“Jenny, Jenny, I’m sorry.” Aaron screamed as the big man began to strip her shirt. “It’s my fault.”
“Let me go!” Jenny had cried, her senses overcome by confusion and fear.
“I don’t think so. You’re an extra perk. I haven’t had a pretty thing like you in a long time, and you see, I’ve been real good lately,” the man had said, his large hands busy with her body.
“Hurry up you two,” a third voice spoke from farther away, “Get the job done. I want to get away from these bugs.”
The brute suddenly turned from Jenny and moved quickly to assist his partner, administering a fast and hard blow to Aaron who had begun bucking and fighting against the man sitting on his chest. Taking advantage of her assailant’s inattention, Jenny jumped up and began running semi-naked away from the marsh bank and the water.
“Go get her,” the third voice said tiredly. “Come on, will you.”
The sounds of running feet close behind Jenny almost paralyzed her with fear, but she kept on struggling to outpace the man, the pain in her bare feet on the crisp marsh grass crippling her forward movement. She screamed for help over and over knowing it wasn’t coming. It was too late. He had already grabbed her blonde ponytail and flung her onto the damp ground, panting from his exertions.
“You’re really a wild one, going to feel real good breaking you in!” The big man had hurt her when he fell upon her on the marshy ground. The sharp grass and weeds were an unpleasant bed beneath her but he made himself comfortable pulling her pants off, then using them to protect his knees as he lowered his cargo shorts. Spreading her legs with his body, the big man held Jenny down by her hair. “She kept trying to get away”, he said later.
Jenny sobbed and fought the man as best she could; the physical pain was overwhelming, but the pain in her heart so much worse. She knew the violation of her body was only a prelude to what was to come. The man was unmasked, with no fear of being recognized. Jenny was a smart girl who had known at that moment that she was going to die. “Aaron, help me,” she screamed shrilly as the big man violently abused her body over and over in the process of taking her life.
The man holding Aaron down beat him in the face and on the head with the butt of the gun.
“We were going to do this with a little more finesse,” he said disgustedly. “I should have shot you while you were sleeping.”
“But why?” Aaron asked through his pain. “Who are you, and why are you doing this? Take my wallet. Take the car, it’s at the resort. I’ll give you money. Just go away and leave us alone.”
“No dice. A job is a job. I already agreed,” the man said, wielding another blow. He fingered the trigger of the loaded weapon and jammed the barrel against Aaron’s head, firing twice in succession.
The blood and brains splash of the educated doctor was no worse or better than that of a dock worker, the killer said later to his comrades. He knew because he had murdered both in his time.
The third voice asked the question. “Is it done?”
Both men nodded, ready to travel. “All cleaned up. Let’s go,” the first man said. “Let’s take their boat, it has a motor.”
Looking back over his handiwork for a minute, the big man had smiled, checked his zipper, and admired the perky pony tail hanging from the scraggly huisache tree.
“Yep. We’re done here,” he agreed, and jumped into Gandy’s boat.
The old dinghy had been aground, tied to a post on the shore near the inlet when the killing crew first found it, believing it to be the boat of an oysterman or fisherman. The original color had faded in the sun and salt water from brown to a streaked tan, but strips of the original color could be seen under the seat in the middle of the boat. The find was the good fortune of the killers, although they had been prepared to push their larger boat through the inlet or walk the distance if necessary.
The owner of the old tan boat was an even older man who lived back a ways in a small shack made from drift wood and other beached lumber he had salvaged from the Gulf. The old man lived alone most of the time except when his grandson was out of school and came to visit
The boy’s father had landed a privately owned helicopter onto a cleared spot in front of the shack on the day of the murders but he hadn’t seen the incident. What the boy had seen was three people that got off a big boat, hijacked his grandfather’s small boat, then poled and rowed it up the inlet where the oystermen had some of their hidey holes.
