by Nick Pirog
“In most victims, the larynx relaxes sometime after unconsciousness and water fills the lungs. This is what we call a wet drowning. Water, regardless of freshwater or saltwater, will damage the inside surface of the lungs, collapse the alveoli, and cause a hardening of the lungs with a reduced ability to exchange air. Freshwater contains less salt than blood and will therefore be absorbed by the bloodstream due to osmosis. Saltwater is much saltier than blood and, due to osmosis, water will leave the bloodstream and enter the lungs.”
Gregory beat me to the punch, “So what?”
“So there was no evidence of water in Kim’s lungs.”
Gregory again beat me to the stupid button, “Meaning?”
Caleb cleared up the matter for the three idiots sitting next to him, “Meaning Kim was drowned in a fresh body of water and not in the Atlantic.”
“Precisely,” Caitlin replied.
We terminated the call with Caitlin and stared blankly at one another. I felt like I was riding the short bus with two of my even more handicapped friends. Let me get this straight, Tristen and/or Conner made Kim swallow her eyes, drowned her in a freshwater body of water, transported her to the Roque Bluffs, dismembered her, and stuffed her in a lobster cage all in a time span of one hour. This was a lot of information to absorb.
We’d ended the call with Caitlin at 5:15 p.m. It was now almost six and we hadn’t made a lick of sense of any of the new information. Gleason offered, “There are 2,000 lakes in Maine and about the same number of rivers. This would be in relation to you, Thomas. You got a fishing hole somewhere?”
“Nope, not here. I did in Washington.” I was more talking to myself than the other three. I said to the three of them, “He started this in Maine and he’s going to finish it in Maine.”
We were all interrupted by Lacy hopping around in the living room screaming, “Oh my God. They came back.”
Her beloved Mariners had apparently made a game of it. Caleb shook his head at Lacy and then straightened up, “What about the lake Alex’s house is built on?”
Gregory and Gleason’s eyes widened, and Gleason said, “That could be something.”
By 8:00 p.m., Alex’s house and Lake Wesserunett was our best bet. Lacy was all smiles and seemed disappointed I made her ride with Gleason and Gregory. I didn’t want her to overhear Caleb and I talk about Conner’s involvement just yet.
We were rocketing westbound along I-95 in the Range Rover two car lengths behind the Caprice when Caleb shook his head and said, “This isn’t right. It’s too vague. Have you seen the lake? It’s enormous. How are we going to know where to look? From the beginning, this thing hasn’t been a treasure hunt, it’s been a dead giveaway.”
I agreed with the kid. The lake was about six miles around and we were flying on the loose connection between Alex and myself. The Caprice signaled to get off the highway at the Route 2 junction. I eased the SUV into the exit lane behind the Caprice. The Range Rover had two wheels down the ramp when Caleb yanked the wheel vaulting us back onto the highway.
I slammed on the brakes and we came to a skidding halt. Caleb said serenely, “Turn around.”
I floored the Range Rover through the grass dividing the traffic and headed east on the freeway. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
“All the murder sites have been boat accessible. Your house, the lighthouse, your boat, and the bluff. Why would this time be any different?”
He was right. All the sites had been boat accessible and the lake Alex’s house backed up to was landlocked. I felt Caleb raise himself an inch off his seat with his fingertips and waited for him to apprise me of Alex’s death site. He said, “You row with Conner at the Verona Rowing Club, correct?”
I nodded.
“Did you know until about two years ago it was called the Penobscot Bay-River Rowing Club?”
I’d never read about this in the newsletter. “What? Penobscot Bay-River?”
“The club is positioned where the Penobscot River runs into the Penobscot Bay. Haven’t you ever wondered why the water is so calm in that area. It’s because the two currents flow against each other to create relative equilibrium.”
“So then it would be half river water, half Atlantic ocean.”
“I said relative equilibrium. Think how the water flows. And the fish you see.”
The water flowed out to sea. The fish were all freshwater. It all fit. We would find Alex on the grounds of the Verona Rowing Club.
