t bothered you too much with all of our shenanigans.”
“Naw. You guys are quiet. Good neighbors.”
“We try to be. So, how has your stay been otherwise?”
“Real nice. We came up with some friends—they’re over in the Mega-Yacht Marina. They’ve got a 120-foot Hatteras. So, we’ve been hanging out with them a bunch on their boat. They loooove their poker. You guys play? Roland and me, we love poker. Nothing high stakes, mind you, just cards, some smokes, friendly conversation. You know?”
“Sounds like fun.” Susie smelled an invite coming. She was calculating whether it would be better to spend more time with these folks, or less. Before she could decide which way to respond, Toni continued.
“Too bad we head back tomorrow. Got family coming in to visit.”
“Back to reality, huh?”
“Yeah,” the woman said, wistfully. “Hey, your guy need any Pepto? If he’s real bad, I can get Roland, have him check him out?”
“Oh, no thanks, Toni. I think he’s on the mend. The worst is over. He’s rehydrating now.”
“Yeah… that’s exactly what I was gonna say. Lots of liquids. Water, Pedialyte, Gatorade. You know the drill.”
“I do. In fact,” Susie said, stubbing out her cigarette, “I should probably check in on him and call it a night.”
“Oh sure,” Toni said, not bothering to mask her disappointment.
Susie took her pack of cigarettes and pulled out four. She handed them to her neighbor and said, “Take these. Get you over ‘til tomorrow.”
“Thanks, hun! Very sweet of you.” Toni perked up.
Susie picked up the wine bottle and ashtray and walked her uninvited guest off the boat. She also made a mental note: a thirty-five-foot Sea Ray Sundancer—I Sea U—with the homeport of Ft. Lauderdale.
It was just past midnight.
DAY SIX
Thursday, May 3, 2018
Roy’s crossing to Miami had been somewhat choppy. Nothing serious for the Yellowfin, but making the journey back by jet ski in those conditions would be another
story.
Roy had been preoccupied with watching the weather and keeping an eye out for other watercraft. He knew that, at some point, he’d need to think through everything that they’d done that day, but for that he wanted no distractions. He’d put it on the backburner.
He approached the mouth to his home canal at about midnight. Slowing the engines, he decided to hang out in the bay for a while to allow time for the neighbors to go to sleep. He was tired, though, and after half an hour, the amber lights and flickering of televisions hadn’t changed.
He started the engines and ran a bit south of the canal entrance, then dropped anchor to wait. He set his phone alarm for 2:00 a.m. in case he drifted off. Which he did.
He slept fitfully—really, he was more in that state of semi-consciousness that feels like the border between sleep and wakefulness. It was cold out on the water.
His dreams ran like a preview for a film called Killing Joe. The set-up, the boat ride, the drugged beer, the Hefty bag, the piss—that rancid smell of urine—and finally dumping the body. It was all bits and pieces. His mind replayed all the steps in the plan, everything they’d done, looking for mistakes.
He kept dreaming that the duffle bag had gotten stuck to the back of his boat somehow, and that rather than sinking the dead body, he’d been dragging it around behind him all night.
He awoke.
A rogue wave had jostled the boat, interrupting the natural rhythm of the sea that had lulled him to sleep.
It was 1:13 a.m.
Still early. Some of those lights were still burning bright.
As he scanned the neighborhood across the bow of the Yellowfin, his eyes settled on the coffin box where, just a few hours earlier, he and Susie had killed a young man. Roy had on other occasions sat there chatting with his daughter. Susie had lain there more than once to take in the sun while he fished.
The space was tainted now. It would never be the same again. He would wait a few months, then sell the boat.
As Roy contemplated, he felt engulfed by his surroundings. He felt buried in them, entombed.
Floating alone in the bay, as he looked to the east and south away from downtown Miami, the horizon melted—the division between the sea and the sky dissolved into one massive snow globe of darkness and water. Roy felt alone in a floating tomb.