Sometime much later when the whole story came out at the trial, the boy would tell what he had seen. The information would help to provide evidence that three people used Old Man Billings boat to facilitate the crimes of rape and murder.
3:00 PM Monday November 23
The old man’s name was Theodore Billings, but no one called him Theodore away from his face. He seldom used the boat anymore, but after his grandson left, he got really pissed off when he saw that it was gone. He loaded up his rucksack with a few supplies for the evening and left his place a little after 3:00 P.M. on the hunt toward the slip. The slip, the narrow inlet that was the oystermen’s hidey hole was the largest of the waterways leading from Edwards Bay into the marsh grass. It dead-ended into a salt water pool full of oyster reefs. He knew how far down the slip went, knew every foot of it, just didn’t know if he could walk it at one time.
Old Man Billings, what everyone called him, saw Gandy’s boat near the same spot where his boat was supposed to be, and borrowed it, but he didn’t connect it’s availability to his loss.
He motored Gandy’s boat up the tidal slip, found his boat drifting in the rising water, picked up a few oysters then towed the dinghy back to where it belonged. He tied the two boats together to the post where the hijackers had helped themselves and then went on his way.
When Sheriff Jack came with that woman detective and asked him if anyone had used his boat lately, Old Man Billings remembered being real upset over something, but couldn’t recall what it was about.
Sheriff Jack told him later that his fingerprints were on Gandy’s boat, but Old man Billings got cranky and said, “I don’t know any reason I would be on Elmore’s beat up row boat when I have a fine one of my own.”
He also didn’t remember that his grandson had been at the shack and left right after lunch on the day of the murders.
5:00 P.M. Monday November 23
Three figures exited their large boat at Jackson Park with two boarding a large black SUV, and one driving away sometime afterward in a white, older model Ford Econoline van. Both drivers were paying close attention to any traffic that might be moving on the jeep trail leading from the main boat docks at Gandy’s to the park. A larger two-lane highway connected with the jeep road and led to Edwards Paradise, eventually meandering to the four lane freeway.
The trip back to Houston was long and arduous for the van driver who kept watch in the rear-view mirror for the tale-tale blue and red flashers of law enforcement vehicles.
Each member of the killing crew rethought the incident using a mental checklist of the completed assignment. They were not friends, and knew little of each other, but all had come together earlier in the day at the boat dock in Jackson Park. The large speed boat had been stolen and was left to drift at the end. Its interior and exterior were wiped clean of prints--the instructions had been explicit. There was no room for error.
Driving the van was an old experience for the big man; he was dexterous with quick reflexes, characteristics not usually accorded to long muscular frames, an anomaly that made him exceedingly dangerous and a good driver in tight situations. The dead girl had discovered his quality when she tried to run from him. The smile of pleasure crossing his lips was instantaneous, disappearing as quickly as it came. She had been a fighter, and that was how he preferred his women. Too bad she had to die. It would have been fun to keep her around for a while. But orders were orders. The big man looked once again in the rear view mirror and then relaxed, knowing he was too far away to be caught.
; The second assassin rode in the black SUV, nodding off whenever the road smoothed enough to encourage sleep. His right hand lay across his lap, fingers splayed across the weapon on his belt. He was careful, never taking unnecessary chances in life or on the job. It was good to have his part of the assignment over, and the payment waiting in Houston. The van driver was the money man, the disburser, the one who notified the crew of any changes in plans. There had been no opportunity to back out once they had begun. Any reneging on the deal offered only one ending, a merciless death.
The third figure, the driver of the SUV was looking down the road to the end of the job, when the money could be spent. Loving money was more than a part-time commitment--it meant that everything in life had to be geared toward success, with no lost time spent on relationships. Someone had once said that money wasn’t the root of evil, the lack of money was the impetus to do wrong.
The fourth person in the killing crew was an errand boy, a one-time hire whose job had been to acquire a certain kind of boat and get rid of it afterward. Sloppiness on his part had provided the crew with a boat that was too large, requiring the team to steal a smaller craft for use in the tiny water way. The big man hated sloppy screw-ups.