I looked at the dash. It was 8:26 p.m. If we found her in the next fifteen minutes she would be alive. Sixteen and she would be dead.
Chapter 54
We were barreling along the freeway at 110 mph when the fatal minute flickered on the dash, 8:41 p.m.
Seven minutes later, we pulled into the barren Verona Rowing Club parking lot. The wind had picked up considerably and the last of the scullers had called it quits hours earlier. My phone rang for the sixth time in twelve minutes and I flipped it open, stating, “Alex is at the Verona Rowing Club.”
Gleason didn’t ask how I knew this, “We’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“Stay in the parking lot. I don’t want Lacy leaving the car.”
“You’re the boss.”
You’re the boss? If I hadn’t been in a dead sprint to the club entrance, I would have stopped to shit my pants. The place shut down at 6:00 on Sundays and the entrance doors were locked. I peered through the glass but didn’t see a janitor vacuuming with headphones on like in the movies. Alex wasn’t going to be inside, and Caleb and I went to work on the eight-foot terra-cotta wall enclosing the club.
The wind was whipping the glass water out to sea and I squinted into the horizon. I tapped Caleb on the shoulder and pointed straight out. “Do you see anything out there?”
He didn’t, but I could have sworn I glimmered the salient shadow of a stern amid the high waves. I gave the ocean a hard stare, but didn’t see the mirage again. Caleb and I were protected from the gusting wind, but it was still remarkably loud and Caleb yelled, “Where do you think she is?”
I could think of only one place we would find Alex’s body and started running.
They kept the shells in a long brick storage shelter across the bridge. Caleb followed behind me as I did a steady jog across the football field-length bridge.
We came to the wrought iron door locked with thick cable and a rotund Masterlock. I pulled my automatic from my waistband and fired off three shots in quick succession. The third round did the trick and the broken cable shuttered against the steel door. Caleb pulled the cables aside as I wrenched the heavy door open. The long room was musty and darkly lit with overhanging garage lighting.
The shells were held in wooden mounting much like submarine barracks, four high and twenty five long on each side. Conner’s shell was in L7C, the third slot of the seventh row on the left side. I placed my hand on the hard wood as if I could tell if death had visited the shell simply by its temperature. I lolled the shell on its side and pieces of Alex’s body didn’t come tumbling out.
Caleb asked, “Should we check them all real quick?”
Checking 200 shells real quick still translated into one big, slow, sloppy chore. If Alex’s body wasn’t stuffed in Conner’s shell, then it wasn’t here. It’s not like I had a shell here.
Whap.
But I did have a locker.
We hightailed it back across the bridge and to the outdoor lockers facing the bay. The lockers were thirty feet from where Caleb and I had first found our bearings after hopping the outer wall. It wasn’t hard to pinpoint my locker. It was the only one leaking blood.
Caleb and I stood motionless in front of locker 81. I straddled the blossoming puddle in front of the locker as I lifted the light combination lock in my left hand. I turned the dial right to 7, left to 32, then right to 6. Unfortunately, the combination was 6-34-5. On the fourth attem
pt, I unlatched the lock and tossed it to Caleb. The wind was fierce and as I looked at Caleb one last time, he yelled, “What are you waiting for?”
I’m sorry, but I was little weary about finding the woman I’d fallen in love with just forty-eight hours prior in forty-eight pieces. I lifted the lock mechanism and eased the locker door open against the prevailing wind. My fingers slipped from the door and the locker slammed shut. I only saw the ravaged body for an instant but—there was no mistaking it—the body was that of Conner Ellis Dodds.
Chapter 55
My head flooded with different components of anguish. Conner was dead. But he deserved it, didn’t he? By default, was Alex still alive? And if so, for how long?
I reeled four or five steps backward and Caleb moved in to take my spot. He opened the locker door and stepped to the side. I numbly took in the sight. The locker was a bloody mess; Conner’s limbs were in a pile at the bottom of the locker, his midsection hung in limbo—I’m guessing from one of the clothing hooks—where his initials, CED, were visibly tattooed across his ripped abdominals.
His head sat in the top cubby lolled to the left, pinning a splintered walkie-talkie against the inner wall. Conner’s face was unrecognizable, only his bright blue eyes remained. They’d somehow escaped the massacre unscathed.
I took two steps forward and Caleb yelled, “Why didn’t Tristen take his eyes?”
I heard myself say, “He wants me to know the game is over. No more clues. No more help. I lost. And I’m next.”
I called Caitlin and informed her about Conner. The conversation was one-sided and I wasn’t sure if she would be playing Chief Medical Examiner on this one. Caleb and I made a pact to keep the Conner information to ourselves; nothing could be gained by defaming him at this point. I still wanted to know why. Why had he helped Tristen? And how had the two come to find each other?
The only person with the answers was laughing at me right now, and there was a good chance he would tell me about Conner’s involvement seconds before he took my life.
Caleb and I hopped back over the wall and strolled toward the Range Rover. The back bumper of the FBI Caprice was barely visible parked parallel with the SUV. Caleb and I passed the front end of the Range Rover and froze.
Caleb said uniformly, “Looks like Gregory won’t be needing Lacy’s painting after all.”
The windshield of the Caprice was covered in blood and brains. Gregory and Gleason were dead. Lacy was gone.
I channeled my anger, uneasiness, and misgivings into all-out rage. At who, I’m not sure. At myself? At Gregory? At Gleason? At Conner? At Tristen? It was a combination of all of them and it wasn’t digesting well. Speaking of which, my sausage pizza from three hours earlier was now part of the Verona Rowing Club montage.
I wrenched the driver side door open and surveyed Gregory’s limp body. The bullet had entered through the back of his skull and sent the better part of his brain and chiseled features onto the dash. Gleason had taken one in the right temple, and needless to say, his left temple was decorating the driver side window.
I couldn’t understand it. How had this happened? Whoever had accomplished the feat had obviously been sitting in the backseat. And it sure as hell wasn’t Tristen Grayer. As naïve and incompetent as the FBI was—and trust me they were—I couldn’t see them inviting Tristen Grayer into the backseat for an invigorating game of 21 Questions. There must be a third party involved.
Caitlin arrived on the scene and I had to console her for ten minutes before she muscled out a word.
I gave her a quick rundown on the carnage, then explained the most pressing detail, “Tristen and whoever else is involved in this nightmare has both Alex and Lacy. I need you to autopsy Conner and see what exactly Tristen is up to. There has to be a clue here somewhere. This is crunch time. I need you to be strong.”
I’m not sure if she saw through my lie. I had little hope for Alex and Lacy at this point. Tristen had thrown in the towel with the clues. His legacy would continue and he would come back next year and turn someone else’s life upside down.
Chapter 56
I don’t remember falling asleep. Caleb and I had gone through two pots of coffee, but neither of us had an inkling who the third party might be. The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced Tristen could have pulled off the stunt. He could have crept up on the Caprice, pulled the back door open, blown both Gregory and Gleason’s brains out, and then snatched up Lacy. This is all assuming the backdoor had been unlocked, which wasn’t consistent with FBI protocol. But then again, it was FBI protocol. I knew preschools that ran tighter ships.
I peered across the table at Caleb asleep in a pile of spilled coffee. I grabbed the pot off the table and went to work on a fresh batch. Caleb stirred and wiped the dripping coffee from his nose, “What time is it?”
I looked up at the clock, it was 2:00 in the afternoon. “We have eight hours. We shouldn’t have slept.”
He nodded, but the both of us knew we needed the catnap. By the end of our brainstorming session last night, one of us had broached the possibility Tristen was a triplet. Could there be three of them, Tristen, Geoffrey, and Bernard?
I checked my cell phone and saw I had five missed calls, three from Caitlin and two from Charles Mangrove. My answering machine was blinking and I knew I would have the same five calls. Charles’ were first and I skipped them both. The last three were indeed from Caitlin. All three messages were fairly similar: she didn’t find any clues, but had something important to tell me and to stop by the morgue.