The fourth person had been waiting in the park when the others returned from the marshy slip, gathered their things and left. The big man stayed behind and pulled his weapon. He was about to dispose of the screw-up, but the target was cautious and began running-an unexpected turn of events. The big man had fired his silenced S&W.38 at the runner who headed toward the rental shack. He ceased firing when the scurrying figure disappeared from sight.
Blood on the ground gave the runner’s path away. The boat docks at the rental shack were no more than a quarter mile down the beach, too close. The wounded man needed to be found and finished off, but the big man couldn’t afford to be seen at the public boat docks that night. Unaware that Gandy had left the rental store unmanned, the big man missed his opportunity and reluctantly left the park, sure of the fact that the wounded man would require dispatch at a later time.
6:00 PM Monday November 23
Sheriff Jack Fuller was a large, black man, with gray frizzy hair, deep brown eyes that sunk into his broad face until they almost disappeared, and a mouth that seldom if ever smiled. “He is pretty much all business,” the local residents said, “but a fair man you can trust with your friendship if he decides to partake of it.” Jack seldom laughed out loud, but his face didn’t change much when he did, a quirk that caused concern among strangers who heard the loud bellow, but saw no signs of mirth on the large, black face.
Sheriff Jack’s newest deputy had come down from a place called Buena Vista, Texas, somewhere southwest of the capitol city. Ernest Garrison had worked there as deputy for ten years, and then decided he needed a change of scenery.
The evening air had cooled considerably by the time the two men got their equipment ready and the boat into the water. The sky became overcast again as the sun went down. Ernest Parker Garrison was a large man about the size of Sheriff Jack, and between the two of them, they managed to tip the speedboat a little too far to one side if they sat anywhere but in the middle. Ernest was a fast learner and studied Sheriff Jack’s ways until he was able to follow the man’s movements, in or out of a boat.
Off in the distance, nothing but water was visible to the two lawmen, no lights of any kind shone from the far shore. It was understandable, because the long rocky shoreline was flooded during the high tides that came in from the Gulf every day, and there weren’t any places for real estate development. The salt water tides all along the north shore were fierce, and had been known to wreck small boats that got caught between the waves and the unforgiving rocks. Edwards Bay was unique to that part of the Gulf Coast, with high cliffs and rocks, reminiscent of ocean shoreline.
The resort on the southern shore was called Edwards Paradise, named for the large lake of water existing in symbiosis with the much larger Gulf. The land was surrounded by salt water on one end, and fresh water on the other, from a canal that connected to the river a little further northwest. At certain times of the day, the fresh water of Edwards Bay would be inundated with a strong dose of salt as the tides rolled in from the Gulf, causing the water level to rise rapidly.
The oyster reefs were more prevalent on the north side of the bay; the regular infusion of salt water upon the shell creatures brought with it a ready supply of food necessary for growing good, fat oysters. The oystermen would get out early in the day before the tides washed in, when the water was at its lowest level, and hand pick the shell fish from the shallow bottom of the bay. Heavily laden skiffs with huddled, grizzled, men in knit caps, high top tennis shoes, and long pants muddied and torn would return before noon, headed back toward the open boat ramps.
Sheriff Jack knew the routines of the oystermen of Edwards Bay because his daddy had been one of them. Sheriff Jack, or back then, just Jack would climb in the boat with his daddy, dressed to stay as warm as possible while he was wading in cold water during the fall and winter weather. Oysters were said to be good only in months with an ‘R’ in them and Jack had spent many winter months dipping his chin into the cold water as he bent over; picking the oyster shells with gloved hands, keeping to the outside part of the reef where the larger shell fish lay in smaller bunches. Sometimes only the edge of a toe was necessary for finding them in the murky water.