Terrific. Alex and Lacy were both missing and soon to be of the deceased variety, and Caitlin wanted to drop the bomb on me that I needed to set aside the month of May for Lamaze class. Can you get cyanide over the counter or do you need a prescription? No, killing myself was option F. Option A-E would bring me close, but I’d probably survive.
Caleb poured two large mugs full of dark Colombian brew and the two of us hopped in the Range Rover. I chugged the coffee down in three gulps, and if I hadn’t killed off all my taste buds with last night’s load, I might have thought the coffee hot. My brain started working again around mile marker 203, and was in full tilt when I parked the Range Rover next to Caitlin’s red Pathfinder in the Bangor County morgue lot.
Caleb and I walked through the front entrance and into the waiting area. My eyes found the thick steel cage door leading to the corridor. The lock was bent inward and the door ajar. The work appeared to be at the diligence of a large, heavy ax.
I crashed through the gate and sprinted down the long corridor, slamming into the door leading to the surgical annex. Caitlin was nowhere to be found. Caleb disappeared into the storage area to search the body bags for Caitlin, but we both knew he would come up empty. I tried Caitlin’s cell and seconds later heard her distinctive ring coming from behind me. I picked her cell off the counter and stared at it long and hard, as if in some way it symbolized Caitlin’s death.
I fought the image off. She wasn’t dead. Death would come for Caitlin, Alex, and Lacy at 10:10 p.m. tonight. Caleb and I had five hours.
Caleb came back into the autopsy room and shook his head. I hadn’t noticed the surgical table in the center of the room where Conner’s body had been laid out and an attempt at reconstruction made.
I looked at Conner’s tattoo, his bulging muscular body, his almost buzzed blond hair, his revered blue eyes, and his fairy tale wanger. Then I looked up at Caleb and said, “The game isn’t over. It’s just begun.”
I explained everything to Caleb on the way to the Verona Rowing Club. He shook his head in disbelief. Hell, I almost couldn’t believe it. But it all fit. The puzzle was complete.
There was quite a scene at the Verona Rowing Club and I had to find one of Caitlin’s higher-ranking men before Caleb and I were let through the masses to the crime scene. The weather had g
one from bad to worse, and the day seemed three hours ahead of schedule. The wind was howling in from the ocean and the small waves were running up onto the deck near the lockers. I stood near the cordoned-off locker and faced out to sea.
I’d yet to disclose one facet to Caleb and forged the last wrinkle in our little shit pot, “Tristen and Conner were working together on this so I think it’s safe to say they’d worked out a plan from day one. I’d gone rowing with Conner the day before the first murder. We’d chatted it up about what we would do to Alex Tooms if we ever got our hands on him. Of course, I thought it was a him. Conner must have known Alex was a woman, and always referred to her simply as Tooms. Conner said he would take Tooms to an island where he would make Tooms rewrite the book. He said he would torture and starve Tooms until Tooms wrote the truth.”
Caleb added the gloss, “The eyes in the locker weren’t looking at you, they were seeing the next murder site. They were seeing the island.”
I placed it in the kiln, “Tristen has Alex, Caitlin, and Lacy on Matinicus Island.”
Chapter 57
The rain whipped against the windshield and my wipers fought a losing battle. It was ten after seven when Caleb and I pulled into the muddy Bayside Harbor parking lot. There were only two other cars, a by-product of the seven to ten foot swells smashing against the harbor pier.
Caleb ran to the Backstern and I ducked headlong into the wind toward the manager’s hut. I pushed through the door and evidentially Kellon’s deadbeat dad thought I was there to kill him. He had on a yellow slicker and shot his hands up in the air. Imagine a high school referee signaling a field goal in a typhoon. That’s what he looked like.
The deadbeat screamed, “Don’t shoot!”
I shoved my .45 in my waistband and said, “I’m not here to kill you. I need your help.”
DBD slowly put his arms down and started breathing again. I said, “This concerns your daughter’s killer. He’s on Matinicus Island and I need to get there so I can kill him.”