The oystermen knew the rocky shoreline, knew the best places for anchoring boats safely, and knew where the inlets were located. Those small strips of water often held the choice oyster beds sought by the experienced oystermen.
Young Jack Fuller had learned to spot those marsh lined waterways from his daddy’s boat, pegging them to his memory when it was time each year to go back to the beds. The water had encroached upon the land a little more each year, but even so, young Jack knew the locations each time he returned with his daddy after the weather got really cold.
The lay of the land was on Jack’s mind when he and his newest deputy got ready to put the boat into the water. The outboard motor was old, but powerful with a tankful of gas for the late evening run. Wind on the bay would be chilly, so he brought along a jacket with a hood. Being cold definitely killed a man’s concentration. He gave his deputy a look then nodded, noticing that Ernest had a fine, water-resistant coat ready for the night’s business. Jack hoped it would be a quick trip, and neither of them would have reason to become chilled before they returned to the boat dock.
Jack chose to sit at the motor end of the boat because he was familiar with the bay, the boat, and the right amount of power needed to negotiate the waves off the northern shore. He had no doubts--the search for the missing couple would take them to that shoreline. His gut rebelled at the thought of those treacherous rocks and high tides, for the combination meant sure trouble. The oyster harvesters would know where to go to avoid the turbulent waters, but a stranger in a small boat would not have that information. Aaron might have attempted a landing on the north shore.
Darkness was already upon the bay, with the last light day disappearing below the horizon, and Jack chewed on the end of a King Edward cigar to calm his stomach, wondering what they might find in the night ahead. His deputy sat forward, eyes searching as they motored across the water toward the north shore. He believed it best to go to the worst first, rather than waiting until it was colder and darker to go near the rocky shore.
If the couple were really lost, and needed to be searched for beyond the means of the sheriff and his deputy, it would probably have to wait until a helicopter could circle around the end of the rough land, and get a panoramic view of the marsh grass and flat land that led away from the rocky shoreline. There was nothing much there. The land was poor and hard to reach because of the marshy inlets that prevented roads being built. What was good for the oyster harvesters was not all good for real estate developers.
The south shore of Edwards Bay was populated, not only by the owners of the resort, but by ma
ny retirees from Houston and surrounding cities who leased the land from the Corps of Engineers and built vacation houses. The Corps owned the bays and the beach land, for the Gulf of Mexico was not for sale. The houses built on private land were bought and sold, but the leased land ended in the water and belonged to no one person.
Jack knew if the couple had gone to shore, and needed help on the south side, someone would have called the boat house for them. Old man Gandy and his son both lived along the south shore, not too far from the boat house. The old man was hard of hearing and feeble, but he could still manage a telephone. Of course, there was the possibility that those things could still happen and present a happy ending for everyone, but each passing hour made that less likely.
The wind was sharp, coming out of the east after it had changed back during the evening with a new cold front threatening the coast land. The oystermen knew the east wind brought no good to anyone--it penetrated the small places on a person, finding the weak spots where cold hurt the most. Many an east wind had tortured young Jack as he sat on the front seat of the boat, his daddy revving the motor, sending them flying across the bay toward their hidey holes. The memory made him shiver inside his hooded jacket. He wondered if the couple they sought had found warmth out of the wind.
Ernest sat shotgun in the boat, content to use his perfect eyesight for scouring the water and the shoreline, looking for anything floating in the water. His hands were tucked inside his water-resistant jacket, keeping them dry and warm. It wasn’t cold yet, but his senses told him it was coming. The wind blew up his nose and across the tops of his ears, chilling him and making the snot run before he could catch it on his sleeve.
Working for Sheriff Jack had been a new beginning for Ernest, being treated kindly by his boss was mighty nice. The sheriff didn’t fancy things up, or use pretty words when he needed something done, he just told Ernest what he wanted, and knew it would be done right. The older man seemed to trust him, and that made Ernest feel really good. Right now, though, he thought, I might be earning my keep.
The Maude Rogers Murder Collection Page 28